Making Peace

For where there is jealousy and selfishness, there will also be turmoil and everything vile.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere.  And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for they who make peace."  - James 3:16-17

The present state of things in the United States could summarized as "in turmoil." Certainly, some wisdom from above would be welcome.  But I don't believe a big rain cloud of wisdom will drop from the sky and dump the listed virtues on the population, or even just our politicians!. Those virtues - peace, gentleness, reasonableness, mercy, etc. are available only to those who actively seek, perceive, and adopt them for their own.. Sadly, that isn't an automatic occurrence.  It is sometimes difficult to find those virtues under one's roof!  There are plenty of reports that even in monasteries and abbeys these qualities are known to take flight. Living in a hermitage might get you close, but that's not practical for most. So what can we do?

I know that we can put our heads in the sand and swear off paying any attention to the news in this quest for peace.  But that is, in essence, leaving the world to fend for itself.  As we already see that doesn't work out well when power structures are hellbent on grabbing as many of Earth's resources as they can for their own power and gain.  When cruelty becomes the goal and masses are being hurt. We see, too, that the evil this brings also tends to corrupt the religious structures and we see dimensions of this evil in Christian Nationalism. So we shouldn't build any hermetically sealed bubbles to ignore what is going on. Jesus didn't.  So neither should we.  But what can we do?

We can limit our consumption of news. Take in enough to know where things are going. Participate in what ways you're comfortable.  This is the public engagement phase of life.  But then it is important to withdraw, to remember, and to recognize that this entire planet is the tiniest of specks in a colossal galaxy.  God's "church" is the universe and God will be here for us regardless of what transpires. Take time out to bask in silence, and practice breathing deeply from your toes to your head. Pick one of the above virtues and think about it for the duration of time you can give over to the meditation.  For instance, what does gentleness feel like?  When have you been gentle with someone?  What would the world be like if gentleness were the primary indicator of social welfare (rather than the economy as it is now?)  Then, make a pact with yourself to try living gently for the rest of your day. Every day you can take a different virtue. This is the way to righteousness. It is the way to make peace.  

Combating the Sorrows & Losses

 

In the long run, change is as much devotional as it is psychological. It is out of love that we ultimately reshape our lives. It is a matter of discipline, a word has the same root as the word disciple. In other words, “To what will we be devoted? What is it that we will love and serve?” ---Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

 The news this week has not been great.  Plane crashes, incompetence & lying being crowned, jobs being removed, the judicial system being undermined, and people deported. Lots and lots of grief and loss being purposely foisted on 330 million people with not much aim apparent toward a positive goal.  I think a good reflection point is in the questions Francis Weller poses above.

One of this Sunday's texts in the Wilda Gafney Lectionary is found in Luke 7. It is the story of Jesus at Nain raising a child from the dead and putting them back in their mother's arms.  Putting the metaphysical miraculous element aside, we can see behind the scenes with a larger lens the fact of the earth's "life cycle" at work.  The completeness of life that we are granted only temporary & partial direct experience of is the flow from living through death.  Like the moon, we only see the lighted side, never the dark backside. 

Throughout life, we experience gain and loss, birth and death. Too often, we plunge ourselves into wallowing in our losses while the gains we experience seem fleeting. I say we do it to ourselves because, far too frequently, it's our brain's interpretation and in-built assumptions that anticipate, exacerbate, or extend our anxiety and misery.  We are wired to expect "the worst" and thus kick start our worry and sense of loss before "it" even happens. How often has "it" not turned out as awful as we imagined? Do we make "it" worse by bottling it up and recycling it over and over in our heads?  I have done that until I am sick of "it" and of myself for allowing it.  Which I don't believe is where God wants any of us to live.

Humans have an extraordinary capacity to change things. We can look at glasses as half full or half empty.  If we carry a belief in the unseen "hereafter" being a glorious improvement over life on earth, death loses a good measure of its pall. As Weller says above, change is devotional as much as psychological. How much devotional time - meditative time - do we spend imagining ourselves in positive spaces surrounded by joy, gratitude, hope, promise, peace, and love? Do we have the positive habit of looking for those virtues bubbling to the surface all around us, all the time?  I call it taking time out from stress. Can we imagine (using the power of our brain) shifting ourselves into a Jesus-loving space where we can feel Jesus loving us and us loving like Jesus? 

I believe there is a realm that is very near, just beyond our physical touch, that operates on the purely virtuous side of life. We are every bit as much spiritual beings as we are physical ones.  The spiritual side breaks into our lives many times a day.  Does it pass us by because we're too busy in our heads/lives to take notice?  Do we look for it? It IS there. Reshape your life with Love. Take it as a New Year's challenge.  Who/what will you be loving and directing Love toward?   

Gifts Received, Gifts Given

 Gifts Received, Gifts Given

A Sermon given on Jan. 19, 2025

Renton United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ

Mark Fredericksen, ND, MDiv

Based on 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

 

A saying my mom was fond of reciting at me when any of my pals would call me some awful name was, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  Have you heard that before? Did the saying do anything to make you feel better? Naw, me either, because the ways that we can be hurt don’t only involve our physical being but, too frequently, real injury can be inflicted by words said. If they get repeated, they can dig a trench in our psyche such that we adopt them and make them into who think we are.  If those words dig into our very soul, they may keep us handicapped or knocked down our whole life long.

As you heard, a big part of my healer’s mindset is holding together the belief that we are complete human beings who have physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and socio-cultural parts.  I think of our soul as being the underlying processing unit that knits these connections together into the authentic person, we are according to God’s design. Our soul provides the gears to make us what we are. But if there are missing gears or damaged gears it’s going to impact our ability to be authentic. Sadly, our society, culture, and technology have pulled us in directions that discourage authenticity and because we can’t be ourselves in the mold that God made us to be, we have a lot of problems like what we’re having. I am sure that you probably would like to see the world a lot differently.  I’m assuming that you would like to experience authenticity.  It’s a hard thing to come by in our society with our past histories and traumas.  So, let’s explore a concept that we can work with to help make a difference – if not for the world, maybe for ourselves or a small corner in which we live.

There is a theological practice borne out of Judaism called ZimZum.  To explain it completely would take several days in a retreat, but I’ll boil it down to its simplest idea.  Instead of Creation being made by a power-exerting God. ZimZum embraces the notion of a love-exerting God who opens a space within Godself for a womb where the love spark for creation is breathed in and grows.  We, and all we know, are growing inside of God.  Through Christ we see the potential love can create and manifest.  This means a) God is our mom, b) God intensely cares what happens to ALL of us.

With those givens – we come to 1 Cor. 12. A wise loving God knows what we need and has provided us with many gifts to enable us to thrive and realize our full authentic potential both as individuals and as an entire species. God is pumping love into the system as an empowering enlivening force for our world.  The Apostle Paul lists a few of these as Gifts of the Spirit. Our souls crave and need all of them.  I don’t believe it is in any way limited to these 12 as there are other passages with different gifts listed.  I also don’t think that we are limited to having just one or two, which is not what some of the Spiritual Inventory makers preach with their online questionnaires.  To reach our full authentic love-empowering selves we need to be open to receiving all the gifts God is providing.   One of the questions that you might ponder or journal about at home is this: What are the gifts you carry in your soul?  And what ones is your soul wanting you to have?

Call me an idle dreamer or an impossible romantic, but I have believed in my heart and soul my entire life that love – a true agape love – such as that demonstrated by Jesus, such as that preached about throughout the New Testament, such as that God imagined to spark the universe -- you know – the ideal we see being strived toward early in the book of Acts – if the Church could model that/live that what would become of the wars, the greed, the grasping for power, the racism, sexism, the hating, the monetizing of everything?   Even though the Church historically and at present has failed to live this out on so many levels I still hold my small little candle of hope that I can do better, that we can do better, that the Church can be better/do better, and that my light and maybe ours together will be the light that the darkness cannot swallow up.

To get there we have to daily recommit ourselves to seeing and receiving the gifts God is placing into our lives in front of us.  To see something we have to look for it.  Get in the habit of assessing/taking an inventory every day of all the good you saw – compassion shown, joy felt, gratitude expressed, love demonstrated, kindness offered, and miracles worked. Since the 1^st of January, I have been keeping a Joy Jar.  I have a small Mason jar and each day I try to write on a small slip of Post-it note a joy I felt, and I put the paper in my Joy Jar.  I have found that when I’m asking myself what I’ve enjoyed (note that word: En-JOY) my thinking changes as well as my perception of what joy is.  Our culture has taught us to be so serious & critical that we don’t realize we’re enjoying things when they’re right there in front of us.

In this process of looking for and taking note of what we are receiving, the table begins to turn. We begin to think things like – “Why couldn’t I do that!”  I could be more positive.  I could smile more.  I could be more willing to offer a helping hand.  I have a gift for listening – I could reach out to someone.  Let me tell you – I’m doing some work in the area of grief and loss.  And what I’ve learned is EVERYBODY has loss and grief.  EVERYBODY.  And the single best healing practice for it is simply telling the story to someone.  Who hasn’t got time to listen?   Though I will admit that listening without offering fixes and advice is a hearty challenge – and maybe it IS a gift.  One that you have? 

 But see?  THIS is how the Holy Spirit spreads. We for too long have been lulled into Christian complacency of expecting the Holy Spirit (or God) to fix every wrong.  But the wrongs get fixed when we activate and use the gifts we’ve received.   Are you sitting under a bushel?  Letting your light be hidden?  Feeling sorry for yourself or frustrated or angry at the stampedes of hypocrisy and greed and violence it seems the whole world is descending into?  I’m convinced it’s taking place because we all have been lured into shutting down, separating ourselves, isolating & withdrawing, and hoarding what gifts we have and not sharing what we have.  What we’ve already been given.

Finally, the last benefit of sharing our gifts is through that experience we get insights into who God made us to be. We find out where our authentic self has been living. And we take a step closer to being a full loving representation of God-in-Christ to the world.