Texts: John 14:15-17; Acts 1:6-14

Last Friday the New York Times published an essay titled “We aren’t built to live in the moment.”  The authors point out that none of the things we’ve previously proposed that set humans apart from other animals actually do.  It turns out language, tools, cooperation, and culture aren’t unique to us.

But, they argue, there is a defining characteristic that sets us, humanity, apart: “We contemplate the future.”  They write: “Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. It usually lifts our spirits, but it’s also the source of most depression and anxiety, whether we’re evaluating our own lives or worrying about the nation. Other animals have springtime rituals for educating the young, but only we subject them to ‘commencement’ speeches grandly informing them that today is the first day of the rest of their lives.”

The essay goes on to weave insights from psychology, brain science, and various forms of therapy to make its case.  Much more than looking back at the past, we seem to direct most of our mental energy toward anticipating the future and adjusting our behavior accordingly.  We do the things we do and feel the things we feel because of the kind of future we anticipate, sometimes the one just seconds ahead, sometimes years and decades.

Our future mindedness impacts even the way we form and reform memory.  Rather than being an archive of past events that remain stagnant, the brain has a way of continually rewriting history.  New contexts, and the kind of future we anticipate add fresh content to past events and change the way we remember them.  The essay states: “The fluidity of memory may seem like a defect, especially to a jury, but it serves a larger purpose. It’s a feature, not a bug, because the point…

Text: Psalm 23; Acts 2:42-47

The sermon today and next week will be multi-voiced.  We’ll be hearing from our new members.  I’ve gently suggested they keep their sharing brief, so I’ll follow my own counsel.

Today’s scriptures speak of a faith that is deeply personal and radically communal.

Psalm 23 proclaims God as a shepherd.  And not just any shepherd, but my shepherd.  “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”  How many people have recited these lines through the millennia?

And who doesn’t need shepherded?  Is there anyone out there who has it all figured out, knows exactly where they’re going and why?  Does anyone always know the way to green pastures and still waters?  Most of the time we’re stumbling in the dark, or, as the Psalmist says, in “the valley of the shadow of death.”  It doesn’t say we avoid the valley or the darkness.  It says we are accompanied through it, and that we need fear no evil.

There is a dimension of faith that is deeply personal, and there are paths we alone have to walk.  Psalm 23 proclaims that when we do, we are accompanied by the great Shepherd, with goodness and mercy trailing close behind.

And there is a dimension of faith that is radically communal.

Acts chapter 2 gives a summary of life in the early church.  “Awe came upon everyone,” Luke writes.   “All who believed were together.”  They “had all things in common.”  “They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

Radical is perhaps an overused word.  It means to get at the root of something.  For the early Jesus movement, the root of faith included an economics of sharing, and a life oriented around community.  We Mennonites are the heirs of the Radical Reformation in 16th century Europe.  The…

Scripture texts: Numbers 5:5-7; Psalm 103:6-10

(Text of the sermon is unavailable, but the proposed resolution that the speaker references can be viewed here: Seeking Peace in Israel and Palestine.)

…

Texts: Mark 3:1-6; Nehemiah 5:1-13

These shirts are going to be great for BREAD gatherings and the softball team and Pride parade and other events, but my favorite part is that I can get away with wearing a tshirt to church once a year.  Very comfortable.

Tomorrow evening members of 40+ congregations across Franklin County will gather at the Celeste Center at the fairgrounds.  We are white, black, and brown;  Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Anabaptist, Unitarian Universalist.  We’ll be joined by public officials with whom BREAD has been in conversation over the last months, and in some cases years.  We’ll ask them to publicly commit to working with us to achieve some very specific solutions to problems we’ve been researching.  Such as: creating a municipal ID card for immigrants and homeless folks to better access city services; preferential contracts from the city for companies that employ workers with criminal records who otherwise find it nearly impossible to get a job, and implementing restorative practices in Columbus City Schools to reduce suspensions and the school to prison pipeline that disproportionately affects people of color.

These are all big issues, each one, and I frequently wonder if BREAD bites off more than it can chew each year as we collectively decide on the next area in Franklin County we want to focus our energy and power.  But BREAD has a track record for getting things done.  We helped create a land bank that demolishes homes on abandoned properties.  We worked with the Mental Health board to open a clubhouse that creates community and opportunities for folks living with mental illnesses.  And members of this congregation were influential in helping create restorative justice circles as a way of diverting youth from the juvenile court system.

Since December I’ve been serving on the steering committee for the current…

Matthew 27:45-53; 27:55-61; 28:1-10

If death were a dance, what would it look like?

When death dances with you, what will it feel like?  What does it feel like?

When Joseph of Arimathea danced with death it looked like… a meeting with Pilate – a rare conference with the political authority who held in his hand the power of life and death.  Who had withdrawn his power to protect life, and handed yet another subject over to a tortured death.  Who had been swayed by the fickle crowd.  Whose soldiers had done their job, carried out their duty, ensuring the security of the state.

When Joseph of Arimathea danced with death it looked like asking for a body, a dead body, from the one with power to grant or withhold that body.  With the wave of his hand, Pilate granted Joseph his request.

When Joseph of Arimathea danced with death it felt like new linen cloth, clean and slightly course, wrapped tight around the body.  It smelled like myrrh and aloes.  It felt like stone, cold and hard.  A new tomb, hewn in the rock.  He laid the body in the rock tomb.  “Then,” Matthew writes, “he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and went away.

When Abbie and I danced with death it sounded like… nothing.  Our first two children were born the way we’d hoped and expected.  The work of labor was followed by the yelp of life and a flurry of activity – doctor and nurses who had done this many times before, skilled at attending to a child in the first minutes after birth.   As the father, who had not felt life slowly growing within me, one minute there was nothing, and then there was something, someone, very real, very real, and very alive.

But with our third child,…