Gathered, blessed, broken and shared for the world...

NOTE:  Here are my opening words for worship this Sunday, April 29, 2012.  Whenever the fifth Sunday of a month rolls around, our Worship Ministry Team plans and prepares worship in a style we're calling "community worship." It is boldly inter-generational, grounded in the rhythm of Eucharist - gathered, blessed, broken and shared - and geared to help us know one another better through Christ's grace.

This week 8 different lay people - and a variety of musicians and artists - will talk about how they find, experience and share the presence of the Sacred in their ordinary lives.  The broad themes will include:  doing justice, making music, sharing compassion, teaching children and creating beauty.  I hope we get the music - and commentary - on film so I can share it.  Here is how I will introduce the celebration...

One of my favorite authors, Barbara Brown Taylor, once wrote:

What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.  My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them.  My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul.  What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human and trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.

And that’s what we’re going to explore and encounter today in worship:  how some of us at First Church find, experience and share the essence of God’s presence by how we live in the real world.  In our real lives.   In our real flesh and blood bodies.  The apostle Paul taught something to the early church that many of us have forgotten so we are trying to reclaim it today.  I Corinthians 12 puts it like this:

What I want to talk about now is the various ways God's Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often misunderstood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. Remember how you were when you didn't know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It's different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can…

(So God gave us all gifts and skills to use in the world – and in the church – and you can see how this is supposed to work…) by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink.

That wisdom is often lost or discarded in our generation:  we cherish – covet – and corrupt our individuality to such an extent that we are often cruel and mean-spirited to others and ugly and disrespectful to God.  A simple example – how we use our tongues – they are so small but they can do a whole lot of damage in record time.  Especially if we aren’t thinking about the consequences of our words – if all we’re doing is thinking about ourselves – apart from the body.  You know, I’ve heard people say some stupid and repulsive things about members of the body that they would be outraged over if said about them, right?

St. Paul’s counsel is wisdom from the heart – soul food, you might say – a sacred way to make certain that the words we speak and the actions we share in our real lives bring us closer to God.  And, of course, he learned this wisdom of the heart from Jesus.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us:

Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, and criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Don't be flip with the sacred. Banter and silliness give no honor to God. Don't reduce holy mysteries to slogans. In trying to be relevant, you're only being cute and inviting sacrilege. Don't bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This isn't a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we're in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate?

As bad as you are, you wouldn't think of such a thing. You're at least decent to your own children. So don't you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?  Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God's Law and Prophets and this is what you get.

So, dear friends and new friends – women, men and children of the Body of Christ – let’s see where the Spirit of the Lord leads us today as we explore how we find, experience and share the presence of God in our real lives…