I, the LORD, Love Justice

Faith, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the First Congregational Church on a continuing mission to explore creation & justice, seek out God's creation, and boldly love as no one has loved before.

After worship and the cookie exchange, once we are all hopped up on sugar, we will have another discussion about our mission statement. According to Jason Bowman at ARTSPEAK Creative, he defines mission statements, vision statements, and core values in this way:

A mission statement is what you intend to do as an organization
A vision statement is how you intend to accomplish your mission
Core values are the attitudes and habits that allow you to accomplish your mission

Our current statement is a mixture of all three, which is not a bad thing, but it is hard to share it with someone just off the cuff or post it in the bulletin or feature it on the bulletin. We are a Just Peace church that has its own statement, as well as an Open and Affirming church. We have taken on a lot, which is not a bad thing, to shot for the stars. We do welcome anyone to join us, but we welcome them to join in on our mission, which includes to advocate for justice for all, which includes making sure that all people have a safe place, not just in our church, but in society and around the world. Everyone is welcome, although to fulfill our mission, all behaviors, language, and attitudes are not accepted. Any group of people, whether it is a community, a business, a faith community, a nation, or a sports organization, has its rules and boundaries. We can't proclaim one thing and practice another.

Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, uses this scripture as his mission statement proclaiming that it is fulfilled in his reading it today. Jesus is the anointed (remember Christ and Messiah mean anointed) to do what Isaiah proclaims. Isaiah shares this with the Jewish people as they have returned to Jerusalem and their homes and lands. It is a reminder to them of God's purpose to help them reestablish their homes, community, faith, and country. For at the moment, the Jewish people were the poor, the broken hearted, the oppressed, and full of mourning. In Jesus' day it was as well, being occupied by the Roman Empire.

Today, on our world, Western Civilization is the empire. It is our country's obsession with more and more is poisoning the world, depleting the world of its resources and ecosystems, and creating injustice and slavery in the Congo over minerals. And our mining of coal has kept the Appalachian Mountains community in poverty, and oil is being taken from the 'third world' countries that leave them poorer and poisoned. In a world of global climate change and rising movements of autocracy and divisiveness between groups of people, what is God calling us to do? It is the same as our mission statement from ten, fifteen years ago. Has this church changed, has the world changed, has our belief and understanding of who God or isn't changed?

It is not up to me to give this church its mission or vision statements. If someone has received one from a vision or an angel, please share it after worship. It is still in the hands of the congregation, hopefully, prayerfully, guided by the Spirit, following in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call Christ, and loving the world as God does. Let us listen and contemplate what our next mission statement should be. Amen.

Nothing Outside Contaminates

First we start with the human traditions, not all of humanity, but Western civilization under the Doctrine of Discovery that basically states that any European explorer (especially from countries that were still Roman Catholic) coming upon any land and people that weren't Christian were able to claim the land and people in the name of their king and country. This created human traditions of enslavement and taking what isn't theirs which is still happening today in Sudan with diamonds, the Congo with lithium, and Palestine with natural gas. We continue to the 1980's were the wealthy were given massive tax cuts and the unions were routinely broken up and laws were put in place to make it very hard to create one in the 'Right to Work' states. Our human traditions have created once again a wealthy class that if they lost 90% of their wealth, they would still be the most wealthy people in the world. It probably started with philosopher Francis Bacon who helped begin th...

Selling Out

Last Fall, I read a book called, "A History of Burning." It is a multi-generational story about a family that migrates from India to Uganda for hopes for a better future to help the British build a railroad, whose children through education secures a government job, but then Uganda throws off their colonial oppressors and gains independence and turns against the Indians who live there, and they have to migrate again and start all over in Toronto, Canada. It is a sad story of colonial power of the British Empire bringing in foreign cheap labor to build their infrastructure that leaves out the local population. And once Uganda gets independence, the corporations still control much of the economy and fosters division between the Ugandans and Indian to keep the country unstable. It is a triumphant story of human determination in the face of adversity, but only a few make it. One of the first paragraphs in a Wikipedia search about Africa told me that Africa is politically unstab...

You Will Be My Witnesses

The first time I served communion as a licensed minister in Fargo, ND, I picked up the tray of cups and proclaimed, "This is the cup of the new covenant!" And then I remembered we serve the bread first, panicked, and said, "Which comes after the bread!" The next time, months later, I served communion, I took the cover off the communion cups, and the altar table was stone, and I timed it perfectly, and purely accidentally, so the cover spun on the table, and you would hear it go, "whew, whew, whew" faster and faster. Sitting near the front was a couple that worked closely with me in the youth groups, each time when I began and messed up, they were bent over, hands covering their faces, taking great humor in my mistakes. In my first church in Walker, MN I messed up just about every baptism, including one time putting the head right on my lavaliere mike and the baby started crying into mike, and I almost dropped the baby when switching it around in my arms....

Vanasõna

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