MORGAN'S MOMENT...
I could have reached out
  and actually touched him!
"

It was celebrity magic
   touched off when Obama
   passed through our town.

He stopped to shake hands
   kiss a baby or two
   and grab a slice of pizza.

People thronged for a look
   asked for his signature
   flashed phone camera photos.

Security watched warily
   disciples in the shadows
   guarding an important man.

Aides picked up a pile of pizzas
   as they piled back on busses
   to head to another town.

Memories were banked
   and news reported
   and stories told and improved upon.

Jesus was something like that
   without air conditioned buses
   and a lot of support staff

But he came to villages
   talked and ate with the people
   and they remembered him forever.

— Art Morgan 

BOOK CORNER
The mobile library we frequent allows us to keep books more than the usual 14 days, which was a good thing in reading of Nelson Mandella’s autobiography, The Long Journey. I knew the basics of the story which was one of the great on-going dramas of the late 20th century during which South Africa became an integrated democracy. His journey from 27 years in prison, to President of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize winner is great history, courageous character and moving drama.

MOMENT MINISTRIES
March 26, 2008

home address:  25921 SW Airport Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97333   541-753-3942
email at a-morgan@peak.org

DOING GOOD
Mother Teresa said, “Do whatever you believe God is asking you to do…” Most of us aren’t always sure whether “God” is motivating us, but lots of people are doing good. I marvel at the variety of things I wish to encourage.
My back page writing about the black community in Los Angeles reminded me of our long time support of All People’s Christian Center in Los Angeles. It is an anchor inter-racial program in the heart of Los Angeles. There is a church in the midst of it where a friend, Denton Roberts is serving as Interim Minister.
On the other hand there is the least urban situation I know in White Swan, Washington where Dave Bell heads up the Yakama Christian Mission. If you are not already on his email list I urge you to get your email address added to receive some meaningful and poetic views of life and work out there from his perspective. The national mission board of the church for both of these institutions has cut off support due to “other priorities.” As someone noted, “Isn’t it usually true that the first things cut are programs for people of poverty and color?” Dave’s email is yakamamission@gmail.com. Note that Yakama is the correct Indian spelling.
I used a brochure from Church World Service on Easter Sunday that had a photo of water at “Jacob’s Well,” which was the setting for my Easter text. The need is for water to prevent 25,000 deaths per day. We’re glad for support we give – wish we could do more.
There are lots of things like that in addition to several dozen local programs a number of us are involved with. They call people like us “do good-ers.” It’s meant as a put-down, but compared to being a do-bad-er or a do-nothing-er, I’d rather be a do-good-er.
Just off the phone with Paul in Monterey California. He was walking with a youth group after pulling bad weed on the seashore. Doing good I think after doing good with us on Easter.
Word was received that our oldest reader, Lucille Morris, died in Seattle at age 97. She’s been reading my stuff for almost 40 years. It was reported that she read the blue sheet until the last. We trust that was not what finally did her in. She was bright and sharp the whole journey.
The Easter sermon at Inavale Farm will be sent to our Webmaster, Bill Gilbert, to be available on our web site (below). (It is listed below.)

 
                                                                                     (back page)

JEREMIAH AND JEREMIAH
        It is apparent that having someone named Jeremiah for a pastor can be dangerous thing. The first Jeremiah, one of the greatest of biblical prophets, was also a patriot who was critical of his government and king as well as his fellow priests. His language is muted in the Bible. The fact that the government threw him in a dungeon for a couple of years because of his preaching gives us a clue. They didn’t think patriots should be critical.
        The most recent Jeremiah sounds like his namesake. Of course we only have a three word snippet from a 15 year-old sermon. He used some outrageous language, as preachers have been known to do to make a point. I suppose that one’s response to him depends on your perspective. There are lots of offensive and outrageous things said by the Farwell’s and Robertson’s and Limbaugh’s of our country. I’m ashamed that I haven’t said more outrageous things myself. There are things that should stir us to rage. The prophets roared like lions, while the “patriotic prophets” bleated like sheep in the presence of national circumstances that would outrage any respectable God.
        It’s a compliment to the recent Jeremiah that anyone paid attention to his sermon. It’s a compliment to his preaching that someone remembered it. It’s especially complimentary to fear that someone might have heard such a sermon and be moved to respond to it. As I remember standing fearfully at the church door to shake hands with departing worshipers after having unloaded one of my most powerful and prophetic sermons, the words were always benign – “that was a nice sermon.” Prophets don’t preach nice sermons.
        You have to be outrageously outrageous to say anything that people will remember and talk about. I’ve heard few such sermons in my lifetime. Clergy are too good at couching their messages about God’s likely attitude toward personal or national behavior. There is always the danger of driving away members, particularly the big givers.
        My introduction to worship and preaching in the black community came during my California preaching years. Our church was across the tracks that ran between Huntington Park and Watts in South Central Los Angeles. We were in a district association of churches that embraced a number of ethnic minorities. So I came to know a number of the pastors of those churches and was invited to attend and preach at some services. It was there I learned that those folks didn’t come to church to sit with folded hands. They expected something to happen that they could feel all over. Music and worship and preaching had rhythm and life. It took a bit for me to let the congregation set the rhythm of my preaching and to expect that there would be ongoing response. And they were expecting a word from the Lord that would not necessarily be good news.
        These folks could sing “God Bless America” as good as anyone. They were proud Americans, but had reason not to be proud of how America treated its poor and minorities, its women and children, its neighbors across borders and across the seas. They could understand that God might not be exactly pleased with what was going on in these parts. They could believe that a nation under God might be judged for its own good. That’s what the first Jeremiah believed and preached. It is probably what the second Jeremiah believed and preached as well.
        I don’t really have room to pick up on some of the prophetic style of Jesus. You can catch his drift if you look up some of the “woe to you” passages. That’s watered down for Christian consumption. The commentary reports that the actual words said “damn you.” But we can’t have Jesus outraged, can we? Would he actually use a swear word? It obviously didn’t make him popular with the powers that be, did it? But could anyone argue that he didn’t speak the truth?
        Obama wants to be President. He isn’t a preacher and doesn’t want to be a prophet. I don’t know what wild ideas he might hold in his head but I hope that he may hold ideas of God’s demand for justice in his heart.
        I’ve quoted my granddad more than once in these pages. He was a Congregationalist, like Obama. He was a pacifist in spirit, but spoke words like a prophet, such as in this poem…
Who never flames with fury – And does not long to blast the wretched wrong – is scarce a man.
 And is often not fit to wash the feet – Of him who shouts and pleads – upon the street."
        Rather than wondering about the outrage of Jeremiah – in fact, both Jeremiahs – we might wonder why there is as little outrage as there is. Maybe we’re suffering from March madness.
─ Art Morgan, March 24, 2008



WHEN JESUS SAID “I THIRST”
Art’s Easter Word for 2008

Jesus was exhausted from traveling, so he sat down on the edge of the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman comes along to get water, Jesus asks her, ‘Give me a drink.’” (John 4:7)

This is an unlikely Easter text. I don’t remember ever hearing it used on Easter. You’re getting something fresh. This is remembered as the story of the woman at the well, more renowned for the fact that she had many husbands. So, how do I claim it for my Easter text?
There are several things that Easter texts have in common. One - they were all written from stories told after Easter. In the case of John the stories are quite a long time after Easter. In fact, most of the texts of the New Testament bear the imprint of Easter.
For another thing - this story has the woman not knowing who Jesus was. That sounds like a reasonable possibility, but it is a characteristic of most of the “recognition” of the risen Jesus by people. Mary, who knew Jesus well, mistook him for the gardener. Two men on the road to Emmaus walked and talked a long time before concluding that the stranger was their friend Jesus. Fishermen were called to shore for an Easter breakfast by the fire, only recognizing who it was when they began to break the bread.
A third hint that this might be a resurrection appearance story - when the woman concludes that this thirsty man by the well must be the Messiah, we have another clue that this is really an Easter story, especially when Jesus wasn’t known as the Messiah until some years after he was crucified.
There are many “layers” to this old story by the time it finally appears in John. Several stories tie together. It is hard to sort out what the original story must have been. I choose the theme of the well and the water and the change of the meaning of “thirst” as a basis for my words.
There are other sources for the word in the gospels. Tradition planted the words “I thirst” on Jesus’ lips as he died. One of the stories attributed to him includes a question from the disciples, “When did we see you thirsty and give you drink?” Jesus answered, “As often as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” The word also appears in the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitudes where Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness…
There are many of things people thirst for that are not water. We understand what it is to thirst for something if we’ve ever been thirsty. Jesus told the woman at the well that after drinking water from that well she would still be thirsty. It’s true. I drank water from that well (along with probably 100 billion microbes) one hot day and was soon thirsty again.
March 22 was National Water Day. I doubt anyone noticed, especially in the Midwest floods, or even here in Oregon where water flows abundantly most of the time. The same day, we received a brochure in the mail telling all about the Corvallis water supply. It’s very safe, they report. I’m glad for you who live in town. Many of us out here drink well water. In the same mail came a packet from Church World Service. I suppose we donate more to Church World Service than anything else. It was about water. There is a picture of a child getting water from the same well we talked about in our scripture. Church World Service fixed up the well to make sure the water was safe to drink. One in five people don’t have clean water. 25,000 people die every day from drinking unsafe water. It is common around the world for people to say “I thirst.”
There’s another story that I think deserves to be placed among the Easter stories. It is the story of Mother Teresa, the Saint of Calcutta. In her youth she believed she heard Jesus say to her “I thirst.” As years went by and she took vows to become a nun, she became sure that the words were for her. Her call was to the streets in the slums of Calcutta. She spent her whole lifetime answering that call.
What few knew was that all during her life, especially after she started her Missionaries of Charity, there was a terrible darkness in her life. This has only become known recently when “The Private Writings of the ‘Saint of Calcutta’” were published by one of her confessors. She had requested that all her letters be destroyed, but several confessors saved them. So we hear the repeated anguish of her cries over a long span of years. The Christ who spoke from the Cross in a most personal way was silent.
Her confessions sounded like this:
I call and there is no answer…darkness is so dark and I am all alone, unwanted, forsaken…where is my faith?...I have no faith…if there is a God.
In my soul I feel just a terrible pain of loss – of God not wanting me – of God not being God – of God not really existing…Heaven, what emptiness – not a single thought of Heaven enters my mind – for there is no hope.
One of the reported sayings of Jesus quotes a Psalm that says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Mother Teresa knew the feeling.
Does she stop her work for lack of faith? Does she let darkness stop her from being a light? Does spiritual dryness and thirst keep her from seeking to relieve the thirst of others? Her life vow and mission from the beginning was to go
“...into the homes and streets and slums, among the sick, dying beggars, and little children.The sick will be nursed as far as possible in their poor homes. The little children will have a school in the slums. The beggars will be sought and visited in their holes outside of town or on the streets.
She kept at this mission tirelessly through doubt and darkness. She recruited sisters to follow her example in the Missionaries of Charity. They expanded through Calcutta and India into at least 77 countries. They established more than 350 homes world wide that sent more than 1000 women out each day seeking those who thirst.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Secretary General of the United Nations once called her the most powerful woman in the world. She was a tireless letter writer. One went to Presidents Bush and Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War:
I come to you with tears in my eyes and God’s love in my heart to plead to you for the poor and those who will become poor if the war we all fear and dread happens.
I call hers an Easter story because Christ rises again and appears in her to offer living water to those who thirst. She invites others to listen to the words of Christ in behalf of all who suffer, “I thirst.” As she instructed those who served with her she also instructs us:
Be the one who satiates the Thirst. Instead of being the one to say, ‘I thirst,’ be the one to do whatever you believe God is asking you to do…
Thirst and need are everywhere. On the streets of Corvallis as well as Calcutta. Our friend, Barbara, called just before I drove out for this service telling me she had to go to tend to one of the homeless people she works with. The shelter will close on March 30, turning these men back into the streets at night. Two have died this winter and one is in the hospital. I don’t know the need that called her out, but answering the call means doing whatever you believe needs doing. That’s what Barbara was doing. In fact, Nancy is doing something of the same thing for her mother today.
Jesus said that “When we do this to the least of these”…to anyone in need…we do it to him.
And Mother Teresa has taught us that we can do it with or without faith, with or without light. My friend Dick Wing wrote in a letter just this Saturday thanking me for my blue sheet article, “The Saint of Darkness.” He says
I think it is one of the most marvelous testimonies in the world that the greatest saint among us was a person who lived with huge doubts and darkness her entire life. And then she said, “the hell with it, I’ll do good work anyway."
I don’t know that she actually said, “to hell with it,” but she didn’t let loss of certainty about Jesus or God keep her from living out the very spirit of Jesus among the lost and the least. May we be among those who do the same.
─ Art Morgan, Easter 2008