Sermon thoughts and other musings

What is "living water"? To us, the phrase is just a euphemism. To persons in Biblical times, living water meant running water - as opposed to stagnant, standing water. In nature, it's pretty obvious that you would prefer to drink fresh running water instead of standing water.

Movement vs. stagnation. That's what the Gospel is all about. The usual Scripture text for Pentecost is Acts 2:1-21. A piece of great advice I heard from a friend about reading that passage is "watch the walls." What he meant by that is that Jesus appears to a group huddled in a room - then suddenly there is a crowd! What happened to the walls? The Spirit calls us to leave our walled existences and get out among the people. Being people of Pentecost - "pentecostal", if you will - means being willing to build bridges to others across every wall that humanity has been able to erect.

Too many churches are content to open their doors, but unwilling to leave their walls. But the willingness to move beyond our own life experience and connect with others in their lives helps us try to understand what their lives are like. Theologian Frederick Buechner says that the capacity to live in someone else’s skin is the definition of compassion. And he went on to say that compassion also means understanding that there cannot truly be joy and peace for me until there is joy and peace for you

True compassion isn't about letting people inside our walls; the compassion we need to show is the compassion of God - the God who came to earth as Jesus Christ, and the God who moves among us in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Do you want to be standing water or living water?

Mother's Day: Being One Family

I've always been opposed to patriarchal language for God, not just because of the sexist implications, but because of my own sexism: I see God as a nurturer, and I associate nurturing with mothers, not fathers. So it's my own gender-stereotyping that sees predominantly feminine qualities in God.

In this passage we see Jesus pray for his disciples, and quite frankly, I hear the voice of a mother praying for her children more than the voice of a father or a friend. And what does Jesus pray for? That God will protect the disciples. And "that they may be one."

"That they may be one." That is every parent's prayer for his/her children, right? Ever see children fight over an estate? What could be more dishonoring to a parent? Can you imagine the pain a parent would feel seeing her/his children fight over what had been left to the children in the hope of making their lives better?

I think any parent would say: if you want to hurt a parent, hurt the children. And parents would probably rather have a child do something mean to them than see their children fight with each other. Now extrapolate that to this world, with God as our parent, and we as God's children. What do you think war does to God? Do you think God sees anything as being worth fighting a war over?