Passover and Communion

April 5, 2012 By Susan Phillips Leave a Comment

As I prepare to celebrate this meal tonight, remembering an upper room two thousand years ago, I am gifted by a much older tradition. As I recall Jesus gathering with friends around a table to celebrate the Passover, I am reminded that their ancestors had already been celebrating G-d’s liberation from slavery for more than a thousand years.

The Holy One liberates us from all kinds of slavery – slavery in Egypt, slavery to sin, slavery of our bodies, minds and spirits to patterns and systems that are deadening to us personally, communally, globally. Remembering these stories calls us to seek liberation for ourselves and one another – again, today, now. Love leads us into life!

Gifts of G-d for the people of G-d

When I go to the table, I am grateful for my spouse’s Jewish tradition. The more I learn about his faith, the deeper sense I have of my own. This is a holy gift.

Pesach Shalom and Easter Blessings!

 

Filed Under: Christian Year, church, emerging church Tagged With: Leave a Comment

I am topsoil + to topsoil I shall return*

February 22, 2012 By Nanette Sawyer 1 Comment

There is something comforting to me in the idea that I am part of the earth and will always be part of the earth. Maybe it’s rooted in my rural upbringing, where I was familiar with the dirt, and played in it, and got my hands dirty often.

There was a time in my adult life when I had a garden and lived in an old farmhouse that used to be a flower farm. I would come home from work some days and plunge my hands into the dirt—to soften it for planting, or to loosen it to pull up weeds.

That was some of the best therapy I’ve ever received. It reminded me that I am part of the earth, connected to it. I am dependent on it, and it has me. (You know, like when a friend says, “I got you.”) It is supporting my life.

Autonomy without community is a very lonely thing. Independence without interdependence is really a myth, in the empty sense of myth. It’s not true. There’s no such thing. Because actually, we’re all interconnected; with other humans, with other animals. With the flora and the soil of the earth.

In the second account of creation, in Genesis two, God takes up a handful of earth to make a human being. It’s not dust so much as topsoil in an agricultural land. This is the stuff from which life comes. This is the soil upon which life depends, and to which all life returns eventually.

I am made of that. I came from that. I will return to that. I am not alone and my life matters because every life matters.

—

*Today is Ash Wednesday. Many Christians will receive ashes on their foreheads today and hear the words, “Remember that it is from ashes you come, and to ashes you shall return.” This is my meditation on the tradition. My reflection on being “topsoil” is inspired by the great scholarship of Ted Hiebert who translated and wrote the commentary on Genesis in the Common English Bible.

Filed Under: Bible, Christian Year, church, Lent Tagged With: , , , 1 Comment

The 11th Day of Christmas…A Prophetic Vision of Peace

January 4, 2012 By Susan Phillips 1 Comment

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. — Isaiah 11:6

Maybe I should have known, but it occurred to me a few years ago that the Christmas decoration Pete Peterson made with a lion and a lamb and the word PEACE might be obscure for some folks. Many people, Christians and otherwise, recognize the guy with the red suit. Folk know to expect greenery, garlands and bows. Everyone seems to enjoy the lights that take on greater significance during the winter holidays of Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and the Solstice. But it took a friend saying, “Why a lion and a lamb?” for me to realize that the prophetic image from Isaiah of G-d’s peaceful reign was not an image most people associated with the Christmas season.

When Pete showed me the plans, I was really taken with the biblical image of peace. I think folks rarely spend much time considering what G-d’s peace will look like, how we might experience it, what the cost of it might be. I suspect that most of us think of divine peace as life like it is, only easier, without the annoying people, the confusing situations, the challenging ethical questions of the day. That’s why the simplicity of placing the vulnerable image of the defenseless lamb next to the powerful, predatory lion spoke to me. The two animals, in tranquil relationship was an eloquent, elegant representation of a peace that is more challenging, confusing, annoying than we have allowed ourselves to consider.

Christians hail the birth of “G-d with us,” Immanuel, at Christmas and call him Jesus, Messiah, Prince of Peace. By the last week of his life amongst us, he referred to himself metaphorically as the Paschal lamb. We may want a Savior who is known for strength, power, might, but the prophetic image in both testaments is of a Messiah who redeems that which is broken, who reunifies that which is divided, who brings together predator and prey in peace. This peace is difficult for those of us who feel vulnerable and possibly more difficult for those of us who are hungry and powerful.

During this Christmas season, while we move into a new year and toward Epiphany, wise folks may seek out the vulnerable Christ child. I invite you to consider when you feel like the wolf, the leopard or the lion. When do you identify more with the lamb or the kid? How will you let the little child lead you into G-d’s peaceful reign?

Christmas blessings of reconciliation all year long,
Susan Phillips

Filed Under: Christmas, Kingdom, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , 1 Comment

It Was A Night Around Christmas

December 28, 2011 By randywoodley 5 Comments

Since the first Christmas was likely in April it won’t be too inappropriate for this to be a few days late. After all, it is called a night “around” Christmas. (Spoken to the cadence of “T’was The Night Before Christmas” duh!)

It was a night around Christmas, in a crowded old cave

With camels and horses and cattle she laid

Knocked up by the Spirit, baby daddy beside

Psycho girl in some trouble, or maybe she lied

 

No time for a cleaning, no time for midwife

The stable was plenty for this baby’s life

Creation around him to welcome him in

The One who created them all back way back when

 

Looking for something or someone so grand

The shepherds crossed over oppressor man’s land

Kept out of the courts, their injustice not heard

He trusted them scoundrels to spread the first word

 

Representing creation, a pretty good crowd

Some shepherds, and cattle, and mice and some foul

A poor pregnant virgin, a blue-collar man

And wealthy Star Gazers from Iraq or Iran

 

All witness a Jew-baby, once who’d been King

And creator, and communist divinity

Calling back all creation, calling all strangers home

Bedded in a camel spit and mouse feces throne

 

A man for the poor, the outcast, the oppressed

For women and Gentiles and all of the rest

For earth and creation, for animals too

For those who just need him, like me and like you.

 

It was a night around Christmas, in a crowded old cave

When God gave up Jesus to the World he had made.

Filed Under: Christmas Tagged With: , , , 5 Comments
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