See Me, Heal Me

Sermon preached March 30, 2014

Text: John 9:1-23

            I remember when the gospel stories of Jesus became rock operas or rock musicals.  I have heard of the wonderful performances of “Jesus Christ, Superstar” that were performed in this very place.  “Godspell” continues to be performed years after its debut in 1971.  A song from “Godspell,” “Day by Day” became a charted single in the summer of 1972 and its simple lyrics are a wonderful prayer that I have prayed.  “Day by day, O dear Lord, three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, to love thee more dearly, to follow thee more nearly – day by day.”

            I have sometimes wondered what it might be like, though, to have a soundtrack for the Gospels using more secular songs.  Here is a song that could fit today’s story:

The Who, “See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHUjOwn660c

            Can’t you imagine the man, born blind, singing this song – see me, feel me, touch me, heal me?

            And Jesus does.  And the story is told wonderfully with humor and irony.  There’s the healing itself.  Jesus spits to make mud, puts the mud on the man’s eyes and asks him to go wash in a pool.  So this person who has never seen is sent, face full of mud, to find the pool of Siloam?  By the way, many trace the toast, “Here’s mud in your eye” to this story!  The man washes, and he returns with his sight, and some who knew him only as a beggar find him unrecognizable now.  Some of the Pharisees get into an argument about Jesus – whether or not healing on the Sabbath is really appropriate.  Rather than deal with the issue at hand, they deny that the man was ever blind, and seek out his parents, who in turn respond – “Don’t ask us, he’s old enough to answer for himself.”  The story continues after our reading, an indicates a continuing blindness among at least some of the Pharisees, who cannot figure out what is going on.  They continue to asset their own spiritual insight, but fail to listen, saying later to the man, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”

            This is a wonderfully told story.  The healing stories of Jesus are wonderful and amazing and puzzling.  The healing stories of Jesus challenge us, and one reason they challenge us is because in our lives, healing doesn’t always happen.  Cure does not always come.  Let’s think about this together for a few moments.

            The mighty deeds of Jesus were understood by gospel writers as power from the Power….  The might deeds of Jesus were seen as the product of the power that flowed through him as a Spirit-filled mystic.  (Marcus Borg, Jesus, 148)  The healing stories of Jesus function primarily to tell us something about Jesus, and through him about God.  They tell us about a God who “creates the world, sustains it, and engages in all that is toward healing” (Laurel Schneider, in Constructive Theology, 75).  God’s desire is for healing.

            God’s desire is for healing, but that’s just the challenge isn’t it?  Healing doesn’t always happen.  I really appreciate theologian Marjorie Suchocki’s reflections on healing and prayer.  God works with the world as it is in order to lead it toward what can be.  Prayer changes the way the world is, and therefore changes what can be.  The application of these dynamics to prayers for healing requires recognition that mortality is part of the way the world is, and that immortality within the conditions of history is not part of our possibilities in the world….  Each of us will encounter one disease or dysfunction that leads to our death.  Prayers for healing must take place in the full recognition of our mortality.  (Marjorie Suchocki, In God’s Presence, 57, 58).  God wills the well-being of this world, even in the midst of its fragility and mortality….  Prayers for healing make a difference in what kind of resources God can use as God faithfully touches us with impulses toward our good, given our condition.  (Marjorie Suchocki, In God’s Presence, 59).

            Mortality is part of the reality of the world in which we live.  We will all die.  Life is terminal.  We may wish it were different, but it is not.  Conversations about healing and faith and prayer and God and Jesus occur in that context.  Sickness happens.  Bodies hurt and parts fail.  Often we recover, but in the end something will get us all.  Why does healing happen sometimes, and not others, and where is God the healer in all that?

            We often appeal to a sense of mystery here, and that is appropriate.  Human healing in and of itself is a bit of a mystery.  I am amazed by the capacities of the human body.  Over the years, as a teacher, Julie has brought home many colds, but I typically don’t catch them.  Bring God into the healing equation, and there’s bound to be mystery.  But how we appeal to mystery matters, I think.  To say that God heals this person but not that person and the reason is shrouded in mystery can leave God sounding kind of capricious. 

Some might then respond by arguing that if God desires healing and well-being, and it doesn’t happen, then God is ineffectual.  I don’t think that’s the only alternative.  God could be seen as one with the strongest influence on any situation, but not the only influence.  One could see God as the most powerful influence in the world consistent with other entities also having power.  This is something like Marjorie Suchocki’s position.  There remains mystery here, the mystery of just how God’s influence operates in life, but it is not the mystery of a God who just chooses this one or that one for healing.

So the healing stories challenge us, and we all have to grapple with the challenge they pose and make our way theologically through this.  The bottom line message of these stories, though, is that God is healer.  The consistent message is that God is always at work toward healing and well-being, no matter the cause of the hurt or disease.  Jesus statement early in the story about sin not being involved in the man’s blindness is not meant to say that God caused the man to be blind for years so that Jesus could come along and heal him.  It is a statement of God’s unrelenting work toward healing.  I have a friend who has shared that the words of Jesus about sin not being involved in disease were a great comfort to her when she had to deal with breast cancer in her life.  It let her know that stuff just happens, and she did not have to be blaming herself for her cancer.

God is healer.  Not only do we have to grapple with this idea in a world where everyone dies, we also need to acknowledge the important distinction between healing and cure. Healing can be more than, or other than, cure.  I really like the quote from Harry Guntrip on your insert: A problem created in childhood is ‘never too late to mend.’  Age does not necessarily bring loss of capacity for emotional change and relief of longstanding tension.  (Harry Guntrip, quoted in H.J. S. Guntrip: a psychoanalytic biography, v)  Guntrip was a clergy person before becoming a therapist, and he reminds us that healing has emotional and spiritual connotations.  He also reminds us that healing of old emotional wounds is always possible.  In the gospel story, the man is not only healed by having sight given, he is healed just as deeply by being recognized by Jesus.  The man is seen.  The man is welcomed.  The man has his life story taken seriously by Jesus.  Healing is happening in all kinds of dimensions.

Sometimes healing takes the form of the ability to keep going, even when one’s physical ailments persist, or the challenges in life remain difficult.  Last week I quoted Anne Lamott from Help, Thanks, Wow: But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on. (47)  There is a healing in keeping going.

I know a bit of that in my own life.  At twenty-one I was diagnosed with chronic ulcerative colitis.  I have prayed for its disappearance over the years, but it has not disappeared.  Because of my disease, I am at a higher risk for colon cancer, and because of that higher risk I receive an annual colonoscopy.  All the recent ad campaigns encouraging colonoscopys bring a smile to me.  I have had a couple of scares with results, but thankfully none have turned out to be cancer.  Often my prayers now are for keeping going.  Just this week, I prayed for some healing relief.  Monday I woke up with a terribly stiff neck and shoulders.  What from, I don’t know – who sinned?  Late Monday, Tuesday, into Wednesday, not only was I stiff, but I was getting spasms in my neck and shoulder, like Charlie horse cramps.  It wasn’t very pleasant, but I also had some important things to care for.  Warren Berg’s funeral was here Tuesday.  My primary prayer was to be able to keep going.  I prayed the opening prayer for the Minnesota State Senate on Wednesday.  I prayed before hand, more than anything to be able to keep going.  I managed, and by Thursday evening my symptoms were subsiding.

Even more than these personal examples, I have learned so much from so many here as you have kept going in dealing with difficult issues in your lives – with discouraging diagnoses, with relationship issues.  Healing, in terms of the ending of a disease or the ending of a difficult situation has not always happened, though it certainly does sometimes.  Healing as keeping going, as the grace of a second wind I witness a lot.

Just a couple more thoughts about God as healer.  If God is the one who “creates the world, sustains it, and engages in all that is toward healing,” – understanding all the complexities of healing in our world, then one of our responses to this God who heals is to be open to that healing in whatever way it may come, and some of the ways it may come have to do with our very openness to that healing.  Last week I mentioned Anthony Robinson’s note that we in mainline churches have traditionally been better and seeing ourselves as strong givers to others, but that we need to balance that with receiving.  I put his quote on the sheet this week.  A one-sided emphasis on giving and behaving as giver… can blind us to our own needs – for grace, for healing, for conversion, for God….The self that is anxious and the self that is hurting; the self that is, yes, capable of giving but that also needs to receive the gifts of God and the grace of God. (Anthony Robinson, Transforming Congregational Culture, 67)  The prayer we prayed this morning was intended to help us be more open to our own hurts and needs and wounds so that God as healer might touch our lives more profoundly.

Yet as we are healed, we are also called to be about God’s work of healing.  “We must work the works of the One who sends us,” to slightly change the words of Jesus.  The priest and writer Henri Nouwen writes about our task in ministry as being wounded healers.  Not only are we recipients of the healing grace of God in our lives, but our own wounds might help us be sources of the healing grace of God for others.  Making one’s own wounds a source of healing, therefore, does not call for a sharing of superficial personal pains but for a constant willingness to see one’s own pain and suffering as arising from the depth of the human condition which all [persons] share….  How does healing take place?  Many words, such as care and compassion, understanding and forgiveness, fellowship and community have been used for the healing task of the Christian.  (Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 88-89).  I appreciate Nouwen’s expansive idea of healing – care, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, fellowship, community.

            To be honest, I would rather be like Superman whose only weakness is kryptonite than be a wounded healer.  That sounds much messier and more complicated.  However, it sounds more real, more authentic, more genuine in a world where we all know woundedness, and where all life ends.  God, whose one shade is God the healer invites us into a healing relationship, and invites us, as we are being healed, to heal.  We are invited, that is, to be more ourselves and be more God-like.  Amen.

Windy

Sermon preached March 23, 2014

Texts: John 4:5-42

            It seems that I have a number of friends who are either turning fifty, or getting quite close.  I passed that by just a few years ago myself, and I sometimes like to think age time and age.  I was a boy in the 1960s and it is interesting to consider that the 1930s were closer in time to me then, than the 1960s are to today.  One of the gifts of growing older is that we are able to store up a lot in our memories.  One of the challenges is that sometimes we remember more about something that happened in the 1960s than something that happened yesterday.

            So here’s a blast from the past:

            “Windy” The Association    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsY8l0Jg3lY

            I remember that song.  I was eight when it was a number one song in 1967 – forty seven years ago.  I think it is still a catchy song.  Who’s peekin’ out from under a stairway, calling a name that’s lighter than air?  Who’s bending down to give me a rainbow?  Everyone knows it’s Windy.

            But Windy sounds remarkably like God, God as Spirit, as blowing wind.  In his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus tells her, “God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”

            God is Spirit.  The words that get translated Spirit are linked to the words for both breath and wind, and this is true for both Hebrew and Greek.  Frederick Buechner is right in putting together that little equation spirit=breath=life.  In the previous chapter of John’s gospel, from which we read last week, Jesus said, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  This has something to do with God as Spirit, as blowing wind.

            In this third sermon on the shades of God, I want to say three things about God as Spirit, as blowing wind, and then draw out what that may mean for us in our lives.

            God as Spirit should often be imagined as a refreshing gentle breeze.  I am going to mix my metaphors here something terrible, but I hope it will be o.k.  In the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, the discussion begins with water.  Jesus asks her for some, but then he goes off in this cryptic and mysterious direction.  “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  The woman responds by asking where Jesus intends to get this water from as he has no bucket.  Again, he responds rather mysteriously.  “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

            Jesus is saying something about God as Spirit, using water imagery.  But his remarks are translatable into wind imagery.  Water is refreshing.  It cools.  Gentle breezes refresh and cool.  God’s Spirit is like a gentle breeze in our lives, needed particularly when life feels hot and dry and parched.  Then we need a little living water.  Then we need a little gentle breeze.

            Winds, even when they are gentle, move things around.  Winds are not always gentle, and the stronger the wind, the more things get blown about.  God’s Spirit is like a blowing wind that rearranges things in our lives and in the world.  One of the most remarkable things about the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is that it happened at all.  The gospel writer includes this little explanatory note that is vitally important – “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”  Here is the way a more contemporary theologian described the situation of Jesus’ time.  “Because of the continual threat of defilement, and still more of being infected by false doctrine, association with Samaritans and Gentiles was unwelcome and taboo” (Ernst Kasemann, Jesus Means Freedom, 23).  There were also some strictures against a Jewish man conversing alone with a Jewish woman, and an encounter at a well would have been particularly fraught with tension for there are overtones of courtship in such encounters in the biblical tradition.  Recall the disciples’ reaction – “they were astonished that he was speaking with a woman.”  If Jesus is an indication of the nature of God as Spirit, as blowing wind, then this wind blows down barriers.  This Spirit is willing to shake things up.

            God as Spirit, as blowing wind also has a certain freedom, a certain unpredictability about it.  Again, the words from John 3 are helpful and instructive.  “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  This is not to suggest that God is unreliable, only to suggest that God will blow through our lives in ways we had not imagined or predicted.

            So let me repeat an important point in this shades of God sermon series.  To better understand the shades of God, is to better understand the direction for our lives.  St. Maximus the Confessor: If we are made, as we are, in the image of God, let us become the image both of ourselves and of God (The Philokalia, II, 171)

            So what does thinking about God as Spirit and as blowing wind suggest for our lives?

            God as gentle breeze suggests our need to receive God’s Spirit, to be open to the Spirit’s work in our lives.  We all need a little refreshing breeze from time to time in our lives.  Joan Chittister speaks of the Spirit as one who “whispers us into the great quest within” (In Search of Belief, 162).  The gentle breeze of God whispers, and our task is sometimes just to listen.  In Help, Thanks, Wow Anne Lamott writes about grace as wind.  “But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on” (47).  The gentle breeze of God is such a gift of grace.

            Anthony Robinson, a UCC pastor in Seattle, writes about a tendency in Christians in long-standing denominations to see themselves as givers only.  God brings us together in the church to do good.  He argues that this is out of balance.  A one-sided emphasis on giving and behaving as giver… can blind us to our own needs – for grace, for healing, for conversion, for God (Transforming Congregational Culture, 67).  We are strong, and have gifts to give.  We are also, in Robinson’s words: The self that is anxious and the self that is hurting; the self that is, yes, capable of giving but that also needs to receive the gifts of God and the grace of God (67)

            This Spirit of God that we welcome into our lives as a gentle breeze, also stirs things up.  In another of his books, Anthony Robinson writes, “The work of the Holy Spirit is often disruptive, challenging, and disturbing” (What’s Theology Got To Do With It?, 140)  God loves us as we are, and there are things in our lives that could and should change.  God loves the world as it is, and there are things in the world that could and should and need to change.  Spirit-filled people are open to change as the winds of the Spirit blow.  Spirit-filled people are often those working to disrupt social distinctions that are not life-giving.  We are moved to reach out to the others at the wells of life – and the other may be someone in poverty, or someone of a different background, or someone of a different racial-ethnic background, or someone of a different sexual orientation, or someone of a different religious background.  We humans have a gift for dividing.  The wind-blowing Spirit of God seems to like to blow down divisions and blow people together.

            So here’s another blast from my past.  When I was in high school, there was this guy, John Powell, whose writings could be found on multi-colored posters.  In fact his books often had pages that were like those posters.  Here is one poster saying: “The behavior of the fully human being is always unpredictable – simply because it is free” (Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am?, 81)  There is something important here for we who seek to live in the image of God as Spirit and blowing wind.  There should be in our lives a certain freedom, a certain unpredictability.  Now it is important to distinguish unpredictability from unreliability.  They are different, I think.  For followers of Jesus who tells us God is Spirit, there should be in our lives a certain spontaneity, a certain liveliness, a certain curiosity.  I appreciate the words of Pamela Cooper-White.  Images of spirit as wind, breath, life force and inspiration collide and combine to form an impression of great power and energy, space enough for air to swirl, a feeling of freedom and release (Many Voices, 91)

            God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.  The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. 

            If I were to sum up what it might mean to live into this image of ourselves and of God, I might say it is to:

Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.                                 (Wendell Berry, “Manifesto”)

            Or maybe the best image is that of the dance.  The universe belongs to the dancer.  The person who does not dance does not know what is coming to pass (The Acts of John, in Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 19).  The music of God the Spirit, the blowing wind, comes to us as a gift of grace to be received then shared.  Dancing to the Spirit’s music will change us, and take us in unpredictable directions.  Still, the invitation is to dance on the winds of the Spirit.

            “Windy” The Association    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsY8l0Jg3lY

Her

Sermon preached March 16, 2014

Texts: Deuteronomy 32:8-14; Isaiah 49:13-16; Luke 13:31-35; John 3:1-17

            Those of you who came hoping for some extended commentary on the Academy Award winning film from which I appropriated the title for this morning’s sermon will be disappointed.  All I have seen of the movie “Her,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansen, Amy Adams, and Rooney Mara are the previews.  However, I do know that at the heart of the movie is a mysterious personal presence who speaks as a female.

            Mysterious personal presence – female.  Hmm.  Let me get back to this.  First a little personal history.  Alan Watts (1915-1973), one-time Episcopal priest, later founder of the American Academy of Asian Studies and well-known teacher of Buddhism and of the relationship between Eastern and Western spiritual traditions – Alan Watts was an important teacher for me at a certain point in my spiritual journey.  When I was going through a period of curiosity and doubt, Watts’ writings, filled with gentle wisdom and humor helped keep something alive in my soul.  His writings were a doorway not only into other spiritual traditions, but also into lost dimensions of Christian spirituality.

            And it was through Alan Watts that I first heard the story about the astronaut who went far out into space and upon his return was asked whether he had been to heaven and seen God.  “Yes.”  “Well, what about God?”  “She is black.” (Watts, OM: Creative Meditations, 143)  Alan Watts was a good teacher, and his story still has something to teach us.

            God is not male.  Nor is God female.  As theologian Sallie McFague writes: God as mother does not mean that God is mother (or father).  We imagine God as both mother and father, but we realize how inadequate these or any other metaphors are to express the creative love of God, the love that gives, without calculating the return, the gift of the universe. (Models of God, 122).

            God is not male or female, but I take seriously the words of another theologian, Elizabeth Johnson.  The mystery of God transcends all images but can be spoken equally well and poorly in concepts taken from male or female reality….  In actual fact, however, male and female image simply have not been nor are they even now equivalent.  Female religious symbols of the divine are underdeveloped, peripheral, considered secondarily if at all in Christian language and the practice it continues to shape. (She Who Is, 56-57)

            God is not female or male, and we may use male or female images for God.  However, we have tended to use the male much more frequently, for many years almost exclusively.  If we are to develop ourselves more fully spiritually, if we are to grow more into our God-likeness, then we need a richer understanding of God and that includes a greater development of the feminine face of God – mysterious personal presence in a female voice.  Besides, if we are to take the Bible seriously, we cannot ignore this feminine face of God.

            Let’s take a quick tour.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night.  “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God,” he says to Jesus.  “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  Puzzling remark.  Nicodemus tries to think this through.  “How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”  Jesus tells Nicodemus not to be astonished by his words about being born from above.  The Spirit of God gives birth.  I don’t know about you, but from all I know, it is women that give birth.

            The Song of Moses, God is praised.  The pronouns are male, but listen to some of the images.  He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.  As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided him….  He set him atop the heights of the land, and fed him with produce from the field; he nursed him with honey from the crags, with oil from flinty rock; curds from the herd, and mile from the flock, with fat of lambs and rams.  Nursing.  Again, I don’t know about you, but from all I know, it is women who nurse.

            Jesus, coming into Jerusalem speaks from the heart.  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.  Jesus, the person in whom we see the image of God most fully, Jesus comparing himself to a hen gathering her brood.  A female image.

            One of the starkest female images for God in the Bible are the words in Isaiah, words attributed to God.  Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

            Let me try and bring all this to a few succinct points.  If God can and should be described in female images, what might they say about God?

            God is a creative power, a creative love.  But God’s creativity is not simply a creativity that works with things outside of God.   God’s creativity comes from deep within God’s own self.  God’s creativity is God giving birth.

            God’s care for creation, God’s care for us is a nurturing, nursing care.

            God care for creation, God’s care for us also has a tough side, a fierce dimension.  Sallie McFague, who has written wonderfully about God as lover, mother, friend, writes this about the image of mother-God.  In the picture of God as mother, God is angry because what comes from her being and belongs to her lacks the food and other necessities to grow and flourish (Models of God, 113)  The image of God as nursing, nurturing mother needs to be supplemented by the image of God as mother fiercely defending her children and calling the world to provide for the flourishing of all.

            The point of our shades of God series is not to form us theologically.  This is not simply a cognitive exercise.  To better understand the shades of God, is to better understand the direction for our lives.  St. Maximus the Confessor: If we are made, as we are, in the image of God, let us become the image both of ourselves and of God (The Philokalia, II, 171) 

            So what does understanding the feminine shades of God mean for us, for becoming both ourselves and more God-like?

            We are to be those who creatively give birth to the good and beautiful in our lives and in our world.  I deeply appreciate Patricia Farmer’s words in her wonderful book, Embracing a Beautiful God: It is our nature to create something.  We are not just creations of God, we are cocreators with a divine Artist who continues to arrange for us new possibilities out of the colors and textures of our lives.  When we offer our creative efforts to God, we are gathering up all the scatterings of our days and arranging them into something that makes sense to us….  It is like offering to God and the world a bouquet of flowers that we’ve hidden behind our backs, something fresh that we grew and tended ourselves. (21)  We are not simply passive recipients of what happens in the world.  Empowered and embraced by God we respond to her by creatively giving birth to our lives so we can give ourselves beautifully to the world.

            There is tending and nurturing in that creative activity.  How are we nurturing and nursing the God-given strengths, gifts and talents that we have?  How are you helping you to grow in response to the nurturing activity of a mother-God?  And how are we nurturing and nursing the good and beautiful in the world.  What is good and beautiful is often small, quiet, hidden and needs our nursing and nurturing.  The world is often a desert land, a howling wilderness waste.  Empowered and embrace by God we respond to her nurturing love by nursing and nurturing the good and beautiful.

            Lest we think of mother-God as only gentle and tender, we need to be reminded that God’s gentleness is strong, and God’s tenderness is fierce.  Too many in our world lack the basic necessities to develop their gifts, and God does not play the kind of favorites among her children that our world seems to want to play.  God calls us to play fair, to watch out for the least and the left out.  Empowered and embraced by God we respond to her gentle strength and fierce tenderness by doing justice.

            God loves us, God so loves the world, like a mother.  It makes me think of a song – what doesn’t – a Paul Simon song.  My momma loves, she loves me.  She get down on her knees and hugs me.  She loves me loves me like a rock.  She rock me like the rock of ages, she love me.  She loves me, loves me, loves me.

            That’s a vital shade of God, and God inspires and empowers us to love like that, to love with a creative love working for the good of all the world.  Be loved.  Let God love you like a mother.  Love, in her name.  Amen.

Playing God

Sermon preached March 9, 2014

Texts: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11

            Electronic games are quite popular and quite convenient.  We carry them around on our phones.  How many of you have ever played “Angry Birds”?  For some games you still need a game system, and if you have one, here’s a game you can play – “God’s Playing Field.”  Here is the description: You decide who lives and who dies.  If you’ve ever wanted a chance to play God, there it is.  Will you be merciful or merciless?

            When kidney dialysis first became more widely available in the early 1960s, because of the development of a Teflon shunt, decisions needed to be made about who would receive the treatment.  At the Seattle  Artificial Kidney Center at Swedish Hospital in 1961 an Admissions and Policies Committee was formed to determine who would receive hemodialysis.  The committee was a private-sector creation and consisted of seven citizens–lawyer, minister, banker, housewife, state government official, labor leader, and surgeon– all selected by the King County Medical Society.   The committee’s work became well-known through a 1962 article in Life magazine.  It became known as “the God committee.”

            Playing God.  There is something about “playing God” that we think quite objectionable.  When the work of Seattle’s “God committee” came to light, it sparked a national debate and national legislation which made kidney dialysis virtually universally available in the United States.  We did not want committees of seven “playing God.”

            There are deep roots to our concerns about playing God.  We find them early in our Scriptures, in the story in Geneis of the man and the woman in the garden.  The man is given instructions by God not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” The crafty serpent, craftier than any other wild animal, tells the woman, however, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  They eat, they do not die, they gain knowledge, but their lives are forever changed.  “The eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.”

            This story is absolutely fascinating on all kinds of levels, and here’s just a couple of them.   Everyone reading this story understands that a part of being human is having some knowledge of good and evil.  To be human is to have some measure of self-understanding and self-awareness.  And the story does not dispute that there is something God-like in this.  There is something God-like in this, and there is also something uncomfortable about this ability to know, reflect, feel.  There is a sense that we are stuck with this God-likeness and it is not always easy.

            I want to push the point further.  I want to suggest that playing God is just what human life is all about.  The early Christian saint and theologian Athanasius, wrote, “God was made human that we might be made like God.”  More recently, the biblical scholar and theologian Walter Wink wrote, “to incarnate God is what it means to be fully human” (The Human Being, 30)

            Finally, let me draw your attention to the longer quote on the bulletin insert.  Allen Verhey is a theological ethicist who writes in the area of bioethics.  Should human beings “play God”?  It depends, you see, on what it means to “play God.”…  If we are to “play God” as God plays God, then we have a pattern for our imitation in God’s hospitality to the poor and to the stranger, to the powerless and to the voiceless….  If we are to “play God” as God plays God, then we will work for a society where human beings – each of them, even the least of them – are treated as worthy of God’s care and affection. (“Playing God and Invoking a Perspective”)

              Playing God is just what human life is all about with one significant qualification.  We are to play God as God plays God.  One way to understand the story of Jesus’ temptation is to see it as a series of temptations to play God badly.  In the end, Jesus wants to play God in the right way.

            Jesus is famished.  There are stones and he is tempted to turn them into bread.  In the story, the temptation is real.  He might be able to do this, but he chooses not to.  We live in a world where hunger is real and solutions to hunger are not always easy.  To turn stones into bread would isolate Jesus from that world, remove him from it, would make the point of power such isolation and removal from the deep hungers of the world, not all of which are for bread.  Jesus will play God by staying engaged with this hungry world.

            Jesus is tempted to throw himself into danger, trusting that nothing will harm him, that he will not dash his foot against a stone.  Jesus refuses.  We live in a world where people get hurt, where our feet get dashed against stones.  Jesus is tempted to isolate himself from that world, to remove himself from that world, to make the point of power such isolation and removal from the hurt and pain of the world.  Jesus will play God by staying engaged with this hurting world.

            Jesus is given the opportunity to have it all, to make success and splendor the point of his life, and to get there any way he can.  He refuses.  We live in a world that often idolizes splendor and excess, where success is defined primarily in material terms and people are tempted to reach that goal any way they can, even if others are left behind.  Jesus is tempted to isolate himself from the toils and struggles of the human community, to remove himself from that world, to make the point of power such isolation and removal, to make the point of power self-aggrandizement.  Jesus will play God by staying engaged with the daily struggles of people for a better world, stay engaged with the community building a newer world.

            We are like God, knowing good and evil, being self-aware.  We cannot go back.  So how will we play God?  “To incarnate God is what it means to be fully human” (Walter Wink).  “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” (St. Irenaeus, in Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul, 181)  So how will we play God?

            I think Allen Verhey is right.  Play God as God plays God.  Then it matters very much how we imagine God.  Marcus Borg: How we image God shapes not only what we think God is like but also what we think the Christian life is about (The God We Never Knew, 57)  Jesus was tempted to play God as a God whose power removes God from human struggles, from human hurts, fears, hopes, dreams.  Jesus was tempted to play God as a God whose power isolates God from the world in which we live.  And aren’t we likewise tempted?  Don’t we sometimes think of God as sitting up there somewhere making decisions about who lives and who dies, sometime with more mercy than others?  Don’t we sometimes imagine God far removed, making inscrutable decisions about illness and plague and death?

How we imagine God matters.  How we view the shades of God matters, and peering into some of the shades of God is where we are going on Sunday mornings this Lent.  But for we Christians, we look to Jesus to understand God best, and to understand what it might mean to play God as God plays God.  As I said on Wednesday, the goal of all this exploring is not to construct an intellectually satisfying theology, as interesting as that can be, at least for some of us.  The goal is a transformed life.

            I need to add a cautionary note.  Inviting us to play God is not an invitation to a mono-maniacal ego trip.  Taken in the wrong way, the invitation to play God can lead one to become an insufferable bore or to a room in a psychiatric facility.  There is an important truth in the acknowledgement that we are not God, but that just means we are not God in God’s fullness.  There is something of God in each of us that needs to be tended, nurtured and allowed to grow.

            The invitation to play God as God plays God is to make God more real in our lives here and now, to make God more real in our lives even in these aching, hungry, dying bodies, to make God more real in our lives in this place and in this time – at First United Methodist Church, in Duluth, Minnesota, in the United States, in this world of 2014 with all is beauty and joy and heartache.

            The invitation to play God as God plays God is stated so well by St. Maximus the Confessor: If we are made, as we are, in the image of God, let us become the image both of ourselves and of God (The Philokalia, II, 171)  Somehow being our best selves and playing God are inextricably linked together.  We have a joyous adventure of discovery ahead exploring our lives and the shades of God.  Amen.

Fire and Rain

Sermon preached March 2, 2014

Texts: Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9

            James Taylor, “Fire and Rain” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwugjyeSKx4

            Fire and rain, when sung by James Taylor, the words are woven into a song that is beautifully poignant.  In our Scripture readings for this morning, fire and rain and clouds, well, it is all a little strange.

            Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.  The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day [God] called to Moses out of the cloud.  Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.  Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain.

            Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James, and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.  And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone lie the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.  Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.

            Clouds and fire and rain and dazzling white.  It all seems just a little odd, a little out there.  Grammatically, the stories are “out there.”  They are third person accounts.  This is what happened to those people.  I want to suggest this morning that the importance of these stories is trying to move them from the third person to the first person, from out there to in here – both individually and communally.  James Taylor sings, “I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.”  But this morning the question to us is posed in another song, “I wanna know, have you ever seen rain?” (John Fogerty, Credence Clearwater Revival)  In other words, what is your experience of God.

            These passages suggest that we can experience God as fire and as rain.  God as fire – God as a burning passion in our lives, a yearning for goodness, for holiness which is healthy wholeness, for a better world – more just, more peaceful, kinder, gentler.  God as fire – illuminating our hearts, souls, minds, helping us see more deeply and clearly, helping us see both the beauty of the world more clearly, and the suffering in the world more clearly.  Do you know something of this God as fire in your own life, this “fire of love in our flesh and our bones” in the words of one of our songs (“Gather Us In”).

            God as rain – God as healing rain, for rain heals – it heals the earth.  God as rain - cleansing, washing, as in the waters of baptism.  God as rain, refreshing, like a cool drink on a warm day.  Do you know something of this God as rain, as “healing rain coming down… bringing mercy” in the words of another song we sing here (“Healing Rain”).

            The first part of this week I was in Nashville.  I am part of a team appointed by the last General Conference of The United Methodist Church to explore and make recommendations about certain parts of our understanding of and processes for ordained ministry.  It is called the Ministry Study Commission.  We are working on a report and perhaps some legislation for the next General Conference.  We may suggest some helpful things to the church, but among some of us, anyway, there is a strong sense that what our denomination most needs will not come through legislation, though there are some needs there for sure, but what we most need is something deeper, something more of these experiences of God as fire and rain, as passion for the world, as healing rain.  It is not an either/or – organization or experience, but without the inner experience, without helping each other know God more deeply, the organizational stuff loses its meaning.

            A few months ago, the Church Council presented to the congregation a “Membership Covenant.”  It represents a lot of good thinking and good work.  Used well, it can be helpful to us as a church, as a community of followers of Jesus.  The covenant encourages us to think about our mutual expectations and how to live together in certain ways.  The covenant talks about loving in the spirit of Jesus.  It talks about sharing our time, money, skills and other resources.  It talks about being an intentionally welcoming community.  It encourages regular worship together.  It invites us to continue growing in our faith and suggests spiritual disciplines or practices for doing so.  It asks that we pray for our church.

            This is all really good stuff.  Underlying it all, though, is a desire for each of us to connect more deeply with God, with this God who passionately loves us and loves the world, a fire of love which we desire in our flesh and our bones, with this God who is a healing rain, coming down to heal our lives and heal the world.  While our covenant can strengthen us as a church, it also needs to help us experience this God of fire and rain more deeply, because in the end, that’s what church is about – knowing and experiencing this God so that our lives are changed, made more whole, directed to changing the world.

            Theologian Marcus Borg says that at the heart of Christianity is this connection with God.  The risen Christ journeys with us whether we know it or not.  Yet there are moments when we do become aware of his presence. (Jesus at 2000, 17).  Diana Butler Bass argues something similar. She writes that Christian worship should help “open people to experiencing… awe, wonder” (Christianity for the Rest of Us, 173).  She goes on.  Hospitality, beauty, celebration.  Awe, wonder, mystery.  Communities making merry.  For too long, mainline Protestants equated worship with thinking about God.  Now, in at least some places, their hearts – the whole capacity of being human – are learning to experience God. (178)

            I want to be clear this morning.  It matters what we do.  Moses came down out of the clouds with a lot of instructions for how to live life in response to God.  Peter, James and John still had miles to go with Jesus.  It matters that we feed the hungry, clothe the ill-clad, befriend the friendless, work to heal the sick, seek justice, pursue freedom, accompany the sorrowful.  It matters that we do these things.  It matters that we show up, like on Sunday morning, for our own good and for others.  All that matters.  Good works are… necessary to faith working through love….  Faith inevitably finds expression in the witness of faith (Schubert Ogden, The Understanding of Christian Faith, 126)

            But what sustains us when the road is rough and life is hard?  Where do we find healing along the way for our lives?  What is our “why” for doing justice, loving kindness, seeking peace and reconciliation?  We want and need to encounter this God who is fire and rain again and again and again.  That’s the invitation today.  Amen.

Crazy Love

February 23, 2014

Texts: Matthew 5:38-48

            Patsy Cline, “Crazy” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na5Y9FxR0lg&feature=kp

            Van Morrison, “Crazy Love”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8WMNUC1So4

            Poco, “Crazy Love”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QON3cHRo5vw&feature=kp

            There is something about “crazy” and “love” which seem to go together in popular culture from the golden country of Patsy Cline singing the Willie Nelson penned song “Crazy,” to the unmistakable Irish rock of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” to the gentle country rock of Poco’s “Crazy Love.”

            But how is this for crazy love?  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven….  If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?  Wow.  Now that’s crazy love in the words of Jesus.

            What might it mean to love our enemies?  If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.  What kind of craziness is this?  Are we simply invited to be doormats of love as followers of Jesus?

            Actually, the craziness of love is wisely and wildly crazy here.  Jesus is not encouraging abject submission to oppressive enemies, but inviting us to actions that offer the enemy the possibility to change.  To offer someone the possibility to change for the better is love.  New Testament scholar Walter Wink writes about this passage, “Jesus is not telling us to submit to evil, but to refuse to oppose it on its own terms”  (The Powers That Be, 100).  The backhanded slap is the only possibility for striking the right cheek for a right-handed person, and the backhanded slap was an act of insult and humiliation from a social superior to a social inferior.  Turning the other cheek requires hitting with the right fist, but this is the way equals fought.  Turning the other cheek you remind the enemy of fundamental human dignity.

            Jesus lived in a two garment society.  Imagine what it would be like to be in court and ordered to give up one of those garments.  How humiliating and degrading.  Jesus counsels to give up your other garment too.  Here is Walter Wink’s description.  By stripping, the debtor has brought shame on the creditor.  Imagine the guffaws this saying must have evoked.  There stands the creditor, covered with shame, the poor debtor’s outer garment in the one hand, his undergarment in the other.  The tables have suddenly been turned on the creditor….  The poor man has transcended this attempt to humiliate him. (The Powers That Be, 104)

            In Jesus’s time, Roman soldiers could conscript people to carry their gear for one mile, but only one mile.  To go further would have been a violation of the military code.  Suddenly a soldier is no longer in charge.  The conscripted person has carried the gear for a longer period of time, and the soldier may be subject to punishment himself.  Jesus, here, in the words of Walter Wink, is “formulating a worldly spirituality in which the people at the bottom of society or under the thumb of imperial power learn to recover their humanity” (108).  I would also say that the enemy is given a chance to change.  That’s crazy love of the enemy.

            And if this is not enough craziness, hear again the words at the end of this reading.  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Talk about crazy, but there it is.  Be perfect as God is perfect.  If we are not feeling just a little uneasy, maybe we haven’t been listening intently enough.  I began in the middle of this reading, love your enemies.  What might that mean in Jesus’s time?  Turn the other cheek, give your second garment, walk the second mile.  What kind of love is this?  God kind of love.  Be perfect as God is perfect.  Love like God loves.

            The word “perfect” here connotes wholeness, maturity, not some state frozen in time, or some goal reached for ever.  Love with God’s kind of love, not a love that simply loves those who love us, but a love that reaches out even when loving is difficult and the world is harsh and cruel.

            John Wesley captures something of this idea of love as being perfect as God is perfect.  Wesley wrote in 1767: By perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our neighbor, ruling our habits, attitudes, words, and actions.

            Be perfect as God is perfect.  Love like God loves.

            What might this mean in our day and time when we have more than two garments, and thank God for that this winter, when laws protect us from being struck, when soldiers cannot simply conscript us into service?  Here are a few testimonies.

            Anne Lamott is a writer, a person of faith, and she leans to the left politically.  In one of her essays she writes about loving the president, when the president was George W. Bush.  For others, her reflections might be more helpful now that the president is Barack Obama.  I know the world is loved by God, as are all of its people, but it is much easier to believe that God hates or disapproves of or punishes the same people I do, because these thoughts are what is going on inside me much of the time.  (Plan B, 220-221)…  I’ve known for years that resentments don’t hurt the person we resent, but that they do hurt and even sometimes kill us.  I’d been asking myself, Am I willing to try to give up a bit of this hatred?   I wondered whether I could try to love my president as Jesus or Dr. King would. (220)  Lamott attends church where the passage about loving your enemies is the focus of the sermon.  Driving home, I tried to hold on to what I’d heard that day: that loving your enemies was nonnegotiable.  It meant trying to respect them, it meant identifying with their humanity and weaknesses.  It didn’t mean unconditional acceptance of their crazy behavior.  They were still accountable for the atrocities they’d perpetrated, as you were accountable for yours.  But you worked at doing better, at loving them, for the profoundest spiritual reason: You were trying not to make things worse.  Day 1 went pretty well.  All things considered….  I have to admit it, though: Day 2 was a bit of a disappointment. (225, 226)

            Desmond Tutu is an Anglican Bishop in South Africa and worked long and hard against apartheid when it was the law of the land there.  Following the end of apartheid, Tutu was deeply involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and in other reconciliation work.  The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa had provided the theological rationale for the racial segregation of apartheid, and after the changes in South Africa, the church issued a confession acknowledging their responsibility for apartheid policies and the suffering they produced.  Archbishop Tutu accepted the confession, and was criticized by some for doing so.  He responded.  I have been with men like Walter Sisulu and others who have been in jail for twenty-five, twenty-seven years for having the audacity to say they are human.  They come out of that experience and they have an incredible capacity to love.  They have no bitterness, no longing for revenge, but a deep commitment to renew South Africa.  I am humbled as I stand in front of such people; and so, dear friends, I think I am convicted by the Holy Spirit of God and by the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in offering forgiveness.  (God is Not a Christian, 31)

            Theologian and author Frederick Buechner reflected on what it might mean to love one’s enemies, and thought that perhaps it begins with seeing our enemies clearly.  You see the lines in their faces and the way they walk when they’re tired.  You see who their husbands and wives are maybe.  You see where they’re vulnerable.  You see where they’re scared.  Seeing what is hateful about them, you may catch a glimpse also of where the hatefulness comes from.  Seeing the hurt they cause you, you may also see the hurt they cause themselves.  You’re light years away from loving them, to be sure, but at least you see how they are human even as you are human, and that is at least a step in the right direction.  It’s possible that you may even get to where you can pray for them a little, if only that God forgive them because you yourself can’t, but any prayer for them at all is a major breakthrough. (Whistling in the Dark, 47)

            Love.  Crazy love.  Love even for enemies.  Loving as God loves.  Be perfect, be mature, as God is perfect.  Crazy.

            And isn’t it the height of craziness to think that this is possible among mere mortals like us?  Is Jesus a little crazy even to ask this of us?

            Perhaps, but then God does love us with a crazy love.  See, if perfect love is described here in these words of Jesus, then this is also God’s love for us, for the world.  God loves us with a love that goes the extra mile.  God loves us with a love that gives itself away.  One way to understand the story of Jesus is to see it as God taking off some of the garments of “being God” and coming to share life with us.  God loves us with a love that persists even when we push God away.

            When we know this crazy love of God for us deep in our hearts, deep in our minds, deep in our souls, deep in our bones, then maybe we, too can love a little more perfectly, maturely.

            Crazy.  Amen.

Don't Even Think About It

Sermon preached February 16, 2014

Texts: Matthew 5:21-37

            White Tail Chapel invites all worshippers to come as they are, exactly as God made them.  The church, located on the grounds of the White Tail resort (“a Family Nudist Community”) focuses on casting off material concerns, including clothes….  Pastor Allen Parker told a local television news station that many of Jesus’ most important moments happened when he was naked.

            How many of you are familiar with the author and speaker Richard Rohr?  Richard Rohr is a best-selling author and speaker.  He is a Francisan monk.  One of his book is entitled The Naked Now.  I don’t think White Tail Chapel is what he had in mind. You just cannot make up stuff like this.

            One of my undergraduate majors was psychology.  I will never forget a date I had in college.  That I can remember them so well says something kind of sad about their frequency.  Anyway, this young woman and I went to a movie.  She knew what I was studying and after the movie she confessed to me that she was nervous the whole time, wondering if I was analyzing her reactions.  The relationship did not last long.

            So here we are this morning with some texts that often make us as uncomfortable as if we were attending a clothing-optional worship service.  We have words of Jesus about anger, about lust, about divorce, about truthfulness.  And it is not just because I was a psychology major that I think this, but I think these texts are about digging deeper, about inner work, about laying bare the heart and soul if you will.

            Jesus begins with elements of his religious tradition.  You shall not commit murder.  But he uses this to offer words about anger and angry words.  “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”

            You shall not commit adultery.  Jesus uses this, as if it may not be uncomfortable enough, to move in a different direction.  “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  And if that is not difficult enough he goes on.  “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.”

            Divorce was permitted in the Jewish tradition of Jesus time.  It was always solely a male prerogative.  Divorced women had few opportunities to make a living economically. Capricious divorce left women destitute. Jesus wants to speak against this.  but how he does this!  “Whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

            Jesus also has some words to say about deep truthfulness, but perhaps we already have enough to grapple with.

            You must admit, this is pretty powerful stuff.  These are some pretty powerful words.  Anger – don’t even think about it.  Lust – don’t even think about it.  That’s not easy in our sex-saturated society.  Divorce – don’t even think about it.  I’m not sure that “don’t even think about it” thing is a very accurate understanding to these passages, but it seems closer to what we have done with them over the years.

            An acquaintance of mine, someone who was working on her Ph.D. at SMU at the same time I was, and is now teaching theology at a seminary, posted a link to an interesting piece on her Facebook page this week -  “The Most Pernicious and Pervasive Heresy (within American Christianity).”  You want to know what it is?  The writer of the essay called it “respectablism.”  Here are elements of what he means by respectablism.  Many local churches tend to become instruments for achieving middle class interests, whether or not these interests can be defended in New Testament terms….  Most American “church people” look for a church that will entertain and comfort them.  As soon as it challenges their most basic values and lifestyles, they either protest or leave.

            I am not sure my theologian friend agreed completely with this essay, but she thought it might have something to say.  I have problems with the way this person characterizes some issues, but there is a truth here for us and we see it in how we have dealt with Jesus’ words in Matthew 5.

            We have taken Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 and understood them to mean, “don’t even think about it” and made that “don’t even think about it” mentality our standard of respectability.  What does it mean to be a Christian?  It means to be respectable.  We don’t get angry.  We don’t really deal with the fact that we are sexual beings – don’t even think about that.  Marital problems, don’t even think about it.  For many years the church harmed a lot of people with its head-in-the sand, don’t-even-think-about-it attitude toward divorce.

            Now don’t get me wrong.  I am not against being respectable.  Nor do I think we should think about anger, and lust and divorce cavalierly.  But I think Jesus is after something more than respectability.  What I think Jesus is after here is a certain kind of naked honesty, though not the kind at White Tail Chapel, more the kind in Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.  These words of Jesus invite us to dig deeper into our lives.  These words of Jesus invite us to serious inner work.  These words of Jesus invite us to dramatic transformation.  But dramatic transformation begins with willingness to honestly look at who we are, look at all the tangled roots of anger and sexuality and relationality that are inside of us.

            Jesus says in Matthew 5: “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.”  Paul writes in Ephesians (4:26): “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”  So is anger ever appropriate? I believe it can be, but only when it arises in the face of injustice and hurt in the world. Even then, anger is in danger of being captured by self-righteousness. We always need to be aware of our anger. We must always ask tough questions of our anger, whether or not it is really rooted in concern for others. We must not let anger turn into self-righteousness. If anger is ever to be creative and constructive, it must be thoroughly woven together with love. In the face of anger we should either be weaving it together with love or learning how to let it go. Failing to do that, we tend to nurture a negative attitude toward those with whom we stay angry. We would like to see them eliminated in one way or another. Sounds a little like murder, doesn’t it.  This is not about “don’t even think about it,” it is about digging deeper.

            Jesus says in Matthew 5: “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  I remember when President Jimmy Carter was a presidential candidate, and admitted that he probably had not been pure when it came to lust.  Some people were shocked, as if this was the most horrific thing he could say.  We fool ourselves if we don’t think sexuality is powerful, and we fool ourselves when we deny that we are sexual beings, to some extent or another.  I appreciate how author Sharon Salzberg puts the matter of the appropriate use of our sexual energy. “All too often, people will sacrifice love, family life, career, or friendship to satisfy sexual craving. Abiding happiness is given up for temporary pleasure, and a great deal of suffering ensues when we are willing to cause pain to satisfy our desires…. Sexuality is a very powerful force. A mature spirituality demands that we, without self-righteousness, commit to not harming ourselves or others through our sexual energy” (Lovingkindness). When we look at people only through the lenses of our own desires, we begin to see them as merely the sum of their parts, not as whole persons, and Jesus wants us to see others as whole persons.  This is not about “don’t even think about it,” it is about digging deeper.

            Divorce.  I have already said something about the social context for this passage, how women in the time of Jesus were often made destitute by divorce, and it remains true that women tend to be made poorer by divorce today, too.  Jesus is concerned about that. Beyond that, Jesus takes life-long covenantal relationships seriously and so should we. While divorce may be a regrettable but necessary alternative when there has been deep unfaithfulness in a relationship (this is not just sexual unfaithfulness), it should never be seen as an easy option.  How do we grapple with all that is inside of us that longs for deep connection with another, but also fears such connection.  This is not about “don’t even think about it,” it is about digging deeper.

            These difficult words in Matthew 5 are not about superficial respectability.  They are about deep transformation.  They are about the adventure of inner work.  They are about following Jesus even into our own hearts and souls with a certain naked honesty.

            In his book, The Naked Now, Richard Rohr captures something of this inner work.  It is living in the naked now, the “sacrament of the present moment,” that will teach us how to actually experience our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us” (12)  We are invited to be awake, which Rohr describes, in part, as “I drop to a level deeper that the passing show” (135).  We want to keep “moving deeper into faith” (166).

            An elderly gentleman ran an antique shop in a large city.  A tourist once stepped in and got to talking with the old man about all the many things he had stacked around his shop.  Said the tourist, “What would you say is the strangest, the most mysterious thing you have here?”  The old man looked around, surveying all that he had in his shop, then turning to the tourist, said,  “The strangest, most mysterious thing in this shop is unquestionably myself.” (Anthony DeMillo, Taking Flight, 131)

            We are strange and mysterious and wonderful, with capacities for beauty, but also for harm.  The invitation here is to do the inner work needed to let God’s grace and love touch all that we are, transform all that we are, so that God can love the world through us.  It’s not about “don’t even think about it,” it is about digging deeper.   Amen.