Last week in the Gospel lesson, Jesus taught his disciples to pray. What he taught has evolved into the Lord’s Prayer – I want to take another look on just one line of that prayer.  “Give us today our daily bread.” Simple enough or maybe simpler would be “feed us today.”

Wow, what would it be like to have my numbers drawn for that huge Mega Lotto Jackpot? I wouldn’t want the money for me; I would give it all away.

And in today’s lesson Jesus tells us a parable about a rich man. According to Jesus story, this guy talks to himself. He dialogue –updated a bit – goes, “Self, I have been blessed with a real bumper crop – lots of bread to say the least.   I wonder what I should do with all of this stuff.    I know, I will tear down my barns and build even bigger barns.   Then I will be set for life. Dude, I really have it made. I can set back and relax, eat, drink and be merry.”   I suspect this guy would even say, “I must really be a great and religious man for God to bless me with all this bread.”   Jesus left that last part out.

If I just had LaBron James’ money, I would be so rich I could help everyone who needed help in all of Spokane.

“IF I” I say to myself over and over as I talk to me about the money I don’t have.    Some of those conversations go into great detail about all the good I would do.   Perhaps I would even tear down my house and build a new one.   Or tear down my life and build a new one where I can eat drink and be merry; while I do all those good things of course. How many of you have shared such a dialogue with yourself?

The fact that we have this habit of dialogue with ourselves about what we would do with such treasures is a great clue that we just might be in the same boat as the rich fool in our Gospel lesson.   He had it all and now an even greater harvest makes him talk to himself about how great life will be.   He can afford to eat drink and be merry.    How did the rich man get into such a self centered – talking only to himself – point of view about his life?    It is God who interrupts his dialogue and calls him a fool.   That was pretty strong language for 2000 years ago.    But even worse God says his soul will be demanded of him that night.    This story is most often interpreted to be about saving up your riches on Earth instead of in Heaven.   But I want to stick with this idea of constant dialogue with self. The rich man did it, I do it, and most of you do it.

How did we get into such a state? Well dialogue with the wrong partner seems to have started a very long time ago. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden shows us that Paradise just might be living life in creative dialogue with the Creator. The man and woman walk and talk with God in the garden. Wouldn’t walking and talking in the Garden with Jesus be Heavenly in your little garden out back of the house? Wouldn’t that turn your little plot of dirt into Paradise?

But one of the creatures intervenes as a rival to God, and the man and woman begin to dialogue with the serpent, placing themselves in rivalry with God.   Paradise lost. Do we lose Paradise when our primary dialogue partner becomes other creatures or ourselves?

But does it work the other way? Can we regain Paradise by having the right partner in our dialogue? With Jesus nearing the moment of death, the one thief opens his life to dialogue with God and is immediately promised Paradise.

Having the right dialogue partner just might be the key to finding Paradise. Look at the rich man, isn’t he much like us? We hear about riches attained by others, but we dialogue with ourselves about what we would do with all those riches. Of course we say to ourselves or perhaps even to our friends that we would give it all or at least most of it away. Do you ever wonder why God doesn’t bless us since we do so much good? Look again at the rich fool, he is talking with himself the whole time. And God breaks into the rich man’s conversation with himself and calls him a fool and tells him he will die that night. Just like Adam and Eve the rich fool has the wrong dialogue partner and Paradise is lost. The Garden of Eden was somewhere in what we now call Iraq. Was it a wonderful place, a paradise, because of the bounty there, or was it a Paradise because there man and woman could walk and talk with God? Because Adam and Eve had the wrong dialogue partners Paradise was lost. Because the robber on the cross opened himself to dialogue with Jesus, Paradise was found.

It might be nice to win or get paid huge sums of money, but I seem to recall from last week’s lesson that we are to pray for our daily bread – for our daily bread for today. Not our daily bread for the following years of our retirement counting our blessings as we eat drink and be merry and don’t need God. Do we need to stop talking with ourselves like the rich fool, and be like the thief and make God our dialogue partner?

We here at Poor Holy Trinity Episcopal church cannot even afford to pay our bills without tapping our shrinking endowment. Would it be possible for us to change our dialogue partner from ourselves to God? And if we did start to really talk to God, would we regain Paradise – Paradise right here on Earth? I wonder what Paradise God could make of this West Central Neighborhood if we talked to him about it. Should we be sharing our blessings with St. Andrews Episcopal Church over on Howard a few blocks east and with Salem Lutheran even closer on Broadway? What does God want us to do? I suspect He wants us to depend on Him for our daily bread; not on the Diocese or the Bishop or new members or…. Maybe we should be in dialogue with God first, then with each other, then with other churches. Do we need to stop talking about what if and open ourselves to more dialogue with God in prayer? I know I need to. Want to join me?

The Lord be with you. —— Let us pray.

Bless us Lord that we may be a blessing. Amen.

No HT 10:00AM Worship this week!

Joint worship & potluck with St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church at Corbin Park @ 11:30am

Getting there is half the fun!
Join us for the first annual St. Andrews & Holy Trinity Picnic this Sunday, August 22, 2010 at Corbin Park. We’ll begin at 11:30 with an outdoor Eucharist, followed by a potluck meal and fellowship. Bring a seat to sit in and a dish to share. Lemonade will be provided. If you want coffee, make a java run on the way. If your dish needs to be kept cold, please bring it in a cooler since we will have Eucharist before lunch is served.

Getting there will require some flexibility due to the closure of Howard Street for Summer Parkway, a pedestrian and cyclist friendly community event. So if you aren’t planning to walk or bike up Howard, you can take your horseless carriage up Wall or Post. Wall Street dead-ends into the corner of the park. Post takes you to Waverly Place—turn right to get to the park. There will be NO parking on the oval streets around the park itself. You will be able to park on the side streets leading up to the park. Approaching the park, you will have to pass at least one, possibly two barricades to get that close. You will also need to approach from the West end of the park.  If you encounter barricades, tell them you are with the church picnic and they will let you in. (While a funky code word would have been more fun, this should suffice.)

If you get lost or frustrated, call Kris on her cell phone @ 701.1826. She’ll send out a search party or talk you in. Just calm down and stay on the line with me . . .

We’ll hold a congregational meeting after our regular 10 am service this Sunday, August 15, in the Parish Hall. We have some important news regarding some new challenges that we will face together in 2011. If you share in Trinity’s ministry in West Central at any level, we encourage you to attend. Please come! Don’t make us send Hilda to bring you in.

We have reached and passed mid-year in the life of Holy Trinity.  It is time for a financial update to let everyone know how we are doing.

A new book by G. Jeffrey MacDonald provocatively picks up one of the most powerful New Testament images — Jesus’ head-on collision with thieving merchants in the Temple at Jerusalem — and applies it to American congregational life, especially its Protestant versions.  In Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul (Basic Books, 2010), MacDonald, a UCC pastor and award-winning journalist who covers the religion beat, gives a series of troubling examples of how the Almighty Market, particularly in its latest American Consumer-Driven incarnation, has overwhelmed, or at least diluted, the soul, or essential character, of our religious communities.

The book’s opening paragraph puts its readers into the midst of a seemingly powerful success story.  In 2002, The Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Arizona had all the accoutrements of success. Its 187-acre campus and membership roster of 12,000 made it a poster congregation for the megachurch movement. On a visit there about that time, I saw firsthand its Disney-designed campus, incredible parking lot system, elaborate food court, and throngs of happy worshippers.

What I did not know when I visited in 2002, I learned from MacDonald’s second paragraph.  The senior pastor of the Church of Joy, Walter Kallestad, could not sleep at night.  Members of his congregation seemed “oblivious” to the social problems of the greater Phoenix area — crime, addiction, unwanted pregnancy, broken homes, etc.  Pastor Kallestad wondered if the larger community would miss his congregation or even notice if it disappeared.  He assessed his congregation and concluded: “They didn’t really want to engage with God.  They wanted relief and inspiration.”  Twenty years into his ministry, Kallestad went before his congregation and with tears repented that The Church of Joy had become a “dispenser of religious goods and services.”  Then he purged many of the frills that made his congregation stand out — talented professional musicians, square dancing classes, groups dedicated to visiting restaurants, card-playing evenings.  One third of his members and almost half of his staff left the church.  Six years later the congrega­tion had recovered less than a quarter of its lost members.  But it had gained a sense that there was more to being a Christian congregation than being entertained spectators and satisfied consumers.  As Kallestad put it, “it’s time you grow up.”

The Church of Joy is not alone in this struggle with the prevailing ethos of religious and spiritual consumerism.  Some seem to embrace the ethos without reservation.  The $28 million, 120,000 square foot Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York attracts 10,000 people each Sunday to services that proclaim a Prosperity Gospel.  Joel Osteen’s 47,000-member Lakewood Church and Creflo Dollar’s School of Prosperity in Georgia sound similar notes.  A new “competitive missions market” has spawned a growing industry of “outfitters” who seek to meet demand for short-term mission trips that take congregation members to places like Honduras or Tijuana, Mexico.  Called by some “vacationaries,” more than a few of those who have gone to Tijuana have had misleading packaged experiences.  Mark Oestreicher, formerly a trainer of youth ministry leaders for Youth Specialties in El Cajon, California, discovered that “Each of these groups will come in, do a vacation Bible school, and lead the same kids to Christ over and over again.”

Many of the impacts of religious consumerism traced by MacDonald are not as attention-getting as the megachurches or mission experience outfitters.  He invites us to consider the total impact of the religious shopping that Americans do as they pick congregations on the basis of their ability to satisfy desires, the appearance of giving kiosks in our congregation hallways, the pressure on preachers to offer comfort rather than transformational demands, and the commodification of baptisms, weddings, and funerals.  Are our congregations losing their larger, life transforming (rather than mere enhancing) characters and reasons for being?

As I ponder MacDonald’s jeremiad, I am reminded that this is not the first time that someone has warned about the ways that the American lifestyle can overwhelm our religious communities.  I recall a powerful set of books with titles like The Suburban Captivity of the Churches and The Noise of the Solemn Assemblies in the 1960s.  I also remember the longer history of Christianity and how repeatedly Christian communities have been at the risk of losing their souls as they became engulfed by powerful cultural dynamics like the establishment of Christianity in the 4th century or the crusading interests of feudal kingdoms in the Middle Ages or the juggernaut of the Third Reich.  It should come as little surprise to us that cultures always infect our religious communities — and that the consequences of such encounters can be destructive and last for a long time. One only has to think of how long the “establishment mindset” that was put in motion by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century — almost seventeen centuries and still counting in the state churches of Europe and the liturgical practices and official polities of many American denominations.

The problem of “watering down” or losing our character is a perennial problem for religious communities.  In every age, including this one in which the consumer reigns, congregations of all sorts are called to look at how they relate to the surrounding culture, to crit­ically appropriate the good gifts of each age, and to ask about the state of their souls.  But they are also called to take risks as they immerse (or incarnate) those precious souls in the full life of the world that needs their full presence and every gift that they possess.

“The Leading Edge” is Alban Institute president James P. Wind’s regular column in Congregations magazine. Please click here <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103533117033&s=56181&e=0011bBYd4OjA38Nfzm6iNzngF0KL9u9I_mOkK5f3u8dnbtB0M51oGP4FBQnryZLC6ckXZxztr8rvtR4ltuNDmyfMOq2fEOhYn9cIUBQzy_-AfIBu6MX0QIV5XdwLrJmOJ-5GoN9upaY99PcG00qOoLMdA==> to read more from the current issue.

Sundays @ 7 will meet on the 2nd Sunday of the month during summer (June, July, August) Come join the singing with young adults and young at hearts for a sung evening prayer with coffee and snacks after the service.

Come join us for a family friendly worship on Sundays @ 10 am.

This Sunday J will include Holy Eucharist and baptism. Your presence is joyfully requested.

Like most Christians, I don’t pay attention to missives from church leaders. This week, however, dueling pastoral letters issued for Pentecost from Rowan Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, and Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, caught my attention — because one so rarely witnesses a first-class theological smackdown between tea-drinking Anglican primates.

Unless you’ve been sleeping in a cave, you are probably aware that the Episcopal Church (of which I am a member) has been arguing about the role of LGBT persons in the church. Along with the Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church has opened itself toward full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians. Here in North America, this has caused some defections (fewer than at first predicted), some legal suits (most have been settled in favor of the Episcopal Church), monetary fallout (hard to separate from general economic downturn), and bad feelings (which, sadly enough, remain). But what is most surprising — and I regularly hear this from bishops, clergy, and congregational lay leaders — is that things are much less tense in the Episcopal Church now than they have been in recent years. Folks are moving ahead in their local parishes doing the sorts of things that Episcopalians are pretty good at doing — creating beautiful worship, praying together, and feeding hungry people.

Despite the fact that the Episcopalians are bumpily journeying into a renewed future, some other Anglicans — mostly in Africa — are pretty mad that we’ve included our gay and lesbian friends and relatives in our churches. Large communities of Anglicans in places like Uganda (the same Uganda that recently tried to pass a death-penalty law for gay people) and Malawi (the same Malawi that recently sentenced a gay couple who wanted to marry to 14 years of hard labor) are seriously unhappy with American Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans.

And this leads us to the Pentecost pastoral letters.

While (somewhat ironically) attending a conference in Washington, DC entitled “Building Bridges,” Rowan Williams sent out his Pentecost letter to Anglicans worldwide, which, after saying a lot of nice things about missions and diversity, pulls rank and proclaimed that he’s going to kick people off important committees whose national churches have violated a controversial guidelines laid out in documents called the Windsor Report and the Anglican Covenant. This includes the Canadians (who let gay Christians get married) and the Americans (who recently ordained a lesbian bishop in Los Angeles) and some Africans (who ordained some Americans who were splitting churches in places like Virginia and Pennsylvania).

In response, Katharine Jefferts Schori essentially accused Williams — in a nice sort of Anglican way — of being a theological dictator. As she says in understated fashion, “Unitary control does not characterize Anglicanism.” For non-Anglicans, trust me, those are fightin’ words.

This is not a conservative/liberal argument (both Rowan Williams and Katharine Jefferts Schori are theologically liberal). This is a fight between rival versions of Anglicanism, a quarrel extending to the beginning of Anglicanism that has replayed itself periodically through the centuries down to our own time.

Rowan Williams’ letter articulates “top-down Anglicanism,” a version of the faith that is hierarchical, bishop-centered, concerned with organizational control, and authoritarian. It is an old vision that vests the identity of the church in a chain of authority in the hands of ecclesiastical guardians who agree on “a coherent Anglican identity” and then enforce the boundaries of that identity through legal means. This version of Anglicanism stretches back through the Middle Ages and relates to similar forms of Christianity as found in Roman Catholicism and some forms of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Katharine Jefferts Schori’s letter speaks for “bottom-up Anglicanism,” a version of the faith that is democratic, parish-based, mission-oriented, somewhat rambunctious, and (even) revolutionary. It is also an old vision, one that vests the identity of the church in local communities of Anglicans at prayer, who adapt their way of life and liturgy according to the needs of Christian mission. This version of Anglicanism is rooted in both the ancient Celtic traditions of English Christianity and the missionary work of St. Augustine of Canterbury circa 600.

As history unfolded, different cultures have picked up on one or the other of these two streams — for example, the British church remains primarily hierarchical (even referring to their bishops as “My Lord Bishop”); while the American church is primarily democratic (”God alone is the Lord”). The Ugandan church is authoritarian; while the South African church is revolutionary. The Anglicans in Sydney, Australia are boundary-oriented and communally closed, while most other Anglicans in Australia are liturgically-oriented and open (the Anglicans in Darwin, Australia are so open that their cathedral doesn’t even have walls).

At its best, Anglicanism manages these tensions — often creating locally innovative expressions of a church that is both hierarchical and democratic, bishop- and parish-centered, bounded and liturgically open at the same time. Over the centuries, this has been called the Anglican art of comprehension, or the via media (the “middle way”).

But once every few hundred years, the tensions explode. This is one of those times.

The argument isn’t really about gay and lesbian people, nor is it about, as some people claim, the Bible or orthodoxy. Rather, the argument reprises the oldest conflict within Anglicanism — What kind of Anglicans are we to be? How do we relate to the world and culture around us? And very specifically now: What kind of Anglicans are we to be in the 21st century? And how to we relate to the plurality of cultures in which we find ourselves?

Set in this frame, this isn’t just an Anglican argument. Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Protestants of all sorts, Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims are having the same arguments within their varying traditions and cultures. What kind of religious faith are we to practice in the 21st century? And how do we relate to the plurality of cultures in which we each find ourselves?

For what it is worth, the river of history does not seem to be on the side of hierarchical church control; rather, history seems to be moving in a the direction of what Thomas Friedman might call “flat church.” The tides are pulling most ecclesiastical boats toward bottom-up versions of faith. Hierarchical church control is, as Harvey Cox argues in his book The Future of Faith, a “rearguard attempt to stem a more sweeping tidal change” toward a new experiential, inclusive, and liberationist view of God and faith.

Despite their smack down, I think that Rowan Williams and Katharine Jefferts Schori might actually agree on the fundamental questions of identity, mission, and 21st-century change. I also suspect that Rowan Williams would secretly find the “sweeping tidal change” more spiritually interesting than trying to keep the Anglican institutional ship afloat in the waters. But he thinks that he’s in charge — and he’ll be captain of this Titanic until the last and may well go down with the ship.

As for me, I kinda like this American Episcopal river raft. Better for navigating strong currents.

See the story and related links @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-butler-bass/rowan-williams-katharine-jefferts_b_600115.html

Help create a scholarship fund to send West Central youth to Camp Cross.

Join us for a benefit dinner and concert by Marshall McLean on Friday, April 30 @ 6pm.

A freewill offering will be taken or send donations to Holy Trinity, P. O. Box 8508, Spokane, WA  99203. Write “scholarship” in the memo line.