Text: Luke 18:1-8

Speaker: Joel Miller

The river is of the earthand it is free.  It is rigorouslyembanked and bound,and yet is free.  “To hellwith restraint,” it says.“I have got to be going.”It will grind out its dams.It will go over or around them.They will become pieces.

Wendell Berry, “Give It Time,” in Leavings: Poems

Let’s talk about prayer.  That’s what Luke says Jesus is talking about when he tells the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge.  “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always, and not to lose heart.” Luke 18, verse 1.

If you’re like me, your relationship with prayer has changed over time.  Different phases, different stages.  Including that point where you step back and question the whole arrangement of making seemingly reasonable requests of the Divine who supposedly has power to affect change in earthly circumstances but has been noticeably non-interventionist during the worst moments of human history.  If prayer doesn’t stop the war, end the genocide, prevent the pogrom, arrest the madness of the capitalist fantasy of profit at all costs, burst the dam, what is it for?          

These are questions one will face if one chooses to persist with the practice of prayer.

One of the directions this can take is toward what’s called contemplative prayer.  This is where I personally have felt most at home in the realm of prayer for many years.  Contemplative prayer is less concerned with changing what God does and more focused on changing oneself.  Or, more deeply, it’s not primary focused on change at all, but simply being with what is.  Contemplative prayer is a way of dwelling with the deepest part of ourselves, which is pure attention and awareness, which is God within us.  It sometimes uses words but welcomes silence.

One of the leading 20th century…

Text: Luke 14:15-24Speaker: Mark Rupp

When I was growing up, one of my chores as a child was to take our leftover food scraps and chuck them into the cornfield that surrounded our country home. I don’t think my parents ever considered this “composting” in any sense that we think of it now, but there was at least a sense that these scraps would serve a better purpose in the field where things were growing than in the garbage bag that got taken away. 

But the thing was, as far as quasi-composting, this was an easy chore. Not only did it not require the sifting, aerating, turning and patient attention that we’ve been talking about with actual composting, we also did not do any kind of sorting with what got thrown into the field. Banana peels? Sure. Bones? Why not? Peach pit? Of course. 

I’m not sure if the farmer who owned the field ever knew we were doing this, and in retrospect, this may have just been well-intentioned parentally-sanctioned littering. Sure, we weren’t throwing pop cans and plastic bottles out there in the field, but I’m not convinced we were doing much more than keeping our garbage can from smelling bad.

Our sub-theme for today is “Gather,” and this week I’ve been thinking about the gathering that takes place with composting, but also about the reality that not everything belongs in a compost pile if it is going to be the life-giving space that it has the potential to be. 

In order to think about the potential that composting has and what lessons it can teach us, I think it can be helpful to think about what is, perhaps, the antithesis of a compost pile and name a simple truth: a compost pile and a landfill are not the same thing.

They may both hold…

Text: Luke 10:38-42

Speaker: Sarah Zwickle

I am grateful, and delightfully surprised, to find myself here today, gathered in this place with you.  My name is Sarah Zwickle. My husband Adam and I lived in Columbus from 2009-2014 as graduate students at OSU, new parents, and neighbors. Our daughters are 14 and 11 now! Time is a swift current. We still very much connect with this congregation, receive your news and prayer requests, and worship via zoom, now from East Lansing, Michigan.

Writing has been my creative expression for years. Speaking is harder. So before I begin to speak these words I’ve prepared, here’s a compost prayer:

May these words settle on each of your internal compost piles, break down into gifts that grow like wildflowers, that transform into what is nourishing and loving. In compost nothing is wasted, not even words, all are incorporated back into the whole. Amen.

Have you come across any snowdrops admiring the snow with their delicate, bowed petals? A crocus or skunk cabbage just beginning to reach towards the sun? We are balancing on the fulcrum of a seasonal teeter totter (what a great word) as it tilts back toward the sun. The cold soil is still keeping most of this season’s growth plans a secret, but Earth’s great inhale, held all winter, is at the very tip top of its exhale, ready to breathe out new life and warmth. Light, plant fibers, and wings are starting to stretch, to lengthen, or in Old English, to lencten, to Lent.

Let’s take a deep breath in through the nose.

Hold the breath for 3 seconds—like a little winter.

Now slowly release inner warmth from your body into the air around you—like newly hatched spring—lengthen your breath, your heartbeat, and your imagination.

Now imagine…in the corner of a garden, behind the barn, and in Rubbermaid…

Text: Luke 4:1-13

Speaker: Joel Miller

It’s hard to enter into the story of Jesus in the wilderness from the comfort of a church sanctuary.  A roof over our heads means we don’t feel the effects of the sun.  Being surrounded by four solid walls greatly reduces the odds of a wild animal roaming by.  There’s no wind.   We’re climate controlled at a pleasant 70 degrees.  There’s a drinking fountain just a few steps away.  There are restrooms with flush toilets and hand soap.  In short, anytime we gather here, and really almost any time in our modern lives, we are far from the wilderness.

It’s difficult to put ourselves inside this story of Jesus in the wilderness, but not impossible.  We have imaginations, and probably most of us have been, at some time in our lives, in a place we would consider wild.   

The wildest place I’ve been the last couple years is the Grand Canyon.  It was with two college friends I hadn’t seen in forever.  Four days and three nights, camping down in the canyon, hiking from the south rim to the north rim, and back again.  It was a lot of hiking with loaded backpacks, and since we hadn’t been together for a long time, a lot of talking.  It was a lot of old rocks, layered down to the exposed metamorphic Vishnu basement rocks, approximately 1.75 billion years old.  When rock is named after the supreme lord who creates, protects, and transforms the universe, it’s old.   

There was a well-worn path, but there were times in the less-traveled parts that felt pretty wild.  Like us soft-bodied relatively new-on-the-scene homo sapiens were flimsy guests in a landscape better suited for California condors and bighorn sheep.  And despite all our walking and talking, one couldn’t help but slow down and feel…

Text: Matthew 17:1-8

Speaker: Joel Miller

Soon after his 27th birthday, a minister in Alabama faced the most fearful day of his young life.  He got a phone call around midnight.  The person on the other line threatened to bomb his house if he didn’t leave town in the next three days.  Also in the house were the minister’s wife and their baby girl.    

He had recently been selected to lead the first ever large-scale demonstration against racial segregation in the US.  A fellow leader later reflected that the advantage of choosing him as leader was that he was so new to the city that he “hadn’t been there long enough to make any strong friends or enemies.”          

But now he had made enemies, and he knew the threat against his family was real.

He hung up the phone.  He was overcome with fear.  He couldn’t sleep.  He got up from his bed and went to the kitchen.   He prayed out loud: “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right…But Lord I must confess that I’m weak now, I’m faltering, I’m losing my courage.”  In the stillness of the dark kitchen, he heard a voice come back at him: “Martin, stand up for righteousness.  Stand up for justice.  Stand up for truth.  And lo I will be with you, even to the end of the world.”  (1)

This was Montgomery, January 1956, and it was Martin and Coretta, and little Yolanda King in that house.  Rosa Parks had already refused to give up her seat on the bus.  She was the leader who said King was a good choice because he had neither friend nor enemy in town, yet. 

The Montgomery bus boycott is frequently referenced as the event that launched the Civil Rights, or Southern Freedom movement.  As Dr. King would later tell…