Families with children may prefer to participate in “Family Suppers” from 6:00 – 7:30 pm on 4 Fridays in October and November. Families will engage in light-hearted get-acquainted activities, a potluck supper in which each family brings a dish to share, brief sharing of joys & concerns, and a closing ritual/prayer. The emphasis is on informal interaction, not on facilitated discussion.

Sign up in the Cross Roads during the month of September. If you would be interested in facilitating and/or hosting a Home Group, or hosting a Family Supper, please contact Ken Pennings at ken@orucc.org or 271-7212, ext. 222.

Our Whole Lives is a progressive approach to sexuality education that addresses the totality of human sexuality in an age-appropriate manner. It is based firmly on the values of self-worth, sexu- al health, responsibility, justice, and inclusivity. As a result, the program affirms equity between the genders and the inclusion of bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people, two issues that are often excluded from traditional curricula. Our Whole Lives was developed by the Unitarian Universality Association and the United Church of Christ and we have offered this program to our youth for over a decade.
OWL is facilitated by four of our adults from ORUCC and they are Bob Ansheles, Amy Fewel, J. McLellan, and Barbara Stretchberry. OWL will meet on Sunday mornings from 8:30-10:00 a.m. with breakfast treats being served at 8:15 a.m. (OWL will not meet on October 30, November 27, and through Christmas break.) OWL will meet in the room at the bottom of the steps in the base- ment (west end).

We will launch the OWL program with a retreat to Pilgrim Center September 16-18. I will also be attending this retreat. We will end the OWL program at our all church winter retreat at Pil- grim Center, January 13-15, 2012. After OWL is complete, we will continue with a 9:00 Sunday School class for this age group starting January 22, 2012.

July 10, 2011

Matthew 13:44-46
44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;46on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

As I mentioned in last week’s message, when ordinary people at the time of Jesus heard the word “kingdom,” they thought immediately of the hierarchical, patriarchal, autocratic, and oppressive Roman empire and its puppet kingdoms that diminished their already difficult lives. But Jesus turned the language of kingdom and empire upside down on its head and proclaimed in word and deed the alternative to all imperial systems: the kingdom of heaven or the Reign of God.

The reign of God is not about hierarchical, patriarchal, autocratic, and oppressive systems that diminish human life. Rather the kingdom of God is about justice and peace, mercy and truth, compassion and kindness, the flourishing and fullness of life.

Today we consider how the greed, consumerism and materialism of empire are still diminishing our lives, stealing our joy, and leading millions to despair. But we aren’t stopping there. We‘d like to believe, as Jesus did, that THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE to empire.  We’d like to consider ourselves part of that alternative.   What would it be like to be the Alternative Community in the Here and Now Kingdom of God?

Like the parables we read last week about the Mustard Seed and the Yeast, today’s  parables about the Treasure in a Field and the Pearl of Great Price are riddles, teasers, stories with a twist that make no sense to those who have been brought up with the worldview and values of empire.

This week as I reflected on these 2 parables, the big questions that kept coming up for me were “Why would Jesus tell stories like these to peasants? How in their wildest dreams would they ever come close to a buried treasure or an exquisite pearl? Don’t stories like this taunt and frustrate the poor?”

Then I began to wonder if that might be the twist in the stories which reveals some hidden meaning.

I began to imagine Jesus crouching next to a crippled beggar and massaging his gnarled legs and feet as he said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.” I imagined him cradling the face of an orphan girl in his hands as he said, “the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.”

What if the crippled beggar was the buried treasure? What if the orphan girl was the exquisite pearl? What if the Kingdom of God is all about valuing and treasuring the poor?

In the mid-third century, Lawrence of Rome was one of the deacons in charge of giving help to the poor and the needy. The Prefect of Rome, who was very familiar with the many charitable works of the Christian community, assumed that the Church had a great fortune hidden away. So he ordered Lawrence to bring the Church’s treasure to him. Lawrence agreed but asked for three days to get it all together. Then he went through the city and gathered together all the poor and sick people supported by the Church. When he showed them to the Prefect, he said: “This is the Church’s treasure!” In great anger, the Prefect condemned Lawrence to a slow, cruel death.

Before the 1500s, many of the indigenous peoples in Central America lived sustainably, working together on commonly owned land that would provide a variety of crops for everyone’s needs. Then came the conquistadors of the Spanish empire who were searching for treasures of silver and gold. They confiscated all the land, set up plantations, forced the peasants to produce cash crops for exportation, and plunged the native peoples into centuries of poverty. By greed, possessiveness and exploitation, Spanish imperialists destroyed the sustainable, communal life of these indigenous peoples. So much for treasuring the poor.

Today’s parables are a call to conversion. For truly the best way to value and treasure the poor is to live in community with them, share all things in common with them, befriend them, fall in love with them.

This is a huge challenge for 21^st c. Americans who have been brainwashed into believing that our value and worth is measured and demonstrated by our contribution to consumption. Our primary identity as Americans is as consumers.

Shortly after WW2, the government was trying to figure out how to ramp up the economy. Retailing analyst Victor LaBeau articulated the solution which became the norm for the whole system: “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption — many things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever accelerating rate.”

Pres. Eisenhower’s Counsel of Economic Advisers chairman said, “The American economy’s ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.” More consumer goods? Our ultimate purpose? Not provide health care, education, safe transportation, sustainability, or justice?

Well where does this leave the poor? And how can we reasonably live and love in community with them if they fail to measure up to these standards of high consumption?

After 9/11, our country was in shock. President Bush could have urged us to do any number of appropriate things, to grieve, to pray, to hope. No, he urged us to shop. It’s the solution for everything. Shop!

We have more stuff, but less happiness. Surveys indicate that our happiness peaked in the mid 50s. Now countries like ours have the most stuff, but we also have the highest rates of depression, suicide, and loneliness. We are the richest and most miserable people in the world. We have less time with family, friends, and activities that make us truly happy. And we have an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor.

In 1997, the Simple Way Community was established in Philadelphia. In their commitment to follow Jesus, they remember that it’s easier to force a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. They and their families live among the poor of inner city Philadelphia. Their mission is to “Love God, Love People, Nothing Else Matters.” They live in simple small houses with just enough space to eat their meals and lay their heads down at night.

They create programs which revolve around the needs and gifts in their community. Sometimes they are feeding fifty folks out of their kitchen, helping a dozen kids with homework, fixing up abandoned houses, or planting urban gardens. In the summers, they are running collaborative arts camps with a theater company mixing suburban and urban kids.

They bring church people to their neighborhood to learn the kingdom of God from the poor, and then send them out to tell the rich and powerful there is another way of life being born in the margins of society. The church…we’re a pretty tough mission field, aren’t we?

Shane Claiborne writes in his book Irresistible Revolution, “I feel sorry that so many of us have settled for a lonely world of independence and riches when we could all experience the fullness of life in community and interdependence. Why would I want a fancy car when I can ride a bike, or a TV when I can play outside with side-walk chalk? It would be a huge sacrifice and painfully empty for us to move out and live in the suburbs. What must it be like not to have block parties or not actually know the people around us?”

Now if I told you there was a community where there are no rich and no poor, where everyone’s needs are met by sharing all things in common, would you jump at the opportunity to belong to such a community? Would you go after such an opportunity with the reckless abandon of going after a treasure buried in a field or an exquisite pearl?

Me either. Sad, isn’t it? I’m really not sure I would want to belong to such a community. This is the tension in which we live as people of faith.

On the one hand, we know there should be no rich and no poor. On the other hand, we don’t want to lose any of the creature comforts we’ve come to enjoy and rely on. Can’t everyone simply be elevated to the status and privilege we now enjoy? Why must we give up anything to improve the standard of living of others?

The problem with this is our planet cannot support and sustain our consumerism. We have 5% of the world’s population. But we’re using 30% of the world’s resources, and creating 30% of the world’s waste. If everyone consumed at the rate of the U.S., we would need 3-5 planet earths. We’re running out of resources. We’re using too much stuff.  Recycling is good and necessary, but is not enough. The waste coming out of our houses is the tip of the iceberg. For every 1 garbage can we take out to the curb, 70 cans were taken out upstream to make the stuff we put out to the curb.

For us, the wealthiest 2 percent of the world’s population, becoming the alternative community in the here and now kingdom of God most certainly requires a shift away from our greed, consumerism and materialism.

It requires a shift away from stripping the planet of its natural resources.

It requires a shift away from polluting our water and atmosphere with toxins released from the production and elimination of our stuff.

In the alternative kingdom of God, we value people & the planet more than our stuff; we advocate and agitate tirelessly for redistribution of wealth to lessen, if not eliminate the gap between the rich and the poor; we find ways to share all things in common with the whole human family, especially the poor.

Amen.

July 3, 2011

Throughout the summer we’ll be journeying through the Gospel of Matthew on the topic of the “here and now kingdom of God,” or as Matthew’s Jesus calls it  ”the kingdom of Heaven.”

Already in this service we’ve been singing about the kingdom of God, or the reign of God:

“Bring forth the reign of mercy, of love, of joy. Rejoice and be glad! Yours is the kingdom of God!”

We’ve also been praying for the kingdom:

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

And Barbara just read two parables about the kingdom:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed….The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.”

In pop culture, we don’t talk about kingdoms very much. So why do we think, talk and sing about the kingdom here in church? Well, because kingdom was very important to Jesus. Right? The actual term in Greek is basileia, which is more accurately translated in English, empire. In first century Palestine, what would people think when they heard the word basileia? They would think of hierarchical, patriarchal, autocratic, and usually oppressive systems that diminish human life. Cleverly, Jesus introduced into that culture the notion of an alternative empire, the kingdom of God, a kingdom, says John’s Jesus, that is not like the kingdoms of this world. Jesus was intentionally, deliberately using the language of empire, and turning it upside down on its head.

For the empire of God is not about hierarchical, patriarchal, autocratic, and oppressive systems that diminish human life. Rather the kingdom of God is about justice and peace, mercy and truth, compassion and kindness. In the reign of God, the blessed ones, the happy ones, the ones living life to the fullest, are not the high and mighty, wealthy and privileged ones, but those who are poor in spirit, full of sorrow, pure in heart; the lowly ones; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, show mercy, seek peace, and suffer for their faith.

So is it relevant for us in 21st century America on the 4th of July weekend to think, talk and sing about the kingdom? Are we acquainted at all with hierarchical, patriarchal, autocratic, and oppressive systems that diminish human life?

Sure we are.

Where do we see these systems at work? Sometimes in marriage, in families, in the work place, in government, in church? But we really don’t have to look further than into our own lives to find oppressive systems of empire. Might empire be showing up inside us? Since birth, many of us have been brainwashed with subtle messages that true happiness is all about acquisition and hoarding of material wealth, dominating and controlling other people, using and abusing Mother Earth.

Many of us have internalized the status quo, and without being all that conscious of it, we may be cooperating with systems of greed, violence and oppression that separate the “haves” from the “have-nots,” the privileged from the unprivileged, those who are included from those who are excluded. Throughout this summer message series, we will be looking at ways the messages, experiences and systems of empire have diminished our lives, stolen our joy, and led to despair.

But we won’t stop there. We have a message of hope!

THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE!

We are that alternative! We can become the Alternative Community in the Here and Now Kingdom of God. When Jesus invited, “Follow me,” he was calling people to become part of a resistance movement. Resist the powers of empire in marriages, in families, in socio-economic-political systems, and in your religious institutions!

And perhaps more importantly, resist empire that shows up inside your own lives! Resist within yourselves any impulse or inclination to diminish your own lives or the lives of others! Jesus then calls for more than resistance. He calls for renewal and restoration! Be whole! Be well! Be your very best selves! Enhance your own lives and the lives of others.

John’s Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have life more abundantly.” As the summer preachers look at the parables and teachings of Matthew’s Jesus, our hope is that together we’ll find ways to live life more abundantly; to find more satisfaction and fulfillment in this life. All that was by way of introduction to this message series.

I invite you to read the Gospel of Matthew this summer, journal about the kingdom, ask yourself as you read and meditate, “How is life in the here and now kingdom of heaven different from life under empire?” and then respond to God’s invitation to resist empire and be renewed and restored in your own humanity.

Most of the 33 (or so) parables of Jesus are really riddles, teasers, stories with a twist, hidden messages that aren’t easy to decipher. They’re often difficult to understand and interpret, and rarely offer a single, clear meaning.

I would place today’s 2 parables about the mustard and the yeast in that category. These 2 parables are very short, but there’s a lot there!

How might Jesus’ audience picture the coming of a king or the beginning of a new empire? A picture of rushing horses and chariots? The clashing of swords and shields?
Won’t the kingdom be established by intimidation, terror, and violent overthrow? Won’t all the wealth in the kingdom be squandered by the elite while the masses languish in poverty and need?

But Jesus paints a very different picture of the reign of God.
–a tiny mustard seed planted in a field,
–a tiny pinch of yeast worked into the dough.
Ha! Pretty absurd, isn’t it? What kind of a kingdom is that?!!!

Comparing the Empire of God to a mustard seed would command the immediate attention of an audience of rural peasants because it is so unexpected. God was supposed to come as a conquering king to slay their enemies. Was this a joke? Well, yes, in a way – but a serious joke. To say that God’s Empire is like a mustard seed was ridiculous.
But God’s Empire is so unlike the empires of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome that Jesus needed to use some shocking images to help people understand this.
God’s Reign of equality, inclusion and diversity is the opposite of the violent empires ruled by greed, hate, hopelessness, and fear, and which maintain the status quo through domination, control and violence over other peoples and nations.

The parables of the mustard and the leaven can speak of the great subversive potential of little seeds and pinches of yeast. God’s reign will not arrive with traditional symbols of might and power, like the majestic cedars of Lebanon depicted in Ezekiel and Daniel, but will infest the world like an obnoxious mustard weed — or through the active faith of ordinary believers. God and God’s Empire are not symbolized by a towering tree of pride and strutting arrogance, but by a tiny mustard seed of compassionate work for justice and peace.

It’s a kingdom that grows by planting a tiny seed of compassion and kindness here and a tiny seed of humility and honesty there.
It’s kingdom that grows by working in a pinch of peace and justice here, and a pinch of equality and inclusion there.
A very little bit of truth makes a huge difference!
A very little bit of mercy makes a huge difference!
Our very small deeds of kindness make a huge difference!
Before long, compassion takes over and starts spreading like a weed!
Before long, justice works its way into enough bread for a multitude!

Mind you, these short parables are not peaceful stories about birds and plants and bread. Rather, they pose difficult challenges and invite us to conversion.
Imagine an alternative to the status quo!
Imagine a world where love spreads so rapidly, it’s virtually impossible to root it out of our garden!
Imagine a world where there’s enough bread for everyone!
Do you begin to see how these short parables were actually a challenge to the status quo? A strong call to resist, restore and renew?

When ORUCC was in the midst of our capital campaign to raise money for the remodeling of our building, I was strangely quiet when the question arose, “Will we set aside a portion of the money we raise for a mission project?” But some of you were not quiet. You expressed strong desire that our remodeling project spill over into active mission into the community. I agreed with the rest of you that we should set money for a mission project.

But then the question arose about what percentage of the total money raised would go toward the mission project. Once again, I was silent. When 10% was suggested, I was nervous, and all the concerns of empire flooded my mind, “Will there be enough for us? Can’t the needs of the poor be met in another way?” But I agreed with the rest of you that we should contribute 10%. Our pledges totaled 1.5 million. Therefore, our mission gift will be $150,000. Wow, a little bit of kindness in those early decisions will be making a huge difference for those experiencing poverty and homelessness in Dane County.

Last week, I met with a small band of people who are serving as “Pastoral Partners” to some folks in this congregation who have special needs. As they shared about this quiet and “behind the scenes” ministry of sending cards, running errands, visiting homes, sharing a cup of coffee, playing a game of UNO, folding hands in prayer, I began to sense that these Pastoral Partner relationships are really making a huge difference in this congregation.

Our teens were in Philadelphia two weeks ago on a mission trip. A number of them journaled about their experience painting walls in a Christian school. “I didn’t think what we were doing made much of a difference.” But then a teacher visited with them and assured them that if they hadn’t done this work, the school might not remain open. Suddenly, it was quite apparent to the teens that what they were doing made a huge difference!

We may want God to show up in great power and might, but God actually shows up in the apparent weakness and foolishness of our small deeds of compassion and mercy.

Though we don’t expect our tiny mustard seed or pinch of yeast to make a huge difference in the world, in actuality, these small gifts are the only way to do it, and the only force strong enough to turn empire upside down on its head.

Amen.

Family supper get together

My family hosted a family supper and attended two others this spring. It was a fantastic chance to meet all the families you rush by at church on Sunday, or try to talk to in between chasing toddlers, changing diapers, and responding to the frantic requests of your children.

The family suppers gave us all a chance to sit down to a meal together and have some more in-depth conversations as the kids played together. The events always included lots of laughter and some very sweet moments. And the best part is the gatherings were informal and accommodating—if you didn’t have time to do anything but stop by the grocery store deli and pick up some potato salad, that was fine. If your kids were misbehaving or pouting, no one judged you. If you didn’t have time to clean your house before hosting, no one even gave it a thought.

It was a great chance for our family to just be ourselves—including the more challenging aspects of family life—and come together with other facing the same challenge of trying to find God in the chaotic and noisy moments of family life.

I can’t wait for more family suppers!

Jennifer Eggerling-Boeck