Gathering Leaders  

set-up/put-away: Sylvia Oliva  

greeter/usher: Kim Hinken and Adri Eathorne   

reader/communion assistant: John Petrosillo
offering invitation: Adri Eathorne

   community hour: All are welcome to our potluck dinner           

Co-creating a progressive Christian Spirituality   

Chesapeake Pride Festival

 

THE POWER OF AN EMPTY SPACE

Jesus was a revolutionary whose job it was to interfere.  He lived on the margins and was on the lam all his life.  He addressed all aspects of his culture and raised questions; he unmasked violence wherever he saw it.  This cost him his life.  We, too are called to be revolutionaries in our time.  Today's martyrs are those such as Oscar Romero who stood up for justice and for the poor in Argntina, and Sr. Dorothy Stang who was assassinated in Brazil. 
There is much violence in our world today!  Our economic system is unjust--we need a new one that will work for everyone and every being.  And we need a new system of education.  Jesus was an artist, a parable-maker who brought all kinds of people together.  The artist today is undervalued while the scientist's and technician's work is valued.  But in education, especially, the intuition, feeling, and beauty which is the work of artists is needed--and education is important for passing on values.  So we need to re-invent the whole thing!
Our political systems are collapsing, e.g. the gutting of the recent voting rights bill.  Rachel Maddow in her TV news program unveiled the voting inequalities due to racism in our country.  We can choose to ignore this but we need to be OUTRAGED!  There is so much injustice:  sexual slavery and many other kinds of injustice toward women, patriarchal injustice, consumer capitalism, and avarice!
We so often project things onto Jesus.  We have much to learn and to unlearn about him.  There's a mystical side to Jesus, his stories and his controversial life.  In the writing of the Gospels, the parts that women played were gradually excised from the stories.  It's important to go back to the sources to renew our understanding of Jesus.  Jesus never claimed he was unique. The prophet Jesus, though he couldn't read or write, spoke in the Temple and he sent us to proclaim the Good News as he did.  But what are we doing?  We certainly have not done a good job the last 2,000 years, and now time is running out!  What are our false gods today?  Tribalism, nation, religion, family, tradition, Wall St., consumerism.
Jesus was about subversive wisdom, not conventional wisdom.  He had issues with his family.  "My family are those who hear the word of God and keep it," he said.  Jesus was from a rural area where there was an economy of exchange instead of money.  Hence his rural images of the Kingdom (vs. the Roman Empire).  The Kingdom was at the heart of Jesus' teachings.  He was baptized by John in a river--this was an inclusive ("everyone welcome") action.  It was not done in the Temple where priests officiated.  John the Baptist was Jesus' mentor.  Jesus overthrew the money-changers' tables in the Temple; he was pushing the boundaries, saying by this action that purity is not about rules but about what is inside. Jesus replaced Temple sacrifices with the meal, which was an affront to convention, and because of this many people deserted Jesus.
Jesus said "The Kingdom is among you (plural)," where two or three are together.  What brings to birth the Kingdom is community.  What brings about justice, including eco-justice, is community.  Jesus called for a "politics of compassion."  "The Kingdom" is actually a verb meaning "where justice and compassion are happening."

Pope Francis on Homosexuality

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word "gay." 

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