African Proverb, Ghana
"If you want to speak to God, tell it to the wind." 

Howard Thurman, 20th century
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." 

Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th century
"A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 19th century
"It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living."

Acts 7:55-60; Ps. 31:1-5. 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

To wonder what is reliable and trustworthy is not to ask a new question. It is a question as old as faith. Jesus' answer is John is a part of our readings for this Sunday: "I am the way and the truth and the life."

​Of course, this could use a little unpacking. What does this actually mean for us? Is it a story of inclusion or exclusion, or is it about something else? In these "interesting times" we might find ourselves wondering whether the values that Jesus' way modeled for his church of self-giving and love, of "laying down one's life" have any merit to them. We might find ourselves squinting and straining to see any link between the truth that Jesus proclaims and what passes for truth in our day-to-day lives. We might wonder whether what really makes for anything like a "good" life that seems increasingly available to only a privileged few. Anything seems to work better that what this downward way of Jesus suggests. If anyone is stumbling over this cornerstone, it is us.​

So what do we believe? What should we? What hope do these texts and this story have for us? Join us Sunday after worship as we spend some time in reflection!

For Further Reflection:
Alice Walker, 20th century
"Wake up and smell the possibility."

Willa Cather, 20th century
"That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great."

Fred Rodgers, 20th century
"You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are."

Dorothy Day, 20th century
"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community."

Jean Vanier, Community And Growth, 20th century
"One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing."

William Shakespeare, 16th century
"We know what we are, but not what we may be."

Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind, 21st century
"It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story."

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 20th century
"When I discover who I am, I’ll be free."

Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging, 20th century
"Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion."

Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard. 19th century
"The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins."

Ivy Baker Priest, 20th century
"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning." 

Gilda Radner, 20th century
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 20th century
"Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do."

'Here in this place, with these people, we begin that week we call Holy.
We crane our necks to see the parade,
we will bow our heads as the funeral procession winds through the streets.
We have been with Jesus on this journey; we long for courage to go to the end....

This week during Aftertalk we will take stock of this year's Lenten journey and look forward to the three days that will take us to Easter morning. What meaning can we draw for the last days of Jesus' life and what is it saying to us this year about our own lives.

Matt 21:1 - 11 † Isaiah 50:4 - 9a † Psalm 31:9 - 16 † Philippians 2:5 - 11 † Matt 27:11 - 54

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Act justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.""
Attributed to Rabbi Tarfon and the Talmud (commentary on Micah 6:8)

Why is it that the blind one seems to see most clearly in this next Lenten story from John? What is the gospel writer suggesting with this?

​Have a look at the stories linked here:

1 Samuel 16:1-13 † Psalm 23 † Ephesians 5:8-14† John 9:1-41

In this day in which we all seem to be children of a sort, playing with our red and blue bubbles, perhaps there is a good question here for us. What does it take to be taken by this gospel and the salvation it draws us toward  that seems to always stretch us beyond our settled systems?

The crazy drama that unfolds just may be one of the funniest slapstick passages in the scriptures. And like most humor, it has a bigger, life-giving purpose to help us breathe so that we can take a second look at the world as we think we know it. Take the Pharisees... Please. Their logical contortions would put any gymnast to shame. How these "hearings" seem to parallel a little too closely some of those currently underway in the other Washington.!

And yet, how are we like the Pharisees who so struggle so mightily to fit this healing into their system that they end up as the truly blind ones by the end? Or do we sometimes resemble the parents--selling out one who belongs to them for fear?

​And then consider this blind one and the serenity, wit, and clarity that seems to only grow as the story develops and chaos all around ensues. What's going on here? What's the story for us?

​Join us Sunday as we spend a little time with this story and our stories. Right after worship.

Further Reflection:

Charles Shulz, 20th century
"I cannot fail to be thrilled every time I read the things that Jesus said, and I am more and more convinced of the necessity of following him. What Jesus means to me is this: In him we are able to see God, and to understand [God's] feelings toward us."

Madeleine L'Engle, 20th century (when asked, "Do you believe in God without any doubts?")
"I believe in God with all my doubts."

Paul Gauguin, 19th century
"I shut my eyes in order to see."

Helen Keller, 20th century
"My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 20th century
"Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God."

Meister Eckhart, Sermons of Meister Eckhart, 14th century
"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."  

"From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages..." So begins the Exodus reading! Let's just say things don't go swimmingly from there, but the story does speak to the process, the stages that the Spirit draws us through as we become more aware of the presence of the Holy in our lives.

​Exodus 17:1-7 † Psalm 95 † Romans 5:1-11 † John 4:5-42

We can see this happen in the story of the woman at the well in John, perhaps similarly as to the way it happened with Nicodemus last week, although the details, the challenges, and the questions are a bit different. Comparing these two stories, in fact, might just have something to teach us about our current, let's call them (red and blue) color challenges. Where we sit, what we trust and what we don't, our connection to locations of power or privilege shape what we hear, how we believe, what work we have to do to allow the presence of God to shine through and break our hearts and our lives open. And that breaking open just might enable us to hear one another again.

​Watch:

For further reflection:

Barbara Pine, 20th century
"Sometimes being listened to is so much like being loved, it is impossible to tell the difference."

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 20th century
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

Ernest Hemingway, 20th century
"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

Henry David Thoreau, 19th century
"It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak and another to hear."

Virginia Woolf, 20th century
"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."

William Langewiesche, 20th century
"You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst."

Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), 20th century
"Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don't tell them they aren't. Sit with them and have a drink."
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 20th century
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

Hafiz, 14th century
"I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being."

Mother Teresa, 20th century
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."

And So It Begins...

We can't even get two chapters into Genesis without a few lies. So it begins for us "dust creatures." But all is not dark! In fact, the light is coming. Lent means "to lengthen." It refers to what's happening for us in the Northern Hemisphere (sorry Christians in the southern latitudes--it looks like we thought it all was about us up north!) as the days grow longer and the light increases. And increasing light is not just about our trip around the sun, it is about illumination, growing understanding that comes by way of self-examination, reflection, humility.

​"You are dust." So comes the reminder of Ash Wednesday. But it is good. We're limited. Life is short. We are connected. It is always good to check yourself, Self-knowing, openness lead us to life and to life-giving ways. Think of it this way. The Lord put the man and the woman in the garden, according to Genesis 2:15, this after declaring them at creation "very good." Very good.

​The only thing that changes in Sunday's Genesis story is that they become aware they are naked. God knew, and wasn't ashamed. Lent invites us to be intentional about stripping away what keeps us poor. What we cannot accept in ourselves we cannot accept in others. What I don't love in myself, I can't love in another.

​Lent is a journey to freedom..

​Sunday's Readings:
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 † Psalm 32 † Romans 5:12-19 † Matthew 4:1-11

For Reflection:

Henri J.M. Nouwen, 20th century
"Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection....When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions....Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the 'Beloved.' Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence."

Jonathan Martin, 21st century  
"But that's one way we can identify the devil's voice: It always plays to our fears. It is the voice that tells us we must do something to prove who we are, to prove that we're worthy, to prove that we are who God has already declared us to be. When we know we are loved by God, we don't have to prove anything to anyone. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves more beloved than we are."

Billy Graham, 20th century
"The devil doesn't need to invent any new temptations; the old ones work as well as they ever have."

N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 21st century
"We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease."

Winston Churchill, 20th century
"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"

C.S. Lewis, 20th century
"How little people know who think that holiness is dull....When one meets the real thing, it's irresistible."

The gospel readings move from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5 to chapter 17, and one more of several scenes with Jesus on a mountain. This time it is Mount Tabor, and Jesus, along with three of the disciples, disappear into the mist, out of view of the other disciples and the crowds. Fortunately we are allowed to follow and wonder, along with Peter, James, and John what the meaning of all this is. Mountains are all over, of course. In the Old Testament reading, Moses encounters God on Mount Sinai. In the psalm, God enthrones God's envoy on Zion, the "holy hill."

​Exodus 24:12-18 † Psalm 2 † 2 Peter 1:16-21 † Matthew 17:1-9

​We who live in the shadow of Mount Rainier, and surrounded by white caps on all sides, know something of mountains and the wonder they invoke. There seems to be something about these imposing, far-off yet immediate places of limits and unsure footing that have everything to do with ensuring that we keep our bearings. What do we make of this? And what did these ancients make of them that had them continually connecting these so called "peak" experiences to faith? How is this Sunday preparing us for our work of Lent, and our living in a world guided by a steadfast love for one another, especially for the aliens among us? What does it look like to keep our bearings in the midst of a political season that seems to be shifting everything so far away from what we have known and been committed to as a country, and as Christians within it?

In his book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes,​ Belden Lane writes: “Language about God is as impossible as it is necessary.” It seems there is something about knowing God and the practice of faith that is a paradox—two seeming opposites are true at the same time. When we arrive at our limits, we also tend to arrive in the arms of God. The place of fearfulness—the place of risk—is also, the place of being known and loved. Lane again: “one is continually lured by God, through increasing levels of obscurity and vulnerability, to a deeper knowledge and love.”

For Further Reflection:

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, 21st century
"It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance--for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light....Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?" John O'Donohue, 21st century
"Much of the stress and emptiness that haunt us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. Internally, the mind becomes coarse and dull if it remains unvisited by images and thoughts that hold the radiance of beauty."

Morgan Freeman, 21st century
"Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen--that stillness becomes a radiance."
Hafiz, 14th century
"An awake heart is like a sky that pours light." 
Richard Bausch, Peace, 21st century
"He turned in a small circle and looked at the grass, the rocks, the river, the raining sky with its tatters and torn places, the shining bark of the wet trees all around. He could not think of any prayers now. But every movement felt like a kind of adoration."

Jesus gives a long list of seemingly more stringent commandments as he continues his Sermon on the Mount this week. What is one to do?  How does one live up to this narrow way he seems to be preaching? Jason Byassee comments that Jesus here is "at his ornery best offering 'advice' that makes no sense divorced from the nature of the one that is giving it" (Feasting on the Word Year A, Vol. 1). During aftertalk this week we'll think about what Jesus might be up to with this sermon and how might hear it for today's living.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 19th century 
"If you look for perfection, you'll never be content."

Mahatma Gandhi, 20th century
"It seems to be a difficult concept for most of us that peace is a skill that can be learned. We know war can be learned, but we seem to think that one becomes a peacemaker by a mere change of heart."

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 19th century
"Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!"