"I Keep My Promises"

"I Keep My Promises!"

(Graphic is a photograph taken February 25, 2008 outside of Cairo, Egypt and titled “Rainbow Over the Pyramid”.  The following notes are shared about the photo:  Throughout the Genesis account of God’s creation of the cosmos and interaction with humanity, we are made aware of the fact that religious traditions and indeed theological notions about God do not develop in a vacuum. When we look at the ancient creation myths of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Mesopotamians we are able to trace the significant influence that these neighboring religious communities had on the way that the Jewish authors choose to tell their story. It seems that there must have been some key characteristics, symbols, and metaphors that defined what it meant to be a God, commonly communicated through the creation stories of the ancient Middle Eastern civilizations.


The most significant Egyptian, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian creation myth is a 12th century BCE story, the Enuma Elish. In one of its most complete versions the warrior god of the sky, Marduk becomes the king of the gods after he defeats the goddess of the dark primordial waters of the chaotic deep, Tiamat. Marduk splits her in two with an arrow shot down her throat. From this, we conclude that the authors of this myth understood a god king to be one who splits the chaos and brings order to the cosmos, much like the Hebrew God in the first chapter of Genesis.
This photograph depicts a rainbow over the pyramids of Egypt (the likely birthplace of the Enuma Elish), which stands as a symbol of the weapon God hangs in the sky, turned heavenward as reminder of God’s covenant never to use it to fire upon the earth again. -- Chance Dillon)


Lectionary Scripture Focus – Genesis 9:8-17 NRSV


Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.  I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."


God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth."


God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."


Reflection on the Lectionary:


Many years ago, home for the summer from my studies at the University of Iowa, I had a thought pressed into my mind, i.e. I could not remember when I last saw a rainbow.  I sense now that it was part of the soul searching I was in at that time related to discerning what profession I should pursue.  Ultimately, I decided upon clinical psychology.  At that point however, I was unclear and seeking a sign that whatever I chose to pursue, it had to be pleasing to God and supportive of a calling I recently experienced (see blog post “Discern theCall”) in terms of ministry.  You see the denomination I belonged to at that point had long shunned formal seminary training in terms of preparing interested young adults like me for full-time professional ministry.  Instead, a young adult was to serve sacrificially and unreservedly – and if you were lucky, and I do mean lucky -- some general officer of the church hierarchy might just notice you and guide you along the ropes to being “appointed” by the hierarchy to come work for it.  There was a huge amount of pressure to the whole process.  So I knew that I had to have a fallback profession in case I wasn’t up to snuff in the eyes of the hierarchy.  I also needed to know, at that time, that whatever the fallback profession would be, it had to be something pleasing to God and for me, one sign of God’s love was a rainbow.


So not able to recall at that time when I last saw a rainbow, I prayed that God that would let me see the next one that came along.  One other thing about that particular summer is that it was the summer of the beat-up 1963 Ford Fairlane, a car I bought from my younger brother to drive back and forth from Fargo, North Dakota, to Iowa City, Iowa for school at the university.  For some odd reason, I had to rebuild the car’s starter every sixty to ninety days.  It was incredibly annoying!  But on one of those occasions, under the jacked up car in the garage pulling off the starter, the rain poured down heavily that hot summer day.  Wanting to keep a breeze going through the garage, I left all the doors open during the storm.


Soon the storm passed and the sun shone brilliantly.  As it did so, I heard a young child exclaim very excitedly at the end our driveway, “Look at the rainbow!”  Instantly, not believing my ears or the situation, I turned my head to look at the young child from beneath the Fairlane and I saw him at the end of our driveway gazing upward with great concentration at the sight before him.  For me, I realized God was answering a prayer and knowing that the sight might not last too long, I crawled out from under the car as quickly as I could.


Stepping outside the garage, I saw the most beautiful rainbow I think I had ever seen to that point.  And then an even more delightful thing happened, a second and equally beautiful rainbow formed right beneath it.  It felt as though God decided to double the pleasure of answering my prayer and I knew that whatever direction I chose to take with my life, God would be with me and would bless my choices.


Fast forward from then to the fall of 2010 and the image of a middle age man of fifty-three sitting and fishing by the shore of the Columbia River at Frenchman’s Bar just outside Vancouver, Washington.  There one encounters a man being pelted heavily by rain that morning. He’s spiritually-broken and beaten down by the lack of vision in the faith tradition he grew up in and for which he served in full time ordained ministry for nearly eighteen years.  There one encounters a man fervently trying to make his peace with God, a man who’s fervently praying that God would release him from that a calling given to the young adult he was so long ago to “prosecute the missionary work in this land and abroad so far and so widely” as he could – a calling that was centered in nothing less than a “work entrusted to all”, a work that was nothing less than the pursuit of God’s just and peaceable reign for all living creatures -- a promise no more clearly evident than the promise reflected by God’s rainbow.


As that middle age beaten down minister continues his plea for release, he confesses with every ounce of his soul that he must have gotten an awful lot of things wrong through the course of his ministry and relationships with others.  Through his tears and his prayers, he tells God that it’s really alright to release him and he in turn releases God from any commitment to that calling.  But then, the rain eases up.  Eventually it stops and the sun breaks through the clouds.  And then a sight across the river stuns the tired broken minister as a rainbow begins to form, and before long above it, there forms another rainbow.  And with this sight comes an answer to the man’s prayers, an answer to his pleading, and in his mind he hears the words, “I keep my promises.”  Nine months later, from “The One” who spoke those words, there will come a calling so profound, again from “The One” who is the source of all life, "The One" who is the head of the church universal, a calling that will totally re-order his life, an experience the minister will name from that time forth, “My God Encounter”.  


Brad Shumate, M.S.,M.A, LMHC
Free of Encumbrance
Vancouver, WA
Email:  brshumate@freeofencumbrance.net

"This is My Beloved. Listen!"

"This is My Beloved.  Listen!"

(Graphic from Jesus MAFA project, see www.jesusmafa.com)

Lectionary Scripture Focus - Mark 9, vs 2-9 NRSV

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.  And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.  Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."  He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"  Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.  As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

Reflection on the Scripture:

In the office of a corporate president this week, I sat marveling at the man in front of me.  He had come personally to the lobby to greet me and a colleague.  He then escorted us to his office.  While waiting for him in the lobby, I read the story of his own transfiguration; a transfiguration from a criminal and drug addict (You should see his mug shot!) to the gentle person who approached and greeted us wearing a pair of jeans with his long hair tied in a ponytail draping down his back over a gray shirt that sported the graphic of a large decorative cross.

Sitting before us in his office, he spoke of his passions for families struggling with mental illness and how that concern extended to the incarcerated.  He then took spoke of the great importance of spirituality in people’s lives and his passion for seeing that need addressed in people.  He then made very clear that he had no interest in advocating, supporting, or building up any particular religion.  Spirituality wasn’t about that and he wanted to be clear that if we were seeking charitable support for any specific faith tradition, he wasn’t available for that.  At that point, I thought, “You, sir, are preaching to the choir!  What you’re saying is exactly my cup of tea.”  

My colleague and I assured him that wasn’t the case for us and spoke further to being a non-profit mental health center that values spirituality for people’s lives and respects all faith traditions.  I smiled to myself realizing that this man was one who can be called, “Son of God.”  And then, toward the end of our visit after being satisfied that we did not represent a specific religious institution or some form of organized religion, he asked to come to our annual fundraiser breakfast in April.  I will have the pleasure of hosting him at my table during the event.  I feel honored and anxious to get further acquainted.

You know, Peter, James, and John were so typical as human beings.  They don’t know how to respond to the presence of the Divine in their midst, so they wanted to enshrine the moment by building a dwelling or kind of altar or temple.  I suppose that at an earlier time in human history, people would have wanted to do the same, in some fashion or another, for the corporate president I met with this week.  Thankfully, his own voice is in tune with God’s voice and he’ll have no part in such endeavors for such things are not God’s ways.

On that note, after sharing my May 26th experience (see My Recent Journey, My God Encounter) with a good friend several months ago, my friend shared an experience he had with a friend of his while they worked to replace a roof on the church they attended.  Like the mountain transfiguration experience of James, John, and Peter -- both men on the roof that day had the same experience at the same time.  To them together, the Spirit said that God’s will only be accomplished on earth when churches are no longer being built.  For me, the experience also says that when we let go, when we no longer build monuments like churches to our egos, either the ego of a single individual or the shared ego of a faith community wanting to showcase itself to the world around it, then maybe like my new acquaintance this week, we’ll finally learn that it is the spirituality of God’s presence made manifest in a single life that matters most.

When we can look to the life of any other man, woman, child or youth and allow ourselves to hear the words, “This is my beloved, listen to her!”  Or as I did this week with a non-conforming corporate president and heard God say, “This is my beloved son, listen to him!”  It’s then that there will finally be hope for all humanity.  It’s then that we will have truly climbed a high mountain and communed with the ancients of time to realize that peace, justice, and healing for all are no closer, nor further away than our spiritual condition justifies – which is a statement from my former faith tradition that I will always treasure.

Be of good cheer, my friends, for as Jesus once said, it is God’s good pleasure to give us the hope and promise that one day, God’s just and peaceable reign will come to the earth.  And for those who build monuments of any form to their ego and greed – they will finally be made to look into the deep and dark abyss of their own soullessness.  And of that, they will be terrified.

Brad Shumate, M.S.,M.A.,LMHC
Free of Encumbrance
Vancouver, WA
Email: brshumate@freeofencumbrance.net

"Nothing is God's Favorite Thing"

Christ healing.  Follow link to see reference
http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55111

Lectionary Scripture – Mark 1:29-39 (NRSV)

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.  Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.  He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.  Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.  That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.  And the whole city was gathered around the door.  And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.  In the morning while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  And Simon and his companions hunted for him.  When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”  He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”  And he went through Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Reflection on the Scripture

“Nothing” is God’s favorite thing to work with.  It’s a statement I heard from a Luther Seminary professor this week and I love it!  In the scripture story above, we have just such a situation.  Simon’s mother-in-law can do “nothing” because she’s flat on her back in the grip of a fever.  Today, we’re far less concerned about such circumstances due to the medical advances we enjoy.  Typically, a good day resting in bed and two extra strength Tylenol is all it takes to break a fever.  But in Simon’s time, a fever caused great concern as it often incapacitated a person in terms of crucial roles in their family, household, and community.  Furthermore, it was not unusual for a fever to result in death and be even more devastating to a family or community.  But here in this story, God’s messenger in the person of Jesus comes to Simon’s mother-in-law and doing “nothing” more than taking her hand, the woman is raised up and restored.  She then returns to the calling that defines and matters most to her which is serving and attending to the people who visit her home.  Phenomenally, by nightfall of this day, she has no less than the whole city at her door!  What a dramatic and miraculous change during just one day she.

Personally, I marvel at the stories of how a thing or situation or circumstance goes from “nothing”, or from hopelessness, to a noble simplicity, or to something amazing because a visionary sees possibilities beyond the “nothingness” in front of them.  In terms of something quite simple, I can recall when my father would take a small block of wood and with a pen knife transform it into a familiar and recognizable object over the course of a few hours.  One time that I watched him, he ended up carving a horse no larger than the palm of his hand, yet it was majestic and reflected strength and character.

To my memory, my father never did much carving, but it was an amazing thing to witness when he did it.  I wonder at times what he might have achieved and enjoyed from this gift had he spent more time and effort at it.   But the fever that gripped and consumed him was his driving need for adulation from others.  Couple that with the tremendous energy he expended seeking domination over people’s lives for ensuring a constant stream of such attention and you have one mighty fever that never let go of his life.

Despite the in-breaking efforts of God’s Spirit and God’s love into my father’s life, his choice was to remain in his fever for much of his life.  It’s possible that in the latter years of his life, some of that fever let up.  I think it may have been when he encountered and joined the recovery community of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Why I say this is that he never updated his final wishes and funeral plans prior to his sudden death from a fatal heart attack on April 2, 2005.  Had he done so, I think his wishes would have been different and reflected remembrance of his A.A. home group in Kansas City, Missouri.

The plans and wishes that my siblings and I located when cleaning out his apartment, reflected old desires that his body be transported to Woodbine, Iowa for a funeral service in the community he grew up so he could be buried next to his parents and a sister who died quite young in a car accident.  Given that those were the only documented wishes we had, we honored those as fully as possible.  Thankfully however, at his sparsely attended graveside service several days later in Woodbine, Iowa, a handful of members from his A.A. home group arrived to pay their respects.  As the presiding minister for that service, I remember many things from the service; some worth remembering and others that are not.  What I remember however from his A.A. friends is their admiration and deep appreciation for my father.  Furthermore, they shared that if the service had been held in Kansas City, we would have been amazed at the many number of my father’s A.A. friends who would have attended to pay their respects.

Looking back on all of that now, I realize that the God of my father’s understanding had restored him in part from his fever, at least as much as he would allow in this life.  And from the restoration that did happen, my father found a community capable of accepting and embracing him completely for the person he was.  Because of that, I think Dad found the measure of peace that was possible for him in this life until the heart attack took him from this world.  Strangely enough, when the phone call came from my younger brother telling me of Dad’s death, I was at that very moment watching the TV announcing the death of Pope John Paul.  The coincidence and phenomenal convergence of those two events at the same moment has never left me.  Two lives lived so vastly different, one that touched countless millions and the other beloved by a large Twelve-Step group; very different men from two very different communities with very different challenges who left mortal life the very same day to begin their next stage of life exploring and living in God’s presence.  The Pope left behind the nothingness-ness he’d been reduced to by Parkinson’s disease.  Hopefully, my Dad left behind the nothing-ness he’d been reduced to by his narcissism.  As a fellow minister once told me, “Death is the ultimate healer of all things.”

In light of the above this is the message I proclaim:  “Live an unencumbered life, in all the myriad of ways that entails, so there resides within you the fullness of unencumbered faith - a faith joyful and complete based on the God of your understanding.”  And before you move on, I offer this prayer for the week ahead of you:

“Gracious God, we live in a world that wants us feverish in so many ways.  There are the fevers of grief and loss so profound that we fear recovery is impossible from the suffering tormenting our souls.  We don’t know how we’ll ever find our way back from the dark night that possesses us.  Yet it is in the penetrating darkness of night that you are to be found anew, found anew in ways we could never have anticipated or imagined in our wildest freest moments of thought and experience.  Come now; come this very moment to free us of the fevers that grip us, that consume us, that make us fear for life itself.  Exorcise the demons they represent.  Cast them out.  And by your touch through your Spirit, by your touch through a friend’s touch, by your touch through the love of family and those who represent family to us, lift us out of the nothingness to which our fevers have reduced us and into the blessings and lightness of heart that bless those who chose to walk the path of healing and restoration -- knowing that such blessings will bring the end of our dark nights and the end of our isolations as your community of love gathers to the doors of our heart.  We pray it and expect it God in the name of all your prophets, martyrs, teachers, priests, followers and monks who ever lived in praise and love of you.  Amen!

Brad Shumate, M.S., M.A., LMHC
Free of Encumbrance
Vancouver, WA
Email: brshumate@freeofencumbrance.net