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The Friday Letters
20 February 2009

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Many of you asked after my health last week, for which I thank you. I am much recovered this week, and have had a far more productive and happy time of it these past five days.

My week started out well on Sunday morning when I sat down at the coffee shop for a pre-Eucharistic espresso. (Tangentially, I always fast before Eucharist on Sunday morning, but I also almost always have 2 shots of espresso on the way to church. Considering how much I enjoy that brief stop for a short read and a tiny cup of coffee, I wonder if I am violating the principle of fasting. Anyone have an opinion?) I receive the Atlantic Monthly magazine on my digital book each month and generally just browse the article summaries before deciding what to read. The March edition includes an article entitled, “The Velvet Revolution”. The summary text was unhelpful, but I thought to myself, “Velvet revolution huh? Sounds very Anglican.” Sure enough, upon following the summary to the full article I found it to be about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and his role in last Summer’s Lambeth Conference. Whatever your opinion on the state of international Anglican relations, I recommend this article to you as a thoughtful portrayal of the head of our worldwide communion.

Monday also held good things, as I skipped my customary sabbath day to travel north into Seattle. Luke Owen and I attended the diocesan “Vocations Day”, a five hour gathering for those interested in the ordination process. You can ask Luke yourselves how he liked it, but for my part I learned a fair amount about the technicalities of the process in the Diocese of Olympia, as well as a great deal about the philosophy of our Bishops towards the raising up of new priests and deacons.

Much of the rest of my week I’ve spent preparing for this weekend, which features a Vestry retreat and a visit on Sunday morning by Bishop Rickel, among other things. I’m looking forward to both these events very much. My preparations, at least the office portion of them, have been conducted standing up. I’ve been having some slight, but potentially long-term, lower back issues. My doctor recommended I try a “standing desk”. It seems counterintuitive, but apparently standing is better for your body than sitting, and much better than slouching, which is what I generally do. You can buy standing desks online, but they are specialty items and thus very expensive. For now, I’ve cobbled together my own standing desk out of a decorative end table and some lumber and clamps from Lowe’s. This will probably sound ridiculous to anyone who has ever been forced to stand all day as part of their job, but I’m actually enjoying it. I’m typing this letter to you standing up right now!

Let me leave you today with a book recommendation. After finishing a terribly difficult-to-plow-through book on personal finance, I’ve just begun reading To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, by Jonathan Sacks. The book has been sitting in my queue since last November when the Bishop mentioned it in his convention address. The author is Jewish, and much of his thought through the few chapters I’ve read so far is full of Torah (that’s Old Testament to us) and Midrash (the stories about the stories in the Bible). I’m really feeling fed by this book right now and would be happy to tell you more if you’re interested. I love reading and am happy to do it by myself, but there is always an added pleasure to sharing something read with another person.

With a sense of joy at the sunshine coming through the windows and the light we share in this community, I offer my prayers for your own happiness this Friday.

Peace,

Ben.

A sermon by Benjamin J. Newland on the sixth Sunday of Epiphany
2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
At the end of the Gospel of Mark, in chapter sixteen, three women go to the tomb where Jesus has been lain. They don’t find him there. Instead, and angel tells them to, “go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee”. The women, seized by terror and amazement, say nothing to anyone.
At the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, in chapter one, Jesus heals a leper and says, “See that you say nothing to anyone.”. Instead, the leper “went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word”. Mark’s Gospel is bracketed by these stories of God asking for human obedience and not getting it.
Naaman too is asked for obedience, and though he gives it mostly because of desperation, at least he gives it. This story from the Second Book of the Kings is a great one, largely because of its compelling main character. Naaman is a leader of men, popular with those whom he commands and favored by those he serves. He is proud, and strong, and, as the story opens, suffering. Fortunately, he also has an excellent healthcare plan.
Despite Nahaam’s exalted status in the kingdom of Aram, it is a slave girl taken from Israel who makes the suggestion to Naaman’s wife that he seek healing in Israel, where a prophet is known for healing. Surprisingly, Naaman heeds this advice. Here is an interesting part of Naaman’s character: it seems that he would be too arrogant and lefty to take advice from a slave girl. The fact that he does indicates what? The he’s desperate for healing? Maybe. That despite his high social position, he hears wisdom wherever it comes from? May be. Either way, it makes him even more compelling.
And, either way, it makes him go to his king, who because of his favor for this commander of his armies, sends a letter to the king of Israel. Naaman bears this letter, along with generous gifts, to the king in Israel, who is unhappy to read it. Mistaking the letter’s request, the Israelite king, defeated once by the king of Aram already, thinks he’s being set up to fail and thus to provide an excuse for another invasion. His overreaction is almost comical, and provides a place for Elisha to enter the story.
The prophet sends a messenger to the king, offering to perform this healing, which is of course what Naaman and the king of Aram had in mind the whole time. Naaman, big important man that he is, sets off for Elisha’s house with his whole retinue, horses, chariots, servants, and enough luggage to live in style for many weeks. Elisha, unimpressed as prophets generally are, will not even come out of the house, instead sending another messenger out to tell Naaman what to do in order to receive his healing. He is to wash in the Jordan river seven times.
Naaman, perhaps rightly, is very offended by this treatment at the hands of a lowly prophet of defeated Israel. Naaman knows how he wants this healing to go: the prophet should, “come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” Besides taking personal offense, Naaman’s nationalistic pride is offended. Why should the pathetic Jordan River be any more cleansing than the rivers of his homeland, the rivers of mighty Damascus? He could have stayed home and had just as good care, if not better!
Again, despite his station in life and his somewhat justifiable offense, Naaman listens to the unlikely source of wisdom. His servants, who are along to care for his horses, and cook his dinner, and carry his bags, get together and give him some more advice. “Why not give it a try?”, they ask. “After all, if the prophet had asked for something difficult as you expected, you would have done it. Why not do this, which is so easy?”
And so, despite his misgivings, despite his hurt pride, and despite the unsatisfying plainness of the cure, Naaman does as he is commanded, and washes, and is relieved of his suffering. Again we are left wondering why. Because he is desperate? Because he is a better and more complicated man than most? Perhaps a little bit of both. Either way, in the end his motivation matters less than his obedience, and he is made clean.
The Gospel story is also about the cleansing of a Leper. Jesus takes a more hands-on approach than Elisha. The unnamed leper has much less social standing but perhaps a bit more faith when he comes to Jesus than Naaman had when he came to Elisha. The leper uses an ancient prayer form when he says to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Clearly the leper has come to the point where his own power to change his life has all gone, and so he addresses Jesus as one would address a god of the ancient world, conferring on Jesus the power to restore him to cleanliness, to society, to life.
Jesus does so. Actively, Jesus reaches out and touches the leper, thus making himself ritually unclean by the standards of his culture. This is a very simple story. The Leper, because of some sort of disease which manifests itself at least in part on his skin, is cast out of society and is unable to be restored on his own. Jesus takes pity on him and makes that restoration possible. The simplest true sermon on these last five verses of Mark’s first chapter is only eight words long: “Jesus cares for the outcast. So should we.” Period, the end.
I was tempted to present exactly that sermon to you this morning. Just stand up here after the Gospel and utter only eight words. Perhaps I would have padded it out to nine words and added an “Amen” to the end of it. “Jesus cares for the outcast. So should we. Amen.” Period, the end. Maybe someday I’ll have the courage or the tenure to be so bold a preacher.
For today, I didn’t want to miss out on Naaman’s story, and I wanted to tell you one more thing about this healing tale in Mark’s Gospel: it’s easy to miss it, but Jesus is angry. I don’t know why. We are told that in reaction to the leper, Jesus is “moved with pity”. This is the commonly accepted translation. You are accustomed by now, I would think, to me telling you that the original word can mean more than one thing. That is not the case here. The word translated as pity means just that, pity. The thing is, of the oldest copies of the Gospel of Mark that we have, some of them read differently. Some of them go like this: “Becoming angry, Jesus stretched out his hand…”
Why the difference? The “Moved with pity” version is just as old, and scholars have agreed that it is the best translation we can make, but it seems as if there was some debate about that even in the first centuries. So maybe Jesus was angry. The other angry part comes after the healing: “sternly warning him he sent him away at once”. This is a case of translation confusion, for the verbs that come to us in English as “sternly warning” and “sent him away” could just as easily be rendered “angrily ordering” and “cast him out”. Again, this is not a definitive argument about the text we have, just an attempt to get under it a little bit to see what might have been going on. It seems possible that what might have been going on was that Jesus was angry.
Why? What was he angry about? Was he angry at the interruption? This is the third time he’s been called on for healing and we are still in chapter one of this Gospel. Or was he angry at the legalistic purification process that had failed this man? The leper might have come to Jesus only after having tried the priests, to whom Jesus sends him back. It is possible that Jesus is angry with a system that is focused on the minutia and rituals supervised by an exalted group of human beings, and not on the healing power that God is supposed to be exerting through that process. Naaman too is healed not by the impressive display of human power that he came to Elisha expecting, but by a simple act of obedience to God. Mark’s leper comes to Jesus also having been failed by human power and ready to make a simple act of obedience to God.
Here then are the messages of these two stories of healing. First, God’s grace is inclusive of those outcast, for Naaman is outside of Israel and the leper is outside of society. Second, God saves not through the dramatic act of a human healer, or a group of human priests, but through a simple act of obedience.
As we encounter human suffering, either in our own lives or in those we come in contact with outside these walls, I pray that we would remember these lessons, and share God’s message of healing with those outcast. AMEN.

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The Friday Letters
13 February 2009
Absolom Jones, Priest

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It has been a frustrating week. I came down with a fever Monday afternoon and spent most of the rest of the week dealing with that. I made one attempt to leave the house yesterday, which left me totally exhausted. Today I’m feeling much better, though with less energy than I’d like to have. When I’m sick I don’t care much about what I’m missing out on, but once I’m recovering I get easily frustrated by feeling behind. Hopefully I’m done with sickness this winter.

Today marks the feast of Absolom Jones, the first black American ordained in the Episcopal church, and the first of two ordained in any formally organized denomination. Here’s a brief biography of Absolom and his contemporary, David Allen.

In 1786 the membership of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia included both blacks and whites. However, the white members met that year and decided that thereafter black members should sit only in the balcony. Two black Sunday worshippers, Absalom Jones (1746-1818) and Richard Allen (1760-1831), whose enthusiasm for the Methodist Church had brought many blacks into the congregation, learned of the decision only when, on the following Sunday, ushers tapped them on the shoulder during the opening prayers, and demanded that they move to the balcony without waiting for the end of the prayer. They walked out, followed by the other black members.

Absalom Jones conferred with William White, Episcopal Bishop of Philadelphia, who agreed to accept the group as an Episcopal parish. Jones would serve as lay reader, and, after a period of study, would be ordained and serve as rector. Allen wanted the group to remain Methodist, and in 1793 he left to form a Methodist congregation. In 1816 he left the Methodists to form a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Ame). Jones (ordained deacon and priest in 1795 and 1802) and Allen (ordained deacon and elder in 1799 and 1816) were the first two black Americans to receive formal ordination in any denomination.
-via www.justus.anglican.org

This week also marks the passing of our dear friend and long time parishioner, Charlotte Orazem. I had the honor of being with her Sunday afternoon for a long visit during which we shared Last Rights. In charge of her own destiny right to the end, Charlotte spent her last few days surrounded by family and her many friends. She will be sorely missed by those of us who now must be without her, and a wonderful addition to the company of saints.

In other news, we had a wonderful time at the first annual CECoP Chili Cook Off last Saturday. I meant to have winning recipes for you today but these are some of the many details that escaped my notice while ill. I will collect information this coming week and announce it to you next week.

Finally, I promised last week to make an announcement about our Lenten program. This I have actually accomplished this week, only because someone else was taking care of it. Some of you will remember Father Lucas Mix, who was here as supply clergy one Sunday last October. Lucas is a published scientist as well as an ordained priest. He will be joining us for four Wednesday evening classes during March. Full details, along with an outline of the program, will be in today’s issue of The eClarion. Here I will just encourage you to attend, as I know I will be interested to participate myself.

Here’s hoping your week was better than mine, and that we all have a healthy, happy weekend. See you in church!

Peace,

Ben.

A Sermon by Benjamin J. Newland on the Fifth Sunday of Epiphany
Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight years old, grasshoppers figured prominently in my summertime activities. There aren’t a lot of grasshoppers on this side of the mountains, not like in the Tri-Cities. Every spring they’d show up, tiny little guys at first, and by the end of the summer approximately the size and shape of my seven year old thumb.
I hesitate to describe to you the sufferings I imposed upon the grasshopper community when I was younger.  Grasshoppers were difficult to catch, but not impossible; thus they were the perfect target. Once captured, grasshoppers served my friends and I as test subjects in our homegrown science curriculum. I learned in school that insects didn’t breath through their mouths, but through orifices in the sides of their bodies. Thus, reasoned I, if you held a grasshopper under water so that only his head was in the air, he should drown, right? Even though his mouth was out in the air? This is in fact true, verified by rigorous experimentation conducted by yours truly in discarded margarine tubs.
I didn’t become a true menace to the grasshoppers until my next-door neighbor introduced me to firearms. The neighbor, whose name I cannot now remember, was a Vietnam veteran, and an avid gardener. As a gardener, he had more rational reason than I to dislike grasshoppers. During the hot summer months he would stalk his gardens with a BB gun rifle, the largest weapon legal within city limits, plinking grasshoppers off the tomato plants from twenty feet away. They never saw it coming; he was like a merciless grasshopper assassin. Which, as a seven year old boy, I thought was super cool.
When I expressed an interest in becoming a grasshopper assassin myself, he said that I’d first have to learn about gun safety. He made me get my parents’ permission, then took me into his house to show me his mostly legal collection of weaponry. Here’s a question: how many of you parents would let your children go into a stranger’s home to check out machine guns? I’m not sure if this is just a sign of the times or if my mom was really not paying attention that day.
At any rate, I eventually became quite the sharpshooter, able to hit a 2 inch long by half inch tall target from ten to fifteen feet away. The grasshopper population resident in our two lots was quite low for many years.
Given this personal history of capricious violence against grasshoppers, imagine my chagrin when I read Isaiah 40:21,

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is God who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;”

Despite my personal misgivings, the fortieth chapter of Isaiah is meant to be encouraging. Scholars divide Isaiah’s book of poetry into two portions, sometimes three. The first thirty-nine chapters are thought to have been written during the exilic period, that time when the best and brightest of Israelites were forcibly relocated to the heart of the Babylonian empire. Chapter forty begins the section that was written following that experience, at the beginning of the restoration period, as Israel attempts to reunite itself around Jerusalem and to recombine it’s two pieces of culture: those who were exiled, and those who were left behind.
So, the poetry of Isaiah in the fortieth chapter is meant to be encouraging. The portion read for us this morning encompasses an ode to the mighty nature of God, and the corresponding excellence of those who worship God.

“…those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.”

I’ll just try not to imagine God holding a cosmic-scale BB gun rifle and drawing a bead on my head.
The city of Corinth was a major port for Mediterranean shipping. It also sat astride the land route from the Peloponnesus peninsula to central Greece and Macedonia. As bustling and cosmopolitan a city as you could find in the first century world, Corinth was an industrial and ship-building center as well as a center for the arts. In the first letter to the Corinthians, we have Paul’s response to two letters he had received from the Christian community he’d founded there. Most likely written in the year fifty-seven from Ephesus, in present day Turkey, Paul responds to the problems the Corinthians are having.
Paul’s response to the Corinthian Christians is broad and multi-faceted. In the portion of text we have today Paul is speaking of the proper role of Apostles. In this conversation Paul delves into two of the paradoxes that would occupy much of his writing: Law vs. Grace, and Slavery vs. Freedom. Each side of these apparent dichotomies have both physical reality as well as spiritual implication. Unfortunately, what we mostly hear is not a subtle conversation on spiritual paradox, but a profoundly arrogant diatribe on how great Paul is.
He starts out with the word “boasting” which has only negative connotations nowadays. In translation, and at the time, it meant something more like “telling”, or “convincing”. To boast in the Gospel was simply to tell it, with feeling. Telling of your own greatness is not the function of an Apostle, but boasting of the Gospel certainly is.
And then there is the next paragraph, where Paul becomes the evangelical chameleon: a Jew to the Jews, a Pharisee to the Pharisees, a Gentile to the Gentiles; Paul becomes “all things, to all people”. To us this can sound deeply arrogant. We don’t tolerate such language from our leaders anymore. We prefer humility, however false.
Yet read carefully, and as objectively as possible, is Paul’s statement really a boast in himself, or is it a strategy? This whole section on Apostleship is about how the sharing of the Gospel is more important that anything else. If, in order to communicate the Gospel to Gentiles, you have to act and think like a Gentile, is that such a bad plan? Was Paul, in fact, the world’s first viral marketing genius?
Both Isaiah and Paul are recommending the same thing, each in their own way. For Isaiah, that awesomeness of God is such that we are insignificant in comparison, and the only rational thing to do is to join in with God’s plan. For Paul, the awesomeness of what God has revealed in Jesus Christ is such that any individual is insignificant in comparison, and the only rational thing to do is share that message with every possible means available to us.
On this fifth Sunday of Epiphany this is the message of scripture for us: come and worship, engage yourself in this liturgy and seek to acknowledge the greatness of God therein. And then, go and share, with your words, in your actions, by your work or your play, share the Gospel of the Lord with any and all. It may be that we are but grasshoppers in the sight of the Lord. A single grasshopper is small, and insignificant, and easily lost. Yet together, in a swarm, even the humble grasshopper can change the face of the earth. AMEN.

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The Friday Letters
6 February 2009

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Another Friday has snuck (sneaked?) up on me and I’m starting to get excited about the pre-Lenten activity level. I’m almost set for the Chili Cook-Off tomorrow; this is your last reminder: there’s still time to come with or without chili. We need tasters and voters as well as cooks, so if Saturday evening rolls around and you’re feeling the hunger pangs, come on down! Also on the food front our annual pancake supper is in the works. I know for me it’s not really Lent until the men of the church have aproned up and made some pancakes. If you feel the same way, you’ll want to put Tuesday, February 24th on your calendar.

The official start of the Lenten season is of course Ash Wednesday. We’ll have two services on the 25th, one at 12:05pm and another in the evening at 7pm. The following Wednesday, March 4th, will begin our Wednesday evening soup dinner and Lenten study series. I’ll have an announcement about that series next week as I’m still waiting for a piece to fall into place next Monday. For now, put March 4th and the next four Wednesday evenings on your calendar.

The arc of faith history that begins in the winter dark of Epiphany season and ends with the joyous light of Easter is a movement that never fails to capture me emotionally, liturgically, and spiritually. The story we tell through worship over the two and a half months is the heart of our religious tradition. I may be biased (OK, I am biased), but I think the Episcopal Church has uniquely preserved this tradition. The liturgical depth of our practice during Lent and Holy Week is our own gift to the world of faith. This season would be a great time to invite friends or neighbors to come and experience our church. It would be a great time to renew your own practice of worship as well.

I look forward to seeing you soon, and sharing worship with you in the coming season.

Peace,

Ben.

A Sermon by The Rev. Ann Saunderson on the fourth Sunday of Epiphany.

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Psalm 111

1Corinthians 8:1-13

Mark 1:21-28

The lessons in the first chapter of Mark are like watching an Olympic gymnastics or skating event.  The action comes very quickly and these passages, while very different stories, all get our attention.  Mark’s style is both simple and super concentrated.  Mark is like an alarm clock.  In last Sunday’s lesson he calls attention to the fact that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.  And then he calls the first disciples—calls them into new ways of being and also models that as Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God has come near, he desires help—to make that known.

Frederick Buechner states that Mark was a man in a hurry, out of breath, with no time to lose because that’s how the people he was writing for were living.  The authorities were out for their blood, and they were on the run.  At any moment of day or night a knock might come at the door, and from there to getting thrown to the lions or set fire to as living torches at one of Nero’s evening entertainments took no time at all.  So he leaves a lot out.  Mark writes for people who already believe instead of the ones who need things explained, therefore it’s who Jesus was, rather than what he said, that Mark’s book is bursting with—who he was and what he did with what little time he had.
In today’s lesson Jesus is in the Synagogue teaching.  Again the details are sparse, yet there is an intensity of meaning.  We do not know what he was teaching, but we know he taught with authority.  After rebuking the unclean spirit people in the assembly “were amazed, and they kept on asking one another, What is this/ A new teaching—with authority!  The authority in Mark is not about power, which is a different Greek work altogether, but about a willingness or right that has everything to do with seeing that justice served.  This is what Jesus’ ministry is about.   My seminary theology professor, who wrote a book on the Gospel of Mark suggests that this opening section of Mark invites us to dream.  It proclaims the powerful work of God in our world through Jesus and asks us to consider what is possible in human life if it is in our midst.

I want to draw another example from a lesson in Luke chapter 2.  Tomorrow is the fortieth day after the Nativity.  It was the custom for the Jewish woman who has been delivered of a child to come to the temple at that point.  This is a time of the mother returning to public life and the child and family enter the temple to redeem the new life.  Because all creation and thus all children belong to God, parents of Jesus day offer the first male child to God as the first fruits of the harvest of their marriage.  Most often two pigeons or turtledoves were sacrificed.  The Presentation of our Lord also called the purification of Saint Mary the Virgin  is sometimes remembered in an evening prayer service as Candlemas.

Looking further into the lesson in Luke,  the essence of this moment is provided by the presence and proclamation of the two elderly people Simeon and Anna who symbolize a life of expectant fidelity.  Simeon, not a priest or Temple official but simply a righteous and devout person, awaits God’s consolation, living out of faith in a revelation that he would not die before seeing God’s messiah.  Seeing Mary and Joseph come, he takes the child in his arms and blesses God uttering what has become the beautiful prayer found in evening prayer and funeral liturgies, the Nunc Dimittis,

Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.

Then Simeon turns to Mary and predicts that the consolation brought to Israel will be a source of division and suffering and that a sword will pierce her heart.

Anna is also standing in the temple with Joseph and Mary and Jesus.  Anna is an 84 year old prophetess who had a brief marriage and a long widowhood.  Her days spent in the Temple confines, she knew its corruption, the emptiness of its halls and of those who filled them.  She had seen many rituals, and many babies.  But this child gave Simeon and Anna joy and filled them with hope.  What did they see that made them carry on so?  They probably saw nothing, and everything, They saw a family of humble means and demeanor, a young and tender mother and her awkward, aging husband—the essence of simplicity.  Simeon, who had seen all the world has to offer, and Anna, who had seen all the human soul seeks, took one look at the child and saw the truth.  Simeon did not say he had seen the Messiah, only that he had seen “deliverance…made ready in full view of all the nations,” and Anna proclaimed that this child was “destined to be a sign” because of whom “the secret thoughts of many will be laid bare”. (Luke 2:31, 34.

So we have from today’s lesson in Mark the witness and questioning of the man with the unclean spirit.  He had within him a force that was keeping him from being who he was supposed to be as God’s child, healthy, whole and free, yet he knew Jesus to be the Holy one of God.  The same issue of authority was also very important for Israel.  Deuteronomy is the written record of God’s laws and commandments that Moses spoke to the people before he died.  And today we read how Israel will recognize the true prophets that God will send in the future.  “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.”  This is the promise from Deuteronomy.  And peeking ahead to tomorrow, we hear the soft witness of two seasoned old people living in hope, expressing joy at the recognition of God’s fulfillment in Jesus.

Today the headlines are somber–job loss numbers are more than the population of Sumner and Puyallup.  Driving through familiar streets in Tacoma I see more for lease signs, windows blinds closed in businesses that are not viable in today’s market.  It would be difficult to imagine that most of us in this assembly are not touched in some way by the financial upheaval.  In the midst of great hope heaped upon the new administration in Washington DC, we have the daily reminders of unethical leadership in business, government and manufacturing.  Whom can we trust, where do we look in January 2009 for authority and leadership?  Competing voices pull us in opposite directions.  Our leaders make conflicting claims about the facts and the truth.  Recognizing the true prophets among us is still an issue for congregations like ours today.  Friday, Bishop Rickel issued the first of what he hopes will be a regular special editions of his newsletter to clergy.  They’ll be focused on the financial crisis and designed to offer resources as we become aware of them, and to also promote some discussion and sharing amongst ourselves so we can help each other in responding to this situation.

Deuteronomy says that faithfulness to the past and readiness for the future is required to discern God’s word.  In Mark we see that Jesus authority is recognized as he doesn’t make compromises with evil and as he demonstrates that his authority comes from God the Father.  And with Mark’s urgency we are also invited to dream and to step forth remembering that the kingdom is now.

•    Because we are united with Christ, we share his ability to confront and overcome the harmful and destructive forces in our lives and in the world around us.

•    Because we share in the love of Christ, we have the ability to create a caring community where the lost and the alienated are welcomed home.

•    Because we are a praying community, we share Christ’s ability to focus the creative power of the universe and use it to restore people to health, wholeness and to seek justice for all.

Transformation is what we are about as Christians, for ourselves, and for our neighbors.  AMEN.