Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Our primary text for this first Sunday of five where we study Jesus' parables (brief stories he told to illuminate what God or the kingdom of God is like) is Luke 14:1, 7-24, which can be read here.

Our parables this week are parables about our dinner tables that are told by Jesus around a dinner table. Which made me think that a good starting point for thinking about this parable could be, who do we eat with at our tables? What sorts of meals do we share together? Who is usually present for these meals? Who is missing?

I don't have pictures of all of you sharing meals in your private homes, obviously, but what I have done to start our reflecting is make a collage of artistic renderings of these parables together with pictures I have of meals we have shared together as a congregation. Take a while to reflect on these images that I have put together into one great image. Who is present in them? Who is absent? How do these images reflect the kingdom of God? Where is the kingdom of God needed to break in upon us in these pictures, and what might that look like?

Let your imagination and observation roam free...

For additional compelling feast images to get you thinking, check out this site that has some really amazingly provocative portrayals of the Last Supper:  http://exclusionandembrace.blogspot.com/2012/06/last-supper-for-everyone.html

What is Sabbath?

Our texts for this week are Luke 13:10-17 and Acts 3:1-8, which can be read at http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=244361577.

Our Gospel story for this week, an instance where Jesus heals a bent-over woman in the synagogue,
leads to controversy over a question that, I think, we are still asking today:  what is Sabbath?  What does it mean to follow the fourth commandment, one of the ones we most often break--to honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy?

As we approach our Christian Sabbath day tomorrow, I offer a few quotes to spark your thinking. What is the Sabbath day to you? What is the importance of a day set aside for worship, rest, and honoring God? What should such a day look like?

See if any of these ideas resonate with you:

The Sabbath is a "day of promise…a glimpse of God's dominion, a little slice of the messianic age dropped into the midst of regular time." -Richard Swanson

"There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.” -Abraham Heschel

"Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center." — Wayne Muller

What sort of Sabbath does your soul need? What does the Sabbath day look like in your life?

Being Jesus' Restless Ones

Upon returning home this afternoon after preaching on Luke 12:49-56 and Acts 17:1-8, I saw where one of my colleagues had posted this blessing from the Franciscans that seemed to fit beautifully with our sermon conversation today. I share it to further your reflection on Jesus' challenging words and the example of an early church that lived out its call to holy chaos, to turning the world upside down!

A Four-Fold Benedictine Blessing

by Sr. Ruth Fox, OSB (1985)

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

Blog Hiatus, and Art for Thought

Hello Faithful Readers-

You may notice a bit of a regular blog hiatus over these weeks; I have been out of town on a vacation that included an intentional internet Sabbath, and am preparing to head out on our annual Intergenerational West Virginia Mission Trip next week and will be on a forced internet Sabbath as we lodge at the lovely but very low-tech 4-H center of Barbour County.

However, as I regroup between these adventures, I came across a couple of pieces of art that go with the parable found in our Gospel text for this Sunday, Luke 12:16-21.  Give it a read here, then reflect on the artwork below.  How do these shed light on what Jesus may have been seeking to teach us in this short but powerful story of a man and his barns?

 Hofheinz-Döring, Margret, 1910-1994
Miser, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

Jim Janknegt’s "rich fool"

a project of www.rejesus.co.uk

Being Jesus'...Bowels?

Our texts for this Sunday, as we continue our series from Luke-Acts on "Being the Body" that explores how the church enacts and embodies the teachings of Christ, are Luke 10:25-27 and Acts 15:1-18, which can be read here.

OK, weird blog post title. I know. But that's because, as I thought about which part of Jesus' body this Sunday's Gospel invites us to be, I was struck by this line Jesus spoke about the traveller we now call the Good Samaritan:

"when he saw him, he was moved with pity."--Luke 10:33

The word "pity" here can also be translated "compassion," or the fantastically graphic Greek word "splagchnizomai" (try saying that one out loud, just for fun) which means, literally, "to be moved as in one's bowels." It sounds weird to our modern ears, but the bowels were thought, in Jesus' day, as the core location of love and pity, that which compels one to action on behalf of another.  In other words, when he was "moved with pity," the "Good Samaritan" was not acting out of some sort of moral obligation, societal responsibility, or some sort of condescending do-gooder spirit; he felt an empathy and compassion towards this stranger that was so deep, he felt it in the lining of his intestines.  It was profound, to his very core, too compelling to ignore.  He was with the man he was reaching out to.  He was drawn to him as with an undeniable magnetic force from somewhere deep within.

I know it's kind of gross to think about it in this literal way...but think about it.  To be moved that viscerally on behalf of total strangers?  What would it be like to show compassion with this sort of passion and physical connection with others who are in pain?  What if this is the deep, embodied way Jesus wants us to express empathy in action even towards those who may be our enemies?  How would this change the way we show love and care to others?

Being Jesus' Feet

As we get back onto the lectionary schedule of readings (sort of--I will be pairing the Luke reading

with complementary readings from Acts, because I have decided we simply don't read Acts enough!), our texts this week are Luke 10:1-11 and Acts 6:1-7, 13:1-4, which you can read here.

In my reading for the sermon this week, I was intrigued by the words of a blogger I really respect, Dan Clendinin, who writes at Journey with Jesus.  In considering our Gospel text, he commented:

One of the fascinating things about the Jesus story is how far and how fast it spread. The book of Acts begins in Jerusalem and ends 1500 miles to the west in Rome. The wild fire also burned to the east. By the year 635 believers confessed Jesus as Lord in China. A hundred years after that, Syrian believers had spread the gospel to Baghdad, Tibet and India. The apostle Paul traveled 10,000 miles proclaiming the good news of God's love. How did this happen?

It is a good question indeed.  How did the story of Jesus spread when he was a peasant from a small town with only 12 original uneducated followers, in a day where there were no cars, planes, interstates, phones, email, internet, or other means of long-distance connection and communication?

Well, it began with people who were willing to go, as the seventy did in today's reading--into isolated villages, forgotten corners, wherever Jesus needed them to go to eat with others, befriend others, and, in relationship with others, share the good news of God's Kingdom and how it was very near to them, right where they were.  Anthropologist Margaret Mead once famously said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."  This was how Jesus began changing the world; and this is how it still happens today.

I think about our "group of thoughtful, committed people" at Broadneck and am amazed at how we are changing the world--and how far we are making our impact.  I think of two members of our congregation who left today to travel to Zimbabwe with JourneyPartners, taking along a dear friend of mine from college whose life has already been impacted by her Broadneck connection and whose life will now be shaped even more.  I think about how two members of our congregation spent the last year in Prague as volunteers at International Baptist Theological Seminary, interacting with the ministers and future ministers that make up a student body holding citizenship in 30 different countries.  I think about another congregant's ongoing connection with Baptists in the Republic of Georgia, about a former participant who is headed later this month to spend time in India teaching at a seminary, about our congregation's ongoing relationship with small towns in West Virginia that we will renew in August on our mission trip, about participants who are spending the summer in Brazil, about our connections with Kenya and with neighbors we encounter once a year when we spend a week giving our time to their kids at Music and Arts Camp, about seeing one of our Winter Relief guests riding around Annapolis on his bike greeting people when I was downtown for the Fourth of July yesterday.

I could go on and on, but the point is I have no doubt about it:  we are part of how Jesus is continuing to scatter the seed of his message far and wide, starting with groups of committed people.  And this, my friends, is worth celebrating!  How can we keep being messengers of this good news, the feet of Jesus wherever we travel?

Sacred Scriptures: A New Day for All People

Tomorrow will be our last Sunday focusing our time together in worship on the scriptures that people in our congregation named as sacred to them--verses and stories that have shaped them in their faith, that have stuck with them over time. Because five weeks is not enough time to cover all the stories and passages people named, each day (except Sundays) through this series one passage that was named by some people but that did not make the "Top 5" has been featured here, with an accompanying image and questions for reflection. As you read this final passage from the final book of the Bible, may you continue to seek to re-encounter long-known texts and to discover new ones that are sacred to others and may become sacred to you!

From Revelation 21 and 22

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever.

• Imagine a new heaven and a new earth.  What would you keep the same from our present world?  What would you want to change?
• Which image in this passage speaks to you most powerfully?
• What might it look like for the nations to be healed, with God making God's home among them and acting as their light?