preparing a message, part 2

Last week I posted about some of my process regarding preparing to give a message at my meeting. It's still about a week and a half away.

Over the course of the last week I've read commentaries and an article, and read the passage a bunch. In this particular passage, reading it in Greek doesn't seem particularly helpful--there aren't any huge insights that have come to me from it. The message isn't in the words, but in the implications.

Still, I looked at a couple other books that have to do with the words themselves, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. One is a synoptic parallel, called Synopsis of the Four Gospels (two volumes: one in English and one in Greek), which means that it looks at each passage in the gospels and compares them to other passages telling the same or a similar story. (It also includes anything similar in extra-biblical sources, like the Gospel of Thomas). I can then see what words are exactly the same, what each author has chosen to present slightly differently, and whether or not other authors included that story. (In this case, there are parallels in Mark 14:3-9 and Matthew 26:6-13, and a somewhat similar incident in Luke 7:36-50. It's rare that a story is in all four gospels, so I probably should pay attention to that.) I also used a Greek tool called The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, also known as Rogers & Rogers (for the authors, father and son). It gives a little more information about words that are difficult to translate, ambiguous or obscure.

Mostly I've just mulled over the passage, both in times set aside for such pondering and at random times. I've paid attention to how it connects with other life events, especially worship services and other events at our meeting. I've also thought a lot about questions I have about the passage, and just let those reverberate around in my brain and spirit, seeing if any sort of clarity comes, and paying attention to other thoughts and questions that rise.

I think in some ways it's kind of hard to wait for a message on a pre-determined passage of scripture. I mean, if I absolutely didn't feel called to speak on this passage and changed to something that wasn't part of the sermon series that would be OK, but at the same time, I trust the discernment of those putting together the worship schedule, and I think it helps us settle in more deeply to be able to listen to Christ when we have a series of messages that relate to one another and draw us to focus on God from a specific perspective. So I trust that the message has/will come.

But usually when I give a prepared message like this (as opposed to standing in open/unprogrammed worship), I start with a topic I feel called to explore, or an idea I read in a book that sparked something in me that I felt called to share, or a passage of scripture that jumped out at me about which I felt compelled to share. But choosing a passage of scripture before a specific message has come to me is somewhat harder for me. I wonder how people do it when they preach from a lectionary every week???

Anyway, about the specific message I'm working on, I chose John 12:1-8, where Mary of Bethany (sister of Lazarus and Martha) anoints Jesus' feet with costly ointment. Although the details are slightly different in the parallel versions, the thing that remains constant in Matthew, Mark and John is the statement, "The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me." My main question is, What does this say to us today? Does it say that since we don't have Jesus we should now make sure that we lavish love on the poor as Mary did on Jesus in this story? What would that look like? Are there still times where we are to pour out our treasure on God and God alone in a way that seems wasteful and ridiculous?

I think I'm kind of like Judas here--hopefully not with the malicious intent, but perhaps it's just as bad to always want to be practical. I think a similar thought--why wouldn't someone sell such an expensive item and give the money to the poor? Or better yet, why would a Christ-follower own something so expensive in the first place? The ointment she poured on him was worth about a year's wages for a day-laborer, so if we imagine it's worth a year of minimum wage, that would be about $17,500 (in my state). That's quite the wad of cash!

So two major things I'm pondering at the moment are: a conversation I had with a few people at a Wednesday night class we had last week, and a question I read yesterday. We're studying the book of John on Wednesday nights, and last week we were talking about ways that we relate to or feel similar to the Pharisees in John. I said I feel like most American Christians right now are more like the Pharisees than the Christ-followers in John: we are more concerned about following the rules of how we're "supposed to" act (most of which are just cultural and aren't in the Bible at all) than we are about actually listening to and following Christ. I talked about our congregation and how it's great in many ways, and yet we're all pretty similar. Would people of a different socio-economic status feel comfortable and welcome if they visited? Would they become part of our congregation?

One of the other people in the group told us she's had several conversations with people in our congregation who speak against the middle class, but she herself grew up without enough, and she's just grateful to be part of the middle class. So she wonders what's so wrong with being middle class?

That really got me thinking. I guess I feel like it's not being middle class that's the problem, it's the attitude. This woman's attitude was like Mary's--one of gratitude, and willingness to do what it is she's called to despite the cost. Many of us who have been comfortably middle class our whole lives have a hard time having this attitude, however--we feel too much of a sense of entitlement. We're not grateful, this is just how life is. It's easy, then, to ignore both "the poor" and any calls we might otherwise tune into that might ask us to impractically expend our resources in an irresponsible way, just for God.

The second thing I've been thinking about is a question I read yesterday. We're also practicing devotional reading of John during the time leading up to Easter, called "Forty Days with the Gospel of John." So yesterday I read about the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, and the query for the day was, "If you knew the gift of God, what would you ask for?" It's talking about Jesus' offer to the woman of living water, but it made me think of the anointing passage as well.

My answer to the question was that I would ask for a release from all the details--all the cleaning and cooking and house repairs and paying bills and....

The woman at the well was asking for a similar thing--she's excited about Jesus giving her living water so she doesn't have to come back to the well all the time to draw more water. She could get rid of that chore!

I want to be like Mary in the story in Luke, where Martha is busily preparing a meal for Jesus and who-knows-how-many other guests, while Mary is sitting around listening to Jesus and not helping. But then what would they eat? Who's going to do all that stuff if I don't?

Mary chooses what is better, and I think in the anointing passage she does the same. She may not know why this anointing is important, but she knows it is. It's totally impractical. It makes a spectacle of herself, going in there where all the men are reclining at the table, letting down her hair to wipe off his feet, spending her family's savings, and yet, maybe she's received the gift Jesus is really offering--living water--and this is the only response she can think of with enough magnitude. She's living beyond the chores and duties, filling the world with the fragrance of pure love for God.

It's so hard to live in that tension, though--how do we know when we're supposed to live life with abandon like Mary, and when we should be practical and take care of the needs of others? How do we receive the gift of living water daily, and yet stay engaged in this world in which we find ourselves?

I guess that's the eternal human question, isn't it?

So I have all these thoughts and they're not coalesced into a sermon yet, but that's where I'm at right now. For part 3 I'll probably post the sermon after I give it--wouldn't want to give it away any more than I already have for those from my meeting who read my blog!

reflections on single-family chicken farming

We got chickens this week, as I mentioned in my last post! We got two of them that are a year old from my brother- and sister-in-law, as well as a coop that Joel fixed up. Then another friend gave us two more. Today we got two baby chicks!


So far I like having chickens. I'm not sure it's more cost-effective than buying eggs, but...probably better for the Earth because the eggs don't have to be transported, and the chickens are probably happier when they're not in a huge warehouse-chicken-coop.

For those of you thinking of getting chickens, here are the things we had to buy and/or assemble:

--Coop
--Fence & posts
--Chicks
--Chick food
--Chicken food
--Water holder
--Food holder
--Bale of straw
--Wood shavings (for chicks)
--Chicken scratch (so the egg shells are strong)

Most of these things should last for years, so although it's a bit of an up-front cost, it's not really all that bad. But of course you have to continue to buy food for them, as well as straw for their nests.

And they poop a lot. I cleaned out their coop from 4 chickens for only about 5-6 days worth (and part of the time there were only 2), and there was quite a bit already. It's not that bad if you keep on top of it, but I can see it being a really gross job if you wait too long.

The eggs are soooo good, though! The yolks are a deep orangish-yellow, and they're much more flavorful. It's fun to go out and collect eggs and eat them for breakfast!

We have had a little trouble with one chicken escaping, so we're going to have to clip her wings. That will be another adventure!

I'll keep you posted on whether we still like them after we've had them for a while.






For more pics of the baby chicks, see this post.

preparing a message, part 1

I'm going to be bringing the message to worship in a few weeks. As a Quaker, in some ways it feels a little bit strange to be so certain that I'm going to be the one through whom God chooses to speak on that day, and yet, there's something cool about digging in deep to do the study, waiting, questioning, listening and writing that can allow God to speak through me and allow others to connect with God. I thought I'd write a little bit about my process of how I go about preparing to bring a message in a Quaker programmed worship context.

First, I chose a passage of scripture around which to speak. I don't always do this first--sometimes I have a thought or subject I want to talk about and find scripture that goes with it. But this time I'm speaking in a series that's leading up to Easter. The series is entitled "Wondrous Encounters," and on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights through Easter we're focusing on the Gospel of John, so I chose a passage from John. The passage I chose caught my attention because I don't get it. I have a lot of questions, and yet it's a story that seems to have a good deal of depth. I chose the story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus' feet with costly ointment, and Judas says, "Shouldn't she have sold that and given the money to the poor?" Jesus says, "The poor you always have with you, but you will not always have me" (John 12:1-8).

I looked at the Greek text and did my own interpretation. When I do translations I look for any words or phrases that are difficult for scholars to interpret, and any words that are in a tense that means they would have stood out to those hearing/reading. Words like these I look up in Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament to get more context, and I do further study in commentaries.

Then I went to the library. This is where I got a little giddy...I was walking to the library with my 3-month-old in a front pack, and I was just bouncing with excitement that I got to go to my college library, go to the biblical commentary aisle and grab some books out to use. Total nerd moment! Anyway, I found an article on the setting of this story in John, and I also made copies from some commentaries on this passage. The ones I usually use are Interpretation (which is pretty pastoral--not too technical, just a general overview and some thoughts on how to preach the passage), Hermeneia (this one is my all-time favorite!), the New Interpreter's Bible (this one is also fairly brief and easy to understand) and the Word Biblical Commentary (this one is pretty technical and gives WAY more information than one needs for preaching, but it's interesting--to me--and sometimes gives insights that help answer questions about particular words or idioms about which I'm confused).

I've begun reading the article and commentaries, so that's where I am right now. I still have a lot of questions and I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to focus on about the story, so my next step (after finishing the commentaries) will be to sit down and write out my questions and thoughts. I also think about the passage on and off throughout the day, so sometimes stuff will come to me when I'm not actually working on the sermon.

As a Friend, I think this allows me to mull over something for a long time and allow the Spirit to speak to me about it. Maybe I'll get to the day I'm supposed to bring the message and something will happen to show us that I'm not supposed to bring that message on that day. But usually when I try to prepare faithfully, I feel the power of the Spirit in me as I deliver the message with which I've been laboring.

simple living: successes & fails

Living simply is one of our goals, because 1) it's cheaper, 2) it's better for the Earth, and, last but not least, 3) we feel like simplicity in life and in our stuff helps us focus more clearly and have time and space to respond when God calls us to do something. Sometimes we do better than others.... Here are some things I've been thinking about lately.

Success: We just got chickens! We inherited some that are already laying--that's our first egg.

Fail: After nearly 10 years of marriage and two kids, we're now a 2-car family. Our "new" car has more space but only gets about 17 mpg.

Success: We bought a house with my mom, so we're sharing space, mortgage payment and childcare!

Fail: We have a landline because it came with our cable/internet package (cable for my mom to watch football), and we each have a cell phone. We tried to go down to one cell phone and our iPod Touches for texts, but that only made life more complicated, although cheaper.

Success: We joined a CSA for this summer! Looking forward to fresh, local fruits and veggies this summer, grown by local f/Friends.

Fail: We suck at doing our own gardening.

Success: Cloth diapers. They're awesome, too! When E was a baby we used regular ol' Gerber cotton tri-folds and plastic pants. This time we sprang for the more expensive but infinitely better bumGeniuses. They are truly as easy as disposables, and last as long per use as a disposable. You can get them either with snaps or Velcro. (I chose snaps because I figured Velcro wouldn't last as long.) They are one-size so you can use them as long as your kid's in diapers. E can still wear them at age 4. I'll probably make a real post with pictures on the family blog at some point, and more details than most of you probably want about diapering...if you're interested you can check there, but I won't bore/gross out the rest of you with any more details...

Fail: Long, hot showers. I always tell myself when I get in the shower that this time I'm going to take a really quick shower, but...just one more minute, just a little bit hotter sounds so necessary in the moment.

Success: Free, used kids clothes and used baby accessories. Babies require TONS of accessories, and since we were moving back and forth across the country with our first, we got rid of basically everything as soon as he outgrew it. But thanks to an amazing community and thinking ahead last summer at garage sales, we haven't bought much baby stuff new, and only a couple outfits. Our 4-year-old has been the lucky recipient of basically all hand-me-down or garage sale clothes thus far, or FreeCycle.

Fail: Going out to eat/drink. We aren't as intentional as I wish we were about where our food and drinks come from when we eat out, and there aren't a lot of really good options nearby (unless we burn fossil fuels to get to them).

Success: Spent the day a couple Saturdays cleaning out the garage! It feels much better internally to have that stuff cleaned out of our physical space.

I suppose I could go on for a while, but those are the ones standing out to me at the moment. It's helpful to me to make a list like this because it reminds me that even though we don't live up to all of our ideals and can't perhaps live as simply as we'd like, we are doing some things that make our lives and our world simpler and more peaceable. I can get bogged down in the little things, but I can also be refreshed by them.

rel. pol. right & group projects

Funny story...I was thinking tonight about how I hate group projects because I'm formulating a class, and it reminded me of a project I had to do in college that typifies why I hate group projects, and it makes me laugh looking back on it.

So for some class in college I apparently wasn't there the day we signed up for groups and I got put in one to do a presentation on the religious political right. Now, I really had no idea what this was until I started researching it. (I think I was basically brought up to believe that parties don't matter, you vote your conscience on any issue, not a party line. So when I registered I called myself an independent.) Anyway, when I started learning what this political group stood for, I was outraged. But the others in my group were hardcore rel. pol. right supporters. We didn't meet as a group often enough to actually talk much about our opinions, though, so I didn't really understand that until we were presenting! I think I was supposed to present the rel. pol. right's view on abortion, and I went off about how I couldn't believe that people who called themselves Christians could be all about the sanctity of life regarding unborn babies, but once they were born it was alright to kill them in times of war just because our leader told us to. I also addressed how no one in the rel. pol. right was offering to take care of a bunch of unwanted babies.

Looking back it's really funny to me to think about how utterly surprising this piece of their presentation must have been to the others in my group! I wish I could transport myself back there to watch, knowing what I do now, to see their reactions and to hear my naive 17- or 18-yr-old self in my first exposure to these ideas as a "valid" belief system, this crazy combination of God and country.

(Sorry if I've offended anyone with this post, but if so you've probably been offended before if you've read any of my other posts! I'm not saying any other party or political group is much better...just the combination here of making political claims that are supposedly faith-based but line up solely with our country's agenda is really stymieing to me. I don't think this disclaimer helped much if you were offended...)

peace month 2011

This month is the second annual Peace Month in Northwest Yearly Meeting! I'm on the committee that puts it together. Whether you're part of NWYM or not, you're welcome to use the resources we created and compiled. Here's the website.

This year we decided to make the theme "Our Stories of Peace." Last year we did sort of an overview of the peace testimony and talked about peace at various levels (personal, interpersonal, communal, national, international), and this year we wanted people to think about and share their stories, and to hear stories of historical Friends.

We created a Daily Reader, which is a devotional booklet people can use in their time with God each day. It has stories from people around the Yearly Meeting about how they came to the peace testimony and how they have been called and challenged to live out peace and justice in the world. If you want, you're welcome to download it at the aforementioned site.

I'm excited to hear how Peace Month goes this year! May God be in the conversations and controversies that this topic sparks.

a mamma again...and "traveling with pomegranates"

First of all, happy new year, everyone!

For those of you who don't know already, we had another baby boy on Dec. 6! I've been a little preoccupied with him lately, and I'm really enjoying remembering how to be a parent of a newborn again. He's making it pretty easy for us, really (as far as newborns go). He sleeps pretty well and he's really laid-back most of the time. And, of course, he's one of the 2 cutest babies every born!

If you want to see pictures, go to our family blog.

Since Christmas I've been working on Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor's book, "Traveling with Pomegranates." I have about 2 pages left. Sue Monk Kidd has got to be one of my all-time favorite authors. This book she writes with her daughter, and it's truly a beautiful work of literature, chronicling Sue's transition to being an older woman and Ann's transition to being a full-fledged adult, as well as their relationship with each other and the Divine. I love Sue Monk Kidd's other works that are so rich with thoughtfulness, wisdom, and persistence in her faith. She is so inspiring, because when she doubted her faith because she couldn't find herself reflected as an "image of God" in the patriarchal form of "Christianity" in which she was raised, she kept seeking until she found God, a God who imaged herself to Sue in feminine forms with which she could connect and grow. I'm so grateful for women like this, and for her willingness to write about it with such transparency and depth.

It kind of makes me sad I don't have any girls to share this with, but I'm so grateful for my two boys, and the chance I have to raise two male feminists. =) I'm also incredibly grateful for my feminist husband. And for a God who shows up in the ways we need her to.