gathering in light

Here’s my sermon for Lent week 2.

“I haven’t known ___ all that long, but there’s lots of things about her that will stick with me. I want to share only one more. I remember the first time ___ called me on the phone and scheduled some office time with me; I am pretty sure she was one of the first people to actually visit me for spiritual advice and she’s not even in my congregation! Looking back I can see that she had this gift of including people and making everyone feel welcome. She even made me feel welcome, inviting me to play a role in her life that otherwise I would have missed out on.”

Last week we talked about making peace with the earth and part of what is needed in order to do that is to have a conversion where we go through the process of blindness to gaining “eyes to see.” That we need eyes to see the beauty in the world around us and the fingerprints of the creator on things in something as simple as the maple leaf is something we can work at, pray for and practice. As we enter Lent we will consider ways in which we can practice these things. Doing this requires that we are able to pay careful attention to the subtleties all around us. Doing this requires that, though we may be distracted, though we may be weighed down with sleep, we do the work it takes to become fully awake, fully present with eyes wide open.

When was a time when you felt fully awake, when your eyes were open and all your senses took in your surroundings? When was a time when your imagination was firing on all pistons, when you felt at peace with God, when you felt at peace with other people? » Read the rest of this entry «

This is my sermon from this past Sunday on making peace with the earth.

First A Confession: This is not a topic I have not always cared about. I am no scientist. I am a total hack when it comes to gardening at this point. I still have quite a big carbon footprint and I’m no die-hard vegetarian or vegan (Michael Pollan’s “flexitarian” works just fine for me). In other words, many of you would be better equipped to stand up here and share with us on this topic. And not just that but I completely recognize that this is a process, a journey of discovery and I do not stand here in judgment or with a measuring stick weighing who is the “greenest” among us. I have no interest in that nor do I think that’s God’s desire for dealing with any topic such as this. » Read the rest of this entry «

Here’s my sermon from today.

It’s true that sometimes community doesn’t always work out right. Emily and I were a part of a small house church a few years back that used the word “community” as a kind of buzz word but it became rather oppressive because the leader want to maintain total control. So the word “community” can also be used to disguise for people out of step with what it really means. But then there are other times that it not only works, but everything flows just right, and the choreography of a community working together for a common cause turns out to be beautiful.

» Read the rest of this entry «

This Sunday we’re talking about hospitality and peace. I’m pulling from Romans 12:3-13 but especially the very last line from v. 13 “extend hospitality to strangers.” Hospitality is not only one of my favorite themes in Scripture, but in theological and philosophical writings as well. While I was preparing earlier today, I thought about the first time I ever preached at Barberton Friends Church. That morning I spoke for close to an hour and basically exegeted two separate pericopes: one was a section in Ephesians and another was a section in Luke (two of my favorite NT books). Afterwards, Emily told me that the reason the message was so long was because I had been preparing for that one my whole life! It was all the material I saved up for the past 20 years! Now that I got all that off my chest maybe the following sermons could be a tad shorter. » Read the rest of this entry «

Here are my notes from Sunday’s sermon.

This month we are discussing what is now known as the Quaker peace testimony, but was, interestingly, called the “testimony against war,” up until about the turn of the 20th century. This morning we’re going to have a small group discussion about statements on the peace testimony from various Quaker yearly meetings [you can download the handout we used here]. I wanted to do this because it helps to stress the point that “testimonies” are formed in community and so why not discuss them in community? In other words, the peace testimony is an isolated idea a few people came up with but is a conviction that is interwoven into the fabric of our tradition. We will also see there is a diversity on how to understand it. » Read the rest of this entry «

Today we are three weeks into the advent season preparing for Christ’s coming. Christmas, for Christians, is not simply a remembrance and celebration of history (though it is certainly that), it is more importantly a proclamation of reality. The father of Quakerism, George Fox, wrote in his journal of his present and personal experience of Christ when he said: “Jesus has come to teach the people himself,” meaning that for Christians there is no waiting for the return of Christ is some distance future, Christ is here with us and among us now. When we talk about the Light of Christ, who is the Inward Light, this is what we mean. Therefore, if Christ came two thousand and nine (or so) years ago, then Christ is also born every year at Christmas and he is born in us every time we make the space in our wombs for the divine gestation to take place. » Read the rest of this entry «

My first six months of youth ministry were a bear. The church I served in had three kinds coming to the youth group when I arrived, one was the pastor’s son and the other two were the daughters of the previous youth leader. But building a youth group from scratch wasn’t the difficult part, what was difficult was some of the politics already in place before our arrival. Within six months the stakes had been claimed and people had chosen sides, some didn’t want to pay for a youth pastor, especially an outsider like me, while others were happy to have us there. There was one woman who was the most outspokenly against us being there and began looking for ways to discredit me and get me removed. I remember for instance her visiting our Sunday School class and investigating the kinds of things I was teaching the youth, where did it come from, who was holding my teaching accountable, etc? I had no trust with this woman and was suspect no matter what I did. When my six month interim was up, the church called together a business meeting to extend my call. A number of people called ex-members who had not gone to the church in years to come back and help to try and get me ousted. It was needless to say, a hostile situation.

I was 21 and hadn’t even been through anything like this before. I started harboring some serious anger towards this one person. I couldn’t go to worship on Sunday without being distracted by her presence constantly wondering what move she would make next, what she might say. I spent a lot of time trying to avoid her eyes, and steer clear of any interaction with her. Then, one day during open worship God clearly told me to go and ask her for forgiveness.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! You’ve got to be kidding me God? I mean, I was totally blindsided by this person. I came in here and they have just continued to harp on me, spreading untrue rumors, trying to get me ousted, I’m hurt!”

But I realized God was right. Whether or not she had done nothing wrong, the only way for me to be able get clear of the situation, to be able to have enough peace of mind to to worship again, was to ask her to forgive me for my ill-feelings festering towards her.

I wrestled with this conviction for at least three weeks. I tried everything to get out of it. I even forgave her before God, hoping that would clear things up. It didn’t and I finally realized I had no choice. If I wanted to find forgiveness, I would have to extend it. Isn’t it always hardest to ask to be forgiven, I mean giving forgiveness was so easy in comparison. Well you might guess how the rest of the story goes. I approached her after our meeting for worship and sheepishly, my head mostly down, with my heart visibly pounding through my shirt, said to her, I need to talk to you for a second. I said, I have been harboring bitterness towards you ever since you visited my Sunday morning class, I need you to forgive me.” I have never felt so powerless, so vulnerable before someone I trusted so little in my life!

You know what she said? She said she didn’t know what I was talking about, but if I wanted forgiveness, then sure, I can have it and walked away. I think I felt even more vulnerable after my confession than before. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go! She was supposed to admit her wrong, we were supposed to both ask forgiveness, makeup and become friends, living happily ever after. Nothing like that took place. Sadly, her and her family actually left the church not too long after that, and I often remember her family. I really never knew what it was all about, or what my role really was in it, but I do remember that feeling of powerlessness that came with confessing and asking for forgiveness.

This morning we look at the third part of the Disciple’s prayer, it is a prayer that concerns our witness in the world. We pray it as a prayer of vulnerability. That feeling of powerlessness that I had back then, even the fact that the situation didn’t resolve the way I thought it would, the fact that I had no power to change the situation but was still to follow through with confessing a need for forgiveness (and even the somewhat genuine offer of forgiveness I gave her) are the very movements that shape not only our own faith but our corporate witness in the world. Confession is not only an act, it is an attitude.

This third strand of the prayer, this “forgive us our debts,” and “the do not bring us to the time of trial” is to be the very shape of how the church interacts with, or witnesses in the world.Too often our attitude and posture as Christians in the world is caricatured as shouting past one another, infighting, arguing fine doctrinal points, being out of touch and irrelevant, as though we can strong arm people into church. When we think about our witness as the church in the world, we must strive to be people who live out the power of weakness, people who are known for their forgiveness, who openly confess their need to be forgiven. Matt. 6:12-13 is a prayer of confession that is as much an attitude as it is an action, this vulnerability is to be at the heart of our mission as the church.

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Forgiveness and Cycles: In this last part of the prayer then, there are two markers of this vulnerability: forgiveness and confession. “Forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors,” is first and foremost concerned with the cycles of literal debt, violence, of sin, oppression and hatred, that confound our world. Jesus here quite simply offers us the key to short-circuiting these, what we might call cycles of exchange. If you forgive others, God will forgive you. That is, if you do not hang onto the offense committed against you, but you instead let it go, the cycle of exchange can be broken. Forgiveness is always a gift, the word debt here should quickly bring to mind the Jewish concept of Jubilee. Gift, as we see in Jubilee, does not anticipate something in return. My approaching the woman and asking forgiveness was not exactly a gift, I still had expectations that were even hidden to myself about how she might respond.

To mention that breaking these cycles of exchange with the gift of forgiveness leaves one vulnerable probably goes without saying. Not only was I left feeling naked before a woman who had hurt me by confessing my own harboring of anger, but she never really reconciled with me. But to say that I approached her on purely good intentions would be to mislead you. Forgiveness is a mixed bag, that it is complex is to say the least. It often leaves us feeling completely striped naked and defenseless.

This is of course, how it should be.

Take for instance a key passage in the Gospel of Matthew that helps interpret this prayer for forgiveness. In Matthew 18:23-35, Jesus tells a parable of a servant whose financial debt had become debilitating. It says he owed 10,000 talents which is said to be equal to around 6,000 denari. You know how many denari a slave would get for a days wage? One. So in order to get 6,000 denari for just one talent would take probably half a lifetime. In other words, this is an astronomical amount of debt [school loans anyone?]. Anyways, The king calls him in, wanting to settle the accounts and the servant falls down to his knew and pleads with him, “‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And then it says that the King’s heart went out to him and forgave him the loan. Out of complete act of mercy the king declares jubilee and cancels the entire debt.

You know what happens next. The servant returns home and one of his fellow servants who owed him talents came fell on his knees before him. This second servant repeats almost precisely what the first servant said to the king, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’” But unlike the king, the first servant, whose outrageous debt had been canceled, he had his fellow servant through in jail until all of the debt was repaid. The king hears of this, flips his top, as surely as anyone else would do, and throws the first servant in jail, not as retaliation, but as a way of saying, if you do not want to work by the gift economy of jubilee of which I canceled your debts, then you to must go to jail. That is, if you want to play by the cycle of exchange, as it appears you do, then the cycle of exchange says you too must be imprisoned.

The king made himself vulnerable, not simply by the fact that he lost 10,000 talents but by the fact that he risked the servant abusing the new found freedom he was given. Now surely the lesson here is not that it is okay to throw people in jail if they don’t return the favor given to them. I would be remiss to have tried to condemn my friend for not returning the confession I offered her. The point is that we have the choice to work in the power of the world, and operate out of the cycle of exchange, the vicious cycles we see all around us. Or we choose to embody this prayer, to break that cycle, stop it in its tracks, throw a wrench in the machine, and offer forgiveness by opening ourselves up to way of vulnerability.

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The Act of Confession: Then in the last part of the prayer Jesus teaches us to pray: “Do not bring us into a time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” Some of you are more familiar with the translation, “Do not lead us into temptation…”Questions arise with this second translation about whether or not God might in some tricky way lead us into temptation. I am unhappy with this translation and the confusion it causes. For one James says, “No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it…” (James 1:13-15) Instead, the better reading is “do not bring us into a time of trial, or testing.” God may not tempt us to do wrong, but God surely tests faith, and we can see testings through church history that for those who wish to live out the way of Jesus trials were unavoidable. When Jesus uttered these fragile words, his movement was still insignificant in size and constantly coming more and more in contact with religious and political authorities.

Not only was Jesus’ own faith tested in Matthew 4 by the “Evil One,” but the disciples got a taste of a real faith-testing trial at the Garden of Gethsemane, who were asked to pray and remain alert, yet fell prey to their own human desires for sleep. Then think of the trial during the arrest, do we draw the sword or not, then there are of course, the trials that Peter faced and who didn’t prove to do so hot in his testing. When we finally get to Jesus’ death, only a few disciples still remain. Thus, I take, “Do not bring us into a time of trial, as a prayer to be spared from the worst of it all. In other words it is a way of admitting that we as disciples are vulnerable.

It is as Dallas Willard says, it is a “vote of no confidence.”

Jesus taught us these words, to be said with regularity, words that admit our propensity to stumble and misstep. We can see from this line of the prayer that confession, both the act and the attitude, was to be a part of the regularly vocabulary of the church. It might be suggested that we follow our friends in Alcoholics Anonymous and open with our own confession, “Hi I’m Wess, and when tested I stumbled.”

What would the church look like if its mission started from a place of vulnerability? Does it just look like a bunch of people who put themselves down, always feeling guilty? No!

This should not be taken, as it usually is within Evangelical churches, as a reason to feel guilty about something. Just google ‘confession.’ There is a complete industry of books and online websites, bulletin boards for people to confess all their sins, all their darkest secrets. [It’s a little disturbing really.] You can make your confession anonymous, or if you’re looking for something a little more warm and fuzzy, you can go to the site called group hug where others will virtually gather around you for a big squeeze. You can find guides to how to get the most of your confession, there are sites for the more transgressive confessions, one site hints at something you’d expect from Jerry Springer show, “droppedthebomb.com.” There are people who have gained celebrity status by “whistle blowing.” Politicians are happy to confess their opponents secrets (whether they are true or not). And it is easy enough to find confessions in movies, literature and TV Shows everywhere. Confession, to one degree or another is everywhere. And for the church, there are a lot of people walking around feeling guilty all the time. But I don’t think guilt is what the Disciple’s prayer is getting at. Instead, this vote of no confidence, this confession, is Jesus giving us permission to not have it all together.

Thus confession becomes as much and attitude that church is to be shaped by. Instead of being a church of the Jim Bakers, the Ted Haggard’s and Jimmy Swaggart’s, the church that is in the big time, that has it all together and is in a place to call judgment down on others, only to find they too have their own vulnerabilities, they too are human in need of constant rescuing, they too have their dirty little secrets, we have been given permission in this prayer to stop with all this phony pretentious mumbo jumbo. We say, God spare us from the tests we recognize we are fallible.

Here in Jesus’ words, inscribed into the formative prayer of the church, we are invited to be honest about where we are and this is precisely the point of genuine faith. We own up not just to our personal failings, but to our corporate missteps. Look, we as the church botch it, we can screw things up as much as we can help things. If the church started from a place of confession in the world, I think the world and the church would be a better place. Not only would we be more readily able to admit that we too can be hypocrites, but that we don’t have it all figured out. Instead of always having an answer or what we perceive to be the right answer on any given doctrinal topic, what if we owned up to the fact that we so often don’t really know the answer?

Confession creates an openness we need in the church. As soon as we assume we can learn nothing from another person, because of their age, their religion [they are from that Quaker group!], their politics, we have stopped praying this prayer. I tend to think that people who are the quickest to come forward with answers about this or that question about the Bible, or this or that question about a social issue, is a person who is deeply unsure about what lies beyond that answer. Our pat answers can be a coping mechanism for a lack of faith. After all, is faith a belief in something that is truly unknown? As soon as we suggest that we have figured out the infinite with our finite minds, that we know how many angels dance on the head of a needle, who will be and who will not be in heaven, or what God believes about this or that concept or issue, we stop praying this prayer and start praying our own version “God, Let me show you how I am infallible when put to the test.”

So for me, confession has to be about openness to change, an attitude of vulnerability that remains open to the Spirit’s present guidance. Confession admits we are on a spiritual journey, wrestling with the things of this world, the testings, the failings, the weaknesses, not just our own, but others whose actions so often deeply impact our lives. Confession, the “I can’t do it” part of all this, is to be woven into the very fabric of our spiritual practice.

Thus we desperately need this prayer, this confession, that we may not be brought to trial, that God will rescue us when we find ourselves there. It is a prayer of humility, and brokenness. The witness of the church is to be formed by the practicing of vulnerability through regularly giving and receiving of forgiveness and attitude of confession.

Let me end with this quote: Joan D. Chittister from her book Heart of Flesh:

We are vulnerable on all sides, in and out, p and down, past, present, and future. We fear vulnerability. It takes a great deal of living to discover that, actually, vulnerability comes to us more as friend than as enemy. Vulnerability may be the greatest strength we have. Vulnerability bonds us to one another and makes us a community in league with life. Because we need one another, we live looking for good in others, without which we ourselves can not survive, will not grow, can not become what we ourselves have the potential to be. [Change in our lives and in our communities cannot happen without this]. Vulnerability is the gift given to us to enable us to embed ourselves in the universe. We are born dependent and spend the rest of our lives coming to wholeness. It is a delicate and dangerous process, requiring and untold amount of support and an amazing degree of forgiveness as we stumble and grope our way from one new part of life to another. Vulnerability, in fact, is the one hallmark of life which, try as we might, we can not cure. Vulnerability, therefore is clearly part of the spiritual process, clearly part of the human endeavor. (142-143)

So then, what does it look like for us as the church to really truly embody the prayer:
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.”

{Image from Princess KB}

This is the sermon on the Disciple’s Prayer from Sunday morning.

This morning we step foot inside the second strand of the Disciple’s prayer, the ethics strand, the strand that gives us guidance on how we are to live in the day to day. We see that even the God of the cosmos is also interested in the giving of something as mundane as a loaf of bread. Last week we discussed the first strand, the strand of the worshiping community who is reoriented around one father, Our Father, in heaven. This week we look at the implications of that reorientation. If God is our father, then what can we expect? What do we pray for? And how do we act? The prayer, “

Give us this day our daily bread or,
Give us this day the bread we need or again,
Give us provisions for what we need today,

is clearly concerned with our ethics.

The role this part of the Disciple’s prayer has in our lives may shift from time to time. At one point we may be on the side of desperation, crying out, “God, give me something to eat. Anything at all.” At other times, we may be less desperate, but still panicked, “God, I’m ashamed to ask, but help us with these little things.” Then of course, there are other times when we pray this prayer knowing full well we already have our daily, weekly and possibly monthly bread. Then we pray this prayer as, “God, thank you for my food, help me to give it away.”

The prayer for daily bread, is also a prayer to become givers of daily bread. We as the worshiping community, formed around our allegiance to God the Father and his kingdom allows us, even calls us, to live out a different ethic than the one our world operates by.

When we pray the Disciple’s Prayer we risk submitting ourselves to the call of the Gospel, we find that we are called not only to pray this pray, but to live it, and be its answer however we can. Or as the Quaker Elton Trueblood said, “When we pray for bread we are entering consciously into the fellowship of those who bear the mark of hunger.” (E. Trueblood, 52). This prayer helps us to fully enter into the Gospel, and empathize not only with God’s desires, but with those calling upon God to respond.

Growing up I have prayed both sides of this prayer. The prayer of desperation, and the prayer to become a giver. Growing up, we had very little. My step-father stopped working in 1992, and with six kids, a few animals, and a mother who tried to work part-time and take care of the family, we had major difficulties making ends meet. Our family of eight lived on $12,000 a year. I remember praying for daily bread. I remember not having food, I remember volunteering at food giveaway centers and being glad they would allow us to take food home with us too. I remember our house going through foreclosure a couple times, yet a random check arrived in our mailbox allowing us to keep the house. I remember the Christmases when the church we attended bought us gifts so there could be something under the tree.

Praying for bread is something I can identify with (at least to some extent) and the beautiful thing is that along with this empathy, was the experience that God truly was the provider of daily bread. We did have what we needed, and often it was Christians who helped us from getting into an irreversible downward spiral. God worked through the church to answer our prayers for daily bread.

How about you? Where are you located in this prayer? What is your daily bread?
Eat.
When we pray this prayer we are asking God for real bread, and trusting that he has provided this bread for others in the past. Bread is an essential object in the Bible. It comes up in all kinds of stories, it was one the main form of sustenance for many in antiquity. What are some of the stories that you recall dealing with bread from the Scriptures?

I would think the most obvious and powerful are Jesus’ final supper, Jesus’ feeding the 4,000 and 5,000 with fish and loaves, (or bagels and lox) and God providing Manna in the Old Testament. When I pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” I almost instantly go back to the story in Exodus 16 where God provided Manna to the Children of Israel. I think when Jesus was constructing this prayer he had this in the back of his mind.

This is a story our Manna and Mercy small group just discussed this past Monday. While the Children of Israel were on the move through the desert to the promised land, they began to get really hungry and complained to God that he’d rescued them from Egypt only to bring them out in the desert to starve to death. God answered this complaint, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.” (Exodus 16:4) Thus YHWH rained bread, called Manna, or literally translated, “What is it?” The instructions were pretty straightforward, but as we all know, they weren’t easy to keep.

You know how the story goes, God provides the manna for all of them. Each was to gather only as much as they needed for the day (smaller clans got less, larger clans got enough for all their people), hoarding wasn’t allowed and was unnecessary because God was providing new Manna daily. This flew in the face of the Egyptian culture they were used to. In Egypt where they were slaves the worked for the Pharaoh to gather up and accumulate as much as possible. God’s way was different. When some of the people hoard manna, just in case, the next day it began to rot and get worms in it! Yuck!!! Talk about leftovers going sour!

There’s a lot to be learned about God’s economics from this passage, and while we may want to try and quickly write it off as being from the Old Testament and no longer relevant today, Jesus’ prayer for “Our Daily Bread today,” inscribes into the heart of Christianity. This kind of sharing economy, where everyone take enough, so that there is enough for others.

Just like Manna was real bread that sustained the Children of Israel, when we pray this prayer, we are praying for real bread to sustain us. We’re shouldn’t spiritualize this prayer too quickly, when Jesus taught this part about bread he did not mean first and foremost a good sermon [Lucky for you!], or a especially nice quiet time though I  it could be these things as well. For this prayer, Bread is bread, and then by extension it can be other things. In recalling this story, we remember the ethics around what it means to allow God to provide just enough.

Enough.
Now I think for the most of us here, when we pray this prayer we fall into one of the two groups of people I mentioned earlier. The first group is the people who have enough, and the second are the people who need the people with enough to help them have enough also. As one person commented on my Face book: Getting to enough should be everyone’s shared goal. Those with more than enough should work towards enough, and those with less than enough should humbly aim for enough as well.

Therefore the translation, “Give us this day the bread we need,” hits close to both groups of people. It reminds us of the Manna story, reminding us that this is a prayer for enough. This prayer reminds us that there are limits and that we need to limit ourselves to what we need, and thank God for enough. When we pray for enough, we pray for God to establish his kingdom economy, where sharing is central. I take what I need so that you too can have what you need. To go beyond this, to pray for tomorrow’s needs as well is to fall into the temptation of hoarding.

Dallas Willard writes that this way of praying for what we need today helps form within us a trusting attitude towards God. I ask for what I need today, and I trust that God will also provide for tomorrow, just the same as today. He says,

“This is how Children do it, of course. A Mother who discovers that her child is saving up oatmeal, pieces of toast, or strips of bacon [or in L’s case pieces of chocolate] for fear of not having food tomorrow has cause to be alarmed. The world being what it is, we can all too easily imagine situations in which the child’s actions would be reasonable. But in any normal situation parents will be astonished and pained that the child does not trust them to provide for it day by day. A child should never have to even think about future provision until it grows older and has that responsibility” (Willard 261).

In this prayer for enough we are reminded that we live in a world that is connected and that our lives have effect on the lives of others. We can often intentionally or unintentionally isolate ourselves from the deep needs of others, in our very rich society there is a vast separation between the rich and poor. Our call to have enough holds us accountable to our brothers and sisters around the world. A theology of enough balances out a culture of excess. It reminds us that to become takers of more than enough is to forfeit the chance of being kingdom givers. One person’s excess and over-consumption is another person’s daily bread. And I believe it is this ethic is inscribed into the heart of Christianity, and it is this that Quakers have tried to revive with their practices of plainness and simplicity.

We don’t have to look far to find examples of how greed and a theology of excess can insulate us from and dehumanize the poor. In a society that prides itself on excess and over-consumption it is no surprise that we have to take from others to fill our wants. A theology of enough, the prayer for daily bread, is the difficult remedy for this greed. Gandhi once said, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.” True simplicity, the kind Quakers have always sought to practice comes out of a love for God and others, it humanizes those who are in need, it looks out for them and advocates that they too have enough, just like us. Quakers at their best have been givers, rather than takers of Bread.

Give.
Shane Claiborne writes in one of my favorite books, The Irresistible Revolution, that “To pray my daily bread is a desecration; we are to pray our daily bread, for all of us.” And so when we pray this prayer we recognize that others are praying this prayer as well. My brother who is out of work praying for daily bread, your sister who was recently laid off is praying for daily bread, the woman who’s husband just walked out on her and left her with two hungry children at home are praying for daily bread. Those of us who are struggling to make ends meet are praying for enough to get by. And those of us who are thankful to be stable and to have extra pray for ways to be givers of daily bread.

And so I think we come to the mission of the church as it is found in this second strand of the prayer. We are to not only pray for bread but to give it if we are a community gathered around “Our Father” who provides. We set out to be like “Our Father,” as Paul says in Ephesians, “Be imitators of God,” Our Father in heaven by loving others and practicing concrete acts of giving. We break down the walls of isolation, and seek first to discover how we can respond to those around us who are in need.

This past February I was a co-facilitator for a weekend retreat on Convergent Friends in the Redwood Forest of northern California. During that weekend we took time to discuss what it meant for us as Quakers to embody the testimony of plainness. One 18th century Quaker discipline reads:

“It is also our concern to exhort all friends, both men and women to watch against the growing sin of pride, and beware of adorning themselves in a manner disagreeable to the plainness and simply of the truth we make profession of (The Old Discipline, 196).” [Interestingly, it is right next to section on poverty, I think it shows that these two things are interconnected.]

Our task at that retreat was to flesh out what plainness looks like in 2009. I remember one lady sharing that she was led to get rid of half her clothes, and she pointed out just how difficult it was to get rid of 50% of her clothing. She said she had given 25% a number of times, but this call to give up half was excruciating. But there was another catch, she had to give all the clothes away personally, to the people who needed them. She wouldn’t take them to a charity and let someone else do it for her, she felt it was essential that she be connected to the process of giving. I think she embodied the heart of this prayer.

Many of you have done similar things: you’ve given food and clothes to those who have needed, that’s daily bread. Many of you have taken people in when they had no place to go, that too is daily bread. In that same Quaker disciple it says, We treat the poor as people who are in our family, and we should think of giving to those in need as lending to the Lord who will repay in due time.

Response.
And so you have been invited to be givers and bring things that would be helpful for homeless people in our area during winter this year. We can be givers of daily bread right here as a church family. We can do this by being prepared to be on both sides of this prayer: The prayer of desperation, and the prayer of enough which compels us to become givers of bread.

And what better thing to represent this tension of giving and taking than a trashcan, probably not the first thing to come to your mind? A couple weeks ago we watched a really great film on dumpster diving, and in that film we got to catch a glimpse of what it looks like for people to live off another person’s excess. Trashcans in our society are receptacles of excess and over-consumption. They contain our refuse and the things we wish to keep hidden from our eyes. But as kingdom people we reverse this meaning and subvert it, we can make it into a receptacle of sharing, of manna, of enough.

My friend Greg Russinger started this project, a trashcans can make a difference, in Portland as a way to embody God’s sharing economy with something that for many of us simply represents waste. A trashcan can make a difference, if we cut back on our excess, cut back on our waste, and lived sought only to have enough then we could have a trashcan filled with gifts rather than trash.

Greg writes on the TCMD website:

In our culture, the trashcan is where we collect our refuse—those unwanted and unclean items that we want to be rid of. For many however, the trashcan represents life—a medium through which daily sustenance is found. In the spirit of the ancient practice of gleaning, in which the leftover crops at the edges of farmers’ fields were left for the poor and the stranger, we’ve reclaimed the trashcan as symbol of hope and given birth to a new initiative: A Trashcan Can Make a Difference (TCMD).

TCMD is a collaborative redistribution effort that uses trashcans for the collection of new goods for those in need. The items collected are then specifically distributed to those in need through partnerships we’ve developed with other local non-profit organizations. TCMD is continually growing through franchise activism—that is, a growing network of concerned individuals, families, businesses, groups, churches and schools collaborating autonomously to host a trashcan in various locales, providing those communities with a visual reminder and an opportunity to embrace the values of generosity, social concern and cooperative living.

It is a network of sharing. For now, I suggest we leave this trashcan in the foyer near my office where we all can have access for it. This will become a place for us to give things to for poor people who need what is inside this. If you know of people are who in need feel free to come and take from this. If you are in need feel free to come and take. We can continue to grow in the ethics of the kingdom by being a community of sharers, givers, and enough.

During our open worship of prayer and silence I invite you all to come up and place things inside this can so in an act of giving Daily Bread. You can put anything in here, if you didn’t bring something but you want to put something in it you can come back later and add to it or you can put money in there and we will use that money to fill in what things may be missing from the can.

As you come forward I invite you to mediate on the part of the prayer we discussed today: “Give us this day the bread we need,” and remember those who are in need. Pray it for your yourself, pray it for your family…And remember you have been invited to participate in the answering of this prayer.

Closing Prayer:

Old Mennonite version of the Disciple’s Prayer:

Abba Father God, Bless your holy name.
Let your reign come now, Let your desires be carried out.
Bring your peace to birth, As in heav’n, so on Earth
Give us bread, daily; Free us, as we free.
When the way is hard, Be our guide and guard.
Your rule, power; and praise Reign supreme, always.

This is an extended version of what I preached on Sunday morning November 1, 2009

Last week we began a new set of conversations, where we are exploring what I’m referring to as, in keeping with other Quakers and Anabaptists, the Disciple’s prayer. This stresses the point that it is for those of us who consider ourselves followers of Jesus, his disciples. Last Sunday we reflected on the prayer as a mission statement; it contains within it both the spiritual and the physical, prayer and action, contemplation and movement.

This week we move into the first of three cords, or sections, that I have compressed the prayer into. Surely, there are many ways that this prayer can be broken down, it is most often framed around six petitions: three for God and three for the disciples – us (McClendon 156). But for our purposes, and the time we have to cover this, a cord of three is appropriate. The Disciple’s Prayer is a cord of three in the following way:

The first strand, “Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” It is about a reorientation within a new community, what should be called a new family that is organized around the Father and his kingdom.

The second strand, as I see it, is: “Give us this day our daily bread,” or as some translators stress, give us enough bread for today. This strand concerns our ethics, how we live out our lives, and how our lives impact others. We take only enough, so that there is enough for others.

The third stand, certainly related to the previous two is: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” This strand is related to the resurrection, that is the sphere of Christianity that is about witnessing to the risen Christ, the part of Christianity that is truly struggling with the world to cultivate and create its own new world here on Earth. As Christians we live in the light and reality of God’s resurrection power, and therefore we live out an alternate reality, one that is as a result of God’s forgiveness and spiritual guidance. We can forgive others, because we are ourselves forgiven! Even more to the point, own forgiveness depends on us being people of forgiveness! And we confess our struggle to live out the new world among so many temptations to break step with God’s kingdom and go at it alone.

These three stands, the reorientation of a new worshiping community, the embodied, ethical strand of the daily and mundane, and the resurrection strand rooted in the in between times, i.e. the compost, with us living and breathing the witness of God’s good news, includes the whole cosmos. This is why I said last week that this prayer contains within it the entire mission and practice of the Christian church. Everything is summed up in this prayer, everything we need to be formed in the likeness of Christ, to become his disciples is located within this prayer, after all it is the Disciple’s prayer.

Now James McClendon pushes this a step further showing how this entire prayer involves creation. In other words the “heaven and earth” of this prayer. I think that it’s worth quoting the whole thing because I know many of you are deeply connected to concerns of creation. McClendon argues that each of the petitions, whether you break it up into six as he does, or take the three cord approach that we have, engage creation. He writes this:

“The first three petitions (the hallowing of the name, the coming of the rule [or kingdom], the doing of the will of the Father) are framed round with the inclusive components of creation, “earth” and “heaven.” These petitions exemplify one great condition for answered prayer, namely that we pray as God wills that we pray. Not only does Jesus as God’s own Son teach this prayer; the petitions declare the divine creative purpose: a creation at peace (shalom) with its Creator, a creation that fulfills the divine rule, a creation that blesses God who is its blessing. ‘On Earth as in heaven’ implies that this threefold petition is not only the Disciple’s Prayer, not only Jesus’ Prayer: it is the prayer of Mother Earth herself in the purpose of God the Father. [The second of the three petitions are uniquely for the disciple’s (there is no evidence that Jesus himself prayed this prayer). They presuppose sin, and sin as rupture between human beings (“our debtors”) and between us and God (“our debts”) and they presuppose the risk of the earthly journey (“lead us not into...”) and the tension of the last days, with the threat that lies at creation’s chaotic margins (“the evil one,” or simply “evil”). Yet the petitions ask for created and creative wholeness in such a time - for a network of forgiveness binding up the wounded world, for a lacing together of souls and bodies sustained by shared (eucharistic and ordinary?) bread, for a providential leadership guiding a pilgrim church through its earthly journey (“save us from the time of trial” in the version of the Consultation on Common Texts).]

But In sum McClendon says, “the Disciple’s Prayer presumes a hearer God deeply involved with the organic and inorganic world, a holy God who blesses the created order with his own presence, a nurturing God who cares about the baking of bread, a healing God who mends the ruptures of social fabric for our good, a guiding God who leads Christians through the narrow passages of time that precede the end. To acknowledge the listening presence of such a God is to acknowledge God’s prior presence in creation to feed and heal and guide and bless.” (McClendon 156).

Therefore, I think this prayer deals with the whole cosmos. When we dare to say the words, “Our Father” this is the Father whom we are talking about, and praying to. The one who is located near and far, the one who is concerned with the mundane, and the one who cares deeply about the cosmos and groans for all of creation to be at peace again.

—-

When we approach this first strand, this prayer, “Our Father, in heaven (or in the heavens more accurately), may your name be sanctified, made holy, worshiped for how good you are, we have to admit that it is only with fear and trembling. It is with pure audacity that we step out in faith and say, “Our Father.”

I personally find difficulty in saying the words, “our father.” I have two fathers, both of whom I have had very different experiences with. The father I grew up with, my step-father, was a very hard man to live with, and while there are some good memories and I love him deeply, much of his memories remain tainted by the last portion of his life. He was deeply depressed for all of my teenage years, and yet refused to get help. He was angry most of the time, and was very physical in his anger. So when it came to me turning 18 my parents had no problem getting me out of the house, I couldn’t wait to get out from under his dark cloud. He committed suicide a week before thanksgiving in 2003.

When I say our father, I confess that I flinch, I stutter and hesitate.

My “real” dad, is almost the complete opposite of my step-father. I’ve only seen him angry twice. I only got to see him every other weekend growing up, so the four days a month I spent with him were much more focused around on hanging out, laughing, building things and having fun together. I looked up to my dad a lot, he’s a fantastic guitarist, seriously one of the best I’ve ever seen, he’s a great artist, he’s friendly, very funny and the life of the party. I know what it’s like to want to imitate my father. But other than those 4 or 5 days a month, I wouldn’t see him. We didn’t really talk on the phone, and if I needed him on the other days of the month that I wasn’t with him, there was a real good chance I wouldn’t see him. I remember frequently feeling let down.

So I confess I carry all of this with me when I say “Our father.” And I can understand why people may have a difficulty with this part of the prayer.

And this father business is difficult anyways, God surely isn’t a burly man, with a big gray beard, smoking a pipe and reading the Sunday times. I often think it would be far easier for me to begin this prayer with, “Our Mother, who is in heaven…” And maybe you are in a similar place, or maybe you’re experience with earthly fathers is completely unlike mine. And while I have been known to slip in the extra words “Our Father and Mother in heaven,” and while I am completely comfortable thinking of God as neither male nor female, and as both, I think it is important to not skip over this “Heavenly Father” business too quickly.

When my daughter and I together before she goes to bed, I am reminded that I am accountable to live not as my earthly fathers, but our heavenly one. And in both my successes and failures as a dad, I have a Father in heaven who will forgive, and who shows a better way. Being reminded of this with my daughter on my lap doesn’t let me off the hook, but gives me hope that we can and should strive to imitate our father in heaven. And I find it comforting that L and I share this same heavenly father.

—-

In Jesus’ offering us this prayer, he has invited us, his disciples, into a different kind of relationship with God. In Matthew 3 Jesus is baptized in water by John, Jesus’ father, YHWH, had come to watch and participate in this important event. Immediately after Jesus’ baptism, his father says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Something like this appears three of the Gospels. Jesus invites the disciples to relate to his father as their own. It is an invitation to enter into a new community, a new family with God, the God of creation, the one who is even concerned with all the cosmos, the one concerned with the nitty-gritty of everyday life.

In Jesus’ time there was a Jewish prayer called the Qaddish that most scholars believe Jesus fashioned at least some of his prayer after. That prayer goes like this:

Exalted and hallowed be his great name in the world,
Which he created according to his will.
May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days,
And in the lifetime of the whole household of Israel,
Speedily and at a near time.

What is interesting about this prayer is certainly the places where Jesus changes parts of it, where he edits it according to his own mission. But for our purposes the first line is most important. It reads, “Exalted and hallowed be his great name in the world…” It is detached, it is worshipful, but it is not intimate, it is not personal. Compare this to our prayer, “Father, Our Father, in heaven, may your name be sanctified.”

Not only is the relationally signified by the word “Father” but it is a collective partnership. It is as invitation to participate in the work of the Father when we say the word “Our.” It draws us in as participants with God, intimate with the one we call Father. This is our divine Father, the one who looks after every lost sheep, who welcomes back the estranged, who forgives the offender, who longs for the redemption of all of creation.

And in our day this makes praying, “Our Father” even more difficult. Not only do many of us struggle with the whole Father bit, but we struggle with this possessive pronoun “Our.” We resist the collective and communal. We resist identifying with something bigger than ourselves. We have our reasons, whether it’s because we don’t like those people over there, we don’t like the things that they like, we don’t make the time, or whatever the case maybe. There are plenty of reasons (some good and some not as good) for why we don’t keep ourselves involved in this community called church.

And so when we pray, “Our Father,” when we dare to say those words, we are allowing ourselves to be reoriented around a heavenly father who has formed a community of worshipers. This community is shared by a broken people and people on the mend alike. Those struggling to find our way, struggling to worship, and make sense of a chaotic world. Those of us seeking to find beauty in the mundane, to carve out of creation a piece that belongs to us, and to share that beauty, and love with those in the world who need it.

When we say, “Our Father” we confess that we cannot do it on own, even though we keep trying we recognize our inadequacy. It is a confession that we need the help of the father. That we ourselves need to be reoriented, renewed, and that the only way to find it is within God’s new family, with Jesus at the head. It is a confession that we live and pray in community. Friends, this is an audacious suggestion, it is a daring act in our times. Everything we know, hear, and do strives against this.

It is also ridiculous to suggest, especially if we look back at other prayers in Jesus’ time like the Qaddish, that we can have intimacy with God, that we are truly God’s children. But when we dare to pray this prayer, Quaker James Mulholland writes, we have to have the courage to pray it as God’s children. How do we pray this prayer as children?

I know that when I was a kid the worst thing my parents could say to me, the thing that drove a stake in my heart more than any other thing they could say or do, was that I had let them down. I didn’t hear this often, but when I did, I was totally crushed. I wanted the approval of my parents, I wanted to imitate them and be like them. For them to say that I was unlike them, I had shamed them, or let them down, was exactly the opposite of what I most deeply desired. When I broke trust with my parents their names were profaned, the trust I had with them was broken.

And so when we pray “Our Father” we dare to say we are going to act as God’s children. I like what Clarence Jordan, a farmer and New Testament scholar once said:

“You don’t take the name of the Lord in vain with your lips. You take it in vain with your life. It isn’t the people outside the church who take God’s name in vain. It’s the people on the inside, the nice people who would never dare let one little cuss word fall off their lips – they are the ones many times whose lives are totally unchanged by the grace of God” (Mulholland 37).

And so when we pray this, we have to see ourselves as having an intimate relationship with God as his children, and we set out to live that way.

And we should be careful to remember that as Children, as Christ’s disciples we are acting out in his name. To act out in the name of someone in the ancient world “was to exercise that person’s power and authority. To call on the name of someone was to put oneself under that person’s protection and command” (Dunn 620).

This is why we should think of the opening of the disciple’s prayer as reorienting our entire world. Everything else in this prayer follows from “Our Father.” That is, everything in this prayer follows from the assumption that we together as a worshiping community, answer to the one Father of heaven and of earth. When we pray this we are praying for help to imitate God, to want what God wants, to live as Jesus lived, and to respond to others in a way that witnesses to the reality of the resurrection in our own lives.

—-

In closing then, St. Augustine wrote “we imitate who we adore.” This prayer leads us into adoration and declares that God’s name be sanctified. Above all else! Not our own, not our agendas, or our church’s, or even our country’s, but God’s alone. “Father, your name be sanctified. May your name be the horizon through which all is judged, all is made right, where justice and peace will kiss!” And this is where God’s name and the politics of his kingdom collide. We are children of this kingdom, a kingdom unlike other kingdoms. And because we are it’s children, we are also a part of it’s legacy, it’s extension in the world. So when we say “your name be sanctified,” we ask in what ways can we help to honor God’s name. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come, we see ourselves as a part of the answer to that prayer.

So then, every time we pray this prayer, every time we call on “Our Father” the one near, the one far, the one who is bringing his kingdom to earth, we prayer for the powers of the world to come unhinged, for God to move, for the powerless to win, for the world to be turned right-side up again. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come we pray for peace to prevail, for righteousness to emerge from the rubble, for justice to be delivered for all who are oppressed. When we pray that “Our Father’s” kingdom come, we recognize that we are children of that kingdom and should be helping bring it along. NT Wright says, “We must risk ‘Our Father’ then, if we are to be the people through whom the pain of the world is held in healing light of the love of God.”

[In closing] Praying these words then is a ridiculous act, it requires that we are unmasked and made whole. It is a call for complete reorientation and a submitting to one father and one kingdom. It is the first strand, the strand of the worshiping community who gives everything over to their Father.

Do we have the audacity to pray “Our Father in the Heavens?