Mending as Sacred Art

The picture is a peculiar style of Japanese art, called kintsugi.  In kintsugi, broken pottery is mended with glue and gold dust.  Kintsugi invites us to own our flaws and our struggles and our mends.  Instead of hiding them or being ashamed of them, we respect our limitations, honor our struggles, find the beauty in them.  That, my friends, is gospel.  God never expected us to get it right the first time.

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

July 22, 2018

Courage for Reconciliation

2Cor. 5:16-20  From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.  17So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;  19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  20So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  

Courage. It comes from the Latin word cor, heart. It takes courage to follow Jesus, if we’re paying attention, because we will do it badly, and we need forgiveness and reconciliation. We are all in process. Reconciliation is heart work: it takes courage.  You can analyze it if you like, but the only way I know how to really reconcile is with my heart wide open.  

Courage. For me, courage often means getting out of my head, out of analysis mode, and into my heart,.  Admitting when I’m hurt, or scared, or confused about something. And sometimes just admitting how much I care, and how vulnerable that makes me.  It takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable.  It takes heart.

My father died almost three years ago.  My dad was a character.  He had two typical modes of relating: holding forth, and being preoccupied. And my dad loved me.  He believed in me.  What a precious gift.   

Dad was a physicist.  He measured the braking speeds of BART trains.  He designed scanners for cargo containers.  He loved a stimulating discussion.  And he was always right.  He would say with a grin, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.”  Then the rest of the family would groan. I am my father’s daughter, in ways that are helpful and ways that are not.  I have learned to add, at the end of a pronouncement, “but I could be wrong.”

I remember more than once dad would be lounging in his upholstered recliner in the family room, trying to ignore the chaos four kids were making, till he couldn’t take it any more.  Then he’d yell, and we’d stop doing whatever was annoying him, for a while.  His yelling startled me, but I never feared my dad. I knew he loved me, and I also knew that he didn’t hold grudges against me.   I did wonder why he had to wait till he was angry to say something.  When I had my own kid, I learned how hard it was to do that differently. 

Outside my family, I learned, people did things differently.  I remember when I was living with my college roommates Christy and Dove.  Dove and I were having an engaging discussion about politics or something.  We were astonished when Christy broke out in tears, “Oh please stop fighting,” she said as she ran to her room and hid.  Fighting?  We were just having fun. I have since learned that different people, cultures, families, communicate differently.

Underneath his rough exterior, my father’s heart was tender and faithful.  When I was losing him to dementia, I tried asking him about things he loved, to cheer him, but instead he would sob.  He could no longer be safe up in his head, keeping his tender heart under wraps. 

I am not waiting to do my sobbing.  I do it many times when I quiet my busy mind and listen to my own heart.  I do it preparing sermons, and reading the news. I do it when I stop trying to analyze or fix, and just let go and let God.  

As a young adult I worked as a chemist, and I was nurtured in my faith by Methodists.  I took many roles at the church, I studied the bible and loved it, and I got to preach! I also had a kind of stereotypical born again experience. (That’s not required around here.)  God became real to me.  Jesus took me on his knee, and told me he loved me, and told me that my character flaws, which had grieved me many times, could be used for good, for gospel. 

After several years of waffling, I finally “answered the call.”  I knew my people skills were not there yet.  But I remembered my friend Sam. Back when he was my lab partner in grad school, Sam told me he wasn’t sure he was up to the career to which he felt called, but he loved it so much he was going to try with all his heart.  So I did.

I became a transitional minister because that’s the ministry I could do when my husband’s job wasn’t portable, but it has been a fit.  I love new things.  I enjoy change.  I love meeting new people, and hearing their stories, even if I can’t always remember their names.  And I can say goodbye. I can say hard things, set hard limits, so the next pastor maybe will have an easier time with certain things.  Every church has certain things. And I don’t need everybody to like me.

I get it that my presence is hard on people who don’t want change.  I do ask you to change things; it’s part of my job.  And here’s the thing.  No matter what I do or don’t do, my very presence is change, because I cannot be your beloved former pastor.  For some people, that hurts.  And there is no way to do it differently.  

On top of that, I am my father’s daughter.  I have opinions.  I can be blunt, and loud.  I want you to know that you can always challenge me, or ask me to do something different, or just say no.  I want you to practice talking about hard things with me. If I happen to be holding forth at the time, youmay have to be blunt.  I can change modes, but I might need a reminder. You don’t have to be good at telling me what you don’t like.  You don’t have to be nice.  Just be real. Ask me to listen, you have something to say.  I can take it.  And we can work it out together.  That’s gospel.  Truth and reconciliation.  That’s gospel.  Reconciliation matters to me.  A lot. 

Here is one thing that really hurts me about transitional ministry.  Knowing that someone (there’s usually someone) is feeling annoyed and disconnected from their transitional pastor and has to sit and listen to me every week, or duck out and miss all their friends.  When they could come and hash it out with me, and hopefully find peace, and enjoy their church. I believe in do-overs. Second chances.  Reconciliation.  That’s gospel. It doesn’t happen every time, but it’s worth the risk. 

The sacred runs in and through each of us, and we are all are flawed.  When we open our hearts we will get hurt and disappointed sometimes, and I surely hope you bring your heart to church.  I want this to be safe space to talk through our expectations and disappointments, our celebrations and our hurts. 

Being real takes heart, courage. Reconciliation is not the peace that passes over misunderstanding, but the peace that passes understanding, that comes by working through differences with open hearts, learning, and building connection. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  

I’m back doing compassionate communication practice groups this week.  I need the practice as much as anyone. Compassionate communication helps me connect my head to my heart.  It helps me let go of the baggage that gets in the way of reconciliation, and it helps me express hard things from the heart, in a way that connects. 

The cover picture on your bulletin is a peculiar style of Japanese art, called kintsugi.  In kintsugi, broken pottery is mended with glue and gold dust.  Kintsugi invites us to own our flaws and our struggles and our mends.  Instead of hiding them or being ashamed of them, we respect our limitations, honor our struggles, find the beauty in them.  That, my friends, is gospel.  God never expected us to get it right the first time.  May we have the courage to name the brokenness in each of us and between us, and be willing to mend it, with the help of God.  Amen.  

Choose Your Stories

We are told that Ruth was King David's great grandmother.  Her story was not incorporated in scripture till five hundred years after it happened when the Jewish exiles were returning from exile in Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem. Their struggles are told in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and there was plenty of tragedy, and bitterness, and fear. The tiny remnant had just returned home to a capital city that was a pile of rubble.  They were surrounded by foreigners. How could they keep their identity and their God among strangers?  

A "homeland security order" was given:  Jewish men must “put away” foreign wives and their children, to stay faithful to God and country.  “Put away” is a nice word for divorcing your wife and abandoning your children.  In the face of this cruelty, the old story of Ruth was dusted off and told anew, to remind the people that chesed (steadfast love and mercy) transcend borders and nationalities, and God’s chesed is sometimes given to us by foreigners, and the chesed of a foreigner shaped Israel's greatest king, David. 

What was that “homeland security order” meant to accomplish, anyway?  To protect the nation, the religion, pure, free of outside influences.  (Remember, no separation of church and state back then.)  They had important values to protect.  But I wonder.  Acting out of fear, using intolerance and cruelty, breaking promises, mistreating women and children, which values do those acts protect?  No values I want.  Might this have resonance in our day?

We are surrounded by bitterness, and fear.  That bitterness will never heal by drawing lines that divide.  No wall or prison or exclusionary law is strong enough to protect people who live by fear and demonize others.  Our values as a nation and as Christians are strong enough to provide welcome to strangers and make them part of us. In welcoming strangers, our identity will shift, but our values will prevail.  In fact, those values require that we welcome strangers, as so many of us were once welcomed. 

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ                                        

July 15, 2018

Chesed: Love Heals Bitterness

Excerpts from the Book of Ruth

            1:1  In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife [Naomi] and two sons. 

            4…When they had lived there about ten years, 5her two sons died, so that the woman was left without her two sons or her husband. 

            6  Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the LORD had considered his people and given them food. 8But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the LORD show steadfastlove to you, as you have shown to the dead and to me.  9…Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. 

16But Ruth said, 

            “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! 

            Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; 

            your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 

17      Where you die, I will die— there will I be buried. 

            May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, 

            if even death parts me from you!” 

            1:22  So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. 

            2:3[Ruth] came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers. As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of [Naomi’s husband.]

            2:8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.  9… I have ordered the young men not to bother you. If you get thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.”  10Then she fell prostrate, with her face to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your sight, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?”  11But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.  12May the LORD reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”  

            2:19  Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!” Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said. 20  “The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his steadfastlove to the living and the dead.” 

            Ruth 3:1  Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you….  3Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to [Boaz] until he has finished eating and drinking.  4When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.” 

            Ruth 3:6  So [Ruth] went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had instructed her….8At midnight [Boaz] was startled, and turned over, and there, lying at his feet, was a woman!  9He said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth, your servant; spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-of-kin.”  10He said, “May you be blessed by the LORD, my daughter; this last instance of your steadfastloveis better than the first; you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich.  11And now, my daughter, do not be afraid, I will do for you all that you ask, for all the assembly of my people know that you are a worthy woman.

            Ruth 4:13  So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. 17… They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David. 

Some people consider the bible a book of rules. I do not.  Its greatest power lies in its stories.  We tell ourselves stories in order to live.  And which stories we tell can determine how we live.  Ruth’s story is a story of steadfast love, but not conventional love.

            Where you go, I will go; where you stay, I will stay; 

            your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 

This reading is used at weddings, but it was not spoken by one young lover to another.  It was spoken by a young widow, Ruth, to her mother-in-law Naomi.

The backdrop of this sweet love story was bitter: famine and death.  Famine had brought Naomi to the land of Moab ten years before.  Death, of her husband and then her two grown sons, was sending her back to Israel.  Naomi has no close relatives back in Israel; she simply hopes she can find food in her native land.  The name Naomi means ‘pleasant.’  But, she says, "Don't call me 'Pleasant.'  My name is now Mara, 'Bitter,' because God has dealt bitterly with me." Naomi's bitterness is a natural response to "when bad things happen to good people." I do not believe God caused Naomi's tragedy, or anybody else's. I do believe God is acting in every situation to bring forth good out of the most unlikely circumstances.  Frequently God acts through people, people with loving and generous hearts, like this young foreign woman Ruth. 

Love is the great commandment:  to love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves.  What do we mean by love? Not an easy question.  The original Hebrew word for Ruth's kind of love is chesed.  Chesedis not a feeling.  It is love in action.  The NRSV translates it here as "kindness", but that is too weak.  God’s chesedis mentioned many times in the psalms, and it’s not translated kindness: NRSV says his steadfast love endures forever. So we read it as "steadfast love".   Greeks translated chesedas "mercy," love that is not required or earned. Chesedgoes way beyond "nice" or a gift of a few dollars. Chesedis big, takes risks and becomes vulnerable, as Ruth became vulnerable when she promised to stand by Naomi in her abject poverty, in a foreign country, no matter what.  

Any real commitment to steadfastlovemakes us vulnerable. Think about it.  Our love may not be returned.  Our loved one can be taken away from us.  The one we pledge to love may come with bitterness, emotional baggage.  And any commitment takes time, and money, and puts a curb on our individual freedom. Yet we are made for love and commitment. We are made to give and receive chesed.  We are made in the image of God, and what does God do?  God loves, generously, hoping for return, but not demanding it and frequently not getting it either.  

Jewish tradition tells the story that God's first act of chesedwas to create a world, and us– an act of generosity we will never repay.  Our Christian tradition tells the story of God becoming human in Jesus, vulnerable in flesh like ours, so he could better show his love for us, and then what happened? He was rejected and killed, by people. But his love for us could not be killed. We are not always good at this kind of love, this chesed. Yet we need to commit ourselves to give love, and open ourselves to receive it, to be whole, to be who God made us to be.  Even in the face of tragedy and bitterness. Maybe especially then.

So in the face of tragedy and bitterness, Ruth made her commitment of love to Naomi, they traveled to Israel, and how did it go?  Ruth camps with Naomi and gleans in a field.  This is begging, the early version of a food shelf, relying on God's chesedthat was written in the law of Israel:  Leviticus 23:22. When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.This field turns out to belong to Naomi's distant male relative, Boaz.  Boaz treats the beggar Ruth with respect and kindness and generosity, In fact he feeds her lunch, and he sends her home with her apron overflowing with grain. At hearing this good news, Naomi praises the chesedof God; her bitterness is beginning to heal.  Also, she’s not going to starve, something most of us can take for granted.  

Naomi determines to make a match between Ruth and Boaz.  I'm sure she checked it out with people close to him, before she set him up. So when Ruth uncovers his "feet," wink, wink, on the threshing floor after a lot of wine at the harvest party, Boaz will do the honorable thing, and marry Ruth.  His response to this entrapment is to praise Ruth for her chesedin wanting to marry an old man like him.  Ruth is a foreigner, could be labeled a golddigger, but he knows he can trust her, because of what she did for Naomi.  By this time chesedis bouncing around that barn so fast and furious that the hired help will all be married soon too.  

In the end Ruth's devoted love heals Naomi's broken heart.  Steadfast love was the seed.  Joy is the harvest.  Or, as Jesus said it,blessed are those who show chesed, for they shall receive chesed.  You probably have heard this saying from the Greek translation.  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

We are told that Ruth was King David's great grandmother.  This story was not incorporated in scripture till five hundred years after it happened when the Jewish exiles were returning from exile in Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem. Their struggles are told in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and there was plenty of tragedy, and bitterness, and fear. The tiny remnant had just returned home to a capital city that was a pile of rubble.  They were surrounded by foreigners. How could they keep their identity and their God among strangers?  

A "homeland security order" was given:  Jewish men must “put away” foreign wives and their children, to stay faithful to God and country.  “Put away” is a nice word for divorcing your wife and abandoning your children.  In the face of this cruelty, the old story of Ruth was dusted off and told anew, to remind the people that chesed(steadfast love and mercy) transcend borders and nationalities, and God’s chesedis sometimes given to us by foreigners, and the chesedof a foreigner shaped Israel's greatest king, David. 

What was that “homeland security order” meant to accomplish, anyway?  To protect the nation, the religion, pure, free of outside influences.  (Remember, no separation of church and state back then.)  They had important values to protect.  But I wonder.  Acting out of fear, using intolerance and cruelty, breaking promises, mistreating women and children, which values do those acts protect?  No values I want.  Might this have resonance in our day?

We are surrounded by bitterness, and fear.  That bitterness will never heal by drawing lines that divide.  No wall or prison or exclusionary law is strong enough to protect people who live by fear and demonize others.  Our values as a nation and as Christians are strong enough to provide welcome to strangers and make them part of us. In welcoming strangers, our identity will shift, but our values will prevail.  In fact, those values require that we welcome strangers, as so many of us were once welcomed. 

Ruth’s story of steadfast love from a foreigner, or Ezra’s story of cruelty in response to fear, which will it be?  Stories remind us of who we are and what we value.  If we tell ourselves stories of the evil outsider, the dangerous other, we create fear, and we become cruel.  If we tell ourselves stories of mercy, steadfast love, generosity, providing protection, building kinship, we can make these things happen. 

It is much harder work to build up than to tear down, to heal instead of remain bitter, to unite instead of divide.  We might need God’s power to do it.  But is there any better work? And what if we don’t succeed in accomplishing what we hope? Maybe our accomplishment will be that in a time of bitterness we remember and live the values Jesus shows us, in the face of fear and bitterness and intolerance.  May we tell each other stories of chesed, steadfast love and mercy, and live by them. Amen.

Spirit on the Move

God’s Spirit acts not only through the leaders of the church but in and through any person the Spirit chooses.  God’s Spirit acts not only in the church but outside it, in nature and in people of other faiths and people of no faith. Maybe that's why, in much of Christian history, the Spirit has been the ignored(or suppressed) member of the Trinity.  To an established hierarchy hanging onto power, the Spirit is dangerous.  It is God acting outside the approved channels, shaking things up, making us rethink our ideas about what God expects of us.  Some people think they own the franchise on God and they will dole it out to the rest of us.  The Spirit terrifies those people.  They can't control it!

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Brea Congregational UCC

July 1, 2018

Spirit-Led and Humble

Numbers 11:24-30.  Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. He assembled seventy men from the elders of the people and stationed them round the Tent. Then the Lord descended in the cloud and spoke to him. He withdrew part of the spirit which had been conferred on Moses and bestowed it on the seventy elders; as the spirit alighted on them, they were seized by a prophetic ecstasy, for the first and only time. Two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, who had been enrolled with the seventy, were left behind in the camp. Though they had not gone out to the Tent, the spirit alighted on them none the less, and they were seized by prophetic ecstasy there in the camp. A young man ran and told Moses that Eldad and Medad were in an ecstasy in the camp, whereupon Joshua son of Nun, who had served since boyhood with Moses, broke in,  ‘Moses my lord, stop them!’ But Moses said to him,  ‘Are you jealous on my account? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would bestow his spirit on them all!’ Moses then rejoined the camp with the elders of Israel. 

Who is in charge of a UCC church?  It’s not the pastor, or the moderator, or the church council, though they are each entrusted with certain responsibilities. We have no higher authority, no bishop or presbytery or pope.  What we have is a bit of bible that was lifted up by the founders of the UCC, that some UCC churches have put in their mission statement: Christ is the head of the church. (Colossians 1:18)

This means that we are being the church when we are following Jesus’ teachings, seeking to live into the Kin-dom of God.  I think we all can get behind that.  Good church leadership, whether from a pastor or a lay leader, or a congregational meeting, is leadership that puts Jesus’ teachings into practice.  It also means something more.  God is active in and through this community, inviting and guiding us to fulfill our mission.  Jesus said that wherever two or more are gathered in his name, he is there.  And our tradition says we can be “inspired,” filled with God’s spirit, as we do our part, small or large, to put Jesus’ teachings into practice. 

No one of us has a special line to God. All of us have the responsibility to think and pray and discuss how we in this church can faithfully serve God. That's the wonderful freedom, and responsibility, of our congregational way.

How do we act responsibly?  First, we fill our own cup.  Seek the spiritual resources we need to be free of fear and full of faith, hope, love.  And then what do we do? Because Christians describe God as Trinity, we can:

            Do God's will, 

                        (Or, as process theology would say it, co-create with God,)

            Be a follower of Jesus, or

            Be led by the Holy Spirit.

These are three different ways of expressing the same thing.  I have a fondness for the language of the Spirit, because back when my scientific brain could not wrap itself around human metaphors for the sacred, I could picture a Spirit, like the Force from Star Wars.

Our reading is about some new leaders getting filled with the Spirit, back in Moses’ day. Some people think the Holy Spirit first came to earth on Pentecost.  The Spirit first appears in our bible in Genesis chapter 1, hovering over the waters at the dawn of creation.  What was new at Pentecost was the realization that God's Spirit comes not only to special people, prophets and leaders.  All of us can expect a share of the Spirit.  

So, God’s Spirit acts not only through the leaders of the church but in and through any person the Spirit chooses.  God’s Spirit acts not only in the church but outside it, in nature and in people of other faiths and people of no faith. Maybe that's why, in much of Christian history, the Spirit has been the ignored member of the Trinity.  To an established hierarchy hanging onto power, the Spirit is dangerous.  It is God acting outside the approved channels, shaking things up, making us rethink our ideas about what God expects of us.  Some people think they own the franchise on God and they will dole it out to the rest of us.  The Spirit terrifies those people.  They can't control it!    

But how do you track this Spirit?  We can never prove God did something.  That's why we have the Christian Faith, not the Christian Fact.  So we can never be one hundred percent sure that it's God inspiring you or me to do this or that.  Yet we have to use our best guess. We make space for God’s spirit to act in and through us when we come together with open minds, and learn from one another, and listen. 

Those of us with a spiritual bent may claim quite dramatic encounters with the sacred, as Spirit or otherwise.  Those of us who are more logical-minded may see this Spirit stuff as metaphor for opening ourselves to fully use the wisdom and sacred values in and beyond our conscious thought.  In either case, making room for God’s spirit makes a congregational meeting very different from a business meeting of a company or a governmental body.  We consciously seek to follow Jesus, co-create with God, be led by the spirit, right in the middle of Robert’s Rules of Order.

Our bible reading is from the time when Moses was leading the people through their forty years of desert wandering.  Moses had so many people to look after.  He had practically a small country, or at least a mega-church, because there was no separation of church and state at that time.  At the end of each day’s wandering, Moses set up his bench and became the peoples’ governor, judge and mediator. He had to do this late into the night, because there wasn’t enough of Moses to go around for the number of people who had questions to be answered and disputes to settle.  When it became clear that he was exhausting himself in a way that wasn’t good for anyone, Moses finally decided to call upon seventy people to help him.  At one point the bible says God told him directly to get seventy helpers, and another time his father-in-law told him.  No contradiction there; Spirit works through people to guide us, and the Spirit often has to tell us more than once to get through to us.  In the case of choosing the seventy leaders, God was guiding Moses to create structures for governing this growing group of people who needed good governance. Seventy district court judges, or clan heads, who could rule on the day-to-day stuff and save Moses’ energy for the big stuff. And Moses gathered them together, a curious thing happened.

The whole group of seventy new leaders (almost) went up to the tent of meeting, and Moses gave them a portion of God's Spirit. Don’t ask me how that works.  What did God's Spirit do for them?  It sounds downright Pentecostal:  ecstatic prophesying.  I'm sure there was shouting and dancing too.  That may not be how our cup gets filled, but it worked for them. 

Moses delegating leadership was a difficult transition.  Before, you could bring their concerns directly to the mighty Moses, even if you had to stand in line all night.  Now you just brought them to your Uncle Daniel.  But everybody knew that something important had happened to Uncle Daniel that day in front of the tent; they saw it.  This visible sign that these new leaders were in touch with God helped everyone trust them. 

Eldad and Medad (don't you love those names), didn't even go up to tent of meeting with the other sixty-eight, yet somehow they got the Spirit too. But some conscientious people reported Eldad and Medad to Moses, those troublemakers.  And Moses said why are you complaining? You’re complaining that God’s spirit filled somebody in the wrong place?  You're worried about somebody with God’s spirit undermining my authority?  I'm not.  I wish all of you could have God’s spirit.  Now we know we can.

A lovely Jewish tradition says the reason Eldad and Medad did not go with the rest of the leaders up to the tent of meeting is that they were so humble.  And because they were so humble, God chose to fill them with Spirit longer than any of the other new leaders. We might say they got their egos and their own plans out of the way so God’s spirit had room to act. 

I trust the decisions and processes of this church because I trust that we are all led by God’s Spirit, and enough of us are paying attention to that leading.  No one of us knows the way forward in detail.  Yet with sound processes, as humble and Spirit-led people, we will discover it.  

We are also led as individuals.  Where is God’s Spirit guiding you to serve this church or this community?  How is Spirit leading you you to be a parent, or grandparent, or activist, artist, caregiver, or friend?  The same principles apply to our whole lives.  

Please keep pondering with me:  How can we co-create with God?  How do we follow Jesus, inside and outside the church?  How can we follow the guidance of the Spirit?.  I am glad we have this community to learn together to be Spirit-led.  That's the way I want to live, and I hope it's the way you want to live too.  Amen.