Peace Community Church

Al Carroll
Community Peace Builders
March 2, 2010
Defending America

At the beginning of my three months term of office as CPB facilitator I was thinking about how to make war less appealing. Now I shifted to considering how to abolish the military in the US, or at least make the Defense Dept. live up to its name as an organization that defends our nation against invaders as opposed to an organization that seeks to force the rest of the world conform to the will of the American Empire. A real ‘Defense’ Department would only act when the Vietnamese were actually trying to land on the beaches of California or an army of Nicaraguans in small boats was seen off the coasts of Florida. Up until about 1948 the Defense Department was called the War Department and that was considerably more accurate label, and at least at that time the War Department shrank its military as soon as wars were finished.

War is viciously awful, but has an appeal and a rationale that is hard to stop once it gets going. Former NYT’s war correspondent, Chris Hedges describes both war’s awfulness and war’s insidious appeal in his book, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.1

Very, very occasionally empires or nations renounce violence or give up their military. Two examples that I have found. The 3rd Century BC emperor of the entire Indian subcontinent, Ashoka, was so upset at the slaughter of his last battle that he cried,
“What have I done? If this is a victory, what’s a defeat then? Is this a victory or a defeat? Is this justice or injustice? Is it gallantry or a rout? Is it valor to kill innocent children and women?2
Subsequently, Ashoka converted to Buddhism and renounced violence.
More recently in 1948, José Figueres Ferrer3, led a successful revolution against a President of Costa Rica who refused to leave office when his term of office was up, and came to the remarkable conclusion that if there was no army, there would be none of the revolutions and coups that plague the other Central American nations. Now Costa Rica exceeds all of its neighbors in education, medical care and wealth by large margins. So it can be done, but this sort of thing seems to generally occur from the top down. Might we American elect such leaders?

What can be done with people power? Recently, I discovered some insights from an extensive essay by the Czech leader Vaclav Havel,4, The Power of the Powerless. This essay was written in 1978 when Czechoslovakia was still part of the Soviet bloc. But Havel makes a distinction between the absolute dictatorship of someone like Josef Stalin and the post-totalitarian state run by the apparatchiks of the Czech state in the 1970’s. In the post-totalitarian state the repression of dissent and the deadening of cultural life is accomplished in large part by the adoption of an ideology that affects the entire society.
Havel, a poet and playwright, makes extensive use of a parable about a green grocer who is asked to place a sign, “Workers of the World Unite”, in his shop window along with the carrots and tomatoes. The green grocer doesn’t really care about the sign but doesn’t want to risk the consequences of refusing. Havel writes,” In an entire town is plastered with slogans that no one reads,.. it is a message to the government, but it is also something more: a small example of the principle of social auto-totality at work. Part of the essence of the post-totalitarian system is that it draws everyone into its sphere of power, not so they may realize themselves as human beings, but so they may surrender their human identify in favor of the system,…” “Everyone, however, is in fact in fact involved and enslaved, not only the greengrocers but also the prime ministers. …the greengrocer is involved only to a minor extent, but he also has little power. The prime minister, naturally, has greater power, but in return he is far more deeply involved.” Remember, that Havel was writing about a seemingly impossible situation in 1978, how could the Czech people possibly throw off the shackles of the Soviet empire? As we know Havel and many of the greengrocers along with priests, professors, teachers, electricians and everyday citizens eventually did just that.

The United States isn’t a post-totalitarian state, but in the area of “national security” we are infected by an ideology. It is very difficult to refute this militaristic ideology. Among the many symbols that are used to propagate this ideology, there are two. One is the American flag pin and the other is the “we support our troops” signs and bumper stickers. Like “Workers of the World Unite” these symbols are not really objectionable in themselves, but they imply conformity to a national ideology. As I remember, Obama did not have an American flag pin in his lapel at the beginning of his campaign for the presidency, but now would not be seen without it. The first 42 Presidents didn’t wear flag pins in their portraits, only Bush-43 and Barack Obama.5 “Supporting our Troops” is not necessarily a bad idea, but unfortunately it implies that we support this nation’s misguided wars. This sort of ideology has the effect that “the people’s interest in [these] matters naturally dwindles and independent political thought, in so far as it exists at all, in seen by the majority as unrealistic, far-fetched, a kind of self-indulgent game, hopelessly distant from their everyday concerns; something admirable, perhaps, but quite pointless, because it is on one hand entirely utopian, and the other hand extraordinarily dangerous…”

The United States is “living the lie”, that its future requires suppressing any opposition to the “American Way of Life” with military force. It is time to begin “living in the truth”, that we are sisters and brothers with all of the other humans on earth. “If the main pillar of [our militaristic] system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.” Havel concludes his essay with, “For the real question is whether the ‘brighter future’ [a world in which we don’t try to solve our differences with violence] is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it?

[This is a story we used during our worship service on the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Though it was geared to the lectionary passage that day about the wedding at Cana, it got me thinking a lot about the struggle any prophet has, like Martin Luther King, Jr., when they are so angry and about the injustices that go on in this world.

The story was written by Ralph Milton, one of my favorite Canadian preachers and was on his web site. You can check it out some time at www.rumors.com. You can also subscribe to the weekly email which includes lots of great stuff, which I sue all the time, including stories and reflections on the lectionary and paraphrases of lectionary texts, plus some 'holy humor.' Send an email to rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com with subscribe in the subject line. Don't put anything else in the email. I've also put today's sermon on the blog.]

Rumors – Whips and wine
This is not a re-telling of John’s Gospel. I let my imagination loose and soon I had a story that featured Mary of Magdala who isn’t in the first part of John and isn’t connected the wedding in Cana or the cleansing of the temple.
It’s a story. Enjoy it and see if it talks to you.

I had a song going through my head…
“Cana wine, Cana wine,
working on my heart and mind…”
And you know how it is. Once you get a song like that in your head, you keep humming it over and over. And I felt just great, because it really was such a wonderful wedding there in Cana. Such a celebration. We laughed. We cried. We danced.
I drank a bit too much, I guess. O, I wasn’t out of control or anything, but I woke up the next day with a headache, a bad headache actually, but that song kept running through the headache. Sick and happy at the same time.
Now as we walked toward Jerusalem, I kept singing the song…
“….flowing free, filling me,
till I lose all sense of time…”
“Mary!” Jesus spoke almost sharply. We had stopped to rest by a spring in a wadi. “We have to walk more quickly or we won’t reach Jerusalem before Passover.”
“And I’m slowing you down?” I asked.
“Yes. No. Not really. I’m sorry, Mary.” Jesus was smiling but I could tell he was worried. I knew his moods. I could sense his fears. He was a strong man, but a man nevertheless, and sometimes afraid.
“Mary, when you were so sick, in Magdala, when we first met. And I was able to help you get rid of that sickness, those demons that were destroying you…do you remember how at first you were angry at me?”
“Yes. It’s always scary to change. I guess I’d grown comfortable with my own sickness. That was my identity. When you took that away, I had to change, and I don’t think I wanted to.”
Jesus looked very sober. Then he grinned. “Let’s get going. Sing the song a bit faster, Mary. It’ll speed us up a little.”
It wasn’t till we were near Jerusalem that Jesus began talking about the temple and the money changers. “They charge a whole day’s wages just to change foreign coins into temple money. That’s way too much. It’s not fair to the poor people. And the price for those animals for sacrifice? An animal costs ten times as much in the temple as it does in the marketplace. And Mary, God doesn’t even want those burnt offerings. God wants our hearts, not burnt meat.”
Jesus walked in silence for awhile. There was a fire building in his eyes. The muscles in his jaw pulsed under his beard.
“And the Gentiles. That’s all they can see of the temple. All they get is the yelling and shouting and the money changing and the stink. And that’s where they’re supposed to pray. They can’t get any further inside the temple. Can you imagine trying to pray in a place like that?”
I’d never been to Jerusalem. This was my first visit and till this moment, I’d been excited and happy.
“What are you going to do, Jesus?”
“I shouldn’t do anything. If I’m smart, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“You’re not much good at being smart when you’re upset, Jesus.” That comment got me an annoyed look, then a grudging smile.
Jesus didn’t tell me what he planned to do in the temple. I don’t think he knew himself. But the more he thought about the temple, the more he got upset.
We stopped at Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, to stay with our friends, the sisters Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. It was a pleasant evening, catching up on old friends, gentle arguments, new ideas. They wanted to know all about the wedding in Cana. I told them how we seemed to run out of wine, then suddenly there were six huge jars full of the best wine we ever tasted.
“Hey, wasn’t that a party?” Lazarus said. He suspected Jesus had something to do with the wine, but Jesus just smiled and wouldn’t say a thing.
The next morning, Jesus was up and gone before I was awake.
“He went to the temple,” said Martha.
“But we were going to go together!” I was angry.
“I think he needed to go alone,” said Martha. “He seemed to have something very heavy on his mind.”
“He’s upset about the money changers, Martha. I’m just afraid he’s going to do something crazy that’ll get him into trouble.”
Which is exactly what happened. He came rushing in at noon that day. His cloak was torn. He had an ugly bruise on his cheek. And as I went to him, I smelled the acrid sweat of tension.
“We have to go right away, Mary,” he said.
“But I haven’t been to the temple yet. I haven’t even been into Jerusalem.”
“I’m sorry. All right.” he snapped.
And so we left and walked together in a tense, unhappy silence. But then, the hard walking – the coolness of the evening seemed to dissipate the fear and anger and frustration of the day. Leaning against a rock that night, Jesus told me what he had done, how he had gone into the temple intent on simply explaining why things needed to change.
“I tried to tell them how evil it was to do this in the temple. But nobody would listen. I lost my temper,” Jesus said sadly. “I just lost it and I started turning over tables and lashing out at people and yelling at them. I even made a whip and started beating at them.”
I sighed. “And they’ll be no more grateful to you than I was, when you purged the evil from my life.”
The sun had set. The shadows closed around us. The evening star was bright and clear against the gathering darkness.
“It’s better to make wine,” I said.
“Hmmm?”
“It’s better to make wine than whips. Good wine softens the soul. A whip hardens the heart.”
Jesus looked long and deeply at the evening star. “Amen, Mary,” he finally said, and closed his eyes into an exhausted sleep.
There were more stars now. Have you noticed that in the night, there is more darkness in the sky than there is light? But it’s the light we see. It’s the light that shines into our soul.
And so I sang my song into myself and to the stars…
“….a new life’s rising in me too,
like an overflowing stream,
and it comes from the taste of Cana wine…”*
*Common Cup Company,
from Turnings, Music Resources for Lent and Easter,
United Church Publishing House, Toronto.

The Lord’s Prayer–Session 1
Steve Hammond

For our study we are using the resource call “Living Our Lord’s Prayer: A Devotional Guide” by Bill Moore. I got it from the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. The resource is very good and is available for $2 at bpfna.org.

These are sketchy notes from the study. Your comments and insights are invited and encouraged.

We began the session by reading from Matthew 6 and Luke 11 where versions or the Lord’s Prayer are found. I think it is important to get a little more context than the prayer itself.

I asked about how the Lord’s Prayer functions in people’s lives and here are some of the responses…

“Keeps me from getting off on a tangent.”

“I like to add my own elements to the prayer” (I think that might include things like who exactly needs daily bread, ways God’s Realm needs to be revealed, who we need to forgive, etc.)

“Prayer of security, especially when I am on an airplane.”

“It’s an inclusive prayer.”

“The Lord’s Prayer used to make me feel included. Now the language puts me off.” (Later in the session we had more discussion about the ‘Father’ language. And there will still be more discussion about that in the next session).

“It’s very direct. This is what Jesus taught us to pray.”

“We have to act first. Forgive us our sins, because we forgive others.”

“Trespasses and debts don’t matter. Thy and your does matter.” (That led to what I thought was a fascinating comment. Ellen Broadwell said that using ‘thy kingdom come’ rather than ‘your kingdom come’ is preferable for her because ‘thy’ reflects usage in German which is more informal. And that holds up the idea that the prayer is a much more intimate approach to God than people were used to in Jesus’s time. But, for people who only deal with English, ‘your’ is the less formal way of addressing God).

The next topic we talked about is who is the ‘Our’ when we begin the prayer.

“Everyone. Maybe even all sentient beings.”

“Anyone who acknowledges God.”

“Our church.”

“You can focus on different aspects of who ‘our’ means, according to what the particular need is.”

“The ‘our’ can be a variety of circles of communities.” (I think that meant the ‘our’ can include the people you are praying with at that moment, the various communities all of us a connected to, other churches and communities of faith (including churches that are a lot different than ours, the whole world).

Some of the questions in the study guide dealt with how community functions in local congregations. We talked about how important it is to learn each others stories. We mentioned in larger congregations how the emphasis is on getting people in small groups so they can get that sense of community. We also talked about how in a small church, it can be hard for new people to feel included because we are already so involved in each other’s lives. Any community large or small, we said, can hurt people’s feelings, ignore each other, etc.

We moved on to the second word of the prayer ‘Father.’ Some people are deeply resistant to the use of masculine language for God, others don’t understand what the fuss is about (I’m talking more about the larger church in general, though some of that was evident in our conversation on Sunday).

Some expressed that since they had good relationships with their fathers, calling God ‘Father’ is not the issue for them that others might have with that language. It seems to me that the issue is much deeper than our own personal experiences with our own fathers and/or mothers and even more complex than those relationships with our own parents can be. I think that gets us back to the ‘our’ discussion, and that struggle of acknowledging the great comfort that the word father offers to some, and the inadequacy, unhelpfulness, and even pain it has for others.

I think it was Kristen who pointed out that even though we want to honor why people like using the word ‘Father’ in this prayer, there is also the matter of what we want to teach our children. We surely want to expand their understanding and concepts and language about God. She also mentioned that it was pointed out in the study guide that Jesus used the word ‘Father’ here not to make any points about gender related issues, but to express the intimacy Jesus uses to approach God in prayer. You could use the word Daddy here, rather than Father.

That got us thinking about other images of God and how we can lift those up. The Parkers mentioned the hymn we sang last week in church “Bring Many Names” which talks about ‘Strong Mother God, and ‘Warm Father God.’ I talked about how struck I am by discussion of images of God where God comes off as the ideal grandmother. People talked about how ‘Creator God’ is much more meaningful to them than God as Father or Mother. Others talked about how you wish you could use the word ‘Parent’ but it lacks intimacy.

Diana Steele, who had initially mentioned that she used to find the Lord’s Prayer something that made her feel included, but now that language puts her off, talked about an insight she got on all of this in Guatemala. In native languages there, words are much more gender neutral, but when they get translated into Spanish or English they begin to carry the weight of our gender biases. I didn’t write down all she was talking about with that so I hope she can chime in here or others can help with that.

Diana also talked about how at her church in Chicago, the pastor always started the prayer with ‘Mother/Father God in heaven.’ Without using ‘Our?’

There are other language issues here, including the fact that we call it the Lord’s Prayer, and you don’t want to get me started on my thoughts about the use of the word Lord in 21st century USA. Then there are is the word ‘kingdom’ which we will confront in sessions ahead. There are other language issues too, that will most likely come up.

We were getting on to an hour and 15 minutes so we had to call time and will pick up with language issues in our next session which will be after church on October 11. (Communion Lunch is next week). People can read the next section, but we still didn’t cover the ‘in heaven’ part from this one.

So, it appears this study will take a lot longer than I imagined it would. But, if our first week is any indication for the future, it will be well worth the time we take. Feel free to dip in and out of the study on Sunday mornings, and do add your comments to the blog, even if you can’t come to a session (or any sessions) and don’t have the study guide. There is a lot we can learn from each other, if you are willing to offer your input. If you would like the study guide I can get it to you. It’s a pretty good resource.

We closed by praying the Lord’s Prayer together, however people wanted to pray it. And it was prayed in a lot of different ways, which reinforced for me, that very first word, ‘Our.’

Steve Hammond
Holy Week, 2009

Every year at this time, I think many of us wonder what it was like for Jesus that last week of his life. The two words that have come to my mind this year are ‘fear’ and ‘trust.’ It’s obvious from the stories in the Gospels that Jesus was scared. He went into Jerusalem to ‘endure the cross’ as the writer of Hebrews put it. “Now is my soul troubled. And what should I say–Loving God, save me from this hour?” “My Loving God, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”

He was afraid. He didn’t really want to die. But he had this abiding trust in God that enabled him to risk death. “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Humanity will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.”

Fear and trust. None of us experience what Jesus experienced. But we know about fear and trust. They aren’t mutually exclusive. Just ask Jesus sometime.

There are plenty of people, some of them in our own congregation, or in our families, or among our friends, who at this very moment feel like they are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It is a time of fear and trust. My prayer for them, and you, if it happens to be the case, is that as strong as the fear is, trust will abide until resurrection comes. It is no easy journey, but one the living Jesus walks with us. I hope prayers and support will sustain until the tomb stands empty.

Dear Ellen,

Your dish of green beans was so perfect and so welcome to the IHN guests today. I heard one mother, as she dished them onto the plate of her man-sized 14 year-old son and encouraged him to eat. “Try these. You’ll like them. They’re not canned. They’re fresh—Look! They have tomatoes, too, and pieces of chopped garlic.”

I wondered what all the fuss was till I heard her story about what it’s like to go to the food bank to get the small blue plastic bag of food allotted to your family for the month. You’re grateful for that bag of food, grateful for the persons who donated it, and as the month wanes and there are 2 more weeks left in the month and only cans of green beans remaining, you find that although you’re grateful for the beans, you’re less fond of them— especially when they’ve become breakfast, lunch, and supper for you and your son.

Her appreciation for the beans you brought kept showing. She and he ate their meal, enjoying all of it, but there was just something special about the beans. A while later, after mother and son had finished eating, she was in the kitchen beginning dishes when another mother with 2 children arrived. (They were late because she’d been trying to get her car fixed. She needs the car to hold on to her job, and had just heard what the cost of repairing it will be. Will she ever be able to afford a house if things like this keep happening? The sadness and worry showed on her face even when she tried to stay strong for her boys.)

“Try the beans,” the first mother encouraged the second mother as she came to the serving table. “They’re fresh—not canned. They have tomatoes in them, and bits of garlic, too.”

I saw the look on the face of the second mother as she spooned the green beans on her plate. “Garlic! Bits of real garlic, not garlic powder,” she said softly, hardly believing all the goodness that your dish held. “When my family has a house again, I’m going to be able to cook for my family again. Beans! I’ll make fresh green beans like these!”

So, Ellen, I thank you for contributing to the IHN dinner’s bounty tonight. Your beans, Phyllis’s scalloped potatoes, Judy Riggle’s salad, Donna William’s roast beef, and Kelly Moe’s cupcakes — what gifts you shared!

Thank you.

Peggy

Lent is not a season of the Church Year that I focus on as much as others times of the year. But I did go to a couple of Ash Wednesday Services yesterday and I am glad I did. I have some things to think about for the next days, weeks, months, whether they qualify as actual Lenten devotional practices or not.

David Hill, the Pastor of First Church (UCC), led the Wednesday morning hymn sing, which coincided, of course, with Ash Wednesday. It was a very simple and helpful service (is spite of the construction racket that was taking place somewhere nearby). He read what is the classic Psalm for Ash Wednesday, Psalm 51, and particularly lifted up what is perhaps the best known verse in that Psalm, v.10 which reads “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” David pointed out how that verse keys into the very basic desire all of us have who want to live our lives more in accordance with God’s purposes and ways.

During the day I thought about how basic Psalm 51:10 is to the Christian life, and how maybe it wouldn’t hurt any of us during these days of Lent, or simply in the days ahead, to think about some of the other basics. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your strength and your neighbor as yourself.” “You are his witnesses.” The Beatitudes begin (and the Sermon on the Mount) in Matthew 5  with, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God,” and they outline more of the basics that come with following Jesus. “You are the body of Christ.” “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God: everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” “Be kind and tender hearted to one another, forgiving each other as God has forgiven you in Jesus Christ.” “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.” “He is alive!” “Follow me.”

Then there were some hymns I was thinking about, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that save a wretch like me.” “Come and fill out hearts with your peace, you alone, O God, are holy.” And the one we sang in yesterday morning’s service, “Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.”

There are a couple of prayers that also point us to the basics. “Our father/mother in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your Kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive us our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for yours is the kingdom, the power, the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

And I’ve been thinking about St. Francis a lot since coming back from the Global Baptist Peace Conference in Italy. What more basic prayer than “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood and to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born into eternal life.”

So it’s kind of a back to the basics for me during Lent. And I know there are a lot more basics out there. I also know that basic doesn’t mean simple. I’m going to put this meditation on our web site. If you have comments or thoughts you would like to contribute just go to pccoberlin.org and click on The Sermonator Page. Find the Back to the Basics post and post your own comments. It’s easy to do and others would benefit.

I also know that during Lent and the days ahead, people will be working on a variety of missions and ministries, including visiting those who are sick, feeding and caring for the vulnerable, working to end the death penalty in Ohio, hauling and inviting folk to church, sharing your faith, working to help gay and lesbian people enjoy the same blessings of marriage that others of us receive, teaching youth about peacemaking, and a dizzying cornucopia of ways you are being the living presence of the living Jesus and proclaiming his gospel of peace. That is all the stuff of the basic Christian life that we like to know about.

By the way, thanks to all of you (Mary Hammond, Susan, Justin, Phyllis, Kristen, Franklin, Linda, Roger, and whoever else I have forgotten) who made the Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper possible. It was a wonderful time, and a good start to Lent. And also my thanks to Anna, Tim, Bethany, Greg, Brian and whoever else planned and helped with the Noon Ash Wednesday Service. My stomach and spirit have been filled these past couple of days…

I don’t know how many of you remember my work last year and my address to you last May, but in writing this I looked at it again, and it was exciting to see how I’ve changed because of the job, yet my love for it and goals haven’t changed at all. I could have changed around a paragraph or two and given you the same talk because everything I had said is still applicable; I love working here and love what I do. Everything else is just “fluff.” Last May I believed that I was done being a Peace and Justice Intern. Although I loved the work, I figured I had different things to do during my time at Oberlin. I did some French tutoring and organ tuning, which, although I really, genuinely enjoy, isn’t anywhere near the same as working for peace and justice. But as I went along last semester, I began to fully comprehend what this job meant to me and how much I liked the work.

Around the middle of last semester, I jokingly mentioned to Mary and Steve about coming back to the job during an ECO meeting. It wasn’t really a joke though, we all knew that it would be great. Mary and I had a meeting in December, we talked about me doing a bit of interning over Winter Term, and we just got so excited! I had missed this stuff so much!

In January I began what we’ve termed the “Poverty Audit.” With the economy sinking and poverty in the county, country, and world rising, I felt that poverty was an issue I was called to understand better. I contacted as many local churches as I could, and compiled a list of poverty-related ministries at the churches. Even though not everyone replied, I still got an impressive list. When I shared my list at the April Oberlin Area Cooperating Ministries meeting, it jogged the memory of other congregations who realized that they were actually doing more than what they had originally thought. I truly hope this Poverty Audit continues because it is still incomplete. I hope it becomes as much a celebration of the many efforts of Oberlin citizens as it is a learning and planning tool in fighting poverty. 

I hope you all made it to the March Peace Potluck. We had Kathy Burns talk, Client Services Coordinator for Oberlin Community Services Center and a board member of the Hot Meals program. Right now we’re facing many changes in our approach to these services. The poverty rate in Lorain County is rising, but Hot Meals remains patronized by the same group as before. Learning and engaging in dialog is important right now; everyone has something to contribute and we need new ideas. I learned a lot from Kathy Burns and am so glad my job brings me into contact with efforts such as these.

I did a bit of Interfaith work this semester, too. I met some of the members of Tzedek, the Jewish social justice activism group, and I worked with a few people from the Newman Catholic group. We all participated in the CROP walk together. Service together is so enriching. I have strong ties with the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago, a group that has been getting more and more publicity because of the success of its programs, more specifically the ‘Days of Interfaith Youth Service’ program. Although we didn’t do a “full” DIYS program, I’d like to think that this small community in Oberlin is building towards the goal of partnership and respect between the religious groups on campus and in the community. 

So here I am this year, once again thanking you for your support and encouragement. This job has had such an effect on my life in innumerable ways. I love it so much. Next semester, don’t be surprised if I jokingly call up Mary and Steve from Paris to tell them I’d like to be an Intern next spring!!!

My name is Olivia. I am a student at the college and have now been working with Mary and Steve here at the church for a little more than three months now. There was a flurry of emails and interviewing before Christmas break and I started immediately when I came back in February.

Throughout the semester I have gone from Community Peace Builders meetings to The Oberlin Area Co-operating ministries, to church luncheons, peace potlucks and the high school for both counter military recruiting and to visit with Donna Shurr and the interact club. I’ve gone to several networking luncheons at the community service building and even made 17 phone calls one day to all the churches in town to collect information about the hot meals program.

In March, I attended a meeting of adults and students from Oberlin middle and high school to try and address some of the issues that face youth in town today. My latest project was the most recent peace potluck on Friday which got together three of the Immigrant Worker Project’s student interns to talk about the lives and especially the challenges that face the growing migrant worker population in the US, focusing on rural Ohio.

What most of these events showed me is really how each thing leads to another, and how connected we all are in our pursuit of peace, justice, and community; how hard we are working, for a fairly common goal. Each new group of people that I met with had at least one other person who I had seen at the last meeting and carried some theme of my interest just one step further.

Two things have stuck out in my mind as sort of “bigger picture” learning experiences. First of all, the fact that it is a church that I work for, of all community organizations, continues to astonish me. I have always been extremely wary of organized religion, and its power to oppress and discriminate. Clearly this is not the case , but my few encounters with the church left me with an impression of intolerance and exclusion.

When I read the ad in the Oberlin classifieds, the fact that I would work for two pastors was the only thing that I felt might get in the way of my ability to really feel comfortable with what I was doing and supporting. That wall that I had put up between myself and the church first began to crack when I asked Mary and Steve during my interview in their living room in December which branch of Christianity Peace Church identified with.

They told me that it had been part of the regional Baptist chapter but had been asked to leave when they declared that they were open and welcoming to gay and lesbian members of the community. Then I came to a few gatherings here, met and talked to people, and was overwhelmed by the sense of warmth and acceptance that prevails. Later Equality Ohio showed the documentary “For The Bible Tells Me So” which explores the experiences of homosexuals coming out within their faith.

The fact that a church would show this only served to break down more of my prejudices against the power of religion in our society. So it’s not all bad. For me, the realization and understanding of the role that a church can play in a community, as a powerfully good force, is almost an entire turn around. I think in this country and probably every where in the world, the church is central to the people and it would be impossible to try to work with any group of people with out its help and still with a deep suspicion of such an important part of people’s lives.

For this reason, the warm welcome that I have received into this community, even as an outsider who doesn’t attend the services on Sunday, deserves thanks beyond what I am able to articulate. This has been an invaluable lesson for me, as someone who hopes to continue this type of work throughout my life and maybe some day on a much larger scale.

What’s more is that there must be places that foster this same sense of acceptance as appreciation as Peace Community all around the country and all around the world. Through interacting with people in town and especially from the gathering of both middle and high school students and adults in March. I’ve been able to see parallels between my own small town in central Vermont and Oberlin, OH. Especially among youth, there are the same issues, the same problems, and the same lack of understanding and trust

Surprisingly, it is this that gives me hope and faith that there is something that can be done, if these experiences are universal then there is a common ground for people to get together to try and solve them and that their solutions will be pertinent and applicable every where.

Again, I think no value can be attached to this lesson. So it is the end of my first year in Oberlin and my first semester with this work that I hope I will continue to do for the rest of my time here. I don’t think I could ask for a job that would exercise such specific and essential skills that I believe will continue to serve me, both the ability to meet and connect with people on their owns terms, organize a presentation, layout a flyer, manage my time, and essentially try to bring people together to understand that we are all looking for fundamentally the same thing.

I always come to the remembrance of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with some measure of shame, because I was a latecomer to the action. I hang around with a lot of 1960′s activist types, the primary one being my husband, but also with many others from Oberlin and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. I often feel somewhat like somewhat of an imposter in such company–not that my own vision and conscience don’t span the globe in 2008, but they surely didn’t in the 1960′s.

I was born in 1952, so I was ‘coming of age’ in the days when Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others, were leading the charge against legalized segregation in our country. My teenage years were spent in a large suburban high school, a white enclave of middle class values. While some were fretting over injustice and conflict in Selma, Alabama; Washington, D.C., and Marquette Park, Illinois, my days were consumed with teenage crushes, overachieving at school, and how well my Beethoven Piano Sonata was memorized for my next piano lesson. As caring of an individual as I sought to be, my attention was focused on the usual fare of teenage life, with an extra dose of genuine volunteerism thrown in.

It was really marrying a news junkie and marketing third world handicrafts through Jubilee Crafts during our early years in Oberlin that widened my world profoundly. These two experiences offered me the opportunity to see that justice is wider and deeper than charity, and yet when a person is hungry or homeless or dispossessed of mind, body, or spirit—charity is as needful as justice.

In our scripture reading from the Letter to the Ephesians today, the author is sitting in prison and writing to his fellow Christians. Scholars dispute whether or not this letter was written by the Apostle Paul, with some landing on either side of this question. I have always believed the letter is Pauline for a myriad of reasons, so today we will assume that it is Paul’s message to the Church in Ephesus.

“Grow up! Grow up! Grow up!” he says. “Don’t stay a newborn in the faith! Keep growing! Keep maturing! Keep journeying!”

Being around my newborn grandchild, Sofia, I have noticed something about young children. Every time I see Sofia, something noticeable has changed about her. Her face is more mature; she focuses on objects more intently. Her little fists are not so tight; her fingers open more often. Her head is stronger, and she moves it more easily from side to side. She smiles a little bit. Now she is smiling a lot, and it has only been two weeks since I last saw her.

As newborns in the faith, we change so much so quickly. Yet, the older we get, the more imperceptible are the daily transformations. If we don’t see an 8 year old for a year, she might have grown several inches! If we don’t see a 54 year old for a year, he might just have added a few pounds or a few silver hairs!

One of my favorite parenting stories comes from an exchange between me and one of my daughters who had been away for awhile during her late teen years. In this case, absence did make the heart grow fonder!

We were standing in the kitchen one day after she returned home and my daughter said to me, “Mom, you have changed so much while I’ve been gone!”

I smiled at her and said, “Oh, my dear, when you are my age, you don’t change that much in four months. I do believe it must be you that has changed!”

The point I am trying to make is that the changes in our lives may seem harder to see the longer we journey with God. In my journal, I recently wrote, “I am growing so slowly, but I am growing deeply.”
The important part is that we are growing at all. We must continually ask ourselves, “What is God doing in my life? How am I growing spiritually?” We must continually ask one another, “What is God doing in your life? What are the growing edges of your spiritual journey?”

I encourage each of us to ponder these questions for ourselves and find someone at church whom you want to know better and share these questions and your responses with one another.

This year, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Planning Committee of the Oberlin-Area Cooperating Ministries moved beyond planning the usual Oberlin events and decided to offer a week of opportunities that allow us to grow and stretch in new ways. The theme of the week is “Moving Beyond Our Boundaries: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.” If there is one thing we take away from our celebrations this year that endures beyond this particular week, I hope it will be the call to move outside our usual spaces, our usual relationships, our usual activities. Listen there for God. Look there for God. Learn there from God. Grow slow, but grow deep.

We may be able to finish up First Thessalonians tonight. As I mentioned last week, we still have sex and the return of Jesus to talk about, but it may actually make more sense to cover all of that in one session. As to why it makes sense, I hope that is evident by the end of tonight’s session. And it’s not like either of these topics have been left unexplored in the course of Christian history.

To do that, though, we need to start near the end of First Thessalonians and work our way a bit forward, so we are going to start with the second coming of Jesus and see where we end up.

Obviously, there has been much speculation about the second coming of Jesus since the early days of the church. It comes up in First Thessalonians, which is the earliest of the documents we have. The issue arises out of the fact that some of the folk have died, probably some have been martyrs. The expectation in the early church was that Jesus would quickly return. We get that sense when Paul writes in 4:16 “those of us who are still alive will not get a jump on the dead or leave them behind.” The expectation being that some of ‘us’ (Paul and the people he was writing to) would still be alive at the return of Jesus. But some of them have died, and the folk at the church in Thessalonica want to know what gives.

First of all, Paul reassures them that the dead will not be left behind when Jesus (shortly) returns. There is no need to grieve like there is no hope for them, “as if the grave were the last word.’ I think that phrase is critical in understanding Paul’s thoughts about the return of Jesus.

In 5:9-11 we read this, “God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.”

For Paul, the sign that salvation had come was in the resurrection of Jesus. The death of Jesus brought about life, and for Paul there was nothing more incredible than being alive in Christ.

Romans 6:1-11–So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!

That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.

Being alive in Christ, for Paul, meant that the line between this life and the next has become terribly fuzzy. He writes later in Romans 8, “for I am convinced that neither life nor death…nor anything in all of creation can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And it’s all based on the resurrection of Jesus. That’s why the grave is no longer the last word. If it wasn’t the last word for Jesus, it doesn’t have to be for anybody. This is the word of hope that he wants the folk in Thessalonica to encourage each other with. The hope that Paul keeps talking about in this and other letters is the hope based on the life that is in Jesus Christ, a life where the grave is not longer the final word.

The question, then, quickly becomes, when is Jesus coming back? How will it all unfold? And don’t forget these folk were bearing the brunt of the empire’s displeasure with their allegiance to Jesus and God’s kingdom rather that Caesar and his kingdom. They were getting killed and thrown into jail. Their property was being taken away from them. They were ostracized, their businesses were boycotted. Think what it must have been like to be Jewish in Warsaw around 1940. That may be something of what the folk in Thessalonica were experiencing. Some of them must surely have thought the sooner Jesus came back, the better, because they were ready for this new world that his return promises.

All of us, the Apostle Paul included, are in uncharted territory when it comes to the return of Jesus. Paul doesn’t talk about it a lot, at least in the letters that are generally agreed to be authentically his. In Paul’s greatest theological treatise, the book of Romans, the subject of the return of Jesus isn’t covered the way it is now with all kinds of speculations of how and when. Here is what we do have from Romans 8 and I think it probably gives us the best insight into what Paul thought about the second coming of Jesus.

Romans 8:15-28 “This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What’s next, Papa?’ God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

We do get a bit of what people have taken as the how in 1 Thessaloninas 4 when Paul writes in verse 16 (or thereabouts) “The Master himself will give the command. Archangel thunder! God’s trumpet blast! He’ll come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise–they’ll go first. Then the rest of us who are still alive at the time will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Master. Oh, we will be walking on air! And then there will be one huge family reunion with the Master. So reassure one another with these words.”

This passage has help create lots of difficulties, or that’s my perspective, anyway. This is one of those passages that those folk who talk about the rapture turn to. In a full disclosure statement, I must let you know, that I don’t think there is, or will be, such a thing as the rapture. Thus, all the popular theology about the end times that makes up the Left Behind series and much of the preaching you hear on the radio or on TV and in many evangelical churches holds little sway with me. I don’t get it. I don’t see that it has anything to do with the Bible.

Think about this. Paul is working with an image here when he talks about meeting Jesus in the sky. First of all, I can’t imagine Paul believed in a three tiered universe where heaven was up, hell down, and planet earth in the middle. Our minds are clouded with this idea of a three tiered universe, particularly from theologians from the dark and middle ages whose notions still have a grip on us. But we also know something, the best we can about dimensions. So for Paul heaven was not up but other. That’s why in Colossians 3 where he mentions the return of Jesus it not as an occasion where we meet Jesus in the sky, but he simply says ‘when Jesus appears.’ Or another way it could be translated, when Jesus is ‘revealed.’

So secondly, I think Paul’s understanding of the return of Jesus was more along the lines of Jesus being revealed, the cover pulled off, rather than these long and complicated time lines, and expositions that pull in a verse here and there from Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew, 2nd Thessalonians, and The Revelation. And don’t forget, I think The Revelation has little to do with the second coming of Jesus, and a whole lot to do about the struggles of following Jesus in the empire.

So it’s unfortunate, I think, that people have grabbed hold of this image from First Thessalonians and used it to construct something that you can’t find in the Bible. Don’t forget that the issue Paul is really addressing is not the second coming of Jesus but what’s going to happen to those who have died when he does return. The images he uses of the trumpet blast, thunder in the heavens, Jesus descending from the clouds, are all images from the Old Testament about God’s rescuing the faithful. And he closes that section, once again, not talking so much about the return of Jesus, but comforting those who wonder about their loved ones who have already died. “There will be one huge family reunion with the Master. So reassure one another with these words.”

There is so much talk and concern about the second coming in much of Christianity these days. Jerry Falwell is a vivid reminder of that. But the New Testament doesn’t go into a lot of detail, nor do most of the writers feel the need to do so even, as I have suggested earlier, the writer of The Revelation. The attitude we find in the New Testament to me is summed up in 1 John 3:2-3 “But friends, that’s exactly what we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we will end up! What we know is that when Christ is revealed, we’ll see him–and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own.”

I think the Apostle Paul’s joy was simply that the future includes Jesus. All the speculation about the when and the where and the how, as if we could figure something like that out, is secondary, at best.

This is how, I think, we get from the return of Jesus to sex. And it’s related to what we read in the first chapter about turning from idols. More about that in a minute. But first, we need to look at what Paul writes immediately after this business about the second coming of Jesus. At the end of the discussion he says we can’t even know the time, it will happen when it happens and just about everybody will be caught by surprise.

Then this in 5:4-6: But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this. You’re sons of the light, daughters of the Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of the Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love and the hope of salvation.

And near the end of the letter we read this in 5:23: May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together–spirit, soul, and body–and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ.

For Paul there are some things that help us get ready for the coming or revealing of Jesus and some that don’t. One that doesn’t is sexual promiscuity. Paul would argue that sexual promiscuity is a sign of a life that is not only not holy, but not whole.

We don’t have to go into how sexually charged our own culture is. And it turns out, that you don’t have to be so openly craven about it to be a sexually charged culture. It’s interesting that fundamentalist Christians and Muslims worry about sex all the time. It’s got as much a grip on them as it does those kids you see dancing on MTV.

There is, however, as the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, nothing new under the sun. First century Thessalonica and lots of other town large and small were sexually charged places. In Thessalonica and many of those other places, sex was part and partial of worship in the temples of many of the gods and goddesses who were worshiped. It was all hedonistic. There was no expectation that married couples would restrain from adulterous activities.

So it’s in this world that these new converts to Christianity, most and maybe all of them not from Jewish backgrounds and used to the sexual license of a place like Thessalonica, were called to live holy and whole lives as they awaited the return of Jesus. Paul raises the issue, because it was an issue.

Have any of you seen any of the Rome programs on HBO? It’s a show about Rome in the days of the great Caesars, like Julias and Augustus. I’ve seen a few of the shows, and it is obviously not PG rated. And it may overplay the sex aspects, but if the Roman empire was anything close to that, there is nothing in comparison to what happens these days that would have made any of them blush. But, and again, who knows how much artistic license is taking place here, it’s clear that it was not a happy sexual climate. Even though everybody is committing adultery, and expected to do so, it still leads to feelings of betrayal, jealousy, self-loathing, and a wish for something better. And it ends up destroying relationships in the formal and informal communities relate to. People don’t trust each other.

I think that is precisely why Paul addresses the issue of sexual promiscuity for the folk at Thessalonica. It’s not simply a matter of pure and whole and holy lives. It’s about maintaining a Christian community where there is trust, respect, and the desire to build a community of faith, modeled after the ways of Jesus, that offers an alternative to the sexual promiscuity of the community that surrounds them. People are looking for that alternative community. And this, Paul writes, is the community that awaits the return of Jesus, a community of Light.

Paul raises another concern, more pedestrian than sexual promiscuity, but just as prevalent and threatening to the community of faith they are trying to build. He encourages them to make sure they aren’t getting into each other’s business.

I think it was Phyllis who a couple of sessions ago raised the issue of the real tyranny, I don’t think those were her words, that Christian community could create. Paul wants the folk at Thessalonica to keep on loving each other and do it even better than they have been. He doesn’t want them to run each other’s lives. The challenge for any community of faith is to believe people will be faithful to the concerns of the community, and trust each other to live out the calling we have to follow Jesus Christ. Paul loved the freedom the Gospel brings into our lives, and for him it would be an awful thing for us to take that freedom from each other.

It turns out, this is no easier than sexual purity. You get a taste of that toward the end of the book when Paul writes in 5:13-15 “Get along among yourselves, each of you doing your part. Our counsel is that you warn the freeloaders to get a move on. Gently encourage the stragglers, and reach out for the exhausted, pulling them to their feet. Be patient with each person, attentive to individual needs. And be careful that when you get on each other’s nerves you don’t snap at each other. Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.”

There was some call for the folk in Thessalonica to get into each other’s business, especially with the freeloaders. That may well have been a reference to idea that some feel like Jesus is going to return soon, so why do I need to get a job. They’re not going to let me starve while we’re waiting.” That may be somebody’s business they need to get into but Paul wants them, even in a case such as this, to be careful. “Gently encourage them…be patient..be attentive to individual needs.”

It’s a challenge to be the church. They are trying to figure it all out. And the answers aren’t easy, but the goal is clear. Be a community of faith that makes Jesus known.

He point to yet another challenge as we near the end of this letter. “Don’t suppress the Spirit, and don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master. On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil.”

How do we check that out? It seems to me that Paul is making a very honest admission at this point. You want to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit. But not everything we attribute to the Spirit is from the Spirit. Some of it, in fact, can be pretty evil. It’s up to the community to discern what’s of the Spirit and what’s not. And that’s not always easy for a community to do.

As Paul begins to finish up he offers what have been a couple of more problematic verses for far too many people. 5: 16-18 “Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.”

It sounds so very spiritual, but is it honest. I remember hearing a woman from a charismatic house church thank God for the recent tragic death of her son. She wanted to be thank God no matter what happened. Do you think that is what God wants of us? Can we really be cheerful, no matter what? And haven’t there been times when it’s just hard to pray.

I think it’s good to be thankful. I’m pretty sure that God deserves much more thanks than God ever gets. There is surely something to be said for cheerfulness. And some of the best prayers may come when it is a struggle to pray. Is there something else Paul is getting at than upholding a spiritual facade when our lives are crumbling or is he just being ridiculous? What do you think?

I really like how Paul emphasizes that this letter needs to be read to anyone. Right at the end he says “Don’t leave anyone out.” He is so grateful for each and every individual who makes up that community of faith in Thessalonica. Together they are the church, and a pretty good one. So Paul wants to make sure that everyone knows he appreciates them. Remember this is the Paul, who for most of his life would never even have talked to a Gentile. Now he is pouring out his thanksgiving, joy, and love for this group of Gentiles in Thessalonica. They are his sisters and brothers in Christ. It is no wonder he signs off with these words “the amazing grace of Jesus Christ be with you.”