Rev. Ron Patterson
August 21, 2022 Plymouth Congregational Churh, UCC Fort Collins, CO Lection: Luke 13:10-17 Did you ever meet the bent-over woman? Did you ever hear her story? I used to think I knew a lot about the New Testament until one day on Long Island back in the eighties, my friend Laura Remsen, a woman well up into her eighties came in to see me and asked me if I knew the story of the bent-over woman. I told her I’d never heard it and she took some delight in opening the Bible there on the end of my desk and showing me the story of the bent-over woman in the 13th chapter of Luke. I love it---I absolutely love it, when members of the congregation know more Bible stories than I do! Well, as Laura stood there, I read the story of the bent-over woman. And what I read was what we heard today. As Luke tells the story, a bent-over woman comes up to Jesus. She’s been bent over for eighteen years, she’s not able to stand up straight. According to the story, her back is bent and her spine is twisted in pain and the cause is a spirit or as one of the older translations has it, “a spirit of infirmity.” She comes to Jesus because she has heard that he is a healer; she comes to him hoping to be healed. And just that quick, with a word and with a touch, Jesus sets her free. Jesus heals her spirit and for the first time in eighteen years, she stands up straight and gets on with her life. Question: Do you believe in spiritual healing? Do you believe in miracles? Do you think that this story is the actual account of a woman with a bent spine being suddenly straightened? Now I am not going to try to answer those three questions directly today, because they need more time than I have this morning, but I am going to invite you to think with me about the bent over woman and her healing for a few minutes—and then whenever we can in the next couple of months, to get together to talk about the things that bend your back and mine—I’m a good listeners and I have the time. Let me begin by saying that my friend Laura sat down in my office that day and together we did some Bible study using the commentaries and other translations I had at hand. Together we became convinced that the story of the bent over woman carries life lessons all of us need to hear. First of all, the story says that her spine was bent by a spirit, a spirit of infirmity. Now what on earth does that mean? What could have bent her over? As modern people, people who have trouble believing in evil spirits, I suppose that the most obvious answer was scoliosis or osteoporosis or some other disease of the bone or the spine. The obvious answer was that this woman was bent over by a medical problem and that if we met her, we might suggest that she needed to see a good orthopedist or a specialist of some sort. That maybe she needed surgery or perhaps she needed a back brace or some pills. But Dr. Luke—and some scholars suggest that the gospel writer Luke was a physician—Dr. Luke has something more in mind here. Because instead of choosing a word which referred to simply a biological or a medical condition, Dr. Luke choose to describe the woman’s condition with a word that has four meanings. A spirit of infirmity could be a medical problem to be sure, it could have been a spinal injury or a physical disease, but the same Greek word includes three more meanings. Her spirit of infirmity might have been a psychological problem—like clinical depression—the sort of depression which grabs hold of our lives and makes each day seem like a burden. Depression is like holding the whole world on your back without seeing any possible way of getting it off. This word covers the sort of emotional problems many of us have had to face or go through with the people we love. Things like this take the joy away and bend us over with worry or a sense of despair that just hangs on and won’t let go. The evil spirit which had hold of her life could also have been a social problem—like being an abused spouse or a person with a substance abuse problem. She could have been caught in a complicated relational web that was sapping her energy and weighing her down.Her back could have been bent over by the worry another person was foisting into her life. She might have been bent over by abuse or weighed down with the emotional pain of watching someone she loved destroy themselves. When the behavior of another takes our love and twists it into worry our love for that other person can break us down and bend us over. The same word also covers the idea of an economic problem or the pressure of people caught in the crosshair of pandemic and politics gone crazy. Maybe the woman was bent over with worry about the gun-toting crazies and the future of our nation. Or bent over from the worry of having more month than money. Maybe she was the first century equivalent of a person who has lost their job or whose unemployment benefits are running out. Maybe she’s like the person stuck in a minimum wage job with kids to feed or who is on a fixed income and the cost of prescription drugs just keeps going up. Maybe she is like some people I know who must choose between eating right and taking the medicine they need to live. On the other hand, maybe her back is bent by having too much, too many things, too many responsibilities, too much to keep track of. Do I really have to remind any of you about the poverty of prosperity? Every one of those possible meanings and probable scenarios are conveyed in the little Greek word translated “a spirit of infirmity.” And here, I hope you see the implication. Luke is trying to tell us that every one of those situations can weigh us down and bend us over and eventually take our health away. The implication is that all four are related and that Jesus has the power to change all of these conditions and their consequences. That Jesus healed this woman and that Jesus can heal us. Now, let’s get personal. What bends you over? What grinds you down? What causes you to feel the weight of the world? What depresses you or makes you anxious? What truly worries you and keeps you awake at night? The bent-over woman is the patron saint of life in the modern world. If we had icons in this faith tradition, we would hang her icon right up here in front where we could see it every Sunday. She is the matron of the migraine, the heroine of the heart attack, the shepherd of the sleepless night, the paragon of the parental nightmare which those of us with children have too often experienced. The same spirit of infirmity which bent her over is the cause of too much of the preventable illnesses in this world. Goodness knows there are enough things that can go wrong with our bodies without the stress we bring on ourselves or the self-inflicted wounds we suffer. She represents the dame of depression. She is the detailer of the worst-case scenario so many of us run through in our minds every night. She personifies the pink slip specter of the fear of an empty bank account and cancelled health insurance. She points out the power that a poorly performing portfolio can have over a person’s life. She incarnates any worry we have ever had. She is the queen of the worry warts of the world. Her portrait graces any grudge we have ever borne, any bone we have insisted on picking, and every old score we have ever wasted our time trying to settle. She reminds us of every rotten thing about others that crowds our memory and ruins our remembrance of life’s best things. She represents any enemy we have failed to love, any minority we have ever despised and every ounce of negative energy which we have held for more than the time it takes to let it go. Did you ever hear a twelve stepper use the expression: “Let go and let God”? The bent over woman’s motto for eighteen long years has been, I can manage, I can make it on my own, don’t worry about me, I’m tough and I can take it. That’s why she is bent over and in one way or another, a little bit or a lot, every one of us is bent over too. The point of this little gospel story is that the human body is never fooled. And that’s where Jesus comes into the picture. Jesus is a helper and Jesus is a healer. Jesus is the one who wants to hear the story of what has us bent over and he’s the one who wants to help and who wants us to help one another. Jesus says come to me all you who are heavy-laden and burdened and I will give you rest and I will give you hope and I will give you abundant life. Let go of what weighs you down. Forgive others and experience the miracle of being truly forgiven—it’s like letting go of a ton of bricks. Put your hand in my hand and let go of whatever causes you to clench your fist—anger, frustration, failure, fear—you name it—all of it wrinkles the heart and burdens the soul—let it go and let me show you the way of love. I have loved you without condition, love one another as I have loved you is what Jesus is saying. Love God and love yourself enough to take care of yourself, body, mind and soul. And that is the good news and that is the best news and that is the promise of life and it is true, it is true, it is true! What bent the woman was real. What burdens you and me is just as real, but by the power of God in Jesus Christ, those real burdens can disappear. Give them to God, let them go and let the love that will never let you go come into your heart. Please pray with me: Loving God, you see our lives and yet you love us. Take the things that burden us and weight us down and bend us over. We give them to you and seek your healing and hope in Jesus. Hear us now, as we pray in his name. Amen.
Heartbreak That Leads to Hope
A sermon related to Jeremiah 8:18-22 and 31:2-6, and to Prophetic Imagination Central Focus: The Prophetic journey through grief to hope. Jer 8:18-22 I drown in grief. I’m heartsick. Oh, listen! Please listen! It’s the cry of my dear people reverberating through the country. Is God no longer in Zion? Has the Sovereign gone away? Can you tell me why they flaunt their plaything-gods, their silly, imported no-gods before me? The crops are in, the summer is over, but for us nothing’s changed. We’re still waiting to be rescued. For my dear broken people, I’m heartbroken. I weep, seized by grief. Are there no healing ointments in Gilead? Isn’t there a doctor in the house? So why can’t something be done to heal and save my dear, dear people? Jer 31:2 - 6 This is the way God put it: “They found grace out in the desert, these people who survived the killing. Israel, out looking for a place to rest, met God out looking for them!” God told them, “I’ve never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love! And so now I’ll start over with you and build you up again, dear young and innocent Israel. You’ll resume your singing, grabbing tambourines and joining the dance. You’ll go back to your old work of planting vineyards on the Samaritan hillsides, And sit back and enjoy the fruit-- oh, how you’ll enjoy those harvests! The time’s coming when watchmen will call out from the hilltops of Ephraim: ‘On your feet! Let’s go to Zion, go to meet our God!’” For the Word of God in Scripture For the word of God among us For the word of God with in us Thanks be to God What is breaking your heart right now? What is breaking your heart right now? Or if that doesn’t resonate for you today: What has really broken your heart in your life in the past? What is breaking your heart is a question we use in the Inner King Training that I sometimes take time away from church to lead (like this past May). It turns out this a potent question in helping people experience unconditional love and blessing in their lives. That includes being a portal for people of Christian faith, especially a people professing the social Gospel, the prophetic Gospel, a Gospel that might change lives and our collective life as humanity. If you have been able to keep feeling during these times of pandemic, of rising inequality, of authoritarian vitriol and violence, and of the earth’s struggle to bear the burdens we humans put on her, you likely have experienced heartbreak. If you are part of a historically marginalized group, you have known it most, if not all, of your life. There are so many opportunities for heartbreak in this life. We just heard the prophetic voice speak of heartbreak. In the first part of the Scripture reading we just heard, Chapter 8 of Jeremiah, the prophet channels the voice of God, broken-hearted for the 6th century BCE siege of Jerusalem that led to the downfall of the southern realm of Judah and the exile of many into Babylon. The Divine pleads like a parent over the bed of her dying child, heartbroken that there is no balm in Gilead, no physician to stem the suffering and death. Jeremiah speaks of drowning in grief and wondering if God has simply left their land. Jeremiah is expressing heartbreak, plain and simple, as he sees destruction coming for the people. The prophet who is sees with the lens of the Divine, feels with the heart of the Divine, encounters the reality of the day with the sense of the Divine. And, so often, what is seen and felt and sensed is the reality of the empire system of Pharaoh or Caesar or Putin or Mao or Trump or whichever representative of the domination system is current. For those who are in touch with the love and justice of God, with the Good News of Jesus, or with the loving and liberated state named in another faith tradition, this encounter with the system of empire is painful and truly heartbreaking. Instead of grace there is harsh judgment, instead of freedom there is bondage and oppression, instead of connection and community there is alienation and suspicion, instead of cooperation and solidarity there is accusation and fear, instead of peace there is violence, instead of the growing and life-giving power of the earth there is a sense life draining away as the earth is dominated. A powerful book, The Prophetic Imagination, by Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us that the Prophetic Imagination begins with the willingness and ability to feel anguish and to express grief in the face of and the experience of empire or empire consciousness, the consciousness of domination and of fear and separation by "isms." Simply put, in the face of this encounter, for the faithful prophet, there is heartbreak. Have we allowed ourselves to feel the heartbreak of that gap, the gap between life and history as we’ve so often known it and the Beloved Community as God has dreamed it? That heartbreak is our connection to our yearning for God’s intended vision of justice and peace and freedom. And that kind of yearning is a source of life-force, soul-force, Spirit-force. It is our deep tunnel to hope, our birth canal to new hope and life in God, to the alternative consciousness of God’s faithful community. For the Hebrew tradition, this yearning life-force feeling generates prophetic vision and prophetic proclamation. The prophets were the ones to herald God’s dream, God’s activity and coming, not as fortune tellers/future predictors, but as voices of the present moment seeing into the deeper currents of God’s longing and God’s activity to liberate. When God heard the cry of the Hebrews, Moses was called to proclaim another reality amidst the darkness of slavery and Pharoah’s way of thinking. When the Israelites had established themselves in Palestine, even to the point in Solomon’s time of building a temple for God to live in, the prophets eventually spoke against the regime, seeing that now Israel had become like Pharaoh, content with a status quo that tried to domesticate God and ignore the cries of the oppressed and ignore the imbalance and injustice of such unequal sharing of the blessings of life. As Brueggemann notes, it is the prophets’ job to bring forth a new consciousness, an alternative to the imperial consciousness of Pharoah, of the established monarchy, of the Roman Empire, and, more recently, of the European colonizing powers including, eventually, the United States. For us, in the USA, our dreams of freedom and justice for all have been imperfect, unevenly distributed, obstructed, distorted, and blinded because they were contaminated by colonial, empire building consciousness. Our self-evident truths cannot be realized in this state of mind and heart. We need God’s alternative consciousness, the alternative sacred vision, the Divine Heart that we witnessed in the Good News proclaimed and lived by Jesus. Prophets old and new bring forth God’s alternative consciousness in two ways; by speaking another truth to the current colonial or empire consciousness and then by energizing those open to the new way, the new Light amidst darkness. But prophets critique the old most effectively not by moralizing, but by presenting their heart break and the heart break of God for what is happening. Amidst the illusion and trance and numbness of the empire’s status quo that says, "Everything is all right. Just go shop. Watch TV. Cruise the internet. Just let us have more authority and we’ll make it all great again," the prophet instead remains vulnerable to wounding, remains compassionate and therefore awake, and from that place voices the heart break of God, expressing the grief of those whose cries refuse to be heard. The wise elder, scientist, and earth advocate Jane Goodall years ago, upon realizing the profound intelligence and heart of chimpanzees was heartbroken to know these kin of ours were locked up in research labs. She set about to get the social, intelligent, and feeling chimps released from isolated 5x5 iron bar research cages. But she did it, not by yelling and pointing fingers, but by staying close to her heart break, telling stories of intelligent, feeling chimpanzees to those organizing such research. Her storytelling powerfully proclaimed another story, another narrative of what chimpanzees were and what a respectful relationship to them would be. The cautionary tale here for those of us open to the prophetic and to worthy causes is to make sure our voices do not merely become brittle, partisan, moralizing voices pointing the finger at the evil "other." The prophets instead rooted their voice in the Divine heartbreak of the ones crying out. They broke the spell of the dominant status quo, not with white papers or resolutions or character assassinations, but with images and voices of the grief of those unheard and unseen, of the pain of the inconvenient truths of the empire, and with the proclamation of the Presence of the God of compassion and justice. It is only after the prophet proclaims Divine heartbreak and acknowledges the felt cost of the imperial consciousness, the injustice built into colonial achievements, and pain exacted by those illusory values that enslave or dominate or discriminate against some for the purpose of others that the prophet can bring the energy of hope to those poor in Spirit, to those crying out, to those broken-hearted ones. So in the second part of the reading we heard today, Jeremiah, in the midst of the darkness of Exile, after naming the grief and heartbreak, can proclaim God’s faithfulness in a new day, a day of justice when those who plant shall enjoy the fruit, when those who have been crying shall sing with joy again. Grief is a way of connecting. The heartbreak we allow ourselves to feel if we acknowledge the suffering of those shut out of history’s voice, those left behind in globalization, those impacted by global warming, those discriminated against, is a way to reconnect with those marginalized people of the human family. And this applies to ourselves and our inner life as well. Remember, last week, Pastor Jane Anne spoke of the macro and micro, of the patterns that repeat in large and small forms in the world. So, too, for our collective and individual lives. The prophet speaks to society and the empires of history, but also to the ways of empire we internalize, dominating and neglecting some parts within ourselves. Then we shut out God’s Grace and justice within. That is also worthy of grief. But feeling heartbreak for those parts of ourselves that are dominated, neglected, wounded, or silenced is a way of re-connecting to those parts within. For the world and the worlds within us, heartbreak is the prophetic way of acknowledging what is not right or well and beginning the process of the re-igniting the hope that brings it back from Exile and death to healing and life. Following the Divine Heart through heartbreak, Jeremiah is able to find hope. Did you hear it in the reading? God told them, “I’ve never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love! And so now I’ll start over with you and build you up again, … You’ll resume your singing, grabbing tambourines and joining the dance. You’ll go back to your old work of planting vineyards on the Samaritan hillsides, And sit back and enjoy the fruit-- oh, how you’ll enjoy those harvests! The time’s coming when watchmen will call out from the hilltops of Ephraim: ‘On your feet! Let’s go to Zion, go to meet our God!’” How beautiful! What good news for the poor of the world and for the poor parts within us! I invite us to be a prophetic community of faith like this, honoring the prophetic way of knowing and expressing the Divine heartbreak and grief of what is not well, what is in Exile, what is worthy of tears in the dark places of history and society, and of the self and soul. In the way of the faithful prophet, heartbreak is the beginning of the journey to Divine Hope. Let us have faith in both the heartbreak and the hope. AMEN
“Hidden in Plain Sight”
Matthew 13.31-35 Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson 31[Jesus] told another parable to them: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in his field. 32 It's the smallest of all seeds. But when it's grown, it's the largest of all vegetable plants. It becomes a tree so that the birds in the sky come and nest in its branches." 33He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through all the dough." 34Jesus said all these things to the crowds in parables, and he spoke to them only in parables. 35This was to fulfill what the prophet spoke: I'll speak in parables; I'll declare what has been hidden since the beginning of the world. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 38380-38389). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition. Do you remember the great fun, especially on a summer’s evening, of playing “Hide and Seek?” The adrenaline rush of finding just the right hiding place and then trying to stay quiet enough so as not to be found? The suspense of stealthily seeking? The squeals of laughter when you were found and then racing the seeker back to home base? So much fun! Think about all the stories you’ve read or seen on the big of little screen about finding hidden treasure. Or even the love of research or discovery as an adult in whatever field you might be in….discovering something new in science, or a new formula as a mathematician, or a new way of constructing an environmental savvy building as an engineer or architect, or new ways of helping a social justice situation, a new client or customer to help, new plot twists as a writer or word pictures as a poet, a new chord progression as a musician. At times when we finally discover what we are looking for, we marvel….well, that was there all along…hidden in plain sight! We just had to look from a different angle, perspective, turn over one more stone – metaphorically or literally. Parables are wisdom hidden in plain sight by using comparison, setting two unlike things side by side. Jesus used parables all the time to teach the crowds and his disciples. He was steeped in the Hebrew scripture use of mashal, enigmatic language whose meaning was not immediately apparent. It was riddle-like. Language “intended to tease the mind into insight rather than communicate a simple idea by means of an illustration.”[i] The mashal of Hebrew scriptures and the parables of Jesus were both meant to conceal and reveal the wisdom and the activity of God. Now why do Jesus, and the prophets before him, speak to us in this concealing/revealing kind of way? Why don’t you just say what you mean, Jesus? I think wise ones down through the centuries and through all traditions knew that riddles, the odd comparisons of parables, language that teased the mind and heart slow us down as humans. We need to listen as human beings, not just as human doings. We can get so busy accomplishing, building, making, doing whatever needs to be done that we forget to slow down and listen. A well told parable, story, riddle, poetic image slows us down. We must take time to contemplate, to consider the meanings in our heads and let the wisdom sink into our hearts. This is the sacred activity, activity of the Holy, of God. The wisdom of the Divine is not taught so much as experienced. Jesus tells the crowds, “The kingdom of heaven, God’s activity in the world, is like a tiny mustard seed planted in the soil. Something hidden happens there in the darkness of the soil. And the seed begins to grow. The seed grows into the largest of plants…as large as a tree and it is shelter for many living creatures.” What happens to that seed hidden in the dark? We know that inside the seed there is the possibility of new life – an embryo plant. With the right amount of water, the seed splits open and begins to grow a root to gather more water and then a sprout to break the surface of the soil so that it can get sunlight and begin the process of photosynthesis. This happens so often, is so much a part of life around us, that we don’t stop to be amazed. But it is amazing! And hidden as it is, seed growth is a small pattern for the holy work of creation. Nothing would survive on earth without this pattern. It is a pattern we can emulate in our faith journey. And Jesus tells us, “The kingdom of heaven, God’s activity in the world, is like yeast hidden in flour dough that causes the dough to grow, to double, triple in size, until it can feed more people than we might have ever imagined.” In fact, hidden in Jesus’s parable is an incredible measure, three measures of flour, translated into a bushel in the Common English Bible. That’s a lot of bread…more than one might make in your kitchen just for fun. Jesus wants us to know that God’s activity can so small like yeast, yet it activates so much! We know that yeast is a single-celled microorganism. It is millions of years old. It reproduces by budding, a new cell growing on the first cell and so on and so forth. When we add it to flour and other bread ingredients it starts to feed on the sugars in the ingredients creating the rising action. This action hidden, in bread making, is another small pattern of the holy work of creation. It is a pattern we can emulate in our faith journey. If the kingdom of heaven, the activity of God, is like a mustard seed or like yeast, then God’s activity in the world is seemingly small and concealed. Yet, mysteriously, through the energy of God’s love, God’s hidden activity grows exponentially and is revealed as powerfully nourishing. Wow! I find this pattern fascinating. It reminds me of fractals, never-ending patterns found repeating in creation. Examples of fractals are the spiral patterns in our fingertips that show up in the galaxies, patterns in ferns that are in tree branches, patterns in river deltas that are in the very structures of our lungs. A fractal is pattern in the micro that is reflected in the macro and vice versa. Thinking metaphorically, each human being made in the image of God would be a fractal of the Holy One. We are not God, but we hold the patterns of God within us. We need to pay attention! American author, social activist, philosopher, and feminist, Grace Lee Boggs, wrote, “Transform yourself to transform the world.”[ii] This is thinking of change at the fractal level, at a seed level, at the level of yeast. I know that in this faith community we want to transform the world with and through God’s love and justice. Our first step must be allowing our own transformation through God’s love and justice. Are we allowing the nurturing presence of God into our own hearts and souls, as a seed allows in water and sunlight to grow and mature into the plant it is meant to be? Are we allowing the yeast of God’s Spirit to grow within our lives, inspiring exponential growth that keeps us nourished as we keep on keeping on for justice? Just as we slow down to hear parables, we must slow ourselves to attend to the slow work of God inside of us, transforming our fear and greed and false ego and self-esteem that is too low or too high. The Holy One will bring transformation in unexpected ways, if we slow down and pay attention through prayer, spiritual practice, study, service, faithful fellowship. It’s a spiral process for as we slow down to attend to our own change, we are also a part of systemic change. Automatically, without any organizing or activism – though those activities have their place. Our transformation influences and catalyzes systemic change without us even knowing. adrienne maree brown writes, “As we speak of systemic change, we need to be fractal. Fractals – a way to speak of the patterns we see – move from the micro to the macro.”[iii] How do we work in community, in this faith community, like fractal patterns of God, like the activity of seeds or yeast? Hmmmm…..I don’t have an analytical answer for that. However, I see the patterns. You all volunteer for ministries in our community, from FFH to children’s Sunday school, to youth group, to making cookies and helping to serve them after a memorial service, to being deacons and trustees, to working with immigrants and welcoming low income and international students back to campus with a housewarming give away, to praying for one another. I could go on and on about all the patterns of God’s activity in the world that I see hidden then revealed within our community. It’s happening! And so, I must assume that the transformations of God’s activity in your lives is happening as well. Hidden, precious, intimate, and yet revealed in your faith and faith works. Keep on keeping on! One more place, one more reveal, I have wondered about is this… a Beloved Community Covenant. Over the years, we have declared through UCC process, through study, discussion, and prayer. Then finally through a vote that we are a Peace with Justice congregation, an Open and Affirming congregation and an Immigrant Welcoming congregation. We strive to live into these declarations. Now the UCC doesn’t have an official process for being a Beloved Community Congregation. But there are UCC churches that have Community Covenants in which they have through discussion, study, prayer, and discernment laid out a covenant saying, “This is how we will relate to one another through God’s love and justice.” Your staff has an official covenant that we remind ourselves of from time to time. In our staff relationships we will 1.) Speak to a colleague and not about, in the case of conflict. 2.) Once a decision is made in staff meeting, we stand shoulder to shoulder in upholding it. 3.) Always assume the best of our colleagues in their intentions and actions. What if we took to heart that as a faith community, we are a fractal, a pattern of the greater world? We know the stresses and conflicts, the divisiveness of our culture, our world. If the micro can mirror and transform the macro, what if we extended the covenant we make in membership into a Beloved Community Covenant as a pathway to greater transformation within us and within our wider world? What if in taking this to heart, we had a stated Beloved Community Covenant, created through prayer, study, discussion, and consensus, that we refer to when tough times happen and there are disagreements in discernment about our way forward as church? What if we could always go back to this covenant that has come out of the transforming hearts, minds, and lives of beloved individuals, of you? What if this Beloved Community Covenant reminded us that we hold the seeds, the fractals, the microcosm of God’s love and justice within us to be in relationship with one another? How might we be transformed as a faith community and be greater transforming activity in God’s wider world? What might happen if we truly live out the kingdom of heaven, the activity of God, the good news of the parables Jesus proclaimed? What if … we succeed in revealing that God’s Beloved Community is here among us and within us and active in the world? What if? Amen and amen. ©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2022 and beyond. May be reprinted only with permission. [i] Douglas R.A. Hare, Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Matthew, (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2009, 147.) [ii] adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy, Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, (AK Press, Chico, CA: 2017, 53.) [iii] Ibid., 59. |
Details
|