Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
~Psalm 139:4
The single biggest problem in communication
is the illusion that it has taken place.
~George Bernard Shaw
Communication is so important! How could we ever live together in
families, work cooperatively, get anything done, and show our love and emotions, if we couldn’t express ourselves and be understood?
In a lovely psalm of being known by God, the Psalmist says God even
knows what we’ll say before we say it.
Unfortunately that’s not the case of us humans for one another!
Far more true is the quote from Bernard Shaw. How many times have you shared with your friend, spouse, or child something that has happened, only to hear them say later, “You never told me that!”?
All too frequently in the church we put announcements in the bulletin and in the newsletter, share during worship, even send out a special email regarding an upcoming event, then have someone indignantly proclaim: “I didn’t know that was happening!”
One of the difficulties with communications today is the sheer amount of information bombarding us. We’re overloaded. It is hard to take it all in.
The Archangel Gabriel (the Communicator!), c. 1430 by Masolino da Panicale.
Experts say that a message has to be given 10-12 times through a variety of means before it penetrates our consciousness. It’s no wonder things get missed!
Despite all that, please keep making the effort!
This wonderful congregation has so many worthwhile activities taking place and we extend our building to many outside groups as well.
That makes good communication — rather than operating in ‘siloes’ or assuming others’ know (or don’t need to know) — is really very important.
In church scheduling alone, considerate, proactive communication helps to avoid double booking and to keep everyone in the loop.
Before you announce an event, tell your group when your next meeting is, etc., please check with Li (Lisa Roth, our new church administrator) to make sure nothing else is on the calendar for the space and time you want.
Then keep Li in the loop for announcements, newsletter articles, and the website so the communications extend to the wider community.
Again, the more ways we can spread the word, the better!
God is doing good things in and among us. Let’s get the word out!
Grace and Peace,
Lisa
What else is in this edition of The Forecaster?
Pentecost is coming right up (June 9th) — check out ideas for getting ready for the Pentecost service;
FCC community goes to the baseball park (June 24th) — get the details (download below);
The Profile Committee — part of the Transition process — had its initial meeting on Thursday evening, May 30th. Tom Brucker is the Profile Committee chairman. Learn more in the full edition (link below);
The UCC annual meeting update (and who represented FCC);
Mark Your Calendar (particularly for August’s annual events) — Veterans for Peace at FCC (August 9th); FCC’s Back-to-School Ice Cream Social (August 29th); and FCC’s Rally Day (September 8th).
This and more … read the full newsletter via the link below.
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs Preached on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 10, 2018
The Lord’s Prayer Is the Best-Known Christian Scripture. It Goes Deep Inside.
Two Unitarian Universalists are arguing about religion.
The first one squares himself and mouths to the second that he is so ignorant about religion that he probably doesn’t even know the Lord’s Prayer. He puts $5 on the table and says, “I bet you $5 you don’t even know the Lord’s Prayer.”
The second Unitarian Universalist broadens his face with a grin, puffs himself up and retorts, “Oh yes, I do. ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ ”
At which point, the first Unitarian Universalist drops his shoulders and admits, “Okay, darn it. Here’s your five bucks.”
About two years ago, believe it or not, I was asked to preach on the Lord’s Prayer. Better late than never, I suppose.
This prayer is, of course, by far the best-known piece of Christian scripture ever, recited perhaps billions of times around the globe every Sunday morning.
However, being extremely well-known, it is also very easy to say it and never once think about what is being said.
The Lord’s Prayer goes deep inside us, way deep.
Aramaic inscription on a funeral stele from the seventh century B.C. in the Louvre. PD Wikimedia.
I was once asked to visit a church member’s father, who was in a nursing home in Syracuse. The father’s time on this earth was drawing close, and he was profoundly wrapped in Alzheimer’s dementia.
During the time I visited him, conversation was completely impossible, but every once in a while, he would mumble something way underneath his breath.
Once I leaned over him and tried to understand what he was gibbering, what the man was muttering, and it dawned on me that he was trying to recite the 23rd Psalm.
“Wow!” I thought. I mentioned that to the nurse as I was leaving. “Do you realize this guy knows the 23rd Psalm?”
She answered quickly, “Oh yes! He knows the 23rd Psalm; he knows the Lord’s Prayer; and believe it or not, he also knows the Syracuse Fight Song.”
An Accident Brings the Doxology to the Lord’s Prayer — It’s not in Jesus’ Original.
Now let me tell you some facts about the Lord’s Prayer that you might not have known. Then I also want to look more closely at a few of the lines within it.
• The Lord’s Prayer is found twice within the Bible, albeit in reduced form as we know it now.
We read the Matthew 6: 9-13 version, and then there’s a slightly shorter version in Luke 11: 2-4. It is not found in Mark or in John.
• In Matthew, the context is the Sermon on the Mount, Chapters 5 through 7, in which Jesus in this particular form is talking about praying in non-hypocritical ways, so as not to seem ostentatious or wordy or pious by others.
In other words, don’t pray in the end zone right after you’ve scored a touchdown so that you’re seen by everybody, but rather pray in your closet off your bedroom.
• In Luke, the context is the disciples asking Jesus how to pray, and JC says, “Do it this way.”
The Lord’s Prayer is original with Jesus, but only up to a point. The theme or concept in every single line of the prayer can be found in the Hebrew scriptures, in his Jewish tradition.
There are only three things generally referred to as “the Lord’s,” which would be the Lord’s Prayer, the Lord’s Supper, and the Lord’s Day.
It is probably not a coincidence that those three occasions do more to unite the global church than probably anything else.
On that one day of the week, celebrating holy communion, praying the words that he taught us, Lord’s Day, Lord’s Supper, Lord’s Prayer.
You might have noticed when Deb Miller read the Matthew version of the Lord’s Prayer in the pre-Sermon scripture reading, it didn’t have the final sentence, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”
It was not in the Luke version, either.
This is a Peshitta (NT Syriac translation) from Iraq dating to the ninth century AD.
What happened is that the phrase, called a doxology, was added to the prayer in the Byzantine liturgy going way back to the Fourth and the Fifth Centuries.
A whole millennium later, in the early 1600’s in England, at the time when the King James Bible was being prepared for publication, the oldest manuscripts accessible to the translators of the period were from the Byzantine liturgy.
With some reason, they thought the phrase was original from Jesus himself. That’s why the scribes at the time put the doxology into the original editions of the Book of Common Prayer.
Three centuries later, translators had much earlier exegeses of the Lord’s Prayer at their disposal, and they realized that their predecessors had jumped to a conclusion and had been wrong. But by that time, the form of the prayer had been set, and it had caught on permanently. It’s a nice ending anyway.
• The 1611 insertion of the doxology in the Lord’s Prayer in England’s Book of Common Prayer occurred first.
That version was used by the Anglicans and the Episcopalians and eventually the Protestants, but not the Catholics.
The Roman Catholic Church did not add the doxology to their prayer until well past the middle of the Twentieth Century, which of course made it interesting when Protestants and Catholics worshipped together.
Toward the end of that prayer, the Catholics would look up and wonder why the Protestants were still praying even after the prayer was over. And the Protestants looked up and wondered why the Catholics stopped early and didn’t finish the prayer.
In 1969, however, the Catholics blinked first and added the doxology to their Roman Rite Mass.
Deciding the difference between using the word “debts” or “trespasses” is definitely amusing, no matter which word you choose.
You might like to try that when you’re worshipping away from your home church. Try using the wrong word on purpose. It’s always a lot of fun.
For English speakers, the word “debts” comes from a translation by John Wycliffe going back to 1395.
But then, well over a century later, William Tyndale did a translation in 1526 and decided to use the word “trespasses.”
The word in Greek, and actually in each of those two different English words as they were understood at the time, didn’t mean just financial debt or trespassing on somebody’s property.
The words mean more generally what we might call sins or offenses. There are so many ecumenical versions of the prayer that now in modern times, many churches just use the word “sins.”
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread Winds up in a Long String of Words
Let’s look at some portions of the Lord’s Prayer, a few of the phrases in it, but I would remind you that Jesus spoke in Aramaic.
The Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, based on Neil Douglas-Klotz’s work. Abwoon Resource Network.
The Aramaic version was translated into the Greek, and then the Greek was used for the English version that we’re used to.
However, I will be referencing some erudition by the Aramaic scholar, Neil Douglas-Klotz. He has at least four books out, examining the Aramaic words of Jesus. In particular, I’ll be quoting and using his book, called Prayers of the Cosmos, which looks at the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes.
What I have come to learn from his research and from studying it is that this prayer is not merely practical.
It’s not just that people will need to be forgiven or will want something to eat today and every day, but rather, the Lord’s Prayer has a powerful mystical side to it, a very deep spiritual side to it, which I hope you will understand.”
Here are some examples …
Want to know just how powerful a prayer The Lord’s Prayer is intended to be … and can be? The Aramaic version holds clues.
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs Preached on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 3, 2018
A Gothic Cathedral Spurs Psalm, “Better Is a Day in Your Courts Than a Thousand Elsewhere”
There is an official Congregational Meeting after church today.
Is it appropriate to spend $100,000 of the church’s money, which by the way is actually your money, to redo the entrance off the parking lot?
Well, I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but there is no way I’m going to answer that question.
However, I do want to talk about church buildings, at least a little. As a matter of fact, it was a sanctuary that was my first clue that I was destined to be a religious person. It was at my parents’ church, and I was of kindergarten-age.
Prior to the worship service there was an adult discussion group that met fifty minutes or so for the previous hour, and my parents would plant me in the sanctuary — no baby sitter, no supervision necessary. I would just sit there in the pew and look around, sort of soak it all in. I remember it to this day, and I loved it.
Nowadays, whenever visiting a new city, I have an urge to go to one of the local churches to check it out.
Chapel at Duke University Cathedral. Photo courtesy of Duke University Cathedral.
Once when I went to visit our kids in the Raleigh-Durham area, I went to Duke University to visit the chapel there, a gothic cathedral, huge, gorgeous, impressive, and I had to see it in person. That little line from Psalm 84 came to mind. “Better is a day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.”
I’ve always felt that way, with one exception — a day in the courts is roughly equal to a day in nature, sitting by a stream. But then those days in nature might be God’s courts as well.
Why Are Sanctuaries so Beloved? Why Are They Built so Magnificently?
Look at them: the huge spaces, the stained glass, the woodwork.
Why do we spend so much effort and money to erect places of worship?
Churches, temples, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, ashrams — all of them, I would suggest, do something symbolic for the soul. That is, they connect heaven and earth because you can walk right in at ground level.
You can feel the functional foundation, built ever so securely, often out of stone. And the way they are built, with spire and vaulted ceiling, draws your eye upward. You can’t help it. They’re rooted in the earth, but with spire and ceiling, you feel the connection between heaven and earth.
On the communion table, you will see a bronze candlestick there with a white taper in it. It comes from my personal altar in my living room, and it’s something I’m fond of, not only because it’s old but also because of its symbolism.
Pair of antique Japanese bronze candlesticks, cranes on tortoises & lotus flowers, circa 1870. Image courtesy of Carter’s Antiquities Guide.
Even though my candlestick is only about a hundred years old, it is modeled after a pair of candlesticks of the same style and appearance from a Zen monastery in Japan from the Fourteenth Century. It has two turtles on the bottom, a mother and a tiny turtle right beside it, and on the back of the larger turtle is a crane and in the beak of the crane is a lotus flower.
The symbolism of the candlestick is exactly the same as the symbolism of a sanctuary, which connects heaven and earth. The turtle has its feet in the mud and its head in the air. The crane has its feet in the mud and its head in the air. The lotus flower has its roots in the mud and the flower up in the air. In each case, putting them together is designed to remind the viewer there’s a connection, they’re linked.
Two Core Symbolisms of a Ladder: Connections Between High/Low, Incremental Rungs for Ascension.
This brings us finally to the scripture for today — the story of Jacob’s Ladder.
Jacob’s Dream by William Blake (c. 1805, British Museum, London). PD Wikimedia.
(As an aside, I will be glad when we can move on to a different scripture passage at some point. “We . . . . are . . . . climbing . . . . Jacob’s . . . Ladder” is an unbelievably slow song because he had a long dream.)
Rather than applying exegetical techniques to this passage, I would actually like to apply dream symbolism to it. So Jacob fell asleep, and he had a dream about this ladder with angels ascending and descending on it.
For dream symbolism, you never want to get fancy because you don’t want to get nuanced, you don’t want to get complex about it. It’s straightforward; here’s what it means.
What is the symbolism of a ladder?
It connects something high up, out of reach from where you are, planted on the ground. You’ve got a leaky roof, and there you are, standing on the ground, looking up at it. It’s the ladder that is the connection between the high and the low, between the out-of-reach and what’s at hand.
But ladders actually have two core symbolisms: One is the connection between the high and the low; the other one is that there are rungs on the ladder to ascend. There are increments, one at a time as you rise.
There’s a phrase, “He’s climbing the corporate ladder,” meaning he’s got a job. What’s the next job? And when he gets that one, what’s the next job after that?
Take one or both of those symbolisms — connecting the high and the low, or the rungs for the incremental steps. Take those and look at life from the point of view of Jacob, or better yet, look at it from your point of view, your life.
Here you are, sitting in a church pew, inside a sanctuary, and in the back of your mind are your problems, the things that are always there, cooking around in your mind as well as in your heart.
Then, because your issues overpower the sermon, you nod off and fall asleep for a while. But then you wake up with a sense of assurance, a sense of joy that heaven and earth are connected, that all your worries are understood by the divine, and you have access to the power that heaven and earth are connected. And as if that weren’t enough, you realize that the actual place where you’re sitting is the connection between heaven and earth. You’re back to a spot where they’re connected, and you knew it not!
An Archetype for Everyone: Build a Memorial to the House of God and the Gate of Heaven.
Stairs to the top of the tower, Duke University Cathedral. Image courtesy Duke University Chapel.
So you build a memorial, and you name the place Bethel — House of God. And you exclaim to everyone that this is none other than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven.
Do you perceive the way this story is an archetype for everyone’s story? The way it applies to each and every one of you in your individual circumstances — feet on the ground, soul linked to God, and you knew it not.
Churches are our memorial. Churches are our Bethel, the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. And sometimes we just don’t know it. Sometimes we forget.
(Read the full sermon for excluded text. Link below.)
Putting on the Mind of Christ Awakens Us to God & Humanity, Spirit & Flesh Already Connected.
Embracing Christ-consciousness, putting on the mind of Christ wakes us up aware of what already is. And what already is, is that heaven and earth, God and humanity, Spirit and flesh are already connected, already linked, Spirit infusing all materiality existing within spirit.
Stained glass window, historic sanctuary at First Congregational Church, Binghamton, N.Y. Photo by J. Walters.
Until the day we awaken to the fact; until the day we incorporate that gospel truth into our souls; until that day, we will read Jacob’s story and try to incorporate the symbolism into our lives, let it sink in; until that day, we will place candlesticks with turtles and cranes and lotus flowers upon our altars.
And until that day, we will build churches and cathedrals with towering spires and vaulted ceilings to remind us because for now, we need reminders. As a rule, we know it not, but we are waking up.
“We tend not to think that way, and yet there it is: the power, presence, guidance, and love of God found physically everywhere in the cosmos, as well infusing and surrounding you.”
Pastor’s Perspective
By the time you read this, we will be at the very end of the church year. It begins with the first Sunday of Advent back in December, and concludes with two of the lesser Christian festivals, Pentecost and then Trinity Sunday, which this year coincides with Memorial Day Weekend.
The “pente” in Pentecost stands for five, in this case being fifty days after the Resurrection.
Pentecost was the time when the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus at the Ascension, was poured out upon the people. it therefore is considered the birthday of the church.
I mentioned above that it is one of the lesser festivals. It in no way compares with Christmas or Easter. There are probably multiple reasons why, but one of them has to do with our general non-understanding or misunderstanding of the Spirit.
Throughout twenty centuries of Christian experience, only a tiny fraction of all those sermons, articles, and books have been about the Spirit. Really, only in the 20th Century did this begin to change, notably with a book on the Holy Spirit by Billy Graham (1978).
Perhaps also it is a different and difficult way of thinking to realize that divinity is literally everywhere, yet invisible.
We tend not to think that way, and yet there it is: the power, presence, guidance, and love of God found physically everywhere in the cosmos, as well infusing and surrounding you.
The Psalmist wrote, “Where can I flee from your presence?” and mentions both heaven and hell, but no, God is there as well. Jesus said at his Ascension, “Behold, I am with you always, even to those close of the age.”
The Pentecost depicted in a 14th-century Missal, National Library of Wales. PD-CC Wikimedia.
Several symbols have been used over the centuries to help us apprehend such thoughts. The Spirit has been likened to a dove (bringing peace and newness as in the story of Noah) which is why the uppermost stained glass on the rear wall is of a dove.
The color for Pentecost is red, symbolizing the flame of fire as at the day of Pentecost recounted in the Book of Acts. Clergy wear red stoles at an ordination, as a prayer that this new minister would be guided and filled by the Spirit throughout his or her ministry.
But the best symbol is our very breath. God breathed upon Adam and Eve and they became more than clay, but living beings. Jesus breathed upon his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Even the very word in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin for spirit also means breathe, or wind.
But thinking of the Spirit as infinitely present, yet invisible, yet also the very manifestation of God’s power and love, is just plain difficult.
We tend not to think about our breathing. It is automatic, and our mind is elsewhere. But when you do find yourself thinking about your breath, perhaps in meditation, or perhaps you’re trying to swim the length of the pool without surfacing, think also of the presence of God. Our creator, redeemer, and sustainer is inescapable, with us to the close of the age.
The June Forecaster also includes news of the Trustees presenting an initial design to create an access ramp from the parking lot into the facility through new doors placed where the current library windows are located.
