Ken Sehested,
Text: Hebrews 2:5-12 (The Message)
The main title of this sermon, “remembering the future,” is a nonsensical notion. How can you remember the future since it hasn’t happened yet? Maybe if you love science fiction, or if you’re a fan of the actor Michael J. Fox, you can imagine going “back to the future.” But remembering the future?
How silly is that, in a grown-up world?
Maybe, in our growing up, we have actually grown in, grown in on ourselves, grown sour on the world, grown weary of illusions, grown cynical about pious propaganda, pious politics, as well as pious religion.
I believe, however, that remembering the future is at the heart of our redemptive calling. Remembering the future is what we ritually practice each and every week in the celebration of the Eucharist, communion, the Lord’s Supper. It’s a ritual to remind us to remember the future each and every day. People on the Way of Jesus are by definition an unreasonable people—if, by reason, you mean the economic reasoning which generates extremes of wealth and poverty. If, by reason, you mean defense strategies that generate instability and terror. If, by reason, you mean the certainties which proclaim that you get is what you earn, that you are what you can buy, and that respect comes at the price of threat.
We are, by definition, an unreasonable people, because we believe that another world is possible. We believe that one day mercy will trump vengeance. We believe we’re headed for a party, not a purge. We believe the meek will inherit the earth. We believe that what the poor and the abandoned need is not money but friendship. If we are to be co-inheritors with the meek, we’d best spend some time with them. For we have much to learn—much to learn about the faith we profess.
Today is world communion Sunday. Our Presbyterian friends get credit for initiating this annual observance, back in the mid-1930s, then adopted in 1940—at the brink of world war—by the Federal Council of Churches (now National Council of Churches). I’m not sure if it’s celebrated much outside the US. And that may be because much of the world suspects that “world communion” holds the same promise of what we call “globalization.” A globalized economy is supposed to work for everyone. “Everyone has an even chance,” so we’re told. But casino owners say the same thing, knowing the process is heavily tilted toward the house.
Having said that, however, I’ve always thought one of the strengths of this congregation is its global vision. We have consistently made connections with people and events at a distance from our own neighborhoods.
Early this past summer I rediscovered a small 4” x 6” notebook I used to record the offerings we received in the first year after our founding in 2001. In fact, the very first offering we took as a congregation was not for our own support. Our very first offering was a mission grant to Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organization which was replanting olive trees destroyed by the Israeli army on the West Bank in Palestine. The total was $305.
In case you didn’t know this, the Circle of Mercy budget process requires that our annual mission grants line item be equal to 10% of everything else in the budget. And that line item is the only one that does not zero out at the end of the year. Meaning: if we don’t spend the allotted amount, we carry that surplus over to the next year. We don’t do that with any other line item. We maintain this commitment because when finances get tight, most congregations end up cutting the missions budget. This commitment involves a spiritual discipline as well as a budgetary practice: Relinquishing control over some portion of our assets reflects our convictions about God’s alternative economy. It is a counter-cultural habit that testifies against the rule of hoarding.
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There are a lot of courageous people in this small Circle. . . . (listing numerous examples)
Truth is, the majority of our acts of healing, our stands for justice, our pursuit of peace are anonymous, attracting no applause, no news reporters, rarely acknowledgment of any kind. Except in the heart of God. (Ethics is, as they say, what you do when no one is looking.)
§ § §
Many of you have seen the bumper sticker: The first line boldly proclaims, “Jesus is coming back soon!”
The second line adds: “Look busy!!”
Going and serving and telling the goodness of the news of grace and mercy we have come to experience in our own lives is surely part of our mission. But part of our mission is also learning to not be so busy, to be still and know, to opt out of the rat race, to come to experience the sheer relief of knowing the world’s healing is not finally up to us. Being exhausted in the world of nonprofit work can be as deafening as exhaustion in the for-profit world.
As believers we have parallel callings, distinct in their performance but woven together in their origins and growth. There is the call to sacrificial engagement with the world’s pain; and there is the call to relaxing into the confident quiet and stillness of the abiding presence of God. Their rhythm has its own ecology, its own alternating impulses, its own distinctive and mutually-reinforcing requirements and disciplines. The deeper we dig into our own souls, discovering the DNA of God’s love, the more loving, and forgiving, we will be in the world. And the more loving and forgiving we are in the world helps us dig deeper into the love of God. Neither precedes the other. Neither is more important than the other. The joining of these two are linked as much as breathing in and breathing out.
And the only way we can get it right is to remember the future, a future that in the book of Hebrews is referred to as “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” (The Message)
The secret to our sacramental vision, the secret that inspires our conviction that heaven’s regard has not abandoned earth’s remorse, is that the future is not determined by the past. If that were true, surely we all would burn in hell.
The Greek word that describes the early church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper is anamnesis. If you look it up in the dictionary, it means “a recollection of past events” or a “reminiscence.” It’s true that when we gather for communion we always tell a particular story, of Jesus’ final meal with his disciples. This is not a generic religious ritual. We are people of a particular story, though we believe the story to have global and even cosmic significance.
But we don’t simply reminiscence: yeah, so-and-so did such-and-such around some Palestinian dinner table back in the day. Anamnesis is more that historical accounting. Anamnesis means to re-member, to put the pieces back together, to be animated with the same Spirit which drove Jesus to his confrontation with the authorities. It was not a confrontation he desired. The next to last prayer he said before his death was “let this cup pass from me,” which is fancy way of saying: Get me outta’ here!
Elsewhere in the Book of Hebrews the text returns to the image of Jesus as the “pioneer” of our faith, and goes on to say that “for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:2). It is this “joy” that here in chapter 2 is referred to with the image of the coming day that is “bright with Eden’s dawn light.”
The thing that drives us in our engagement with a world shaped by despair and driven by violence is the promise that another world is waiting, another world is coming, another world is groaning, waiting to be born, as a mother in childbirth. And we are among its midwives. Likewise, the thing that protects us from despair and exhaustion is this secret whisper we manage to hear when we quiet our souls: Be not afraid! God is not yet done. The night of travail will surely give way to the morning, a morning “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” Be of good cheer. For “we are people on a journey, pain is with us all the way. Joyfully we come together at the holy feast of God”: From distant places to the streets in our own neighborhoods. “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). That’s a world communion Sunday worth working and waiting for.
Sisters and brothers, the meek are getting ready. They invite us to join them in that risky vigil.
# # #
Circle of Mercy Congregation
Asheville, NC
7 October 2012
Lover to the beloved one! / Transforming each of them into the other.” —English translation of one stanza from St. John of the Cross’ “
fated home, / marked children that we are, / Abel seeding Lamech’s threat, compounded / epoch after aeon after era, bloodied soil wailing still.” —continue reading “
humankind.” —Alice Walker
century. The Rohingya have not been given even the minimal status as a “minority” group, have been stripped of their citizenship, not counted in the census, and have been subject to Buddhist mob and military violence for the past half-century. The United Nations described them as among the most persecuted religious minorities in the world. (See Linday Murdock, “
political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.” —see 
Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile natural gas pipeline running from West Virginia to Eastern North Carolina, with opposition organized by “The Alliance To Protect People and the Places We Live. (You can view the pipeline’s map 
Korea and Spain have set official targets for electric car sales. —see 
They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” —Jeremiah 17:7-8
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.
intentions and a people's faith / In the sacred promise a statue made / Livin' in a city of immigrants.” —Steve Earle, “
unauthorized immigrants had mostly been working-age men who crossed back and forth to the US for work while their families stayed in their home countries.)
ducation.
got about $1 billion in benefits. Also, they paid about $10.6 billion in state and local taxes. —Alexia Fernandez Campbell, “
ted States-born parents.”
deported for something your parents did. That’s the fate Dreamers are currently facing.
¶ Altar call. “
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.
).
ones. Houston has some of the weakest building codes in the nation; and earlier this month President Trump rolled back provisions that would strengthen those standards in flood-prone areas.
—continue reading “
or peril, blessing or curse, assurance or threat. What follows is a selection of such texts. —continue reading “
rollin' in / Man I'm standin' out in the rain / Yeah flood water keep a rollin' / Man it's about to drive poor me insane.” —Stevie Ray Vaughan, “
been and never will be conquered, and will never surrender to anyone.”
central highlands of Afghanistan around 650 BCE. Bamiyan boasted a flourishing Buddhist civilisation from the 2nd Century up to the Islamic invasion of the 9th Century. This is where the world's two largest standing Buddhas once stood, until the Taliban destroyed them in 2001 [see below].” —“
expectancy is Afghans is less than 61 years.
States finds itself locked in a pathologically recursive loop; we fight to prevent attacks and defend our values, only to incite further violence against ourselves and allies while destabilizing already chaotic regions. Our forces are competent, professional, and effective.
watchdog says.
were several shades of meaning. The term, in fact, requires decoding. Yet within the upper reaches of the American national security apparatus, one definition takes precedence over all others. In Washington, freedom has become a euphemism for dominion.” —Andrew Bacevich, “
in front of them.” —Marine General Robert Neller, responding to a question from his troops about their objective in Halmand Province, Afghanistan, quote in Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “ ‘
Other features
¶ Call to worship. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual worship.” —Romans 12:1
classroom.” Is this a disparagement of classroom teachers—or for that matter, pulpit preachers? I don’t think so. Good preachers and teachers know their job is to incite a thirst for learning and for revelation in the world beyond libraries and liturgies. —kls
Meanwhile, back in Washington, these headlines from major media outlets:
economics at NYU who has conducted extensive research on the U.S. teaching force.
dollars to lock a child up after getting into trouble, but won’t invest a few thousand dollars to get kids born healthy, to give them a head start, to give them a decent education. We must changes these priorities.” —Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund
el, beware the traffic jams.]
• “
e version below is slightly edited.
“distressed” pair of jeans for $1,495.00.
It stretches credulity. Kind of like Nathanael's incredulous response to his brother Andrew's breathless announcement that the one "of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote"—the Messiah—had been found, Jesus of Narareth.