Romans 8:15-17a 
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.
When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

When I read the words bear witness I think of someone who comforts and attends to my fears. I imagine one who will look into the face of my discomfort, my fear my deepest troubles and will not look away, but will bear those things with me. In the same way the Spirit knows the prayers of our hearts the Spirit bears witness to our trouble as well as our joys, to our deepest truths and to the most important truth of all: That we are children of God.

Who sits in the darkness with you? Who reminds you of who you are and to whom you belong? How does the Spirit speak this truth in your life? Through another person? In a sacred place?

I’m drawn to this image of the Spirit as the day of Pentecost winds to a close. The epic, nearly violent movement of the Spirit gives way in this text to a gentle companionship. A Spirit that is bound up in each of our own spirits. A Spirit to give us courage to move forward beyond the day of Pentecost and into the world. A Spirit that invites us to be claimed by God and to claim our inheritance.

May you inherit the hospitality of those first
Christ followers who fed one another and the poorest among them,
May you inherit the comforting breath and
companionship of the Holy Spirit,
May you inherit the creativity, imagination
and the unconditional love of God the creator,
May you inherit Christ’s commitment to justice,
inclusion and love of neighbor,
And may all of these things fill you, teach you,
and make you whole.

AMEN

Peace,

Shawna

Musical Meditation

ACTS 2:16-21 

“This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
 ‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

This is Peter’s response to the events of what we now call Pentecost. He and the other disciples as well as hundreds if not thousands of Jews from every nation were gathered together and suddenly a rush of wind roars in an tongues of fire dance on their heads and the words of the disciples are heard by each person gathered in their own native tongue. Peter’s response to the crowd’s jeers and suggestions that they are drunk is to quote this beautiful text from Joel.

A prophetic word that describes a time of new life, of creativity and imagination. A time in which that liminal space that we sometimes call thin places, where the division between the ordinary and sacred gets blurry, where God seems to be in the very air we breathe. The place where the Spirit blows in and the winds change. The space where dreams and visions flourish.

Where are the places dreams and visions flourish in your own experiences? When have you been invited to speak of your dreams, or a prophetic word of hope? Where have you heard and seen such things?

May you find your way to such sacred spaces,
May you know it when you arrive,
May the Spirit of God be revealed in both
the ordinary and the extraordinary places,
May the Holy Spirit stir your dreams and
open your mouth to speak words of love,
And may these experiences have the
power to transform your communities.

AMEN

Peace,

Shawna

Musical Meditation

ACTS 2:4-6 
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.
And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

Have you ever been in a crowded and chaotic setting and felt completely overwhelmed? Once when my oldest son was just 11 years old I took him on a cross-country adventure to visit a friend in New York City. We hadn’t lived in an urban area ourselves yet so the bustling city experience was exciting, overwhelming and a bit intimidating. On one afternoon our friend took us to China Town where we watched them throw fish at the market. I had never in my life been surrounded by so many bodies at once. Each person seemed in the midst of animated conversation. Each one speaking in their own language and each one headed in what seemed to be a different direction. I remember clinging to Matthew’s back pack for fear of losing him in the chaotic yet festive crowd.

Imagine the disciples in a similar setting. Imagine them surrounded by people each caught up in their own conversation. Words and sounds and languages from every nation filling the air around them as they attempted to share their story of Jesus’ resurrection. And then suddenly in the midst of the chaos, on the wings of the Holy Spirit comes clarity. In that moment each person hears and understands the words of the disciples. What a rare and mystical experience. How often does a moment of clarity cut through the chaos of our day to day lives? When it happens it’s a gift isn’t it?

When has the “regularly scheduled programing” in your life been interrupted by the Holy Spirit? Did it result in more chaos or clarity?

May your lives be filled with interruptions of the movement of God,
May the words of God be carried to you on the winds of change,
May you hear in your own languages:
the language of your birth and the language of your heart the Good News Words of God,
And may the breath of the Holy Spirit bring clarity in the midst of chaos
inviting you to respond with creativity and imagination!
AMEN

Peace,

Shawna

Musical Meditation

ACTS 2:1-3 
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

Have you noticed how the disciples seem to be all together in one place all the time? At least since the death and even after the resurrection of Jesus. What do you think they’re scared of? Are they huddling together waiting for the Judean Elite and Roman officials to forget about what happened? Are they waiting to see what crazy thing this Rabbi Son of God will do next? Are they still in a state of shock and disbelief? Are they doing strategic planning or visioning so they move forward with precision?

Well according to our Pentecost story from Acts they’ve waited and watched and gathered together in one place for long enough. Now the Spirit is interceding. And not with the a gentle or deep sigh but with a rushing violent wind and tongues of fire. I bet that got their attention!

Can you remember a time the Spirit swept into your life and grabbed your attention? Were you waiting for it? Hoping to be blown in a new and exciting direction? Or were you scared and huddled up hoping it would blow on by? In this well known story from Acts the disciples are called out and made visible once again in their communities. God’s fire danced on their heads.

How has God called you out of your comfortable or hidden places and what has God marked you for?

May the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit find you,
And may you be delighted in the dancing movement of the Spirit,
May God’s call catch like fire,
Lighting your way forward and warming you from within.
AMEN

Peace,
Shawna

Musical Meditation

Last week I wrote a devotional about praying out-loud, and this week the scripture text set for Sunday lifts up prayers of the heart. It’s with a deep thanksgiving that I read these words. I think of the times in my life in which there just weren’t words to express the fear, worry, love or amazement hidden in the recesses of my heart. Those prayers that live in our hearts unable to be formed or molded into spoken words represent both the deepest joys and the most difficult heartbreaks of our lives. Those moments that live inside us, that only the interceding Spirit or someone who has experienced something similar can seem to comprehend.

Can you think of the moments in your life that go unspoken, and yet God attended to them? Either celebrating or grieving with you? And have you sat with a friend or even a stranger who knew the particularity of your joy or pain without needing to exchange words? Who are the ones who know your heart?

May we give thanks for the Spirit that intercedes on our behalf,
coming to our aid and hearing our prayers,
even in the deepest recess of our hearts,
May we give thanks for the listening Spirit that
comes in the form of a friend or stranger,
one willing to be our companion in wordless prayer.
AMEN

Peace,
Shawna

Musical Meditation

I’ve always loved this text, the idea that there is something so tremendous, so valuable so transformational that the whole of creation waits for it together. And not a quiet waiting but a loud and getting louder kind of waiting. A waiting that contracts and recedes but gets increasingly intense as the whole world waits hungrily to claimed and set free.

I was adopted and so I think that word always jumps out at me, making me read this scripture through that particular lens. Today when  I read it occurs to me, the author of this letter longs to be claimed by God. At it’s heart this is what it means to be adopted. To be chosen and claimed. To be taken as one’s own and be truly made a part of this new family. When I was kid adoption wasn’t as common (or at least  not as well-known) as it is now and often times kids would say to me, but where is your real mom?  And I’d think, wow, they just don’t get it. This is the lady who’s claimed me and loved me and made me hers. She is my mom.

We wait with anticipation to be loved and claimed in such a way that it sets us free. True love doesn’t bind or break, it challenges us to love well in return, no longer clinging to selfishness, fearfulness, insecurity, anger or hurt feelings. It’s hard work this waiting and loving. We struggle as individuals and as whole nations, as a species and in concert with all of creation contracting with violence and war and then receding and waiting for peace.

What are we waiting for? Not a passive peace but for redemption, for reconciliation, for the world to be made whole. God’s been working on teachings creation about love like this for a long time. It’s a long labor of love. How do we participate rather than wait passively? How do we learn to trust our adoption, believing that we are each chosen, claimed and loved by God?

O God,
We long to be claimed by You
and set free from the things in this world
that bind us to brokenness.
We long to bring our groaning and clamoring voices
together for peace,
working in concert for reconciliation
rather than retaliation.
Be with us in our labor pains
Oh God and teach us to breath in our fears
and breath out love,
teach us to breath in hate
and breath out peace.
AMEN

Peace,
Shawna

Musical Meditation

Psalm 1:3 
They are like trees 
planted by streams of water, 
which yield their fruit in its season, 
and their leaves do not wither. 
In all that they do, they prosper.

Since preaching about it last week the idea of abiding in God has stayed with me as I’ve turned my attention to the texts for this week. The Psalmist offers a beautiful image of what it means to abide in God. Describing those who plant themselves in the stories, words and laws of God as trees that are planted by a stream of water. I imagine these trees on the banks of a gentle stream growing thick and green towards the rising sun.

Earlier in the Psalm the writer encourages the listeners to ignore advice that is mean-spirited and selfish, to move towards God and not away from God and not to build one another up rather than using words to shame, bully or mock one another. The Psalmist often creates the dichotomies in which the good, the bad and the ugly are so easily discerned from one another. If I read it too quickly I might think the Psalmist is saying that some folks are good and some are not. But it’s more complex than that isn’t it? And it’s too easy to draw big thick lines between who we imagine as good and who we imagine is wicked. When in truth many of us have discovered that all of these parts — the good, the bad and the ugly — exist in our own hearts and minds.

There are times the voice of truth and love, of compassion and humility speaks loudly in my head and heart. But there are other times that voice is clouded or competing with voices responding to hurt feelings, disappointment and judgment. I imagine God’s stream of compassion running through my heart, pumping love and life and light into it so that it will grow strong and lean in towards that light, towards God. The beauty of a stream is in it’s invitational nature. It doesn’t overwhelm like the ocean, it flows at an even pace, calm and cool. It reflects the softness and beauty of it’s surroundings and functions as a life source for those who would root themselves nearby, for those who would swim, bath or drink from it.

May you abide in the cool waters of God’s compassion,
May you find yourself rooted in the words of God,
May you lean in towards the light growing stronger,
May your experience of God let you face your fears and brokenness with honesty
so that you move towards a wholeness grounded in Christ.
AMEN

Peace,
Shawna

Musical Meditation

What does it mean to have eternal life? I added the word abundant to the verse because it was suggested to me this week that abundant is a more accurate translation, that it conveys more clearly the original meaning of the text. 1 John is in many ways a commentary on the Gospel of John. And in the Gospel of John Jesus describes eternal life in this way:

This is eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent. (John 17:3)

That is to say that eternal life is a life grounded in and bounded to God, a life in which we (the believers) know God through Jesus — the one who walked, taught, ate, loved, died and was resurrected among us.

In ancient middle eastern communities there was primary emphasis placed on the quality of life, especially of life in and with God. Jesus who was grounded in the Jewish ancient middle eastern community invited his followers into the fullness of knowing and being known by God through his own life and teaching. He invited them to an experience of abundance. Over the centuries as the early Christ followers became the Early Church and the Greek influence of rationalism and logic became the prevailing notion our understanding of eternal life took on new meanings that reflected a culture that favored longevity or quantity over quality.

How do our current values shape our ideas about God? About what living a life of fullness and abundance looks like? Does our current culture favor an emphasis on the here and now or on what happens when we die? Do we value quality? quantity? or both? And does our faith community reflect the same values or different ones?

May you live into the fullness of the knowledge that God is with you,
that despite our fears and all that we do not know,
we trust that in life and in death we belong to God.
AMEN

Peace,
Shawna

Musical Meditation

The author (often referred to as the Elder) who writes 1 John is addressing a community of believers or Christ followers. Much like those of us in churches today his community of believers did not all believe the same things about Jesus or agree on what we would call theology or doctrine. That is to say, they had a variety of words and understandings of how God worked in the world and what the role of the Holy Spirit or Jesus was. There was some confusion and dissension. Sound familiar?

The Elder writes to them, imploring them, hoping to remind them of the story of who Jesus is. In the verses before this one he refers to the waters of Jesus’ baptism, to the pronouncement of the Holy Spirit, to the suffering he endured on the cross and finally here he names God the creator as the greatest one testifying to who Jesus is. The author of 1 John also reminds his readers to listen to their own hearts, that they have the testimony of who Jesus is inside them, written on their hearts.

Testimony is a word made complicated by the centuries. When I hear it I think of courtrooms and witness stands (which may be a sign that I’m watching too much TV drama) or I think of sidewalk proselytizers who might as well be yelling into an empty abyss for all the attention they get from the crowds that pass them by without a backwards glance. But what does testimony look like in our communities of believers in this time and place? What are the words and stories about Jesus that are written on your hearts? Last week we were invited in the Gospel of John to abide in God. If our lives our grounded in God, if they are nourished and supported and bound up like branches to the vine of God then where and how do the stories of God turn up in our lives? In our stories?

When you find yourself telling someone a story about your life today, ask yourself, and where is God in this story?

Our everyday stories are our testimonies about the living, breathing, challenging and comforting Christ in our lives. They do not have to be cut and dried and obvious, in fact most of the time they aren’t. They don’t have to end with a moral or be tied up with a perfect and then we all lived happily ever after ending because we don’t often know how our stories are going to end. They just need to be true. God is with us in the trenches of the ins and outs of all of our days and the stories that we tell about the silly and mundane, the heartbreak and humiliations, the tenderness and forgetfulness of our days are our honest-to-goodness God stories.

So go on, go ahead and tell your stories,
May God’s presence be revealed in each one of them,
May you see God revealed in the stories of another,
May these stories hold and sustain you and
May they testify to the truth that God is with you.

AMEN

Peace,
Shawna

Musical Meditation

 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.
Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

In the midst of his prayer for the disciples Jesus describes them in this way:
They are given by God.
They belong to God.
They are in the world.

Jesus’ words must have been reassuring to the disciples. That they are given, belong and are protected by God. But what does it mean for the disciples to be in the world? That must have been unsettling to hear, “I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.” Was Jesus leaving them behind? What should they do? What will happen to them next?

What does it mean for us? To be in the world? Our answer might depend on how we see and experience the world? Do we see and experience the pain and suffering in the world? Do we notice the beauty of the world we live in? Do we think of the world as our own small piece of the city, the United States of America? When we hear world do we think bigger? The whole planet? Our galaxy? The whole universe?

Before we answer that question it might be good to consider Jesus’ next words, “protect them… so that they may be one, as we are one.” Jesus invites the disciples, and us into deep and abiding wholeness. To see ourselves as one. When we consider the world in all it’s beauty and brokenness do we understand ourselves as intricate part of the whole? That we belong to God and to one another?

We are in the world.
We are given by God.
We belong to God.
We are protected by God.
We are in the world to love one another.

Go out into the world in peace,
Shawna

Musical Meditation