The Day of Pentecost, May 27, 2012

May 27, 2012

The Day of Pentecost, Year B

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

          “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.”

          Today is the feast of Pentecost.  What is Pentecost about? _______   The coming of the spirit....  The birthday of the church…  Sure, it is all of those things, and more.  Pentecost celebrates God’s promise to remain with the Christian community in the wake of Christ’s death, Resurrection and Ascension.  Pentecost celebrate the riches of His inheritance, to continue our unpacking of St. Paul’s three Ascension questions.  And this inheritance, this Pentecostal vision of the Advocate, the coming of the spirit of truth, this is the truth that will set us free.

          A quick historical note.  St. John’s gospel was written probably between 100 and 120, so seventy to ninety years after Our Lord’s death.  The first years, the first decades of the church were dominated by the parousia.  What does that mean?  The waiting for Christ’s immanent return.  We are still waiting, but it was serious then, “He’s coming back any moment… live like it.”  So here is John, writing after decades of this waiting, holy waiting but waiting nonetheless, and you might be able to imagine that something had to give.  Some scholars think that this story of the Advocate being sent by Christ from God was St. John’s way of dealing with the disappointment, or at least reassuring the larval Christian community that God had not abandoned them.  It is important to remember that from where we sit: 1900 years later and still waiting.

          That said, Jesus calls this spirit of truth what?  The Advocate.  The Greek word is parakletos, and is translated also as “Counselor” or “Comforter” or for real Bible geeks, “the Paraclete”.  It literally means “one called alongside.” I think of a companion, a partner, a soul friend.  The way St. John uses this word, we are not to conflate the Advocate with the totality of the Holy Spirit.  The parakeltos is a specific, personal role that the spirit fills in a person or a community.  The Holy Spirit is hard to grasp.  By Her nature, She ebbs and flows, She breathes in and breathes out and envelopes all that is within Her life-giving embrace.  She is cosmically vast, infusing, animating the creation in Her joyous wisdom.  The parakletos is a way to describe one aspect of Her animation, a personal one.  If the Holy Spirit is the movement of the tides, the parakletos is the single wave we are carried on in the sea of being. 

          A word of caution… I know very little about the Holy Spirit. No one does; that is why say “great is the Mystery of faith.”  I know very little about the Numinous, that is the technical term for things spirit.  I know very little, but I have some very deep feelings about Her if not expiences of Her.  When I feel energy, life, movement… I feel the Holy Spirit.  When I encounter wisdom, deep learning, inner growth, expansion… I feel the Holy Spirit.  When I see children becoming, lambs skipping in a field, plants creeping upward, the force that through the green fuse drives the flower… I feel the Holy Spirit. When I feel passion, when I am moved to tears by a sentence, a painting, a phrase within an aria, or certain stretches of Jerry Garcia’s improvisations… I feel the Holy Spirit. When beauty envelops me, when Brigid and I share a rainbow over the Coburg Hills, or walk through a hayfield just before first cutting, wind rolling on and onward over the Timothy, amber waves almost… I feel the Holy Spirit. Where do you feel her?____  Numinous.

          So what, then, is the Advocate?  What then is the personal slice of the Spirit that Christ sent to each of us?  How do we begin to understand our little wave in the global movement of the tides?  Good question. 

          One way I think about the Advocate is the process of God penetrating our inner being, God making a clearing in our heart in which to build a way of life.  In the Advocate we begin to build a way of life founded in truth.  Remember, we do not have the Christ with us anymore, but we still have God, now in the Person of the Spirit, and not just with us, but within us.

          So how does the personal indwelling of the Advocate, as understood here, relate to the numinous we encounter in the world?  How do we build a way of life founded in truth?  A way of life in truth is characterized by openness; an openness to seek truth and an openness to accept truth when we encounter it.  A way of life founded in truth is characterized by personal engagement in the mystery of grace.  We recognize it in ourselves when we are in a posture of receptivity, able and willing to let the sun shine in.  We experience the Advocate working in our hearts when we feel awe in the presence of the awesome, when we feel enlivened in the presence of the radically alive, when we feel gracious in the event of actual grace, generous in the event of true generosity, kind in the face of heart-felt kindness, beautiful in the presence of true beauty.

Has anyone heard of Joe Henry?  He’s a musician who has been releasing music since the early 90s.  He is fabulous, his old stuff at least.  He wrote a song 20 years ago that went like this:  One day when the weather is warm/ I’ll wake up on the hill/and hold the morning like it was a plow,/And cut myself a row/And follow it until/I know better by God than I know now.

The Advocate, the Companion, the one called alongside… when you let Her in your heart, when you accept the way of life you are being led to, you live boldly, tenaciously even, but not stubbornly.  Cutting a row with a plow is grueling work, much harder to do than it looks.  (Or it should be, a 10-bottom plow on a couple hundred hp tractor makes light work for the back but is murder on the soul.)  It is grueling work, and decisive work and is a major investment of time and energy.  And the world is changed in your wake.  But when you learn that you have to go a different direction, or have to pick up and do it somewhere else or even have to stop all together, in the peace of the Advocate, you act based on the truth you have found. 

          It is that balance. Being fully committed, leaning all the way in to the work you have been given to do AND being humble enough, non-attached enough to change what or how you are doing things when you learn something new.

          This is all in the middle of the thing that I am probably most proud of myself for besides our two girls.  When I have figured something out, I have made changes, more or less regardless of the cost.  When I learned that the Marine Corps was not what I thought; I left.  Same with the corporate world and Unitarian Universalism. I certainly should have been more discerning before jumping in to things with both feet.  (Mom, you were right.) But when I found out that x was not what I was supposed to be doing, I changed what I was doing.  And a confession: one of my greatest fears is being considered flakey which is a real bummer being as flakey as I can be.  And my personal history could be interpreted as the history of an incredible flake.  But I do not think it is.  I think it is the spirit calling me to a way of life founded in truth.  When I find myself doing what I no longer am supposed to be doing, I get this feeling of some twisting existential impatience.  I have discerned this as the Advocate, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit saying, “You know better, now follow me.”  or “It’s going to be OK once you are back on the right path.” 

          How has the spirit inhabited your heart?  Where do you feel that twist or pull in your life?  Do you feel it or hear it?  Is the still small voice calling out to you?  Do you hear the deep calling unto deep?  Are you doing what you are supposed to be doing? Are you living like you are supposed to be living? Are you who you are supposed to be?

          In prayer alone or here with us; in worshipping God; living in community; serving the world; learning, loving and growing in the experience of the gifts and the sorrows of this world. In these, and in any of the innumerable moments of your life, you have the opportunity to learn who you are supposed to be, what you are supposed to do, how you are supposed to live.  This is the indwelling of the Advocate, the spirit of truth.  This is your inheritance as a child of God.  Make use of it.  AMEN.

         

         

Ascension Sunday, May 20, 2012

Ascension Sunday, Year B

May 20, 2012

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

“…so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you…what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints…and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe according to the working of his great power.”

                         Today we remember the Ascension of Our Lord, the occasion when Jesus ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God. The central issues of the Ascension have very little to do with what Jesus was up too once He left the temporal realm, the realm of time and space, and have even less to do with how He got there.  Rather, the Ascension has everything to do with what we are up too here and now, knowing that God, at least God located in the fully human substance of Jesus Christ, is no longer here or now.  I know this sounds technical if not inane, but if we do not get some of this stuff straight, some of our understandings in order, the whole thing, the Christian vocation itself can be nonsensical, or worse, we can be led to idolatry and all other kinds of bad religion.  Right thinking alone will not get you to God; but wrong thinking guarantees that you won’t.

            So what are we to do in the wake of Christ’s bodily departure?  (And no, it does not matter if it happened this way, rising in glory on a cloud.  This is just the story that we have and stories are generally better at conveying meaning then they are at relating facts.)  In his letter to the church in Ephesus, St. Paul left us three penetrating questions to consider in a post-Ascension world.  These are the roots of today’s remembrance.  St. Paul asked:

            What is the hope to which we have been called?

            What are the riches of his inheritance?

            What is the greatness of his power?

            These questions really get to the heart of why we are Christian.  Not just worshipers of God, but lovers of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the fullness of the Trinity in its endless numbered days.  Where do we begin with these questions, particularly with the “eyes of our hearts enlightened”? Well if I had an hour to preach, I could get through all three this morning.  You all game?  It couldn’t be longer than last week’s Mass… 

            These questions are so important that we are going to pray on them for the next couple of Sundays.  Next Sunday is Whitsunday, the day of Pentecost, and the theme of the riches of his inheritance dovetails well into that great Solemnity.  And then we are on to the greatness of His power, a fitting thread to follow through Trinity Sunday on the 3^rd.  All three questions are meant to be on our hearts as we transition from this Easter season to the long slow stretch of ordinary time that is before.  So today we consider Hope.

            What is the hope to which we have been called?  This is a trickier question that it might seem.  Hope is slippery.  The tricky thing is that hope is not about specific things to come, specific outcomes in the future.  That is not the proper definition of hope, at least not Christian hope.  Christian hope is not about wishing.  Christian hope is not about longing.  Wishing and longing are grasping, clinging feelings.  When we attach to some specific outcome we stray into the world of fantasy.  “I so long to be rich!”  “I so wish to get better!”  “I need x, y or z.”  Hope like this becomes a sin against hope, it becomes presumption, anticipated fulfillment (the other sin against hope being despair, anticipated failure).  The future, assuming that it comes (which is an assumption; the future itself is an assumption), but nothing in the future, even a future itself, is guaranteed.  The future is so totally out of our control, and dwelling on specific hoped for outcomes distracts us from the important work and even more important relationships we have before us in the present moment. 

            “It’ll all be better when we die, our future rewards are in heaven.”  When my grandmother died, her pastor prayed over her body, “We are so glad you are dead, Helen, you are now with the Father where you have always longed to be.”  I wanted to punch him in the nose.  “Don’t you be glad that my grandmother is dead, she’s not,” I thought. This is the classic example of disordered attachments, of un-Christian hope.  It is this specific form of hope, deferring work towards happiness or well-being (or justice) in the now in favor of future heavenly reward that led to Marx’s very correct and highly misunderstood critique of religion as “the opiate of the masses.”  Improper hope distracts us from what we need to be and do in this world, right now.  That pastor could have prayed much more rightly, “We hope Helen now rests in peace.”  Or, “We hope her family can bear this loss and find joy in her memory.”  Those are things to hope for.  Hoping to be cured from a disease or recover from an injury is futile and unrealizable, but hoping in Christ that we have the courage and the will to live through whatever we face. Hoping for the inner strength to overcome adversity, for the patience to find solutions, now those are things to pray for.  Those are things to hope in.

Proper Christian hope… I am going to quote a German theologian, Ferdinand Kersteins.  He is Catholic and not particularly prominent, but bear with me, it’s good.  He writes, “Freedom is the key to the new, to the coming of what never was before.  History is played out between the freedom of God, the ground of all, and the freedom of man (sic).  Christian hope fixes its gaze on the futurity which this play of freedom makes possible and not on a predetermined goal of a development.  Hope looks to history that is to come.”

The key here is Christian hope’s focus not on some predetermined or presumptive outcome, that is attachment to a fantasy, but Christian hope focuses on the interplay of freedom that God has graced existence with.  The freedom of God and our own distinctly human freedom engaged in an amazing, serendipitous, improvisational dance through the multidimensional stratum of existence… our hope is that the dance continues and that we abide in the dance, the process of the dance, the theodrama as one great Jesuit calls it, and not on the specific steps of that dance. 

I am not a sports fan.  No matter how long we end up living here in Eugene, I do not suspect that I will ever wear any Ducks gear.  I am sorry, it is nothing personal.  I spent most of my life in Boston, a fanatical sports city, and have never worn anything with even a Red Sox logo.  That said, I was in divinity school in 2004 when the Red Sox won that first world series in 80 something years.  Even I, the perpetual disdainer of popular culture, I felt the excitement and even watched two innings of one of the games.  But truly, at divinity school, there was some debate about whether it was proper Christian hope to hope for one team to prevail over the other.  (Well, in the pennant race at least, the question was about praying for the Red Sox to win because even I knew that the Yankees were on the side of darkness).  A legendary old priest/professor in Cambridge, Ed Rodman, a rabid Red Sox fan and a wise and holy man, he answered the question for us.  No, it was not OK to hope or pray for the Red Sox to win; rather, pray for the officials to make the play fair so that the contest may proceed as an interplay of the perfect freedom of God , humanity and the ground of being.  (I think the subtext was that all things being equal, God’s thumb would be on the Red Sox’s side of the scale).  But really, Christian hope lies in the desire truly in “all things being equal,” in equanimity, in balance and repose and peace.

 As we say in the Mass, “In the fullness of time… bring us to that heavenly country where… we may enter the everlasting heritage of your sons and daughters…” Hope is all about in the fullness of time. We cannot even venture to guess what the fullness of time looks like or even really means, but our faith in hope is that it is going to work out in kairos, (does anyone know what kairos means?)  …in God’s time. This is the fullness of time.  Proper hope now, in the wake of Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension is that we fulfill our vocation, fulfill our special purpose, fulfill our obligations as baptized members of Christ’s body and allow ourselves to be led by God to where ever it is that God needs us. 

So that is nice, this theological exploration of hope.  Well thought through, and as I warned, rather technical if not inane.  But, I truly believe it matters, because with hope rightly understood, the path to prayer is made more straight.  Prayer, meditation, whatever you call it, that is where God intersects with the world definitively, particularly in a post-Ascension world.  In prayer the eyes of our heart truly are enlightened.  Who we are is exponentially more important than what we do.  Prayer, hopeful prayer, is a path to realize who we truly are.  We pray not for x to happen, or y to cease or z to change, but we pray for the courage to be who we truly are.  We pray for the resilience to weather the storms.  We pray for the wisdom to discern God’s will.  We pray for the patience, the humility, the stillness inside to be an island of peace in a sea of discontent.  Pray that you are a comfort for someone; pray for the ability to be a good friend; pray for the gift of prayer.  And how do we pray?  How do we hope to pray?  Well, that is something that we are about to begin working on in earnest around here.   Stay tuned.  Be hopeful.  AMEN

May 13, 2012

Rogation Sunday/Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

             “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…”

Has anyone here heard of Utah Phillips?  I know that Nick sold him a pair of pants that he made.   He was a great folk singer and muckraker.  Some years ago he gave a talk to a young writers conference that was set to music by the indomitable Ani DiFranco.  What he said was this:

"You're about to be told one more time that you're America's most valuable natural resource.  Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources? Have you seen them strip mine?  Have you seen a clear-cut in a forest?  Have you seen a polluted river?  Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource!  They're gonna strip mine your soul!  They're gonna clear-cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit, unless you learn to resist, ‘cause the profit system follows the path of least resistance, and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river run crooked!  Hmph!"

             “Following the Path of Least resistance is what makes the river run crooked.” Interesting.  Sort of turns it on its head.  Why do rivers run crooked? Because they are supposed to. The river runs crooked because it is supposed to… Rivers follow the most expedient route, the path of least resistance.  Rivers do not flow in straight lines, they do not go up hill.  Of course, by expending enough energy we can make them go straight or up hill but they will not do that of their own volition, that is not the way of the world.  

            I started thinking about the path of least resistance when I was farming back in Massachusetts. There, farmland, if left to its own devices, would revert to a mixed pine/hardwood forest dominated by white pine, sugar maple and a variety of oaks with a spectacular copper beeches thrown in for color.  Leave the land alone for a year and woody shrubs start popping up.  Birch saplings then come in through the brambles with some spruce and early pines.  These are the pioneer species.  As these trees thicken the slow growing oaks and maples stretch out towards the heavens and the canopy closes, shading out the undergrowth and making habitat more suitable for deer, moose, wolves and bear.  It takes a couple of hundred years to be old growth, but that path takes no “effort” on the part of the forest community.  The land wants to be a forest.  It is the path of least resistance to get there.

            Around here, I am still learning, but it seems that most of the Willamette Valley wants to be oak savannah.  Fire kept the ground clear for herds of deer, elk and bison, and the myriad edible plants like the beautiful camas that surrounds Resurrection.  Mountain lions, bear and wolves liked it, too.  The land here, it would seem, wants to be an oak savannah.  The path of least resistance would take the land to where it needs to be.  

            What does this observation, what land would do if left to its own devices, what does it mean?  How does that matter?  Again, I defer to my intimate knowledge of 100 acres 50 miles north of Boston.  There, knowing that the land wants to be a forest, we tried to come to a compromise.  In the near horizon, returning to forest would not provide the calories we needed to survive, so we sought to mimic natural systems that approximated a forest ecosystem.  Compromise.  Forests never have bare ground, so we covered as much land as possible with living mulches of clovers, vetch and grasses.  Forests have animals in them, so we ran our chickens and turkeys over the land to eat the bugs and scratch their own manure into the soil.  We had plans to run mammals over the land, pigs with their rooting and sheep or goats as grazers.  The soil microbiology had evolved over 10,000 years to confect fertility from forest deutrius, so we used shredded leaves as mulch. We mostly grew what evolved in a climate such as ours, varieties that needed little green housing and not much in the way of plastic row covers or hoop houses to survive and could make it pretty well with our normal rains.  We farmed on the path of least resistance.

            When Paul writes, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God,” he is talking about the time when human beings realize that the perfect path, the way of Christ is right before us.  The whole of creation is waiting for us to find it and God wishes for us to be on the path of least resistance because with that consciousness we will be led onward as parts of this creation, not as consumers of it, rulers of it, even caretakers or it, we will simply be participants in it.  Parts of it.   Why did we break from the natural flow of things?  The why is a matter of great debate, the fact that we did leave the path laid out for us is indisputable.

            God wants us to be the way we are supposed to be.  God wants us to do things the way they are supposed to be done.  This is a theology of go-with-the-flow, but not in a lazy or laissez faire kind of way, but in an organic way; an in-line with the true nature of things kind of way; a conforming to the moral curvature of the universe kind of way.  And how are we to discern the way things are supposed to be, or be done?  Well, we need to discern, we need a process.  And what are we to look for?  Simplicity is a good indicator.  Elegance is, too.  If one of the paths before you is marked by beauty or loveliness or if it isn’t too loud or dirty or if it has an especially good smell, that is a good indicator that God wants you on that path.  (Joel Salatin, the great farmer of Omnivore’s Dilemma fame always says that good farming doesn’t stink.)  Things tasting good together is another sign.  Basil grows well with tomatoes.  So does cilantro, and the strong smell of those herbs planted as companions to the tomatoes confuses some pests, reduces the risk to those plants.  The path requiring the least energy expenditure, the least frenetic effort, the least push up-hill; that might be the right choice.  The path that feels right, that feels in alignment with the wind, the tides, the river, the trees, the sun or rain, whatever natural conditions that define your home, these are all indicators, signs that you are on the path of least resistance.   

            God in Christ did not promise us a rose garden.  We ought not have expectations of a world of easy peace and tranquility, those things take enormous effort, and whether we seek peace and tranquility for the world or simply in our hearts, it takes effort.  What God in Christ does promise, though, is if we stop complicating our own lives and the lives of the rest of creation, if we stop all of that, all of the manipulating and engineering of nature, the altering of things that need not and ought not be messed with, if we tread more lightly in all things, it will be just that much easier to rest in the lap of creation, to find refuge in the ever-loving arms of God.  Rivers on their paths end up in the oceans.  For us, it is the peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding, this is the final destination on our path of least resistance.  Let’s find it.  AMEN.

May 6, 2012, Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B

The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B

May 6, 2012

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

            “If you abide in me, and my word abides in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

            Ours is a God of abundance. Ask and you shall receive, look and you shall find, knock and the door will open, “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit…”  Ours is a God of abundance.

            Is that the story of the world?  Abundance?  When you read the paper or listen to the radio, do stories of abundance abound?  When you walk through the grocery store, or poke around online or watch television with the deluge of advertisements, is the primary message that there is plenty to go around, that there is enough for everybody to have everything they need and even everything they want?  No.  Not truthfully.  There is no consciousness of real abundance in our society.  Our society, our world, it would seem, doesn’t operate by leaning in faith into the everflowing stream of abundance, but rather it seems guided by a deep, pathological scarcity consciousness.  Certainly that is the basis of the free market, that the highest possible price is extracted due to actual or perceived scarcity.

            Now, our actions might appear as driven by visions of abundance, but in general they are not, it is an illusion. We act as if nothing will ever run out, we act like some resources are limitlessly abundant, for instance the vast bison herd across the middle of this country, or old growth forests across the West, the cod fishery off of Massachusetts or the fertility of the prairie’s soil communities.  These resources have been exploited as if there will be no end, but there is an end.  The bison are gone.  So are most of the old trees and the cod fishery collapsed, there are for commercial purposes no codfish left.  And the fertility of one of the three great prairie systems of the planet is draining into the Gulf of Mexico leaving a dead zone the size of New Jersey because the nitrate concentrations are so high.  Exploitation like this is not driven by visions of abundance, but by scarcity.  With a consciousness of abundance, there is no hurry, there is plenty to go around.  There is no need to develop the most efficient extraction technology when there is no hurry, we can go easy.  With a scarcity consciousness, though, you’ve got to make your pile now, quick, before it runs out or worse, before someone else gets to it first.  Scarcity consciousness led us from ax to saw to chain saw to track mounted feller bunchers and Skycranes to denude our beautiful Cascades.  Scarcity consciousness led us from pick and shovel to pneumatic drill to open pit to mountain top removal to dig coal in West Virginia.  Take what you can as fast as you can and run.  That is scarcity consciousness and it is terrible for us.  Terrible.  It leads us to ugliness, greed, violence. It is the way of the world.  It is the way of death.

            So is everyone sufficiently depressed?  Yes.  It is depressing.  It is scary because things that seemed limitless, that seemed abundant are running out.  Think about peak oil.  Has anyone heard of that?  There are those who say that we are at the zenith of oil production, it is all down hill from here.  There is also peak water, it is running out in some places.  Volatility in grain markets holds whispers of peak wheat.  These are all products of scarcity consciousness; the way of the world.  Now I’m depressed…

Time and time again, Jesus told His disciples (that is us) to be in the world but not of the world.  Remember, much of Christ’s teaching has to do with the physical world and our relationship with it: with materials, with resources and wealth.  He taught, Give away everything and follow me.  Your staff and cloak, that is all you need.  The son of man has nowhere to lay his head.  And let us not forget the lilies of the fields, how splendidly God dresses them, and without worry.  This brings us back to our lesson this morning. “If you abide in me, and my word abides in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

What do these words mean?______  Is Jesus saying if we pray right we will get what we want?  Is He telling us that if we believe correctly all of our desires will be satisfied?  In a word, yes, that is what He is saying, and that is very good news.  What a promise of abundance.  Please do not get me wrong, I am not preaching some cheap prosperity gospel, a tawdry God-wants-you-to-be-rich or that wealth-is-a-sign-of God’s-favor theology that pervades some branches of the church.  No, not at all, that is ridiculous theology that is bad for us and the world and is not true to the Word of Our Lord.  But our God is a God of abundance, of plenty, and God is making a promise in these words, “If you abide in me, and my word abides in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”  How do we make sense of this?

Are you all familiar with the film The Matrix?  It is a science fiction vision of a mythic dystopia involving the revelation of a messianic savior starring Keanu Reeves, of all people.  In an important scene Neo, the protagonist, asks, “What are you telling me, that I can dodge bullets?”  His mentor Morpheus, played by Lawernce Fishbourne, replies, “No, I am telling that when you are ready you won’t have too.”

 “If you abide in me, and my word abides in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” What Jesus is teaching is that if you really do it, that is if you really get it, if you really abide in God and if the Word, the Logos really abides in you, then do not worry about what you ask for because you are not going to ask for something that is not possible in God.  If you are actually in alignment with the true nature of things, if you are following the will of God what you see as options will be sustainable. You are not going to ask for more than what is needed because greed will be dead, avarice and gluttony will not be options.  Like Neo, when you are ready, you won’t need to worry, your wants will coincide with your needs, and your needs will be in alignment with what the planet can provide.

“Abide in me…”  Another way to say that is to dwell in, to live in, to inhabit.  Abide also means to continue without fading, or not being lost in something.   Eugene Peterson’s translation of the bible, The Message, is useful here.  In this version the verse reads, “…if you make yourself at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that what is asked will be listened to and acted upon.” 

Jesus, God, our God of abundance presents the nature of things as being sufficient.  There is enough to go around.  Enough food and water, land and energy, there is plenty of wealth and love and kindness and all of it to go around.  There is enough, albeit conditionally; so long as everyone abides in God, so long as everyone really takes into consideration the great commandment, to love God and love our neighbor, then it will be OK.  If we knew that by taking too much here we would leave someone else without enough, we wouldn’t do that.  Not intentionally.  Abiding in Christ we will make the right choice.  Abiding in Christ, we know that our country represents 5% of the world’s population and consumes 25% of the world’s resources and we know we have to change our ways. We would not eat meat at every meal, we would walk more, drive less.  We’d buy used things, or better, just buy less of everything.  Miraculously, divinely, the less we consume, the less material that is run through our household’s economy, the city’s or state’s or region’s economy, the simpler everything becomes, the less you want, the less you need, the more room you have for people, love, fun, the more room you even have for God.

This is such a liberating concept.  If we align ourselves with the will of God, if we relax ourselves enough to dwell in God and open ourselves enough to let the word of God dwell in us, then our own desires will be mediated by an agapic love of the world.  We’ll make better choices, we’ll make deeper sacrifices, we’ll abide in each other as Christ wishes us to do.

This is all great for those of those who own things.  Who control portions of wealth.  It should be easier to have abundance consciousness when we have an abundance (though those with the most, the 1%, seem the most infected with scarcity consciousness).  What I mean is, you cannot pray your way out of poverty.  And woe be to the person who instructs the poor to pray this way so that their wants and needs are modulated by a religious patina of the righteousness of poverty.  That is the same as preaching the virtues of silent suffering to the beaten spouse or abused child, or to focus on the future rewards of heaven and not on the injustices of the present moment. 

But look around.  Eugene is not one of the most prosperous cities in the world, I just moved from one of them, Boston, and this ain’t Boston, thanks be to God.  But we have enough here.  Look around this room.  We have an abundance of resources.  We have human energy here at intimidating levels.  We have incredible skills and dedication and compassion housed in this place.  And we have plenty of money.  Really, we have enough wealth, enough money in this church to do whatever we need to do, virtually everything we want to do and a lot of what we dream of doing.  The world of finances here have operated with a scarcity consciousness, the idea that we never have enough.  Truly, I believe that that time is passing.  It will take sacrifice, it will take prayerful decisions and family conversations, but we are growing together in our ministries, our generosity, in the depth of our corporate relationship with God and neighbor. This is a place of abundance.  “Those who abide in me and I in them will bear much fruit.”  The fruit is coming in.  Abide.  AMEN