Sunday, August 4, 2019

A call to abundant living!




As I read today's gospel, I knew I wanted to head somewhere towards greed, the need to build up our own reserves at the expense of others and then…and then stupid things were said, another meaningless mass shooting, the threat of executions, and religious leaders gathered at the border…

But as Stephen Colbert says in the meantime.
In the meantime, …

“It is not a sound normally associated with the border, particularly in its latest role as a national symbol of incalculable political charge.
But there it was, as unmistakable as the pink seesaws that prompted it: laughter.
Two architects in the San Francisco Bay area are responsible for the installation over the weekend of the three seesaws that briefly graced a small stretch of the nearly-2,000-mile swath of land where the United States abuts Mexico. Videos of the seesaw have drawn millions of views after one was posted on twitter by Mexican actor Mauricio Martinez.
The project draws power from its simplicity, the way it presented a vision of another reality at the border that contrasts with the one created by the heated immigration debate.”[1]

In the meantime, … I just saw this though it happened a few weeks ago

“World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed at the US-Mexico border Saturday to make a statement about global unity, urging listeners to "build bridges, not walls."
The classical musician brought his touring Bach Project to Laredo, Texas, in hopes that his music will connect people with each other no matter their cultural differences.
"I've lived my life at the borders. Between cultures. Between disciplines. Between musics. Between generations," said Ma, who performed with the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge, which connects Texas and Mexico, as a backdrop behind him. "In culture, we build bridges, not walls. A country is not a hotel and it's not full."[2]

In the meantime, …

“Francisco Erwin Galicia, a rising high school senior in Edinburg, Tex., had set off on a Texas road trip on June 27 to attend a college soccer team tryout only to end up accused of lying about his citizenship as authorities questioned the authenticity of his documents, according to his attorney, Claudia Galan.
He had been traveling to North Texas with his brother and a group of friends for the scouting event when they were stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint in the South Texas town of Falfurrias, about 65 miles north of their hometown, Galan said.
They were asked for papers. And Galicia had plenty, including a wallet-sized Texas birth certificate, a Texas ID card and Social Security card, Galan said.”[3] They didn’t believe him “ he was held with 60 other men and not allowed to shower for the 23 days he was held, and by the time he was released he had lost 26 pounds. "It was inhumane how they treated us," he said. "It got to the point where I was ready to sign a deportation paper just to not be suffering there anymore. I just needed to get out of there."[4]

“And in March of this year, 9-year-old Julia Medina was detained by CBP for 32 hours despite her being a U.S. citizen.
Though she's an American, Medina's family lives in Tijuana, and they cross the border each morning to get to school. On a Monday morning, CBP detained her and her 14-year-old brother, Oscar, saying she didn't look like the photo in her passport, according to NBC San Diego. CBP said the elementary student, who was questioned without her parents present, "provided inconsistent information during her inspection." The agency reportedly had no explanation for why it took 32 hours to confirm her citizenship and release her, though in that time they accused her brother, who is also a U.S. citizen, of human smuggling and tried to have him sign a document saying his sister was his cousin. Medina was finally released after her mother pleaded with the Mexican consulate to contact U.S. immigration authorities.”[5]

In the meantime, as this week we recall the bombing of Japan… the bulletin of atomic scientists report we are still two minutes before midnight on the doomsday clock

“As the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board prepared for its first set of Doomsday Clock discussions this fall, it began referring to the current world security situation as a “new abnormal.” This new abnormal is a pernicious and dangerous departure from the time when the United States sought a leadership role in designing and supporting global agreements that advanced a safer and healthier planet. The new abnormal describes a moment in which fact is becoming indistinguishable from fiction, undermining our very abilities to develop and apply solutions to the big problems of our time. The new abnormal risks emboldening autocrats and lulling citizens around the world into a dangerous sense of anomie and political paralysis.”[6]

Where do I go, what can I say?  My heart breaks daily and I get angry, and I pray and I pray and I pray and yet the world goes on spiraling into a cultural mess that divides, alienates and blames the other.  Our country today has become a hoarder of goods and prosperity and has decided that we need to store up what we have for a better tomorrow as opposed to sharing it and seeking an egalitarian future.

You would think that the world has taught us enough of how hate and prejudice prosper and grows and how to avoid just such situations and yet It goes on and on.

It is funny ok maybe not…but there is an ongoing argument about just how political a sermon should get…Why isn’t there an argument on just how religious politics should get?  You see, dear government and world, my faith is not crossing into your government. your government and it’s practices and it’ language has crossed my faith!

You crossed my faith when you allowed slavery to run rampant, you crossed my faith when you ignored the rise of Hitler and you allow the same divisive rhetoric permeate our culture, you crossed my faith when you dropped bombs on Japan and then increase our nuclear arsenal, you crossed my faith when you failed to serve veterans properly and continue to leave them in the dust , you crossed my faith when you separated Children from their families and incarcerated them in prison camps…

So, I am angry, I am upset, I am prayed out…not really…but as I list all these things…all these overwhelming historical facts and articles and noise…noise, noise, its nothing but noise…

It is just noise when we get lost in this huge picture…It is so much noise when it over powers us and makes us feel small and insignificant, it is just noise when we decide to close of the outer world and just focus on ourselves

This comes back down to being present to the here and now, being present to our spiritual needs; our prayer life, our quiet time with God, our engaging in the holy spirit which is the answer to our prayers and then listening, deep listening for the movement of the spirit…

“The rich farmer is a fool not because he is wealthy or because he saves for the future, but because he appears to live only for himself, and because he believes that he can secure his life with his abundant possessions.

When the rich man talks in this parable, he talks only to himself, and the only person he refers to is himself: “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry’” (Luke 12:17-19).

The rich man’s land has produced abundantly, yet he expresses no sense of gratitude to God or to the workers who have helped him plant and harvest this bumper crop. He has more grain and goods in storage than he could ever hope to use, yet seems to have no thought of sharing it with others, and no thought of what God might require of him. He is blind to the fact that his life is not his own to secure, that his life belongs to God, and that God can demand it back at any time.

The rich man learns the hard way what the writer of Ecclesiastes realized -- quite simply, that you can’t take it with you. All that we work so hard for in life will end up in someone else’s hands, and as Ecclesiastes puts it, “Who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 2:19).[7]

We may not be able to act on a national level, except by voting, but we can act on the local level. We are collecting items to be sent to our church at the border in Arizona to help them in their mission work.  We support the denominations which in turn send clergy, chaplains and theologians to address our concerns in the daily business of our government where the cross the lines into our purview.

We serve our community here with the food for kids at school program.  I wonder what it would take?  How many more hands to make this happen at the high school level as well as the grade school.

We have the beautiful community meals but what would it take to make that happen more than once a month.  Let the Community know that this is a free community meal for all! If you can afford it please donate ten dollars, if you can’t please volunteer, if you can’t volunteer please enjoy the meal.

I would love a team to sit down with and look at how we do this and what we can do to improve it.  Can we invite guest chefs to perhaps do a cooking lesson that then turns into the meal of that night? Just a thought.

Let’s do more to explore what we can do as a community for our community.  Where is the greatest need and what skills do, we have to meet it?

As we engage in our local charities.  As we engage in our community as the loving face of Christ.  As we seek to serve our neighbor out of our abundance then we set the example.  Then we become the norm of how a loving community lives, acts, and speaks! 

Yes, we are but one small community yet we have abundant resources,

If we reach out to all of our fellow congregations 134 UCC 57 UMC 24 UU congregations, that’s 215 congregations. What can we achieve?

 Even if we do not share ministries with them, we share core values that are being expressed over and over again.  If we lift up the love that is Christ in our communities then our communities are lifted up in love as well and then love will win.

“Like the rich farmer, we are tempted to think that having large amounts of money and possessions stored up will make us secure. Sooner or later, however, we learn that no amount of wealth or property can secure our lives. No amount of wealth can protect us from a genetically inherited disease, for instance, or from a tragic accident. No amount of wealth can keep our relationships healthy and our families from falling apart. In fact, wealth and property can easily drive a wedge between family members, as in the case of the brothers fighting over their inheritance at the beginning of this text.

Most importantly, no amount of wealth can secure our lives with God. In fact, Jesus repeatedly warns that wealth can get in the way of our relationship with God. “Take care!” he says. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).”[8]

This is a call to share our abundance. To evaluate our resources. To look at what the future of our church should be and invest in it wisely.  This is an investment in our community and ministries.  As we set this example and continue to minister to the community around us, and as our denominations continue to minister to the world around us, we know that one day we will see the realization of the prayer that as in heaven so here on earth.

Keep praying, keep listening   keep growing in God and we soon will see the headlines I shared will dwindle.  So, as a final thought let us pray into our abundance

From The Light of God that we are.
From The Love of God that we are.
From The Power of God that we are.
From The Heart of God that we are.
Let us Decree-
WE dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance.
The Abundance of God is our Infinite Source.
The River of Life never stops flowing and it flows through us with lavish expression and bountiful possibilities.
Good comes to us through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless us.
We now open our hearts to receive God’s goodness.
Nothing is too good to be true.
Nothing is too wonderful to have happen.
With God as our Source nothing is impossible.
Let us not be burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come.
By the power of our faith, coupled with our purposeful fearless actions and our deep relationship with God, our future is created and our abundance made manifest.
we ask and accept that we are lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. Our minds are quiet.
From this day forward let us give freely and fearlessly into Life and know that Life gives back to us with a fabulous increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. God provides for us in wondrous ways for the work that we do.
We are indeed grateful. Amen.[9]


[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/07/30/two-artists-built-seesaw-across-us-mexico-border-then-video-kids-playing-it-went-viral/?utm_term=.ae3535d4a0ef
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/14/us/yo-yo-ma-us-mexico-border-trnd/index.html
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/23/francisco-erwin-galicia-ice-cpb-us-citizen-detained-texas/?utm_term=.71dabe5b5db9
[4] https://www.gq.com/story/border-patrol-detained-9-year-old-american-girl
[5] Ditto
[6] https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
[7] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4048
[8] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4048
[9] https://www.angelawakened.com/2015/12/the-most-powerful-abundance-prayer.html

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