Texts: Psalm 103:1-5, 13-18; Mark 10:17-26

Speaker: Chris Walker

I want to talk about choosing less as a spiritual practice. 

I wanted to start with a personal story, and a poem by Wendell Berry. But there’s not  enough time, and I respect the limits of your attention. So no story, no poem, I’m going to  plow right in.  

All I’ll say is that for decades I had a sense that the life I was living was not anywhere  close to the life I was called to live, and I felt like I was trapped. Over time, I came to  understand that a couple of things were contributing to the disconnect in my life: 

1. Losing sight of who I am—the person I’m called to be in the world and for the  world; and 

2. The paralysis caused by too many demands on my time and attention.  

Does that resonate at all? I’m guessing the second part might—too many demands on our  time and attention?  

The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csziksentmihalyi once wrote that the  mental distress peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can  actually accomplish, and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.  

And 150 years before, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men live lives of  quiet desperation.” In the 1840s, Thoreau was paying attention to what was going on around his home in Concord, Massachusetts. He wrote about his neighbors for whom farms, houses, chores, barns, flocks, oWice, just seemed like endless forms of penance. 

“How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its  load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its  stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, pasture, mowing, and  wood-lot. . . . Better if they had been born…

Texts: Genesis 1:31-2:3; Isaiah 2:1-4; Mark 1:14-15; 2 Corinthians 5:16-18

Speaker: Joel Miller

Three weeks ago, I went white water rafting with our youngest daughter, Ila, on the New River in West Virginia.  It was Ila’s first time, my third.  Each time included a long bus ride from the check-in area to the put-in spot on the river.  Each time the main guide gave instructions the whole ride, yelling over the noise of the loud retired school bus, with a hoarse throat, because they do this every day.  On the two previous, higher risk, trips – without Ila – this largely involved telling us all things that could go wrong.  Despite this, each time, I was struck by one of the key practices of rafting safety.  It’s called “point positive.”

In summary, there are plenty of obstacles on the river – rocks, branches, the protruding remains of a train car that careened off the nearby tracks decades ago, etc.  There are plenty of routes you shouldn’t take and, depending on the level of difficulty, some routes that present real danger.  When approaching such a challenge, the guide will always point positive.  That is, they will point in the direction you should go rather than the ones you should avoid. 

Just as important, if your boat does get hung up on a rock, a guide will point in the direction you should lean to allow the water current to push you safely free.  And if you do end up in the water, a guide will point in the direction you should swim toward.  They will not point toward an undercurrent and yell, Don’t go there.   

They will always, they repeat, loudly, on that loud bus, point positive.

Along with being consistent and clear, this addresses a fundamental feature of human psychology.  We tend to go in…

Texts: Psalm 44:22-26; Mark 3:1-6

Speaker: Joel Miller

What do we do with our anger?

The theme of this worship series is “Rise Up! Take Courage!” It matches the current theme of Central District Conference.  When the writers of the worship guide sat down to choose the weekly subthemes, they decided to start where they imagined many folks are starting these days.  With anger.  Actually, rage.  Week 1:  “Voice your rage,” as it says on our bulletin cover.  Well, this is week three for us.  We’ve been cherry picking the resource for our own schedule.  This Sunday, we picked the angry cherry.

If you’re feeling angry, or enraged, about anything in the world these days, anything in your life, this Sunday is for you.

It’s not a very churchy thing, to emphasize anger.  Not many folks head out to worship on a Sunday morning, thinking, I hope I return home a little angrier than I am now.  But let’s risk it.  Consider, now, something about which you are angry.  Feel the temperature rise a bit within you.  Hold that thought as carefully or firmly as you need to. 

Are we there?  Everyone still OK?

What do we do with our well-founded anger?

Well, if you’re the Psalmist, you direct it at God.

When the poet in Psalm 44 says, “Because of you we are being killed all day long,” the “you” being addressed is God, the Lord, Yahweh, the Divine Spirit from which all reality flows – who/which/that supposedly cares about justice and mercy.

So why, the Psalmist cries out, all this suffering?  It’s because of You, capital Y – You.

In the two verses that follow, the Psalmist manages to accuse God of being  lazy, sleepy, dismissive, disinterested, and/or forgetful.

Psalm 44, verses 23-24, from us, to You, capital Y:

Rouse yourself! (lazy)  Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake (sleepy)  !…

Text: Haggai 2:1-5

Speaker: Joel Call

“Theology has failed us.” This is how theologian, Marika Rose, Senior Lecturer at Dublin City College, begins her book A Theology Q/ Failure. We occupy a time in history of perpetual crisis in which theology seems to work against the aims of peace and justice. As recently as yesterday, US bombs continue to fall on Iran despite negotiations for peace. U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, author of American Crusade, tattooed with Christian insignia including both a Jerusalem Cross and a Chi Rho, recently quoted the Bible at a Pentagon briefing. A couple months ago, Christian pastors gathered in the Oval Office to pray for Trump as he led the US into war. Billionaire Peter Thiel —friend of Jeffrey Epstein, fan of JRR Tolkien, and founder of Palantir — continues to tour his theology of the end times, according to which we are invited to view Greta Thunberg as the avatar of the antichrist. Theology is wielded today both by Christian Zionists and by the state of Israel, arguing that the mass killing and starvation of Palestinians is both necessary and morally justified. Gaza and the West Bank lay in ruins.

Theology has failed. Amidst our state of permanent crisis, we stand in the rubble of the destruction of the past. Far from keeping us from the worst of our human capacities, theology has actually been used to further justify and sustain the violence and devastation of our world.

The theme of this year’s Central District Conference annual gathering was Rise up! Take courage! We convened in Harrisonburg, Virginia to reflect on a year’s worth of experiences. Where might wisdom be calling our group of Anabaptists? Where might the Spirit lead? I wonder how can we hope to Rise up! and Take courage! when our very tool, the…

Text: Luke 4:14-30

Speaker: Joel Miller

Rock a bye baby, in the treetops

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall…..

And daddy will catch you, cradle and all

This was a favorite bedtime song for all three of our girls. 

We would start with me rocking them up high – Rock a bye baby in the treetops.  Just a couple years ago.

Then came the wind and the increased rocking – When the wind blows (blow in their face), the cradle will rock

Then the bottom drops out – When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall

Followed by the grand finale – And daddy will catch you, cradle and all

Followed by laughter and demands to do it again.  This was not a great strategy for winding down for sleep, although it did make me tired.    

It was a favorite of mine for reasons likely embedded in the deep recesses of the evolutionary development of the dad brain.  Exercising strength and protection.  World-building.  Calculated risk taking in which I am both the cause of and the deliverer from danger.  And, of course, making a joke that gets your kid to laugh hysterically.  This gets harder as they age, but we still try. 

Also, and this is what I was most conscious of every time we did it, it was a favorite of mine because I felt clever for having changed the ending of a shockingly dark and confusing nursery rhyme.  So peaceful, so violent.  And down will come baby, cradle and all. 

And sometimes I even felt prayerful.

Who doesn’t want their child growing up in a world where they are surrounded by caring adults who offer unconditional love and support when they fall.  It beats a world where the isolated individual is suspended by one branch holding them precariously in the air which…