Quotes to Get us Ready for the Pet Blessing

Don't forget about Brother Eli's Spring Pet Blessing this Sunday, May 4 at 3:00 pm in the manse backyard at 220 North Hinde Street.  In the meantime, read these quotes in preparation.

Psalm 50.7-11

Hear, O my people, and I will speak,

O Israel, I will testify against you.

I am God, your God.

I do not reprove you for your sacrifices;

your burnt offerings are continually before me.

I will accept no bull from your house,

nor he-goat from your folds.

For every beast of the forest is mine,

the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the air,

and all that moves in the field is mine.

John Woolman:

I was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Creator, and learn to exercise true justice and goodness not only toward all men but also toward the brute creatures; that as the mind was moved on an inward principle to love God as an invisible, incomprehensible being, on the same principle it was moved to love him in all his manifestations in the visible world; and as by his breath the flame of life was kindled in all animals and sensitive creatures, to say we love God as unseen and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least creature moving by his life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction in itself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding, universal love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. Do not, therefore trouble [them], do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God’s intent.

St. Bonaventure:

The creatures of the sense world signify the invisible attributes of God, partly because God is the origin, exemplar, and end of every creature, and every effect is a sign of its cause, the exemplification of its exemplar, and the path to the end, to which it leads … For every creature is by its nature a kind of effigy and likeness of the eternal Wisdom.  Therefore, open your eyes, alert the ears of your spirit, open your lips, and apply your heart so that in all creatures you may see, hear, praise, love and worship, glorify and honour your God lest the whole world rise up against you.

Earth Day Isn't Just for Hippies and Elementary School Children

April 22 is Earth Day.  Big deal, right?  Teachers will read kids a book about recycling and a bunch of half-baked old hippies will roll around naked in a field of flowers somewhere.  That's how a lot of folks, Christians included, probably feel about Earth Day. For some reason over the millenia we have lost touch with the fact that the earth is not just a way station on the way to heaven, but that the earth is the blessed creation of God and that we as fellow creations of God are both indebted to and connected to the earth as well as being stewards of it.  "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands," we read in Psalm 19.  

Now I'm going to get a bit mystical here with you, but many believe that mysticism is where we eventually end up when we're honest with ourselves, with others, and with God in realizing that our lists of beliefs may look nice and tidy, but in thinking that we have things figured out we're just living in an illusion.  Mysticism recognizes mystery and replaces head-knowledge with heart-knowledge.  Knowing what we know now about the unfathomable age, beauty, delicacy, and even brutality of the earth, we Christians should think of Earth, not as our personal grocery store or slave, but as the womb in which we live.  The image of the earth as womb has been incredibly transformative for me.  

In the womb we are provided with what we need; we are so well taken care of that we float within the bodies of our mothers as we develop little by little.  We don't float around in there thinking, "How can I get more from this umbilical cord? It's cramped in here; maybe we can add on a spare womb-room. Do you think I can bottle this fluid and sell it?  No, we just are, and although we cannot see our mother we know she is there because we are inside of her and she has given us life. We don't know what she looks like or smells like.  We have no idea what color her hair or eyes are.  We don't know what shade her skin is. But we know she must be there, because we are here.  

Eventually we are expelled from the womb through the dark birth canal and we come into the light and we inhale our first breath of air.  Wow!  Who knew all this was out there! In the womb we could hear the sounds outside but we had no idea how big and beautiful and musical it was out there.  On earth we are in the womb and a healthy child does not disparage or reject the womb just because the child won't be there forever. No, the womb is the cradle of life as is the earth.  When we exploit, destroy, disparage, ignore, or refuse to care for the earth, we are rejecting the womb in which we are being nurtured.  The earth has been consecrated and sanctified by the incarnation--the coming of Jesus as "the Word made flesh."  The Creator walked in the midst of the creation, came into the womb with us.  Wow!  That should blow our minds!  

Seeing as I've probably either confused you or grossed you out, I will end now by simply sharing with you some of the most beautiful spiritual poetry ever to be written.  If you're Christian faith includes an appreciation for, love of, and kinship with the rest of God's creation from the dog to the beetle to the rock to the sky, you should spend some time learning about St. Francis of Assisi.  On this Earth Day, please enjoy his beautiful and poetic prayer and may it become your own.  

"The Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon" 

by St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, 

All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor and all blessings.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong, 

and no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,

especially Sir Brother Sun,

Who is the day through whom You give us light.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,

Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,

In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,

And fair and stormy, all weather's moods,

by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,

So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,

through whom You light the night 

and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,

Mother Earth

who sustains and governs us,

producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praise be You my Lord 

through those who grant pardon 

for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, 

By You Most High, they will be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death,

from whom no-one living can escape. 

Woe to those who die in mortal sin! 

Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will.

No second death can do them harm. 

Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks,

And serve Him with great humility.

Amen and Amen.  Happy Earth Day!

Pastor Everett

Something You Should Know About: Yellowberry

Since this is Holy Week, I am extraordinarily busy here at the church.  We had a wonderful Palm/Passion Sunday and we're now working toward Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunrise, and Easter worship.  What a week!  But while I don't have time to write a full post this week, I do want to share something with you that I think you should know about.  If you were in the Parents' Sunday School Book Study of Sex + Faith: Talking to Your Children from Birth through Adolescence you know that we've talked a lot about healthy body image.  The fact of the matter is that our money-driven culture doesn't care what is healthy for us.  Our money-driven culture only cares what makes money.  Our culture hits us from both sides.  We are stuffed full of so much stuff that we're just fat and (supposedly) happy or we are told that we need to be sexy all the time.  Whatever happened to healthy?  So we have to have our own values and not let our money-driven culture set our values for us.  

With this in mind I came across an article about a wonderful new company started by an 18-year-old named Megan Grassell.  It is a company that makes age-appropriate bras for girls 11-15 years old.  Why is your 35-year-old male pastor writing about this?  I know there aren't a lot of pastor who would be willing to touch this topic with a ten foot pole, but I think it is important.  I'm writing about it because I'm not just the pastors to the adults; I'm the pastor to the kids and families as well.  Plus I'm the father of a little girl, and I'm tired of the over-sexualization and cheapening of our bodies that takes place in our money-driven culture.

The company started when Megan took her little sister shopping for her first bra, but all she could find were sexy, padded, push up type of bras for little girls!  So Megan decided to start her own company to fix this problem.  She called it Yellowberry.  It is all about healthy body image and treating little girls like little girls rather than as little women.  Please take a few moments to go to the following link:

Yellowberry: Meet the Teen Titan Who is Taking on the Youth Bra Industry

Remember, we have to have our own values and not let our money-driven culture set our values for us.  Our kids are too important for us to let them be thrown to and fro by the waves of culture.  With this in mind, thanks to some of the funds given by the late Jennifer Shaw I have put together a lending library of books for kids, youth, and parents about healthy body image, body care, and sexuality.  Don't let your kids hear it from someone else!  First Presbyterian Church is here to help.

Have a blessed Holy Week,

Pastor Everett

Jesus' Third Way

I was speaking to someone not too long ago about how I view the gospel of Jesus Christ, or at least how I hope to view the gospel. The conversation started because of how I have been purposely quoting various Christian viewpoints in my sermons lately and bringing attention to the fact that a lot of people, including the people I am quoting in my sermons, would find it strange or uncomfortable that I'm listening to such various voices.  For instance, a few weeks ago I quoted John Calvin and Pope John Paul II in consecutive sentences! Another time I quoted R.C. Sproul, who is an extremely conservative Calvinist, Richard Rohr who is a Franciscan priest that incorporates a great deal of psychology into his work, Billy Graham who is, of course, the most famous Baptist evangelist of all time, and Marcus Borg, an extremely progressive/liberal Episcopalian theologian that I used to refuse to read at all. 

Some people want to know where I stand. Do I stand with Sproul, Rohr, Graham, or Borg?  Well, while someone else might find that question interesting in order to categorize me, I'm not interested in being categorized.  Here's how I put it in my March 16 sermon: 

A point I'm trying to make by doing this is to say that we don't necessarily need to be either conservative Christians or liberal Christians.  What we must be are Christians who are interested in the truth wherever it comes from and who are honestly seeking a deeper relationship with God in Jesus Christ much more than we are seeking any kind of affiliation with one group or another.

In the conversation I was having with this person about how I view the gospel, I took the glass candy dish that sits on the desk in the church office and I put it in the middle of the circular table.  I stood on one side of the table and looked at the candy dish.  I said, "For this exercise, the candy dish is the gospel.  A great many people look at the gospel from this side of the table." Then I walked to the other side of the table and said, "A great many others look at the gospel from this side of the table."  Then I said, "There are good faithful Christians on both sides of the table, but the problem is that they're only seeing their side of the gospel." Then I walked around the table completely in a circle.  "I want to see the gospel like this," I said as I completely circled the gospel, seeing the candy dish from every angle and vantage point.  "I don't want this side or that side of it.  I want the whole thing." Some people think this is being too open-minded, too postmodern.  That doesn't matter to me, however, because since I started circling the gospel instead of just looking at it from one side or the other my faith has deepened a great deal.  I have begun to move from holding a position which must be defended to living in a relationship that need not be defended, but cultivated and enjoyed.

We all need to be careful to hold very loosely to our various ideological affiliations.  If being a Republican or a Democrat is more important than reconciled and healthy relationships with others, we are holding too tightly to that affiliation.  If being Presbyterian or Baptist or Episcopalian or nondenominational gets in the way of reconciled and healthy relationships with others, then we are holding that affiliation too tightly.  The same goes with all kinds of affiliations.  We must be careful as Christians to recognized when our own viewpoints, ideologies, and affiliations become idols or cause us to look down upon others.  The Apostle Paul dealt with this with pretty much every one of his early congregations.  They were always trying to split into various special interest groups and Paul kept trying to get them to recognize that they were missing the fact that within the Kingdom of God those things don't matter and usually get in the way.

Here I want to offer an extensive quote from the work of famous Swiss theologian Karl Barth, who lived and worked in the first half of the 20th Century.  His theology is in many ways the foundation for much of modern Presbyterian Church (USA) theology.  This quote is from his magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, and talks about how Jesus avoided all affiliations other than his affiliation with God and God's Kingdom.  

Jesus was not in any sense a reformer championing new orders against the old ones, contesting the latter in order to replace them by the former.  He did not range Himself and His disciples with any of the existing parties.  One of these, and not the worst, was that of the Pharisees.  But Jesus did not identify Himself with them.  Nor did He set up against them an opposing party. He did not represent or defend or champion any program--whether political, economic, moral or religious, whether conservative or progressive.  He was equally suspected and disliked by the representatives of all such programs, although He did not particularly attack any of them. Why His existence was so unsettling on every side was that He set all programs and principles in question.  And He did this simply because He enjoyed and displayed, in relation to all the orders positively or negatively contested around Him, a remarkable freedom which again we can only describe as royal... He never said these things ought not to be... He simply revealed the limit and frontier of all these things--the freedom of the kingdom of God.

In other words, Jesus didn't get all caught up in the tribalism of which we human beings are so fond.  To say Jesus was a conservative as we understand that is false.  It is also false to say that Jesus was a liberal as we understand that term.  Jesus' way wasn't this way or that way; Jesus' way was a third way.  Jesus was interested in the will of God, plain and simple.  If parts of God's will are considered conservative (sexual morals) while other parts of God's will are considered liberal (care for the poor) then so be it.  Jesus let other people argue about that and just went about doing the will of God while the others spent their time arguing or pontificating.  As James writes, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves; do what it says" (1:22).  So may we hold loosely to our various ideological affiliations and quit trying to be right.  Instead, let us be righteous.

FAQ: Everett, is it okay to be cremated?

I was going to write about something else this week but I decided this would be a good week to address a question that I have received twice in the past week and several times more than that over the last couple of years.  The question is, “Everett, what do we Presbyterians believe about cremation?  Is it okay?”  Because this is a question that folks are asking, it is an important question worth addressing.  As is always the case, we have to begin with a little bit of theological work which will be familiar to those of you who heard my sermon a few weeks ago on 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.  I could just say yes or no, but then you wouldn’t understand why the answer is what it is. 

First of all, we have to deal with the fact that many Christians have the idea that the body doesn’t matter.  “When I’m dead, just throw me out!” they say.  “Who cares?  It’s just a shell.”  This is a common misunderstanding among Christians that comes from a good, faithful place but isn’t totally accurate.  It comes from a place of firm anticipation and hope of heaven, which is a good thing.  “When I die, my body will be here and my soul will be in heaven.”  What a wonderful hope to have.  As Paul writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19).  How true, how true.  However, we too often slip into that old idea that the body is bad or useless or irrelevant and that the soul is good and useful.  When we do this we divide ourselves, instead of seeing ourselves as what Scot McKnight calls “a multi-faceted organic unity of heart and mind and soul and spirit and body.”  

If our souls are sacred, if our “hearts” are sacred, if our minds are sacred, then so are our bodies.  We are created in the image of God (including our bodies), we are fearfully and wonderfully made (including our bodies), we worship and follow an embodied Savior, we are redeemed through the cross (including our bodies), and the Holy Spirit dwells in us.  All of this makes our bodies sacred and requires grateful and loving stewardship of our bodies, engaging in eating, fitness, and sexual behaviors that fit with a sacred understanding of our bodies.  “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” Paul asks the Corinthians.  “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.”  Our bodies are sacred and we are to honor God with them; we are also to honor God with how we treat the bodies of others, no matter who they are.

After a person was crucified, the bodies were usually left on the cross long enough for the birds to tear it apart for all who passed by to see as a constant gruesome reminder of what happens to you if you defy Roman rule.  Then the half-eaten, decomposing bodies would be thrown into a ditch.  After Jesus’ death on the cross, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, couldn’t bear the thought of Jesus’ body being treated that way.  After all, his body wasn’t just a shell to be thrown out.  Although Joseph and Nicodemus surely didn’t understand this as of yet, Jesus’ body was the very meeting place of the human and the divine.  They took his body down from the cross, placed him in a tomb, wrapped his body in spice soaked linens, and prayed the Jewish burial prayers over him.  The female disciples of Jesus didn’t think his body was irrelevant or bad either; they were on their way to the tomb to anoint his body with spices and oils when they saw that the stone had been moved.  They treated his dead body as sacred.

“Okay, well that’s Jesus” you say.  “Of course his body was sacred!”  Very true!  However, it is our conviction as Presbyterians that because of both the image of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that our bodies, as frustrating and sometimes challenging as they can be, are also the very meeting place of the human and divine.

So our body is sacred, but only temporarily right?  Although God may somehow put us back together at the final resurrection of the dead (the Jewish belief that is also ours according to the Apostles’ Creed), we could say that our bodies are “temporary,” at least in the way we know our bodies.  Paul writes, “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in (body) is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands… for in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.”  The point I want to make, however, is that just because our bodies are in some sense “temporary,” that doesn’t change the fact that they are sacred.  The sanctuary where we worship on Sunday is temporary, but it is sacred.  The Bible you hold in your hands for morning and evening study and prayer is temporary, but it is sacred.  Today is temporary.  It will soon give way to tomorrow.  Yet, today is sacred.  Because someday we will all take our last breath and our bodies will stop working and begin to decompose, our bodies will need to be dealt with.  But because our bodies are sacred, where the human has met the divine, our bodies must be dealt with reverently and lovingly; they must be “retired” as you would “retire” something sacred. 

Typically there are two ways to dispose of something sacred: bury it or burn it.  The best example of this would be a Bible.  What is the proper way to dispose of an unusable Bible?  Here is what our brothers and sisters in the United Methodist Church say.  In the Presbyterian Church (USA) we do the same thing:

In light of God's call to be good stewards, we should give Bibles that may still be of worthy use to people or communities who need them.  [If we must dispose of them, however,] this service should be conducted in a space where a fire may be safely lighted. The fire should be hot enough and of such size that it will consume all the pages of the Bible or devotional book.  Pastors may want to plan a congregational or community service (perhaps, ecumenical in its planning and leadership) and invite people to bring worn-out Bibles or devotional and prayer books for disposal.  A fire may be lighted prior to the start of this time of worship and prayer. Burial of Bibles in an appropriate place may be used as an alternative to burning.

I plan to lead a Bible disposal service sometime this year for our congregation (and any others who would like to be involved).  This description of what we do with the sacred pages of the Bible (yet another place where the human and divine meet) is very helpful in understanding what is appropriate for “disposal” of “this earthly tent” of the body.  “In light of God’s call to be good stewards, we should give” body parts “that may still be of worthy use to people” to those that need them.  In other words, I believe our Christian faith should lead us all to be organ donors.  Then whether we bury or burn a body, it must be done not only within the law of the land, but with respect, thanksgiving, worship, prayer, and a recognition that “naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” 

So, yes, it is okay to be cremated (or buried), as long as it is done in a way that recognizes that our bodies may be temporary in their current state, but they are very much sacred.