Kent Beduhn
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December 28, 2014

Scriptures:
Psalm 148
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40

I was doing caroling the other day in Gaithersburg, and I suggested then, I would suggest we all do something now to improve our health profile for the coming year, something I did the other day while leading caroling.  Just doing a little singing of a “Gloria,” one good Gloria! Before we move forward.  Please rise and sing out:  “Glo-OOOOO-OOOOO-OOOOO-ria, in excelsis Deo!”  OK, have a seat.  Simply close your eyes and notice how the “Gloria” feels in your body, how the praise of the gloria feels inside of your body.

We have a final glimpse at the infant child, Jesus, in this week’s lectionary.  I was so struck by the figures of Simeon & Anna, as I was reviewing this during the week.  This dedication of Jesus, how it’s done and the events surrounding it, say much about various aspects of praise in community, particularly how we express our generativity through our community’s Creative Commitment.  I would suggest to you the calling to dedicate our own work to the Lord is actually something we’re destined for, as we keep our praise alive.

There are 3 things I’ll be sharing about:

1. What are we waiting for?   [I would suggest to you the opportunity to praise.]  That’s one thing we’re waiting for.

2. What are we destined for?   [I would suggest to you it’s the calling to dedicate our work to the Lord.]

3. How do we show Jesus’ Light? [I would suggest to you it’s the creative commitment to live our call in community.]
 

1. So, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?  What are we most ANTICIPATING?

Like Simeon, we’re looking forward to something? 

  • This person was known as righteous & devout; the Holy Spirit was with him
    • Right relationship and devotion blended well in this man, somehow.
    • When we bring ourselves to prayer, how we bring ourselves in prayer is a mark of this right relationship.  If we begin and end our prayer with praise, that right relationship is opened and connected in a different way.  
    • Just as Fred was saying at the very beginning of our worship about how the cult of Israel how they came into the Sanctuary with a sense of openness to God’s presence, calling forth and being open to how God had preceded them into the Temple,
    • How our intention expresses praise may hit the mark our life purpose.  It may help to bring it forth a Spirit of Praise of God in others and a whole community.
    • This may be the chief mark of the Holy Spirit in community: Praise.
  • Praise:
    • What is the nature of praise?  In the midst of a sometimes cold & dark world, it’s thanks, love and respect all rolled up in warm blanket of admiration.  It means & expresses enthusiasm, exultation, exciting & surprising energy. 
    • How does what we praise change, or how does it change us?  When we focus on praise of God, our mind gets off of ourselves, and our faith increases.  Our faith reaches.  Most importantly, we are not thinking about problems, or problem-solving, or ourselves.  Rather than praying complaint or shortcomings, we are praying praise.  We are offering ourselves up.  This automatically elevates mood, enthusiasm, & stamina to endure & persevere in life’s challenges.  And finally, it works.
    • If we praise God, does God change us?  How do WE change when we praise?
    • Philippians 4:6-7 tells us, "Be careful for nothing [which means don’t be careless, but being caring for the things that really matter]; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
    • This is exactly what Simeon had heard.  He’d heard that when he saw the Messiah, he’d be able to be dismissed in peace, that his life would have meaning in this context.
    • The Isaiah 61 passage from today’s lectionary: ‘my whole being shall exult in God.’  THIS, I would offer to you, is Praise.
  • Also in Is. 61, ‘Righteousness & praise’ are what God causes to spring up among the nations, in the face of the Messiah coming. How?
    • As a garden causes what is sown to spring up [mysteriously]
    • As the earth brings forth shoots [mysteriously]—THAT’s how righteousness & praise spring up. 
    • I would offer to you that that’s how righteousness and praise rise from among our own garden here at 8th Day.
  • How can we raise up a horn for the people of God who are close to him?  --It’s another aspect of praise in the psalm that was read.  In Psalm 74 & the read Psalm 148, the
    • Horn: a symbol of might or power; our praise is such a sign of strength, I would offer you;
    • "for the joy of the LORD is your strength" (Neh. 8:10).  So that’s another way praise arises, praise strengthening through joy.
    • This certainly is something that sustained both Anna & Simeon in the Temple for all those years.  We’re talking for Anna, being in the Temple from 7 years after her marriage (maybe her teens or 20’s) until the Lord Jesus arrives her entire life, until 84. 

Prophetess Anna:  of great age (84)

  • Never left the temple: worshipped there with prayer and fasting.  Being in praise is what sustained these people.
    • It’s a steady confidence that raises when we delight in the Lord. You know some people like this. You know some people like this in our community.
  • At that moment she came, and began to praise
    • Praised God: the sense of honoring, waiting, expectancy
    • The Prophetess Anna never left the Temple.  Imagine that.  Fasting and praying.  With the connection with the baby Jesus, as the child arrives, she begins speaking about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
    • The character of Simeon is looking for the Consolation of Israel.  Another aspect of praise: praise brings consolation.  When you’re awake to God, it gives you opportunities to see God at work in the present moment.
       

It’s inspirational.  I encountered an example of that this week, out caroling in Gaithersburg.  Met Bob Bolcum—maybe some of you know him—at King Farm Ingleside nursing facility in Gaithersburg—while singing Christmas songs.  He’s a person who helped to found Dayspring, and was part of the early Church of the Saviour.  He came up and introduced himself, after I’d said I was part of the Church of the Saviour, after the sing.  He walked up to Carol and me, and then started a story immediately:

  1. “It was 1954.  [The year I was born, 60 years ago.]  Gordon & I were digging the hole for the septic tank & we were over our heads.  It was so deep we needed a ladder to get out.”
  2. “In a course Gordon offered in those early days, he asked me to turn my life over to God, and said that, at first, I would feel no different, but that God would honor it.  [But that God would honor it!]  I did turn my life over to God, and I didn’t feel any different—I remember shortly after sitting at a stoplight in my car, checking inside—I didn’t feel different at first.  But, God has honored my dedication over the many years.  My wife and I have had 8 children & we have 22 grandchildren, they all live within 15 minutes of us here.  We’re heading out for Christmas dinner with all of them in a couple days!”   So, this was a mark for this man of how his life, his dedication, had been honored by God.
  3. What are we waiting for?  An invitation, like Gordon’s of Bob?  A recognition of how God’s opening to us might be honored?  We are waiting for a call that gathers us up, I would suggest to you, and presents before us a challenge bigger than we imagined: our life’s calling.
  4. Regarding call, Carol shared an amazing quote with me last night from her own autobiography:  “I would [allow] anyone to whom a good inspiration repeatedly comes, never to neglect it out of fear.  If he turns nakedly to God alone, he need not be afraid of failure, since God is all-powerful. May he be blessed forever.”—St. Teresa of Avila, her The Life of Teresa of Avila, by herself.
  5. So, how does our dedication, by our praising, by turning our will & our lives (as it says in the 12 steps) over to the care of God become honored by God?  How do we recognize such honoring in ourselves or those around us?   
     

2. This is the second thing I want to speak about: Destiny.  Destiny knocks.  It was destiny that they experienced that day when Jesus was brought into the Temple.  When we experience call, we feel compelled or destined to do something, to ACT.   I can imagine this is what Joseph and Mary felt when their child was being praised, dedicated and honored so intensely by these strangers.  They realized they were destined to raise the Messiah, the anointed one of Israel.  Unthinkable!

What happens when we DEDICATE our work, out of faithfulness to God’s call?

Simeon blessed and dedicated them with the “Now Master, you may let your servant go in peace.”  And then said to Mary three very important things:

  • The Child destined for the falling and rising of many;
  • This will be a sign that will be opposed
  • And, in this piercing you will experience, Mary, the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.

So, I suggest to you today that we, our 8th Day Faith Community, are being held by Simeon.  We are symbolically Christ’s body, as a church, we will likely do these same things:

-We may be destined for the falling and rising of many through our work. 

            -How we are distinctly displaying and living out God’s Call is our  Creative Commitment continues to inspire us to do this.   

-We will be a sign that will be opposed.

            -We stand against the mainstream culture.  Our little church defies what the church means in America today.  Little churches like ours are not supposed to exist.  It’s one of the reasons why a person like Parker Palmer was so willing to say to Marcia (when she talked with him this summer) in a plenary session, “Any one of the churches of the Church of the Saviour who’d like me to come and work with them, I’d be happy to do that.  But any mainstream denominational I will not come and work with.”  So, how will we be opposed?  How will we be a sign that’s different in the culture we stand against, against the status quo?  

And our piercing, our struggles, our hurting among us, reveal the inner thoughts of many.  I’m thinking particularly of the many ways this has happened over recent years with racial justice, healing and reconciliation.  And how we anticipated in many ways—since Feburary of last year—the deep lessons that this needs to be resolved in the wider culture, just as it needs to be resolved among us—we honor the diversity among us and develop it. 

--the means by which the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.

These are just some of the ways this continues to happen.

  • We have all been fed by the Advent sermons & sharings we’ve had:
    • Emily’s expression of Thomas Merton’s thoughts about becoming holy or sanctified:  “When the light shines in us it is transforming.  As far as the light of God, we are owls, blinded by the light…  Those who look like saints aren’t and those who aren’t [looking like saints] are.”
    • Fred’s concept of ‘fearless solidarity’!
    • Dixcy’s loving exposition of hospice:  a place of accommodation, a place of receptivity and a place of healing transition
    • These are all marks, I would suggest to you, of revealing innermost thoughts to one another and revealing to the larger culture something very much in opposition.
  • The movement to take on the Potter’s House as a mission & as a ministry.  It’s something that’s truly remarkable.
    • We’re in the home stretch of this project, I’m told.  It’s remarkable particularly in light of some of the resistances and concerns raised from within our own group, and how God allowed this to be part of who we are in a very organic and honoring way.  We listened carefully to one another, we opened our hearts and our minds.  We engaged the most gifted and skilled among us to help this to happen.  I would suggest to you that this is another example of the rising of many.
  • How will our working for racial justice, reconciliation & healing in our community be opposed?  Who is ready to stand today and say we should not be ‘about our Father’s business’ in this great work?  There has been much good work and preaching in our community on this to date.  There will be much more, I am sure.  We are destined for the rising and falling of many.

As we dedicate ourselves to this and many other works of call, we will—as Jesus’ body—do as Jesus did, we will grow, become strong, we will become filled with wisdom:  As it said in the Gospel, “The child grew, became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.”

May God’s favor be upon us.
 

3.  HOW ARE WE LIGHT?  If Gerald were here, he’d tell you quickly about the 4 qualities of light, and the physics of all it transforms us all, and how, literally, we all are Light.  (It’s a couple of conversations I’ve had with Gerald, & I encourage you to have that conversation with him.  It’s an amazing conversation.)   You will be, we are told in the Gospel, “A light for the revelation to the Gentiles” in the Nunc Dimitis, in the “Now, let us go in peace.”    Gal:  ‘when the fullness of time had come’

  • So, when we were embracing the call of restoring the ministry and renovation of the PH it’s a prime example of it.  We received this ministry in “adoption as a child of God” & become an heir of God’s realm as we assume this calling as a church.
  • All the missions of this church: the Companions MG, Family Place MG, Racial Justice & Healing MG, New Creation MG, Servants MG—all of them assume this adoption as “children of God.”  And the Spirit moves in us.  It causes us to cry—as it says in the Galatians 4 passage—from our hearts, “Abba, Father!”  From that intimacy, “Daddy, Father!”   May the Spirit cause us to cry “Abba, Father!” –out of our intimacy with God in our service.  It’s not about what we can do, but about what God can do through us.
  •   It says in that passage, “You are no longer a slave, but a child; and if a child then also an heir.

I want to take this shining of the light to another level among us today, I want to use the phrase: “Creative Commitment.”

Creative Commitment.  That’s what you have when you live your faith, you dedicate your life to God, as Simeon led Jesus to be dedicated.  It’s what we do in our community, and it’s what God will do through us, when we choose to do it.  Creatively Commit.
 

How might we recognize God’s honoring us as we express and live into our Creative Commitment, our Dedication to God as a church?  There are a few ways we’ll do this.

What if we focus our Commitment and Re-Commitment process on our Creative Commitment?  --what God is creating with and thru us, in our call to serve?  It seems to me, personally, we have been too focused on “Membership,” the concept of Membership, as a sign of belonging in our life as a community.  It delineates a boundary IN or OUT.  This leads to inevitable exclusivity.  I believe it does not belong in our church.  This was not Jesus’ Way; he welcomed anyone and everyone.  He acknowledged many as disciples and apostles who were not politically correct or appropriate in the world’s standards.  He did have people in his inner circle.   We need also go honor that inner circle, somehow.  It would be for those who are willing to follow Jesus at a level at which other people are not called, or willing to follow.  We can do this.  We have embraced that truth.
 

Membership does not and should not define our belonging.  It is our call to serve that should define our belonging, and to dedicate ourselves in that service that empowers us to COMMIT, to make it possible for “our whole being to exult in God,” as Isaiah says.

  • As we dedicate and commit in community we are shared “makers” and “developers” of community, as a garden springs up, as shoots are brought forth from the earth.  We bless one another and God.
  • As we ‘step up’ ourselves, God’s whole being is praised, our whole being exults, and our depth belonging to God brings a peace that releases us, Blessed.
  • As we live into and express our collective community, our call to Creative Commitment, we enter into a creative process where all of ourselves—our strengths and our weaknesses—are all shared—can be used for good to serve God.
  • I was struck by some of these truths in our recent Christmas party:  Hearing Dottie’s poetry, Emmy Lou Daly’s rendition of “What a Wonderful World”, Dawn’s country singing, & Irene’s singing “Do, Re, Mi,” –and then her deep appreciation of everyone’s clapping, which made it difficult to leave the chair (or stage)

So, what is Creative Commitment.  Creative Commitment is at least 4 things: It is…

  • Risk Boldly.  Creatively Commit to go beyond your comfort level, face into your fear with courage, to do something you didn’t think you could do.  Contribute with your gifts.
  • Embrace Community.  Creatively Commit to embrace courageous solidarity with others who have the call to do the same work in the world. This gives you the strength to keep going in your mission, when the going gets tough, and it will get tough.  We know this.
  • Engage the Work.  Creatively commit to doing the work, knowing, like Mary, that our hearts will be pierced.  There will be ignorance, fear and prejudice against us, and then we will know we’re doing the right thing, God’s “new thing.”
  • Faithfully Persevere.  Creatively commit the time, the splace, the attention and devotion to bring about the goodness, beauty and truth only you, in your unique gifts, are able to bring into this world in your own unique way, thru your unique call to act.  What comes through you, as a vessel.
     

A personal story:

Writing songs is a strange and wonderfully frustrating process.  At the beginning, there is a “felt sense”—perhaps from a phrase or a melody, a chord progression or even a word, that something needs to “come from this”—there is much more could be “grown from this!”  It’s something that happens in each of us in our own unique way.  It was a chief expression of the outward journey while I was in the New Creation Mission Group over the last 7 years.  Out of time dedicated to finding out what could be “grown from this,” those little seeds I was given, over the weeks and the months.  dozens of songs (hundreds of songs) came to light—not from me, but thru me.  It’s clear to me I was a vessel for something different and something much larger, coming THRU me, but not OF me.  In many ways I’m a very much a self-taught musician and you’ve been very patient teaching me, from being a musician in this community.  But it wasn’t ME. (This is important, because our egos can be caught up with this, if we’re not careful we can think our call is based upon ego.)   Our call is not the “I Am” the culture defines that we are, or even what we think we are.
 

So, applying some of the categories above,

  • Risk Boldly.  As Mary Cosby said, “If it seems impossible, it must be call.”  So, I Creatively Committed to go beyond my comfort level.  I even quit my consulting job, and spent 2 mornings a week, 8-12 basically, the time I would have normally spent consulting at military bases over that last 2 years, doing this song-writing.  I face into my concern about what could happen with courage financially or with me, by praising God.  I took risks.  I took the risks to express something.  I’d discover gifts in the very process of making the song happen.  I would be challenged to do something or sing in a way I’d never done before, and maybe never heard, but heard it inside first.
    • It was so hard to sing and play at first, in this community (publically, in the early 1980’s, when I started singing and playing in this community for the first time).  It felt like it was ALL about me, unfortunately.  It was only thru the encouragement and tolerance, support and patience of the loving community that I persisted and learned how to play and share the music as a vessel, not as the thing it was all about.
  • Embrace Community.  Without support, without the support of the Annas and Simeons around us, I could not Creatively Commit to embrace the idea, and dedicate it to a use.  I experience a courageous solidarity with others (other musicians, adventurers in Christian community, and others) who have the call to do the same work in the world.
    • The dedication and inspiration of the other creative artists—even in our own community, especially in the work and sharings of the New Creation Mission Group, focused my trust that the songs had a place and purpose in the world.  I never would have been able to do that alone.  In our worship, or in public performance, those songs have a place.  They could mean and express more to others than I thought they could, in other words.  They went beyond me, thru community, to become something larger than me.
  • Engage the Work.  I Creatively Committed to becoming an extension of the Light, letting the Light shine thru the work by “showing up.”  Creatively Committing to do the work, honoring the work, fulfilling the work’s purpose and direction, what it was asking me to do with it.  I knew, like Mary hearing Simeon, my heart will be pierced—the heart of the work or the expression of it.  There will be many critics and biases against it, and part of the work is being open to people’s feedback about the work.
    • The piercing of my heart or the heart of the work may take the form of criticism (internal or external) or concern that the work did not get expressed in such a way the vision could be fulfilled.
    • Engaging the Work means preparation, hard rehearsal and planning for how to best get the experience of the work OUT.  Each song has its own life cycle and must speak for itself.  So, it means trusting that.
  • Faithfully Persevere.  I apply the discipline to Creatively Commit the time, place, or attention to bring about the goodness, beauty and truth of the work.  I witness what the song asks of me, or the congregation, as I rehearse and re-shape it.  I trust the influences that it has on me and others, and continued to seek others’ feedback on the work.
    • This aspect of faithfully persevering means we are called to be servants.  Our job as servants is not to succeed, but to be faithful, as has been said many times from this pulpit.
       

So, those 4 things in Creative Commitment:  Risk Boldly. Embrace Community. Engage the Work. Faithfully Persevere.  As we witness and support one another in these four movements of the call to dedicate our own work, our own call, the aspects of praise all blossom in our community spirit. 
 

We will know and live into:

  1. What are we waiting for?   [the opportunity to praise]
  2. What are we destined for?   [the calling to dedicate our own work]
  3. How do we show Jesus’ Light? [the creative commitment to live into our call in community]

Thru Creative Commitment in our community, now I am also doing similar to the music, as I further fulfill my call to build leadership in a new call to the Servants Group.
 

Anticipate the opportunity to praise, people.  Follow your call, dedicate yourself to it.  Summon the creative commitment to live out your call in our Christian community.  This is how we, in our Beloved Community, might raise a horn of power and might, of strength, thru the Creative Commitment to our shared song of praise.  And may it all praise God, to the Glory of God.  Amen.