YOUNGER SAINTS’ MESSAGE Book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSTRhh2mn08 Ruby has a Worry.
Ruby learns that worries go away when you talk about them. What worries do you have? You can talk about them with friends, and family, and church, and God. We’re all listening!
Let’s talk about some now together: Prayer: God, we know you understands worries. Jesus was so worried once that he stayed up all night praying to you. Hear these worries we pray to you now (say them aloud!) Thank you for hearing them, God. Amen.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Consistory Monday evening at 6:30 in person. Bring masks, lawn chairs, and bug spray.
- Service next Sunday online
- Private Facebook page for prayer requests
CENTERING
Reflection for Father’s Day:
The Longing and the Love ~ written by Brian Lundin
We long for the perfect protection of a father,
for strong arms that encircle us,
hold us tight to a broad chest,
a beating heart.
Arms that toss us into the air,
screaming with laughter and a little fear,
even though we know those arms will always catch us.
From the moment we gasp our first breath of air,
we long for the perfect father.
We long for a father who sacrifices,
who lays down his time to play games,
read our favorite book one more time,
or take a long walk and listen.
Who reaches into his pocket
and pulls out a dollar for ice cream.
Who reaches deeper to provide a good home,
good food, and good gifts.
We long for a father who always protects,
always cheers, and always sacrifices.
Some of us are blessed to find
bits and pieces of these longings
met in human form,
Like sun through stained glass—a brilliant picture,
illuminated by our Father who satisfies these longings.
We thank God for fathers who protect,
who encourage with strong words,
and strong convictions;
fathers willing to sacrifice,
striving to love.
But some of us are grieving.
Grieving the loss of a good father,
or the lack of one.
Some never knew their father’s arms,
and some bear scars,
on skin and soul,
dealt from a father’s swinging arms.
At some point, all of us are left longing.
Lacking.
No human father can perfectly satisfy.
Look up and know your Father in Heaven
gave you these longings,
and only He can perfectly fulfill them.
His strong arms protect,
His words bring life and light.
His perfect sacrifice draws us to His side,
where we can hear His heart beating with perfect love for us.
We celebrate our fathers on earth,
and our Father in heaven.
We give thanks for the longing,
and give thanks for the love.
And we pray now:
God, we draw together to you across time and space. We hold one another and we hold on to you. We bring our longings for perfect love. We bring our experiences of love. And here – in your fatherly arms – we rest, we share, we worship. Let us feel your abiding love. Amen.
SCRIPTURE
Last Week Jesus named 12 to go out and minister in his name. That same speech continues today. In it, Jesus warns his disciples that people already call Jesus the king of devils, and Micah has prophesied that even families will divide when God’s reign draws near. Therefore, those who follow Jesus should expect even family to call them devils. However, do not fear. They can kill your body but never your soul. Matthew 10:24-39 reads…
SERMON: Finding Strength in Change
It’s in the 10 commandments. Honor thy father and mother. It’s a super important, basic, unifying rule in many societies. Jesus’ society too. You MUST take care of your parents. Your must honor them. Don’t make them worry. Don’t bring them shame. Be sure they’re cared for.
In the USA? … We have a reverse culture. Honor your children. Parents are supposed to care for their children. Make sure they don’t worry. Make sure they are cared for and not shamed.
What does it look like played out? Well, we are rather horrified if a parent uses their child’s savings for themselves. We think a parent ought to sacrifice their own wants for a child’s wants. We state it isn’t right for an elderly person to be a burden on their adult children.
In elder-focused cultures, they are horrified if a child doesn’t use their savings on their parents. A child is expected to make sacrifices for their parents’ wants. They think it is a horrible shame for an adult child to not care for their parents even if it is a burden. Perhaps especially if it is a burden.
Neither way is right nor wrong. We just need to understand Jesus’ context here. In this context, Jesus is saying societal customs and expectations are out the window with him. He’s a sword – an object of division. Some people are going to react to Jesus and the reign of God with violence. Violently pulling away – dividing – and proclaiming this Son of God is the king of devils.
Do you feel like you’re experiencing some of this strife and division right now? I am. “One’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Yeah. That hits me right here. People I love deeply, have known for years, are suddenly strangers to me of late. Words and ideas I thought I’d never hear them say or read them write now flow out of them. Who are these strangers who I’ve loved for decades? How is it our most fundamental relationships – mother and daughter; father and son – even these are fractured?
Rapidly everything is changing. We are witnessing a miraculous awakening to the systemic racism in our society. And in response, all that was in the dark is being brought out into the light. What was once whispered is now proclaimed out loud.
A lot of what we hide in the dark is stuff we don’t like. It’s a lot nicer to think of Jim Crow eras like the movie “The Frog Prince” where the rich white plantation-house people are bumbling happy helpers to the poor hardworking slave-house blacks. It’s a lot easier to think Confederate flags with the Dukes of Hazard than with the Ku Klux Klan. I would be very happy to keep thinking of my friends and families as quietly holding biases against non-whites instead of knowing some openly hate non-whites.
I liked the feeling of knowing Christopher Columbus found America while seeking freedom… instead of reading his own words about seeking profit and what a nice bunch of slaves he’d found. Guess he got his profit. And anything but freedom was given.
Do you feel like you’re reeling? I do! Rapidly, change over takes us. When the heat is turned up water slowly heats, and slowly heats. What a quick change it is from gently churning to a roiling boil! So, too, it is when our society heats up. Who we are is exposed.
Are we at our cores seeking God, or seeking profit? Seeking the reign of God on earth, or seeking to reign on Earth?
Trauma, hurts, chaos, these take off our masks and expose who we are. Rather than one or two people hurting, the entire world is hurting right now. It means the world is awakening to itself in many different ways.
Consider what’s happened just this year… The trauma of the Australian fires in January with 500 million animals dying; the almost war in Iran and Iraq led us into February we signed a peace agreement with the Taliban. March we got hit with COVID quarantines around the world. And the DOW plunged for a new record loss. And then it just kept beating this record over and over again. In April we realized we weren’t going to be quarantined for just a week or two and had an Easter at home. And the Pentagon confirmed UFO videos… we barely even blinked at that! … In May the Black Lives Matter protests began. There is a gigantic oil leak killing the arctic and almost war in South and North Korea. June? Millions of covid cases. A half million dead. No end in sight. Climate change on track for mass human death within 30 years as countries redouble economies to make up for loss wealth during COVID.
Somewhere in all that mix health protections for GLBTQ persons was stripped; 50 some EPA rules were stripped including the ones that say you can’t build houses on top of industrial waste sites; we had record ice melts and a new hole in the ozone and record floods and storms and…
… and we had personal losses. Personal fears. Personal family and friends disagreements. Personal bad medical news and personal sorrows.
PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder. It happens when one trauma, one set of super badness, isn’t healed before the next trauma happens. When the world is bombarded over and over again, we develop world-wide PTSD responses.
PTSD responses are reacting with more stress to a situation than the situation calls for. So, for instance, the white woman in Michigan who blocked a black woman from leaving Kroger’s because the black woman’s son had stood on the bottom shelf to reach something on a top shelf. And the white woman didn’t like that.
Blocking the black woman’s car until police force you to move is way more than what the situation called for. She’s taking other trauma – any of the above or some of her own – and reacting to this past trauma to the tiny little event of seeing a kid do something she wouldn’t let her own kids do.
Spoons. With permission, I share this story about my husband and I. We ran out of kitchen spoons. All were dirty. And it was too much. First for him, and then for me. We both got angry and teary eyed and frustrated. Really – the situation called for one of us to just wash the dishes. Or a single spoon so we both had one. But the day’s stress and anxiety. The day’s worries. The world’s worries and our worries – everything was too much. We over reacted to the current situation because all the other things were not yet healed from.
A lot of people are out of spoons. A lot of people are stressed and short tempered. A lot of people are hurting.
Does it permit random acts of overreaction? Does it mean blocking the woman at Kroger’s was okay? No. But it does help us to realize we, ourselves, need to take a breather.
We need to be more intentional about our prayer life. Our quiet time. About naming what stresses us – and coming to each other and God with these things.
Names are powerful. Names let you have power over something. Name what worries you:
(…)
Breath with me a moment.
In… 1… 2… 3… 4…
Out 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6…
In… 1… 2… 3… 4…
Out 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6…
In… Do not be afraid…
Out… His eye is on the sparrow…
In… My peace I give…
Out… Beyond understanding…
God we name these worries. (…) (…)
We give them to you.
We set these burdens down.
In exchange for your lighter yoke.
Amen.
In all of this chaos and change. In all of this strife and conflict. In all our misunderstandings – God is present. God takes notice of a single sparrow dying. This happens all the time all around the world. We don’t notice most of the death. But God does. And God cares. God cares enough about us to know how many hairs on our head. We don’t know this about ourselves. What we experience, what we fear, what keeps us up at night… God knows. And cares about.
This is not the first time rapid change has swept humanity and it won’t be the last. Jesus called them birthing pangs. Hard. Painful. Coming and going. A sign of God’s reign breaking more and more into the world. A sign of the world giving birth to a new reality that, with the mercy of God and the discipleship of ourselves, is more and more an earthly reality that reflects God’s heavenly realm.
When it gets overwhelming and we feel lost, Jesus tells us that ” those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” In other words… when our lives get lost… literally we die for Jesus’ Way or if we lose them in another way — to sorrow, to chaos, to pain for others or the world — when we care so much we hurt… we begin to live.
Gandhi rephrased Jesus this way: “The best way to find your life is to lose your life in service to others.”
I hear here encouragement. When we reach the end of our rope and it’s too much – we can let go and let God. When we die to ourselves, to our families, to our friends, to our old ways of being… we are reborn as a new person who is more Christ-like. When we let go of our old beliefs, our old ways of seeing the world, it is painful. But out of the pain of releasing that old self… a new self emerges.
Each day Jesus calls us to be more authentically ourselves to ourselves, to others, and to the world. God sees and knows us – all the way to our core. And in our core God sees the image of God’s self. A beautiful core. A beautiful soul. Uniquely crafted for each one of us. Full of unique talents and skills and ideas. A soul made out of love and made to love. And that soul is protected by the Spirit of God. Sealed, as we say in baptism, marked as one of the souls growing in the universal Church of Christ.
So, to refer to another Disney movie, “Show yourself. Step into your power.” (Frozen II)
We don’t know what tomorrow holds but that God will holds us there. And that is our power. Our reassurance. Our victory. We have already died and have been reborn into the reign of God. Yeah. Life is scary. Yeah. Change is scary. Yeah. There’s a lot of great big good things and great big bad things happening all at once. But in it all? God’s love rests on even the sparrows. On the crickets. On the string bugs and minnows and earth worms. On frogs and butterflies. On ephemeral clouds. On single rain drops. God’s love is on us.
That doesn’t change.
And that is the source of our power and strength to carry on, to pick up our cross, and keep doing “the next right thing” (Frozen II)
May God bless the space among us all until we meet in person again!
Amen!
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 