Fred Craddock writes about going up to the University of Winnipeg in Canada, and getting snowed in in a blizzard.  He left his hotel and went to the little bus depot because it had a café.

He writes, “I went outside, shivering.  The wind was cold, the snow was deep.  I slid and bumped and finally made it around the corer into the bus station.  Every stranded traveler in western Canada was in there, stranger to each other and to me, pressing and pushing and loud.  I finally found a place to sit, and after a lengthy time a man in a greasy apron came over and said, “What ‘ll you have?”  I said, “May I see a menu?”    He said, “What do you want a menu for?  We have soup.” 

I said, “What kinds of soup do you have?” And he said, “Soup.  You want some soup?”

I said, “That was what I was going to order—soup.”

He brought the soup, and I put the spoon to it—Yuck!  It was the awfulest.  It was kind of gray looking; it was so bad I couldn’t eat it, but I sat there and put my hands about it.  It was warm. .. so I clutched it and stayed bent over my soup stove.

The door opened again.  The wind was icy, and somebody yelled, “Close the door!”  In came this woman clutching her little coat.  She found a place, not far form me.  The greasy apron came, “What do you want?” 

She said, “Glass of water.”

He brought a glass of water, took out his tablet and said, “Now what’ll you have?

She said “Just the water.”

He said, “You have to order, lady.”

“Well, I just want a glass of water.”

“Look I have customers that pay—what do you think this is, a church or something.  Now what do you want?”

She said, “Just a glass of water and some time to get warm.”

“Look, there are people that are paying here.  IF you’re not going to order, you’ve got to leave!”

And he got real loud about it.  So she got up to leave and, almost as if rehearsed, everybody in that little café stood up and started toward the door.

I got up and said, “I’m voting for something here; I don’t know what it i.”

And the man in the greasy apron said, “All right, all right, all right, she can stay.” 

Everybody sat down, and he brought her a bowl of soup.

I said to the person sitting there by me, I said, “Who is she?”

He said, “I never saw her before.”

The place grew quiet, but I heard the sipping of that awful soup.

I said “I’m going to try that again.”

I put my spoon to the soup—you know, it was not bad soup.  Everybody was eathing this soup.  I started eating the soup, and it was pretty good soup. 

I have no idea what kind of soup it was.  I don’t know what was in it, but I do recall when I was eating it, it tasted a little bit like bread and wine.  Just a little like bread and wine.”

At one time in each of our faith lives, we said we would go to the vineyard, . . . that our actions would follow our words and intent.

For some of us, it means we need to respond when something unjust happens, or by reaching out to others with casseroles or notes or words of support,

Or being changed on the inside,

Or by looking at everyone with a heart of love.

And when we do so, we recognize that bread and wine sometimes are in the soup.

St. John Chrysostom (c.347-407) preached on this Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard and said: "Why is it that the householder seemed to give the workers, regardless of their labors, all exactly the same reward? It is because God has only one reward to give, a reward that has no measure in money or hours or days or years - and that reward is God Himself."

We all receive the same . . . .and confident that God does love us, despite all of the ways we fall short, despite the fact that we are some of the last who have come to the vineyard . . . and evcn then, our work isn’t always that great, we still are called to labor in the vineyard . . .  in God’s service. . . serving others and the one who calls us.

"When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flocks,

The work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart."

      --Howard Thurman

The message of our faith, that really is so unique, is that we can not work our way to heaven, nothing we do could ever be enough,  So 2000 years ago, heaven came to us. . . . . for each of us.

One of my favorite Christmas cards has a verse on it from Roy Lessin.  The verse inverts our understanding of this passage, focusing not on the shepherds, but on the angels.  He writes,

“If we could hear like angels hear or do the things they do,

If we could see like angels see, and have their point of view--

We would understand their wonder as they spoke of Jesus’ birth,

For they knew that God left heaven to become a man on earth.”

However much the shepherds may have marveled at this news of God come to earth, the angels seem to marvel just as much.   And that points not to good news, but to great news.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love:

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying [to ourselves] that we are born to eternal life.

-St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

We pray for the children who put chocolate fingers on everything, who love to be tickled, who stomp in puddles and ruin new pants, who eat candy before supper and who can never find their shoes in the morning.

And we also pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who have never bound down the street in a new pair of shoes, who never played "one potato, two potatoes," and who are born in places that we would not be caught dead in and they will be.

We pray for the children who give us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who sleeps with their dog and who bury their goldfish, who hug us so tightly and who forget their lunch money, who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink, who watch their fathers shave, and who slurp their soap.

And we pray for those who will never get dessert, who have no favorite blanket to drag around behind them, who watch their fathers suffer, who cannot find any bread to steal, who do not have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures are on milk cartons instead of on dressers, and whose monsters are real.

We pray for the children who spend all their allowance by Tuesday, who pick at their food, who love ghost stories, who shove their dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse the bathtub, who love visits from the Tooth Fairy, even after they find out who it really is, who do not like to be kissed in front of the school bus, and who squirm during services.

And we also pray for those children whose nightmares occure in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who are not spoiled by anyone, who go to bed hungry and wake up hungry, who live and move and have no address. We pray for those children who like to be carried and for those children who have to be carried. for those who give up and for those who never give up, for those who will grab the hand of anyone kind enough to offer it and for those who find no hand to grab.

For all these children, we pray today, for they are all so precious.

Ina J. Hughs

"God loves everyone, but probably prefers "fruits of the spirit" over "religious nuts.""

"God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage."

"He who angers you, controls you!"

From the Jan 2009 Newsletter

The way we take communion at Squires represents great theology.  It even has scriptural backing, straight from Paul’s words in 1 Corinithians 12.  When we receive the bread, we hold on to it, and then we all eat it together.  Eating together is a reminder that we are all in the body of Christ, that who we are only becomes fully evident when we recognize that we are called to be part of something greater than ourselves. 

When we receive the cup, then, we each drink immediately, as a reminder that each of us has been called to a unique and specific role within the life of the church.  Sometimes it might be a role that you do not even fully recognize, but each of us provides something important.  Whenever a new member joins the church, the body of Christ is changed. 

Communion at Squires represents great theology, but actually—generally—the reason why most churches have members take the cup as soon as they receive it  is because, otherwise,  moving children, shaky hands, or inattention could result in stains and spillage.  That said, the way we take communion at Squires still represents great theology, or a great tension within each of our own faith journeys.  A tension between individual and community, or between distinctiveness and uniformity, can be a part of life.

When students in my world religions class study Chinese philosophy and religion, frequently they are impressed by the “five great relationships” and the deep respect that the youth are expected to pay to elders, and that children are expected to pay to parents, in Confucianism.  When students then go a step further and read about some of the frequent implications of this respect, their eyes get larger when they see that Chinese parents frequently choose their children’s spouses and career.  Americans tend to want to determine more of their own destiny.

When I—as a younger sibling—was growing up, I frequently did whatever my brother had done two years previously, maybe because that represented a familiar path to me, or maybe because I didn’t have a strong preference.  He was in band, I was.  He was in Scouts and DeMolay, and I followed.  He took accounting, personal typing, and majored in business in college, and so did I (actually, economics).  I was very quiet growing up.  My neighbor (kind of) jokingly told my parents that she didn’t know I could talk until my brother went off to college.  Maybe as a result of that, or maybe because all teenagers go through something similar, I wondered how I was distinct or unique.  Within the next few years I had been very active in debate and I had studied overseas in a number of countries, and I think that those were good experiences for me . . . in part, because they were my own.  In part, they were good for me, because I was finally ready to step out on my own.

There always are tensions between individual and community.  In the United States frequently we focus on “the individual.”  Almost a decade ago, a sociologist named Robert Putnam wrote a book called Bowling Alone.  The title gives some clue as to the contents of the book.  Increasingly, people are not joiners.  They belong to fewer civic organizations.  They don’t want the commitments of relationships.  They “bowl alone.”  Along the same lines, fewer people are involved with churches.  Some are not involved because church no longer speaks to them, some because they have been hurt before by people in churches, some because they say that they see themselves as “spiritual” but not as “religious.”  They “bowl alone.”

The beginning of a new year feels like a great time to focus on hopes and dreams.  If I have one hope for our church this year, it is that we can reach out more to people, both within our congregation and outside of it, and help them recognize the value of community and of heritage, of gathering together and growing with others, of bringing their own unique contributions in service of greater causes and ideals, and of finding more fully who they really are, not by “bowling alone” but by being a part of a caring community.   If that would happen to result in people joining or being an active part of Squires, that would be great, but that is certainly not the goal.  The goal is to be faithful to God’s call and to share good news.  

In communion, when we eat the bread together we recognize that we—as distinct individuals—are called to be part of something greater than ourselves.  The rest we can leave to God.

Have a blessed new year!    Craig

A Different Type of Prayer

Heavenly Father, Help us remember that the" jerk" who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester..

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us, the greatest gift is love.  It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear.

Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity.  Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

(Source Unknown)