Readings for Pentecost 12, Lectionary 22A

• Jeremiah 15:15-21 and Psalm 26:1-8 
• Romans 12:9-21  
• Matthew 16:21-28

Before Our Eyes, by Pastor Kinsey
Mason grows up before our very eyes, in the movie Boyhood.  Following Mason, who’s played by Ellar Coltrane, over the actual 12 years of Mason’s/slash Ellar’s life, beginning at the age of 8 – is very moving, and of course, completely innovative!  Even though nothing earth-shattering, nothing out of the ordinary happens, it manages to get inside you, and change, how you look at, yourself. 

This is not a documentary, but a fictional story, presented in real time.  Mason, grows up in front of our eyes, along with actors, Ethan Hawke, as Mason Sr., and Patricia Arquette, as Olivia, his mom.  His parents are already divorced in the first scene, and Mason lives with his mom.  She will divorce twice more, before finding a healthy and compatible partner – and through those tumultuous relationships, she manages to develop her talent, even while keeping a roof over their heads.  His dad slowly grows up during the film, from a self-centered, rock-star-wanna-be, to a much more involved and caring father to Mason, though never more than a week-end dad.

And so Mason must learn to find himself and his place in the world, as he literally grows up before our very eyes.

As a high school junior, Mason shows an unusual talent for photography.  One day, when the rest of the class is working on a photo assignment digitally, on their computers, Mason is perfecting his artistic eye using good old fashioned film.  His teacher, Mr. Turlington, finds Mason in the dark room, developing his latest photographs, and delivers what he thinks is a motivational speech – that Mason’s basically wasting his talent, and he needs to grow up and take his art seriously. Not everyone has the talent and gift he does, but unless you work hard at developing a “career” you will be just like all the other loser artists – and you’re better than that.

Mason is gracious, but not convinced.  So Mr. Turlington gives Mason a new assignment, to cover the HS football game, thinking that it will show Mason how to cultivate a trade with his photography skills.  Mason goes to the game alright, but he shoots artsy shots of the football equipment and people in the stands, instead of the game!

In his senior year, Mason is working as a bus boy in a chain restaurant.  The manager catches him laughing with a waitress in the kitchen, because they just shared some un-eaten shrimp off a customer’s plate, instead of throwing it out.  The touching interaction between the teenagers, is suddenly arrested, when the manager bursts in to accuse Mason of slacking on the job.  Mason points out that he’s otherwise been working hard, and it’s not his fault that the other bus boy assigned for that shift didn’t show. 

Finally, when Mason’s girlfriend is breaking up with him, right before they are set to go to college together, Mason takes it pretty hard.  His dad shows up to give him support, telling him, she wasn’t the right one, and he knew it from the beginning.  She was too square for him, and didn’t get his artistic side, and, don’t worry, there’ll be other girls at college!  Mason likes his dad, and appreciates the effort, but it doesn’t really help him to get over his loss. 

Well, surely, the Golden Rule, if not one of the Ten Commandments of our time, as author Garret Keizer says, is, “Thou shalt be supportive!”  Parents and friends, practice unfailing support!  Often it means simply projecting, our issues, and what has worked for us, on to others.  But Mason, bless his heart, as desperate as he is to find parents and friends that love and appreciate him, for who is, doesn’t acquiesce easily to their often, less-than-helpful attempts at supporting him, as he continues to grow up before our very eyes.  Mason really does have artistic talent.  But he’s also still a kid, and needs more time to figure it out.  Mason needs love and honesty, from those who are willing to go deep with him, in facing life, in all its complexities. 

Boyhood, I’d have to say, is not a classic film, but it is, honest! 

Jesus, has 12 supporters, who follow him, more or less, anyway, to the end.  But when they try to become supportive teachers, thinking they better understand how the world works, or supportive bosses, who are on the lookout for following the narrow road to success, Jesus knows he’s being played. 

In our reading from last week, when Jesus takes the disciples to Caesarea Philippi, the Las Vegas of Palestine, headlined by the Roman god Pan,  and asked them, who do people say that I am; who do you say that I am?  Peter confesses, he is the Messiah, the anointed one of God. 

And this story continues in our Reading today, as Jesus begins to explain what it means to be the Messiah.  He has come to reveal a new way, different from the other gods, different from the religions which had infected the world with a contagious mechanism of violence people used, and still use, against each other, that we call holy or sacred, because it can keep the peace for the winners, for us, or whoever that is, but only for a time, until the next time it has to be played out all over again.  But this is not God’s way!  On the cross, Jesus reveals our sin in this system.  God’s way is not conquering, lording it over others, but rather demanding justice for all, living Shalom, peace-fully.  Jesus tells his disciples that the elders, the chief priests and scribes will arrest and condemn Jesus, and insist that he is the trouble maker.  If we just get rid of him, we can have peace and calm again – he can be our scapegoat, and order will be restored, if we kill him.  On the cross, Jesus reveals this lie!  (The truth has come out!)

The disciples know one thing, that he is controversial enough that the authorities, and 1%ers in power, probably do seek to kill him.  But they want Jesus to fight back – because, their minds, being infected by the ‘sacred violence contagion, they think they cannot fail, God, after all, will be on their side.  But Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 

Jesus came to save the whole world by revealing our human failings to live this life God gave us, not by grace and generosity and peace, but to reveal our false, sacred-violence, that demands others, pay the price in our place, sometimes in a noble effort to protect ourselves and our loved ones – but still a contagion that is not divine, but of this world.

“If you want to become my follower,” Jesus tells Peter and the 12, then “take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

It’s easy to be, a friendly, or parental supporter, if you avoid the hard stuff.  But is that what your friend, or family member, really wants, or needs? 

Jesus is God’s Son, because he perfectly mimicked the love and grace of the kingdom and realm of God, here among us, where the culture of sin and sacred violence is so very contagious.  He didn’t ask his followers to be kindly surface supporters of the status quo, and mimic the virus of violence.  He asked us to become more fully human, living a life balanced somewhere between the two stumbling blocks Jesus identified: 1) sacrificing our ego’s for others, to the point of playing the victim, and, 2) being so self-absorbed that we can only take care of #1.  To become fully human, as God has structured and created this world, God sent Jesus, a healthy contagion, a model of Self that is self-respecting, and that respects every other Self in the world, by insisting on peace and justice for all.

The death and resurrection of Jesus reveals this to the world!  “For what will it profit us if we gain the whole world but forfeit our life,” said Jesus?  “Or what will we give in return for our life?” 

Mason had a difficult “boyhood.”  By the end of the movie, he is still searching to become more fully human.  But we hope that, maybe, just maybe, by staying true to who God made him, and the talent and gift he’s been given, he might have the courage, and find the faith, to live into it.  Not to settle for surface supporters, in his life, but to go deep, to take up his cross, and follow the one… who has walked this way, before.  

Readings for Aug 17, 2014
10th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15A

 
• Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 and Psalm 67  
• Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32  
• Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-2

A Place At The Table, sermon by Pastor Fred Kinsey
We all have our reasons for disliking the 3 year lectionary, and the readings appointed for us to read from, each Sunday.  The most popular complaint is that we just don’t get to hear a good deal of material from the bible, we miss a lot of parts.  Not that anyone wants to hear all the “begats,” like, Noah begat Shem, and Shem begat Aram, and Aram begat Mash, and so on. 

My own personal ‘beef’ with the Lectionary is more the opposite – of all the readings they do pick, why did they choose this Gospel reading, today!  Couldn’t we just skip this embarrassing side-story, which takes place far from the action, outside Israel, and portrays Jesus being so, politically Un-correct – “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” Jesus tells the Canaanite woman?!  What are preachers supposed to say about him, after that, without appearing to rationalize his rabid remarks?  But, every 3 years, I get to try again! 

There is something here that both, convicts us, and pulls us forward; that feels like a train wreck, but we can’t let go of; that lays bare our deepest most vulnerable shortcomings, and yet insists that God’s mysterious Holy Spirit, ever present, ever changing, must be there, somewhere! 

It’s striking, first of all, that this embarrassment we feel, was not the feeling Matthew’s gospel readers had.  Times change!  The first believers, being Jewish Christians, would have been much more scandalized and embarrassed at what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees, in the first half of our gospel reading where Jesus challenges their customs about washing their hands before eating:

     it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.

And when Peter says he’s still confused, Jesus makes it even more explicit:

     Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?

Ouch!  Sewer jokes – that’s not where I’d go with the sensitive customs of my own people!  But the point is, for us, this part usually runs off our backs.  The issue of hand-washing before dinner, that Jesus is addressing, is so passé to us – I mean, we rarely even think about sitting down together for dinner, much less worry about how we set the table!

But for the disciples of Jesus, who are traveling with him to get away from it all, to Tyre and Sidon, to Gentile, outsider territory along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, to a downtrodden occupied people that the Israelites long ago defeated – where is the crime in Jesus dismissing such a rude person who they don’t know, and feel they have no real responsibility to, by telling the truth?  They probably felt they were being relatively polite to her, compared to how they really felt! 

So, the point of the story, then, still remains, now:  It’s about the validity of everyone’s faith, and the power of gospel message to convict us in the lives we live today, while creating believers in the Messiah, David’s royal Son – it’s about the boundaries which come tumbling down in the person of this Anointed one, through the blowing of the Holy Spirit’s never-ending work. 

Jesus was Jewish by birth, and crucified as, the king of the Jews.  He was also a prophet, bringer of redemption to the Gentiles. 

In Tyre and Sidon, Jesus might even be in prayer, because he has gone far away, to be on retreat, after a grueling schedule of ministry –  of teaching authoritatively in parables, healing whole towns of people, feeding 5,000 and walking on the Sea of Galilee – and Jesus is perhaps too deep in meditation, or, too exhausted to even respond to the Canaanite woman.  So, the disciples, ever-slow to understand, think this is a cue to shoo her away.  But in her persistence – persistence that knows what she has come for – the Canaanite woman rushes right up to Jesus, to kneel before this One she recognizes as king in a posture of worship, and petitions him as the religious royalty she knows him to be: “Son of David, help me,” she says! 

Trying one more time to dismiss her as a low priority, in his overwhelming, not yet completed mission, he belies the privilege of his heritage, which to our ears, amplifies the injustice of their separation in so many ways, by religion, race, ethnicity, and gender, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs,” says Jesus.

Without missing a beat, the Canaanite woman responds: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.”  She sees, not just what she wants to see, but what is really there.  She sees the true king of the heavenly empire, come down to earth, not the human-made boundaries of religion.  She sees, in this man on retreat, the Savior of the empire of this world.  And when she cleverly indicates that she really only needs the crumbs from the whole loaf of Israel, that fall to the floor, she is actually asking for much more, ‘a place at the table!’ 

So, one actually has to know what one is seeing, to see what is actually there.

This week the nation was shocked by what it saw, in Ferguson, MO, through the eye-witness accounts of the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, raising his hands in surrender, pleading “don’t shoot,” through the pictures of his body lying in the street in a pool of his own blood, and the film clips in the days following, of a militarized local police department in full battle-ready gear, compliments of a spending spree by Homeland Security, that only encouraged separation, misunderstanding, and confrontation, in an “us vs. them” posture.

In Ferguson, however, residents were not shocked, at least not in the same way.  What I mean is, they know this treatment is a possibility for their black sons, and it is so common place that mothers and fathers teach their children at an early age, how not to resist arrest, in the hopes of surviving on the streets.  They know it is not uncommon to be treated as –pardon the expressioin- animals, dogs living by the crumbs that fall from their, 21st century, master’s table.  It is the rest of us, the insiders, like the disciples, who do not live there, and who have rarely been on, this foreign territory, who are only now, perhaps, coming to see what is actually (happening) there.  If any of us can take it for granted that when we call 911 the Police will come and protect and defend us, then we live in a different Zip Code from Ferguson. 

And yet, like the Canaanite woman, Ferguson residents responded overwhelmingly positive, taking the high ground, if you will, protesting peacefully, using their anger to join hands across the racial divide, asking again for what they have always wanted, for Police to ‘serve and protect’ them too, and so, have shown an awesome and amazing faith, hoping to transform this horrific nightmare, into the possibility of something redeemable and good. 

If we admire the faith of the Canaanite woman, who revealed a faith stronger than the priests and Pharisees of Jesus’ own tribe and clan, how can we not practice what we preach?  “God’s work, our hands,” as the ELCA slogan goes!  How will they know of our faith, unless we are the ones to reach out, and grasp their hands, across the divide?  Otherwise this will be just one more news cycle that fades away, and with it the powerful meaning of our gift of faith.

In occupied 1st century Palestine, Jesus came to plant God’s empire squarely in the middle of an overwhelmingly oppressive regime that claimed ‘it’ was sovereign.  He used sophisticated street theatre and courageous table fellowship to transform the world.  And so, as we strengthen our faith together, we learn to see Jesus for who he is, even when it seems like he’s not listening – or like we’re being ignored, like we are less-than. 

“When we go off into the world, it is important to know what we are looking for—and what we are seeing,” says Pastor Rufus Burton.  “This is where the readings for this Sunday, are encouraging.”  The Canaanite woman knows she is not currently recognized as one of them, as within the boundaries of the Covenant Chosen People.  She is used to living in a different neighborhood, feeling the oppression and exclusion of being under-served, yet as minorities often are, she is well acquainted with the dominant culture, the community the disciples are from, including the king who lives among them now.  “One actually has to know what one is seeing, to see what is actually there.” (Rufus Burton, CC, 8/14/14 Living by the Word)

God offers each and every one of us, a place at the table.  We are Christ’s body, broken and shared – from one loaf.  Only then – when everyone is at the table – will that which divides us, begin to be healed – and we will hear yet more clearly, Christ’s declaration, ‘People, great is your faith!’   

Readings for August 10, 2014
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 19A

• 1 Kings 19:9-18 and Psalm 85:8-13  
• Romans 10:5-15   
• Matthew 14:22-33

Getting In and Out of the Boat, Pastor Kinsey
My cousins and my brother and sister were already in the water.  But I stood on the dock, frozen, in more ways than one.  I must have been all of 10 or 11 years old. 

I wanted so bad to get in and splash around with them, swim and dive off the raft.  But the summer air felt cool to me, and just the thought of getting in made me shiver.  I had already gained the nick name, blue lips, for the way my lips turned a purplish hue after being in the clear, cool, spring-fed waters, of our Wisconsin lake, for only a short time.  As the clouds blocked the sun momentarily, I backed away, and I wrapped my towel around me.  I just couldn’t take that first step.  It’s a pattern I repeat to this day – on the edge of the water! 

Quite possibly it came from a time I was even younger, when our family was attending my mom’s cousins’ wedding in Springfield, IL.  And the last day, as we were getting ready to check out of our motel room, my brother and I were at loose ends.  And so we wandered off, and found ourselves by the outdoor pool.  No one was there except a couple of maintenance guys, but we didn’t pay much attention to them.  Dressed in shirt, shorts, and shoes, we didn’t have time to get in, but as I walked around the pool, I decided to, just step up on the diving board, I don’t know why.  I had good balance, and no fear, but unfortunately, as I confidently walked out toward the end, that’s when I discovered why the maintenance men were there, that early summer morning – to attach the diving board to its platform!  It had been laid in place, but not yet bolted on.  And as my brother describes it, as I walked out to the end, the board gave way ever so gently, and for a moment it looked like I was walking on the water!  To me, it felt a lot less graceful, like I was sinking down fast, like everything was out of my control, and the very cold water was about to swallow me up!

So, that could be where my fear of water came from – I’m just sayin’!

Jesus insisted that the disciples get into the boat and cross over to the other side without him.  The Sea of Galilee is famous for storms blowing up quickly out of nowhere, and apparently this was one of them.  The boat was battered by the waves, for the wind was against them, all night.  Jesus had needed to take a breather, and go and pray by himself alone.  Like Moses before him, he finds God, by going up the mountain.  Finally, sometime after 4, 5, in the morning, ‘in the darkest hour before the dawn,’ Jesus comes looking for them.  But he comes not in another boat, but simply, walking across the Lake, and when they see him they start freaking out that he’s a ghost, a bad omen, a grim Reaper of a sort.  But he’s just the opposite, he has the power to conquer the chaos of the storm.  And Jesus calls out to them, “Take heart, it is I” [or, I Am who I Am – as God told Moses from the burning bush]; “do not be afraid.” 

Peter, characteristically, gets all excited, but wants to make sure it is Jesus, so he asks him to prove it: Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water!  And Jesus said, Come.  So Peter confidently gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water toward Jesus.

There was one way, I learned when I was much older, to conquer my fear of the water.  It was when Kim and I moved to the UP, and we swam together, for exercise. Sometimes we went to the beautiful pool at the George Young golf course that allowed lap swimming.  But in the summer, it was Kevin Jarvi who told us, in his good Finlander way, “if it gets too hot der, don’t worry you can always jump in the nearest lake and cool down!”  It was really hot that summer, when we started going to Ice Lake, just down the road.  It was called that, because they used to cut huge blocks of ice off the lake in the winter and store them underground, to sell, long before refrigerators became popular.  But our goal was to swim, purely for exercise, and we swam all the way across the lake, and back, maybe a half hour or 45 minutes.  And even in Ice Lake, that was ok with me.  I got my faith and courage to step in, from the task I wanted to accomplish – something that would be good for me, and our family, because it would help me stay healthy.

Peter, took courage, when he realized it was Jesus.  He felt the gift of faith.  But then, he noticed the strong wind, and suddenly he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be doing this!  Sure, if Jesus was divine, he, might be able to.  But Peter, couldn’t remember what the point of it was, and he started to sink. 

It’s Elijah, in our 1st Reading, who ran into this very same dilemma, only worse.  He had conquered all the false prophets, quite an accomplishment, but now he was obsessed with the threats of just one, Jezebel.  So Elijah retreats to a cave to get away, and pleads for God’s presence.  This is the lowest point of Elijah’s ministry, he feels like he’s been abandoned, like he’s the only one left with faith, like everyone is against him.  Not even the storms of wind, earthquake, and fire, move Elijah to rediscover his faith.  So God comes to him in the sheer silence, hoping to provide a transformation of perspective, after all that Elijah has seen and been through.  But still, Elijah is not moved.  He feels spent and alone, even though, as God says, there are some 7,000 faithful ones, who remain. 

But Elijah is not able to recover, unwilling to take the next step in faith and courage that is necessary.  He’s frozen in a kind of PTSD fog of fear and inability to cope with everyday life.  His ministry is over.  But compassionately, God offers Elijah a way out – he can pass his mantle on to his disciple, Elisha. 

The church gathering that Matthew’s gospel is addressed to, is having difficult days too.  They are frozen and fearful.  Where is Jesus for them now?  Can they count on God’s presence to pull them through?  Should they trust stepping out of the boat? 

Here in our gathering, at Unity, we certainly have our challenges too.  Is our faith strong enough to step out and go where we need to go?  Where is the Spirit of Jesus in our lives, all these centuries later?  What is it that God is calling us to do, here in this time, and this place? 

After Jesus and Peter got back in the boat, the wind ceased.  Some have suggested that Peter didn’t need to get out of the boat to prove anything.  The power of the Spirit of Jesus, is in the boat, with all the rest of the disciples – the boat being one of the best and strongest symbols of the early church assembly, and people of God.  The boat is where we live together in community.  It takes all of us to navigate the rough and challenging waters. 

Our faith grows by worship and prayer, hearing the Word and sharing in the Meal.  We nurture and support one another in the boat.  And even though the night is always darkest before the dawn, we find our courage when we step out, all together, into our neighborhood, and city, and world, putting our faith into action courageously.  From our beautiful old boat, we demonstrate the resurrection good news that changes and transforms us, we overcome our mistakes of acting alone, and we find the purpose that Christ promises us, in living our lives. 

Who doesn’t want to jump in, and overcome our fears – to play in the lake with our family and friends?  What is it that God is calling us to, in our boat, that can ignite our courageous faith, and overcome our fears, and un-freeze our feet, that our joy in the Good News of Christ, may find its purpose? 

Readings for August 3, 2014
8th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 13

• Isaiah 55:1-5 and Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21  
• Romans 9:1-5  
• Matthew 14:13-21

Kingdom Come Symposia, Pastor Kinsey
It was a beautiful day for gathering the group on the green grass yesterday.  We’d been out in the warm afternoon sun, in groups of three, for the last couple hours, and before sending us home, we all sat together in our group of, not quite 50. 

Would you like a snack, Jackie asked me, holding out a granola bar?  Oh, and I forgot to pass out the waters too!  Who wants water?  And we all took a bottle, seated in our circle in the shade of the trees. 

Ok, let’s debrief how it went.  Here’s a form to fill out so you can tell us how many voter registration forms you’re returning.  Remember, they have to be complete, otherwise they won’t count.  And it’s illegal to fill it in yourself.  So if you have some incompletes, that’s alright, just list that on the next line of the form.

As we tallied the number of valid forms, we realized it put ONE Northside, as a whole group, over the 1,000 mark of new registered voters!  And everyone gave a cheer and a round of applause. 

We were feeling full and satisfied on this glorious day.  It wasn’t just the snacks and the refreshing water, or the beautiful summer weather, but the accomplishment of this milestone, of reaching 1,000 registered voters.  True, the goal was 5,000 and so we still have a ways to go!  But at least we were now counting by the 1,000’s, and it gave us hope we could make it.  As the group broke up, feelings were high. 

The high degree of importance for the mission and message of Jesus, is nowhere more clear than in the feeding of the 5,000, which is the only miracle story that’s recorded in all four gospels. 

And this is the gospel story that our Unity Vision Statement is based on, using the one from Mark’s gospel, where the people sit down on the grass in groups of 50’s and 100’s.  I learned something new about this story, that I didn’t know before, when I dug a little deeper to understand the word “group”, in Greek, which means symposium, in the original language of Matthew and Mark, Luke and John. 

Greek symposia were common for hundreds of years before Jesus.  They were basically house parties, gatherings by invitation, and they varied in purpose, from the kind Plato and Socrates attended, which were an invitation to philosophical discussion and debate, with wine and cheese, of course.  But there were any number of themes: poetry readings, song, and musical performances, always by the guests;  debate about political issues, games, or, in some cases, just the eating and wine drinking as the focus.  And, oh yes, only the elite of society could attend!  They reclined in cushioned couches arranged in a special room, in a big circle.  It was strictly upper class.  The rest were there to serve them.

That Mark’s gospel uses this word, symposia, is no mistake.  The 5,000 who had followed Jesus to a deserted place, that is, away from the urban watchful eye of their occupiers, was reminiscent of the Exodus, when the Israelites followed Moses into the wilderness, to find their freedom.  The disciples actually wanted Jesus to dismiss the people, to go home to eat, but out there in that public place, they create their own symposia.  These followers of Jesus are anything but the elites of society.  Food insecurity was rampant for most everyone in 1st C. Palestine, due to the occupation.  Most people were living, hand to mouth, day to day, a subsistence existence and diet, with some variance, a little better or worse.  While the elites, the 1%, of Jesus’ day, including a few of his own people who cowed to the Roman over lords, even the priests in the Temple, had no worries and, food in abundance.  From Herod to the Emperor, gluttony has been documented, insatiable appetites, over the top wasting of food, a famished craving.

And so, when Jesus prays, “give us this day our daily bread,” it’s no joke, but a deep desire, for food security. 

When Isaiah says, “Ho, everyone who thirsts,
                come to the waters;
                and you that have no money,
                come, buy and eat!
                Come, buy wine and milk
                without money and without price.

This is God’s invitation to imagine the eschatological banquet that is the coming down as the kingdom and realm of God to overtake our world – a sign when, as Amos said, justice shall flow like a river, or as Mary sang, when the mighty will be brought down from their thrones - and so on! 

Jesus declares that, in God’s empire, the hungry will be fed.  Out of the meager food you are left with today, God will provide an everlasting banquet, just as Isaiah promised to Exiles in Babylon, a feast of fat things, and well-aged wine.  Jesus fed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, as a sign and a promise of what God’s kingdom will look like and what it should be, already. 

The greed and insatiable appetites of the rich elites today, are well documented too.  Not just political junkets to dine in the Caymans or Caribbean, but billionaires who want still more, squeezing those have the least, because they believe all the trash talk out there about our brothers and sisters, about “not working hard enough,” or not being smart enough, or not being the right skin color. 

Once, I sat in on a CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) Board meeting with a large group of religious leaders from all over Chicago.  We had bought just enough shares to participate.  It was a symposium of about 100 or more, and they were gathered that year to celebrate how they off-shored more of the tax money they owed than ever before, creating record profits at the expense of all the rest of us.  We stood up, one at time, to raise our voices against this insatiable appetite, and remind them that it had consequences to the well-being of real people and the good of our society as a whole – and asked them to repent.  Not wanting to hear this, they had their beefy security escort us out!  But that was alright, we didn’t really want to stay for the wine and cheese anyway! 

When Jesus refused to send the people home, and organized them into 50 and 100 member symposia, he was transforming the elite symposia of Greek-Helenistic culture all around him, into communities, the beginning of church communities, that were public churches, gathered around prayer, at the table of the Meal of Holy Communion, gathered around the gift of Christ’s body, filling us up to be Sent out and to multiply the “miracle of resurrection” to the world, one neighborhood at a time. 

Somehow, the Spirit of Christ, which is the body of Christ, keeps performing this miracle of multiplication: whenever food insecurity, or political corruption, or persecution of religion, or joblessness, or violence, or racism, or pure greedy appetites appear – Symposia, and faith communities, emerge, and grow, and organize, to overcome the oppression, the sin and deep root causes, from the Evil One. 

On the grass yesterday in Rodgers Park, our symposia – organized to engage voters in the public arena – gathered gratefully.  Like the 12 baskets of broken bread left over, there were some granola bars still uneaten in the plastic grocery bag, but the real miracle was, none of us had ever joined a symposia like this before.  And now 1,000 voters were registered that hadn’t been yesterday – people who care about our neighborhoods, who actually live and work in them. 

The vision of our symposia here at Unity, is to be an urban green space, welcoming everyone into a holy encounter, where we are changed, that all may be fed as Jesus feeds us.  In the church of Jesus Christ, prayer is tied to the polis, and the Spirit of Jesus is our organizer, you might say, and we are the leaders.