"You are are the God who works wonders...."
Psalm 77:14a

Reflection:
We have concluded a full week of Vacation Bible School at OPCC with nearly 40 children enrolled. There was laughter, singing, jumping, screaming, and lots of excitement found within our building. The joy of the children was irresistible and brought smiles to all of our faces.

What creates this kind of excitement? Why were the children so eager to return each night? 

"You are the God who works wonders..." This verse from the 77th Psalm was our main scripture for the week. God definitely works wonders all around us. The children arrived each evening excited to learn more about God as they observed God working all around them. They learned that every one of us is invited to become involved in serving each other with the gifts we have been given. 

The picture above is of a field of mustard plants. One of our lessons focused on Jesus' parable of the mustard seed. The mustard seed begins as one of the tiniest of all seeds but grows to become one of the largest plants, nearly 12 feet tall, that produces an abundance of seeds. This tiny seed may look like an ordinary little seed but it grows slowly to produce an extraordinary yield. If God can do this with a tiny seed, what is possible with us? 

We will attempt to look through the eyes of the children tomorrow morning in worship. Keep your eyes open and you may find more of the extraordinary arising from the ordinary. 

“It’s the core values of our church that our ministries have in common– serving from our hearts, living hopefully and expectantly, valuing each person and accepting our differences with love. We use the resources that God has provided to strengthen our community, trying to address whatever needs we discover. A few years ago, right after we’d renovated our Sanctuary, our congregation got together and realized this was God’s plan for us. All the energy you see here sort of sprouted from that moment.”
      - From Church in Overland Park Reinvents Itself 

READINGS: 
After that I will pour out my spirit upon everyone; your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. (Joel 2.28)

When there’s no vision, the people get out of control, but whoever obeys instruction is happy. (Proverbs 29.18)

There is still a vision for the appointed time; it testifies to the end; it does not deceive. If it delays, wait for it; for it is surely coming; it will not be late. (Habakkuk 2.3)

Don’t remember the prior things; don’t ponder ancient history. Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it? (Isaiah 43.18f.)
                                                         - All scripture CEB    

REFLECTION:
The vision & mission that have emerged from our Discernment Retreats have been given initial expression in a Future Story; that is to say, OPCC’s future story in narrative form. Our story is entitled Church in Overland Park Reinvents Itself, and it looks back on our situation from some unspecified point in the future. If you have begun to read and reflect on the story, you know that it describes a vital, dynamic, and courageous faith community that has identified its core values and undertaken the hard work required to live into them. I find it exciting to read (and reread!) the story, because I love the progressive and confident stance this community takes toward faith, the spiritual life, and the lived expression of faith in community service and the ongoing work for justice. You can readily recognize the faith community that has been molded through the past six decades; and yet the community is altogether new and exhilarating. I’m more than ready for this future, I desire to be a part of this faith community, and I pray you do as well.

One key passage in our future story looks back to a precise moment in the life of the faith community we call Overland Park Christian Church, and traces its development from that starting point. I have cited the passage in the heading above. Please read it again, and notice one particular statement, “A few years ago, right after we’d renovated our Sanctuary, our congregation got together and realized this was God’s plan for us. All the energy you see here sort of sprouted from that moment.”

If that description sounds more than vaguely familiar, it’s because we stand at that seminal moment now. This Is the Moment! We are the congregation that is commended for realizing God’s plan for their mission and ministry. We are the folks who are recognized for summoning the courage to embrace the plan and live into it day by day. We are the oh so very human group on which this future hinges. We may not sense ourselves up to the task; we might even wish that someone else – anyone else – would insure this promising future. But there is no one else to stand tall and courageous, and dare to envision a church reinvented, a church recreated. As the comic strip character Pogo used to say, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

Needless to say, the decisions we take in the next few months will have a tremendous effect on the future of this faith community. So I encourage you to be prayerfully discerning in your consideration of this unique story, and seek the grace to embrace it without fear. In our worship gatherings for the next several weeks, you will have opportunities to spend time in prayer and reflection at the future story display set up in the overflow room of our worship space. When you are ready – and not before – when you discern the willingness to embrace this vision, indicate that by writing on what will be our future vision banner. You may inscribe a prayer for our congregation, you may add a scripture passage that addresses the task at hand, a poetic image that reflects our situation, and you may even write your name if you choose.

I can’t help but wonder; when the fearless reporter in the story leaves our building after being awed and impressed by the congregation it houses, will the reporter see only the two signs specified in the narrative, or will the reporter also see a worn but proud hand-drawn banner on which we have left our mark? 

God revealed a sublime truth to the world when he sang, “I am made whole by your life. Each soul, each soul completes me.”                                                             
                      - Hafiz 

READINGS: 
God, brilliant Lord, everyone knows your name – Majestic! Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs that drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble. I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden’s dawn light. You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge, Made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild, Birds flying and fish swimming, whales singing in the ocean deeps. God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.                
                                 - Psalm 8 (The Message; adapted)

Meanwhile, the eleven disciples were on their way to Galilee, headed for the mountain Jesus had set for their reunion. The moment they saw him they worshiped him. Some, though, held back, not sure about worship, about risking themselves totally. Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.”
                                - Matthew 28.16-20 (The Message)

REFLECTION:
Sunday is the day we set aside to contemplate Trinity; God as Three-in-One and One-in-Three. Yeah, I know; doesn’t make much sense, does it? At least, its meaning doesn’t exactly jump off the page. And there is certainly no model in the natural world to help us understand this puzzling notion of God that perplexes the most penetrating minds.

For example, one Christian theologian back in the day (way back in the day!) said of his doctrine of Trinity that he had not said nearly enough or that which is most important; but wrote at all to avoid being silent. More recently, Barbara Brown Taylor has resorted to poetic language to speak of Trinity. She compares it to a Zen Buddhist koan, the one most widely known in the western world, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Trinity, that is to say, is impenetrable mystery, like one hand clapping; only in this instance it is the sound of three hands clapping.

By this point you might be thinking, “Why bother to continue? Why not stop while we are ahead?” Why set aside a day on the Christian calendar to celebrate that which we have no chance of understanding? Why waste a worship gathering on such an abstract and distant concept?

I would respond that it is worth our while to examine Trinity because of the power of the poetic images that give it substance. These beautiful metaphors offer snippets of insight, they point toward something awesome and wonder-full; they provide fleeting glimpses of a God too rich for words, too real for any reality we know, too big for the universe as a whole, too small for the most intimate expression. Pay close attention, listen intently, delve more deeply; and Trinity will speak to you. Trinity will speak, not like an objective description of God or knowledge about God. Rather, Trinity will speak in the voice of poetry that will meet you in the middle of your lived experience with comfort, insight, understanding, and always a healthy dose of challenge.

I don’t want to preach Sunday’s sermon in my blog post, which is designed to help us prepare for worship, but let me mention what I consider to be the heart of Trinity’s meaning for our day, and its challenge to our collective lived experience. Many would trace the chaos and disarray of our society in the good ol’ U. S. of A. to the loss of any notion of a common good, an interweaving of lives, a dependence on and responsibility to each other. In its place is an exaggerated notion of individual freedom, and the right to live my life as I choose; period, end of story. No longer do our personal freedoms end at the intersection of the rights and needs of others, but exist absolutely and independently of anyone else.

Here’s the rub; when God’s life is contemplated as the model and inspiration for our own, as is emphasized from cover to cover in our Christian bible, this self-absorbed and over simplified notion of our personal life and freedom is challenged to its core. Why? Because God – listen closely to the poetry of Three-in-One and One-in-Three – God is always "we." God is always community. God is always completed in rich, intimate, relationship. Hafiz heard this voice; that is why he could give expression to the profound statement quoted above, “God revealed a sublime truth to the world when he sang, “I am made whole by your life. Each soul, each soul completes me.”

This image – the poetry of Trinity – has far reaching implications for the way we understand and live our life. I encourage you to reflect, pray, and listen for the soft, poetic voice of God that can and should inform our relationships.

I look forward to our time together on Sunday when we gather for a shared experience of worship. This week we worship at 9:30 am. Next week, however, we will begin our experimental summer schedule: intimate, informal worship at 8:30 am, and at 10:30 our primary worship gathering, which intentionally focuses outward, trying to meet the worship needs of a wide swath of folk, including new additions to our faith community. This worship includes both traditional and contemporary elements, woven into a progressive and unique worship style.

If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; but when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed.
    - Proverbs 29.18 (The Message)

This is what God says, “Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
                                  - Isaiah 43.14a, 18-19 (The Message)


READING: 
When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them. There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues? Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?” That’s when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven, spoke out with bold urgency: “Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren’t drunk as some of you suspect. They haven’t had time to get drunk—it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen: “In the Last Days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters; Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams. And whoever calls out for help
 to me, God, will be saved.”
                           - Acts 2.1-21 (Selections; The Message)


REFLECTION:
To hear Isaiah report God’s intention to do something brand-new, you’d think God would be the source for the old saying “Out with the old and in with the new.” Somehow, I doubt this. It doesn’t sound like God’s style of expression. And besides, God never throws anything out; not babies with bath water, not old-stuff to make room for the new, and certainly not you or me. God doesn’t discard and replace things… God re-creates them. Paul understood this, and was able to pronounce with confidence that in Christ, all things have become new.

This is important to remember as our faith community concludes and affirms its discernment of God’s vision of what OPCC can and should be; God’s mission for us that will not be impossible if we choose to accept it. God is waiting and yearning to re-create our faith community, to re-invent our vision, illumine our understanding, and in so doing show us the WAY from here (of course, taking the babies with us!).

Our vision discernment retreats have been wonderful experiences in which the movement of Spirit has been obvious. This group, which included some 50 folk at one meeting or another, began by discerning the core values that guide, inspire, and empower our faith community; values that can and should be identified and intentionally woven into our walk in faith. From this foundation, the groups attempted to envision what a faith community based on these values would look like in the future; to discern what our faith community would look like when re-created from the insideOUT! The results of these retreats have provisionally issued in a Future Story; a fictive narrative that recounts the growth of our faith community. The story has two chapters. The first recounts the ways we will reach out into the larger community to assist folk in need, partner with others of good will to work for the common good, and stand for issues of justice and fairness. Chapter two recounts the attention we will give to our spiritual nurture and development, our efforts to be an intentionally welcoming community, and thus, to successfully welcome new folk into a dynamic faith journey with Christ, and the fellowship of our faith community.

This Future Story will be distributed to those in worship on Pentecost Sunday, and will be available as well on the web site and in the reception office on campus. We will read, pray, clarify, question, discuss, and revise if necessary the vision that inspires this story of a church that reinvents itself. As we discern consensus around the vision; as each of us recognizes the willingness to embrace this vision, we will celebrate it as the road map to the future. We will express it in summary form as a statement of vision and mission, and begin work on a strategic plan to prioritize goals, and give arms and legs to the vision. I have been amazed at the quality of the discernment process to this point (and the great work of our visioning team), and am excited to expand this discernment and prepare for something brand-new that is even now bursting out among us.

In case you missed it this morning, we focused on the ascension of Jesus; that day not too long after Jesus had appeared to the disciples for the first time, when he would bless them, pray for them, and then rise up to be with God.

Among many other things, in the ascension we are reminded that we are called to continue this story of God's love and saving acts.  As Jesus rises to be with God, so too are we called to rise up - and to share God's story and grace with the world!

We hope you enjoy this short video shared this morning, of Maya Angelou reading portions of her poem, "And Still I Rise."