The Eagle

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Walking the rocky shore
Cold wind from the Baltic Sea washes over me
On a rocky outcrop she sits
Mysterious black, white crowned head
The Eagle watches me
Follows me as I search among shoals
Calls to me as I
Hunt through blueberries and arctic orchids
Day after day she comes to see what I have found
We have become friends
Talking to each other as the sea rolls nearby
I tell her my time to leave is soon
I tell her I will miss her company
Suddenly, she flies over my head and …
With a final call offers me a gift
A gift unbidden, un-expected,
All the more precious
A gift to remember …
The Eagle who followed me

Ruth Jewell, ©May 25, 2011

Sermon: John 4:5-42

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This morning’s scripture just happens to be one of my favorite from the Gospel.  One reason is this story is rich in imagery.  I can see the well, the tired Jesus who watches the woman walk to the well he sits by.  I imagine that the well is surrounded by trees probably olive or maybe a fir-tree and I can smell the dust that still floats in the air from the passing of the travelers.  I can feel the noon day heat and see the woman walk through the heat shimmer on the road as she carries her water jugs to the well. 

Now, I am quite sure you are all familiar with story of the ‘woman at the well’ but let me recap for you, the highlights so to speak.   Jesus is traveling with his disciples because he is avoiding the Pharisees in Judean territory.   Tired, thirsty, and hungry, he stops by a well to rest while his companions go on ahead to search for food for the mid day meal.  A woman comes to the well to draw water and Jesus asks her for a drink.  They end up talking and Jesus awakens something in the woman who runs to the village to tell everyone else.  We have all heard this story hundreds of time and I’m sure you can tell me why this woman is so special and why it was so radical that a Jewish Man, a Rabbi, was talking to a woman, a Samaritan woman.  Think of it this way, here are Jewish men, traveling in a territory that all other Jewish people avoided like the plague and they are even willing to eat their food and drink their water!  Scandalous!   But in the heat of the day, maybe things look a little differently to hot, tired and dusty people.  But more than the individuals of the story I’d like to talk about what this story meant to the community that was hearing it for the first time.

I have been trying to come up with a comparison for today’s time and maybe this might give you a tiny idea of what this journey meant in first century terms.  Suppose you had to travel to Monroe and between you and your destination lay a land filled with criminals, sexual predators, and mentally unstable people, called the Monroe State Prison.  And just suppose the accepted route to Monroe goes around the Prison and takes 7 days  , but, if you went through the Prison territory, your journey would take you 1 day.  Which route would you choose?  Remember the people living in the Prison area are outcasts and to speak to them or get the dirt from their ground on you will make you unacceptable in polite society forever.  Don’t even think of eating, drinking or speaking to the residents.  That was the choice Jesus and his disciple had to make.  Do you now have some idea of just how radical it was for Jesus and his companions to even be in Samaritan territory, let alone speak to someone or eat and drink their food? 

There are Biblical Historians who believe this is not an actual encounter of Jesus and the Samaritans.  That it probably is a reading back into the ministry of Jesus due to a post resurrection Samaritan mission, and the influence of Samaritan converts on the Johannine communities.  That means that someone, the author of John or someone else added a story of the conversion of the Samaritan community by Jesus himself.  The writer wanted to legitimize the Samaritans position within the evolving community of first century Christians.  Does that change the meaning of the story, well maybe, because, for me I think the story has a great deal to do with the  embracing of “the other” even when that “other” was as despised as Samaritans were.  It’s not just about a woman who was the first apostle to a hated people, rather this is about one group of people trying to welcome another group they once found repugnant.   

  The writer of this passage is struggling with the presence of a people who 20 or 30 years before would have been banned from their places of worship but now are part of their community.  People who were really thought of as charity cases in the best of moments.  People they could help so they would feel good about helping someone less fortunate than they were.  People they could say “boy I’m so glad I’m not one of them!”   I’m not saying that it is better to be an outsider, what I am saying, and the writer of John is saying, is there is no difference in the eyes of God between any of us.  This passage is trying to tell two communities, which probably were at odds with each other, that Jesus would have found both sides to be worthy of God’s love and that if  God find’s each side acceptable then why couldn’t everyone in the community. 

The plight of this first century community is not so different from the one we are facing today.  Today we too are struggling as a community with the addition of people from other cultures who bring some new and strange ways of worshiping into our midst.  I am not talking about Queen Ann Christian Church or any specific church, rather I am talking about the wider church and how we as Christians are struggling with welcoming the new ethnic churches into our fellowship of compassion, justice and mercy.  It is often difficult to see God in ways different from ours even when it is enlightening and transforming; but it can also be scary. 

I can just imagine how the members from both sides of the Johannine community felt because I’ve been there.  I’ve been on both sides of the issue of acceptance of the “other,” a little afraid that what I believe will be challenged and at the same time exited that what I believe will be challenged.    If I am honest with myself I have to admit that learning I don’t have all the answers means that I just may not be as secure in God’s love that I thought.  If we all stop and think it is where we all are when a new way of “seeing” God is presented to us.  So first let’s look at how the Jewish Christians visualized God, Christ and Holy Spirit. 

Jewish Christians in the first century were primarily Jewish in nature; they saw their world through the lens of the Hebrew Scriptures as taught by Temple and Synagogue.  That meant that by becoming Christians they had already made a huge transition to a new way of thinking and many felt Christianity should remain as Jewish as possible because that is what they were comfortable with. Do you remember all those arguments about Gentiles between Paul and the Disciples?  

The Samaritans, on the other hand, were no longer purely Jewish and as a result they were not able to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem.   Therefore The Samaritans set up their own place of Worship on Mt. Gerizim and developed their own worship customs, mostly in defiance of Temple authorities. 

So now you have two groups that hated each other being converted to Christianity and entering into community together, each with different ideas about worship, and God.   Wouldn’t you feel threatened?  Wouldn’t the other feel threatened?  Yet there is a conflict here, they’re Christians and that means they are my brothers and sisters in Christ, so they can’t be bad.  Oh it just makes my head hurt to think about it.  Wait a minute both sides say, if you worship the way I do, which is the right way, then we won’t be strangers anymore, we’d be one.  Can’t you just see both sides coming together across a table and speaking those words at the same time?  My head is beginning to hurt again. 

Does this scenario sound familiar, we’ve all been in those places where we’ve been threatened by someone else’s way of worship, yet somehow we also find something wonderful in those moments.  The unfamiliar becomes a door way into a new understanding.  We just have to get beyond our own belief that we are the right ones.  It is a fact that most new Disciples churches are ethnic, and that means that we will encounter new ways of worship and praising God that are different from our own.  As a faith community we are not called to assimilate the other into our way of worship, nor are the others called to assimilate us into theirs.  Rather each community is called to celebrate the life and faith of all and recognize the presence of God in the diverse ways we all reach out to the Divine ones.   

As part of my course work for a Masters of Divinity I am interning this year at a Day Shelter for urban First Nations People, The Chief Seattle Club, and so I work two days a week with individuals that have held a status not all that dissimilar to that of the Samaritans.  They too have been, are, a despised people, a people forgotten unless we discover they have a resource we, the dominate culture, want.   We see them as one people yet I have come to learn just how diverse their cultures are.  Just like the rest of the diverse people’s of the United State the members of the Chief Seattle Club are made up of many different tribes each with their own unique cultures and ways of being.  I have learned much about being a person of faith from being with, eating with, sitting with, and praying with people who have a deep spirituality.  It’s not my spirituality, but I honor the beauty of their hearts because God honors them. 

This week I was asked how I, a Christian, can accept people who may not believe the way I do.  Our discussion was long and involved, at least on his part, I just kept saying what every way you are fed by God and the Spirit is right for you and I honor that.  I am a Christian, I will always be a Christian, but just as Jesus went into Samaritan territory and recognized God’s presence I too recognize God’s presence in the people I meet, whether they are First Nations people who follow their own tribal beliefs, Muslims who follow Mohammad or Buddhists who look for enlightenment through the teachings of the Buddha.  All are children of God. 

In the NRSV version of Romans 5:1-2 Paul says “5Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we* have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have obtained access* to this grace in which we stand; and we* boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”  I have some problems with this version, mostly because I don’t like the way the word ‘justified’ is used. 

But I really like the way it is restated in the paraphrase bible The Message:  “1-2By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.”   Yes we as Christian find our way through the Master Jesus, but God has thrown open the doors and as we stand there we discover new spaces where God’s glory is magnified.  So it’s not what we have been used to and maybe it will challenge us.  But, oh the spaces we will discover when we embrace the other.  

I keep hoping we will be better than the first century Christians and open our doors to new ways of visualizing God, finding God in unexpected places, seeing God in people we haven’t met yet. 

Sermon presented on March 27, 2011, @ Queen Ann Christian Church

©Ruth Jewell, March 26, 2011

Meditation on Matthew 10:34-39

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Matthew 10:34-39

34‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Ok, so Christ said he doesn’t bring peace but a sword, but, what kind of sword?
He tells me I am not to love my family more than him, not that I’m supposed to abandon them just that Jesus’ and the Spirits will comes first.  I’m to let the spirit take care of my family and give over control of my life to the spirit.

It is not easy to let go of my control of my life.  I keep wanting (and do) to snatch back the reins that I only partially have given to God. So, I am to keep my family life in tension with my faith community life and the faith part comes first.

God how does that work, I have a husband who wants my time, I have school work to complete; do I drop those when I know that you have given those to me?   Or, are they the responsibilities you talk of, the cross I am supposed to bear?

Where does the balance come from?

Does letting go of my control of the situation mean I am to just stop worrying but not stop attending?

Hmmmmmm, now there is a thought,  Hmmmmmm, Now that is a thought, take care of those things but without concern for how . . . Hmmmmmm

©Ruth Jewell, November 13, 2010

Memories

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Thanks to Christine of Abbey of the Arts Poetry Party for bringing forward memories of people long ago!

they come like ghosts
floating in my
memories
like autumn fog
misty, gray,
cold, intangible

father, friend,
mother, teacher
death separates us now
all except the memories
holding them in
static lives of yesterday

in their gray world
a universe apart
each lives
as close as thought
within
a gray fog box

©Ruth Jewell, September 13, 2010
While I love fall and all that it brings, fog, changing leaves, and cool sunny days, the memories of times past also come, which can be both lovely and sad all at the same time.  So many of my friends and family have passed away in fall and early winter and they often come like the fog to present themselves in a ghostly parade to remind me of times past, both the good and the not so good.  As I watch them enter my mind’s stage I am surprised to find that most of them are women, strong, defiant, and determined to change the world they lived in.

There is my maternal great-great grandmother who was determined that her family would stand with President Lincoln in the great fight against the south and my paternal great-great grandmother who wanted only to live with her family in freedom, so she left Georgia to travel north while the rest of her family made the terrible trek to Oklahoma on the “Trail of Tears.”  Then there is my maternal grandmother, the first woman to complete college in my family, a Suffragette, proud of her role in getting women the right to vote. And, I can’t leave my mother out, who, during WW II, worked in the steel mills making rivets for air planes.  I am the inheritor of all of their strength of will, their courage to get things done, and their desire to leave this world in better shape than they found it. 

One other woman has a prominent place in my memory, my first grade teacher, Miss Wooster.  She was a teacher of great courage and compassion, two traits that go well together.  Even though she had one arm paralyzed from an accident she never gave up her dream of being a teacher and for that I am eternally grateful.  I started school the fall after a devastating accident that left me scared and timid.  I was still wrapped in bandages when I started my first day of school and to have this kind, tall woman reach down with her one good arm, hold me and tell me that we were going to have so much fun that day meant more to me than anyone could possibly know.  Her example of never giving up became the model for my life.  Miss Wooster taught me to hold my own against the inevitable onslaught of teasing, ridicule and insensitivity that I would face all of my life.  Without her I wouldn’t have survived my childhood whole in spirit.

There are a few men who hold special places in my memories, like my great-uncle Charlie who was an itinerant preacher of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  His circuit was the triangle that made up the coal mining fields of southern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Northern West Virginia and in a strange stroke of fate he baptized by father, unknowing that dad would marry his favorite niece 12 years later.  It could not have been an easy pastorate for great-uncle Charlie, mine disasters, starvation, and no health care would have meant more funerals than births and weddings.  But the stories of great-uncle Charlie say he taught and comforted those that needed both and celebrated when he could. 

There is also my Father who was one of the most spiritual people I knew.  He taught me to respect all of creation, to be open to the words of other faiths, and to treat all people as brothers and sisters in the Holy Spirit. Even though he never made it past 6th grade he taught me the value of reading good books, to never let someone else make up my mind for me, to never let anyone tell me that their way of understanding the scriptures was the only way.  Dad told me to read and study and make up my own mind, but to be open to the changes that come from growing in the world.  To dad I owe my Disciples Faith; a strong sure faith that is open to a world of ideas and beliefs and how they influence me, helping me to grow stronger in my own beliefs and faith.

Each and every one of those ghostly memories is a part of me, my grounding in this world and the rocks of my path to the next.  If even one of these amazing individuals had been missing from my memory I would not be who I am today. Each memory is a thread in my own fabric of life, albeit a cloth that has a few holes and loose threads but overall beautiful and strong.  I owe that beauty and strength to those who have gone before me, those I follow, and those I have inherited so much from. 

As I try to see into the fog of the future, I wonder who I am passing my legacy onto.  Am I, will I, play a role in someone else’s life.  That is an awesome responsibility to know, and maybe not know, what you do and say may influence another life.  Doesn’t that thought just want to make you crawl into a corner and not be seen for fear you will cause someone harm?  But, what I have to remember is that when I choose to do nothing someone is still watching and learning just as much as when I act and that means the choice to act or do nothing is always fraught with “what ifs.”    Life is just one big IF, and strength comes from boldly stepping out with faith and not looking back. 

©Ruth Jewell, September 13, 2010

Who Is My Neighbor

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they come in the night
crosses burning
pipe bombs at the ready
hate in burning eyes

who will stop them
who will say enough
who will hear the cry of the stranger,
 the weak amongst us

will it be me
will I stand between the mob and the stranger
am I alone, who else will stand
who else will ask “who is my neighbor”

©Ruth Jewell, August 20, 2010

I realize this is different from all of my blog entries, but I have become angry and frustrated with the controversy over the proposed Muslim community center in New York and have been thinking strongly of what I have been taught about compassion, mercy and care of my neighbor.  I just want to ask who is your neighbor?

Who would have thought that a community center could cause so much trouble?  It is to be a center where people learn of each other, learn to share commonalities, and recognize the humanity of all.  If it had been proposed by anyone else it wouldn’t have been a problem, but no, a self styled fear has created a firestorm of hate against those who do, a Muslim community in New York.  Do you really believe that only Christians were inside the towers when those planes hit?  Do you really believe that Muslims didn’t feel pain when their husbands, wives, sons and daughters died that day?  Christians weren’t the only ones to die when the terrorist attacked.  There were people of all faiths in those buildings, it was a “WORLD TRADE” center and people of all faiths and no faith died because of a few.

 I find the objections of the few terrorists in this country who claim a high road while ignoring the Log that lies in their eyes offensive.  The people of this country, Christian or non-Christian, have nothing to be proud of when it comes to terrorist acts.  Places of worship bombed, Doctors offices bombed, people vilified, physically hurt, or killed all because someone thinks they, and only they, are right.  The amount of hate in this country has reached such a pitch that I’m not sure I recognize the land of my birth any longer.  I fear for my grandchildren and the world they must live in for they will not know how kind and caring the people of this country can be.  The world’s role models that stand for righteousness and peace are being replaced with those who stand for greed, hate, material success; a world that looks after the “me” and not the “other.”

I am saddened by the people who only think of what they have accumulated; only protecting what they have not realizing they could gain much more by giving to those who have so little and only want to find a way to survive.  Each and every one of us will be called to account at some point and all will discover that we will leave this world just as we entered, naked and alone, some more alone than others.    

In the Gospel of Luke a lawyer asks “who is my neighbor” and Jesus responds with a story of compassion by a hated Samaritan.  That lawyer is pushed into answering his own question with “the one who showed mercy.”    Jesus tells him to “go and do likewise,” but the Parable was apparently never taken into the life of the people who heard it then, or hear it now.    For today I’m ashamed to say not many of the people who claim to be “Good Christians” are showing much mercy.  

Who IS YOUR NEIGHBOR, who IS MY NEIGHBOR—my response is to remember the answer of the lawyer and go and do likewise; and what does that mean for me.  Well, it means stand up and speak up for what is right.  Even when intimidated or over run with hate filled speech, I must not give up; I will just keep saying what is right until at least one other person hears the message and does the same.   That may seem like a small thing, but in the end it is by our words and fearless deeds that we will be remembered.  I want to be remembered for speaking up in defense of my neighbor, whatever culture they come from, whatever faith they believe in.  They are my neighbor and it is my God given obligation and responsibility to care for them.   

So let this be my manifesto, if you offend my neighbor you offend me and while I will defend your right to say whatever you want, I will not tolerate abuse of the “the widow, the child, the ill, the weak, or the stranger amongst us.”

©Ruth Jewell, August 20, 2010

This summer isn’t what I thought it would be!

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This summer is becoming all about prayer, not the kind that you sit and struggle to connect with God, but rather waiting for my vision, hearing, and all the rest of my senses to recognize that God has been here all the time.   I have  been reading a lot of thought-provoking stuff this summer and I admit I haven’t read a single novel or none theological book, yet.  But what I have read has been an extension of what I’ve been feeling for the last year.   I’ve read two books by John O’Donohue, Anam Cara and Eternal Echoes, along with Martin Buber’s I and Thou and now that I’ve completed those three books I realize just how important prayer and my relationship with God and all creation is to my well-being .  Yes I know I’ve been studying for 3 years and if I had read these 3 books before I began STM I would have enjoyed them, but, now they have real meaning for me.  I see threads of my life that have been and are being woven together to form a whole all through a life that has been prayer.

This summer I’ve been trying to discern what prayer means to me, Ruth Jewell.  Not Ruth Jewell the wife, ecological consultant, or even theological student, just Ruth.  How do I relate to God in my prayers, what is prayer, and how do I accept prayer into my being.

O’Donohue says that “Prayer is not about the private project of making yourself holy and turning yourself into a shining temple that blinds everyone else.  Prayer has a deeper priority, which is … the sanctification of the world of which you are privileged inhabitant.”   Prayer isn’t about asking for that pony, a full stock portfolio, or even that “A” in the class you’ve worked so hard for and prayer isn’t about sweating and struggling to connect with God.  Because, I’ve already ‘connected’ with God and am in relationship with her. 

I am beginning to recognize that every moment of my life, every breath I take, every time my heart beats, I am in a relationship with God.  My first prayer task is to accept that relationship into my being allowing it to work through everything I do.  Then, what I have to do is to reflect the Divine relationship, which began before my birth, out to the world around me.  My last major task is to recognize and honor the relationships reflected by each and every member of this universes creation.  On paper those sound so easy, but I know from experience just how hard it is to follow through on them. 

One of the issues I’ve had this summer has been I haven’t been able to sit and practice the spiritual disciplines I’ve always found fulfilling.  Instead I want to work with John on our Garage cleaning (which is a way bigger job than I thought it would be) or sit with him on our deck and watch the ferry come in and out.  All I want to do is be with my grandchildren and my friends children to watch them grow into new beings all their own.  I am thrilled that I’ve been asked to be part of important tasks for STM and my ecclesial community both are chances for me to give back what they’ve given to me.  I love offering prayers for those in need of comfort I just don’t want to do it sitting still, or in a setting that makes me stand out. 

I was worried that I was entering a “dry period” in my spiritual life and maybe I am, but I think I am instead entering a rich time where prayer is more than sitting in a worship setting, prayer is working, loving and being in contact with all of creation.  I have always had an easy conversational style of praying to God, but now I don’t have to have any special time set aside to do that.  I find that, for me, prayer isn’t something I do, it’s something I am.  I do not have to work on my relationship with God; I am in relationship with Her.  She is present every moment of my life, waking or sleeping, whether I recognize her presence or not, She is there.  With every breath I take I breather Her in, with every beat of my heart I spread her essence throughout this clay vessel called a body.  With every word I speak She speaks.  That is an awesome responsibility and one I am learning to respect.  I know (and She knows) I will not always be successful but I now feel I am awakening to something so old it’s new, I just don’t know what to make of it all.