Do you have a favorite chair? Maybe it is a lazy boy recliner, in front of the television, or perhaps it is a porch swing, the perfect place for watching birds and fireflies, falling leaves or opening wildflowers. Maybe it is your computer chair, where you surf the Internet and get caught up with your friends on e-mail or facebook. My favorite chair is the platform rocking chair. You know the ones I am talking about? I think they are also called glider rocking chairs. Regular rocking chairs start out on one side of the room and as you rock they walk, ending up on the other side of the room against the wall! If you are rocking a baby, it's impossible to get up, scoot the chair back over, and not wake the child! They are unsteady too; if you rock too hard they can sometimes tip. I like platform rocking chairs because they both move and stay put; they rock, but they are extremely stable.

We bought one at a garage sale when I was pregnant with our daughter, Kali. Many of my fondest memories are of wearing that chair out. I found a picture of it the other day, as I was trying to get my photos organized. Actually, I found a bunch of pictures taken of that chair over the years. I think every person who came over and held Kali those first months of her life sat in that chair. My husband's eldest brother and his wife came on day 3, bringing vegetables from their garden, homemade noodles, pies, and a quilted baby blanket. They belong to the German Baptist Brethren Church which is similar to Amish: the women wear white stiff net bonnets and dresses that have a sewn in cape. The men have long beards and wear black suits with buttons because zippers are forbidden. There are no instruments in worship and the men and women sit on separate sides of the sanctuary. Women do not speak in church.

After rocking our baby, they walked with my husband across the street so he could show them around the church he and I were serving together. As they left, they hugged me good-bye, smiled, and said to us, "You have a beautiful church." Because I am a woman, they do not acknowledge my call to ministry directly but they are kind to me. They would not be comfortable worshiping with us there just as we would not be comfortable worshipping with them. I love music that moves with rhythm and emotion and I encourage people to show up for worship in jeans and shorts if that would make them more comfortable. They chant their hymns using prayer books that have shapes under the words instead of music notes. They have no organ, no piano, no guitar, and certainly not a brass section at Easter. They have heated debates about what colors of fabric are too bright for the woman to wear and how the younger women have started wearing too much pink.

These are the people who raised my husband and loved him into who he is today. He has great fondness and appreciation for them and for their traditions even though he grew up and became United Church of Christ minister and is theologically progressive. A few summers ago we spent an afternoon at their national tent revival held back in Jack's hometown of Rossville Indiana. There we heard one minister declare, "If it was good enough in the 18^th century, it should be good enough today". Not all the members agree with that statement and that is creating tension for their community just as we too live in that tension between what to conserve from our traditions while adapting to current science and knowledge as we move into the future.

Like a rocking chair, we all rock back and forth between: holding on and letting go, holding still and moving forward, justice and mercy, agreeing and disagreeing, rocking, moving, being flexible while also staying put, immovable, firm on those things that cannot be compromised, and the hardest task of all: serving Christ together, united, and building bridges of understanding between both sides of current issues.

Jack's brother has 2 boys who are now married. Eric married a German Baptist Brethren woman, Megan, and his older brother Brian married a Buddhist woman from Thailand, Sama, who he met at Purdue. Both nephews have stayed in our home at different times and their wives rocked their beautiful babies in that rocking chair. I must confess that each time, I made an excuse to linger in the kitchen nearby, listening as one sang lullabies and old hymns with a voice so pure it brought tears to my eyes, the other sang songs in a language I did not know but with love so pure that I understood every word.

Over the years, I watched as these grandparents fully embraced both families, equally. I marveled at how these staunch German Baptists, leaders within their faith community, were able to travel to Thailand to attend the Buddhist ceremony and to honor and connect with Sama's family there and how they have loved her as their own daughter for over a decade now. I am humbled and moved by their faith in action. The differences between the German Baptist faith and my own are very real and at times are uncomfortable; but the bridge God extends between us is even more real and I am humbled and inspired by the integrity of their love.

Now, as if that wasn't complicated enough, Jack's sister married Mormon; what I knew about Mormon beliefs, before I met Jerry, was that I was uncomfortable and disagreed with many of them. What I have learned is that Jerry's soul and life and faith cannot be summed up by the specific creeds and details of Mormonism. The man exudes love and joy and deep goodness. He fought cancer for 2 years before it took his life 1 year ago today. When we visited him in the hospital, we all laughed and cried and talked about faith. We agreed that when we all meet up again on the other side, there is going to be one heck of a game of euchre. Do you know what Mormons, UCCs, German Baptists, and perhaps even Lutherans all have in common? Euchre. Oh yes, and homemade ice cream, even though we each swear by different recipes.

Also pictured in the rocking chair is my friend who is an evangelistic vegetarian; she is militant about not eating meat. She sat in that chair and rocked Kali, seated next to my husband who grew up hunting and trapping, plucking feathers off of the chickens his grandmother had just decapitated, plucking the bullets out of the cows' brains during butchering every January of his childhood, a job he says he liked because it kept his hands warm. When Jack eats lamb, goat, beef, (even bunnies!) he is united with fond memories of checking his trap lines on the way to school with his buddies, and being raised hunting with the men of the Rossville community that nurtured him as he was growing up. We ate pasta and vegetables for dinner that night as we celebrated her upcoming marriage to Mike, who still directs the Chicago Homeless Foundation, and together we tried to figure out how our church might support homeless children.

In addition, that chair has rocked Jews, Catholics, agnostics, atheists, Unitarians, fundamentalists, and a Chinese Buddhist who was married to a Christian. His wife wanted very much for him to be baptized, to share what Christianity meant for her. He was willing to do so but wanted to be sure that he could still participate in the Buddhist traditions that were important to him especially the rituals of honoring the ancestors. He died unexpectedly 4 years after his baptism having given his wife a bridge of comfort.

A few years ago it was blessed to hold a Muslim refugee from Ethiopia whose skin is the color of the dark wood of the chair's arms. Six months pregnant, she talked to us of torture and despair as well as love and hope; she returned later with her baby in her arms to continue her stories. Another Muslim refugee from Kosovo arrived with her husband and 4 children. She came over for a cup of tea with her then 9-year-old son, who didn't want to let her out of his sight. Too big to be rocked, he sat scrunched up next to her in that chair as we struggled with hand gestures to communicate. Suddenly she looked across the room and saw our photo albums and began weeping. Soon we were all weeping and rocking, sharing the universal language of the heart, of family memories, love, and loss. Whenever I hear people calling Muslims children of Satan instead of children of God, my heart leaps out of my chest to defend these strangers who we now call friends, our extended family in the household of God.

That chair also rocked my sister's life partner, now wife, Bee, who sat there 20 years ago, the first time she came to dinner at our home and our daughter crawled up on her lap for a story, officially welcoming her to the family. And just this week people who happen to fall in love with someone of the same gender have been condemned and called terrible names by people claiming to speak for Christ and I wonder when, WHEN will we demand our faith back from those who have hi-jacked it and twisted it into weapons of destruction, of hate, even of violence and instead proclaim the good news of God's love and care for ALL of God's children, for ALL of creation.

Jesus took a strong stand on justice and compassion and a flexible stand on religious practices and rules. Jesus also believed that the world is best changed through healing, sharing, loving, and praying not violence.

That chair has rocked people who were grieving and people who were laughing, people who I like and people I still find annoying. It has rocked parishioners who affirmed our ministerial leadership and it has rocked those who respectfully disagreed with us, and sometimes, back and forth throughout the years, these were the same people. It has rocked men and women, babies and children, members of our youth group, and many of our old folks. More than a few times my daughter turned it into a rocket ship and occasionally I was invited to go along. Many times it was the place where heated family discussions happened as we tried to work through problems and competing needs as well as times of watching movies together sharing laughter and affection.

I thought we were just buying an old rocking chair; but really, we were buying a bridge. So what does this have to do with our scripture readings this morning? In Colossians we read:

"you¹⁰ have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. ¹¹In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!"

What reveals Christ's presence in a life? Here it says "The image of our Creator" and that when that happens those things that divide us fall away! Surely, wherever there is compassion, loving-kindness, non-violent protest against injustice, mediation and peace-making, lullabies, laughter, life shared in sorrow and celebration, whatever the race or religion or recipes in the kitchen, the Creator's face can be seen there, rocking in a chair that is not too soft, not too hard, but stable, comfortable, and balanced.

Sadly, there are some people whose spiritual rocking chairs are dangerously off kilter because they are balanced on a platform of hatred, fear, misinformation or outright lies, and threats of violence. Just one day of news showed a Christian pastor raging that Muslims are not also children of God but of Satan, the Barn of Terror in Ellettsville is gearing up advertising again for its ministry of terrorizing people with graphic threats of hell unless they join their particular version of Christianity, and a Christian Extremists calling people who happen to fall in love with someone of the same gender "prone to violence, uncontrollable savagery" and that instead of being one of the holocaust's targeted victims along with Jews and gypsies, that Nazi's were made up of primarily gay men and Hitler was gay! What? I was heartsick for days after listening to that absurd and appalling garbage.

How do you and I respond to and resist the current Christian ideologies that propagate hate and ignore facts? People are absolutely entitled to their own opinions but they are not entitled to their own facts! Debate is one thing; propaganda and intentional manipulation of information is something altogether different. I never thought I'd be quoting author Anne Rice in a sermon—my husband enjoys her vampire fiction but I'm not a fan of that genre. Anyone she had a much-publicized conversion to Christianity a few years ago. This week she made an interesting pronouncement:

I will no longer be "anti-gay," "anti-feminist," "anti-science"

"My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," Rice wrote. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become."

Maybe God helped her find her way to a spiritual platform rocking chair, balanced on the gospel and good biblical scholarship as well as current science and heart-focused experience. What sort of gentle but firm protest can we make with our lives, our words, to proclaim our faith when others profane Christ by using him to condemn and threaten God's other children?

And, even as we stand firmly against hurtful spiritual messages, we also affirm that people are always more than their ideologies, their fears, and their faults. God is at work in all people, even those we stand in opposition to. If we want to preach a God of love, then we must, even when it is difficult, demonstrate with our lives, a God of love. I often imagine that seated next to the throne of God, might be a rocking chair, and seated there, persons I might be surprised to see, just as they might be surprised to see me! This is a humbling image that tempers my temper.

Which brings me to the final scripture focus this week, building bigger barns because the harvest has been so good and warnings about greed. And, an aside here, don't wait until retirement to go after your dreams, to travel, to take up a hobby, to develop an aspect of yourself that is dormant but waiting to blossom, to give your loved ones things you plan to leave them in your will or tell them about it now and why you want them to have it. Life is short and it grieves God when God's gifts to you go unrealized!

So, what do you think is the boundary between celebrating an abundant harvest, claiming God's gifts for our lives, and being greedy? This passage seems to be saying that whenever we equate a bountiful harvest, an accumulation of material stuff with special favor from God, as if we somehow deserve these things more than others, have spiritual arrogance instead of humility and gratitude, that is greed. When we find ourselves with an overabundance of good things, we are not being treated extra special, rewarded by God for being better than others, more valued and cared for then others; instead we are being called to become grateful receivers and faithful distributors of God's extravagant gifts.

Your church does this in so many ways. I told Kaye, your office administrator, last week, I have been so moved by the kindness and hospitality that St. Thomas extends to each other, to the community, to other faith groups, and even to your visiting pastors. My daughter attended the early service here last week and commented how friendly everyone was, even how willing you were to laugh during my sermon (she doesn't always think my jokes are that funny), and that when you sing together you sound like you like being in here with one another. I told her I agree. It continues to be a joy and blessing for my life to spend time with you all. Perhaps being a faith community is like pulling up our spiritual rocking chairs together on God's front porch to sit and rock and sing and talk and praise God for the harvest of hearts filled with love that surround us. Amen.