Contents 2003:
July 27 Aug 3 Aug 10 Aug 17 Aug 24
Aug 31 Sept 7 Sept 14 Sept 21 Sept 28
Sermons
2003   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008
July 27, 2003  to September 28, 2003
September 28, 2003

     "...And the Lord their God was with them to lead them, by day in a pillar of cloud to show them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so they could continue both day and night.
      And the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire went with them by day and by night, for the Lord of creation shows himself to his people in the dark, and in the light, in the shadow and in the flame."  

Madeleine L'Engle, from The Pillar of Fire,
based on Exodus 13: 17-22

"Then God said, "Let there be light!" and suddenly everywhere was bathed in the light.  And God saw that the light was good." Genesis 1:3-4

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."

top of page 

September 21, 2003

"The Story of the Children’s Fire"

The whole community sits around a circle called a Medicine Wheel. Around that wheel are representatives of all the different aspects of the community. In the East, there’s the fool. In the West, there’s the witch. In the South, there’s the hunter. In the North, there’s the creator. Others positioned around the circle are the shaman, the politician, etc. And in the center of the circle is the children’s fire. Next to the children’s fire sit the grandfather and the grandmother.

If you want to build a condominium in the community of Spirit Lake, you have to enter the Medicine Wheel in the East, at the position of the fool. The question you ask is, "May I build a condo on Spirit Lake?" The fool takes your question, turns it backwards and asks, "What would Spirit Lake say about such a condo?" You then have to take the question the fool gives you to everyone around the Medicine Wheel. Each will respond to you according to their position in the community.

The last people you must ask the question to are the grandmother and grandfather who guard the children’s fire. If these two decide that the request is not good for the children’s fire, then the answer is "no." They are the only ones in the circle who have veto power.

The concept of the ultimate question is simple. Does it hurt or help the children’s fire? If it can pass the test of the children’s fire, then it can be done.

As heard from the elders of the Hopi Nation,
Quoted in Kathleen A. Guy, Welcome the Child

 top of page

September 14, 2003

"September 11, 2001"

(continued from last Sunday)

 

Against so primitive a need, in this one protected space
We dare ponder the unthinkable: What world is ending?
Is it ours? What prayer will forge our sorrow
Into compassion for the work ahead?
What grace will give us back tomorrow
Where mercy and justice might embrace? . . .
The Son of Man, that stunning future we resisted
Is coming then and now and once again. . . .

Who breaks in upon our normalcy, the illusion we are safe
And steals the ground beneath our feet,
The changed course that marks our fate.
We will never be the same.
Going out like children under bright familiar skies
We return changed, older, shock-eyed, trembling. . . .

Whose time of anguish gives birth to new life
The long sorrow that yields to new worlds
Resurgent hope that what we – one generation –
Could only conceive but could not do
Others will do, must do.
A birth of new hope
Not in the possibility of peace
But its necessity – our end or our beginning.
The sowing we will reap.

Patrick Marrin,

editor of Celebration,
an ecumenical worship resource,
in 9/21/01 issue of the National Catholic Reporter

top of page

Sunday September 7, 2003

We are pulled forward into a future we do not want
Come sooner than we feared
Like terror at the thought of judgment
We are not prepared for this . . . .

Retribution lays out its tracks early
That soulless satisfaction that always seems
To retrieve its path home again, but always higher
In a never-ending spiral, fresh victims, sorrow
Upon sorrow, fueling its own causes.

Those who now grieve without this simple cure
Are thrust forward by the collapse of meaning
The assault on symbols that cannot save us
To the colder season where darkness begs for light –
September to October and November
Holy observance of Endtimes and the Advent of new life
When only altars can bear the ache and longing
That permeate our waking hours and sleepless nights.
As days grow shorter, it is then that people gather
In every tongue and race huddle to rekindle hope
The ancient songs and common symbols shared
Rekindle and return, whispered words that reassert
God still dwells within our damaged human circle
And love is still stronger than death.

 

Patrick Marrin,

editor of Celebration,
an ecumenical worship resource,
in 9/21/01 issue of the National Catholic Reporter


(to be continued next Sunday)

top of page

Sunday August 31, 2003

Let every word
be the fruit
of action and reflection.
Reflection alone
without action
or tending toward it
is mere theory,
adding its weight
when we are
overloaded
with it already.
Action alone
without reflection
is being busy
pointlessly.
Honor the Word eternal
and speak
to make
a new world possible.

Helder Camara

Human existence cannot be silent,
nor can it be nourished by false words,
but only true words with which men
and women transform the world.
To exist, humanly, is to name the world,
to change it . . . . Human beings are not
built in silence, but in word, in work,
in action-reflection.

-- Paulo Freire

 top of page
Sunday August 24, 2003

Justice & Renewal

I have come to think of our task of creating a just, peaceable society as a continuous process of finding sustainable balances in a web of relationships of humans to one another and to our fellow creatures of nature.  This can never be done once for all, but has to be tried anew in every generation.  Every generation is called to correct the distortions and violations of life that have arisen in their time and to reshape the world for the ongoing life of the  next generation, so that the legacy of violence is not passed on redoubled . . . .

The Jubilee tradition of Hebrew scripture is my model for this continual work of renewal in every generation, as opposed to the quest for a final revolution That will set things right "once-for-all."  Women who have been in charge of the repetitive tasks of daily clean-up and nurture are perhaps more able to understand this than men.

Each new achievement of a livable, humane balance of sustainable life will be different.  Each will be based on a new appropriation of the historical situation, Which will in turn shape a new culture and call for new technologies.      It is a historical project that needs to be undertaken again and again. We do this work, not just for ourselves as individuals, or even for our own families or nations, but for the global community.  It must increasingly be seen as the collective effort of all humanity as one community on earth.  It is this shaping of the beloved community on earth, for our time and generation, to bequeath to our children, which is our primary capacity and task as finite, historical humans.

-- Rosemary Radford Ruether

top of page

Sunday August 17, 2003
Sophia (Wisdom) I loved;
I sought her out in my youth,
I fell in love with her beauty,
and I longed to make her my bride. . . .
Once you have grasped her, never let her go.
In the end, she will transform herself into pure joy.
-- Book of Wisdom; Sirach


Yahweh created me when his purpose first unfolded,
before the oldest of his works.
From everlasting I was firmly set,
from the beginning, before earth came into being.
The deep was not, when I was born,
there were no springs to gush with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
before the hills, I came to birth;
before he made the earth, the countryside
or the first grains of the world's dust.
When he fixed the heavens firm, I was there,
when he drew a ring on the surface of the deep,
when he thickened the clouds above,
when he fixed fast the springs of the deep,
when he assigned the sea its boundaries
-- and the waters will not invade the shore --
when he laid down the foundations of the earth,
I was by his side, a master craftsman,
delighting him day after day,
ever at play in his presence,
at play everywhere in his world,
delighting to be with the sons and daughters
of the human race.

-- Proverbs 8:22-31

top of page

Sunday August 10, 2003

Prayer For Courage To Do Justice

O Lord,
Open my eyes that I may see the needs of others;
Open my ears that I may hear their cries;
Open my heart so that they need not be without succor;
Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong,
Nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.
Show me where love and hope and faith are needed,
And use me to bring them to those places.
And so open my eyes and my ears
That I may this day be able to do some work of peace.

Amen.

Alan Paton, South Africa, 20th Century

top of page 

Sunday August 3, 2003

We are all survivors of Hiroshima.

Robert Jay Lifton           

 

It may be only by descending into this hell in imagination now that we can hope to escape descending into it in reality at some later time.  The knowledge we thus gain cannot in itself protect us from nuclear annihilation, but without it we cannot begin to take the measures that can actually protect us.

Jonathan Schell           

 

If I shriek
who will hear me
if I don’t
break the silence in which diatribes
pile up, who will
hear me
if I speak normal
words in the normal
order

who will hear me . . .

if I fail
to work all the horror
into a play
of voices in which the living and the dead
live again
who will forgive me
Marc Kaminsky,

from "Questions: Nakajima Hiroshi,"
in the book The Road from Hiroshima: A Narrative Poem

top of page

Sunday July 27, 2003

"One Small Boy"

The report

on the miracle

of the bread and the fish

is about what happened to somebody

who gave all he had.

It is, of course, the story about Jesus

multiplying all that bread and that fish.

But

whose bread did he multiply?

Whose fish did he divide?

It all started

with the real hero

of that story:

one small boy.

 

* * *

 

I think that Jesus

praised that small boy

who had given all he had . . . .

When you are asked for something

you think you are unable to give,

think of that small boy

of this story,

and think of the twelve baskets

full of food given to him

because he gave

all he had.

-- Joseph P. Donders
 

top of page

Home Page

 

Site Map

209 West First Street       Reno, Nevada 89501
Telephone (775) 322-4564     FAX (775) 322-0285