We celebrate Mothers’ Day this Sunday. The holiday of Mothers’ Day was commemorated in 1908 when Anna Jarvis celebrated a memorial for her deceased mother, and she attempted to make it a national holiday. By 1920, Mothers’ Day had become commercialized as we know it today. Taking the commercialization away, it becomes a celebration of all mothers. Each of us has had a mother who carried us for nine months in her womb and gave birth to us. For those of us who have lost our mothers, it becomes even more significant to remind those whose mother are living to honor them.

As human beings, we have a need to speak about God, and we speak about God with metaphors. The dominant metaphors for God through much of human history have been male: God as Father. Let me first say that God is beyond all language and description, for God is infinite mystery. But practically, we need human images to speak about God. As I said, patriarchal culture has elected to use male images. But there is a strong tradition within our biblical heritage to speak about as God as Mother and with female metaphors.

Here are a few quotations:

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! (Isaiah 49:15)

As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem. (Isaiah 66:13)

Or from Jesus: Jesus speaks about God as Feminine Wisdom who sends messengers, and like a mother hen who wants to gather her children under her wings (Luke 13:34) or the woman who places the yeast secretly in fifty pounds of flour. (Luke 13:20-21)

Our God is neither male nor female, both male and female and more because we are made in the image of God. Those who claim that God is only male have excluded and denigrated female experience. I remember in a workshop years ago, a woman clergy speak how difficult it was for her to say “Our Father” since her father had physically abused her. She resorted to “Our Mother” and that was an image meaningful in her prayer experience of God. Here at MCC in the Valley, we practice an inclusive use of language to speak about God since we are male, female, and transgendered. And we experience God in our own gendered language but realize that God is always beyond language. God is like a “father” and God is like a “mother.” And God is infinitely more than the metaphor of God as a father or mother.

This Sunday let us remember our mothers and that God, like a mother, will never forget us.  “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted.”  God, like our mothers, has given us life and will never forget us.

After service, we hold a Mothers Day Potluck Barbecue. Please bring a side dish or beverages to share. We provide hot dogs, buns, and condiments.

Rev. Megan More will preach a sermon entitled “A Mother’s Love.” Bring a friend to join our worship and fellowship.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

Here we are again at Mother’s Day, when, naturally, we celebrate all mothers, especially our own. But there is much more to that than just the women who bore us. There are also those who raised us, adopted us, loved us, sacrificed for us. Mothers come then in all forms, sizes, looks, colors and creeds. But the one thing they all have in common is that love for their children, and the willingness to sacrifice themselves if necessary for their child.

That is how I see God, and from God, Christ, willing to sacrifice God’s self in Christ for our salvation and liberation from sin. That kind of love is also eternal, non-judgmental and complete. Just as a mother will love her child no matter what, defending her child no matter what, God does that for us also.

But a mother is also not necessarily defined by sex. A mother is defined by heart and spirit. Single fathers become mothers in their own way, needing to fill all roles for their children. Same sex male parents also show they are more than just two “dads”, but two “moms” as well.

So that “mother” is within all of us to some degree, especially in how we love, and why we love, and what that love means in our lives.

Celebrate that Mother in us all this Sunday, but especially for that certain, special Mother in our own lives. Honor them, living or not, for without them, we wouldn’t be here.

May God bless you all,

Rev. Megan More, M.Div
Clergy on Staff

Last week James Stuart delivered a wonderful sermon for Earth Day. I want to explore further some of themes about the Christian environmental movement. So I share a meditation reflection from Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, who sent this out on Wednesday morning (April 24). It gives you a glimpse of my sermon entitled, “In the Image of God.”

When I first joined the Franciscan order in 1961, my novice master told me we could not cut down a tree without permission of the Provincial (the major religious superior). It seemed a bit extreme, but then I realized that a little bit of Francis of Assisi had lasted 800 years! We still had his awareness that wilderness is not just “wilderness.” Nature is not just here for our consumption and profit. The natural is of itself also the supernatural. Both natural elements and animals are not just objects for our plunder. Francis granted true dignity and subjectivity to nature by calling it Brother Sun, Sister Fire, Brother Wind, and Sister Water. No wonder he is the patron saint of ecology and care for creation.

Once you grant subjectivity to the natural world, everything changes. It’s no longer an object with you as the separated and superior subject, but you share subjectivity with it. You address it with a title of respect, and allow it to speak back to you! For so long creation has been a mere commodity at best, a useless or profitable wilderness depending on who owned it. With the contemplative mind, questions of creation are different than those of consumption and capitalism, and they move us to appreciate creation for its own sake, not because of what it does for me or how much money it can make me. For those with spiritual eyes, the world itself has to be somehow the very “Body of God.” What else could it be for one who believes in “creationism”? As Paul puts it, “From the beginning until now, the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22), so it is not only an evolutionary body but an eternally pregnant body besides. God’s creation is so perfect that it continues to create itself from within. The Franciscans were not wrong in not cutting down ordinary trees without a very good reason.

I just discovered two weeks ago, one of the worst polluters of the world — the Peoples Republic of China — has mandated that every person in China between the ages of five and seventy is required to plant 4 to 6 trees a year to combat the pollution generated by the country’s emission of toxic gases into the atmosphere. Trees are the lungs of the world, removing carbon emissions so that we can breathe oxygen.

This Sunday after worship we will show the award winning documentary “Call Me Malcolm.” It is a story of young girl’s transition to become a trans-man, his attempt to understand gender in our society, his falling love with a woman, and his ordination as clergy in the United Church of Christ. My students at Claremont School of Theology and CSUN loved this beautiful documentary and Malcolm’s journey to accept himself as an original blessing of God. We will show this movie at noon time.

Come and bring a friend to join us for worship and fellowship.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

I apologize ahead of time that I am using a meditation from Rev. Michael Piazza’s Liberating Word meditation (4/10/13). This week I am bombarded with proof reading galley proofs of the new book, Queering Christianity, and one of the editors, Rev. Tom Bohache, fell and broke his hip; he is in a hospital in Barcelona (Spain) awaiting transportation to a hospital in the United States. Keep Tom in your prayers. So I have stepped into take over Tom’s proofing the galley texts, as well as do in the indexing guide for the book. And there is the work on the atrium.

So here is Michael Piazza’s thoughtful meditation:

There is a blog that asks, “What if God’s love really does endure forever?” Two of my favorite books are If Grace is True and another If God is Love. All three challenge us to believe things that are contrary to the evidence of our secular experience, yet, they are tenants of core Christian beliefs. To engage these truths fully, and to live as if they are real, is revolutionary and absolutely contrary to the lifestyle and patterns of modern American life.

Do we dare? Do we dare live as if God’s love endures forever, or are we stuck in patterns of belief that trap us in believing that love is tentative, fragile, and comes with an expiration date? Few of us live our lives on the edge as though we believe God’s love endures forever. We live with anxiety and fear that contradict this statement of truth offered repeatedly to us by scripture.

We are prone to trust in that which fails, disappoints, and falters, but “God’s steadfast love endures forever.” Steadfast love is such an anomaly in the culture in which we live. Divorce, disappointment, and desertion are so common that few of us are capable of fully believing in “steadfast love.”

So rare is this reality that I looked up “steadfast” and “endures” on Dictionary.com:

stead·fast [sted-fast, -fahst, -fuhst] -adjective
1. fixed in direction; steadily directed: a steadfast gaze.
2. firm in purpose, resolution, faith, attachment, etc., as a person: a steadfast friend.
3. unwavering, as resolution, faith, adherence, etc.
4. firmly established, as an institution or a state of affairs.
5. firmly fixed in place or position.

en·dure [en-door, -dyoor] verb
1. to hold out against; sustain without impairment or yielding; undergo
2. to bear without resistance or with patience; tolerate
3. to admit of; allow; bear
4. to continue to exist; last
5. to support adverse force or influence of any kind; suffer without yielding; suffer patiently
6. to have or gain continued or lasting acknowledgment or recognition, as of worth, merit or greatness

God’s love is firmly established and unwavering, and it will continue to last without yielding! So if you fully believed that, how would you live?

Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? Do we have faith that Jesus is the resurrection and life? Do we hold to the notion that death is not the final word and that God’s love is stronger than death? Do we believe that after we die, like Jesus, we too will rise from the dead and live on in God’s paradise? Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

This Sunday, April 14th, we’re joined by two UCC congregants from the area conference to get to know us at MCCV. And after worship on April 21st, we will have a potluck lunch and commemoration party for our deceased member Steve Leasure, a now a friend of God in paradise. Let’s have a party for Steve.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

We celebrate the holiest days of the Christian year–the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In a meditation “Love is stronger than death,” Henri Nouwen writes,

As I walked through the dark woods at the end of this Easter Day, full of intimate joy, I heard you call Mary Magdalene by her name and heard how you called from the shore of the lake to your friends to throw out the their nets. I also saw you entering the closed room where your disciples were gathered in fear. I saw you appearing on the mountain and at the outskirt of the village. How intimate these events really are. They are like special favors to dear friends. They were not done to impress or overwhelm anyone, but simply to show that your love is stronger than death.

O Lord, I know now that it is in silence, in a quiet moment, in a forgotten corner that you will meet me. Call me by name and speak to me a word of peace. It is in my stillest hour that you become the risen Lord to me.

God’s love is stronger than death. As we look at death in the world, we witness the death of friends and loved ones, death of holy innocents as victims of oppression and war, and the death of other life. But we look for hope at the tomb in the garden with Mary and the other disciples. We stand with Mary Magdalene, the apostle of the resurrection, grieving at the culture of death in our world. Christ the gardener calls us to a ministry of compassionate care, nurturing, and healing people and all life. By his death and resurrection, Christ became intertwined with the web of life on Earth. The Irish poet Mary Plunkett writes in “I see His Blood upon the Rose,”

I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes;
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fell from the skies.

I saw His face in every flower,
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but His voice – and carven by His power
Rocks are His written words.

All pathways by His feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross every tree.

Christ (now resurrected and with a transformed body and life) in the garden of the resurrection, points us to look to nature to find his presence. Magdalene walked in the footsteps of Christ the gardener. She focused her ministry of compassionate care and healing of life in the life-giving of God on Easter. This is the day to celebrate that Christ is risen and present to us in all of life. Ignatius of Loyola has taught me through prayer and contemplation to find Christ transparent in all people, in all life, and in the Earth herself.

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the central foundation of our Christian faith–Christ’s resurrection. Join us for a wonderful worship service. We ask you to bring a dish for a potluck brunch in our garden. There will also be an Easter bonnet contest after brunch, and the winner will receive an Ukranian Easter egg created by Rev. Joe. I have watched him during the last couple weeks, designing and working on them: they are beautiful.

On Easter, we take a second collection to offset costs to replace our Atrium with a new Pergola filled with plants and trees. This is to stop the damage to the foundation of the church building from the corroding planters caused by constant watering.

Come and celebrate Easter – the God event of life and compassion.

Peace,

Rev. Bob

This Sunday is the fifth Sunday of Lent, and we snuff the candle out on the oppression and exploitation of the Earth. Over the last couple of centuries, humanity has moved away from seeing itself connected to the Earth and have been driven to dominate, exploit, and rape the Earth of its resources. Humans have distanced themselves from the Earth and other life through privileging itself with a dominating mission.

Celtic Christianity is a minority tradition that needs to be recovered. It is traced to Pelagius, who opposed Augustine on notions of grace and original sin, and Pelagius was forced to flee from Rome to the British Isles. Celtic Christian spirituality is indebted to Pelagius and other Celtic Christian writers. As I write a bit about his spirituality, you find themes that are recurrent in our church. Pelagius understood a Christian as one “whose door is closed no one” and “whose food is offered to all.” He believed in the goodness of the Earth, for him, the Earth did not fall into an original sin as humans fell. It was a place of God’s beauty and grace. He held to the goodness of grace and the goodness of nature.

That is why we have placed a Celtic Christian cross in our resurrection garden to remind us of the original blessing of all creation and the Earth herself. It is a cross with the very rising of the sun, for the sun rising is a reminder of Christ’s resurrection in the garden of nature and as a gift of God. The Celtic cross merges the rising sun with the cross of Christ symbolizing the wholeness of salvation in the death and resurrection of Christ. Like Pelagius, MCC in the Valley does not place any boundaries on God’s grace. We recognize that we distribute food to the homeless and feed the birds in our garden. Our food and hospitality is offered to all.

But this Sunday we are very conscious of the ravages of increasing climate change caused by human ignorance, arrogance, and greed. Pelagius and the Celtic spiritual tradition practiced a principle for us to meditate upon this week: “Let no person have more than he/she needs, and everyone will have as much as they need.” These are words of wisdom based on Jesus’ practice of God’s reign.

Every Saturday at 5 PM, we hold our Catholic mass. Tell your Catholic friends about our service.

On Monday, March 25 at 7:30 PM, we hold our Taize spiritual practice. This month we’ve moved it from Thursday to the Monday of Holy Week. Make it a Lenten practice to join us for meditational singing and prayer.

Mark your calendars: On March 28, Maundy Thursday, we co-celebrate a Christian Seder at MCCV. We will be joined by congregants from Little White Chapel. We ask each household to bring a side dish or bottle of grape juice or red wine to our dinner. We will provide lamb and chicken for the seder meal. On Good Friday (3/29), we co-celebrate an Earth-Centered Tenebrae (Good Friday Service of the Passion of Christ) at Little White Chapel (1711 North Avon St, Burbank. It is the first left on Burbank Blvd., just after Hollywood Way.

On Easter Sunday (3/31), we celebrate the central foundation of our Christian faith — Christ’s resurrection. Join us for a wonderful worship service. We ask you to bring a dish for potluck brunch that day in our garden. There will also be an Easter bonnet contest after brunch, and the winner will receive an Ukranian Easter egg created by Rev. Joe. I have watched him during the last couple weeks on designing and working on them. They are beautiful.

Come and join us this Sunday in gratitude for all you been given by God.

Peace,

Rev. Bob