Palimpsest: A New Spirit

A New Spirit

Acts 2:1-21

Readings

Recognizing that we are all children of God and individuals of sacred worth, we welcome all God's people. We are called to practice unconditional love, and therefore we accept all persons regardless of sexual orientation and gender identities. By declaring ourselves to be a Reconciling Congregation, Fairmount Avenue United Methodist Church joins many other United Methodist churches in working to eliminate prejudice and discriminatory practices in ourselves and our communities. – Fairmount Avenue United Methodist Church Reconciling Statement

God, you are the God of Huldah, 

of Miriam and Deborah.

You are speaking still 

through prophets in our midst.

You whisper an idea in our ear: 

we say, “What’s she up to?”

You rise in our joy or outrage offering a vision: we say, “Whoa, she is out of control!”

We should cover our mouths with our hands,

amazed that You still love us.

You are our God. Forgive us.

– Dumbarton UMC, Shaping Sanctuary

The story of Pentecost, a pivotal part of the biblical narrative, marks the inauguration of the church and launches the globalization of the Christian faith. We cannot recreate the phenomena of Pentecost; our God is not the god of repeat performances but a God who is always seeking to do a new thing, and the Holy Spirit is pressing us to creativity and innovation and persistence. In his book Thinking about God, Fisher Humphreys describes the Spirit as One who “brings life and vitality into the experience of the Christian and the church...He makes Christian living dynamic as well as decent.” I understand the activity of the Spirit to be fostering unity, not division; inspiring creativity, not repressing it; and revisioning the future, not preserving the status quo. – Barry Howard, The Christian Century 5.15.13

In a historic moment tonight on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol, Governor Mark Dayton officially signed the freedom to marry into law... Minnesotans United, the campaign that successfully defeated the hurtful marriage amendment in 2012 and led the effort at the Capitol to secure the freedom to marry in 2013, released the following statement following tonight’s event: “Today would never have been possible without the dedication and commitment of the hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who believe that freedom means freedom for everyone. Just two years ago, today was nearly unimaginable – but over the last 24 months, Minnesotans proved that we don’t turn our backs on family...Across all political backgrounds and religious beliefs, Minnesotans spoke up and affirmed what we already knew to be true: Marriage matters, and it is a basic freedom that should not be denied to some simply because of who are they. Governor Dayton’s signature today makes the dreams of so many families a reality, and makes Minnesota a more free and fair place for all who call it home.” – www.mnunited.org

Questions:

• Do you believe the Holy Spirit is still at work? Where do you see signs of it?

Palimpsest for Mother's Day

A Mother’s Heart

I Kings 17:8-24

Readings

It is true that the widow needed Elijah, but the prophet first needed her. Desperately thirsty, he asked her for water. Hungry, he asked her for bread. Her generous response was rewarded with an undiminished supply....These are common folkloric themes and may represent some legendary embellishment of the facts. Some commentators suggest that the boy did not die but was unconscious or in a coma. Whatever the specifics, the widow and the prophet were mutually dependent on each other to the point of maintaining life. That a widow was chosen to provide for the prophet is a particularly poignant point, for she herself had no provisions and no one to provide for her. A childless widow was a family responsibility in terms of securing an heir, but a widowed mother was on her own and had to struggle to survive. Nevertheless God sent the prophet to the woman so that he might be nourished by her. This relationship between the religious figure and the woman should not be overlooked. – Miriam Therese Winter, WomanWisdom

“You’re a demanding fellow, Elijah,” the Voice said. “You call me demanding,” was the prophet’s rejoinder. “Just look at all that you have asked of me.”

“Well, at least I never asked for your last grains of flour and last drops of oil to make me a pancake.” The Voice came back again, dripping with irony. “If I hadn’t kept slipping more provisions into that widow’s house, you all would have starved.”

“I had faith that you would come through for the widow and semi-orphan, even if you wouldn’t think of helping me. You see I know you have a soft spot for wounded types, even if they are foreigners. I knew you wouldn’t let them down.” Now there was a touch of incredulity in the Voice. “Well, who wouldn’t be moved to mercy when you see your own prophet taking the last morsel of food out of the mouths of a widow and her hcild, even if they are foreigners?” The last phrase mimicked Elijah’s own intonation. “Show some mercy now, O Mericful One. I am sure it’s no news to you that the child is dead. Is that what passes for mercy these days?” Elijah was irritable now, and his voice revealed it.

– The Storyteller’s Companion, Judges-Kings, Michael Williams, editor

Ain’t I a woman? Look at me

Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted

and gathered into barns and no man could head me...

And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man -–

When I could get it – and bear the lash as well and ain’t I a woman?

I have born thirteen children and seen most all sold into slavery

and when I cried out a mother’s grief none but Jesus hear me...

and ain’t I a woman?...

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world

upside down, all alone, 

together women ought to be able to turn it rightside up again.

– Sojourner Truth

Questions:

• How does the widow of Zarepath advocate for her own child? What does she use?
• How do we move from advocating for the children we know to the world’s children?

Palimpsest - No Fear

No Fear

John 14:23-29

Readings

Under certain conditions, the R-brain (reptilian brain - brainstem and cerebellum) wreaks havoc on our thinking and learning. This phenomenon is called downshifting. Our R-brain immediately takes charge when we feel threatened or fearful. It wants only to survive at any cost. We downshift into our R-brain in settings that are unpredictable, disorderly, or threatening. We downshift in situations that lack boundaries and borders, where too many choices are present...In many cases, our downshifting deprives us of joy. It drains us of our aliveness. It prevents us from playing full out with all God’s gifts. It holds us back from the ministries to which God calls us. The shadow of the cross often falls across our choices.Following Jesus usually involves stepping out in faith, taking risks, stretching beyond our comfort zone. If we let our R-brain’s fears hold us back, we never experience the joy of using our spiritual gifts at their full capacity. We never have the deep satisfaction of doing what God created us to do. We deprive ourselves of the transformative learning that sets us free from the past and makes us truly new creations in Christ. – Thomas R. Hawkins, Loving God with All Your Mind

The deed of Gift for the interim is centered on “peace,” the total wellbeing that underlies this Hebrew word of greeting and farewell. It has a meaning specific to Jesus in this Gospel, namely, the overcoming of fear and perturbation with which the chapter opens. Only he can give the gift of peace which is envisioned. Like love, it is a Johannine hallmark of being a disciple of Jesus. – Gerard Sloyan, John

I love the way in which all the angels of scripture, and Jesus himself on occasion, say to people whom they encounter, “Fear not.” At least that is what they say in the King James Version, two simple words that act to obliterate fear, giving the listener the hope that fear’s domination of the human heart is subject to God, after all, and its power can be extinguished. – Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

Your mother told you to play nice. That’s easy when she was your opponent. No fear.

The sky is not the limit, the ground is. So shut up and jump. No fear.

Whoever has the most toys, wins. But dies anyway. No fear.

Fear– the thief of dreams. No fear.

Don’t let your fears stand in the way of your dreams. No fear.

It’s not life that scares me. It’s the sudden stop at the end. No fear.

It’s not who you know. It’s who knows you. No fear.

Fearless by choice, not by chance. No fear.

Absoutely, positively, most definitely, without a doubt. No fear.

Know it. Learn it. Live it. No fear.

– “No Fear” slogans on t-shirts, 1995

Questions:

• When do you experience fear that keeps you from thinking clearly? What do you do to clear your mind? What helps you calm down?
• How can Jesus tell us not to be afraid? How does Jesus help us when we are afraid?

Pile of stones

Palimpsest 5th Sunday of Easter

Acts 11:1-18

Readings

When hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them. Then, in fact, the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of the new found unity. Thus the biblical stories help us to realize not just that hospitality is an important virtue, but even more that in the context of hospitality guest and host can reveal their most precious gifts and bring new life to each other. – Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out

Observance of the dietary laws was not just a matter of obedience to law, it was a matter of religious identity, a symbol of who Jews were as people of God. I once asked a Reformed Jewish rabbi if he kept kashrut, the dietary regulations. I was not surprised that he responded yes, but I was unprepared for his reason. He said that he could eat pork if he wanted, that there was nothing sinful or wrong with eating pork; it was not a matter of law. However, he went on, he had chosen not to eat pork and to observe the other kosher restrictions as a way to honor those before him who had risked and given their lives that he might have the freedom to make that choice, to be Jewish. For him, it was a matter of who he was as part of that community...And yet, the heart of the issue here for the early church is not really about unclean food. The real issue is about what such regulations about clean and unclean food, regulations that divide the world up into insiders and outsiders based on conformity to certain rules or regulations, does to other people and community. ---www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearC/Ceaster5ac.html

There is a sense in which this text generates a certain kind of terror in the heart of the reader, for it makes clear the fact that it is the nature of the Spirit to remain free, bringing to bear the intention of God in the most unlooked for ways. If those early disciples who stood much nearer the Christ-event than we were not prepared for the Spirit’s fresh initiatives, how much less prepared are we? If Peter’s generation of Christians could be astounded, what might the Spirit have in store for us? – Texts for Preaching

A first step in resisting top-down perspectives is to realize that others are always already part of who we are, whether we realize this or not. Our identities are shaped in relation to others, whether positively through the guidance of our parents, teachers, and friends, or negatively through repressions in which we identify ourselves negatively as being unlike poor people, ethnic minorities, or people of other sexual orientations. – Joerg Rieger, Grace Under Pressure: Negotiating the Heart of the Methodist Tradition 

Questions:

• What do you think might have happened if Jesus’ message hadn’t been shared with the Gentiles? Would you be a Christian today?
• What groups might be represented by the Gentile and Jew dichotomy in our culture? What strangers might become beloved guests, and community?

Feed My Sheep: Peter

Acts 9:36-43

Sheep on the Isle of Iona, 2012 (Michelle Hargrave)

Readings

After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Master, you know I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

He then asked a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

“Yes, Master, you know I love you.”

Jesus said, “Shepherd my sheep.”

Then he said it a third time: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was upset that he asked for the third time, “Do you love me?” so he answered, “Master, you know everything there is to know. You’ve got to know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. I’m telling you the very truth now: When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you’ll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don’t want to go.” He said this to hint at the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. And then he commanded, “Follow me.”

– John 21:15-19, The Message

Even then this wasn’t over. He kept looking at me. And now I knew what was coming, and it did come. For the third time he said, “Simon son of Jonah, do you love me?” I bowed my head and started to cry like a child. He was asking and he was telling, both. He knew. He knew. He knew how many times I said I did not even know him. He knew. 

I couldn’t raise my face to him. I said, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.” There was a great silence after that. Someone was moving, but no one said anything.

And then I felt his hand on my shoulder. Jesus was kneeling in front of me. He crooked a finger beneath my chin and lifted my head, and I looked through my tears and saw his eyes filled with such kindness that I only bawled the harder. He said, “Feed my sheep.”...So then he stood up, and he said to me all over again what he had said at the very beginning. He said, “Follow me.” – Walter Wangerin, The Book of God

Dorcas. called a disciple, was loved and revered among the widows of Jaffa, a Mediterranean port city to the north of Jerusalem. Widely praised for her talented sewing and many charitable works, she died after an illness and was raised to life again by Peter. The name Dorcas is Greek – the Aramaic is Tabitha. 

The only person to be raised from the dead by an apostle was a woman, Dorcas, and many became believers because of this miracle. Peter’s actions call to mind Jesus’ raising of Jairus’s daughter, which he had witnessed. The word “disciple” used to identify Dorcas is the only occurrence of the feminine form of that word in the entire New Testament. In this context, “disciple” seems to describe those with authority. – Miriam Therese Winter, WomanWord

Questions:

• How much did Peter change between the end of the Gospel and this chapter in Acts? How was he different? Did Peter “feed my sheep” as Jesus requested? How?  Did he follow Jesus’ instructions, finally? 
• What has Jesus told you to do? What do you need to be able to live that out?

Palimpsest: Paul

Scripture

Acts 9:1-6

Readings

Generally, under Minnesota law, people can change their legal name through marriage, divorce/legal separation, or by filing a name change action in court. Changing a legal name through any of those processes requires that you do specific things. The process of filing a name change action involves filling out court forms, appearing before a judge, and it may also involve notifying third-parties.

 –http://www.mncourts.gov/selfhelp/?page=514

For the rest of his life he never doubted that the Lord Jesus had made his last resurrection appearance to him, to Saul, “as to one born out of due time.” So the story was true. The man repented of his persecutions. Three days later he was baptized. To indicate the radical change within himself, he changed his name to Paul, and after a period of preparation and prayer, he, too, began to tell the story – in Greek, to the Greeks.– Walter Wangerin, The Book of God

The modern evangelical notion that conversion is an instantaneous, momentary phenomenon is not rooted in the thought of the Reformers nor, we might add, in the thought of Luke. Even Paul’s dramatic encounter upon the Damascus road (reported three times in Acts–with significant differences in each account), required interpretation, reflection, and the confirmation of the community. Presumably, we never become too old, too adept at living the Christian life to be exempt from the need for more conversion, additional turning. The Christian life is akin to the way in which Luke organizes the life of Paul– a series of journeys, pilgrimages, excursions out into some unexplored territory where all that is known is the faithfulness of God. Conversion is a process more than a moment. 

– William H. Willimon, Acts

I was breathing out murder,/I was seething with rage, 

I was plotting disaster,/For the ones in the Way 

I was stunned by the brightness /And by what I'd become 

I was cornered by greatness,/With nowhere to run 

But I saw your glory,/And it's brighter than the sun 

I encountered a man/Who had rose from the dead 

He left my religion/All tattered in shreds 

My world was destroyed/A new life had begun 

And I put my faith/In Christ Jesus the Son, 

Because I saw his glory/And it's brighter than the sun 

Seen your glory,/Seen your glory 

I waited to hear you /And the visions they came 

Of suffering glory/And preaching his name 

I will follow you Jesus/Till your will be done 

I will trust in your strength/Until my race is run 

Cause I see your glory/And its brighter than the sun

– Ali McLachlan, “Brighter Than the Sun”

Questions:

• Have you ever changed your name? Why? How? Did you feel changed?
• There is no specific mention in the Bible of why Saul changed his name (if he did) to Paul. Why do you think Saul became Paul?
• Have you ever known anyone to be changed as much as Saul was?

Artwork: by He Qi

Palimpsest 4-7-13

John 20:19-31

Put your hand, Thomas,
on the crawling head of a child imprisoned
in a cot
in Romania.

Place your finger, Thomas,
on the list of those who have disappeared in Chile.

Stroke the cheek, Thomas,
of the little girl sold in prostitution in Thailand.

Touch, Thomas, the gaping wounds of my world.

Feel, Thomas,
the primal wound of my people.

Reach out your hands,
Thomas,
and place them at the side of the poor.

Grasp my hands, Thomas, and believe.

– Kate Mcllhagga, from Eggs and Ashes, Wild Goose Publications

Why do we say creeds? Unlike some churches that require affirmation of a strict list of beliefs as a condition of membership, The United Methodist Church is not a creedal church.
So why do we recite creeds during worship?
The United Methodist Hymnal contains nine creeds or affirmations. Only two of these (Nicene and Apostles') are strictly considered to be creeds because they are products of ecumenical councils.
The remaining affirmations are taken from Paul’s letters (Corinthians, Colossians, Romans and Timothy) along with affirmations from the United Church of Canada, the Korean Methodist Church and the United Methodist Social Affirmation.
United Methodists are not required to believe every word of the affirmations. Church founder, John Wesley himself did not agree with a historic (Athanasian) creed, because he disliked its emphasis on condemning people to hell.
Affirmations help us come to our own understanding of the Christian faith. They affirm our unity in Christ with those followers who first wrote them, the many generations who have recited them before us and those who will recite them after we have gone. – Rev. J. Richard Peck, Why do we say creeds?

But the fact that we have no simple answer does not mean that we can evade the questions. We have also seen the hazards–even terrible harm–that sometimes result from unquestioning acceptance of religious authority. Most of us, sooner or later, find that, at critical points in our lives, we must strike out on our own to make a path where none exists. What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions–and the communities that sustain them–is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery. Thus they encourage those who endeavor, in Jesus’ words, to “seek and you shall find.” – Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas

Questions:

• How do you feel about Thomas’ request for verification of the resurrection? Was he wrong? Why or why not? What would you have done?
• Do you ask a lot of questions about the Bible and theological ideas? Do you feel supported in asking questions? How do you find answers?
• Is Thomas a role model or a warning?

Palimpsest

A palimpsest is
1: writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times 

2: something having unusually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface

I first read about palimpsests when I started preaching twenty-two years ago. The idea fascinated me - a multilayered document that could be read more than one way. Sounds like scripture to me. Like poetry. Like preaching.

For about sixteen years I have been putting together weekly readings and questions to go with my sermons (or Sunday's text if I am not preaching.) It helps me organize my thinking for preaching, it gives me a way to provide source material in a written form for my congregation, and it is a place to put a variety of texts together that are tangentially related to the sermon. I think of it as a way to read the sermon with more than one layer. So I call it my palimpsest, and I include it in the bulletin each week for my congregation.

I intend to start posting my weekly palimpsests here on the blog. I hope they poke your brain a little.

Frost in Albert Lea

March 2, 2013
Zane had a meeting in Le Center so Theo and I went to see my parents in Albert Lea. It gave me a chance to tell them more about my new appointment to Mankato, about an hour from where they live.  Then we went to bed and Theo remarked how dark it was, nighttime in the country. We were sharing a trundle bed - I on the upper portion and he on the lower.

At 3:30 in the morning he flung himself next to me and remarked that he couldn't sleep. So we cuddled awhile, then got up for cinnamon toast, and then rocked in a chair in the moonlight. Sometime after 4 we went back to bed and he finally went to sleep.

At 9 mom came in to wake me up. "I'm sorry," she said, " but it is just too beautiful outside. You have to get out your camera."

She was right. Theo slept until noon, I got this lovely snow-blue photo, and all is well.