Sometimes, All I Need is the Air that I Breathe... 5/22/16

     (Based on Genesis 1:1-2, 2:4b-7, Job 33:1-4, Matthew 3:13-4:2 - And on a great   song by The Hollies!)

            All through the month of May, we’ve been celebrating the environment that is so closely linked to the God we worship and serve. We’ve seen God in the soil – that wonderful and rich provider of nourishment, life, and growth; that soil from which we were all created…that soil to which we shall all return. We’ve celebrated God’s presence in water in its many forms, particularly the form of Jesus’ living water offered to the Samaritan woman in the well. Today, we turn our attention to the sky, the air.

            For centuries and even millennia now, Christians have come to picture God as living way up in the sky, remote from us, unreachable, in a totally separate realm we refer to as “the heavens.” Many Christians still believe that we can never get there – that place where God is – until we die. Does that make sense to you? Are you comfortable with that?             

          The writer of Hebrews sure wasn’t. He put it this way in chapter 4 verse 15: “For we do not have some high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we have.”

            Paul wasn’t completely comfortable with a remote, distant God either. In Romans 8:26, he tells us that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don’t even know what to pray for but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” The Spirit “searches and knows and dwells within our hearts.” That’s close!

            Take a look at that amazing quotation I put on the front of the bulletin today. Once again, it comes from Diana Butler Bass and her amazing book Grounded.

           

            "For centuries, we have distanced heaven, placing it beyond reach and  making it impossible to experience. If you think about it, however, heaven is not far away at all. We may walk on the ground, but the rest  of our bodies move through the sky all the time -- the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere that extends upward from the earth's surface to about thirty-    five-thousand feet. The sky begins at our feet.

            "To say that God is in the sky is not to imply that God lives at a certain address above the earth. Instead, it is an invitation to consider God's presence that both reaches to the stars and wafts through our lives as a spiritual breeze."

            How cool is that? The sky begins at the top of our feet. She’s right, isn’t she? The sky begins where the ground ends. Butler Bass points this out because, like me, she is not a fan of the traditional understanding that God is “up” there, way above us in some separate, heavenly realm. If we recognize that the sky begins here – at our feet – then God can be all around us, literally as close as our next breath!

            Job understood this. He said in Job 27:3 “For as long as life is in me, the breath of God is in my nostrils.” And in 33:4 "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

         A little later this morning, we’re going to sing that classic hymn, “Breathe on my, Breath of God.” Did you know that in Hebrew – the language of the Old Testament – the word Ruach means wind, air, breath, and Spirit. What a word! It encompasses all those things that we have since separated with our many words. And Greek – the language of the New Testament – is similar to the Hebrew in this regard. The one Greek word “Pneuma” can mean spirit, Holy Spirit, wind, and breath. Ancient cultures were actually way ahead of us on recognizing the nearness of God, and their language reflects that!

         I think Jesus and the writers of the gospels worked hard to reinforce the nearness of God as well. The passage I shared from Matthew, which is actually covered the same way in all 4 gospels, has the heavens being torn open and that spirit of God – the Ruach, the Pneuma – descending out of the heavens and staying on the earth. It doesn’t go back up! Matthew’s account emphasizes that not only does this spirit come down and rest on Jesus, but it stays! In fact, it is that same spirit that then compels Jesus out into the wilderness. And it’s that same spirit that comes upon and surrounds the disciples in Acts chapter 2, the day of Pentecost that we celebrated last week. It’s the same spirit that hovered over the waters before creation in Genesis 2. And the same breath  - the breath of God that called everything into existence. It’s all connected! It’s all the same thing! It’s in the wind; it’s in the air; it’s in the sky; it’s in your lungs and my lungs; it’s in this space above our shoes, in everything that’s above the ground. Wow!

         So if all this amazing stuff is connected – sky, wind, air, breath, breath of God, God’s Spirit, what does that mean for us and for our lives? Well, first it means that every time we breathe, we become more connected to God. I’m going to shut up so we can all breathe for a while. Ready…. (Breathe)

        Secondly, this truth about air, wind, spirit, sky, breath and God should help us remember that we are all connected with each other, right? What’s the one thing that connects every living human being on the planet…? We all breathe. The very act of breathing is what connects us, no matter what color our skin is; no matter what country we live in, no matter who we vote for, no matter what religion we are. It is our breath that connects us! Not only do we all breathe, but more importantly, we all breathe the same air. This might not be the most pleasant thought I share with you today, but in this room, right now, the very air that you take into your lungs is the exact same air that has been in and out the lungs of every other person in this room. (Talk about recycling! I had us all breathing before; now everybody is holding their breath! ) And as we back the camera up further and move outdoors, that same principle applies. We come from the same soil as everyone else; we drink from the same well as everyone else, and we breathe the very same air as everyone else. Folks, we are all in this together.

          I learned about the incredibly connection our breathing builds between all people through a group I facilitated in the six years before I came here, I worked with a small group of adult students every Tuesday night in a Petoskey yoga studio, helping them explore and experiment with ancient, silent prayer practices. We would gather for an hour each week. The first 10-15 minutes, I’d offer some background and instruction on a particular silent practice. Then, for the next 20 or 30 minutes, we’d attempt the practice or discipline. And then in the final 10-15 minutes, we’d talk about what we experienced in the silence and meditation. I’m not sure what we expected would result from the silence, but some really cool things happened that we didn’t expect. One was that, over time, we started to feel incredibly close to each other. There was a real tenderness and compassion we felt for each other, by sharing that space together and entering that scary and often uncomfortable silence. Simply breathing together and not talking put us in a very different kind of realm. We rarely, if ever, had any lightening bolt experiences or flashes of the presence of God. But, in a way, that made our time together even better, for we were all humbled by our individual and collective emptiness. That time spent breathing in shared silence, waiting on God, made us all realize that weren’t as holy or as godly as we sometimes like to think.

         I want to close by sharing a very personal story of the moment when God showed me just how present She is in the air we breathe and in the wind. I was going through a very low and dark time in my life. I was lonely and very isolated. I was unemployed and feeling the pinch of long-term, day-to-day economic hardship. I was taking a walk in one of my favorite, most beautiful Northern Michigan bluffs along Little Traverse Bay, where there was tall, unmowed wheat grass on this cliff overlooking the bay. It was just before sunset and the sky was brilliant. The wind was up and, in addition to making the tall grass sway rhythmically, it was pushing the billowing clouds from left to right, from west to east across the sky. I was feeling weak, depressed, and totally alone.

         For some reason I stopped along the bluff and took a few deep breaths, as I looked out over the swaying grass, the whitecaps on the waves, the rapidly moving clouds. I felt the wind on my face as I looked all of this power and movement and beauty. And suddenly, it occurred to me that the air I was breathing was the exact same air that I was feeling on my face; it as the exact same air I could see blowing the grass, the waves, and the clouds.

         So I took in more of that air, and my chest began to swell and my posture straightened, and it hit me…It hit me that I was connected to that swaying grass and those billowing clouds and those strong crashing waves. I realized that I had access to that exact same power that I saw and felt all around me. It was God’s spirit – all of it. And I wasn’t separate from it. I was connected to it! I was a part of it, and it was a part of me.

         After several minutes, I started walking again, and I felt incredible – powerful, strong, hopeful, and it was nothing like being alone. In fact, I knew more at that moment than I ever have, that I am not alone. I am never alone. I knew right then that I am not weak, but infused with the same power of that wind that was everywhere around me.

         I come back to that moment, to that scene every now and then, for it reminds me that the air, the wind, the breath of God, my breath, your breath – it’s all connected. Loneliness and separation – as real they may feel at times – they’re an utter illusion. Human loneliness and isolation are a lie. The Truth – with a capital T – is that we are far more connected to each other and to God than we can even imagine. And when we forget that, when we lose sight of that powerful and eternal connection with God and with each other, all we have to do to get it back…is breathe. Just breathe. Mindfully take in each breath remembering all that is within it – your breath, my breath, the breath of the world, and the Ruach, the Pneuma, the breath of God.

         That’s the good news of the gospel. That’s the good news that I have for you today. Amen.

Jesus, the Living Water, Reverses the Curses!

                                 (Based on Genesis 3:1-13, John 4:4-15)

         Offered to FCUCC Gaylord – May 15, 2016 – by Toby Jones

            I suppose we’d have to be living under a rock not to notice that water is everywhere in the news lately. Whether it’s the on-going and horrifying crisis in Flint or the frightening water shortages in places like California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, water – something we used to take for granted – is now a precious and precarious commodity.

            We know that when God created the world, God understood water’s importance, which is probably why She made this planet 3/4ths water – some for drinking, some for transportation, some for beauty and recreation, some for silence and contemplation – and plenty for all people.

            The Bible – both Old and New Testaments  - are full of stories suggesting a deep connection between God and water. As Diana Butler Bass puts it, “the interplay between water, wellness, and spirituality was well known to our ancestors.” (Grounded, pg. 81). Think of how many Christian holy places, from shrines and temples to cathedrals and monasteries, are built over springs or beside wells and rivers. And it’s not only the Christian faith that recognizes this important connection between God and water. To Hindus, the Ganges River is the destination of their holiest pilgrimages. Muslims, in their creation story, depict Allah sitting upon the waters, for in Islam, the waters existed before anything else did.

            There is such power in water – spiritual power - whether in rivers, oceans, streams, lakes, the rain that falls this time of year, or the simple cup of water we offer to a thirsty stranger. Jesus put it this way: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.”(John 3:5)

            That brings me to my favorite water story of all – in John 4, where Jesus has this amazing conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. In many ways, it tells us everything we need to know about Jesus – who he is, what he cares about, and how he rolls.

            I’m going to start by telling you everything I’ve known about this passage historically, and then end by telling you what I only recently learned about it that I never knew before – something that makes me even more fond of this terrific text. Are you ready…?

            First, the story tells us how Jesus was NOT one to play by anyone else’s rules, especially those of the religious authorities of his day. Did you know that faithful, law keeping Jews of Jesus’ day weren’t ever supposed to enter Samaria? Samaria was a region within Israel that lied between Galilee and Jerusalem. And the people who inhabited it were of mixed race and mixed culture. In addition, many Samaritans still participated in some polytheistic religious rituals. So for all these reasons, faithful, orthodox Jews not only wouldn’t speak to Samaritans, but they wouldn’t even set foot in Samaria! They would walk all the way around Samaria, adding as much as a half-day’s journey rather than set foot in this unclean, pagan place.

            So, as Jesus is leading his disciples from Jerusalem back up to Galilee, he goes right through Samaria. He doesn’t deviate from his course at all, walks right into the center of town, and sits at the well in the town square. His disciples were shocked, dumbfounded and scared.

            Here’s another note before we go further. Did you know that in Jesus’ day, Jewish men didn’t speak or fraternize in public with women – period. Not their wives or daughters, and definitely not strangers. And in this passage Jesus has his longest recorded conversation with anyone in all the gospels, and it’s with a woman – a stranger, and a Samaritan! Are you getting my drift about Jesus being a rebel? He shocked his disciples and really shocked this woman. A Jewish man…speaking to her…and a Rabbi no less? Jesus was way out of bounds here!

            But it gets even more amazing, as we turn to the particulars of this woman. We already know she was a Samaritan, but as the passage unfolds, we find out that she has been married 5 times and is now living with a 6^th man! Back then, this woman was about as low as she could get – even in a Samaritan community. And yet, Jesus spoke with her.

            Perhaps the most important thing for us to realize about this Samaritan woman is how she felt about herself. We know she felt like a total loser with a capital L! We know this because of a tiny detail in the story that most people don’t even notice when they read John 4. At the end of verse six, the line is: “It was about the 6^th hour.” That means it was 12 o’clock noon.” No big deal, right? Actually it is a HUGE deal. Guess who went to the well to get water at noon….NOBODY. Care to guess why? Going to the well meant carrying a heavy wooden bucket- even heavier once it was full of water – over several miles. To do so at noon meant going in the hottest part of the day AND a time when a good deal of water might evaporate on the way home. Biblical scholars point out that there is only one kind of person who would come to the well at high noon: a person who is so despised and mistreated in her community, that she chooses to go get her water when NOBODY else would be apt to be there.

            How telling that Jesus has his longest and most compassionate conversation with THIS Samaritan woman – not only a woman – who Jewish men are not supposed to talk to in public; not only a Samaritan – who Jews are forbidden to have any dealings with; but a five time marital loser who gets verbally attacked by everyone she knows, and is a pariah, even among a nation of pariahs! I love Jesus! I love this man!

            And what does Jesus say to her? He offers her “living water,” living water. He says, ‘if you drink the water I’m offering, you will never thirst again.’ As Diana Butler Bass puts it, “Jesus implies that he’s not just a well; he’s the water!” Jesus lets this woman know that if she connects herself to him, if she taps into him, he’ll quench her thirst forever. He’s going to bless her spiritually and in a way that lasts.

            Now here’s the new thing I learned about this already amazing passage, and I just learned it this week, reading this amazing book called “Grounded” by Diana Butler Bass. Before too long you’ll be getting an invitation from me to study this book with me in a book group, maybe this fall. But back to what the author taught me this week.

            Diana Butler Bass notes that this story in John 4 creates an exact reversal of the story of the fall, going all the way back to Genesis 3 and Adam and Eve. I’d never seen it before, but Butler Bass is right – it’s there, plain as day! In Genesis 3, we have this serpent coming to Eve and saying that if she eats of the tree of life, the knowledge of good and evil, her eyes will be opened and she’ll gain spiritual wisdom right. So Eve accepts the serpent’s invitation to eat and what does she get…? She gets cursed. She gets booted out of the garden and becomes an isolated outcast, right?

            But in John 4, look what happens. Jesus invites the woman to drink from his well of living water, and this time, instead of being cursed and cast out, she is blessed! The woman is blessed in such a profound and dramatic way, that she runs to tell all her friends. She leaves her empty water bucket at the well, and in her excitement runs to the town and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? The Messiah?” John goes on to tell us that “many Samaritans came from the town and believed in Jesus because of this woman’s testimony.”

            What a transformation! What a blessing! You’d think no one would believe anything on the basis of this despised woman’s testimony, right? But that’s how the living water of Jesus works! Once she took into her heart and spirit, it reconnected her to God, it reconnected her to herself, and it reconnected her to her community. This Samaritan woman goes from being cursed to being blessed, and, in so doing, she not only blesses others, but through her, the long standing curse associated with Eve is blown to bits; it’s undone; it’s reversed!

            Jesus turns curses to blessings; that’s what the living water of Jesus does! Jesus takes old, worn out, damaging understandings that we have of ourselves, and sets things right. Jesus restores us to who we really are.

            So what about us? What does this John 4 story of the woman at the well mean for us? Well, first it means that we need to realize that we are not cursed either. We are NOT sinners in the hands of an angry God, as Jonathan Edwards thought. We’re blessed, not cursed. Can I get an amen? Second, we need to consider what we can we do – you and I, right here in Gaylord – to help others understand that they’re not cursed either? How can we help reverse that curse that so many people around us feel? Who do you know who feels despised, cast out, and unwelcome? Who in our community is convinced that their mistakes and past actions have cursed them forever, that they are no longer worth anything?

            Maybe it’s time that you sat down with that person at the Gaylord town well. Don’t worry about what other people might think. That never stopped Jesus. In fact, the more despised and cut off the person is, the bigger the opportunity for blessing. That’s how Jesus saw it.

            The people in Samaria had gotten it wrong where this woman who had been married five times was concerned. They thought they could cut her off, but she was a part of them. Their blessing depended on her blessing. The Jews in Israel had gotten it all wrong too. They tried to cut themselves off from the Samaritans. Little did the Jews know that their blessing depended on the Samaritans being blessed right along with them. And so it goes, all throughout human history. We ostracize, we cast out, we curse those we view as different from us, failing to notice that we’re all one. We have a common destiny. We drink from the same well. We’re either all going to make it, or none of us will. That is the lesson of the water and of the well. That is the lesson of John 4, the Samaritan woman, and the living water of Jesus. That’s the good news of the gospel. Eden’s curse has been reversed – for ALL of us. Amen.

"And We've Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden" - 5/1/16

                                  

                                 (Based on Genesis 2:4b-15 & John 9:1-7)

            It all started with soil…it ALL started with soil: every plant, every flower, every tree, and every vegetable, right? Any gardener, any farmer, any botanist or ecologist will tell you that it all starts with soil. But it’s easy to forget that something else started with soil too…You and me and ALL of humanity! According to Genesis two, we were made of the earth, of the soil, from the dirt.

            God has always been into dirt. As theologian Norman Wirzba put it, “God fashioned the first human being by taking the dust of the ground into his hands…and then animating it… God gave it life from within.”

            For those of us who are farmers or who grew up with farmer parents and grandparents, no one needs to tell us how vital and miraculous soil is. Soil is amazing! It is the life source. Dirt is no dirty word for people of the land. Kids know this intuitively. They are fascinated with soil and dirt. They love to play in it, to rub themselves with it, and to get it all over their bodies. And if we go back in time, before the Industrial Revolution came along, from the late 1700’s to the mid 1800’s, we were all a lot more into and in touch with the soil than we are today, right? As Diana Butler Bass puts it, in the pre-industrial revolution days, “God, dirt, and divinity were easy companions. Creator and creation were part of the same theological ecosystem.” This is why, Butler Bass continues, “Jesus spun agricultural tales for his hearers’ spiritual benefit.” But, Butler Bass continues, “the Industrial Revolution transformed how we understood the dirt…People became estranged from the land; the dirt became an it.”

            Think about it! As we got more into machines and technology, almost all our associations with dirt and soil went from positive to negative. If your child or grandchild comes in from outside with soil on his hand or pants, you say, “Don’t come in here! You’re filthy dirty!” If a joke is off color and inappropriate, we call it a “dirty joke,” right? What’s another word for a pornographic magazine? In America nowadays, people from cities consider themselves superior and better educated than people from farms. “Country people” are thought of as poor, uneducated, with dirt under their fingernails. What about our language for sin? It’s the same thing, right? We say that a sinner is dirty, soiled by sin, and needs to be washed clean in the waters of baptism. It seems that dirt and soil are not things we appreciate anymore; in fact, they are things we avoid.

            It’s too bad, because God is in the dirt; God has always been in the dirt. That may be why there are actually more people involved nowadays in community gardens and in local farming efforts than there are in churches. Think about that! Just a few generations ago, no one would have even questioned the fact that God and dirt go hand in hand. As one man put it, “There’s no such thing as a secular farmer! The seasons are spiritual; the soil is spiritual, and so we farmers are a spiritual lot.”

            One way of reading our origin stories in Genesis, particularly the Garden of Eden, is that originally, we had a great relationship with the soil and the earth. That relationship was part and parcel of our relationship with God. But when Adam and Eve lost site of that connection, that relationship, they were cast out of the garden, out of that farming life, and began to wander the earth and take from it rather than nurture and give to it. So we really need to “get back to the garden” as Joni Mitchell put it in a song that Rokko and I will sing for you in a few minutes.

            This earth God lends us to protect and care for is a miracle, an absolutely amazing creation. And it all starts with dirt, with soil. The more in touch we are and connected we are with soil and with dirt, the more in touch and connected we are with God. Conversely, the more removed we are from the soil of the earth, the more detached and removed we are from God. I think that is why I can so clearly see God’s hand in the huge movement that’s going on right now toward both organic and local farming. More and more people - and especially young people - are trying to get back in touch, into more direct contact with the food they eat. They want to know where it comes from, how it was grown, produced, and packaged. A lot of America’s brightest young people are willing to spend more money buying and consuming vegetables that are grown locally, as close to where they live as possible. They even want to participate in growing it, if at all possible. So they join CSA’s – Community Supported Agricultural Cooperatives. God is present in the movement toward local food production and consumption.

            Folks, I may be talking about this now. But I have to confess that I never even thought about any of this when I was younger. I was a city and suburban kid. We went to a grocery store and bought the cheapest best deal we could find, without any regard for where it was produced, how it was grown, how it had been packaged, or how many thousands of miles it may have been transported to get to us. Not only did my “Christian” family and I not think about that, we certainly saw no connection between those kinds of ecological, environmental questions and following Jesus. We assumed that if we went to church on Sunday, put some money in the collection plate, studied the Bible, and treated others well, that that was all there was to following Jesus.

            But then, over time, I started attending lectures back in Indiana about why family farms were dying. I started watching documentaries about how food is being mass-produced and chemically manufactured. I started learning about GMO’s, pesticides, and the environmental damage that is done every time we people in Michigan buy lettuce from California and apples from Washington State.

            Only in the last 8–10 years has it started to dawn on me just how great the distance has become between the dirt and me. Without ever intending to, I have lost touch with the earth, with the very dirt and soil out of which I came. Scripture teaches that out of the dust and dirt I’ve come and to it I shall return. Jesus was all about the dirt. Have you ever noticed that 95% of his parables used the earth and dirt to teach us about God? He was always writing in the dirt with his fingers, sitting in it, leaning against a tree, sleeping on the ground out under the stars. In the passage I shared from John’s gospel a few moments ago, Jesus used dirt and spit to heal a man’s blindness. Mudd…to heal! How great is that? Jesus lived his entire life intimately connected to the ground.

            I read one study that said more and more churches today are building community gardens right on their property. Some are doing it to raise healthy local food for charities, food pantries, and hungry families. Others are doing it to supplement the church’s budget. Some are doing it as a primary fellowship activity, and many are doing it just for fun. But they’re all discovering that gardening is deepening their faith, reconnecting them with God. I wonder if we could try that? Reverend Anna Woofenden goes so far as to say that the church should be “a community where the church is the garden and the garden is the church.” I like that.

            Now, I’m no Luddite. I know that some technology is good, and we can’t all be farmers. We can’t just wish away the concrete we’re surrounded by concrete most of the time. But I do know that the closer I get to the earth – to the ground and the dirt and the soil - the closer I feel to God. I know that the more I consider where my food comes from, how it got from the farm to my table, the healthier, the more in balance, and more spiritual my life becomes. My faith has really changed and evolved over the years, and I hope it continues to. I am so thankful that God can be found and experienced just as powerfully in the dirt as in a beautiful building like this.

            In my faith journey, I’ve found that it’s really helped me to stop thinking about God as up there and out there in some distant and heavenly place. In fact, I’ve come to think of the earth as God’s own body – literally and physically. I think of the earth as God’s body rather than thinking of it as some planet that God just looks down on from on high. I want Eloise to grow up playing in the dirt and finding God in it. I want her to know that we’re all connected, and what better way for her to learn that than to learn that we all live on God’s body – the earth, the mother of us all. At school, just this week, incidentally, Eloise learned about what it means to reduce, reuse, and recycle. We take a lot of walks together, and she won’t walk by a piece of trash without picking it up and lecturing me on why we need to take better care of the earth. Kids get it. They really get it!

            Originally, all humans came from the earth. Everything we are, everything we eat, everything we need is in the ground, and that includes God, who’s right in there too. Over the course of history, many and even most humans in industrialized nations – without realizing or intending it - have moved further and further away from the soil and the land. In the process, we’ve inadvertently created a huge distance between ourselves and God, and I think we’ve paid a pretty big cost because of it.

            You know, it’s strange – we’ve come to talk about sin as if it’s some sort of dirty thing, as if sin means that we have somehow become soiled or unclean. But what if we’ve gotten it backwards or twisted around? What if our big sin is NOT that we’re dirty, but that we’ve gotten too far away from the dirt, that we’ve fled from our life source, from our origin, which IS the dirt, which IS the soil.

            Maybe Joni Mitchell was right? Maybe we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden…little by little, inch-by-inch, row-by-row. It’s something to think about…