Pentecost

Different Colors, different shapes, one fire.

Pentecost is the season in which we celebrate the Spirit of God, symbolized in wind and flame.
Pentecost is the season in which we are reminded that our faith isn't just about events and people in the past but about what the Spirit of God is calling us to do and be right now.

Welcome to Pentecost

LIFE AND DEATH IN HONDURAS

LIFE AND DEATH IN HONDURAS
Political Violence, the U.S. Drug War and the Roots of Migration

An evening with Fr. Ismael Moreno Coto.
Wednesday April 10, 2013
7:00 p.m. Keystone Church
Honduran Jesuit priest Ismael Moreno Coto is director of Radio Progreso a radio network that covers northern Honduras, and of a research and social action center (ERIC). Since the 2009 SOA graduate-led coup, "Padre Melo" has spoken out and has been on the receiving end of death threats and intimidation for his work for justice.

Sermon: The Poor

Reading 2: The Gospel reading is from John, chapter 12

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.  There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.  Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"  (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

Holy Wisdom, Holy Word.   Thanks be to God

Lent 5 Year C

John 12:1-8

The Poor

By Rich Gamble

In the story today in John, Mary has wasted perfectly good perfume to anoint Jesus. Judas complains that the perfume could have been sold for a great deal of money and that could have been given to the poor. Three hundred denarii is about a years salary for a common worker. In today’s terms here in Seattle we are talking about maybe $30,000. Imagine paying that amount for a bottle of perfume and then using all of it at one time on one person’s feet.

 

Granted Jesus didn’t ask for this but neither did he try to stop Mary. And when Judas complains Jesus defends Mary. Now John discounts Judas’ motive for saying this. Where this story appears in the other Gospels it is the disciples as a whole who ask the question. The point is the question not the motivation behind why it was asked. Why waste the resource? Why not turn it into aid for the poor?

 

Jesus quotes the first part of Deuteronomy 15:11 “You always have the poor with you,” he then says “but you do not always have me."

 

I bet you have heard that quote about the poor always being around. It is generally used by people who know enough of the bible to insulate themselves from the implications of being Christian. People use this quote to justify ignoring the plight of the poor.  The point supposedly is that it is silly to worry about the suffering of impoverished people because they are a natural part of the social and economic landscape. Worrying about the suffering of the poor is like worrying about rain in Seattle. It happens, live with it.

 

It is important when people write off the suffering of billions of people with this throw away quote that we respond that it is a really bad understanding of what Jesus means. First of all Jesus was quoting from Deuteronomy 15:11.

 

Indeed if you read the rest of Deuteronomy 15:11 you will see that it says:

“Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’”

 

This quote comes from a part of Deuteronomy which talks about the Sabbatical Year which calls on believers to honor God every seven years by forgiving debts, and releasing those enslaved by debts.

 

Assuming that Jesus understands what he is quoting then not only is he not saying to ignore the poor but he also pointing out a passage that talks about the forgiveness of debts and setting free indentured servants every seven years. It is a vision of charity as part of a broader systemic approach to economics. Yes you help those in need by giving freely but also you forgive debts and set slaves free. It is a much bigger picture than just giving money to those in need.

 

So what’s going on in this passage? Jesus in supporting Mary’s action is saying to the Judases of the world, there will always be opportunities to care for the poor. But what Jesus is about is something greater than charity, something bigger than justice. Jesus is the embodiment of the will of God and that will leans not to a perpetuation of unjust relationships between rich and poor.

 

Jesus represents God’s ancient call to upset the applecart of human relations and celebrate our faith by ridding ourselves of injustice and all other forms of violence and living fully in the light of the love of God.  

 

In other words Judas, our celebration of Jesus is not about painting the smiley face of charity across the abysmal evil that is injustice. Jesus represents God’s indomitable will to Love and love is bigger that charity, even bigger than justice.

 

Jesus then is the symbol of the transformation of the values of the human community.

 

Charity is important but it is not the answer. Charity perpetuates the separation between the rich as givers and the poor as receivers. Justice eliminates the separation by redistribution of resources so no one has to be a perpetual receiver. Charity by itself justifies unjust systems by making those who profit from the system feel righteous and superior to those who are the recipients of their generosity.

 

Yesterday 3 of our interns joined with people of faith from across Seattle to talk about starting a campaign to make the minimum wage in Seattle a living wage. In other words compensation capable of supporting a family with adequate salary and benefits. This work comes straight out of our understand of God as one that places a priority on those most marginalized and vulnerable.

 

Out of that conversation came the insight that by providing food banks and free medical care we are often subsidizing the profits of those businesses that fail tor provide their employees with a living wage and adequate benefits.

 

Could Mary have honored Jesus by selling the perfume and giving it to the poor. Of course she could. But this story is meant to provoke our thoughts and questions. This story highlights the fact that Jesus stands for more than just charity. In fact charity is one of the least parts of what Jesus has to offer. Jesus embodies for us a struggle for a world ruled by love where the need for charity would be rare because we have constructed a just and loving society .

 

Why should places like this church exist, when the space could be used to provide low cost housing, and the budget could be used to buy food for the hungry? Well we shouldn’t continue to exist if we are not promoting a bigger more just vision of what the world could be. But as long as we do proclaim such a vision then we like Jesus serve a vital role. We question the current order of things and instead illuminate the radical alternative that is God’s Realm. We are called neither to abandon our works of charity nor our work for justice. It is important to remember that charity often makes us feel better about ourselves than working for justice does. That is why most congregations do some form of charity but few do the work of justice. But is it in that more challenging less rewarding work of promoting Jesus’ alternative world view where the real hope for humanity is to be found.

 

This congregation has given hundreds of thousands of dollars away to support the cause of charity and justice since the beginning of the Festival of Hope. In the time that I have been at Keystone we have over 500 forums for justice, plus countless planning meetings. We host Eliza’s work with Heifer which helps provide food and empowerment to people all over the planet. We host my work with FAITH which works towards the end of homelessness. That work may not have happened if there had not been a congregation keeping this space open. That work may not have happened if there had not been a congregation here tending the flame of God’s vision.

 

But as important as all that work is the vision God gives us is so much bigger. The implications of understanding the very core nature of God and therefore ourselves as self-giving love, has the power to transform lives, families communities and nations.

 

As long as that vision sits at the heart of this congregation and as long as we act in accordance with that vision then we are justified in giving our time and money to keeping Keystone alive and growing. As long as embers of a vision of God’s love smolders in places like this, then there is the very real possibility that it will catch and transform the world. We are the keepers of a vision of transforming hope. That vision is very good news.

 

Amen.

Young Adult Service Communities

http://www.ucc.org/volunteer/yasc/

This link takes you to the United Church of Christ national website's page for Young Adult Service Communities. Scroll down and you will see our community there. They are taking applications for the program for next year so if you know a young adult send them the above link.

Tom Greene

It is with great sadness that we report the death of one of our members, Tom Greene. Tom was a faithful and supportive member of this community. He will be deeply missed.

Email hacked

I am very sorry to say that our email has been hacked. Please do not open any attachments or click on any links in any suspicious looking emails from the Keystone account. When in doubt contact us.

sermon: Light Enough

Epiphany 1 Year A 010613

Matthew 2:1-12

Light Enough

By Rich Gamble

 

This is Epiphany. My computer’s dictionary defines epiphany as: “a sudden intuitive leap of understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence.” It is the time that we celebrate the Aha moment in the Christian story when the longed for savior is discovered to be that peasant prophet Jesus.

 

In some traditions Epiphany celebrates the baptism of Jesus. In others it celebrates the coming of the wise men. Depending on which gospel you are reading either of those times can be the big Aha moment. Today we are looking at the story of the wise men. The wise men only appear in Matthew’s gospel. Luke prefers shepherds as the official witnesses of the birth of Jesus. Mark and John are not really that interested in the story of Jesus’ birth.

 

Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus, is just that, a story. There are a great many people who want to read it as history and if that is important to you, understand that even if it were chronicling actual events, someone is choosing which events to write down and which not. Even if it did happen as told and if we had a video camera there to record the event, there is always a mind behind the camera choosing which events to focus on, which direction to point the camera. So whether you see this as theological story written to highlight a truth greater than the actual events or whether you see this as history faithfully recording the events, either way, it is a creative work.

 

In Matthew’s story, the wise men set out from the East. They had seen a star rising and believed that it signaled the birth of a king. So they went to Jerusalem, and to the palace of the King and asked to see the child recently born to be king.

 

Herod doesn’t have any children recently born. Herod is a pretender to the ancient throne of Israel, kept in place by the power of Rome. So Herod is more than a little concerned by the idea of a rival to the throne. Herod makes nice with the wise men and calls in his court theologians. The theologians say that if a king is to be born Bethlehem is the place. So Herod sends the wise men off to Bethlehem and he asks that when the wise men find the baby king that they come back by the palace and tell Herod just where that baby can be found so that he, Herod can go and pay homage to the baby as well.

 

We know what the wise men do not, that Herod is not interested in paying homage; he wants the baby dead. The wise men set out towards Bethlehem and the star is there and they follow it right to the house of Mary and Joseph (remember that in Matthew’s story Jesus is born at home in Bethlehem). The wise men offer gifts fit for a king and then, warned in a dream, go home on a different path, without reporting back to Herod.

 

So in terms of the story, why did the wise men go to Jerusalem to ask Herod where the baby was? Didn’t they have a star? The wise men followed the star west but at some point quit following the star and went to Herod instead. Maybe they gave up on star following because it is hard work. Stars give off little light. It is hard to see by them at night. If you are following one you are likely to trip over all kinds of obstacles. Stars don’t make paths. We make them by stumbling along in the dark. Stars don’t illuminate the best route. They give very general directions.

 

So maybe having followed the star in the dark for who knows how many hundreds of miles the wise men saw a nice level road to Jerusalem and took that road over the uncertain terrain of the star’s leading.

 

 And why not? Herod was the king, so if you are looking for the next king wouldn’t going to the current one be a wise thing to do? Instead of keeping their eyes on the guiding star the wise men turned to Herod. Once they leave Herod’s presence, then the star reappears in the story but by then it is too late. Herod has been warned, and when the story continues Mary and Joseph have to flee for their lives, becoming refugees in Egypt and Herod sends his troops to kill off every baby boy in Bethlehem.

 

The blood of the babies is on Herod’s hands but the blood wouldn’t have been spilled if the wise men had been more wise. If the wise men had followed the star and not their own ideas and expectations about what a king was and where to find one, then the babies of Bethlehem would have lived.

 

The story of the wise men points out to us our own tendencies to seek answers and solutions from the traditional places of power and influence, from people with power measured in money horded or in the potential to use violence.

 

All thoughts these days are on the doings in Washington and soon in our state Capitol as well. We have needs and fears and hopes as a nation and planet of people and we turn to the people with power to address our concerns. Of course we are generally disappointed; but perhaps the fault is less about the failures of the people in power then it is in our expectations that such people are going to be able to be the true answer to our needs.

 

The wise men had expectations as to where a king was to be found. Such persons would be found in the palace in the capital, not in a carpenter’s house in Bethlehem. A king in their minds looked more like Herod and nothing like Jesus. And as a proclamation of the Christian faith we say, that the Jewish world was waiting for a messiah and got just that in Jesus, even though Jesus was nothing like what they thought they needed and Jewish Christians became a splinter group of greater Judaism.

 

It is good and right that we get involved in politics as a matter of faith. That is one of the underlying truths of Matthew’s Gospel, our story of faith is wrapped up in politics, and economics and social structure. Jesus wasn’t born on a cloud but in a town occupied by Roman soldiers ruled by a murderous Roman lackey.

 

But even as we involve ourselves in the messy business of politics and economics and social systems, we are shown by this story and many others in our tradition, that answers to our longing for a world aligned with God’s vision of justice and peace, will not be found in systems of domination. The president and the new congress could do amazing things to make this world a better place but it is unlikely that people willing to make such fundamental changes to our structures of power and wealth would ever win the office and if they did it is unlikely that their reforms would last more than a few years. We cannot legislate the Realm of God. In the long run, we are called to keep our eyes fixed on something bigger and brighter than any one person or party or election. And if we lose sight of that, we turn into those people who justify all manner of evil: who kill to bring peace, who torture to establish the rule of law, who lie to establish their truth, who ignore the suffering of others to bring prosperity to all. Our hopes are tied not to kings of industry or politics but to babies born into danger. Our hopes will not be realized as a gift of the powerful but as a negation of that sort of power.

 

When America turned to President Reagan we aided in the slaughter of babies in Nicaragua. When we turned to President Clinton we aided in the starvation of children in Iraq. And not the war in Afghanistan continues to take the lives of innocents. Now we make heroes of torturers and take for granted that our president has a “kill list” of people to be murdered on his command. All of these leaders have called on us to pour our money into the tools of war and not into the projects of peace. Several years ago outgoing congressman Dennis Kucinich reported in a speech: that the Department of Defense has never passed an independent audit, that the Inspector General had notified Congress that the Pentagon could not properly account for $1.2 trillion in transactions, that in recent years the Dept. of Defense could not match $22 billion worth of expenditures to the items it purchased, wrote off, as lost, billions of dollars worth of in-transit inventory and stored nearly $30 billion worth of spare parts it did not need. Yet the defense budget grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a cold war which ended, weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new wars.

 

Sure, we try to get the best person possible into office; best not in terms of what they can do for us, but in terms of what they can do for peace and for the poor. But then the day after they are elected we are called to align ourselves with the guiding light of justice and if that means we stand in opposition to the politician of our choosing, so be it. The president is not our star. A party is not our star. The nation is not our star. Democracy is not our star. The majority can be and often is unjust.

 

The light we follow leads onto some uneven ground, for the light of God leads us to work for those who are vulnerable, those who are suffering. Such places are not easy to travel. Our story shows that the wise men were led to the crib of an infant who would one day not become a Herod but who would die at the hands of the Herods.

 

The star that we follow in the dark of our world leads down a challenging path. There will be times when we will stumble. The brightness of the star that we follow can be dimmed by the glare of our greed or fear. Over the centuries of the following of Jesus, many have lost their way. Many have taken the easy road to Herod by turning to patriotism or prosperity.

 

Our star leads us down another road. Our challenge as a community of faith is to know our star and follow it. The light of God shines forth from the plight of those with the least. It shines forth from the lost and alone; from the sick and sad, from ghettos and battlefields, nursing homes and homeless shelters.

 

Our star is the light love that is drawn not to the palaces of the powerful and prosperous but to the places of need. Our star is dream of a better way for humanity to travel than down the road that leads to Herod. Our star is a dream that cannot be killed, that rises again and again on the horizon of each generation. Our star is our true nature, our true power, our true destination, the self giving love that is God. That is our star. And it leads us still. Amen.