Sunrise is an event that calls forth solemn music in the very depths of our nature, as if one’s whole being had to attune itself to the cosmos and praise God for the new day, praise him in the name of all the creatures that ever were or ever will be. I look at the rising sun and feel that now upon me falls the responsibility of seeing what all my ancestors have seen, in the Stone Age and even before it, praising God before me. Whether or not they praised him then, for themselves, they must praise him now in me. When the sun rises each one of us is summoned by the living and the dead to praise God.

~Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, quoted at http://www.plough.com/en/subscriptions/daily-dig/odd/april/daily-dig-for-april-30

I'm a "let's get to work and change things" kinda guy. It shapes my spirituality, and my theology. I love new things, new experiences, new designs, and people with a passion for the future—and a willingness to sacrifice for the future, combining patience with passion. It's about sociality, not nature, for me. So, I've often found folks who talk about finding God in sunsets, or sunrises, or hikes in the woods or walks on the beach, or in repetition and stability and preservation . . . curious. I believe them (you?), but don't really feel what you feel. Now it must be said: I do enjoy sunrises, and sunsets, and woods, and beaches, and singing familiar songs and remembering well. I find beauty there, and am moved. But I tend (tend . . . not exclusively, but mostly) to find "God" in action. Beauty comes in repetition for me. God comes in change: Godly change, that is: positive, dynamic, love-creating, justice-making change (not the change of destruction and loss).

But I also know that mine is one form of the faith. It tends to be the kind of hardwired spirituality that created Protestant faith. But it's not the only way. That other form, the one you might be hardwired for, tends to go to beauty first. It tends to let beauty, remembering, preserving, and celebrating be the way in which change is welcomed—rather than the other way around. And that's the spirituality that has given us traditions more open to art, ritual, and structures designed to preserve things.

We kinda need each other, don't you think? We need to remind each other of the ways God reveals Godself, and balance each other now and then. We need to let God be in the sunrise, reminding us of who we are and who God is and so giving us courage to face a day of following Jesus. And we need to let God be in the work following Jesus gives us to do, which gives us reason to accept the sunrise as a call on our lives to keep open and keep hopeful and keep going toward the future that God imagines. Let the 'sunrise' metaphor apply to other things, too.

The contemplative monk and active writer, Thomas Merton, wrote the quote at the beginning of this post. Merton was well known for his commitment to wedding faith and concern for social change, for the poor, and for creating just communities. Yet he was also a great advocate for connection among all things. His comment here about the sunrise, about beauty and the reassurance it gives is a nice reminder that all things praise God: what is given us that does not change, what reminds us of our connection to all who've seen the same, and in our urgent, humble acts in response.

All good. All God. 

Forty-two years ago this month, I was ordained in the United Church of Christ. As much as we like to tell amusing tales about this period of time in the history of women in the United States, these were very painful and confusing times for those of us who were “firsts” in our professional callings.

Please recall that women of my generation were raised:

• To wear white gloves.
•  Never to beat a man at sports
• Never to express an opinion.
• To be subordinate.
• To find our worth in our attractiveness to men.
• To attend college for the purpose of finding a husband.
• Not to worry our “pretty little heads” about such matters as theology or politics.
• To act within the prescribed dictates of etiquette and “ladylike behavior.”

The vocations open to women were nursing, teaching, secretarial; all honorable callings, but narrow in scope, and always trumped by the role of wife and mother. Some women thrived in this world, but others yearned for a different experience, because they had a different calling.

Fast forward to the 1960's when our country was struggling with human rights, and the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement were becoming headlines in the National News. Enter a young woman from Iowa who dropped out of college to join VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), and her whole world view was changed. She felt called to follow the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, and to enter the ministry. That young woman is now a much older woman who serves as your Assisting Pastor for Senior Ministries.

In the 60's, women were not present in the ministry in the middle west or the western states, and you could almost hear strains of “How Do We Solve a Problem Like Maria?” when I entered seminary, and the astonishment continued through much of my career...amusing to many, but often painful to me as I was just trying to be faithful to my call.

Fast forward over 40 years, and you find me applying to Pinnacle Presbyterian Church. As I met for the first time with the selection committee, I was acutely aware that I did not meet any preconception they might have for the position, for ministry, for Pinnacle Presbyterian Church. After all, I was not even Presbyterian, had spent most of my ministry working with the poor and the disenfranchised, and I lean more toward art than Ivy League.

Enter on the selection committee one Paul Rooker...a retired military man face to face with a Flower Child. God always has a sense of humor, and God's humor was quite evident during this meeting. Something very spiritual and very special took place when Paul and I met, because he not only accepted me, but reached out in love and encouragement, and has never wavered in his support of my ministry. The first people I look for when I am in the pulpit are Linda and Paul Rooker, because I know if they are there, it will be ok. Paul showed me the ropes from everything to where we have our meetings to who could be of help in each situation. His instruction was always with a loving heart and helpful vision. Upon reflection, our connection is not at all odd, because we have both been driven all our lives by an abiding, deep and committed faith in a God who is full of delightful surprises. I hold out hope that this same God will continue to form surprising and serendipitous alliances among the faithful. Paul's presence has made all the difference for me, and with a grateful heart, I say, “Thank you Paul Rooker.”

Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.  ~Mark 16:9-11

Easter is a time of joy and a time when we celebrate Jesus conquering death and rising from the dead. It is a time for families to get together, to wear new “Easter” clothes, and get candy.

Now that Easter Sunday is over are our lives any different? Now that we have spent the last 40 days waiting and preparing for Easter, are we changed, or do we just continue with our lives like nothing happened?

Often when we think of the Easter story, we have this idea that once Jesus revealed himself to the women at the tomb, the word quickly spread. We think the disciples all believed the good news of Jesus rising from the dead - except for doubting Thomas, who doubted until he felt the very wounds in Jesus’s hands and side. Despite what tradition might have us believe, that wasn’t the case.

In Mark’s account of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene goes and tells the disciples what she has seen, but they don’t believe her. Then Jesus appeared to two unnamed followers. After this encounter, they went and told the eleven disciples, and yet the disciples still didn’t believe. For some, days and even weeks went by, but they still didn’t understand the magnitude of Easter. After Jesus was buried, some hid out of fear. Others went back to work, doing what they did before they followed Jesus as if the last three years hadn’t changed their lives forever.   

Sometimes I feel that, as Christians, we want to be like Mary in the Easter story. We want to go out on Easter morning and tell everyone about Jesus rising from the dead. We take photos and post on social media that “Christ has Risen.” Despite wanting to be like Mary, or even feeling like Mary for a day, when Monday comes we find ourselves being more like the eleven than we are like Mary. Our lives go back to the things we know. We default to what makes us comfortable, and things are not really any different. However, when Jesus showed up in the upper room after his death to reveal himself to the disciples, he gave them the life-changing gift of the Holy Spirit, and they were never the same.

What if this Easter, instead of just falling back into our normal, everyday routines, we make space for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives? I encourage you to invite the Holy Spirit to guide you as we live into the hope and joy that is Easter.

Sin is a depressing subject. “Accentuate the Positive,” the song says, and positive thinking and inflated self-images are the pop-psych answer of our times. So why peer at our dark side during Lent? And why spend six Bible for Dummies weeks trudging through the Seven Deadly Sins?

One answer is that smart, faithful people have told us to.  Centuries of Christians have found the study of sin helpful – from 4th-century monks in Egypt, through Dante’s 13th Century Inferno, on to C.S. Lewis’ 20th-century run at the Devil’s playbook with his Screwtape Letters.  These authors agree that sin’s power is best disarmed directly.

But that just moves the question back one step: Why flee sin? It sounds like a ludicrous question for Christians. Of course we hope to flee sin!  But on another level, we need to ask after our motivation for fleeing sin. 

From our first weeks alive, we learn that people like us more if we do things that please them. It’s deeply engrained. That’s ok, and God bless us for learning fast. But you and I too quickly apply that instinct to our relationship with God: “We avoid sin to win God’s love.” Problem: that road does not lead home. Ask the Pharisees.

Theological quandaries like this often require the help of Texas recording artist Lyle Lovett. His song, “God Will,” speaks the heart of a man whose love has worn thin:  Who keeps on trusting you /when you've been cheating /and spending your nights on the town? /And who keeps on saying / that he still wants you/when you're through running around?/And who keeps on loving you/when you've been lying/saying things ain't what they seem? / God does/but I don't! /God will / but I won't! / And that's the difference / between God and me!

In his very wry way, Lyle Lovett brings Jesus’ good news:  God’s inexhaustible love never wears thin, no matter what we do. Philip Yancey puts it this way: “Nothing you can do can make God love you any less.  And nothing you do can make God love you any more.”  God’s infinite love does not expand or contract because you and I sin or don’t sin. Friday’s old rugged cross shows us that.

Let’s ask our question one more time: Why avoid sin? Because it may not move God, but sin surely moves us.  Vices glitter, and our eyes widen and we snatch it. But afterward we find ourselves yards further away from God.  “Their end,” as Paul has it, “is death.”

But God’s free gift is life.  This time, our guide is Annie LaMott, another deft theologian among us: “God loves us exactly as we are…and too much to leave us exactly as we are!” We’re most fully alive when we are most fully with God.

God bless your Holy Week walk with God to the cross.

What can separate us from God’s love? Can trouble, suffering and hard times, or hunger and nakedness, or danger and death? No! Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!  (Romans 8)

There are days in our lives when we all need EN-COURAGE-MENT.  Sometimes the rainfall brings nourishment to the soul and freshness to life. Other days it seems to wash away hope and we fear the sun will never shine again. Same rain. Different soul.

The beauty of life in Christ is this… no matter what our circumstances, or how we interpret them, NOTHING can separate us from God’s love. Encouragement is only one of the many blessings we receive as children of God when Jesus is our Lord. 

Paul reminded “all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi” of some of these blessings: 

….encouragement from being united with Christ,
...comfort from His love,
...fellowship with the Spirit,
...tenderness and compassion…  (Phil.2)

Paul then enjoined them to make his joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

As pilgrims on the journey of life, along a path often punctuated with potholes, God calls us to follow the example of Jesus. What we discover when we attempt to exemplify Christ is this: when we live in love, God lives in us, and God’s love is made complete in us (1John 4). However, when we don’t realize God’s love in us, we are without hope, we have no compassion or comfort and anxiety becomes our companion. We feel alone. Our solitude brings us no solace. We are deceived into thinking that we are on our own on life’s journey. But the One who laid down His life for us, who knows how it feels to be deserted and forsaken, perceives our pain and discerns our doubt. Jesus visits us in our loneliness, breaks through the isolation and is present to breathe new life into our souls. This is the promise of Easter! 

It’s because of this promise that we have hope, even if God seems distant. I believe the human soul yearns to be one with God and undivided from God’s love, whether we recognize it or not.  Jesus journeyed to Jerusalem, laid down His life, and got up on Easter to establish a new covenant. Next week, as WE make our journey from Palm Sunday to Easter, stopping along the way at the Last Supper and ultimately witnessing the agony of Christ’s crucifixion, may we yet be en-couraged knowing that Jesus journeys with us…both now and eternally. For NOTHING can EVER separate us from God’s love—What an amazing PROMISE!!!