Sermon preached February 24, 2013
Texts: Luke 13: 31-35
Do you ever wonder what your life looks like from the outside? Many of us, when we get into our forties, perhaps, and certainly by the time we are in our fifties and beyond, have those moments when we are kind of stunned to realize that we are now in our forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties. Sometimes we just say to ourselves, or to others, “I don’t feel fifty.” But how do we really know if we have never been there before? I’ve come to the conclusion that part of feeling fifty plus is that you don’t really feel it.
We experience our lives from the inside, but do we stop to think what our lives look like from the outside? To do so too much is not a good thing. We would be overly self-conscious, always wondering how others are perceiving us. Yet I think it might do us good, at least on occasion, to stop and think what our lives might look like from the outside. I am fifty-three. I don’t really feel fifty-three, though how would I know because I have never been fifty-three before? I am fifty-three. I am not terribly tall. I don’t really think about this all that much. I’ve lost a lot of hair. Surprisingly I don’t think about that much either, though I know it saves me time in the shower in the morning.
So trying to see myself from the outside, I am going to be blunt here. I am short, bald and middle-aged. There are times when this outside perspective could be helpful. If I notice a younger woman, and the age for younger women keeps moving up, if I notice a younger woman glancing my direction my first thought probably should not be thinking of myself as thirty, but trying to see from the outside. I am short, bald, middle-aged, someone is glancing my direction. Do I have broccoli in my teeth? Has my hair blown over my scalp? Are my pants zipped?
On a broader level, it can be helpful for our church to look at ourselves from the outside. We know what a wonderful group of people we are – warm, caring, searching, wanting to make the world better. What some may see from the outside is a building that can be a little cold, and they might wonder if this is a place only for the well-to-do.
Pathways to God. No, I am not going to focus on looking at ourselves from the outside as a pathway to God. I want to talk about prayer as a pathway to God, and I have just taken my sweet time getting there. Yet there is a point to all this looking at things from the outside.
We typically think about prayer from our side of things. By that I mean when we talk about and teach about prayer, we focus on what we should do and perhaps on our inner experience of prayer. Twice since I have been pastor here, we have offered opportunities to study the book In God’s Presence: theological reflections on prayer by Marjorie Suchocki. By the way, I am going to be serving on a national denominational study commission with Marjorie and I am really looking forward to that. Marjorie’s book has chapters on intercessory prayer, prayers for healing, prayers of personal confession, prayers of corporate confession, liturgical prayers, the Lord’s prayer, and prayers of thanksgiving and praise. We might expect those kinds of things in a book about prayer – types of prayers that we might pray.
During Lent, 2011, our theme was prayer. We began by discussing the heart of prayer being relationship and transformation. Then we journeyed through meditative prayer, prayer as asking, silent prayer, prayer as lament and complaint, and prayer as gratitude.
Recently our district superintendent offered a workshop on prayer in the area, and it included methods of prayer such as praying with Scripture, prayer shawls and beads, prayer walks, labyrinth prayers, and body prayer.
We typically think about prayer from our side of things, and that’s o.k. St. Augustine, in his work, “The Confessions” addresses God. Yet the human, this part of your creation, wishes to praise you. You arouse us to take joy in praising you, for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. (Book One, Chapter One). We think of prayer and we consider our restless hearts searching for God. We think of prayer and we trust that prayer changes us, as the Joan Chittister quote on the insert notes – “the function of prayer is to change my own mind, to put on the mind of Christ, to enable grace to break into me.”
We typically think about prayer from our side of things, and that’s o.k., but it might be helpful for us to consider prayer from God’s side of things. We get a glimpse of that in today’s Scripture reading. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. The story carries a feeling of foreboding. Pharisees warn Jesus to avoid Jerusalem because Herod wants to see Jesus eliminated. Jesus intends to outfox that fox Herod by continuing his work of teaching, healing and freeing. Then speaking as a prophet speaks, with the voice of God, Jesus says: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (NRSV). “I have often wanted to gather your people, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (CEV). “How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen, her brood safe under her wings” (The Message). God desiring, God wanting, God longing to enfold people. God seeking to wrap us as a hen tenderly gathers her chicks under her wings. This is prayer from God’s side.
This is not entirely a strange point of view. If you had been among those who read Marjorie Suchocki’s book In God’s Presence, you would have encountered prayer from God’s side. Prayer is not only for our sakes, but also for God’s sake (18). Our texts portray a God deeply involved with the world and its events, with God wooing the world to deeper modes of community and caring, wooing us toward deeper relation with one another and with God’s own self (19). Suchocki’s theological reflections on prayer evoke “the image of the dancing God who woos us to partnership through prayer” (127).
God longs for us, longs for our time and attention. God desires to be as close to us as our own breath. God is wooing us into a more intimate relationship.
Why does God woo us, long for us, desire us? God wants to gather us as tenderly as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings. God just wants to be close. In addition, prayer makes a difference to God. Again in the words of Marjorie Suchocki, these also found on your insert: God works with the world as it is to bring it toward what it can be. Prayer changes the way the world is, and therefore changes what the world can be. Prayer makes a difference to what God can do in and with the world. (31) Opening ourselves to God in prayer changes us, changes the conditions in the world God is trying to influence. We become more open vehicles for God’s love for the world. Our prayers means God has new material to work with as God works toward a newer world.
Prayer makes a difference to God and for God. Shifting back to our more typical perspective, prayer also makes a difference to us. Prayer changes us. It helps us grow “to experience the heart of life with all one’s heart and soul and might” (Michael Eigen, Contact With the Depths, 116).
Prayer changes us. In a novel I just recently finished, writer Annie Dillard penned this line: What was solitude for if not to foster decency? (The Maytrees, 165) Solitude, prayer draws us closer to God, and we are changed. We cannot be drawn closer to the heart of God without having our own hearts and souls changed.
Prayer is a pathway to God. It is a two-directional pathway. We take time for God, reach out to God and find that a longing God is always already reaching toward us, wooing us.
Two final words. Some of the best advice I ever read about prayer was this ancient piece of spiritual guidance: Pray as you can pray, don’t pray as you can’t pray. (Thomas Langford, Prayer and the Common Life, 12) Prayer can be daunting. Just do it. Find a method that works for you and pray. Perhaps the second best advice about prayer I’ve encountered is found in Anne Lamott’s most recent book. Lamott: I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help. Thanks. Wow. (Help, Thanks, Wow: the three essential prayers, 1)
If you are ever having problems getting started with a prayer, may you hear the wooing voice of the longing God: How often have I desired to gather, longed to gather, you as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Amen.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Angels and Demons
Sermon preached February 17, 2013
Texts: Luke 4:1-13
When I think of old television shows, I think of programs broadcast only in black and white from the 1950s and early 1960s – “Father Knows Best,” Leave It To Beaver,” “The Honeymooners.” I have seen reruns of all these shows over the years. Most of us have seen popular entertainment that is a little older than we are. We are aware, I think, of popular entertainment that is even more distant in the past for us. I know that before such programs as these, radio was the popular medium, and I even know the names of some radio shows, though I never listened to them. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"
What boggles my mind, when I think about it, is that “The Shadow” was closer in time to me that television programs like MASH or The Mary Tyler Moore are to today’s children and youth. The other day I was sharing with my medical ethics class about taking a girl to a Gordon Lightfoot concert when I was in high school and none of them had ever heard of Gordon Lightfoot.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" The temptation story of Jesus is a story about angels, and demons, and shadows. If you thought you were going to hear something about the Dan Brown novel or the Ron Howard movie, sorry.
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” The wilderness. In the Bible and Christian tradition, the wilderness is a provocative image. It is a place of danger, “the howling wilderness waste” (Deuteronomy 32:10). But is it also a place of discovery. In the wilderness, the desert, one discovers oneself. In his brief book on the Christian Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton wrote, “What the Fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ” (5). They went to the desert, the wilderness, to find it. And in that place of self-discovery, God is found. From Deuteronomy 32, God sustains God’s people “in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste.” Our Lenten theme is pathways to God, and this text suggests that one such pathway is the pathway of self-awareness, self-discovery, the kind of self-discovery that happens in wilderness places.
Led by the Spirit in the wilderness. This is a story of angels and demons and shadows. Jesus is tempted by the chief of the demons, the devil. He is tempted, in one instance, with angels. He confronts shadows.
The shadow, not the pulp fiction radio character Lamont Cranston, but the human shadow, comes out in this story. The human shadow consists of those parts of ourselves we struggle with and tend to hide. The poet Robert Bly uses the image of us putting things in an invisible bag that we carry behind us – those things about ourselves that we are told are not so good or so nice, yet they don’t go away. (Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow; Zweig and Abrams, Meeting the Shadow). We need to deal with them.
One element of the shadow that is part of us is the shadow side of our strengths. Our strengths have negative dimensions when they are overused. Our strengths can be misused. We are uncomfortable acknowledging that. It is part of our shadow.
Jesus has wonderful creativity. He could turn stone into bread. Too quick a use of such creativity to feed a hunger may hide deeper hungers. We can be satisfied with too little. Sometimes over-reliance on one’s own creativity does not allow room for the creativity of others. If Jesus had given in to this temptation to turn stones into bread would he later have been able to say to the disciples, confronted with a hungry crowd, “you give them something to eat”? (Luke 9:13)
Jesus has charisma and power. How often do we see charismatic people, powerful people, get caught up in their own power, misusing it for narrow gain, hurting others? Henry Ford could not give his son, Edsell, proper credit for the good work he did on the Model A. Religious figures like Jim Jones or David Koresh would rather have their followers die than deal with their own abuse of power. Jesus has to keep his own charisma and power in check. “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”
Even piety and religiousness can have a shadow side. How often the language of religion is used to put down, to hurt. Christian language has been used to justify slavery, the subjugation of women, the exclusion of gay and lesbian persons. Islamic language is used to justify suicide bombing and killings. The temptation is there to use the strength of our religious language and bend it the wrong way. Surely angels will come to rescue you , Jesus, if you throw yourself off the temple.
In the wilderness, cut off from distraction, we can discover more about ourselves. We can begin to see the shadow side of even our strengths. I remember an incident from my seminary days. My first seminary field placement was in a supervised hospital setting working with a clinical pastoral education supervisor. At the end of the year, he did a group evaluation. There was a woman who he recommended do some therapy around anger issues. There was a man who he thought should do some reading to open up his thinking a bit more. I remember asking, “what do you think I should read,” and he told me to stop reading. It was not a literal suggestion, but a recognition that I can rely too much on my head. I love words and language and concepts. I love to use language to paint a more complex picture of the world. That’s good. That’s helpful, but there is a shadow side. Reality is richer than even the concepts. Explanation can be important, but just being there for someone without explaining matters a great deal. I haven’t stopped reading, but I haven’t forgotten that encounter either.
We wrestle with angels and demons and shadows in the wilderness and in discovering the depth in ourselves, we find God in new ways. The poet Rilke once wrote, “If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well” (quoted in Rollo May, Love and Will, 122). God has given each of us wonderful gifts. Affirm them, but also acknowledge that even good gifts have shadow sides.
A second dimension to the human shadow that I see in this story and want to touch on, but more briefly, is our vulnerability. We tend to hide our vulnerable places, put them in the invisible bag we carry behind us. Yet when we are willing to be vulnerable, we discover God more deeply. About the Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton wrote: These monks insisted on remaining human and “ordinary.”… The simple men who lived their lives out to a good old age among the rocks and sands only did so because they had come into the desert to be themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that divided them from themselves. (The Wisdom of the Desert, 22-23)
Now I happen to think each and every one of you is extraordinary, but there is a shadow side to the language of extraordinary. If everything is always extraordinary, it can be difficult to be open to the vulnerable places we have, to the ordinary moments. Yet such openness seems a pathway to God. I recently read this simple sentence that had a powerful impact – yes, I am still reading! Messing up is a part of existence, perhaps a needed part (Michael Eigen, Contact With the Depths, 94)
We hunger, yet we need not be defined by our hungers. That is a radical word in a society that would like to see us act on most of our hungers, typically by buying something to assuage them. We hunger, and that is o.k., but if are willing to admit our hungers, perhaps we have a better chance to sort them out and discover which hungers are deepest. Perhaps we have a better chance of discovering that letting go of some lesser hungers helps feed deeper ones.
We are confused about our own power. We want to control more than we can control. We don’t always want to acknowledge the power we have, because with power comes responsibility. From our baptismal liturgy – “Will you use the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?’
We have questions about our faith. When should we take leaps of faith and when are such leaps simply foolishness? It is o.k. to admit we have questions and that some matters of faith and life don’t admit of easy answers.
We would hide our vulnerabilities, but being open to them opens us up to God’s Spirit in new ways.
Awhile back I came across this poem by Rilke that speaks to me about hanging with vulnerabilities. It is printed on the bulletin insert.
How dear you will be to me, then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn’t I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
seasons of us, our winter-
enduring foliage, ponds, meadows, our inborn landscape,
where birds and reed-dwelling creatures are at home.
(“Original Version, Tenth Dunio Elegy, tr. Stephen Mitchell)
The reason the Spirit leads us into the wilderness, where we have the opportunity to deepen our self-awareness is that in so deepening, we discover something new about the closeness of God. In the wilderness, in our self-discovery, God meets us. We find God loves us, shadow and all. God gives us gifts to be affirmed and calls us to use those gifts, in spite of their shadow side. God is there to help us overcome the most destructive sides of our shadow. God uses us to touch the lives of others with beauty and grace and love, even as we continue to wrestle with angels and demons and shadows. The wrestling doesn’t end. The devil only departs for a time. The wrestling doesn’t end, but we discover in the wilderness that neither does God’s love for us. Amen.
Texts: Luke 4:1-13
When I think of old television shows, I think of programs broadcast only in black and white from the 1950s and early 1960s – “Father Knows Best,” Leave It To Beaver,” “The Honeymooners.” I have seen reruns of all these shows over the years. Most of us have seen popular entertainment that is a little older than we are. We are aware, I think, of popular entertainment that is even more distant in the past for us. I know that before such programs as these, radio was the popular medium, and I even know the names of some radio shows, though I never listened to them. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"
What boggles my mind, when I think about it, is that “The Shadow” was closer in time to me that television programs like MASH or The Mary Tyler Moore are to today’s children and youth. The other day I was sharing with my medical ethics class about taking a girl to a Gordon Lightfoot concert when I was in high school and none of them had ever heard of Gordon Lightfoot.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" The temptation story of Jesus is a story about angels, and demons, and shadows. If you thought you were going to hear something about the Dan Brown novel or the Ron Howard movie, sorry.
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” The wilderness. In the Bible and Christian tradition, the wilderness is a provocative image. It is a place of danger, “the howling wilderness waste” (Deuteronomy 32:10). But is it also a place of discovery. In the wilderness, the desert, one discovers oneself. In his brief book on the Christian Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton wrote, “What the Fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ” (5). They went to the desert, the wilderness, to find it. And in that place of self-discovery, God is found. From Deuteronomy 32, God sustains God’s people “in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste.” Our Lenten theme is pathways to God, and this text suggests that one such pathway is the pathway of self-awareness, self-discovery, the kind of self-discovery that happens in wilderness places.
Led by the Spirit in the wilderness. This is a story of angels and demons and shadows. Jesus is tempted by the chief of the demons, the devil. He is tempted, in one instance, with angels. He confronts shadows.
The shadow, not the pulp fiction radio character Lamont Cranston, but the human shadow, comes out in this story. The human shadow consists of those parts of ourselves we struggle with and tend to hide. The poet Robert Bly uses the image of us putting things in an invisible bag that we carry behind us – those things about ourselves that we are told are not so good or so nice, yet they don’t go away. (Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow; Zweig and Abrams, Meeting the Shadow). We need to deal with them.
One element of the shadow that is part of us is the shadow side of our strengths. Our strengths have negative dimensions when they are overused. Our strengths can be misused. We are uncomfortable acknowledging that. It is part of our shadow.
Jesus has wonderful creativity. He could turn stone into bread. Too quick a use of such creativity to feed a hunger may hide deeper hungers. We can be satisfied with too little. Sometimes over-reliance on one’s own creativity does not allow room for the creativity of others. If Jesus had given in to this temptation to turn stones into bread would he later have been able to say to the disciples, confronted with a hungry crowd, “you give them something to eat”? (Luke 9:13)
Jesus has charisma and power. How often do we see charismatic people, powerful people, get caught up in their own power, misusing it for narrow gain, hurting others? Henry Ford could not give his son, Edsell, proper credit for the good work he did on the Model A. Religious figures like Jim Jones or David Koresh would rather have their followers die than deal with their own abuse of power. Jesus has to keep his own charisma and power in check. “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”
Even piety and religiousness can have a shadow side. How often the language of religion is used to put down, to hurt. Christian language has been used to justify slavery, the subjugation of women, the exclusion of gay and lesbian persons. Islamic language is used to justify suicide bombing and killings. The temptation is there to use the strength of our religious language and bend it the wrong way. Surely angels will come to rescue you , Jesus, if you throw yourself off the temple.
In the wilderness, cut off from distraction, we can discover more about ourselves. We can begin to see the shadow side of even our strengths. I remember an incident from my seminary days. My first seminary field placement was in a supervised hospital setting working with a clinical pastoral education supervisor. At the end of the year, he did a group evaluation. There was a woman who he recommended do some therapy around anger issues. There was a man who he thought should do some reading to open up his thinking a bit more. I remember asking, “what do you think I should read,” and he told me to stop reading. It was not a literal suggestion, but a recognition that I can rely too much on my head. I love words and language and concepts. I love to use language to paint a more complex picture of the world. That’s good. That’s helpful, but there is a shadow side. Reality is richer than even the concepts. Explanation can be important, but just being there for someone without explaining matters a great deal. I haven’t stopped reading, but I haven’t forgotten that encounter either.
We wrestle with angels and demons and shadows in the wilderness and in discovering the depth in ourselves, we find God in new ways. The poet Rilke once wrote, “If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well” (quoted in Rollo May, Love and Will, 122). God has given each of us wonderful gifts. Affirm them, but also acknowledge that even good gifts have shadow sides.
A second dimension to the human shadow that I see in this story and want to touch on, but more briefly, is our vulnerability. We tend to hide our vulnerable places, put them in the invisible bag we carry behind us. Yet when we are willing to be vulnerable, we discover God more deeply. About the Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton wrote: These monks insisted on remaining human and “ordinary.”… The simple men who lived their lives out to a good old age among the rocks and sands only did so because they had come into the desert to be themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that divided them from themselves. (The Wisdom of the Desert, 22-23)
Now I happen to think each and every one of you is extraordinary, but there is a shadow side to the language of extraordinary. If everything is always extraordinary, it can be difficult to be open to the vulnerable places we have, to the ordinary moments. Yet such openness seems a pathway to God. I recently read this simple sentence that had a powerful impact – yes, I am still reading! Messing up is a part of existence, perhaps a needed part (Michael Eigen, Contact With the Depths, 94)
We hunger, yet we need not be defined by our hungers. That is a radical word in a society that would like to see us act on most of our hungers, typically by buying something to assuage them. We hunger, and that is o.k., but if are willing to admit our hungers, perhaps we have a better chance to sort them out and discover which hungers are deepest. Perhaps we have a better chance of discovering that letting go of some lesser hungers helps feed deeper ones.
We are confused about our own power. We want to control more than we can control. We don’t always want to acknowledge the power we have, because with power comes responsibility. From our baptismal liturgy – “Will you use the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?’
We have questions about our faith. When should we take leaps of faith and when are such leaps simply foolishness? It is o.k. to admit we have questions and that some matters of faith and life don’t admit of easy answers.
We would hide our vulnerabilities, but being open to them opens us up to God’s Spirit in new ways.
Awhile back I came across this poem by Rilke that speaks to me about hanging with vulnerabilities. It is printed on the bulletin insert.
How dear you will be to me, then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn’t I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
seasons of us, our winter-
enduring foliage, ponds, meadows, our inborn landscape,
where birds and reed-dwelling creatures are at home.
(“Original Version, Tenth Dunio Elegy, tr. Stephen Mitchell)
The reason the Spirit leads us into the wilderness, where we have the opportunity to deepen our self-awareness is that in so deepening, we discover something new about the closeness of God. In the wilderness, in our self-discovery, God meets us. We find God loves us, shadow and all. God gives us gifts to be affirmed and calls us to use those gifts, in spite of their shadow side. God is there to help us overcome the most destructive sides of our shadow. God uses us to touch the lives of others with beauty and grace and love, even as we continue to wrestle with angels and demons and shadows. The wrestling doesn’t end. The devil only departs for a time. The wrestling doesn’t end, but we discover in the wilderness that neither does God’s love for us. Amen.
Friday, February 15, 2013
I Want To Take You Higher (and Lower)
Sermon preached February 10, 2013
Texts: Luke 9:28-43a
Sly and The Family Stone, "I Want To Take You Higher"
Playing music during sermons, I am afraid that I might be risking becoming something of a caricature of myself. I might have to give this up during Lent. We’ll see.
I want to take you higher. Mountaintop experiences. There is this wonderful story that comes from the Christian Desert Fathers and Mothers tradition. Abbot Lot went to see Abbot Joseph. “Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of bad thoughts: now what more should I do?” Abbot Joseph stood, raised his hand up in the air, his fingers becoming like lamps of fire. “Why not become all flame?” (Kathleen Norris, Dakota, 123).
I love that story. Why not become all flame? I want to take you higher – up the mountain.
The French philosopher Pascal, had sewn in his coat something he had written on a scrap of paper, the scrap of paper being discovered only after his death. From about half past ten in the evening to about half an hour after midnight. Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not the God of philosophers and scholars. Absolute Certainty: Beyond reason. Joy. Peace. Forgetfulness of the world and everything but God. The world has not known thee, but I have known thee. Joy! Joy! Joy! Tears of Joy! (Happold, Mysticism, 39).
I want to take you higher. Why not become all flame? I have had some of those kinds of experiences in my life – moments when God was extraordinarily close, remarkably real, moments when the light and warmth and power of God’s love embraced me closely. This past week I was for three days at Christ the King Retreat Center near Buffalo, MN where the Minnesota Conference Board of Ordained Ministry meets. We interview persons coming for ordination in the UMC in Minnesota. A couple of years ago, in that same place, while in worship in their chapel, I had such an experience of the closeness of God. The physical presence of Jesus, a presence I saw on a crucifix in front of the chapel, became very real to me. I was in the same chapel this year, but did not have that same experience.
Today’s Gospel reading from Luke, there are some of these moments. One is a very literal mountain top experience where Peter, James and John go with Jesus to pray. “And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” There is a shared experience here. Jesus experiences something. Peter, James and John experience something. They see Jesus becoming all flame.
The very last words of the reading for today also indicate some kind of mountain top experience, though everyone has come down from the mountain. A father, concerned for the well-being of his only child, a son, brings him for healing. The healing happens, “and all were astounded at the greatness of God.”
There have been times when I have felt something like the dazzling presence of Jesus. There have been times when I have been astounded at the greatness of God.
As human beings, we are wired somewhat differently. I can hear Sly and the Family Stone sing “I Want To Take You Higher” and I get taken higher. I can hear the words of a poem and feel them deep in my heart or gut. Many years ago, I heard the Irish poet Seamus Heaney on public radio. It was a broadcast from the Guthrie Theater. I was so moved by it that when the program was re-broadcast later, I taped it and have often enjoyed listening to Heaney’s reading.
But I know that Sly and the Family Stone, or the music of John Coltrane, or the poetry of Seamus Heaney don’t take everyone higher. That’s o.k. Not everyone has intense experiences that might be called mystical. I do think that we all have some capacity to experience the closeness and love of God and I hope that for you all, you have had such experiences in your own way. And the experiences are not always solitary. We can experience the closeness of God together, like at worship. We can experience the closeness of God sharing a common task done in love. The hug of another can feel like the very hug of God.
I believe Jesus wants to take us all higher. I believe that we all have some capacity to know and feel and experience God and God’s love deeply. Such experiences may not be frequent. A couple of years ago, Mother Theresa’s journals were excerpted, and many were surprised to read that she went for many years without an intense experience of the presence of God. Still, Jesus wants to take us higher.
Jesus also wants to take us lower. There is this remarkable weaving in the Gospel this morning. The story immediately preceding the transfiguration is about Jesus anticipated suffering and death. When Moses and Elijah come they speak to Jesus about his departure and what he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. They speak about the difficult road ahead and about his death. Whatever wonderful experiences we may have of the presence of God and the love of God do not isolate us from difficulties and the harsh realities of life, including death.
Then they come down from the mountain and are immediately confronted with another difficult challenge. A caring father needs help for his tormented son, his only child. The son is traumatized. Something in his life is tearing him apart. We can wonder about the language of the demonic, but we know that lives can be traumatic. We know that people can be torn apart by forces that go beyond them – think addiction, think sex trafficking, think gangs, think vicious bullying, think of grief that won’t let go, think of having done something that haunts you.
There is a loving father. There is a hurting child. The situation is difficult, seemingly beyond the ability of the disciples of Jesus. Jesus seems a little peeved about it all, too, even after his mountain top experience. Perhaps the journey to Jerusalem is weighing heavy on his heart. Yet in the end there is healing. In the end there is astonishment – another transfiguring moment.
In his introduction to The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, Bernard McGinn writes: One thing that stands out in the accounts of all the Christian mystics is that their encounter with God transforms their minds and their lives. God changes the mystics and invites, even compels, them to encourage others by their teaching to open themselves to a similar process of transformation (xvii).
God desires a relationship with us. The God we know in Jesus wants God’s love to be known in the depth of the human heart and soul, in our human hearts and souls. We may experience that differently, but I believe God wants us to know God’s love deeply and intimately. God wants to warmly and strongly embrace each of us. Jesus wants to take us higher.
The same love which God desires to have penetrate our deepest being is a love that cannot be contained there. The love we know within is a love for the world that drives us out to be there in the difficult moments, to confront the demonic, to plumb the depths, to engage the work of transformation. It has never really hit me before, but this story of the transfiguration always comes on the last Sunday before Lent, that time when we are asked to plumb the depths of our hearts, when we are asked to commit ourselves anew to the loving way of Jesus.
Jesus wants to take us higher and lower. And here is one final remarkable thing. This journey with Jesus is not simply a two-step movement – up the mountain for extraordinary experiences, down into the world to minister God’s love, justice and care. The same Jesus who takes us up the mountain walks with us in the valleys and can be known there, too. It is not just when we get away from the difficulty and messiness of life that we know God’s love intensely. God’s love in Jesus can be known right in the midst of the messiness and muck and difficulty. It’s there where demons are cast out leaving us astounded at the greatness of God.
At the end of the day, the most important transfiguration is that a son is made well and restored to his father. Every time there is a little bit of healing, we catch glimpses of the dazzling greatness of God’s love, and we can be moved just a little higher. Amen.
Texts: Luke 9:28-43a
Sly and The Family Stone, "I Want To Take You Higher"
Playing music during sermons, I am afraid that I might be risking becoming something of a caricature of myself. I might have to give this up during Lent. We’ll see.
I want to take you higher. Mountaintop experiences. There is this wonderful story that comes from the Christian Desert Fathers and Mothers tradition. Abbot Lot went to see Abbot Joseph. “Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of bad thoughts: now what more should I do?” Abbot Joseph stood, raised his hand up in the air, his fingers becoming like lamps of fire. “Why not become all flame?” (Kathleen Norris, Dakota, 123).
I love that story. Why not become all flame? I want to take you higher – up the mountain.
The French philosopher Pascal, had sewn in his coat something he had written on a scrap of paper, the scrap of paper being discovered only after his death. From about half past ten in the evening to about half an hour after midnight. Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not the God of philosophers and scholars. Absolute Certainty: Beyond reason. Joy. Peace. Forgetfulness of the world and everything but God. The world has not known thee, but I have known thee. Joy! Joy! Joy! Tears of Joy! (Happold, Mysticism, 39).
I want to take you higher. Why not become all flame? I have had some of those kinds of experiences in my life – moments when God was extraordinarily close, remarkably real, moments when the light and warmth and power of God’s love embraced me closely. This past week I was for three days at Christ the King Retreat Center near Buffalo, MN where the Minnesota Conference Board of Ordained Ministry meets. We interview persons coming for ordination in the UMC in Minnesota. A couple of years ago, in that same place, while in worship in their chapel, I had such an experience of the closeness of God. The physical presence of Jesus, a presence I saw on a crucifix in front of the chapel, became very real to me. I was in the same chapel this year, but did not have that same experience.
Today’s Gospel reading from Luke, there are some of these moments. One is a very literal mountain top experience where Peter, James and John go with Jesus to pray. “And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” There is a shared experience here. Jesus experiences something. Peter, James and John experience something. They see Jesus becoming all flame.
The very last words of the reading for today also indicate some kind of mountain top experience, though everyone has come down from the mountain. A father, concerned for the well-being of his only child, a son, brings him for healing. The healing happens, “and all were astounded at the greatness of God.”
There have been times when I have felt something like the dazzling presence of Jesus. There have been times when I have been astounded at the greatness of God.
As human beings, we are wired somewhat differently. I can hear Sly and the Family Stone sing “I Want To Take You Higher” and I get taken higher. I can hear the words of a poem and feel them deep in my heart or gut. Many years ago, I heard the Irish poet Seamus Heaney on public radio. It was a broadcast from the Guthrie Theater. I was so moved by it that when the program was re-broadcast later, I taped it and have often enjoyed listening to Heaney’s reading.
But I know that Sly and the Family Stone, or the music of John Coltrane, or the poetry of Seamus Heaney don’t take everyone higher. That’s o.k. Not everyone has intense experiences that might be called mystical. I do think that we all have some capacity to experience the closeness and love of God and I hope that for you all, you have had such experiences in your own way. And the experiences are not always solitary. We can experience the closeness of God together, like at worship. We can experience the closeness of God sharing a common task done in love. The hug of another can feel like the very hug of God.
I believe Jesus wants to take us all higher. I believe that we all have some capacity to know and feel and experience God and God’s love deeply. Such experiences may not be frequent. A couple of years ago, Mother Theresa’s journals were excerpted, and many were surprised to read that she went for many years without an intense experience of the presence of God. Still, Jesus wants to take us higher.
Jesus also wants to take us lower. There is this remarkable weaving in the Gospel this morning. The story immediately preceding the transfiguration is about Jesus anticipated suffering and death. When Moses and Elijah come they speak to Jesus about his departure and what he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. They speak about the difficult road ahead and about his death. Whatever wonderful experiences we may have of the presence of God and the love of God do not isolate us from difficulties and the harsh realities of life, including death.
Then they come down from the mountain and are immediately confronted with another difficult challenge. A caring father needs help for his tormented son, his only child. The son is traumatized. Something in his life is tearing him apart. We can wonder about the language of the demonic, but we know that lives can be traumatic. We know that people can be torn apart by forces that go beyond them – think addiction, think sex trafficking, think gangs, think vicious bullying, think of grief that won’t let go, think of having done something that haunts you.
There is a loving father. There is a hurting child. The situation is difficult, seemingly beyond the ability of the disciples of Jesus. Jesus seems a little peeved about it all, too, even after his mountain top experience. Perhaps the journey to Jerusalem is weighing heavy on his heart. Yet in the end there is healing. In the end there is astonishment – another transfiguring moment.
In his introduction to The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, Bernard McGinn writes: One thing that stands out in the accounts of all the Christian mystics is that their encounter with God transforms their minds and their lives. God changes the mystics and invites, even compels, them to encourage others by their teaching to open themselves to a similar process of transformation (xvii).
God desires a relationship with us. The God we know in Jesus wants God’s love to be known in the depth of the human heart and soul, in our human hearts and souls. We may experience that differently, but I believe God wants us to know God’s love deeply and intimately. God wants to warmly and strongly embrace each of us. Jesus wants to take us higher.
The same love which God desires to have penetrate our deepest being is a love that cannot be contained there. The love we know within is a love for the world that drives us out to be there in the difficult moments, to confront the demonic, to plumb the depths, to engage the work of transformation. It has never really hit me before, but this story of the transfiguration always comes on the last Sunday before Lent, that time when we are asked to plumb the depths of our hearts, when we are asked to commit ourselves anew to the loving way of Jesus.
Jesus wants to take us higher and lower. And here is one final remarkable thing. This journey with Jesus is not simply a two-step movement – up the mountain for extraordinary experiences, down into the world to minister God’s love, justice and care. The same Jesus who takes us up the mountain walks with us in the valleys and can be known there, too. It is not just when we get away from the difficulty and messiness of life that we know God’s love intensely. God’s love in Jesus can be known right in the midst of the messiness and muck and difficulty. It’s there where demons are cast out leaving us astounded at the greatness of God.
At the end of the day, the most important transfiguration is that a son is made well and restored to his father. Every time there is a little bit of healing, we catch glimpses of the dazzling greatness of God’s love, and we can be moved just a little higher. Amen.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Real Love
Sermon preached February 3, 2013
Texts: I Corinthians 13:1-13
Play a bit of The Beatles, “Real Love.” Real Love
“Real Love” is the last Beatles single to reach the Top Forty charts here in The United States. It did so in 1995, fifteen years after John Lennon had been killed. How is such a thing possible? Multi-tracking – layers of sound. Lennon had recorded a demo tape of “Real Love,” but had never released the song himself. While working on their anthology project – a film and cd collection about their history, the other Beatles recorded their voice and other instruments and mixed their layers of music with John Lennon’s layer. The result – “Real Love.”
Love itself has layers, dimensions. Many of you may already know that the Greeks had multiple words that we translate “love.” Where the word “love” appears in the New Testament, it may be different words in the original Greek.
One layer of love that gets a lot of attention in our culture, gets the most attention in our culture, is what our culture typically means by “love” is romantic love. In our culture romantic love is often thought to have some of these features. Each person has a single soul mate, a one and only. Our task is to find that person, and when we do we will know it. Further, “it’s sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along” – that from a popular 1970s song. Love means never having to say you’re sorry – that from a popular early 70s movie. Such love just hits us, bubbles up, but can also leave. Psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell writes about this in his book Can Love Last? (187): Popular culture tells us that “chemistry” is crucial in love…. The excitement is either there or not there.
Is this layer of love, this love that we spend so much time on in our culture – our songs, our movies, our television, really the heart of love? Bluntly – No. It is more “reel love” than “real love.” Our idealized notions of romantic love are often misleading or simply plain wrong. This is probably where you should all feel kind of sorry for Julie. I sound pretty unromantic here.
To be sure, there is a truthfulness in some of our popular notions of romantic love. I hope those in love in this way do feel that their partner is a soul mate, and uniquely so. I do hope that there is a passion in such love that rises up and carries us away sometimes. However, there is some danger in taking this as the heart of love, even of romantic love. If love is all about chemistry, and the feelings seem to have ebbed, does that mean you did not locate your true soul mate? Some seem to think just this.
This idealized romantic love bifurcates, splits love and effort, love and intention, love and the ordinary. We want to experience in our romantic love being carried away sometimes. That’s o.k. Yet this is not the only layer of love. It is not the only layer of love we should think about, and certainly not the only layer of love we should be living. It is not even the only layer of romantic love. The passionate dimension of romantic love can ebb and flow. It needs other dimensions of love. Stephen Mitchell: Chemistry certainly contributes to creating the components, but there is a choice, a commitment in loving, that cannot be reduced to its emotional ingredients…. The cultivation of romance in relationships requires two people who are fascinated by the ways in which, individually and together, they generate forms of life they hope they can count on. (194, 201)
There are more layers to romantic love than reel love often imagines. Real love is more than that, and real love is more than romantic love. Real love is a love which is intended to guide all our living, from our romantic relationships to the way we relate to people every day, to the way we think about our life together in society and across the globe.
Real love, the heart of love, the deepest layer, is the love Paul writes about in I Corinthians 13. Paul was not concerned with romantic love here. He was not penning a poem for the wedding of his first cousin once removed, though weddings are often where we hear this text. In the movie The Wedding Crashers there is a scene at a wedding. The priest says that the second Scripture reading will be read by the sister of the bride. As she makes her way forward to read two men talk. “20 buck, First Corinthians.” “Double or nothing Colossians 3:12.” The sister begins, “Now a reading from First Corinthians.
Paul was writing not for a wedding, but for an early Jesus community that frankly was having some big problems getting along. This is the kind of love with which you should live – a love that is patient and kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. It is a love that does not rejoice when things go wrong, but rejoices when people act truthfully. It is a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Here are a couple of other translations which help us get at what love is about. Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting (Contemporary English Version). Love puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back (The Message). It is this love that Paul has in mind when he concludes his letter to this feuding Jesus community – “let all that you do be done in love” (I Corinthians 16:13).
But real love is not just our task. The love Paul describes here is the love with which God love us. God is not mentioned in this chapter, but early on in the letter Paul is clear that God’s grace and God’s Spirit is active in this community when they are at their best. It is God’s love which is a model for our love.
This is love, real love. This is the love with which we are loved by God. With us, God is patient and kind. With us, God rejoices when things go right. With us God is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, trusting, enduring.
This is love, real love. This is the love into which we are invited to grow. John Wesley, in a quote I’ve used with some regularity over the years, once wrote this: By perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our neighbor, ruling our habits, attitudes, words and actions (January 27, 1767) This is our task, this is our calling as followers of Jesus. Knowing how deeply we are loved by God, love. Love with real love. Failing to do that, we become a lot of noise in an already too noisy culture. Failing to do that, we become a lot of busyness in an already too busy world.
In this real love there is intention. We want what is best for others. In this real love there is effort. We want what is best for others and are willing to do something about it. This love is intended to shape our ordinary lives, our day to day interactions – in our most intimate relationships, as well as our relationships at school, work, in the community. This love moves us to care for our culture, our society, our politics, our environment. We ask hard questions about the meaning of love for issues such as gun safety, climate, immigration, same-sex marriage, taxation, war and peace, bringing together individual freedoms and common care for one another. Real love does not shy away from tackling such issues, but it also shapes the character of our discussions. Real love leaves no area of our lives untouched.
Real love is our task, our goal, the way. In our journey toward becoming more loving as followers of Jesus, we need to return again and again to the heart of God’s good news in Jesus – God loves us with real love. Amen.
Texts: I Corinthians 13:1-13
Play a bit of The Beatles, “Real Love.” Real Love
“Real Love” is the last Beatles single to reach the Top Forty charts here in The United States. It did so in 1995, fifteen years after John Lennon had been killed. How is such a thing possible? Multi-tracking – layers of sound. Lennon had recorded a demo tape of “Real Love,” but had never released the song himself. While working on their anthology project – a film and cd collection about their history, the other Beatles recorded their voice and other instruments and mixed their layers of music with John Lennon’s layer. The result – “Real Love.”
Love itself has layers, dimensions. Many of you may already know that the Greeks had multiple words that we translate “love.” Where the word “love” appears in the New Testament, it may be different words in the original Greek.
One layer of love that gets a lot of attention in our culture, gets the most attention in our culture, is what our culture typically means by “love” is romantic love. In our culture romantic love is often thought to have some of these features. Each person has a single soul mate, a one and only. Our task is to find that person, and when we do we will know it. Further, “it’s sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along” – that from a popular 1970s song. Love means never having to say you’re sorry – that from a popular early 70s movie. Such love just hits us, bubbles up, but can also leave. Psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell writes about this in his book Can Love Last? (187): Popular culture tells us that “chemistry” is crucial in love…. The excitement is either there or not there.
Is this layer of love, this love that we spend so much time on in our culture – our songs, our movies, our television, really the heart of love? Bluntly – No. It is more “reel love” than “real love.” Our idealized notions of romantic love are often misleading or simply plain wrong. This is probably where you should all feel kind of sorry for Julie. I sound pretty unromantic here.
To be sure, there is a truthfulness in some of our popular notions of romantic love. I hope those in love in this way do feel that their partner is a soul mate, and uniquely so. I do hope that there is a passion in such love that rises up and carries us away sometimes. However, there is some danger in taking this as the heart of love, even of romantic love. If love is all about chemistry, and the feelings seem to have ebbed, does that mean you did not locate your true soul mate? Some seem to think just this.
This idealized romantic love bifurcates, splits love and effort, love and intention, love and the ordinary. We want to experience in our romantic love being carried away sometimes. That’s o.k. Yet this is not the only layer of love. It is not the only layer of love we should think about, and certainly not the only layer of love we should be living. It is not even the only layer of romantic love. The passionate dimension of romantic love can ebb and flow. It needs other dimensions of love. Stephen Mitchell: Chemistry certainly contributes to creating the components, but there is a choice, a commitment in loving, that cannot be reduced to its emotional ingredients…. The cultivation of romance in relationships requires two people who are fascinated by the ways in which, individually and together, they generate forms of life they hope they can count on. (194, 201)
There are more layers to romantic love than reel love often imagines. Real love is more than that, and real love is more than romantic love. Real love is a love which is intended to guide all our living, from our romantic relationships to the way we relate to people every day, to the way we think about our life together in society and across the globe.
Real love, the heart of love, the deepest layer, is the love Paul writes about in I Corinthians 13. Paul was not concerned with romantic love here. He was not penning a poem for the wedding of his first cousin once removed, though weddings are often where we hear this text. In the movie The Wedding Crashers there is a scene at a wedding. The priest says that the second Scripture reading will be read by the sister of the bride. As she makes her way forward to read two men talk. “20 buck, First Corinthians.” “Double or nothing Colossians 3:12.” The sister begins, “Now a reading from First Corinthians.
Paul was writing not for a wedding, but for an early Jesus community that frankly was having some big problems getting along. This is the kind of love with which you should live – a love that is patient and kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. It is a love that does not rejoice when things go wrong, but rejoices when people act truthfully. It is a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Here are a couple of other translations which help us get at what love is about. Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting (Contemporary English Version). Love puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back (The Message). It is this love that Paul has in mind when he concludes his letter to this feuding Jesus community – “let all that you do be done in love” (I Corinthians 16:13).
But real love is not just our task. The love Paul describes here is the love with which God love us. God is not mentioned in this chapter, but early on in the letter Paul is clear that God’s grace and God’s Spirit is active in this community when they are at their best. It is God’s love which is a model for our love.
This is love, real love. This is the love with which we are loved by God. With us, God is patient and kind. With us, God rejoices when things go right. With us God is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, trusting, enduring.
This is love, real love. This is the love into which we are invited to grow. John Wesley, in a quote I’ve used with some regularity over the years, once wrote this: By perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our neighbor, ruling our habits, attitudes, words and actions (January 27, 1767) This is our task, this is our calling as followers of Jesus. Knowing how deeply we are loved by God, love. Love with real love. Failing to do that, we become a lot of noise in an already too noisy culture. Failing to do that, we become a lot of busyness in an already too busy world.
In this real love there is intention. We want what is best for others. In this real love there is effort. We want what is best for others and are willing to do something about it. This love is intended to shape our ordinary lives, our day to day interactions – in our most intimate relationships, as well as our relationships at school, work, in the community. This love moves us to care for our culture, our society, our politics, our environment. We ask hard questions about the meaning of love for issues such as gun safety, climate, immigration, same-sex marriage, taxation, war and peace, bringing together individual freedoms and common care for one another. Real love does not shy away from tackling such issues, but it also shapes the character of our discussions. Real love leaves no area of our lives untouched.
Real love is our task, our goal, the way. In our journey toward becoming more loving as followers of Jesus, we need to return again and again to the heart of God’s good news in Jesus – God loves us with real love. Amen.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Spirited
Sermon preached January 27, 2013
Texts: Luke 4:14-21
Last Sunday night, I was at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Ecumenical Worship Service at Church of Restoration. For two hours and forty-five minutes, I was at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Ecumenical Worship Service. While the service lasted a bit longer than normal, I knew that the worship would not be a sixty to seventy-five minute proposition.
I also know going in that the worship style will be more emotionally expressive than the worship style most of us grew up with, unless you grew up in a Pentecostal church. The MLK worship service was held at Church of Restoration, which is a predominantly African-American Pentecostal church.
One of the gifts of the Pentecostal stream in the Christian tradition gives us is the permission to be more emotive and emotionally expressive in our worship. We are emotional beings, and our worship should allow some opportunity for that, though we should also acknowledge that one can express one’s emotions more quietly, as well. The overreach of the Pentecostal stream in the Christian tradition is the claim that forms of raucous emotional expression are definitive evidence of the presence of God’s Spirit. I know Pentecostal Christians who claim that one cannot have a deep experience of the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life unless one speaks in tongues.
Our text for this morning tells me something else. It gives us other indicators of the presence of God’s Spirit on our lives and in our life together.
Jesus is in the synagogue in Nazareth “where he had been brought up.” Handed a scroll for the Sabbath reading, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me – and what happens? There is no mention of hands raised or of tongues or of emotive expression. Those are all o.k., but when God’s Spirit is present, there are other things that happen. When the Spirit shows up there are other more important, more vital, more central indications. These signs of the Spirit have personal and social dimensions. These signs of the Spirit give us both promise and task or mission.
When God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us, there is good news for the poor. The good news is that the poor become visible, the poor become a part of our care and concern. In the 1970s, primarily in Latin America, theologians who had been working with the poor and oppressed in those highly stratified societies began to think in some new ways about theology, formulating a “theology of liberation.” A central insight of liberation theology is that our spiritual life involves a “conversion to the neighbor, to social justice, to history” (Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 205). Liberation theology claimed “to know God is to do justice” (205).
If this seemed startling and new, it really wasn’t. Liberation theology, at its best, we an attempt to recover an essential element in Christian faith and life. James 2:15-16: If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that. When the Spirit of God is upon us and among us and within us, when we are “Spirited,” there is good news for the poor, and we are driven to mission and task.
There is a personal dimension, here, too. Recall that Matthew 5:3 talks about another way of being poor. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Eugene Peterson, in The Message renders the passage this way: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”
We know what it’s like to be at the end of our rope, to feel that our inner resources for dealing with the stresses and strains of living are thin. I think we all experience that sometimes. Theologian Marjorie Suchocki, In God’s Presence (55): “To be human is to hurt.” We know the hurt and pain of living – disappointment, rejection, dreams deferred or denied. There is good news for us, too. We are objects of God’s love and care. One phrase of Isaiah 61 that does not find its way into Luke 4 is the phrase, “to bind up the broken hearted.” When our hearts break, when we are poor in spirit, there is good news for us too. Where the Spirit of God is upon us and among us and within us, when we are “Spirited” the good news is that God cares and wants to bind up our broken hearts. This good news is personal. This good news is promise.
When God’s Spirit is upon us, and among us and within us there is release for captives and freedom for the oppressed. There is a strong social dimension here. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this very well (“I Have a Dream”):
So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvannia.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
King understood that the struggle of African-Americans was rooted not only in the American dream, but in the work of the Spirit to proclaim release to the captives and freedom for the oppressed. When God’s Spirit is upon us and among us and within us, we join the human struggles for freedom. This is a task for Spirited people.
Might another task also be to ask about literal prisoners in our own society? The United States has 6% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The median incarceration rate among all countries is 125 prisoners per 100,000 people. The rate in the United States is 743 per 100,000, by far the highest in the world. The issues are complex, but perhaps Spirited people should ask if we could not do better.
There is a personal dimension, here, too. Not all forms of unfreedom are political oppression. Not all our captivity is incarceration. People are not free when they act out of inner compulsions, often the result of past pain. People can become captive to patterns of behavior that are hurtful to others and themselves. The range of such captivity is wide – addictions, inability to manage one’s own anger responses, holding on to past hurts in ways that diminish present experience. When God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us, God’s Spirit works in us to set us free. Spirited people live by the promises of John 8: You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free…. If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed (v. 32, 36)
When God’s Spirit is upon us, and among us and within us there is recovery of sight. There is a social dimension here. There is mission and task here. Christians for centuries understood that responding to God’s Spirit meant care for the whole person, including care for physical well-being. How many hospitals has the Christian church founded over the years? Our current emphasis in The United Methodist Church on Imagine No Malaria is another manifestation of our understanding that God’s Spirited people care about the health and well-being of others. God’s Spirited people seek to help the blind recover their sight. I think of my friend, Dr. Lowell Gess, an eye doctor and United Methodist pastor who established the Kissy Eye Clinic in Sierra Leone, and made countless trips over the years to perform eye surgeries, bringing recovery of sight to the blind.
Here, too, there is a personal dimension. Recovery of sight is a primary metaphor for spiritual renewal, healing and awakening in the Bible. Jesus understood that. When God’s Spirit is upon us, among us and within is, our ability to see the world is enlarged. Narrow patterns of perception, which can also enslave us, are opened up. We can be more open to our own hurts and shortcomings, trusting that with God there is healing and new life. We are open to the hurts and pains of the world, to the poor, the oppressed, the hurting, knowing that these, too, are beloved of God and we are invited to do what we can to be good news for the poor, to set the captives free, to heal the hurting. We cannot do it all, but we cannot simply turn away.
In a way, Jesus, himself, has his eyes opened in this morning’s text. He finds his life in the larger story of God’s dealings with humanity as recorded in Scripture. The promise of reading the Bible is always that in these words we will find new ways to see our lives, and encounter God more deeply. Reading this text, we have the opportunity to become more Spirited.
There is one other Spirited word for us in this text. Jesus reads, sets the scroll down. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The indications that God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us are that good news is brought for the poor, including you and me when we are poor; that release is proclaimed to the captives and freedom to the oppressed, including us in our unfreedom and captivity; that there is recovery of sight for the blind, including you and me when we are blinded in our souls.
This is what happens when God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us. And when is that? Now, always now. Today, this scripture is fulfilled. Now is always God’s time. Now is God’s time for good news for the poor. Now is God’s time for releasing the captives. Now is God’s time for freedom for the oppressed. Now is God’s time for the blind to see. Today is the day for God’s spirited people to take up the tasks that the Spirit sets before us.
If you are feeling poor, today there is good news. If you are locked in unfreedom, find yourself in captivity, today, there is release and freedom. If you are soul blind, today there is recovery. Now is always God’s time. Today is the day to be God’s spirited people, letting God bind up our broken hearts.
The Spirit of God is upon us, among us, within us – there is work to be done, there is love by which we are embraced and healed and freed. Spirited indeed! Amen.
Texts: Luke 4:14-21
Last Sunday night, I was at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Ecumenical Worship Service at Church of Restoration. For two hours and forty-five minutes, I was at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Ecumenical Worship Service. While the service lasted a bit longer than normal, I knew that the worship would not be a sixty to seventy-five minute proposition.
I also know going in that the worship style will be more emotionally expressive than the worship style most of us grew up with, unless you grew up in a Pentecostal church. The MLK worship service was held at Church of Restoration, which is a predominantly African-American Pentecostal church.
One of the gifts of the Pentecostal stream in the Christian tradition gives us is the permission to be more emotive and emotionally expressive in our worship. We are emotional beings, and our worship should allow some opportunity for that, though we should also acknowledge that one can express one’s emotions more quietly, as well. The overreach of the Pentecostal stream in the Christian tradition is the claim that forms of raucous emotional expression are definitive evidence of the presence of God’s Spirit. I know Pentecostal Christians who claim that one cannot have a deep experience of the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life unless one speaks in tongues.
Our text for this morning tells me something else. It gives us other indicators of the presence of God’s Spirit on our lives and in our life together.
Jesus is in the synagogue in Nazareth “where he had been brought up.” Handed a scroll for the Sabbath reading, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me – and what happens? There is no mention of hands raised or of tongues or of emotive expression. Those are all o.k., but when God’s Spirit is present, there are other things that happen. When the Spirit shows up there are other more important, more vital, more central indications. These signs of the Spirit have personal and social dimensions. These signs of the Spirit give us both promise and task or mission.
When God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us, there is good news for the poor. The good news is that the poor become visible, the poor become a part of our care and concern. In the 1970s, primarily in Latin America, theologians who had been working with the poor and oppressed in those highly stratified societies began to think in some new ways about theology, formulating a “theology of liberation.” A central insight of liberation theology is that our spiritual life involves a “conversion to the neighbor, to social justice, to history” (Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 205). Liberation theology claimed “to know God is to do justice” (205).
If this seemed startling and new, it really wasn’t. Liberation theology, at its best, we an attempt to recover an essential element in Christian faith and life. James 2:15-16: If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that. When the Spirit of God is upon us and among us and within us, when we are “Spirited,” there is good news for the poor, and we are driven to mission and task.
There is a personal dimension, here, too. Recall that Matthew 5:3 talks about another way of being poor. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Eugene Peterson, in The Message renders the passage this way: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”
We know what it’s like to be at the end of our rope, to feel that our inner resources for dealing with the stresses and strains of living are thin. I think we all experience that sometimes. Theologian Marjorie Suchocki, In God’s Presence (55): “To be human is to hurt.” We know the hurt and pain of living – disappointment, rejection, dreams deferred or denied. There is good news for us, too. We are objects of God’s love and care. One phrase of Isaiah 61 that does not find its way into Luke 4 is the phrase, “to bind up the broken hearted.” When our hearts break, when we are poor in spirit, there is good news for us too. Where the Spirit of God is upon us and among us and within us, when we are “Spirited” the good news is that God cares and wants to bind up our broken hearts. This good news is personal. This good news is promise.
When God’s Spirit is upon us, and among us and within us there is release for captives and freedom for the oppressed. There is a strong social dimension here. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this very well (“I Have a Dream”):
So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvannia.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
King understood that the struggle of African-Americans was rooted not only in the American dream, but in the work of the Spirit to proclaim release to the captives and freedom for the oppressed. When God’s Spirit is upon us and among us and within us, we join the human struggles for freedom. This is a task for Spirited people.
Might another task also be to ask about literal prisoners in our own society? The United States has 6% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The median incarceration rate among all countries is 125 prisoners per 100,000 people. The rate in the United States is 743 per 100,000, by far the highest in the world. The issues are complex, but perhaps Spirited people should ask if we could not do better.
There is a personal dimension, here, too. Not all forms of unfreedom are political oppression. Not all our captivity is incarceration. People are not free when they act out of inner compulsions, often the result of past pain. People can become captive to patterns of behavior that are hurtful to others and themselves. The range of such captivity is wide – addictions, inability to manage one’s own anger responses, holding on to past hurts in ways that diminish present experience. When God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us, God’s Spirit works in us to set us free. Spirited people live by the promises of John 8: You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free…. If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed (v. 32, 36)
When God’s Spirit is upon us, and among us and within us there is recovery of sight. There is a social dimension here. There is mission and task here. Christians for centuries understood that responding to God’s Spirit meant care for the whole person, including care for physical well-being. How many hospitals has the Christian church founded over the years? Our current emphasis in The United Methodist Church on Imagine No Malaria is another manifestation of our understanding that God’s Spirited people care about the health and well-being of others. God’s Spirited people seek to help the blind recover their sight. I think of my friend, Dr. Lowell Gess, an eye doctor and United Methodist pastor who established the Kissy Eye Clinic in Sierra Leone, and made countless trips over the years to perform eye surgeries, bringing recovery of sight to the blind.
Here, too, there is a personal dimension. Recovery of sight is a primary metaphor for spiritual renewal, healing and awakening in the Bible. Jesus understood that. When God’s Spirit is upon us, among us and within is, our ability to see the world is enlarged. Narrow patterns of perception, which can also enslave us, are opened up. We can be more open to our own hurts and shortcomings, trusting that with God there is healing and new life. We are open to the hurts and pains of the world, to the poor, the oppressed, the hurting, knowing that these, too, are beloved of God and we are invited to do what we can to be good news for the poor, to set the captives free, to heal the hurting. We cannot do it all, but we cannot simply turn away.
In a way, Jesus, himself, has his eyes opened in this morning’s text. He finds his life in the larger story of God’s dealings with humanity as recorded in Scripture. The promise of reading the Bible is always that in these words we will find new ways to see our lives, and encounter God more deeply. Reading this text, we have the opportunity to become more Spirited.
There is one other Spirited word for us in this text. Jesus reads, sets the scroll down. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The indications that God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us are that good news is brought for the poor, including you and me when we are poor; that release is proclaimed to the captives and freedom to the oppressed, including us in our unfreedom and captivity; that there is recovery of sight for the blind, including you and me when we are blinded in our souls.
This is what happens when God’s Spirit is upon us, among us, within us. And when is that? Now, always now. Today, this scripture is fulfilled. Now is always God’s time. Now is God’s time for good news for the poor. Now is God’s time for releasing the captives. Now is God’s time for freedom for the oppressed. Now is God’s time for the blind to see. Today is the day for God’s spirited people to take up the tasks that the Spirit sets before us.
If you are feeling poor, today there is good news. If you are locked in unfreedom, find yourself in captivity, today, there is release and freedom. If you are soul blind, today there is recovery. Now is always God’s time. Today is the day to be God’s spirited people, letting God bind up our broken hearts.
The Spirit of God is upon us, among us, within us – there is work to be done, there is love by which we are embraced and healed and freed. Spirited indeed! Amen.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The Best Is Yet To Come
January 20, 2013
Texts: John 2:1-11
There I was at a high school National Honor Society banquet where I had been asked to give the invocation. After the dinner and before presentations, two students got up to sing. As they sang, a certain discomfort began to hit the room. The school superintendent, who attended the church I pastored was noticeably upset as the song continued. The duet, a boy and a girl from the high school were singing a song popular just a year or two before – “Tonight I Celebrate My Love For You.” Frequently in the song, the couple sings “when I make love to you.” It worked for Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson, but at this National Honor Society banquet, well, the superintendent just kept getting redder and redder.
Music makes a difference at celebratory events. Here might be a nice song for a wedding dance – play a bit of Frank Sinatra, “The Best Is Yet To Come.” Maybe when I retire, I will have a small business offering a combination of officiating at weddings with being the dance dj. The best is yet to come.
Jesus arrives at a wedding in Cana. The wine runs out. At Jesus’ direction, large water jugs are filled, and the water becomes wine – really good wine. Can’t you just hear, as the new wine is served, the dj playing – “The Best Is Yet To Come.”
Life with Jesus is meant to be a life of joy. It is intended to be a life of joy because with Jesus we live with a horizon of hope. A horizon of hope – the best is yet to come.
To live well, human persons need hope. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (275): “Man must reach out for support to a dream, a metaphysic of hope that sustains him and makes his life worthwhile.” Theologian Jurgen Moltmann, The Experiment Hope (21-22): “Man hopes as long as he lives and conversely, he lives in the liveliness peculiar to him as long as he hopes.” I think of the words of African-American poet Langston Hughes: Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/that cannot fly.
And in Jesus, in the God of Christian faith, we find hope. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (20): Faith in Christ gives hope its assurance…. Hope gives faith in Christ its breadth and leads it into life.
But how can we really hope? Look at the world in which we live. I am discouraged that our national conversation about gun violence and gun safety seems to have evoked more political posturing than constructive dialogue. Will we ever talk about what might really work and just what kind of society we want to live in? Current federal laws have even prohibited the National Institutes of Health from studying the causes of gun violence. What about a national conversation about climate change? Again, we seem more caught up in the politics of it than engaged in a genuine dialogue about the role human action might be playing in the climate and what we might do to mitigate negative affects. There are important conversations to be had, and we seem incapable of having them. Can we expect any better? Should we expect anything different?
More personally, don’t we all get discouraged sometimes? Aren’t we disappointed when an event we had been looking forward to turns out poorly, or a relationship we had high hope for fizzles? Perhaps it is better to give up on expectations.
Is the hope we have in Jesus only a hope for a better life after this one? Can we really link hope and joy?
No and yes. Our hope in Jesus is not only a hope for something better in another life. It is a trust that God is at work now, in our lives, in our world. Not everything turns out as God desires, but God never gives up – never gives up on us, never gives up on the world. We call that grace. Hope and joy belong together. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (32): Expectation makes life good, for in expectation man can accept his whole present and find joy not only in its joy but also in its sorrow, find happiness not only in its happiness but also in its pain.
Because God is at work, even now, we can joyfully experience the good gifts of life and the progress that the human community makes. Huston Smith, religious scholar, and author, now in his early nineties, has written a second volume of autobiography – And Live Rejoicing. In it, he reminds us that there is good news to be noted and celebrated in our world (153):
• Never in recorded history has there been less starvation
• Never in recorded history has there been less slavery
• Never in recorded history have so many human beings lived under rulers that they themselves elected
• Never in recorded history has the position of women been as good as it is today
No matter how disappointed or discouraged we can be, there are days when we witness astonishing beauty, amazing kindness, unexpected tenderness, grace, love – moments when the ordinary water of our lives becomes wine. We need to celebrate that.
When we are hurt, disappointed, discouraged, when the world seems sadly out of kilter, we can know a modicum of joy, even then, because we trust God continues to love and God continues to be at work in our lives and in our world. Things can be different, and God is working to make them so. In that there is joy, and in the words of Joan Chittister, “joy enriches the world” (Called To Question, 220).
With Jesus, there is hope – the best is yet to come, and sometimes it breaks through. Within that horizon of hope, there is joy, and joy enriches the world.
On this United Methodist Women’s Sunday, we rejoice in the accomplishments of women in the church and in our society. We have not arrived. There is still work to be done in the church and in the world. There are still places in the church where the failure of one woman pastor leads a church to say they don’t want another female clergy person for a while. In our society, there remain too many places where women are not treated as equals, are not respected as they should be. With Jesus there is hope and joy and the energy from our hope and joy is the energy we need to keep working for change.
On this weekend celebrating the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we rejoice in the progress made in racial reconciliation because of the work of Dr. King and so many others. We have not yet arrived. There is still work to be done in the church and in the world. Racial epithets are still too common. An effigy of the president hanging from a billboard tells us that there is more to do for racial justice and understanding. With Jesus there is hope and joy and the energy from our hope and joy is the energy we need to keep working for change.
And Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this. He knew that with Jesus there is hope and joy. In his last public address, the night before he was assassinated, King spoke poignant words.
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountaintop. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
The best is yet to come. With Jesus there are always creative resources to be tapped, there is always the possibility that the water will become wine. We as a people live within a horizon of hope, and there is joy. Amen.
Texts: John 2:1-11
There I was at a high school National Honor Society banquet where I had been asked to give the invocation. After the dinner and before presentations, two students got up to sing. As they sang, a certain discomfort began to hit the room. The school superintendent, who attended the church I pastored was noticeably upset as the song continued. The duet, a boy and a girl from the high school were singing a song popular just a year or two before – “Tonight I Celebrate My Love For You.” Frequently in the song, the couple sings “when I make love to you.” It worked for Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson, but at this National Honor Society banquet, well, the superintendent just kept getting redder and redder.
Music makes a difference at celebratory events. Here might be a nice song for a wedding dance – play a bit of Frank Sinatra, “The Best Is Yet To Come.” Maybe when I retire, I will have a small business offering a combination of officiating at weddings with being the dance dj. The best is yet to come.
Jesus arrives at a wedding in Cana. The wine runs out. At Jesus’ direction, large water jugs are filled, and the water becomes wine – really good wine. Can’t you just hear, as the new wine is served, the dj playing – “The Best Is Yet To Come.”
Life with Jesus is meant to be a life of joy. It is intended to be a life of joy because with Jesus we live with a horizon of hope. A horizon of hope – the best is yet to come.
To live well, human persons need hope. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (275): “Man must reach out for support to a dream, a metaphysic of hope that sustains him and makes his life worthwhile.” Theologian Jurgen Moltmann, The Experiment Hope (21-22): “Man hopes as long as he lives and conversely, he lives in the liveliness peculiar to him as long as he hopes.” I think of the words of African-American poet Langston Hughes: Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/that cannot fly.
And in Jesus, in the God of Christian faith, we find hope. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (20): Faith in Christ gives hope its assurance…. Hope gives faith in Christ its breadth and leads it into life.
But how can we really hope? Look at the world in which we live. I am discouraged that our national conversation about gun violence and gun safety seems to have evoked more political posturing than constructive dialogue. Will we ever talk about what might really work and just what kind of society we want to live in? Current federal laws have even prohibited the National Institutes of Health from studying the causes of gun violence. What about a national conversation about climate change? Again, we seem more caught up in the politics of it than engaged in a genuine dialogue about the role human action might be playing in the climate and what we might do to mitigate negative affects. There are important conversations to be had, and we seem incapable of having them. Can we expect any better? Should we expect anything different?
More personally, don’t we all get discouraged sometimes? Aren’t we disappointed when an event we had been looking forward to turns out poorly, or a relationship we had high hope for fizzles? Perhaps it is better to give up on expectations.
Is the hope we have in Jesus only a hope for a better life after this one? Can we really link hope and joy?
No and yes. Our hope in Jesus is not only a hope for something better in another life. It is a trust that God is at work now, in our lives, in our world. Not everything turns out as God desires, but God never gives up – never gives up on us, never gives up on the world. We call that grace. Hope and joy belong together. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (32): Expectation makes life good, for in expectation man can accept his whole present and find joy not only in its joy but also in its sorrow, find happiness not only in its happiness but also in its pain.
Because God is at work, even now, we can joyfully experience the good gifts of life and the progress that the human community makes. Huston Smith, religious scholar, and author, now in his early nineties, has written a second volume of autobiography – And Live Rejoicing. In it, he reminds us that there is good news to be noted and celebrated in our world (153):
• Never in recorded history has there been less starvation
• Never in recorded history has there been less slavery
• Never in recorded history have so many human beings lived under rulers that they themselves elected
• Never in recorded history has the position of women been as good as it is today
No matter how disappointed or discouraged we can be, there are days when we witness astonishing beauty, amazing kindness, unexpected tenderness, grace, love – moments when the ordinary water of our lives becomes wine. We need to celebrate that.
When we are hurt, disappointed, discouraged, when the world seems sadly out of kilter, we can know a modicum of joy, even then, because we trust God continues to love and God continues to be at work in our lives and in our world. Things can be different, and God is working to make them so. In that there is joy, and in the words of Joan Chittister, “joy enriches the world” (Called To Question, 220).
With Jesus, there is hope – the best is yet to come, and sometimes it breaks through. Within that horizon of hope, there is joy, and joy enriches the world.
On this United Methodist Women’s Sunday, we rejoice in the accomplishments of women in the church and in our society. We have not arrived. There is still work to be done in the church and in the world. There are still places in the church where the failure of one woman pastor leads a church to say they don’t want another female clergy person for a while. In our society, there remain too many places where women are not treated as equals, are not respected as they should be. With Jesus there is hope and joy and the energy from our hope and joy is the energy we need to keep working for change.
On this weekend celebrating the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we rejoice in the progress made in racial reconciliation because of the work of Dr. King and so many others. We have not yet arrived. There is still work to be done in the church and in the world. Racial epithets are still too common. An effigy of the president hanging from a billboard tells us that there is more to do for racial justice and understanding. With Jesus there is hope and joy and the energy from our hope and joy is the energy we need to keep working for change.
And Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this. He knew that with Jesus there is hope and joy. In his last public address, the night before he was assassinated, King spoke poignant words.
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountaintop. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
The best is yet to come. With Jesus there are always creative resources to be tapped, there is always the possibility that the water will become wine. We as a people live within a horizon of hope, and there is joy. Amen.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Splash
Sermon preached January 13, 2013
Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Water. We often greet the day with water in different kinds of ways. We get up in the morning and take a shower with water. We use water to brush our teeth. I like to drink a little water at the beginning of the day, and I particularly like to run some water through ground coffee beans to make coffee in the morning.
It is our good fortune to live where we do, because water here is plentiful. We live on the shores of the lake that holds more fresh water than any other body of water in the world. We live in a state that is “The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.” In such a place it is easy to forget how precious a resource water is on planet earth. Should we be asking about how many people earth’s water resources can sustain, particularly as changing climate patterns seem to be linked to increasing droughts? We are asking how we can combine economic growth needed to meaningful employment with care for our water resources.
Water is precious to we human beings and to the planet we inhabit. My focus today is not there. My focus today is on water as an important symbolic resource. On this Sunday when we tell the story of Jesus’ baptism, I want to explore with you water as a complex, multivalent symbol. “Multivalent” is just a fancy way of saying that something has many meanings. I want to explore three of them.
We in the church use water for baptism. It is an initiation rite in the church, a welcoming ritual. When I think about baptismal waters, I think of waters that heal, waters that cleanse, waters that soothe. When I baptize a child, knowing that the water will be sitting up on the altar for some part of the worship service, I run it just as hot as I can get it so that the waters feel warm, comforting, and soothing to the child being baptize. By the way, I do that for adults as well!
As I think about the waters of baptism, I think about God’s love represented in those waters. God’s love is as plentiful as water in the land of ten thousand lakes. God’s love is as life sustaining as water. God’s love surrounds us and permeates us. Baptism is a joyous celebration of the love of God which is always there for us, even before we are aware of that love. With baptism, we affirm that God claims us, just as God claimed Jesus at his baptism. “You are mine, you are beloved.” In God’s love we find rest for our souls. In God’s love there is healing and forgiveness. God’s love provides opportunities for new beginnings, new births. In the baptismal prayer we recall Jesus, nurtured in the water of a womb and baptized by John.
The waters of baptism provide a word of welcome to the community of faith, as well. It is the way the church has of saying, “God loves you, and we do too. We are glad that you are here.”
When I think about the symbol of water here it is warm, calm waters I imagine. Yet we know water is not always warm, and quite often the opposite of calm. Water can even be terrifying, waves crashing, waters roiling. We see it when the fierce winds blow the waters of Lake Superior. The Lake can be a dangerous place. I was in high school when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, and heard Gordon Lightfoot sing the song when he was in concert here about a year later. Our chapel is dedicated to three brothers, three of Gene and Betty Halverson’s sons who lost their lives when the waves of the lake came crashing into the canal. Though I was in elementary school, I remember that too - a cautionary tale about respecting the power of wind and water.
We witnessed another destructive side of water this past June as torrential rains fell and streets were washed out and basements flooded.
Such images are the symbolic backdrop for Isaiah 43. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” Waters can overwhelm. They can be terrifying and dangerous.
Life can be stormy and frightening, even terrifying. The newspaper has recently run some stories about teenage girls running away from home only to get caught up in the horrors of sex trafficking. The stories sadden, and make us ask what kind of world do we live in. In our own lives, there are the small storms of disappointment and discouragement. There are the larger terrors of significant illness, grief and loss. Many of us have walked that road together, and you are walking that road with my family in the wake of Julie’s mom’s death and funeral. We all experience some of the storms of life, some of the terror of life. Author and therapist Michael Eigen writes, “one never recovers from being human” (Contact with the Depths, frontpiece). It is his way of saying we all know life’s difficulties, storms, small terrors.
When we think about water as a symbol in this way, God’s promise to us is not that we will avoid being human. God’s promise to us is that God will be with us. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” The promise goes on. “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…. Do not fear, for I am with you.” (Isaiah 43)
When I consider water as a symbol for the storms of life, the occasional terrors of being human, and consider God’s promise to be with me, to be with us, I am especially heartened, because the reality of our lives is that sometimes we need to go through some roiled waters to get to a better place, as the Israelites had to cross the Jordan on their way to the promised land. Sometimes in our lives we need to “use the pain as a stimulus to grow bigger than the pain,” in the words of Michael Eigen (Faith and Transformation, 109). Sometimes we have put ourselves in a difficult place and the only way out is through some of that difficulty. We hurt someone, and have to admit our fault and seek forgiveness. That can be terrifying, yet it is only through the storm that we will find a better place. God promises to be with us through those troubling waters. We get enmeshed in a pattern of behavior that is life-stultifying, even life-crushing and the only way out is to confront the pain. God promises to be with us – when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
Between a warm, calm pool of water and crashing waves that terrify us and threaten to overwhelm, there are those rapids that we love to ride, whitewater that we are thrilled to navigate. There is something in that understanding of water as a symbol that speaks to our life of faith. Life with God, the journey with Jesus is an adventure, sometimes a whitewater adventure. The life with God, the journey with Jesus is movement and dance. In one of his poems, T. S. Eliot writes, “Except for the point, the still/point,/There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” (“Burnt Norton” in Four Quartets, 15-16) There is that still point where we encounter the God whose love in Jesus surrounds and embraces us in the quiet waters of baptism, and then there is the dance with God, the whitewater adventure. With God, we can never be sure just where we will be going. With Jesus, we will be surprised by joy.
I have been the pastor here for seven and a half years. Most of you know that I grew up in Duluth, as did my wife Julie, but had not lived here for over twenty years when we moved back in 2005. During those years we visited because we had family here, but had not thought a lot about moving back permanently.
When I was appointed as the pastor here, I was glad to be back, but being in Duluth was not something that I had long sought. Some who are from Duluth spend a lot of time considering how they can make it back. That wasn’t me, mostly because I knew that in the United Methodist appointment system, where I would serve as pastor was not just up to me. No point in spending a lot of energy pining for a place one may never get to.
So we just found our way back to Duluth – and it has been a wonderful adventure, not always easy, but wonderful. Four years ago, my father died, and we were here. Two years ago, a close cousin my mom’s died, and we were here. Last year my grandma died, and we were here. January 5, Julie’s mother died, and we were here. Hard stuff, but what a serendipity that we have been here. I look out and remember many whose lives I have had the privilege of celebrating as we also marked their deaths. I feel an enormous sense of gratitude for so many delightful people it has been my joy to know. I look out and see people who seven and a half years ago were strangers, and who have now so enriched our lives. Thank you. This summer, First United Methodist and Chester Park United Methodist churches merged, and Chester Park was the place my mom was confirmed and where my parents were married, and where I went early in my candidacy process to visit with a pastor there to find out about ordained ministry. I am so glad I have been here for this.
With joy in my heart, I say to myself, “what a ride!” This has been an adventure. I have been around awhile in ordained ministry, even serving for seven years as a district superintendent in this denomination. I have seen pastors in the eighth year of their ministry think that maybe they have done all they could do, that maybe the adventure and thrill are gone. That’s not where I am at. I feel like these past years have gone by quickly and that there is so much more we can do together. I can’t wait to see where God might be leading us next, where the rapids of the Spirit are flowing, where the dance is going.
Water. In the calm warm waters of baptism, we are embraced by God’s love and welcomed by the Jesus community. When the waters of life become rough and terrifying, God is with us so we will not be ultimately overwhelmed. Following Jesus takes us flowing along the whitewaters of the Spirit. What a ride! Splash! Amen.
Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Water. We often greet the day with water in different kinds of ways. We get up in the morning and take a shower with water. We use water to brush our teeth. I like to drink a little water at the beginning of the day, and I particularly like to run some water through ground coffee beans to make coffee in the morning.
It is our good fortune to live where we do, because water here is plentiful. We live on the shores of the lake that holds more fresh water than any other body of water in the world. We live in a state that is “The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.” In such a place it is easy to forget how precious a resource water is on planet earth. Should we be asking about how many people earth’s water resources can sustain, particularly as changing climate patterns seem to be linked to increasing droughts? We are asking how we can combine economic growth needed to meaningful employment with care for our water resources.
Water is precious to we human beings and to the planet we inhabit. My focus today is not there. My focus today is on water as an important symbolic resource. On this Sunday when we tell the story of Jesus’ baptism, I want to explore with you water as a complex, multivalent symbol. “Multivalent” is just a fancy way of saying that something has many meanings. I want to explore three of them.
We in the church use water for baptism. It is an initiation rite in the church, a welcoming ritual. When I think about baptismal waters, I think of waters that heal, waters that cleanse, waters that soothe. When I baptize a child, knowing that the water will be sitting up on the altar for some part of the worship service, I run it just as hot as I can get it so that the waters feel warm, comforting, and soothing to the child being baptize. By the way, I do that for adults as well!
As I think about the waters of baptism, I think about God’s love represented in those waters. God’s love is as plentiful as water in the land of ten thousand lakes. God’s love is as life sustaining as water. God’s love surrounds us and permeates us. Baptism is a joyous celebration of the love of God which is always there for us, even before we are aware of that love. With baptism, we affirm that God claims us, just as God claimed Jesus at his baptism. “You are mine, you are beloved.” In God’s love we find rest for our souls. In God’s love there is healing and forgiveness. God’s love provides opportunities for new beginnings, new births. In the baptismal prayer we recall Jesus, nurtured in the water of a womb and baptized by John.
The waters of baptism provide a word of welcome to the community of faith, as well. It is the way the church has of saying, “God loves you, and we do too. We are glad that you are here.”
When I think about the symbol of water here it is warm, calm waters I imagine. Yet we know water is not always warm, and quite often the opposite of calm. Water can even be terrifying, waves crashing, waters roiling. We see it when the fierce winds blow the waters of Lake Superior. The Lake can be a dangerous place. I was in high school when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, and heard Gordon Lightfoot sing the song when he was in concert here about a year later. Our chapel is dedicated to three brothers, three of Gene and Betty Halverson’s sons who lost their lives when the waves of the lake came crashing into the canal. Though I was in elementary school, I remember that too - a cautionary tale about respecting the power of wind and water.
We witnessed another destructive side of water this past June as torrential rains fell and streets were washed out and basements flooded.
Such images are the symbolic backdrop for Isaiah 43. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” Waters can overwhelm. They can be terrifying and dangerous.
Life can be stormy and frightening, even terrifying. The newspaper has recently run some stories about teenage girls running away from home only to get caught up in the horrors of sex trafficking. The stories sadden, and make us ask what kind of world do we live in. In our own lives, there are the small storms of disappointment and discouragement. There are the larger terrors of significant illness, grief and loss. Many of us have walked that road together, and you are walking that road with my family in the wake of Julie’s mom’s death and funeral. We all experience some of the storms of life, some of the terror of life. Author and therapist Michael Eigen writes, “one never recovers from being human” (Contact with the Depths, frontpiece). It is his way of saying we all know life’s difficulties, storms, small terrors.
When we think about water as a symbol in this way, God’s promise to us is not that we will avoid being human. God’s promise to us is that God will be with us. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” The promise goes on. “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…. Do not fear, for I am with you.” (Isaiah 43)
When I consider water as a symbol for the storms of life, the occasional terrors of being human, and consider God’s promise to be with me, to be with us, I am especially heartened, because the reality of our lives is that sometimes we need to go through some roiled waters to get to a better place, as the Israelites had to cross the Jordan on their way to the promised land. Sometimes in our lives we need to “use the pain as a stimulus to grow bigger than the pain,” in the words of Michael Eigen (Faith and Transformation, 109). Sometimes we have put ourselves in a difficult place and the only way out is through some of that difficulty. We hurt someone, and have to admit our fault and seek forgiveness. That can be terrifying, yet it is only through the storm that we will find a better place. God promises to be with us through those troubling waters. We get enmeshed in a pattern of behavior that is life-stultifying, even life-crushing and the only way out is to confront the pain. God promises to be with us – when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
Between a warm, calm pool of water and crashing waves that terrify us and threaten to overwhelm, there are those rapids that we love to ride, whitewater that we are thrilled to navigate. There is something in that understanding of water as a symbol that speaks to our life of faith. Life with God, the journey with Jesus is an adventure, sometimes a whitewater adventure. The life with God, the journey with Jesus is movement and dance. In one of his poems, T. S. Eliot writes, “Except for the point, the still/point,/There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” (“Burnt Norton” in Four Quartets, 15-16) There is that still point where we encounter the God whose love in Jesus surrounds and embraces us in the quiet waters of baptism, and then there is the dance with God, the whitewater adventure. With God, we can never be sure just where we will be going. With Jesus, we will be surprised by joy.
I have been the pastor here for seven and a half years. Most of you know that I grew up in Duluth, as did my wife Julie, but had not lived here for over twenty years when we moved back in 2005. During those years we visited because we had family here, but had not thought a lot about moving back permanently.
When I was appointed as the pastor here, I was glad to be back, but being in Duluth was not something that I had long sought. Some who are from Duluth spend a lot of time considering how they can make it back. That wasn’t me, mostly because I knew that in the United Methodist appointment system, where I would serve as pastor was not just up to me. No point in spending a lot of energy pining for a place one may never get to.
So we just found our way back to Duluth – and it has been a wonderful adventure, not always easy, but wonderful. Four years ago, my father died, and we were here. Two years ago, a close cousin my mom’s died, and we were here. Last year my grandma died, and we were here. January 5, Julie’s mother died, and we were here. Hard stuff, but what a serendipity that we have been here. I look out and remember many whose lives I have had the privilege of celebrating as we also marked their deaths. I feel an enormous sense of gratitude for so many delightful people it has been my joy to know. I look out and see people who seven and a half years ago were strangers, and who have now so enriched our lives. Thank you. This summer, First United Methodist and Chester Park United Methodist churches merged, and Chester Park was the place my mom was confirmed and where my parents were married, and where I went early in my candidacy process to visit with a pastor there to find out about ordained ministry. I am so glad I have been here for this.
With joy in my heart, I say to myself, “what a ride!” This has been an adventure. I have been around awhile in ordained ministry, even serving for seven years as a district superintendent in this denomination. I have seen pastors in the eighth year of their ministry think that maybe they have done all they could do, that maybe the adventure and thrill are gone. That’s not where I am at. I feel like these past years have gone by quickly and that there is so much more we can do together. I can’t wait to see where God might be leading us next, where the rapids of the Spirit are flowing, where the dance is going.
Water. In the calm warm waters of baptism, we are embraced by God’s love and welcomed by the Jesus community. When the waters of life become rough and terrifying, God is with us so we will not be ultimately overwhelmed. Following Jesus takes us flowing along the whitewaters of the Spirit. What a ride! Splash! Amen.
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