Friday, July 25, 2014

Give A...

Sermon preached July 20, 2014 (Creation Care Sunday for our church)

Texts: Romans 8:12-25

            Listen again to some of the words of Paul from Romans 8, this time rendered by Eugene Peterson in his translation/paraphrase The MessageThe created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next.  Everything in creation is being more or less held back.  God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead.  Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.  All around us we observe a pregnant creation.  The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs.  But it’s not only around us; it’s within us.  The Spirit of God is arousing us within.  We’re also feeling birth pangs.
            I am not an expert on birth pangs.  Nor is Eugene Peterson, nor was Paul, for that matter.  What I appreciate about Paul’s writing here in this part of the Bible is Paul’s affirmation that God’s redemptive work involves all of creation.  We, as human beings, are part of creation.  Some of the readings today have been chosen to emphasize that point.  We human beings are unique in creation, to be sure, but God’s love and care extends to all creation.  It is a new heaven and a new earth that God continues to bring into being, not only a new humanity.  On this Sunday where we are celebrating God’s good creation, a Sunday that is also Lake Superior Sunday, we want to remind ourselves that we are part of creation and that God’s redemptive work includes all of creation.
            Another thing I appreciate about these verses of Paul’s is that he is inviting us to pay attention to the created world.  There are voices to be heard here, voices that speak wisely.
            I am going to be very brief this morning.  It has already been a rich morning with readings and music and there is more to come.  Let me say simply and quickly three things, rooted in these verses from Romans 8.
            Listen to the voices of creation.  In creation we hear whispers of beauty and truth.  We come to understand that importance of the body and that we belong to the moon.  Listening to the voices of creation, we can come into the peace of wild things.  We can rest in the grace of the world.  Listening to the voices of creation can help clear the fog from our spirits sometimes.
            The voices of creation are not only voices of beauty and truth, there are sometimes cries of anguish.  Yes, these can be birth pangs, pains that lead to new life, but we have a role to play in that.  When we hear the anguished cries of a bruised world, will we work with the Spirit of God to repair the world.  It is true that every living thing has some impact on the world around.  Animals eat other living things – plants and animals – to survive.  We humans eat other living things – plants and animals – to survive.  We cut trees to build homes or make paper for books.  We use water to drink and to grow foods and flowers.  We will not live without destroying some other life, but can we find sensible limits to our destruction, for in the end, if we don’t, we jeopardize the very life of the planet.  The anguished cries of creation can be birth pangs or death sobs, and we have something to do with that.  God’s redemptive work is toward sustainability.
            When we listen to the voices of creation, we can also hear the voice of the Spirit. The voice of beauty and truth is always the voice of God.  That voice speaks within us, as well.  The Spirit “groans” within us.  God moves within us, inviting us to newness of life, inviting us to share in God’s redemptive work.  God’s Spirit is both a soothing voice and a restless force.  In Romans 8, Paul writes that God’s Spirit bears witness “with our spirit that we are children of God.”  He also writes that we “groan inwardly.”  One of the paradoxical elements of the Christian life is that there is this deep inner peace in knowing that we are loved by God and this inner restlessness which continually reminds us that God’s redemptive work is not yet finished.  Look at the world.  There is work to be done.  Listen to the cries of creation and know there is work to be done.  The voice of God’s Spirit is not only an invitation to action, but also, and as importantly, an invitation to dream, to imagine, to think.  If we cannot think about, dream about, and imagine a different world, we cannot act as wisely as we might, we cannot live into it.
            Listen to the voices of creation.  Listen to the voice of God’s Spirit in creation and within.  The third thing I want to say is give a….  When I was young one of the advertised reminders that we had a role in caring for the world around us was a simple slogan, “Give a hoot, don’t pollute.”  Give a hoot, care and act on that feeling of caring.  If you need some stronger language, give a… and put a word beginning with a “d” there. That’s a song, by the way.  Paul Stookey, the writer and singer of the beautiful “Wedding Song,” a song Julie and I had at our wedding thirty-two years ago this week, on that same album had a simple song called “Give a Damn.”  It was an encouragement to care and it remains good advice.
            So care, and act on that caring.  Give a…  Do something to make the world a little better to care for creation a little more deeply, then do the next thing.  The naturalist Loren Eisley wrote: Man is not totally compounded of the nature we profess to understand.  Man is always partly of the future, and the future he possesses the power to shape. (The Star Thrower, 296)  There is a restlessness within us, a groaning of God’s Spirit, that longs for a better world, a world we have the power, with the grace of God, to help shape.  Think, dream, imagine, do.  And be.  As we shall hear in a moment, “what we ultimately need most are human beings who love the world” (Gary Snyder, Back on the Fire, 70).
            Think, dream, imagine, do, love.  Give a….. Amen.

Paul Stookey’s “Give a Damn” (cover version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb2AaSGExeo
Spanky and Our Gang, “Give a Damn” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFwfe4Sjvmw

Quotes and Questions for Reflection

Psalm 136:1-9, Inclusive Language Version

O give thanks to God, for God is good,
for God’s steadfast love endures forever.

O give thanks to the God of gods,
whose steadfast love endures forever.

O give thanks to the Sovereign of sovereigns,
whose steadfast love endures forever;

who alone does great wonders,
for God’s steadfast love endures forever;

who by understanding made the heavens,
for God’s steadfast love endures forever;

who spread out the earth on the waters,
for God’s steadfast love endures forever;

who made the great lights,
for God’s steadfast love endures forever;

the sun to rule over the day,
for God’s steadfast love endures forever;

and the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for God’s steadfast love endures forever;

“Blossom”   Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, volume 1
In April
   the ponds
      open
         like black blossoms,
the moon
   swims in every one;
      there’s fire
         everywhere: frogs shouting,
their desire,
   their satisfaction.  What
      we know:  that time
         chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
   is a state of paralysis.  What
      we long for: joy
         before death, nights
in the swale – everything else
   can wait but not
      this thrust
         from the root
of the body.  What
   we know: we are more
      than blood – we are more
         than our hunger and yet
we belong
   to the moon and when the ponds
      open, when the burning
         begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
   of hurrying down
      into the black petals,
         into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered,
into the body of another.

“The Peace of Wild Things”   Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

“A Reward”   Denise Levertov, from The Life Around Us, Selected Poems on Nature
Tired and hungry, late in the day, impelled
to leave the house and search for what
might lift me back to what I had fallen away from,
I stood by the shore waiting.
I had walked in the silent woods:
the trees withdrew into their secrets.
Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk
over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray.
Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies
afloat on their element as I was not
on mine.  I turned homeward, unsatisfied.
But after a few steps, I paused, impelled again
to linger, to look North before nightfall – the expanse
of calm, of calming water, last wafts
of rose in the few high clouds.
And was rewarded:
the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying
just offshore on his post,
too up his vigil.
                             If you ask,
why this cleared a fog from my spirit,
I have no answer.


from “Writers and the War Against Nature” Gary Snyder, from Back on the Fire: Essays
One can ask what might it take to have an agriculture that does not degrade the soils, a fishery that does not deplete the ocean, a forestry that keeps watersheds and ecosystems intact, population policies that respect human sexuality and personality while holding numbers down, and energy policies that do not set off fierce little wars.  These are the key questions worth our lifetimes and more….  What would it take?  We know that science and the arts can be allies.  We need far more women in politics. We need a religious view that embraces nature and does not fear science; business leaders who know and accept ecological and spiritual limits; political leaders who have spent time working in schools, factories, or farms, and maybe a few who still write poems. We need intellectual and academic leaders who have studied both history and ecology and who like to dance and cook.  We need poets and novelists who pay no attention to literary critics.  But what we ultimately need most are human beings who love the world.

Human beings are both part of nature and unique in nature.  How might we discuss that theologically?  How might we discuss that in ways that are helpful?

What are some of the ways we can be “human beings who love the world?”


What do you think are some of the “easy ways” we can better care for creation?  What are some of the “hard choices” we face?

Friday, July 18, 2014

Sow What

Sermon preached July 13, 2014

Texts: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

            Miles Davis, “So What”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXk1LBvIqU
People who know jazz almost instantly recognize this song from the moment it begins.  You can hear it’s title in the notes – “So What.”  The minute the trumpet sounds, if you are a jazz aficionado, you know that this is Miles Davis.  Someone once said that Miles Davis plays the trumpet “like a man walking on egg shells” (Barry Ulanov).
            Jazz is a unique American art form, and among its unique features is improvisation, that is, creativity on the spot.  Each solo is played a little differently each time it is played.  Music writer and critic Albert Murray says that jazz is “the creative process incarnate” (Ward and Burns, Jazz, xvii).
            You all did not show up this morning for a music appreciation lesson, though there is always a lot of music here to appreciate.  I begin with jazz because my sermon title is a play on Miles Davis’ song – “sow what” – and I am sorry for any of you who might have seen the sermon title and thought I was going to be talking about hogs today – but the parables of Jesus are a little bit jazz.  They are creativity incarnate. They create something new and fresh.  They open us up to new ideas, perceptions, ways of thinking and therefore, also, ways of living.  “In the parables of Jesus language opens onto a greater reality” (Robert Funk, Jesus as Precursor).  Scholar John Dominic Crossan writes about the parables that they intend “to make us probe and question, ponder and wonder, discuss and debate, and above all else, practice that gift of the human spirit known as thinking” (Crossan, The Power of Parable)
            We are not always so very comfortable with such creativity.  We rather like the way we think right now thank you very much.  Being challenged is not always our favorite activity.  We sometimes like to domesticate the parables if we can, and we are not alone in that.  It seems that even the earliest followers of Jesus sought neat interpretations of the parables.  Today’s parable, often called the parable of the sower, is one of the few parables that is given an explicit interpretation.  It is put in the mouth of Jesus in the gospel.
            So here is a challenging idea for you.  What if this interpretation really comes from some of Jesus’ early followers and not from Jesus himself?  The issues here can be complex and I want to leave them for the discussion after church if you want to come, but there is some wide scholarly consensus, and this has been around for about a century, that the interpretation of the parable of the sower in the gospels probably did not originate with Jesus but with the early church.  That doesn’t make it bad or wrong.  In fact, it provides one helpful lens on the parable.  That lens seems to suggest that the important fact in the story is the kind of soil you are – do you receive the word of Jesus like good soil?  Of course, those in the early church might pat themselves on the back and say “we are the good soil.”  The parable might have been a word of comfort in difficult times.  Nothing wrong with that, except that we may, in reading the parable in this way, miss some of its power.
            The words of philosopher and therapist, Jonathan Lear seem relevant here: We both do and do not want to live with routine understandings of ourselves (A Case for Irony)  There is something that draws us into more creative ways of thinking, but something that we fear about this as well.  The urge to domesticate the parable is strong.
            What if we let the story stand by itself, without this interpretation?  What if we do a little thinking, pondering, wondering?  What if we let the parable be more riddle-like, and we exercise that gift of the human spirit known as thinking?  What might this parable say to us other than – “congratulations for being such good dirt!”?  How might the Spirit speak to us in fresh and creative ways, a little like the voice of jazz?
            “Listen!  A sower went out to sow.”  He does not seem like the best sower to me.  He wastes a lot of seed, throwing it hither and yon, wildly whipping it about.  I am told, though, that this method of scattering seed was not uncommon in Jesus’ day.  I have to think, however, that there are some limits to the amount of seed any particular sower might sow.  Yet this sower keeps sowing.  Seed gets eaten by birds, the sower keeps sowing, maybe even glad that some birds are getting fed.  Seed falls on shallow ground where it may not do well.  The sower keeps sowing.  Seed falls among thorns, and they don’t do well, yet the sower keeps sowing.  Finally, seed finds some good soil, but here’s an interesting point easily overlooked.  Just as there are three not-so-good scenarios, so there are three better scenarios.  There is good soil – yielding thirty-fold.  There is some better soil, yielding sixty-fold.  There is the best soil – yielding a hundred-fold.
            So here are a couple of thoughts to ponder.  Maybe God is like that wild sower.  Maybe God “loves wastefully” to use a term from Bishop John Shelby Spong.  Maybe the real good news in this story is not that we are such great soil, maybe the good news is that no matter what kind of soil we are at a particular time, God keeps sowing, sow what – love!  Isn’t the truth of our lives that we are sometimes distracted so that life flies in and hides something of God’s love from us?  Aren’t we sometimes shallow in our faith life?  Don’t we get caught up in the cares of the day, and let what’s more important get chocked out?  Even then, God keeps casting seeds of love and grace, tossing them into the wild winds of God’s Spirit, hoping that the soil condition of our lives will change.
            And here’s another bit of startling good news.  While the sower’s behavior in the story may have fit the times, the description of the harvest does not.  A good farmer could have expected a yield of about ten to twelve-fold – not thirty, sixty or a hundred.  What kind of wild story is Jesus telling?  Maybe this, when God’s love connects with our lives – wow!  God’s love is strong enough to help heal damaged relationships, damaged psyches, a damaged world.  God’s love was enough so that fifty years ago people worked really hard to build this building we are worshipping and learning and growing it.  God’s love is enough so that once a month we open our doors to whoever will come with their twenty dollars and we help feed them.  God’s love was enough that thirty years ago a kind of shy kid from the Lester Park neighborhood had a bishop lay his hands on his head and ordain him and he stands before you today as your pastor.
            So the story may speak to us about God if we let our imaginations play with it thoughtfully.  I think the story speaks to us as a church.  Maybe we are to be the sower in the world.  Whatever you think of John Shelby Spong, I think he got it just right when he wrote, “the business of the church is to love people into life” (Resurrection).  The business of the church is to love people into life.  Our United Methodist Church says that the mission of the church is to makes disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  It is another way of saying we want to love people into life.  This church says that we welcome all people, are guided by the teaching and unconditional love of Jesus and are inspired to live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.  It is a longer way of saying we want to love people into life.  We want to, in the words of Spong, build “a world in which everyone can live more fully, love more wastefully, and have the courage to be all that they can be” (Jesus for the Nonreligious).
            We want to love people into life, and there are many ways we can be doing that.  We cannot do it all, so we have to choose.  Some of the choices we make will be like casting seeds to the birds, yet we are to keep on.  Some of the choices we make will be like throwing seed on rocky soil, yet we are to keep on.  We will cast some seeds into the thorns, yet we are to keep on.  We will readjust our aim from time to time.  We will give up some forms of sowing to take up other forms.  Some of what we do will fail.  Yet we keep sowing.
            This parable can speak about God, if we ponder it thoughtfully and imaginatively.  This parable can speak about our church, if we ponder it thoughtfully and imaginatively.  This parable can also speak to each of us, if we let it.
            Know you are loved.  You are loved by a God who keeps casting seeds of love and grace in your direction hoping to catch some good soil in your heart, mind, soul.
            Loved by this God who sows on the wild winds of the Spirit, love.  Love wastefully, wisely, imaginatively.  If wasteful and wise seem contradictory, well, they are, sort of.  The riddle is always to hold them in creative tension.  If we seeks to be too “wise” in our loving, we may become stingy sowers.  If we only love wastefully, we might never catch anything but pavement.
            One good story deserves another, so here’s one.  Kent Nerburn, an author from Bemidji writes about a time when he was present in the courtroom where a young man was on trial for murdering a girl he had seen walking down the street.  It was the kind of crime that is rare, but one that we fear deeply.  It was a random act of violence.  This young man and a friend dragged this unsuspecting girl, whom they had never met, into the woods and shot her.  The prosecuting attorney described in grim detail the specifics of the murder….  The horror was almost too much to bear… but through it all the father of the murdered girl sat impassively, watching the trial, watching the boy.  The young man was found guilty, and afterward the father announced that he was going to visit the young man in jail.  People were stunned, but the father was adamant.  “That boy and I are forever bound…. We need to know each other.  I do not know if I can forgive him.  But perhaps if I know him I will not hate him.  This is about healing and reconciliation. (Make Me An Instrument, 22,23)
            This story comes from Nerburn’s book on the Prayer of St. Francis, which is about sowing – “where there is hatred, let me sow love.”  Sow what - sow love.  Towards the end of the telling of this story, Nerburn writes his own thoughts.  “Sowing” does not imply that something is fully grown, only that the seeds of possibility have been planted. (25)
            A sower went out to sow.  So what – big deal, who cares?  Except that this sower might tell us something about the love of God, a love cast abundantly on the wild winds of the Spirit.  When those seeds of love and possibility sink deep inside us, we too can cast them out wildly and joyfully, as church, as people.  That’s so what, so sow what?, sow love.  Amen.

Quotes and Questions for Reflection

In the parables of Jesus language opens onto a greater reality.
                                                Robert Funk, Jesus as Precursor

A parable… is a metaphor expanded into a story, or, more simply, a parable is a metaphoric story….  Challenge parables mean – that is, intend – to make us probe and question, ponder and wonder, discuss and debate, and, above all else, practice that gift of the human spirit known as thinking.
                                                John Dominic Crossan, The Power of Parable

A riddle is a riddle because it uses intentional ambiguity and expects an answer….  Some of the parables [are] intentionally ambiguous statements that solicit a response (though not necessarily a verbal response) from the audience….  Jesus’ parables are “metaphors” in the general sense that they compare two things, and that some of them are “riddles” because they make their comparisons in a way that generates ambiguity.
                                                Tom Thatcher, Jesus the Riddler

Then follows the interpretation of the parable of the Sower.  Now this whole passage is strikingly unlike in language and style to the majority of the sayings of Jesus…. These facts create at once a presumption that we have here not a part of the primitive tradition of the words of Jesus, but a piece of apostolic teaching.  Further, the interpretation offered is confused.
                                                C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom

We must conclude, then, that the interpretation of the parable of the Sower is a product of the primitive Church which regarded the parable as an allegory, and interpreted each detail in it allegorically.
                                                Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus

We both do and do not want to live with routine understandings of ourselves.
                                                Jonathan Lear, A Case for Irony

What do you think of the idea of parables a rich in meaning because they are metaphoric stories, even riddles which evoke a thoughtful response from their hearers?

Do you agree with Jonathan Lear that we both do and do not want to live with routine understandings of ourselves, and therefore may tend to “domesticate” the parables?

What do you think of the idea that the interpretation of the parable belongs to the early Church community and perhaps not to Jesus himself?  How does this have in impact on your understanding of the Bible?

What grabs your attention in the parable and provokes you to deeper thought?

The business of the church is to love people into life.
                                                John Shelby Spong, Resurrection Myth or Reality?

What do you think of Spong’s statement?

The call of God experienced in Christ is simply a call to be all that each of us is – a call to offer, through the being of our humanity, the gift of God to all people by building a world in which everyone can live more fully, love more wastefully and have the courage to be all that they can be….  God is about living, about loving, and about being.
                                                John Shelby Spong, Jesus for the Nonreligious

What do you think of Spong’s statement? Does “love wastefully” have some resonance to the sower in the parable?

“Sowing” does not imply that something is fully grown, only that the seeds of possibility have been planted.

                                                Kent Nerburn, Make Me An Instrument

Thursday, July 10, 2014

I Want to Know What Love Is

Sermon preached  July 6, 2014

Texts: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30


            So here is the 1984 Foreigner song from which I took this morning’s sermon title, “I Want To Know What Love Is” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loWXMtjUZWM&feature=kp
            But now I have a bit of a problem, because I am not sure just how to get from this song to the next word in the sermon: gonorrhea.  This is not a good transition.  “I want to know what love is, gonorrhea.”
            So let’s see if we can redeem this situation.  Many of you know that my daughter is an ob-gyn resident.  This week she was going to be making a presentation on gonorrhea and chlamydia to other residents and physicians, and I asked if she remembered the Seinfeld episode where Kramer was acting out disease symptoms for medical students, giving a stellar performance for gonorrhea.
            How is it that I can remember a Seinfeld episode?  I love Trivial Pursuit kinds of games.  I have sometimes thought I might be good on Jeopardy, along with thousands of other people, though I have imagined finally getting on the show and having all kinds of categories about which I know nothing – “Alex, I’ll take fabrics for $100.”
            Knowledge.  There is so much that can be known, and so much that we do know.  Our minds are pretty amazing. While knowledge matters, there is something vastly more important, wisdom.  Joan Chittister writes: It’s not difficult to become smart. It is difficult to become enlightened enough to be able to distinguish what is smart from what is wise. (Becoming Fully Human, 97).
            Wisdom.  Let me suggest to you that wisdom has not only to do with our minds, our heads as it were. Wisdom has to do with head, heart and hands – with knowing, feeling, and doing.  We get hints of this in various places in the Bible.  Be wise in what is good. (Romans 16:19)  Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. (James 3:13)
            In today’s gospel reading, we get more than a hint that wisdom has to do with head, heart, and hands, we get the message straight up.  Today’s reading can be divided into two sections, the first centered on the saying, “yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” and the second focusing on the invitation – “come to me.”  Wisdom in the religious tradition of Jesus was a feminine figure – Sophia.  The emphasis of Jesus in this passage is that wisdom may not be what the purportedly “wise and intelligent” think it is.  People missed the wisdom of John the Baptist, and they are missing the wisdom of Jesus.  Want to know where wisdom is, look for deeds.  Sophia/Wisdom makes herself known by her effects.  Even more significantly, Matthew’s words locate the wisdom of God in Jesus.  Marcus Borg: On the one hand, Jesus was a teacher of wisdom….  On the other hand, the New Testament also presents Jesus as the embodiment or incarnation of divine wisdom (Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 69).  Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza: Matthew characterizes Jesus as Sophia herself….  Jesus does what what Wisdom does. (Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet, 151).  Jesus embodies wisdom and Jesus embodies love, and wisdom is known in love.
            To be wise, then, is to align our thinking, feeling and doing and to align it in the direction of love.  To be wise is to love.  To grow in wisdom is to grow in love.  To talk about the relationship between wisdom and love is important, for we are called to love in a very complicated and complex world.  To be wise is to love and to love well is to be discerning.  In writing about the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, scholar Walter Brueggemann says: Wisdom teachers stay close to the enigmatic quality of experience… [and] the richness of concrete experience….  In an embrace of the traditions of wisdom, know the dailiness of life in all its contested, buoyant density. (Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 681, 745)  Jesus embodied wisdom.  Jesus embodies love, and wisdom is known in love, a love that operates with discernment in the midst of our rich, complex, dense world.  And Jesus, in his life touched very particular lives with his love, especially those who were on the social margins.
            Into this enigmatic, rich world, this world of buoyant density, we hear the call of wisdom.  We hear the call to love.  The call of love is gift and demand.  But just what, materially speaking, are God’s gift and demand as they are decisively re-presented through Jesus himself?  They are, in a word, the gift and demand of love, of a boundless love that authorizes – i.e., both entitles and empowers – a human existence of obedient faith working through love and love incarnating itself as justice….  Jesus himself, through everything he says and does, means love – both God’s prevenient love for all of us and, on this basis, through our obedient faith in God’s love, our own returning love for God and for all whom God loves. (Schubert Ogden,  The Understanding of Christian Faith, 73)
            Love is a demand.  Love implores us to live differently.  The wisdom of love is always seeking to discern the loving course of action in a complex world, or sometimes we need to say the “more loving” course of action when the alternatives are less than ideal.  Love demands our best thinking, and wisdom demands our deepest loving.
            Yet love is not ceaseless demand, it is also a gift.  If we see love as only demand we risk harming ourselves and others.  The Biblical scholar Walter Wink shares the response of a person discussing in one of his workshops the famous passage from Matthew 25 about the least of these.  I tried that for seven years and ignored my wife and family trying to get European and U.S. money to the starving of India and Africa.  I totally ignored the ‘least’ within myself and my family, till I lost them through divorce. (Walter Wink, The Human Being, 185 )  Love is not only demand.  Love is beauty, joy, musement.  It is finding our way to dance to the unforced rhythms of grace.  I bet you may have been wondering if ever I was going to get to the second section of today’s gospel reading, a favorite among many.  Jesus: Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.  Sophia/Wisdom speaking.  Jesus (The Message): Are you tired? Worn out?  Burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.  I’ll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.  Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
            The question of wisdom is the question, “I want to know what love is.”  To be wise is to know, in the words of the poet W. H. Auden The choice to love is open till we die.  The voice of wisdom is also the voice of Forrest Gump: I may not be a smart man, Jenny, but I know what love is.  Wisdom is as wisdom does, and what wisdom does is love.  May we be so wise.  Amen.

Faith Forum After Hours – Seven Summer Sermons
July 6, 2014

Scripture Reading: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Sermon Title: I Want to Know What Love Is

Quotes and Questions for Reflection

It is not difficult to become smart.  It is difficult to become enlightened enough to be able to distinguish what is smart from what is wise.
                                                            Joan Chittister, Becoming Fully Human             

How would you distinguish knowledge from wisdom?


Be wise in what is good.        Paul, Romans 16:19

Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
                                                                        James 3:13
What do you think about the idea that true wisdom is wisdom about love, that genuine wisdom leads to loving action?


But just what, materially speaking, are God’s gift and demand as they are decisively re-presented through Jesus himself?  They are, in a word, the gift and demand of love, of a boundless love that authorizes – i.e., both entitles and empowers – a human existence of obedient faith working through love and love incarnating itself as justice….  Jesus himself, through everything he says and does, means love – both God’s prevenient love for all of us and, on this basis, through our obedient faith in God’s love, our own returning love for God and for all whom God loves.
                                                Schubert Ogden,  The Understanding of Christian Faith

How would you reflect on love as both gift and demand?


Wisdom teachers stay close to the enigmatic quality of experience… [and] the richness of concrete experience….  In an embrace of the traditions of wisdom, know the dailiness of life in all its contested, buoyant density.
                                                Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
                                                William James, The Principles of Psychology

On the one hand, Jesus was a teacher of wisdom…. On the other hand, the New Testament also presents Jesus as the embodiment or incarnation of divine wisdom.
                                                Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

The choice to love is open till we die.
                                                                        W. H. Auden   

I may not be a smart man, Jenny, but I know what love is.

                                                                        Forrest Gump

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Something

Sermon preached June 29, 2014

Texts: Matthew 10:40-42

            I don’t know why I have never thought of it before, but this Sunday’s sermon has an all-purpose sermon title – “Something.”  It answers the question – “What are you going to preach about?” – something.  It gives people a good response to the sermon – “Wasn’t that sermon something?!”
            It even provides multiple musical options.  Some of you were probably expecting this:
Some may have been expecting this:
James Taylor, “Something in the Way She Moves” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoevtZiVR4k&feature=kp
            But I am guessing that not many of you, at least until yesterday, were thinking about this:
Lee Ann Womack: “Something Worth Leaving Behind” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awjH_CqOgX0&feature=kp
            “If I will love then I will find I have touched another life, and that’s something worth leaving behind.”  These words were referred to yesterday as we celebrated the life of J Adamec, who died tragically and suddenly this last week at age 45. The words are meant for all of us.  Touching the lives of others with kindness, that’s what these few short verses from the Gospel of Matthew are about.
            To be sure, the verses in Matthew have a narrower function and meaning.  They are meant to be words of comfort to the early disciples of Jesus who often experienced hardships for following Jesus.  Think of how powerful such words could be to a beleaguered disciple – “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.  Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”  God is measuring the lives of others by how they treat you!  What encouragement.  That last phrase about giving a cup of cold water to “one of these little ones” is a word about how the disciples are to treat the newest people who have joined them on the spiritual journey with Jesus.
            Yet Matthew’s words cannot be contained within that context alone.  Kindness is intended to be the way in which disciples of Jesus are treated.  Kindness is meant to characterize the community of the followers of Jesus.  Such kindness cannot be contained, but inevitably spills over into all of life.  And if God’s Spirit may be at work in surprising ways, through surprising people, shouldn’t all be welcomed, shouldn’t all be received, shouldn’t small acts of kindness be extended to all?
            A few years ago, I came across this rather amazing statement from theologian Robert Neville.  Christianity is first and foremost about being kind.  Love is the more customary word than kindness, but love is too complicated in its symbols, too loaded with history, to be a plain introduction to Christianity….  Being kind… is an ideal that often has been ignored within Christianity or seriously distorted….  Christians believe that communities of kindness are the human ideal because of the nature of God.  (Robert Cummings Neville, Symbols of Jesus, xviii, xix)  Neville goes on to describe some of what kindness entails: Some obvious and up-front meanings of kindness should be affirmed before stumbling on hard cases.  They include being generous, sympathetic, willing to help those in immediate need, and ready to play roles for people on occasions of suffering, trouble, joy, and celebration that might more naturally be played by family or close friends who are absent….  To be kind is also to be courteous, an extremely important and difficult virtue in a society as multifarious as ours.  (Neville, Symbols of Jesus, xviii, xix)
            Is that all there really is to Christianity, kindness?  That’s not what Neville is saying.  Christianity is about more than kindness, but it is never about less than kindness and kindness is central to the meaning of our faith.  Christianity is about God, but about a God who acts toward us with lovingkindness.  Christianity is about Jesus, but about a Jesus who lives kindness, teaches kindness, embodies kindness.  If our understandings of God and Jesus don’t help us cultivate kindness, if our live together in the church doesn’t, help us cultivate and grow in kindness, then we need to examine what is wrong.
            But doesn’t kindness seem sort of ho-hum, sort of weak, sort of unexciting?  And who doesn’t like kindness?  The words of Mother Teresa could be found almost anywhere – “be kind to each other.”  (No Greater Love).   The words of author George Saunders could be put on bumper stickers: “err in the direction of kindness” (Congratulations, By the Way).  Who would object to any of this?
            Yet the world is often an unkind place.  We live in a world where, according to Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, “kindly behavior is looked upon with suspicion; public espousals of kindness are dismissed as moralistic and sentimental” (On Kindness, 7).  “Kindness,” they write, “has become our forbidden pleasure” (5)
            If we often sing the praises of kindness, yet also disparage it, and don’t consistently live it out, what gets in our way?  Let me suggest three things, and they are probably not the only three things that get in the way of our kindness.
            When we see certain people having trouble, sometimes we simply think they are getting their comeuppance.  Why be kind to jerks?  In our movies we often find those characters who we hope don’t succeed because they are not very nice people.  In “The Help,” for instance, we aren’t too disappointed when some of the rude white women, who treat their African-American housekeepers so poorly, seem to get their comeuppance.  In fact, we rather like it.  It seems easier to wish people who behave poorly will get a taste of their own medicine than to find a way to weave kindness together with accountability.  Brene Brown has asked, “Wouldn’t it be better if we could be kinder, but firmer?” (The Gifts of Imperfection, 17)
            Another thing that gets in the way of kindness is our perception that kindness is inherently weak.  Again, I take some cues from Brene Brown.  Kindness does entail some vulnerability, which Brown defines as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure” (Daring Greatly, 34).  When we are kind, we open ourselves to the hurt and pain of others.  Brown writes, “love is a form of vulnerability [and] vulnerability is life’s great dare.  It’s life asking, “Are you all in?...  Answering yes… is not weakness: It’s courage beyond measure.  It’s daring greatly.” (Daring Greatly, 43)  We don’t want to be weak, but can we shift from thinking of kindness as weakness to see kindness as an adventure, as courageous?
            Finally, kindness, because it entails vulnerability, does open us up to the pain of others and the pain of the world.  Phillips and Taylor write: In one sense kindness is always hazardous because it is based on a susceptibility to others, a capacity to identify with their pleasures and sufferings.  Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable.  Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness, 5).  It is not easy to open ourselves to the pain of others and the pain of the world, but kindness is often a response to such pain, hurt, disappointment, suffering.  Kindness is more than the kind word offered, or smile given, when we greet someone.  It takes us to difficult places.  As George Saunders writes, “kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include… well, everything” George Saunders, Congratulations, By The Way).
            Meeting all these obstacles to kindness requires courage.  It might be just as true to say that Christianity is about courage as to say it is about kindness.  Christian faith is about the courage to be kind, and about the courage to receive kindness from God and others.
            But one last problem with kindness.  Kindness don’t feed the bulldog.  Kindness seems so small.  It strikes us as so small and ineffective when matched up against the massive problems of the world.  The world is so full of deep struggles, profound suffering, systemic issues and difficulties.  What good is kindness among all this?
            Kindness is more than an interpersonal quality.  It has social dimensions.  While these can be complicated, it does not mean they are non-existent.  Robert Neville: Sometimes it is hard to tell in what kindness consists.  Whether a social welfare system is ultimately kind if it creates a long-term dependent class of people is a debatable point at this stage, and how to amend it to make it more kind is also debatable (Symbols of Jesus, xviii).  We can debate the social meaning of kindness, but embodying kindness remains our goal.  And as the philosopher Martha Nussbaum notes, the kindness of love matters for justice.  Respect grounded in the idea of human dignity will prove impotent to include all citizens on terms of equality unless it is nourished by imaginative engagement with the lives of others and by an inner grasp of their full and equal humanity….  The type of imaginative engagement society needs… is nourished by love.  Love, then, matters for justice. (Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions, 380).
            Kindness may seem small, but “the quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another” in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Sojourners, July 2014).  Even small kindnesses, a warm welcome, a cold cup of water, a smile, a hug, being with someone in their moment of grief or triumph, can make a significant difference in the world.  Kindness participates in the “butterfly effect.”  It seems that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in South America may make a difference for the course of a tornado in North America.  It is not the only factor, but one influencing factor.  The world needs more of the butterfly wings of kindness.
            One of my favorite stories, and the one I will end with today, about the great effect of small things is the story inspired by the late naturalist Loren Eisley.  A man was walking on the beach one day and noticed a boy who was reaching down, picking up a starfish and throwing it in the ocean.  As he approached, he called out, “Hello!  What are you doing?”  The boy looked up and said, “I’m throwing starfish into the ocean”.  “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the man.  “The tide stranded them.  If I don’t throw them in the water before the sun comes up, they’ll die” came the answer.  “Surely you realize that there are miles of beach, and thousands of starfish.  You’ll never throw them all back, there are too many.  You can’t possibly make a difference.”  The boy listened politely, then picked up another starfish.  As he threw it back into the sea, he said, “It made a difference for that one.”  (see Loren Eisley, The Star Thrower)
            In our complicated, competitive world, kindness can seem so small, so weak, so vulnerable.  Kindness can seem to take us to hazardous places.  Yet kindness makes all the difference in the world.  The God of Jesus Christ is a God whose character is lovingkindness.  God grant us the courage and sense of adventure to live more kindly, and when we do, we will live lives that have something worth leaving behind – and isn’t that something!  Amen.
Quotes and Questions for Reflection

Christianity is first and foremost about being kind.  Love is the more customary word than kindness, but love is too complicated in its symbols, too loaded with history, to be a plain introduction to Christianity….  Being kind… is an ideal that often has been ignored within Christianity or seriously distorted….  Sometimes it is hard to tell in what kindness consists… but some obvious and up-front meanings of kindness should be affirmed before stumbling on hard cases.  They include being generous, sympathetic, willing to help those in immediate need, and ready to play roles for people on occasions of suffering, trouble, joy, and celebration that might more naturally be played by family or close friends who are absent….  To be kind is also to be courteous, an extremely important and difficult virtue in a society as multifarious as ours….  Christians believe that communities of kindness are the human ideal because of the nature of God.
                                                Robert Cummings Neville, Symbols of Jesus

What do you think of Neville’s statement that “Christianity is first and foremost about being kind”?

How true to these identified obstacles to kindness ring to you?:
·        Some people are just getting their comeuppance
·        Kindness opens us up to pain (see Phillips and Taylor below)
·        Kindness often makes one appear weak
How do we work with such obstacles?

In one sense kindness is always hazardous because it is based on a susceptibility to others, a capacity to identify with their pleasures and sufferings.  Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable.
                                                Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness

Empathy requires some vulnerability… but it’s worth it.
                                                Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

Kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include… well, everything.
                                                George Saunders, Congratulations, By The Way

Respect grounded in the idea of human dignity will prove impotent to include all citizens on terms of equality unless it is nourished by imaginative engagement with the lives of others and by an inner grasp of their full and equal humanity….  The type of imaginative engagement society needs… is nourished by love.  Love, then, matters for justice.
                                                Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions

Be kind to each other: It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness.
                                                Mother Teresa, No Greater Love

The quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another.
                                                Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sojourners, July 2014

Err in the direction of kindness.
                                                George Saunders, Congratulations, By The Way

If I will love then I will find
I have touched another life
And that’s something
Something worth leaving behind.
                        Brett Beavers and Tom Douglas, “Something Worth Leaving Behind”

                        (sung by Lee Ann Womack)