This message was shared at Urban Sanctuary on Sunday May 27th, 2018.

Thank you once again to all of you who shared time, energy, and food and love to make last Sunday’s celebration such a beautiful success. I suspect it will take me seasons to process the depths of this experience and this season with all of you. It has been a true privilege to have had this time to be a pastor here in this incredible community.

There feels like so much unfinished business between and so many things we could yet still share together, so many ideas you shared that we didn’t get to. But today I want to use what little time left to share what’s on my heart in word and song.

Today, many Christians around the world celebrate Trinity Sunday. You can try to find that word in the Bible, yet you won’t because it isn’t there. But the Trinity is one of my favorite Christian concepts because it’s meant to convey the “flow of energy between persons.” In fact, the word translated as “person” hypostasis in Greek doesn’t refer to an individual, but instead “a state of being- just as water can manifest as ice, liquid or vapor, but remains the same chemical compounds throughout.” [1]

It’s a flow of energy between different states of being. It reminds us that the Divine does not just manifest like this, confined, disconnected, static. It’s a glorious mysterious, this and this and this. It’s dynamic. It’s movement. It’s flow. And maybe this flow that is God sometimes comforts and sometimes creates and maybe sometimes this flow that is the Holy One moves us and shakes us into a new place. Like the words of this ancient Psalm, “The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness…” “The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl…” Some scholars believe this is in fact the oldest Psalm, where we get the voice of the Lord 7 times. God is still speaking…

My understanding of God is grounded in the idea that every moment offers a chance for something that is just a potential to be made a reality. And from the outside potentials can look like impossibles. But the truth is as one person put it, “Each moment is a tiny explosion of possibility.” The impossible can become possible, like the Psalmist proclaims even an ancient and rooted tree can end up dancing.

This all got me thinking about how amazing this last year has been and what magic seemed to happen when oak trees were allowed to whirled and a bunch of tiny explosions of possibility were allowed in.

I am not looped into this world, but apparently those who are familiar with improv comedy know that the game “Yes, and…” is common as an icebreaker. As one person describes it, “It’s a protocol that allows for anything to happen, and it goes like this: No matter what your fellow actors present to you, instead of negating it, belittling it, or disagreeing with it, your job is to say, “Yes, and…”  Accept the scenario as it’s presented to you (regardless of where you wanted it to go), and then to add to it. Volley back with something your fellow players can respond to.”[2]

Yes and… is an experience that allows each person to take on radical openness. It is a way to practice welcoming tiny explosions of possibility into the room. And it is used in not just comedy now, but in business communities as well. The concept has now reached startup land- Yes and. When new ideas and suggested possibilities and voiced dreams are dared to be shared, instead of all the reasons why that idea can’t, won’t, didn’t before, instead people are asked to pause, to literally pause and take a deep breath and find a yes and…

The aim is to build on what is shared- not assuming what is shared will be the plan, the final play, but that the openness in the room, creates a flow that paves the way for something different to emerge. Improv and comedy and jazz both offer an invitation to a Mystery, a wild openness. Barbara Holmes says, “Jazz is a way of being in the world, a willingness to break away from rhetorical comfort zones and language hierarchies.” It’s a musical yes and…

Committing to yes and allows us to see the limits we, ourselves place on our lives and how small we often dream.

In my experience this is a valley of engineers and the job of engineers is searching for problems and that is not yes and, that is no with a side of all the reasons it won’t work.

So my final word for you today with tears and hope is to dare to be the people and the place of yes and… Beloved of God on this Trinity Sunday where we celebrate the flow of energy, let it go, let it flow! Be willing to let It happen when something surprisingly good unfolds. Don’t be afraid of the movement.

Because if God does not just manifest like this, confined, disconnected, static, if God is a glorious mysterious, this and this and this, if God is dynamic, if God is movement, if God is the energy, the pulse between potential and possibility, then let it move, give it freedom to break away from religious comfort zones, love it and let the mystery be. Let this be a church of yes and…

Nicole Lamarche and Kevin Haley closed the sermon with Let the Mystery Be by Iris DeMent

[1] The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind- a New Perspective on Christ and His Message by Cynthia Bourgeault 71

[2] Scott McDowell https://99u.adobe.com/articles/7183/the-yes-and-approach-less-ego-more-openness-more-possibility

A message on the occasion of going public with Urban Sanctuary San Jose, a new collaboration of the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ and the United Church of Christ in downtown San Jose, CA.

Living Pentecost

Sunday May 20th, 2018

What a beautiful thing to be there together today for this special celebration! I am so in awe of this past season and this current moment that I fear I won’t make it far without tears of joy spilling out.

Whether this is your first time here or this is your spiritual home, you are a part of something beautiful today, you are living Pentecost with us, you are blessing a new bold and brave collaboration in the name of justice and love. We are celebrating!

And this has been another week where we might find ourselves stumbling toward and longing for things to be excited about, things to celebrate, am I right? I am yearning for things that make me weep not for sadness but for joy, for the incredible beauty that abounds, for the generosity that paves the way and for all of the possibilities, luring us toward something deeper.

This Pentecost story has images of a violent wind, an unbound Spirit, being filled, the heat of flames. It recalls and references with intensity the creative work of the Divine in the book of Genesis, offering another sort of creation story, this time-not the genesis of the world, but of the church.

So we are celebrating today Urban Sanctuary San Jose on Pentecost. In the Christian tradition Pentecost is a “foundational theological event for the church” as it tells a story of God busting through and “indwelling” the people.[1] As the story goes, the Holy Spirit makes it possible for people across all kinds of categories and fragments to come together in the name of something deeper to build and live Beloved Community. Today we are celebrating living Pentecost here and now.

Community members shared…

This origin story is rich and because today we are celebrating this new collaboration, of a spiritual community that values both the Wisdom found in the ancient and the present, perhaps this story points out what is possible when we are willing just be open to wild ideas right here and now. Perhaps it asks us to remember once again what is required for new to break through…

But here’s the thing I have learned as spiritual entrepreneur- as a faithful fool who set out to start a new thing, allowing your heart, your life, your journey to be infused by something bigger than you, some dream so wide you cannot do it alone, when you allow that something else to bust through, that’s when the good stuff comes, that’s transformation, that’s what happens when we risk discomfort to experience something Transcendent, something to be in awe of here and now.

So it seems to me that Pentecost is indeed a “foundational theological event for the church” but not just because it tells a story of God busting through and “indwelling” the people,[2] or because it is “a flesh inbreaking”[3] or that everyone could speak and be heard, but also because it reminds us who we are.

This story in the book of Acts cannot be separated from the Jewish text in the book of Leviticus which gives very detailed instructions for how to prepare for the feast of Pentecost. You should bring grain and bread for God and for everyone. At the end of the Pentecost Party instructions it reads, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God.”  

This story reminds us who we are: We are a people who work for a world where everyone has enough. We are a people who praise and party. We are descendants of visionaries and dreamers. We are a people who welcomes wonder and awe.

According to D Mark Davis a more accurate translation of that first line of the Pentecost Story in the Book of Acts is: And in the fulfilling the day of the Pentecost, all were together at the same. Or maybe it’s more like what many commentaries point do but don’t say: When the day of Pentecost had come, they went all in together.

They agreed that the visions they each held separately could only be manifest fully if they went all in together. They committed to investing in new dreams, dreams there were too wide for any of them to do on their own. They decided that even when it was disruptive, allowing their ways of speaking and hearing to be expanded, would lead to transformation.

What a gift to be celebrating with all of you, on this Pentecost we are living, that reminds us who we are. This is what happens when we go all in, risking discomfort to experience something Transcendent, something to be in awe of here and now, a new genesis story.

[1] Donald McKim in Feasting on the Word

[2] Donald McKim in Feasting on the Word

[3] Kristin Emery Saldine in Feasting on the Word

I am not sure our little progressive church startup got more attention than when this picture of Eliza in front of our banner outside of the First Unitarian Church of San Jose went viral on social media.

God is not a boy’s name is a simple saying that sparked fascinating conversation and debates. Some of my friends and colleagues said well of course, God is not a person, God is a presence a power. Some were incensed. Like later when I had the banner behind me while a stood in front of a table blessing dogs at Bark in the Park, one woman snapped at me and said that meant I didn’t believe in Jesus.

If Jesus is a man, Jesus is God, God is a boy’s name.

But I said, if one understands Jesus to be pointing to God and manifesting God, we can still say that God is not a boy’s name. Some of in our community said of course and used the language of Star Wars, God is a not a person, but a person can manifest the Force and May the Force be With you.

Interestingly this is clearly a rich theological debate inspired by the occasion of a simple slogan.

In Judaism, God’s name is so holy you don’t even pronounce it fully.

As someone who cherishes science and the wonder of the cosmos, I have landed in a place where God is a three-letter place holder for the truth that there is more going on than I am generally able to perceive. It is an inadequate way of saying I am invested in awe. I accept my own insignificance. I do not know and yet.

In a political climate where so much hate and harm is being done in the name of religious convictions, I find myself wanting to boldly reclaim God. In mainstream American culture, God has become dressed with capitalism, militarism, racism, sexism and more. God has become more like Caesar than Jesus.

Apparently the God this country loves, supports lying and cheating and dropping drones on innocent people, as if the King needs a few sacrifices here and there.

But even when the dominant culture preaches and teaches and spouts that God endorses hate and violence and inequity, we must reclaim the God, to which Jesus points. Because the Spirit that showed up in him, the way he lived and did his final journey was not as a king with an army, but a peacemaker who taught lessons by asking questions, a man who dined with those cast aside and lead alongside women.

In the time when the Psalms were sung, people believed the world was something like a metal dome and stars were holes poked in the top. For the LORD, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth…who maybe sat upon the dome. God was of course, then up and away.

It is a precious thing that we have a spiritual community here that is rooted in the Wisdom of Christian teachings and also diverse in our thinking about who and what and if God is- among us are agnostics and conventional Christians, spiritual independents, people of conscience and progressive Christians, among us are images of the Holy as an invisible force, a power, a whisper, a lure, a humming.

Right now in our country and in our world, I want to reclaim the God to which Jesus points. God is not a man in the clouds waiting for you to fall short. That is Santa Claus.

For me when God is no longer king, magic happens because our role changes from bowing down because we have messed up or because we can never be worthy- our lives become about tuning in, being of use, seeking guidance and wisdom, loving ourselves and others into forgiveness and always growing more fully into who we are summoned to become. What name do you hold for God? Who is the holy for you?

Who or what or if God is for you? There is room for you, here, sing praises with a Psalm!

I will close with a reimagining of this ancient text from Psalm 47 on this Mother’s Day weekend and then we will have some moments of silence.

47:6 Sing praises to the Cosmos, sing praises; sing praises to our Greater Love, sing praises from all directions, sideways, below, above.

47:7 For God is the Life Force of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm. Sing praises all day long.

47:8 God is present among all the nations; God sides with not just one.

47:9 The leaders of the peoples gather as now as one. Humankind should lay down the shields, all of the earth belongs to God, the One;

He is highly exalted. She is highly exalted. It is highly exalted.

Who or what or if God is for you? There is room. No need to bow down. Get busy singing and dancing. Sing praises to the Cosmos.

May it be so.

Amen.

I am finding people have all kinds of responses to the fact that I am saying goodbye to this ministry, just as things are really growing and snapping and we are celebrating and launching a new collaboration called Urban Sanctuary. Why now? It’s a good question and I do tear up because it is all truly amazing, but the Universe just made it clear that it was time.

Silicon Valley Progressive Faith Community will change its name and the denominational connections will grow and the new thing will have a different structure, but that is really called resurrection.

I have learned as a church planter that being ready for change and letting go is essential for the pastor and the leaders. Innovation requires iteration, which requires letting go again and again to hear and make room for what longs to emerge.

What a beautiful and important time to be a true urban sanctuary for all, a spiritual community intentionally holding space for all people in the heart of Silicon Valley. I trust that what is needed was here and more has been planted, tended to, loved, started and will carry on for generations.

I cherish the three more times for our Sunday Gatherings and with joy and gratitude our family will say be at the party on May 20^th and we will all say farewell on Sunday May 27^th.

South Bay friends see you this Sunday!

Mural art at Eastridge Mall in east San Jose

South Bay friends see you this Sunday!

Nicole

A message shared on Sunday April 29^th, 2018

One of my first jobs as a young person was working in Beppie’s Greenhouse. Beppie was in her late sixties and had leather skin, a thick Dutch accent and a raspy voice from the fact that she smoked more cigarettes than any person I ever saw.

I loved the hours I spent in her hot little greenhouse. The smells were intense and the fact that it was always changing drew me. Beppie had strong opinions and an infectious chortle and between deep puffs she would take her stubby fingers and show me how to pinch the petunias. Rows and rows of petunias of many colors on shelves, in small plastic families of six. You who are gardening buffs know that this process of removing old flowers is called deadheading. And what it’s really about is, making room… for a new bloom.

This beautiful teaching we heard from the Gospel of John begins by referring to something like spiritual deadheading, “remove every branch in me that bears no fruit…” “Abide in me as I abide in you…”

This is something like a koan for us, a paradox to be meditated upon. “Abide in me as I abide in you…”

Questions arise: What does it mean for us to be deeply connected to the Source, the Divine/God or whatever name you have for the Holy?

In a world that tells us achieving and consuming will get us what we want, what truly will allow fruit in our lives?

We are told and sold the idea that fruit means individual fortune and maybe fame, but the Christian tradition says that fruit is something else. In the book of Galations we learn that fruit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Here in the Gospel of John we learn that fruit is not related to the health or wealth of an individual, but fruit is about role and relationship to the other parts. Interconnection and relationality – the wellbeing of the branches are related to the vine, the thriving of one part is related to the thriving of another. Fruits in our lives come from interwovenness with God and one another. The images “ emphasize the communal and relational nature of faith… challenging all of us whose lives have been constructed largely on the modern idea of the sovereign individual;” [1]

And here’s the other thing, the truth that boldly shows up here: there is no hiding from the fact that some things must fall away and change forms in order for the new to break through. “Two aspects of God’s created world are held together- bearing fruit and being pruned.”[2] “Abide in me as I abide in you…” Good living needs deadheading.

And as our community embarks upon a new adventure, it is clear to me that we must all be willing to be pruned, not our selves, but rather some of the stories we tell.

What I mean by this is that in order to welcome the kind of fruit in our lives and in this community, we must let old things stories fall away, a sort of pruning about what we say about aloud about who we are.

Just last week I was setting up the sound system and the keyboard and I realized I wasn’t sure how to complete the last step. I called Bob, I texted Jeremy, I breathed, I figured it out! Now I have never seen myself as an Audio Visual expert, it’s a low bar for ministers, so maybe I am an A/V expert among religious professionals? But when I came home to share how it went, Jeremy said, “You didn’t freak out!” You set it up and did some trouble shooting and you made it work! I am now going to tell a different story about myself. I am an AV whiz!

And I think that in order of this congregation to keep growing and meeting the spiritual hunger of those who come through our doors, we need to some pruning of the stories we tell.

Because it wasn’t so long ago that I heard someone say: We aren’t a singing congregation and I now I think maybe that’s a story that needs to be pruned.

And it wasn’t long ago that I heard someone say: We don’t need guest cards because we don’t have guests and now I think maybe’s that’s a story that needs to be deadheaded

And I know all of the stories I tell in my head or to others about myself- maybe some of them have long since withered and stop bearing fruit in my life. We all hold these kinds of stories about how we are not enough or stories about who we once were, but aren’t any more. Am I right? What stories do you tell about yourself that need to be pruned? What stories do we tell about this community that need to wither and die? How can we make room for what wants to be?

Branches are removed, allowed to wither,… but this is not the end. The withering is a compost for what is yet to spring forth. It is a reshuffling of material and spiritual matter, allowing new possibilities to unfold.

One of the meanings for the Greek root for ‘abide’ meno is “holding out.” Perhaps when we are deeply connected to the Spirit and to one another, when we are abiding, we are able to hold out and hold fast and feel the fruit of joy, even through a good pruning.

Beloved ones, let us “remove every branch, take every story we tell about ourselves that bears no fruit and let it die…” sure there is always room… for a new bloom.

Abide in Love as it abides in you…

(The congregation was invited to write down stories that need to be pruned on a notecard…)

[1] Stephen Cooper in Feasting on the Word Fifth Sunday of Easter; John 15:1-8, Theological Perspective

[2] Nancy Blakely in Feasting on the Word Fifth Sunday of Easter, John 15:1-8, Pastoral Perspective

Early on the first day, while it was still dark, this is how the most important story in all of Christian tradition begins in the account in the Gospel of John. While it was still dark.

Before there was clarity. Before light makes a way. Before peace is found, when disappointment abounds, this is where the most important story begins…in the dark. Mary weeps alone outside the tomb.

She is the only person at the empty tomb in all four of the gospels. Let’s just stop right there. This is no April Fool’s joke. Mary is the only person at the empty tomb in all four of the gospels. I can’t believe some traditions still won’t ordain women!

Mary is the one who refused to turn away from the tragedy unfolding in her heart and her town. She showed up when the crowds were gone and the hope for another way seemed gone too. They expected their king to show up on a horse with swords and an army, instead Love was made manifest in the flesh, in the form of king who wore a crown of thorns and armed with healing ointments, he rode in on a donkey. The light came into the world and it was extinguished. Early on the first day, while it was still dark…

They were all forced to witness state sanctioned violence, where their friend and lover and brother Jesus had his life taken too early, this seemed to be end, the worst thing. All that seemed left now was an empty tomb.

I don’t know about you, but I know a little something about weeping outside the tomb of disappointment and despair, where the world suddenly seemed so different and indifferent to hope, where possibilities and plans died and it felt like God maybe didn’t see you. Do you know what that’s like? I know I do…

But as the story unfolds we learn that this tomb is in a particular place. Only the Gospel of John has this tomb in a garden.[1]

A garden is a powerful metaphor throughout the sacred stories in the Jewish and Christian traditions. And it is only a couple of chapters earlier in the Gospel of John that we encounter the garden at Gethsemane, a place whose name literally means “oil press,” and is located on the Mount of Olives just across a valley from Jerusalem. Jesus went there to pray and it also a place where he would be betrayed.

Here we find ourselves in a garden again. The empty tomb is in a garden. Mary awash in the madness of grief and misunderstanding, mistakes Jesus for the gardener.

She was weeping outside the tomb of disappointment and despair, where the world suddenly seemed so different and indifferent to hope, where possibilities and plans died and it felt like God maybe didn’t see her…but then Jesus says her name, first he calls her woman, which is like what? But then, he gets it and says “Mary!!!!”

She is named, being called out by name is being invited in and blessed, reminded that she is seen by the Divine, even in tragedy and pain, a stone of hopelessness was rolled away.

Because the thing about the tomb of the Easter story is that it is in a garden. And the truth of life in a garden is that while it is still dark, something new is fighting to break through to the light, the truth of life in a garden is that death and life, struggle and sprouts are all intricately woven together like a messy ball of roots deep in the cool soil.

This tomb is in a garden.

This morning I wonder whether Christian communities have been asking the wrong questions for a few thousand years: Jesus rose from the dead, do you believe it? Maybe the questions the Spirit offers us in this time are more like: How do we show up to the heartbreak and pain when the crowds are gone and hope seems gone too? How do we show up for one another even when all we can do is weep? How do we not let the worst thing be the last thing and have the last word?

Maybe this is captured in the words of Frederick Buechner, “The worst isn’t the last thing about the world. It’s the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best. It’s the power from on high that … that wells up from the rock-bottom worst of the world like a hidden spring. Can you believe it? The last, best thing is the laughing deep in the hearts of the saints, sometimes our hearts even. Yes. You are terribly loved and forgiven…”[2]

How do we live as people of faith and hope invested not just in the truth that Jesus’ body was freed to rise that morning, but also in the truth that we are freed to choose to rise too? We can keep showing up, even through tears, one day at a time.

In the words of one writer as ,“beloved community we look for the work of divine love amid the tragedies of personal existence and the injustices of social experience, even when most of the world believes that dream has long since died.”[3] We show up knowing that just maybe in the words of one writer, “Our hurts (can) now become the home for our greatest hopes.”[4]

This week after the glorious turnout for the March for Our Lives across the world, an outcry demanding change, taken to the streets, the students from Marjory Stone Douglas High School have been mocked and ridiculed and shamed by those invested in the status quo. Amid sorrow and suffering and terror and tragedies these students could choose to stay in their pain or to pass it on to others. Instead, even as they weep, they are pushing back, not with the swords of hateful words, but with boycotts and boldness. They are not letting the worst thing be the last thing. They are choosing to keep rising.

Toward the end of this part of the Easter story Mary proclaims, “I have seen the Lord!” and I wonder if she was saying something like, even outside the tomb of disappointment and despair, where the world suddenly seems so different and indifferent to hope, where possibilities and plans died, where there is sorrow and suffering and terror and tragedies, she begins to fully take in this truth: I am seen! You are seen! We are all seen. We can lean toward love and life and light even while it is still dark… We can choose to not let this worst thing be the last thing. We can choose to keep rising.

Even an empty place that feels like a tomb, even that sad or hard or worst thing, doesn’t have to have the last word. Maybe that tomb seems like the end, but maybe it’s a tomb… in a garden…

And the thing about a garden is that while it is still dark, something new is fighting to break through…some day, at some point, some thing new will be rising…

This meditation was followed by three minutes of silence.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2807

[2] The Final Beast by Frederick Buechner

[3] D. Cameron Marchison Feasting on the Word Easter Day

[4] Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation April 1^st, 2018, Week Fourteen: Human Bodies, Jesus Bodily Resurrection http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/675B331BC12E769B2540EF23F30FEDED/887B5458B26326910F8C96E86323F7F9