Earlier this summer, I was talking to a friend of mine who was in town visiting, and we were catching up on life stresses, as you do. We started with the usual stuff – jobs, finances, family. And we each had loads to be thankful for, but also our share of open questions and challenges too. But then my friend started talking about some of the details of his life that are very different from mine. He lives in an area where everyday levels of violence are really high, so some of the traumas that I’m most confronted by through the news are in front of him weekly if not daily. And his work puts him in contact with politicians and other leaders who are supposed to be helping with this but are sometimes maddeningly obtuse – not getting it, not caring, doing the wrong thing. And my friend just plugs away with them as an advocate – patient, persistent, passionate, not giving up, but also not blowing things up, not burning the bridges he needs to be useful.

And my friend isn’t just good at his work, best as I can tell, but he’s one of the happier people I know – consistently peaceful and joyful.

So I asked him: how is this so? How do you not check out and give up, or become consumed by rage or just entirely reactive to all the stress and chaos around you?

And he said, well, I used to be, but I have this daily practice that helps and has really changed me, especially as I’ve kept at it these past twenty years. And the practice he was talking about was twenty minutes of silence a day.

And he asked me, Steve, do you know about this practice? Have you tried? And I told him, yes and yes, but not for twenty years. More like twenty days. And he encouraged me to keep at it, that it’ll work a lot of good in me.

Just twenty minutes of silence a day, engaged in some particular ways we’ll talk about today, practiced over many years, had reshaped my friend’s inner life. Had helped to grow in him a reservoir of wisdom and peace, was helping him stay grounded and pursue his life’s aims in circumstances that could so easily leave him reactive and stressed out.

This is a practice I’ve been trying more and want to commend to you today. It’s a type of what can technically be called apophatic spiritual practice, a fancy word – apophatic – that I’ll say more about in a few minutes because I think it will help us understand what we’re trying to do here.

But let me first read one of the scriptures from today’s Bible readings. And I’ll share a way of reading this passage that models this kind of spirituality.

Jesus has just been teaching his students some of his more famous material about the prominence of anxiety and fear in the human experience, and about God’s desire and capacity to grow presence and peace in us. And then, we’ll see, his teaching takes an interesting turn.

It goes like this:

Luke 12:32-40 (CEB):

32 “Don’t be afraid, little flock, because your Father delights in giving you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Make for yourselves wallets that don’t wear out—a treasure in heaven that never runs out. No thief comes near there, and no moth destroys. 34 Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.

35 “Be dressed for service and keep your lamps lit. 36 Be like people waiting for their master to come home from a wedding celebration, who can immediately open the door for him when he arrives and knocks on the door. 37 Happy are those servants whom the master finds waiting up when he arrives. I assure you that, when he arrives, he will dress himself to serve, seat them at the table as honored guests, and wait on them. 38 Happy are those whom he finds alert, even if he comes at midnight or just before dawn. 39 But know this, if the homeowner had known what time the thief was coming, he wouldn’t have allowed his home to be broken into.

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23:

1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

1:12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem,

1:13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.

1:14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

2:18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me

2:19 --and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.

2:20 So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun,

2:21 because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.

2:22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?

2:23 For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.

In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I went on a mission trip to Mali, Africa for 2 weeks. While I was there I remember one day, I was kneeling and praying in a room, sweating in the heat of the summer, asking God to show up and meet me, that I wanted to experience God in a real way while I was on this mission trip. I mean I came all the way to Africa! Don’t miracles happen on mission fields? So I prayed and prayed. And suddenly I felt this gust of wind and felt chills run throughout my body and I gasped and turned around and it was the fan air.

We’re following a Bible reading guide called the Lectionary during the summer to preach from. And today’s text, from Ecclesiastes, calls life, vanity. Vanities of vanities. The word, sometimes translated vanity and sometimes meaningless, is derived from the Hebrew word meaning “breath”, “vapor “ or “light wind”. Passing wind. Like my mission trip, just fan air. Vanity, a chasing after wind. That’s what the author pretty much says what life is. It’s quite a cynical view of the world.

I’ve always been a bit confused by this book. When I’ve always learned from good Christians that ‘there’s a meaning for everything’ or ‘things aren’t just chance’, that ‘there’s a purpose driven life’ for everyone! So this book of the Bible, Ecclesiastes that has the these statement of “everything is meaningless”, well what’s the meaning of that?! I wanted to know. Like, it’s so negative vibes! That’s not faithful. It’s a downer book. Especially in these chosen verses for today, which it looks like it chose verses here and there from chapters 1 and 2, that doesn’t even include some of the conclusive lessons or takeaways from the book. Like, I can’t preach a sermon that’s titled, ‘everything is meaningless’ okay? And be done. We’d get some constructive criticism feedback on our Welcome Cards and emails tomorrow!

So, why. Why is this book in the Bible?

Let me just read you a few other lines/translations from the book, “I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race.” (1:13) “I conclude the the dead are better off than the living”. (4:2) and “And the day you die is better than the day you are born. Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies” (7:1-2) Oh, comon! You don’t like birthday parties? Something is wrong with you mister! Why is such a perspective in the Bible though? How can such words contribute to our faith journey?

There is some wisdom here. Some truth. Harsh truth.

Hi! Good morning everyone. I’m Ivy, as Michaiah mentioned. I hope your week was full of moments that you are grateful for - some that maybe let awe and wonder grab you for a second. Some that allowed you a moment of rest - to renew for whatever work lay ahead of you. I know I’m thankful for this moment with all of you, together, collectively creating a service on this Sunday morning that is still to unfold. So thanks for being here in this moment right now!

We are in the midst of summer here at Reservoir, marked in a myriad of ways, in part by our sermons.

Throughout most of the year - our sermons are more thematic and series driven, but over the summer we form them out of a mix of assigned Scripture readings that Christian traditions have used for centuries - called the lectionary.

Preaching out of the lectionary allows us as speakers some freedom, giving us the chance to talk about something that’s been on our mind that maybe didn’t fit directly into a series. If you were here last week, you heard Steve talk about something he’s wanted to talk about for awhile - “Hell” - and for me today, it’s a chance to talk about something I’ve been wanting to talk about - Joy!

Seriously though, I was really helped by Steve’s sermon last week - and I think in a lot of ways what we think about Hell is directly related to how we access joy. Because how we experience God, who we think God to be, and how we live out our life in response to that picture of God is critical. Do we think God is an angry God? Or a joy-filled God?

And I suppose, in some ways it’s as bold to speak about “hell” as it is to speak about “joy” these days. To talk about joy in these times, I think can feel frustrating for people - “Really, joy? We are going to talk about joy? Isn’t that just a way to evade the deep reality of pain in our world? Will joy make an effective difference? Aren’t there a whole host of other, really direct ways to effect change?” And I totally hear that - I get that - and yet I think JOY is a deep call of Jesus’, for all of our lives and for the growth and flourishing of ourselves, as well as for our nation and world.

If you’ve noticed we start every Sunday morning service with a welcome that includes the line, “We hope you discover the Love of God, the gift of community and the JOY OF LIVING.” In some ways that can sound just like a nice tag-line, but we mention it because we really believe that a good God - a fundamentally LOVING God - invites us into a life that is not just survive-able,but one that we are excited to LIVE, fully as our good selves, in partnership with a God whose longing is to love us and to be a joy-filled restorer and healer. And so we start our services with this, because we believe that joy does make a difference.

I’m so happy it’s summer - it’s a season that I greet with a little bit of a slower internal pace - and gives me a little more stretch at the margins, where I can experiment and try out some things that have been stirring in the back of my mind.

And recently that has looked like starting this Developing Racial Conscious group here at Reservoir, in partnership with Dorothy Hanna and Trecia Reavis. We’ve been reading a series of books recommended by people of color who’ve come to this gathering and outside of the gathering… One of which we read recently entitled, Eloquent Rage - A Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower, written by this woman, Brittney Cooper, who is a professor at Rutgers.

And in reading her story as a black woman, one would pick up pretty quickly that given the levels of racism and misogyny that she’s encountered  joy would be very far from her lived experience. And as is true to the title of her book, she shares deeply on how rage has been a useful means of clarification for her - allowing her to really press in and question, what is wrong in this world?

So today, I’m preaching, I think, my first sermon ever about hell. 

I’m not alone. People seem to either talk not very much at all about hell, or they bring it up a lot. And if you’re like me, the people that bring up hell on the constant seem, I don’t know, not that healthy about that fixation. 

You may think of people who try to convert people outside sporting events by wearing placards and passing out brochures about hell. Or there are the folks who pay for highway billboards in other parts of the country, warning people about hell. I’ve found out driving my daughter to a couple college visits outside of New England, that you can be driving along the highway and see one sign by the side of the road - WARNING: construction ahead. And then a little while later another one up higher that’s like: WARNING: you’re going to hell!

Which makes me think of one other reason some people either talk about hell a lot or almost never. Many people who have a lot to say about hell seem to be really clear on who is going there and - surprise - it is never them. 

But despite all this, with a little fear and trembling, here we go. What the hell! 

A quick thing up front:

If you know me or Reservoir Church well, this should not at all surprise you, but this sermon will not be entirely predictable or expected to everybody in the room. And, depending on where you’re coming from on this topic,  I may have something to say that will be outright surprising or even difficult. What I can promise is that I’m not making anything up today. Everything I have to say in these sermons is, as always, my best attempt to teach the Bible in light of the life and teachings of Jesus, in an accessible, timely, hopefully interesting manner. To do so in a way that is representative of at least parts of the Christian tradition. And to make space as I talk for our community, and each of individually, to pay attention to God’s voice and invitation to us to engage constructively in the deep and important aspects of making meaning and trying to flourish in our lives. 

If all that is happening, it never much matters whether you agree with me or not, or whether we all agree with one another. Our invitation at Reservoir is never to conformity but to connection. 

So let’s get right into today’s passage from the lectionary, the church’s read-the-Bible together plan. And as we do with this reading from Luke’s biography of Jesus, we’ll see the lectionary has the same trouble that we do. In that the reading recommended for preachers from this passage was to read the first eleven verses and the last one here, but to skip over some of the troublesome lines near the end. 

But, never one to back away from a challenge, I have kept those verses for the sake of today’s talk. So here they are - the approved, and not so approved verses, from today’s reading in Luke 10. 

Luke 10:1-16 (CEB)

10 After these things, the Lord commissioned seventy-two others and sent them on ahead in pairs to every city and place he was about to go.2 He said to them, “The harvest is bigger than you can imagine, but there are few workers. Therefore, plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest. 3 Go! Be warned, though, that I’m sending you out as lambs among wolves. 4 Carry no wallet, no bag, and no sandals. Don’t even greet anyone along the way. 5 Whenever you enter a house, first say, ‘May peace be on this house.’ 6 If anyone there shares God’s peace, then your peace will rest on that person. If not, your blessing will return to you. 7 Remain in this house, eating and drinking whatever they set before you, for workers deserve their pay. Don’t move from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a city and its people welcome you, eat what they set before you. 9 Heal the sick who are there, and say to them,

Good morning! It is great to be with you. I am freshly back home after spending time away with family. I’m very aware of the luxury of having vacation and time off that many of us but not all of us get to have. So I’m doubly grateful to have the time away and to be welcomed back to this community to deliver a message of hope, life, and good news. God’s Spirit does speak even on vacation.  

Motorhome

A big chunk of my early years were spent in sunny southern California. The mountains, when you could see them through smog, were usually snow capped, and about 45 minutes away. And the cool waters of the Pacific Ocean was also about 45 minutes away in another direction. 

I remember that my Dad was always coming home with a “new to us car” that he purchased from a car auction.

One day my Dad came home with a motorhome for us to take on a summer family cross country road trip. 

We took to the road for a really fun road trip that we remembered for the rest of our lives. From the Pennsylvania Liberty Bell and Philly cheesesteaks to the monuments in DC, it was historic. But somewhere on an Arizona highway our motorhome flipped over onto its side going at a decent highway speed. 

I was in the back of the motorhome looking for a board game to play, singing a little song out loud to myself or to God, and the suitcases which were stacked up in the shower, for optimal storage space, all came crashing onto me and trapped me for a few minutes.  My family called to one another that we were okay, and my sister, pulled me out from underneath the clothes loaded suitcases. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured. I don’t remember much, but I do remember someone with strong arms pulling me up and out of the motorhome and as I stood in the shade of the fallen motorhome waiting for the rest of my family, a young woman noticed my head was bleeding. 

She eagerly, sweetly, cheerfully remembered she had a t-shirt in the back of the trunk of her car and returned quickly to give it to me so I could stop the bleeding. 

As a 10-year-old I don’t remember very many details, like how we ended up in a hotel or how we ended up back home to California (my mom said A LOT of people stopped to help), but I do remember the radiance and open handedness of that one person and I remember thinking to myself “Wow. How kind. Would I have done that?” I was grateful that she stopped to help me and aided in our family being rescued from that highway accident.

Today, we’re in the 4th week of a less topic based summer sermon series. Reservoir church is following a traditional scriptural reading called the Lectionary— an assigned assortment of readings for each day. 

I’ve been listening to my co-workers’ sermons online and I’ve noticed some similar themes emerging — even in today’s sermon, even without consulting one another, there’s consistency in the thematic nature of our sermons and what we’re gleaning from these scriptures. We’re inspired by the same Holy Spirit. 

The Good Samaritan

The principle scripture we’ll look at today is Luke 10. It’s a familiar passage to many in the religious world and even in the medical world, laws have been established after this passage. 

Let’s read The Parable of the Good Samaritan.

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” 27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]” 28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Just before the sermon today, I want to share a couple of timely opportunities for your engagement. Because sometimes, perhaps you’ve had this experience, a whole bunch of things come together and give you this sense that something important is happening, that maybe God is doing something significant and timely. And I feel like that right now. 

On short notice, I realized that friends of our church, Jenny and Nate Bacon, were going to be in town. Jenny and Nate are part of an order of Jesus followers among the world’s urban poor. We support their work financially through Reservoir’s partnerships fund, which gives 10% of your giving to Reservoir to the Bacons and others throughout the world. So I’m hosting a lunch for Jenny and Nate in the ministry center living room at noon, if you’d like to talk with them about their work in Guatemala, but I felt like given all the news we’re hearing and seeing in the States about people asylum seekers from Central America at our Southern border, I felt like we’d all appreciate  hearing from the Bacons for a moment today. 

Because I know that the stories we’re hearing and the pictures we’re seeing of the conditions at our country’s Southern border are heartbreaking. We see masses of asylum seekers, and people living in just deplorable, inhumane conditions. And we hear a confused, and fear-filled, divisive, dehumanizing national response. 

And you know when we hear stories, or see these things on our computer screens, and feel there is no hope and nothing we can do, that is a spiritually unproductive experience, right? Or when we think this is just ammunition for one side or another of a partisan political battle, that’s not the most spiritually productive experience either. 

I find that unchanneled anger or defensiveness or helplessness becomes despair or apathy or resentment or fear. And I don’t know about you, but I want better in my life than despair or apathy or resentment or fear. And I think Jesus wants better for us as well, wants to help us engage in hope and faith. 

And it has been struck me this week that God is doing something along these lines. There are a plethora of ways that we are part of a movement to love and welcome and accompany vulnerable immigrants in our city and region and beyond. 

So let’s have Jenny and Nate join us and chat for a moment, and then I’ll share some opportunities to engage and we’ll pray as well. Jenny and Nate Bacon, welcome back to Reservoir.

[no transcript - brief interview begins at :30 and ends at about 15:00]

Three other ways you engage if immigration is part of your story or you want to accompany and serve our immigrant neighbors:

Pastor Lydia and I are both part of a campaign to make sure immigrant residents of this state can safely and legally drive in this state, a campaign we’ll share more about in the weeks to come. For now, you can pray for us, but we’ll share more ways to be involved in the weeks ahead. 

This Thursday night, we’re hosting the quarterly gathering of BIJAN, which is a network of faith communities and individuals who are working to reduce the escalating harm of our immigration system in these times. This organization is not run by or sponsored by Reservoir, but it has connected me with some beautiful ways to get to know and support more of my vulnerable immigrant neighbors. If you’d like to learn about or participate in this work, the info for Thursday’s gathering is in the program.

And on Saturday, we’re co-hosting a daytime Know Your Rights workshop here at Reservoir to empower immigrants and their allies to know the full rights they have as residents of this city and state and country. You’re welcome to come, if that’s relevant to you or your friends and family. That information is in your program as well.

 

 

Good morning! What a joy it is to be here with all of you today, and what a joy it is to be together!

We are in full summer mode here at Reservoir marked by this 10:30am service and also from a preaching perspective we also shift a little bit for the summer.  We organize less around a topic based 6-8 week sermon series, but instead preach out of a grab bag of scriptures or what many Christian traditions call the Lectionary -- an assigned assortment of readings for each day. And last week Pastor Lydia kicked us off with this, and preached from the scriptures of Galatians. And I’ll follow today with some continued insights from Paul,  the author of Galatians, that he offered to early churches, and that through the inspired work of the Holy Spirit are still very potent for us today. 

To Cherish -- Soccer Nights

First though - I want to pause and give thanks to some folks in the room for the experience of Soccer Nights!   If you’ve been around even a tiny bit here at Reservoir - you’ve probably heard us mention this free soccer camp that we offer for 200 or so kids in the greater Cambridge area.  We just concluded on Friday our 12th year of soccer nights!

And I was just struck again by the enormity of what it is to pull off a feat of organizing 200 kiddos, with equipment and snacks and demonstrating drills, CORI checks, and hospitality tables and communication, and little kids entertainment and logistics and hosting side events like volunteer soccer games - or moms soccer games and icecream and organizing crew and all the while not losing one kid!

Is just heroic, and it’s due in great measure to the 100 or so volunteers that helped Soccer Nights be a place of beauty, of safety, and to really showcase the vitality/richness and spirit of humanity coming together.

This is my 2nd year of preaching at the end of Soccer Nights. I’m so grateful for that!  I realized that it also coincides with my kids first full week of no school. Where each year, I purposefully do not sign them up for any structured programming to give them a little break. I think I imagine such a beautiful, peaceful scene of us being alongside one another, where my kids read book upon book upon meaningful, life-enriching book, and I pound out great work and perhaps a content-rich sermon.

And then I realize, “Oh my goodness that is completely delusional!”  That has never happened! I don’t know why I don’t go back into the resources of my memories to grab concrete data there.

Don’t get me wrong - it was still lovely time with my kids - just totally different than that picture! 

So as the week ticked on this past week, I got a little nervous as to how exactly I would find at least a couple of hours for words to hit the page in a slightly coherent way!

And about mid week, right before I walked on the field,  I was like alright Jesus we need to talk about this, and I felt pretty quickly a nudge from him to just relax a little (not in a condescending way - but just an invitation to relax INTO God).

As I walked onto the field, Coach Michaiah (Pastor Michaiah to many of you),  led us in warm-ups and stretches. 

She instructed us to do this cross-arm stretch..

And as I did, I looked up at the sky, which was brilliant blue, and the myriad of cloud formations,  and I felt a surge of peace. 

And then Coach Michaiah said, “give yourself a little hug”...

And I totally got teary......it felt like a physical invitation from God, “Do you accept the love I have for you, right now?  ALL the LOVE I have for you”.

With this rush of God’s love - shifted something in me and allowed me to relax and be present to the time with my kids and to the kids on my team at soccer nights, and to release worry about content for my kids entertainment in their days,  or for a sermon.

The below text is from the preacher's prepared remarks, and is not an exact transcript, but is very close to the recording. Additionally, at around 7:34 minutes in, we experienced a technological challenge which halted recording. The recording picks back up again, but about a minute of the sermon (paragraphs 4/5 in the text) was lost.

Galatians 3:23-29

3:23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.

3:24 Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.

3:25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian,

3:26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

3:27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

3:28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

3:29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

I visited Korea last year. I was born there but moved to the U.S. when I was 9 years old. It was only my second time back. And it’s of course a whole different place than when I used to live there. I was using Google Maps to navigate the Korean bus system, and had to ask for directions. I stopped someone and asked (in Korean), “Do you know what bus I need to take to get to Namsan Tower?” And the guy replied back to me (in English), “Do you speak English?” Now, if you know Korean, you know that my Korean is good but I clearly have an American accent. And everyone knows ‘bus’ in Korean is not ‘bus’, it’s “Bbuh seu”.

When I moved to the United States, I didn’t know how to speak English. I learned but for a while had an accent. People stared at me and treated me differently. I always had this dream what it would be like to go back to Korea, where everyone looked like me, and I could speak Eorean and not be misunderstood. It turns out I’m too Korean in America and too american in Korea. Am I Korean or American? Identity is a peculiar thing. I never felt totally at home anywhere and displaced no matter where I was.

And I especially struggled with that in my formative years. Throughout middle school and high school, I probably changed my “identity” about every year. Each grade, I made a new circle of friends. 6th grade, I embraced being a shy girl with only 2 friends, the 3 of us picked a spot just around the corner of the school building at every recess. 7th grade I felt the need to expand my circle, or actually move up the ladder, I joined the cheerleading team and made friends with the popular “prep” crowd. Then I got too cool for the cool kids and in 8th grade and decided that I was into alternative rock, baggy pants, and hung out with skaters. 9th grade, I met these Vietnamese kids at our school that were so cool with their low-rider cars and what they called “rice rockets”, fixed up Hondas with spoilers and rims. We’d go “race” our cars around the block during lunch hours. I jumped around to “cliques” and reinvented myself every year. Because I didn’t fit in anywhere.

It would be too cheezy of me to simply say that I found myself in God. Although I did, after I was much older, not necessarily through church community, because churches were always somewhat complicated too. I didn’t fit into Korean youth group. Or the campus fellowships where everyone had similar political views in college while I was studying political science. Because actually Sunday mornings are some of the more segregated times in america. I found myself, after years of trying to be this or that for others, realizing that I didn’t need to try so hard to have people understand me. They didn’t. They didn’t get me. They couldn’t put me in the categories they knew.

We’ve got a lot going on today so I’m going to get right into it here with some words from Jesus.  We are finishing up our spring prophetic living series. Next week, and for all 11 weeks of summer at Reservoir, our pastoral team will speak at our 10:30 services as we’re guided by the Bible texts of the day. Rather than choosing those texts as part of a series, we’ll draw them from a shared Bible reading plan called the lectionary, that churches in many traditions use. We keep a daily version of this Bible reading plan on our website, where it’s called Read the Bible Together, and we’ll be using the Sunday weekly version of that calendar this summer, just like we did last year.

But today we’re wrapping up these 8 weeks we’ve called Prophetic Living - living as if our best hopes in God are timely and true. We’ve drawn from a smattering of the wisdom of the ancient Hebrew prophets in our Bible’s Old Testament, and a bit from Jesus when he’s functioning as a prophet too. Both Christianity and Islam esteem Jesus as a truth teller; I think the teaching of Jesus holds pretty broad respect in non-religious American culture at large as well. Although most Americans, just like most Muslims and just like most Christians, haven’t really grappled a lot with the content of the teaching of Jesus.

Jesus’ words are on the one hand so simple, and at the same time so deep they’re kind of inscrutable. Jesus tells these stories about farming and fish and water and widows that are earthy and grounded and at the same time seem to nudge us toward a life that impossible - impossibly hard, impossibly beautiful, impossibly provocative, impossibly good. I come in and out of passion and interest with most religious things, but I think I will never tire of the words of Jesus.

Let me share a few of them right now. In Luke’s good news, Jesus tells this little story. Jesus says:

15 Then Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions, even when someone is very wealthy.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “A certain rich man’s land produced a bountiful crop. 17 He said to himself, What will I do? I have no place to store my harvest! 18 Then he thought, Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store all my grain and goods. 19 I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself. 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.”

-Luke 12:15-21 (CEB)

Jesus, what a story you tell, Jesus. It’s funny. This guy is so excited, so pleased with his own good luck and clever ideas. And then God enters the story, and depending on your point of view, or the mood you’re in that day, it gets even funnier, or it gets kind of dark.

“Fool, tonight you will die. How’s that barn doing for you now, fella?”

Jesus’ listeners, who were largely what we’d consider really poor, probably would have cheered this turn in the story. But it’s provocative too, isn’t it? I’m not going to try to answer all the questions this story raises, because I want to focus on something else. But I really wanted to tell this story, and raise the questions it asks about how we accumulate and what’s important.

This guy and his barn and what it all means at his death - I’m going to mainly just let it hang there. I don’t think the takeaway is to spend zero energy planning for our future - to give no thought to our future is sometime to ensure our future regret and to ensure trouble for our loved ones.

But to my mind, Jesus is suggesting that a focus on accumulating possessions and wealth and security for ourselves,...

Happy Pride! Happy glorious sunshine and happy morning!

This morning I want to start with some words that have helped me, specifically over the last year, that have really been a guiding force for me in my vocation as a pastor, but really in all of life—words that came to me long before we thought of this “Prophetic Living” sermon series that we are in. They are words from one of the world’s greatest teachers on the prophets, Walter Brueggemann.  I read at some point last year a great swath of his work and I felt like he spoke directly to me when he said that good preachers and teachers help other people make sense of God by helping them "pause long enough” to take in who God is to them. And he said to do this, we need to indulge the metaphors and imagery of God that we’ve gleaned from scripture: “the giver of the biggest dinner party ever,” “father,” “mother,” “divine,” “king,”  “ a powerful sea monster,” “a gentle nursemaid," a tender friend “who wipes away every tear from all faces" and so on (December 20, 2011 On Being).

Mr. Brueggemann says that what preachers and teachers and the church as a whole succeed at doing however, is often flattening out "all the images and metaphors of God,  to make it fit in a nice little formulation" that works within creeds and doctrines ⁠— a little cleaner. But of course, a formulaic approach to God comes at a loss, because it allows for no flexible, relational connection to God, who we hope is a real and living, loving, moving spirit in our midst.

So his real charge, to me, was that we have to figure out a way to "take time to sit with these images and relish them and let them become a part of your prayer life and your vocabulary and your conceptual frame,” if we want more than a formula bound God. The use of poetry and imagery that scripture and people around us and the whole of this life offers us demands our imagination, and, if we can call it forth, will actually give us more access to God!  It’s the pathway to growth, the deep spiritual formation we are seeking and wanting.

But this growth won’t abide by a linear graph. It’s not a straightforward trajectory, an “up and to the right” picture.

This spiritual life ⁠— that Jesus absolutely calls us to live ⁠— is far beyond what could be mapped out.

It requires us to go into spaces unknown, to take a journey, to open doorways that haven’t been opened, to say things that haven’t been put to air and imagine and explore new ways forward that have not yet been carved into the ground in front of us, to listen and pay attention to the fullness of the world around us (as it’s ever-changing).

This life, with God in the mix,  requires us to IMPROVISE. And this is what I want to spend some time digging into this morning, this improvisation life we get to live.

I’ve been surprised at how defensive I am to this word “improvise." it calls up so much fear. My most vivid nightmares to this day are walking up on stage without a plan, no sermon text, not knowing where I’m going.

This is just unwise, and disrespectful, and irreverent.  

So I want to clarify today what holding our lives open to improvising can look like ⁠—to dispel the sense, maybe, that it’s a complete free-for-all, and to pitch that to improvise calls us into deep listening of one another and God and allows us to create new pathways.  We can draw from a rich, vibrant history, a bedrock of faithful improvisors ⁠— the prophets and prophetesses that have gone before us, who held their lives open to God’s story in a way that steadied their posture for the future unseen, in an unpredictable world.

Jesus calls us to this life ⁠— a life designed to be improvised ⁠— because our foundation is as true as the great prophets, with this knowing ⁠— the knowing of who we are and who God is to us, (as best we can tell).