sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 9:14-27 2 Kings 22:8-11; 23:1-3
In the past couple of weeks, I have received a lot of call from people wanting me to do surveys – on politics or some product or some other issue. So, in the spirit of the season, I’ve got a few questions to ask you….
How many of you read the newspaper – oh, say at least 3 or 4 times a week?
How many of you watch television or stream shows off the internet regularly?
How many of you have the radio on most of the time?
How many of you surf the web – you know … on news sites or Facebook or any of the other places?
(pause)
How many of you sit down and pray or spend time reading the bible or poetry or something else that inspires your soul each week?
I don’t ask these questions to make you all feel guilty (though I expect that we all do), but they do point out a big problem with our lives. We spend more and more of our time with screens and paper, and less and less time interfacing with actual people let alone with God.
We say we don’t have time, but we find thirty-five minutes for Facebook and an hour or more to watch our favorite TV shows. We have half-an-hour for YouTube videos on this and that. We pull together hours over the course of the day to listen to the radio and check email and catch up on our favorite magazines or papers.
We have time. We just spend it elsewhere.
It’s not really a matter of a lack of desire. All of us want to spend more time in communion with God, but we fill all of our time with other things – things that we believe are important. And many of them are important, but, really, is the most recent episode of House all that important? We have tricked ourselves into believing that all these mundane, trivial distractions are more important than our spiritual lives.
So how do we get ourselves back to God?
In January, I told you all about the media withdrawal that attacked me when I got back from our trip to France. To tell the truth, though, I wasn’t really that detached from the technological world. I checked email regularly, and I still caught glimpses of the news in French newsstands.
What was refreshing … and disturbing about those two weeks was that I was not bound to media the way that I sometimes feel I am here. There were plenty of distractions – plenty of new things to do and see. At home, things are all familiar. Sunsets, I’ve seen them. Neighbors, I know them already. Concerts, … really … in a university town? Not all that interested – though I’m sure I would be if I actually knew what they were. At the end of the day, when I’m tired and I have time to fill, I don’t think of checking out anything new. I just want to distract myself with something on the TV.
And during the day, there’s my pride. I feel like I have to know what’s going on. How can I sound like I’m a responsible, intelligent member of society if I’m in the dark on what’s going on in the news. So, I read news online and I listen to the radio even though I know that the news cycle will just repeat the things I’ve already heard again.
Here or when I’m traveling, I fill up whatever space there is in my life with white noise or new things. There is no silence - no time left when I am alone with myself and God …, and there are many time when I could use some of that.
(pause)
But it’s not really silence that I need. What I need is stillness which is a very different thing. I need time to focus and rest. I need quiet space in my day, in my mind, and in my spirit. I need to bread down the bad habits – the fracturing addictions – that have taken over my life and build some new, healthy ones if I’m to indulge my desire for a healthy spiritual life.
Breaking down habits …. That’s hard to do, and if neuroscience is to be believed, it’s only getting harder. In 2010, The New York Times reported that …
Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. The say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.
These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. the stimulation provokes excitement – a dopamine squirt – that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored…. [For] millions of people these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.
Researchers say there is an evolutionary rationale for the pressure this puts on the brain, [but] in the modern world, the chime of incoming e-mail can override [more important goals]….
“Throughout evolutionary history, a big surprise would get everyone’s brain thinking,” said Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford. “But we’ve got a large and growing group of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it.”
And even after our multitasking ends, our fractured thinking persists. On the whole, we find it more difficult to think deeply about anything or stay focused long enough to find our way to deeper truths. I know people who can’t do any one thing for more than 15 minutes without getting restless (and I don’t mean my children) – people who get up in the middle of a concert or a play to go out and check their text messages (assuming they’ve turned off their phones to begin with which is become less and less likely). Others say they “need” to check their Facebook page just to catch up if they’ve been away from the computer for a mere 4 hours. I, myself, feel ill at ease if there is no music or news radio playing in the background. It’s just too quiet.
In many ways, we are like the boy in the passage from Mark. We are so consumed by the white noise made by the media all around us that we are unable to hear or understand the voice of God when it speaks to us. In a sense, we are possessed, and if Jesus is to be believed, the only way to put that demon behind us is prayer.
But media is not all bad. Email helps us keep in touch with people we can’t or don’t see very often. Cell phones are wonderful in emergency situations or even just when we can’t remember everything we were supposed to get at the grocery. Radio and the internet and even the television can teach us important things and give us a better understanding of how our actions affect people around the world. This book (hold up the Bible) not only helped King Josiah lead the Israelites back to the law, it helps us all as we walk the path of faithful discipleship.
The problems come when we let all those helpful tools that we have created take over. When we put set them up in the high places of our lives and pay no attention to how they shape who we are and how we live, they start to color everything. They demand more and more of our time and energy, and we begin to forget that there are others who have prior claims: our families … our friends … our God ….
Think about it for the next couple of minutes…. Think about it. If you had all the time back – all the time that media has taken up this past week … the past couple of days – what would you do with it? How would that shape you?
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Want Not, Waste Not
sermon by Torin Eikler
Genesis 2:4b-9,15 Genesis 15:7-11,17-21
You may have heard of the small nation of Kiribati in the South Pacific. If you’ve seen pictures of it, you know that it’s made up of a lot of small atolls and one small island that are home to 103,000 people. They are not rich or powerful, but they’re not poor either. And they live in one of the more beautiful places on Earth. I wouldn’t mind visiting sometime, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.
You see, the average elevation of the entire country is just bit higher than 6 feet above sea level, and that has some not-so-beautiful consequences. They are, of course, subject to the power and unpredictability of storms, but they have learned how to deal with that in the hundreds of years they’ve been there. The more unfortunate problem they face is global warming, and while most of us have the luxury of arguing about whether that is a real threat or not, Kiribati has already lost some of its land to the rising tide. Before the end of the century, they expect to be completely underwater and have already arranged to buy part of neighboring Fiji so that they can move in 2062.
News like this seems to be coming out all the time. I don’t mean that islands are sinking or that the rising sea level will swallow us all up. (Certainly not here in West Virginia anyway). That’s actually old news. But there are all sorts of stories coming out every day about the shrinking polar ice caps or the three species (non-human species) that go extinct every day or some other environmental catastrophe. There are so many that sometimes it’s hard for me to actually pay attention to them all… let alone remember them. But I do remember the first story I heard that actually made me wonder about how we are treating the Earth.
It was 1988 or ’89, if memory serves, and the Fort Wayne newspaper ran an article about a man who was suing the city so that he wouldn’t have to pay garbage collection fees. It seems that he had somehow managed to cut his waste down to one small trash bag per month, and he was more than happy to run that to the dump himself rather than pay for weekly pickup that he didn’t need.
The article went on to talk about the growing confrontation between this man and the city, but I didn’t read all of that. I was stuck on a totally impossible idea - ONE SMALL BAG of garbage … PER MONTH! Even if I multiplied that by the five people living in my house, it wouldn’t come close to the 2 big garbage bags I lugged out to the end of the driveway each week. Just one small bag per month … how did he do it? Why did he do it? It got me thinking….
Five years later I was earning my degree in Environmental Studies when we were asked to do an analysis of the county and recommend a site for the new landfill that would have to come online in the next few years. (It wasn’t the county that asked us to do the study, and I’m confident they ignored it.) So we did the project, … and in the process, I learned more than really wanted to know about toxic seepage, water table contamination, and the slow build up gasses that can cause explosions … all of which were problems with the Wabash County Landfill. I realized that I was as much a part of that as anyone, and I decided to make some changes ... to become part of the solution instead of the problem.
For years, I have tried to hold on to that conviction. I have tried not to buy pre-packaged goods, and when I do, I have looked for recyclable packaging. I have gardened and preserved in order to have good vegetables to eat without having to buy produce shipped thousands of miles with all the fuel burned in the process. I dutifully recycle everything that I can. Carrie and I have used cloth diapers 70-80% of the time with our children. And yet I take out a can-full of garbage every week, and I have all but stopped even seeing the plastic bags and cans and bottles and other trash that line the streets of this neighborhood and the ones I regularly walk through. There’s just so much that needs to be done, and it’s easy to sit back and say that I have done enough to reduce my own footprint. It’s so easy to get caught up with pointing fingers at others rather than admit my own failings … even if it means that I have to hide from the God who walks in this garden every day.
Last week, Carrie said that scripture doesn’t tell us much about Jesus’ thoughts on spending even though it records a lot of his teachings on money and economics. Well, there is even less in the New Testament about waste or caring for creation. Nowhere at all do Jesus or the disciples or the letter-writers talk about recycling or deforestation or driving less, but John tells us that Jesus was there during creation – a part of the God who called it all good. And Jesus, himself, says that he has come to fulfill, rather than overturn, the law of the covenant.
That covenant has its roots in the beginning of creation when God brought forth the Earth with all its plants and animals and called it all good. Then, she created human beings and entrusted it to us. Not to “dominate” as the unfortunate translation that has taken root in our collective subconscious says, but to care for it. In point of fact, as Wendell Berry wrote:
The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because he wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift of the use of it, that obliges us to take excellent care of it. If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be excused for note loving it or justified in destroying it?
It was not given to us to do whatever we would like with creation. It is our calling to tend it so that it multiplies and bears fruit for all of its inhabitants. We humans are just a small fraction of that group. It’s past time that we take up our trowels, gloves, reusable bags, and rakes and clean up our mess even if it seems an impossible task, and when it does seem impossible, remember these words of encouragement:
If God is really at the center of things and God’s good future is the most certain reality, [as we claim,] then the truly realistic course of action is to buck the [ethic] of our age … and simply do the right thing. If we believe it is part of our task as earthkeepers to recycle, then we ought to recycle, whether or not it will change the world. Do the right thing. If we think it part and parcel of our ecological obedience to drive less and walk more, then that is what we ought to do. Do the right thing. We should fulfill our calling to be [caretakers] regardless of whether global warming is real or there are holes in the ozone layer or three nonhuman species become extinct each day. Our vocation is not contingent on results or the state of the planet. Our calling simply depends on our identity as God’s response-able human image-beareres.
So … rather than being discouraged, rather than just giving up, let’s do what’s right. Let’s step into our roles as stewards, clear away all the junk that comes between us and God, and open our eyes to the wonder around us.
Genesis 2:4b-9,15 Genesis 15:7-11,17-21
You may have heard of the small nation of Kiribati in the South Pacific. If you’ve seen pictures of it, you know that it’s made up of a lot of small atolls and one small island that are home to 103,000 people. They are not rich or powerful, but they’re not poor either. And they live in one of the more beautiful places on Earth. I wouldn’t mind visiting sometime, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.
You see, the average elevation of the entire country is just bit higher than 6 feet above sea level, and that has some not-so-beautiful consequences. They are, of course, subject to the power and unpredictability of storms, but they have learned how to deal with that in the hundreds of years they’ve been there. The more unfortunate problem they face is global warming, and while most of us have the luxury of arguing about whether that is a real threat or not, Kiribati has already lost some of its land to the rising tide. Before the end of the century, they expect to be completely underwater and have already arranged to buy part of neighboring Fiji so that they can move in 2062.
News like this seems to be coming out all the time. I don’t mean that islands are sinking or that the rising sea level will swallow us all up. (Certainly not here in West Virginia anyway). That’s actually old news. But there are all sorts of stories coming out every day about the shrinking polar ice caps or the three species (non-human species) that go extinct every day or some other environmental catastrophe. There are so many that sometimes it’s hard for me to actually pay attention to them all… let alone remember them. But I do remember the first story I heard that actually made me wonder about how we are treating the Earth.
It was 1988 or ’89, if memory serves, and the Fort Wayne newspaper ran an article about a man who was suing the city so that he wouldn’t have to pay garbage collection fees. It seems that he had somehow managed to cut his waste down to one small trash bag per month, and he was more than happy to run that to the dump himself rather than pay for weekly pickup that he didn’t need.
The article went on to talk about the growing confrontation between this man and the city, but I didn’t read all of that. I was stuck on a totally impossible idea - ONE SMALL BAG of garbage … PER MONTH! Even if I multiplied that by the five people living in my house, it wouldn’t come close to the 2 big garbage bags I lugged out to the end of the driveway each week. Just one small bag per month … how did he do it? Why did he do it? It got me thinking….
Five years later I was earning my degree in Environmental Studies when we were asked to do an analysis of the county and recommend a site for the new landfill that would have to come online in the next few years. (It wasn’t the county that asked us to do the study, and I’m confident they ignored it.) So we did the project, … and in the process, I learned more than really wanted to know about toxic seepage, water table contamination, and the slow build up gasses that can cause explosions … all of which were problems with the Wabash County Landfill. I realized that I was as much a part of that as anyone, and I decided to make some changes ... to become part of the solution instead of the problem.
For years, I have tried to hold on to that conviction. I have tried not to buy pre-packaged goods, and when I do, I have looked for recyclable packaging. I have gardened and preserved in order to have good vegetables to eat without having to buy produce shipped thousands of miles with all the fuel burned in the process. I dutifully recycle everything that I can. Carrie and I have used cloth diapers 70-80% of the time with our children. And yet I take out a can-full of garbage every week, and I have all but stopped even seeing the plastic bags and cans and bottles and other trash that line the streets of this neighborhood and the ones I regularly walk through. There’s just so much that needs to be done, and it’s easy to sit back and say that I have done enough to reduce my own footprint. It’s so easy to get caught up with pointing fingers at others rather than admit my own failings … even if it means that I have to hide from the God who walks in this garden every day.
Last week, Carrie said that scripture doesn’t tell us much about Jesus’ thoughts on spending even though it records a lot of his teachings on money and economics. Well, there is even less in the New Testament about waste or caring for creation. Nowhere at all do Jesus or the disciples or the letter-writers talk about recycling or deforestation or driving less, but John tells us that Jesus was there during creation – a part of the God who called it all good. And Jesus, himself, says that he has come to fulfill, rather than overturn, the law of the covenant.
That covenant has its roots in the beginning of creation when God brought forth the Earth with all its plants and animals and called it all good. Then, she created human beings and entrusted it to us. Not to “dominate” as the unfortunate translation that has taken root in our collective subconscious says, but to care for it. In point of fact, as Wendell Berry wrote:
The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because he wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift of the use of it, that obliges us to take excellent care of it. If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be excused for note loving it or justified in destroying it?
It was not given to us to do whatever we would like with creation. It is our calling to tend it so that it multiplies and bears fruit for all of its inhabitants. We humans are just a small fraction of that group. It’s past time that we take up our trowels, gloves, reusable bags, and rakes and clean up our mess even if it seems an impossible task, and when it does seem impossible, remember these words of encouragement:
If God is really at the center of things and God’s good future is the most certain reality, [as we claim,] then the truly realistic course of action is to buck the [ethic] of our age … and simply do the right thing. If we believe it is part of our task as earthkeepers to recycle, then we ought to recycle, whether or not it will change the world. Do the right thing. If we think it part and parcel of our ecological obedience to drive less and walk more, then that is what we ought to do. Do the right thing. We should fulfill our calling to be [caretakers] regardless of whether global warming is real or there are holes in the ozone layer or three nonhuman species become extinct each day. Our vocation is not contingent on results or the state of the planet. Our calling simply depends on our identity as God’s response-able human image-beareres.
So … rather than being discouraged, rather than just giving up, let’s do what’s right. Let’s step into our roles as stewards, clear away all the junk that comes between us and God, and open our eyes to the wonder around us.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Word of Unburdening-Spending
During Lent, we are looking at some of the things that "burden" us and obscure the promise of Christ from our lives. We are looking at food, spending, waste, media, and possessions. Our worships during Lent will have a greater focus on silence and reflection, with a short meditation inviting you into contemplation. The worship center invites you to explore what it is in your life that “clutters out Christ.”
John 2:13-22
There was good economic news this week. According to two dozen economists surveyed by the Associated Press, the US economy is improving faster than previously predicted. “The economists foresee stronger growth and more hiring than they did two months ago, and predict an unemployment rate at around eight percent by Election Day.”
I heard this report on the news one morning this week. And really, it didn’t phase me very much. It just seems like we get jockeyed around daily with daily changing economic forecasts: one day, things are looking up, the next we’re plummeting back down into crisis. Honestly, it all sort of just slips by me. But the report ended with something that always jerks me back to attention. It said that it’s unlikely this improvement has little to do with what is going on in Washington. Rather “economists give most of the credit to consumers, who are spending more and saving less.”
This always seems wrong to me, though I know it makes sense in a macro-economics sort of way in a capitalist economy. But it is always hard for me to swallow. Especially when the rate of foreclosures is at an all time high. Especially when, according to the US Census, 15% of the US population is living in poverty.
So am I right in thinking that one of the biggest threats to the US economy is not Europe’s financial woes, or our dependency on foreign oil, or the growing dominance of China in the marketplace. But actually the greatest threat to the US economy…are people who don’t spend their money?
Now I know that’s simplistic, and not exactly true, but I have heard this over and over--what we need to do to get this economy moving is to spend, spend, spend. Remember when you got that stimulus check a few years ago and people were pleading for you not to save it, to go out and blow on something…anything?
And yes, you don’t need to tell me that I’m not an economist, I know that full well, so why should I be questioning this? I guess it is because I am a Christian. And, yes, I am a consumer. And to be a responsible Christian consumer, I need know… that fully one-third of the things Jesus talked about was about money and how we spend it, use it, lend it, abuse it.. He seemed to be obsessed with it. And he wasn’t obsessed with it in the way we are obsessed with it.
In fact, probably most of those things he has to say would cause us to stiffen and bristle and say, “well, that’s not really me he’s talking about” and “well, yes but that’s not practical.” And he probably would ask “and how many of the things I say and do are practical?”
It’s true, when it comes to economics in general, and our own private spending in particular for the most part, Jesus talks a lot more than we see him act. But when he does act it is a pretty interesting story. We don’t see what he buys, and from where he buys it, or how much. The most dramatic story about Jesus and money involves him overturning tables in the temple. Raging in the marketplace and the place of worship.
In fact, this story is one of the few stories that show up in all four of the gospels. It was impressive enough, central enough to Jesus’ life that all the gospel writers included it.
Now to be clear, many of these “tables” were there with the blessing of the temple. They weren’t just selling trinkets, or “temple souvenirs”. They were selling animals and other goods to be sacrificed and used in the holy festival of Passover. This is not an unknown or frowned upon custom.
Some have said what was going on in this story wasn’t that people were selling things, but how the selling and buying was happening. Often, as we can imagine even in this time, many of the merchants would be price-gouging goods, making it difficult for the needy and poro to obtain these things to observe the festival properly. It wasn’t that they were selling that made Jesus angry, it’s that they were exploiting the poor, and making a mockery of faith.
Jesus can’t believe that people have taken the holy temple, and turned it into a “den of robbers”, as described in Matthew. Jesus is turning the tables in anger because God’s dwelling place was turned into an arena for exploitation. And I imagine Jesus would be grieved to see us relating to this world, this sacred dwelling place, in a similar way. In our economy, human beings are first and foremost consumers, simply players in a market. We have forgotten that we should be relating to this world as children…children of God. Somehow our economic system has stripped us of that primary identity.
Isak Dineson famously said "All suffering is bearable if seen as part of a story." Sharon Astyk reflected on this quote on scienceblogs.com. She says the following: “The emptiness that people feel when they live a life primarily as consumers is no accident - the problem is that the story we're engaged in isn't very interesting. A story where your primary role is to create a market, to consume and come back for more is incredibly dull.
And Astyk ponders, “Is it any wonder, if you live your life like a baby bird with your mouth open that what gets dropped into it every time is a worm? People will attempt to reshape your worm and convince you that it is extra yummy this time, but it is still a worm. And the story of consumers is still boring.”
“[A]nd it is no accident” she says “that despite the fact that bazillions of dollars are spent telling us we are just consumers, and that's all the story we could ever need, people by the thousands and sometimes even millions are frustrated and looking for a better story…The good news is that there are better stories out there for the claiming and the living. The good news is that we can do better than worms.”
We can do better than worms."
Spending is what gives us credit as a citizen in a capitalist economy. But we are not just consumers. We are not just citizens. We are children of God who have been taught a different story. One where concern for others comes before our acquisition of stuff. One where sacrifice was shown in service to others not in slavery to rising interest rates and collection agencies. One where compassion trumps comfort and money and cloaks and extra miles were to be given graciously.
To start living that story will need some tables turned upside down. And Jesus isn’t here to do it for us. So we need to start with our own.
And to begin that turning, we enter into a time of confession, laying out some of the tables we have setup in God’s holy temple. Please turn to the insert, the
Testimony/Reflection on Spending, given by Kim Cockroft our worship leader
Right away I think of this story: my first truly sacrificial gift, and how it was given in ignorance that ripened into bitter regret.
I was about six, old enough to know how rare and wonderful a silver dollar was. My granddad gave these gleaming discs to us on our birthdays, and they were precious things. My sister never spent hers’, and I once bribed her out of one, but that’s a different story.
We were at our grandparent’s church—a place of plush carpet and gleaming wooden pews softened by long red cushions. When the offering was taken, I fumbled in my pockets for a quarter—then, as now, I felt a compunction to place something in the offering, even if it was from a panicky impulse not to be embarrassed in front of the solemn offering men in their suits, looking like Mafia envoys. As the velvet plum-colored pouch, split in half by slick walnut handles, passed me, I slipped in a quarter—a small offering, perhaps, even for a child like me who received allowances, but enough to get by, I thought, much better than a dime, say, or a handful of pennies, pathetic as they slide from the palm. In any case, I’d be guilt-free at least until communion, when my mother would cry and I’d struggle to come up with a list of sins to confess silently to God so I’d not drink unbearable punishment on myself. At least offering was over with.
But my sister passed the pouch to my father, as it disappeared out of reach down the aisle, I realized what I had done. Oh, no! My silver dollar. Given to me by the warm, old hands of my grey-haired grandfather. Given to me in love and in trust. I’d put it in a pouch with other meaningless coins, and it would be counted and dropped into the church coffers by more men in suits. Nobody would know how precious it was to me—nobody.
I pulled my mother’s ear down to my mouth and whispered, “I gave away my silver dollar. Into the offering!”
She sensed the desperation in my voice, I knew it. Would she help me retrieve it? God didn’t care what denominations the money came in, after all! Couldn’t I just give four quarters, the same amount of money but not the monumental treasure that my Granddad’s silver dollar was? I only got one once a year, and not even that often, since we lived overseas. Granddaddy had to go to the bank especially and exchange regular paper money for the silver dollars he’d place in his grandkid’s palm. Surely God would understand that this gift was too precious?
My mother leaned over in the church-way she had, where she could whisper in our ear without moving her eyes from the front of the church. “Never regret giving anything to God,” my mother whispered back.
What? Why did parents never understand?
I spent the rest of church—the scripture readings, the long sermon, right through the last hymn—in agony over my loss. I pictured how it had happened over and over again. I’d felt in my pockets, yanked out a silver coin, and tossed it in the offering pouch. I saw it disappear down the aisle again and again, and I thought about what my mother had said—never regret, never regret, never regret.
I still think about this moment. I don’t know if the loss of my silver dollar, which was of utmost significance to me at six, was a defining moment in my life, but the memory still defines me today, when I struggle to give away what’s precious. The giving, done in a moment of spirited generosity, perhaps, is not as hard as the trusting—the trusting that the one to whom I give can appreciate the gift enough, will be careful with what I have given—my money, my time, my children, my love.
God will take it all—and in my clearer moments, I realize it was never mine in the first place. I realize that there is no such thing as possession in the Great Story—that all things are entrusted, but not given away for keeps. God is not trustworthy in the way I want God to be. I want to receive a gift and hunker down in my favorite chair, savoring it without fear that a thing I love so much will be taken from me. But there are no such promises, and love rarely makes such promise. I can’t tell my children that their lives will be easy. I wish I could, and believe it, but I can’t.
One thing—no, two at least--that have not been given to me with any conditions. Love and grace. Love and grace—they are the sky, the stars, the ground, the ocean, the very air I breathe. No one can take these from me, and these I can give freely, freely, forever.
It’s the silver dollars I’m still struggling to find in my pockets, and knowing what I give, slip them into the offering basket. Today my silver dollar is my sense of security, control, and my knowledge of the future. Surely something else would do just as well. Surely it can’t be expected of me. Perhaps it’s not quite clear how much it means to me. And yet, I fumble about in the darkness of my pockets, untangle it from my grasping fingers, and let it go.
And as I watch it disappear down the aisle, as I watch other hands dropping coins—gifts that I cannot begin to understand or know—I feel panic, fear, grief—and then a growing sense that all is okay, not perhaps in the particulars, the lists of worries I love to obsess about—but in the large sense. I ask regret to leave me. All will be well. And all will be well. All manner of things will be well
John 2:13-22
There was good economic news this week. According to two dozen economists surveyed by the Associated Press, the US economy is improving faster than previously predicted. “The economists foresee stronger growth and more hiring than they did two months ago, and predict an unemployment rate at around eight percent by Election Day.”
I heard this report on the news one morning this week. And really, it didn’t phase me very much. It just seems like we get jockeyed around daily with daily changing economic forecasts: one day, things are looking up, the next we’re plummeting back down into crisis. Honestly, it all sort of just slips by me. But the report ended with something that always jerks me back to attention. It said that it’s unlikely this improvement has little to do with what is going on in Washington. Rather “economists give most of the credit to consumers, who are spending more and saving less.”
This always seems wrong to me, though I know it makes sense in a macro-economics sort of way in a capitalist economy. But it is always hard for me to swallow. Especially when the rate of foreclosures is at an all time high. Especially when, according to the US Census, 15% of the US population is living in poverty.
So am I right in thinking that one of the biggest threats to the US economy is not Europe’s financial woes, or our dependency on foreign oil, or the growing dominance of China in the marketplace. But actually the greatest threat to the US economy…are people who don’t spend their money?
Now I know that’s simplistic, and not exactly true, but I have heard this over and over--what we need to do to get this economy moving is to spend, spend, spend. Remember when you got that stimulus check a few years ago and people were pleading for you not to save it, to go out and blow on something…anything?
And yes, you don’t need to tell me that I’m not an economist, I know that full well, so why should I be questioning this? I guess it is because I am a Christian. And, yes, I am a consumer. And to be a responsible Christian consumer, I need know… that fully one-third of the things Jesus talked about was about money and how we spend it, use it, lend it, abuse it.. He seemed to be obsessed with it. And he wasn’t obsessed with it in the way we are obsessed with it.
In fact, probably most of those things he has to say would cause us to stiffen and bristle and say, “well, that’s not really me he’s talking about” and “well, yes but that’s not practical.” And he probably would ask “and how many of the things I say and do are practical?”
It’s true, when it comes to economics in general, and our own private spending in particular for the most part, Jesus talks a lot more than we see him act. But when he does act it is a pretty interesting story. We don’t see what he buys, and from where he buys it, or how much. The most dramatic story about Jesus and money involves him overturning tables in the temple. Raging in the marketplace and the place of worship.
In fact, this story is one of the few stories that show up in all four of the gospels. It was impressive enough, central enough to Jesus’ life that all the gospel writers included it.
Now to be clear, many of these “tables” were there with the blessing of the temple. They weren’t just selling trinkets, or “temple souvenirs”. They were selling animals and other goods to be sacrificed and used in the holy festival of Passover. This is not an unknown or frowned upon custom.
Some have said what was going on in this story wasn’t that people were selling things, but how the selling and buying was happening. Often, as we can imagine even in this time, many of the merchants would be price-gouging goods, making it difficult for the needy and poro to obtain these things to observe the festival properly. It wasn’t that they were selling that made Jesus angry, it’s that they were exploiting the poor, and making a mockery of faith.
Jesus can’t believe that people have taken the holy temple, and turned it into a “den of robbers”, as described in Matthew. Jesus is turning the tables in anger because God’s dwelling place was turned into an arena for exploitation. And I imagine Jesus would be grieved to see us relating to this world, this sacred dwelling place, in a similar way. In our economy, human beings are first and foremost consumers, simply players in a market. We have forgotten that we should be relating to this world as children…children of God. Somehow our economic system has stripped us of that primary identity.
Isak Dineson famously said "All suffering is bearable if seen as part of a story." Sharon Astyk reflected on this quote on scienceblogs.com. She says the following: “The emptiness that people feel when they live a life primarily as consumers is no accident - the problem is that the story we're engaged in isn't very interesting. A story where your primary role is to create a market, to consume and come back for more is incredibly dull.
And Astyk ponders, “Is it any wonder, if you live your life like a baby bird with your mouth open that what gets dropped into it every time is a worm? People will attempt to reshape your worm and convince you that it is extra yummy this time, but it is still a worm. And the story of consumers is still boring.”
“[A]nd it is no accident” she says “that despite the fact that bazillions of dollars are spent telling us we are just consumers, and that's all the story we could ever need, people by the thousands and sometimes even millions are frustrated and looking for a better story…The good news is that there are better stories out there for the claiming and the living. The good news is that we can do better than worms.”
We can do better than worms."
Spending is what gives us credit as a citizen in a capitalist economy. But we are not just consumers. We are not just citizens. We are children of God who have been taught a different story. One where concern for others comes before our acquisition of stuff. One where sacrifice was shown in service to others not in slavery to rising interest rates and collection agencies. One where compassion trumps comfort and money and cloaks and extra miles were to be given graciously.
To start living that story will need some tables turned upside down. And Jesus isn’t here to do it for us. So we need to start with our own.
And to begin that turning, we enter into a time of confession, laying out some of the tables we have setup in God’s holy temple. Please turn to the insert, the
Testimony/Reflection on Spending, given by Kim Cockroft our worship leader
Right away I think of this story: my first truly sacrificial gift, and how it was given in ignorance that ripened into bitter regret.
I was about six, old enough to know how rare and wonderful a silver dollar was. My granddad gave these gleaming discs to us on our birthdays, and they were precious things. My sister never spent hers’, and I once bribed her out of one, but that’s a different story.
We were at our grandparent’s church—a place of plush carpet and gleaming wooden pews softened by long red cushions. When the offering was taken, I fumbled in my pockets for a quarter—then, as now, I felt a compunction to place something in the offering, even if it was from a panicky impulse not to be embarrassed in front of the solemn offering men in their suits, looking like Mafia envoys. As the velvet plum-colored pouch, split in half by slick walnut handles, passed me, I slipped in a quarter—a small offering, perhaps, even for a child like me who received allowances, but enough to get by, I thought, much better than a dime, say, or a handful of pennies, pathetic as they slide from the palm. In any case, I’d be guilt-free at least until communion, when my mother would cry and I’d struggle to come up with a list of sins to confess silently to God so I’d not drink unbearable punishment on myself. At least offering was over with.
But my sister passed the pouch to my father, as it disappeared out of reach down the aisle, I realized what I had done. Oh, no! My silver dollar. Given to me by the warm, old hands of my grey-haired grandfather. Given to me in love and in trust. I’d put it in a pouch with other meaningless coins, and it would be counted and dropped into the church coffers by more men in suits. Nobody would know how precious it was to me—nobody.
I pulled my mother’s ear down to my mouth and whispered, “I gave away my silver dollar. Into the offering!”
She sensed the desperation in my voice, I knew it. Would she help me retrieve it? God didn’t care what denominations the money came in, after all! Couldn’t I just give four quarters, the same amount of money but not the monumental treasure that my Granddad’s silver dollar was? I only got one once a year, and not even that often, since we lived overseas. Granddaddy had to go to the bank especially and exchange regular paper money for the silver dollars he’d place in his grandkid’s palm. Surely God would understand that this gift was too precious?
My mother leaned over in the church-way she had, where she could whisper in our ear without moving her eyes from the front of the church. “Never regret giving anything to God,” my mother whispered back.
What? Why did parents never understand?
I spent the rest of church—the scripture readings, the long sermon, right through the last hymn—in agony over my loss. I pictured how it had happened over and over again. I’d felt in my pockets, yanked out a silver coin, and tossed it in the offering pouch. I saw it disappear down the aisle again and again, and I thought about what my mother had said—never regret, never regret, never regret.
I still think about this moment. I don’t know if the loss of my silver dollar, which was of utmost significance to me at six, was a defining moment in my life, but the memory still defines me today, when I struggle to give away what’s precious. The giving, done in a moment of spirited generosity, perhaps, is not as hard as the trusting—the trusting that the one to whom I give can appreciate the gift enough, will be careful with what I have given—my money, my time, my children, my love.
God will take it all—and in my clearer moments, I realize it was never mine in the first place. I realize that there is no such thing as possession in the Great Story—that all things are entrusted, but not given away for keeps. God is not trustworthy in the way I want God to be. I want to receive a gift and hunker down in my favorite chair, savoring it without fear that a thing I love so much will be taken from me. But there are no such promises, and love rarely makes such promise. I can’t tell my children that their lives will be easy. I wish I could, and believe it, but I can’t.
One thing—no, two at least--that have not been given to me with any conditions. Love and grace. Love and grace—they are the sky, the stars, the ground, the ocean, the very air I breathe. No one can take these from me, and these I can give freely, freely, forever.
It’s the silver dollars I’m still struggling to find in my pockets, and knowing what I give, slip them into the offering basket. Today my silver dollar is my sense of security, control, and my knowledge of the future. Surely something else would do just as well. Surely it can’t be expected of me. Perhaps it’s not quite clear how much it means to me. And yet, I fumble about in the darkness of my pockets, untangle it from my grasping fingers, and let it go.
And as I watch it disappear down the aisle, as I watch other hands dropping coins—gifts that I cannot begin to understand or know—I feel panic, fear, grief—and then a growing sense that all is okay, not perhaps in the particulars, the lists of worries I love to obsess about—but in the large sense. I ask regret to leave me. All will be well. And all will be well. All manner of things will be well
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Word of Unburdening - Food
During Lent, we are looking at some of the things that "burden" us and obscure the promise of Christ from our lives. We are looking at food, spending, waste, media, and possessions. Our worships during Lent will have a greater focus on silence and reflection, with a short meditation inviting you into contemplation. The worship center invites you to explore what it is in your life that “clutters out Christ.”
Matthew 4:1-11
I know that our time of confession is later in the service, but I’m just going to start with one now. Part of this reflection on food was written while perched high on a stool at Kenyan Café, as I nursed a steaming mug of chai and noshed on a beef samosa. I don’t know if it was inappropriate, or highly appropriate.
Either way, it tasted really good. As you know, I really love food. I love it love it. In a book I read on the French way of eating and appreciating food, a book I read early on in my new found love of food and cooking, , Dr. Will Clower said something like “Americans say they love food. But that’s not true. Americans are addicted to consuming food. We neither appreciate nor really enjoy what food is and what it can do for us.” And that started me on a new food revolution for myself about seven years ago.
I have rehearsed that statement as I’ve watched people scan Cheetoes and Pepsi at the grocery checkout, feeling superior with my organic cabbage and tofu. I’ve scoffed at “typical Americans” when I’ve passed by the McDonalds on my way to eat out at our neighborhood Japanese restaurant. As I’ve sat down to pray with my family at dinner, I admit to feeling self-rightous pity for families who have made the decision to overschedule their lives so much that they never sit down together. Really, I have thought, I have the food thing figured out. I eat mindfully, appreciatively, locally, seasonally, organically…(except for the occasional scarfing down of Ramen noodles at midnight, or the sudden urge for a macaroni and cheese from KFC).
But really, those “Americans” Doctor Clower mentions, whiles still probably a large part of our society, have seen a dramatic shift since I first read that book seven years ago. In fact in the last decade, the middle class (and I should admit that this is the perspective I and many of us in this congregation live in and see the world through), the middle class has had an explosion of “foodies”. [Eating out is a national pastime. Culinary schools proliferate. Cookbooks take up more and more shelf space in bookstores and homes. Films and books have brought to the mainstream the unethical and environmental devastating ways Americans obtain their meats, grains, vegetables, and fruits. A TV network devoted to food allows us to spend all 24 hours watching people prepare or consume food—such programming has even been labeled… “gastroporn.”]
Which is an interesting comparison. Linking food with desire, cooking with sex. Now we’re getting into some real sinful Lenten stuff! In the journal Policy Review, Mary Eberstadt wrote an article asking “Is Food the New Sex?” [She says that a generation ago it was generally assumed that food was a matter of taste, whereas sex was governed by universal moral law. These days, she asserts, the assumptions are almost exactly the reverse. In many quarters there is more of a laissez-faire attitude towards other people’s sex lives, or at least a reluctance to appear judgmental about them. But people are quick to judge the eating habits of others with great indignation once reserved for other moral violations.]
And probably this goes beyond just food—just look at the list of things we are “unburdening” ourselves from this Lenten season. It’s not sex, alcohol, familial abuse, gambling, stealing, cheating. It’s food, spending, media, possessions, and waste. These are the things we like to judge these days.
So when I thought about food, I had to read the congregation, like we do as pastors. I didn’t feel I needed to say “give up the Twinkies. Twinkies are junk food.” or “Think about were your food comes from.” In our midst we have farmers, vegetarians, raw foodists, locavores, gardeners, fair trade activists, international cuisine aficionados, bakers, etc. etc. And putting myself in the middle of you, I thought, maybe the message I needed to hear, and by extension the message you might relate to, is, still, about gluttony. My favorite deadly sin…second only to sloth because sloth was sleeping and not paying attention as it was being usurped.
It would certainly seem like mindful, aware foodies such as ourselves should not need to worry about gluttony. But, I was reminded in an article by Martin Copenhaver, an article I was reading as I licked the samosa residue off my very happy fingers, that “Gluttony takes many forms.” Copenhaver reminds us that “Gluttony, properly understood, is the sin of being fixated on food to an inordinate degree. It is exhibited not just in the person who mindlessly wolfs down a lot food. [It is also] the dieter carefully meting our quarter cups of no-fat cottage cheese[… It is also] the person who drives across town to get organic lettuce.”
In my life, I went so far as to admit the sin of being unaware of food, of not focusing on food and where it came from and what it does for us, that I probably have gone a little too far of focusing too much on it, and not in a healthy way. More a fixation on judgment than the desire to appreciate it that I originally hoped for, the divine gift it is to be able to take and eat and see how very very good it is.
For sure, food doesn’t seem simple anymore. If the devil was only tempting us to turn stones into bread it would be so much easier, we might think. Foodie guru Michal Pollan spells out 64 rules for healthy, socially responsible eating: Sixty-four. But it’s with his last one that he sounds a lot like Jesus, the last one being “Break the rules every once in a while.” Because while there is a lot of rules about food in scripture, Jesus was more of one who broke the rules, rather than followed them.
People didn’t like the way he ate, the fact that his disciples picked grain and ate it on the Sabbath, the fact that some of his disciples did not fast, the fact that he kept inappropriate company at his table, the fact that some thought him a glutton because he enjoyed his food and drink.
So what’s your food hangup? For some of us, food is that sin that we fixate on to an inordinate degree. Maybe if you don’t have something to nibble on every two hours, you start feeling panic. Maybe you anxiously count every calorie that passes by your lips and just know that looking at that bowl of ice cream means an extra pound. Maybe you are so confident about your food choices that you are convinced that everyone who doesn’t eat like you is misguided. Maybe your desire to eat and cook is covering something else up, wrapping up a dark burden with a more colorful, and socially-appropriate, distraction.
As I sat with that Kenyan samosa digesting, wondering what sort of sin I was committing, I finished that article by Martin Copenhaver, in which he grants a small word of grace, "Perhaps all of us are guilty of one sin or another when we sit down for a meal. That is one reason why I am particularly comforted by the reminder that Jesus welcomed sinners…and that he ate with them, too.”
[silence]
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord. As we prepare for a time of confession, I invite you to turn to #86 in Sing the Journey songbook. To begin our time of prayer we will sing through this song once and at the end of the prayer we will sing it again. Taste and see, the goodness of the Lord.
hymn: "taste and see"
God of wind and sun, grain and vine
We confess that we have not looked at
food as a source of nourishment and connection.
Forgive us for worrying about convenience rather
than celebrating goodness
Help us taste and see
(pause)
God of the poor and oppressed
We confess that we have delighted in food
at the cost of the earth
and to the exploitation of others.
While we become more aware of this, help us
not fall into fatalism and cynicism.
But help us taste and see that the Lord is good
(pause)
God of the field and the table
We confess that we have stood in judgment
of others for their food choices.
We know this does nothing to bring us together
but pushes us further apart by our ideologies
Humble us, make us aware of our shortsightedness
so we can join you at the table
So we can taste and see all you have for us.
AMEN
hymnTaste and See
[silence]
Just as Christ invited sinners to his table, so we are invited. Because on that night, Jesus took simple things: bread and wine.
He took bread: at its essence flour, yeast, water, and salt. And he broke it saying everytime you do this, every time you eat with your sisters and brothers, remember me.
And he took the juice of the vine: grapes, pressed and aged. And as he poured it he said every time you lift a cup with another, I am there. Remember me.
And in that he blessed us, he blessed simplicity, he blessed the gathering. Let us pray: God, you are present in the food. We focus on you, not on what we consume. We take your goodness, not simply bread and cup. Bless these things, and bless us as we draw closer to you. Amen.”
You are welcome to the table: no matter your doubt or your faith, no matter your religious affiliation, no matter the sins you have done or will do. All who repent of wrongdoing and wish to enter the path of rightness and justice and oneness with God may come forward, take a piece of bread, dip it and eat it.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
Matthew 4:1-11
I know that our time of confession is later in the service, but I’m just going to start with one now. Part of this reflection on food was written while perched high on a stool at Kenyan Café, as I nursed a steaming mug of chai and noshed on a beef samosa. I don’t know if it was inappropriate, or highly appropriate.
Either way, it tasted really good. As you know, I really love food. I love it love it. In a book I read on the French way of eating and appreciating food, a book I read early on in my new found love of food and cooking, , Dr. Will Clower said something like “Americans say they love food. But that’s not true. Americans are addicted to consuming food. We neither appreciate nor really enjoy what food is and what it can do for us.” And that started me on a new food revolution for myself about seven years ago.
I have rehearsed that statement as I’ve watched people scan Cheetoes and Pepsi at the grocery checkout, feeling superior with my organic cabbage and tofu. I’ve scoffed at “typical Americans” when I’ve passed by the McDonalds on my way to eat out at our neighborhood Japanese restaurant. As I’ve sat down to pray with my family at dinner, I admit to feeling self-rightous pity for families who have made the decision to overschedule their lives so much that they never sit down together. Really, I have thought, I have the food thing figured out. I eat mindfully, appreciatively, locally, seasonally, organically…(except for the occasional scarfing down of Ramen noodles at midnight, or the sudden urge for a macaroni and cheese from KFC).
But really, those “Americans” Doctor Clower mentions, whiles still probably a large part of our society, have seen a dramatic shift since I first read that book seven years ago. In fact in the last decade, the middle class (and I should admit that this is the perspective I and many of us in this congregation live in and see the world through), the middle class has had an explosion of “foodies”. [Eating out is a national pastime. Culinary schools proliferate. Cookbooks take up more and more shelf space in bookstores and homes. Films and books have brought to the mainstream the unethical and environmental devastating ways Americans obtain their meats, grains, vegetables, and fruits. A TV network devoted to food allows us to spend all 24 hours watching people prepare or consume food—such programming has even been labeled… “gastroporn.”]
Which is an interesting comparison. Linking food with desire, cooking with sex. Now we’re getting into some real sinful Lenten stuff! In the journal Policy Review, Mary Eberstadt wrote an article asking “Is Food the New Sex?” [She says that a generation ago it was generally assumed that food was a matter of taste, whereas sex was governed by universal moral law. These days, she asserts, the assumptions are almost exactly the reverse. In many quarters there is more of a laissez-faire attitude towards other people’s sex lives, or at least a reluctance to appear judgmental about them. But people are quick to judge the eating habits of others with great indignation once reserved for other moral violations.]
And probably this goes beyond just food—just look at the list of things we are “unburdening” ourselves from this Lenten season. It’s not sex, alcohol, familial abuse, gambling, stealing, cheating. It’s food, spending, media, possessions, and waste. These are the things we like to judge these days.
So when I thought about food, I had to read the congregation, like we do as pastors. I didn’t feel I needed to say “give up the Twinkies. Twinkies are junk food.” or “Think about were your food comes from.” In our midst we have farmers, vegetarians, raw foodists, locavores, gardeners, fair trade activists, international cuisine aficionados, bakers, etc. etc. And putting myself in the middle of you, I thought, maybe the message I needed to hear, and by extension the message you might relate to, is, still, about gluttony. My favorite deadly sin…second only to sloth because sloth was sleeping and not paying attention as it was being usurped.
It would certainly seem like mindful, aware foodies such as ourselves should not need to worry about gluttony. But, I was reminded in an article by Martin Copenhaver, an article I was reading as I licked the samosa residue off my very happy fingers, that “Gluttony takes many forms.” Copenhaver reminds us that “Gluttony, properly understood, is the sin of being fixated on food to an inordinate degree. It is exhibited not just in the person who mindlessly wolfs down a lot food. [It is also] the dieter carefully meting our quarter cups of no-fat cottage cheese[… It is also] the person who drives across town to get organic lettuce.”
In my life, I went so far as to admit the sin of being unaware of food, of not focusing on food and where it came from and what it does for us, that I probably have gone a little too far of focusing too much on it, and not in a healthy way. More a fixation on judgment than the desire to appreciate it that I originally hoped for, the divine gift it is to be able to take and eat and see how very very good it is.
For sure, food doesn’t seem simple anymore. If the devil was only tempting us to turn stones into bread it would be so much easier, we might think. Foodie guru Michal Pollan spells out 64 rules for healthy, socially responsible eating: Sixty-four. But it’s with his last one that he sounds a lot like Jesus, the last one being “Break the rules every once in a while.” Because while there is a lot of rules about food in scripture, Jesus was more of one who broke the rules, rather than followed them.
People didn’t like the way he ate, the fact that his disciples picked grain and ate it on the Sabbath, the fact that some of his disciples did not fast, the fact that he kept inappropriate company at his table, the fact that some thought him a glutton because he enjoyed his food and drink.
So what’s your food hangup? For some of us, food is that sin that we fixate on to an inordinate degree. Maybe if you don’t have something to nibble on every two hours, you start feeling panic. Maybe you anxiously count every calorie that passes by your lips and just know that looking at that bowl of ice cream means an extra pound. Maybe you are so confident about your food choices that you are convinced that everyone who doesn’t eat like you is misguided. Maybe your desire to eat and cook is covering something else up, wrapping up a dark burden with a more colorful, and socially-appropriate, distraction.
As I sat with that Kenyan samosa digesting, wondering what sort of sin I was committing, I finished that article by Martin Copenhaver, in which he grants a small word of grace, "Perhaps all of us are guilty of one sin or another when we sit down for a meal. That is one reason why I am particularly comforted by the reminder that Jesus welcomed sinners…and that he ate with them, too.”
[silence]
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord. As we prepare for a time of confession, I invite you to turn to #86 in Sing the Journey songbook. To begin our time of prayer we will sing through this song once and at the end of the prayer we will sing it again. Taste and see, the goodness of the Lord.
hymn: "taste and see"
God of wind and sun, grain and vine
We confess that we have not looked at
food as a source of nourishment and connection.
Forgive us for worrying about convenience rather
than celebrating goodness
Help us taste and see
(pause)
God of the poor and oppressed
We confess that we have delighted in food
at the cost of the earth
and to the exploitation of others.
While we become more aware of this, help us
not fall into fatalism and cynicism.
But help us taste and see that the Lord is good
(pause)
God of the field and the table
We confess that we have stood in judgment
of others for their food choices.
We know this does nothing to bring us together
but pushes us further apart by our ideologies
Humble us, make us aware of our shortsightedness
so we can join you at the table
So we can taste and see all you have for us.
AMEN
hymnTaste and See
[silence]
Just as Christ invited sinners to his table, so we are invited. Because on that night, Jesus took simple things: bread and wine.
He took bread: at its essence flour, yeast, water, and salt. And he broke it saying everytime you do this, every time you eat with your sisters and brothers, remember me.
And he took the juice of the vine: grapes, pressed and aged. And as he poured it he said every time you lift a cup with another, I am there. Remember me.
And in that he blessed us, he blessed simplicity, he blessed the gathering. Let us pray: God, you are present in the food. We focus on you, not on what we consume. We take your goodness, not simply bread and cup. Bless these things, and bless us as we draw closer to you. Amen.”
You are welcome to the table: no matter your doubt or your faith, no matter your religious affiliation, no matter the sins you have done or will do. All who repent of wrongdoing and wish to enter the path of rightness and justice and oneness with God may come forward, take a piece of bread, dip it and eat it.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)