I Want to Know What Love Is

Sermon preached  July 6, 2014

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

            So here is the 1984 Foreigner song from which I took this morning’s sermon title, “I Want To Know What Love Is” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loWXMtjUZWM&feature=kp

            But now I have a bit of a problem, because I am not sure just how to get from this song to the next word in the sermon: gonorrhea.  This is not a good transition.  “I want to know what love is, gonorrhea.”

            So let’s see if we can redeem this situation.  Many of you know that my daughter is an ob-gyn resident.  This week she was going to be making a presentation on gonorrhea and chlamydia to other residents and physicians, and I asked if she remembered the Seinfeld episode where Kramer was acting out disease symptoms for medical students, giving a stellar performance for gonorrhea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLRlbsBJhio

            How is it that I can remember a Seinfeld episode?  I love Trivial Pursuit kinds of games.  I have sometimes thought I might be good on Jeopardy, along with thousands of other people, though I have imagined finally getting on the show and having all kinds of categories about which I know nothing – “Alex, I’ll take fabrics for $100.”

            Knowledge.  There is so much that can be known, and so much that we do know.  Our minds are pretty amazing. While knowledge matters, there is something vastly more important, wisdom.  Joan Chittister writes: It’s not difficult to become smart. It is difficult to become enlightened enough to be able to distinguish what is smart from what is wise. (Becoming Fully Human, 97).

            Wisdom.  Let me suggest to you that wisdom has not only to do with our minds, our heads as it were. Wisdom has to do with head, heart and hands – with knowing, feeling, and doing.  We get hints of this in various places in the Bible.  Be wise in what is good. (Romans 16:19)  Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. (James 3:13)

            In today’s gospel reading, we get more than a hint that wisdom has to do with head, heart, and hands, we get the message straight up.  Today’s reading can be divided into two sections, the first centered on the saying, “yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” and the second focusing on the invitation – “come to me.”  Wisdom in the religious tradition of Jesus was a feminine figure – Sophia.  The emphasis of Jesus in this passage is that wisdom may not be what the purportedly “wise and intelligent” think it is.  People missed the wisdom of John the Baptist, and they are missing the wisdom of Jesus.  Want to know where wisdom is, look for deeds.  Sophia/Wisdom makes herself known by her effects.  Even more significantly, Matthew’s words locate the wisdom of God in Jesus.  Marcus Borg: On the one hand, Jesus was a teacher of wisdom….  On the other hand, the New Testament also presents Jesus as the embodiment or incarnation of divine wisdom (Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 69).  Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza: Matthew characterizes Jesus as Sophia herself….  Jesus does what what Wisdom does. (Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet, 151).  Jesus embodies wisdom and Jesus embodies love, and wisdom is known in love.

            To be wise, then, is to align our thinking, feeling and doing and to align it in the direction of love.  To be wise is to love.  To grow in wisdom is to grow in love.  To talk about the relationship between wisdom and love is important, for we are called to love in a very complicated and complex world.  To be wise is to love and to love well is to be discerning.  In writing about the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, scholar Walter Brueggemann says: Wisdom teachers stay close to the enigmatic quality of experience… [and] the richness of concrete experience….  In an embrace of the traditions of wisdom, know the dailiness of life in all its contested, buoyant density. (Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 681, 745)  Jesus embodied wisdom.  Jesus embodies love, and wisdom is known in love, a love that operates with discernment in the midst of our rich, complex, dense world.  And Jesus, in his life touched very particular lives with his love, especially those who were on the social margins.

            Into this enigmatic, rich world, this world of buoyant density, we hear the call of wisdom.  We hear the call to love.  The call of love is gift and demand.  But just what, materially speaking, are God’s gift and demand as they are decisively re-presented through Jesus himself?  They are, in a word, the gift and demand of love, of a boundless love that authorizes – i.e., both entitles and empowers – a human existence of obedient faith working through love and love incarnating itself as justice….  Jesus himself, through everything he says and does, means love – both God’s prevenient love for all of us and, on this basis, through our obedient faith in God’s love, our own returning love for God and for all whom God loves. (Schubert Ogden,  The Understanding of Christian Faith, 73)

            Love is a demand.  Love implores us to live differently.  The wisdom of love is always seeking to discern the loving course of action in a complex world, or sometimes we need to say the “more loving” course of action when the alternatives are less than ideal.  Love demands our best thinking, and wisdom demands our deepest loving.

            Yet love is not ceaseless demand, it is also a gift.  If we see love as only demand we risk harming ourselves and others.  The Biblical scholar Walter Wink shares the response of a person discussing in one of his workshops the famous passage from Matthew 25 about the least of these.  I tried that for seven years and ignored my wife and family trying to get European and U.S. money to the starving of India and Africa.  I totally ignored the ‘least’ within myself and my family, till I lost them through divorce. (Walter Wink, The Human Being, 185 )  Love is not only demand.  Love is beauty, joy, musement.  It is finding our way to dance to the unforced rhythms of grace.  I bet you may have been wondering if ever I was going to get to the second section of today’s gospel reading, a favorite among many.  Jesus: Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.  Sophia/Wisdom speaking.  Jesus (The Message): Are you tired? Worn out?  Burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.  I’ll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.  Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

            The question of wisdom is the question, “I want to know what love is.”  To be wise is to know, in the words of the poet W. H. Auden The choice to love is open till we die.  The voice of wisdom is also the voice of Forrest Gump: I may not be a smart man, Jenny, but I know what love is.  Wisdom is as wisdom does, and what wisdom does is love.  May we be so wise.  Amen.

Faith Forum After Hours – Seven Summer Sermons

July 6, 2014

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

Sermon Title: I Want to Know What Love Is

Quotes and Questions for Reflection

It is not difficult to become smart.  It is difficult to become enlightened enough to be able to distinguish what is smart from what is wise.

                                                            Joan Chittister, Becoming Fully Human             

How would you distinguish knowledge from wisdom?

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

Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

                                                                        James 3:13

What do you think about the idea that true wisdom is wisdom about love, that genuine wisdom leads to loving action?

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

                                                Schubert Ogden,  The Understanding of Christian Faith

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

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

                                                Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

                                                William James, The Principles of Psychology

On the one hand, Jesus was a teacher of wisdom…. On the other hand, the New Testament also presents Jesus as the embodiment or incarnation of divine wisdom.

                                                Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

The choice to love is open till we die.

                                                                        W. H. Auden   

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

                                                                        Forrest Gump

Something

Sermon preached June 29, 2014

Texts: Matthew 10:40-42

            I don’t know why I have never thought of it before, but this Sunday’s sermon has an all-purpose sermon title – “Something.”  It answers the question – “What are you going to preach about?” – something.  It gives people a good response to the sermon – “Wasn’t that sermon something?!”

            It even provides multiple musical options.  Some of you were probably expecting this:

The Beatles, “Something” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX92FJ-lwXI&feature=kp

Some may have been expecting this:

James Taylor, “Something in the Way She Moves” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoevtZiVR4k&feature=kp

            But I am guessing that not many of you, at least until yesterday, were thinking about this:

Lee Ann Womack: “Something Worth Leaving Behind” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awjH_CqOgX0&feature=kp

            “If I will love then I will find I have touched another life, and that’s something worth leaving behind.”  These words were referred to yesterday as we celebrated the life of J Adamec, who died tragically and suddenly this last week at age 45. The words are meant for all of us.  Touching the lives of others with kindness, that’s what these few short verses from the Gospel of Matthew are about.

            To be sure, the verses in Matthew have a narrower function and meaning.  They are meant to be words of comfort to the early disciples of Jesus who often experienced hardships for following Jesus.  Think of how powerful such words could be to a beleaguered disciple – “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.  Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”  God is measuring the lives of others by how they treat you!  What encouragement.  That last phrase about giving a cup of cold water to “one of these little ones” is a word about how the disciples are to treat the newest people who have joined them on the spiritual journey with Jesus.

            Yet Matthew’s words cannot be contained within that context alone.  Kindness is intended to be the way in which disciples of Jesus are treated.  Kindness is meant to characterize the community of the followers of Jesus.  Such kindness cannot be contained, but inevitably spills over into all of life.  And if God’s Spirit may be at work in surprising ways, through surprising people, shouldn’t all be welcomed, shouldn’t all be received, shouldn’t small acts of kindness be extended to all?

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

            Is that all there really is to Christianity, kindness?  That’s not what Neville is saying.  Christianity is about more than kindness, but it is never about less than kindness and kindness is central to the meaning of our faith.  Christianity is about God, but about a God who acts toward us with lovingkindness.  Christianity is about Jesus, but about a Jesus who lives kindness, teaches kindness, embodies kindness.  If our understandings of God and Jesus don’t help us cultivate kindness, if our live together in the church doesn’t, help us cultivate and grow in kindness, then we need to examine what is wrong.

            But doesn’t kindness seem sort of ho-hum, sort of weak, sort of unexciting?  And who doesn’t like kindness?  The words of Mother Teresa could be found almost anywhere – “be kind to each other.”  (No Greater Love).   The words of author George Saunders could be put on bumper stickers: “err in the direction of kindness” (Congratulations, By the Way).  Who would object to any of this?

            Yet the world is often an unkind place.  We live in a world where, according to Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, “kindly behavior is looked upon with suspicion; public espousals of kindness are dismissed as moralistic and sentimental” (On Kindness, 7).  “Kindness,” they write, “has become our forbidden pleasure” (5)

            If we often sing the praises of kindness, yet also disparage it, and don’t consistently live it out, what gets in our way?  Let me suggest three things, and they are probably not the only three things that get in the way of our kindness.

            When we see certain people having trouble, sometimes we simply think they are getting their comeuppance.  Why be kind to jerks?  In our movies we often find those characters who we hope don’t succeed because they are not very nice people.  In “The Help,” for instance, we aren’t too disappointed when some of the rude white women, who treat their African-American housekeepers so poorly, seem to get their comeuppance.  In fact, we rather like it.  It seems easier to wish people who behave poorly will get a taste of their own medicine than to find a way to weave kindness together with accountability.  Brene Brown has asked, “Wouldn’t it be better if we could be kinder, but firmer?” (The Gifts of Imperfection, 17)

            Another thing that gets in the way of kindness is our perception that kindness is inherently weak.  Again, I take some cues from Brene Brown.  Kindness does entail some vulnerability, which Brown defines as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure” (Daring Greatly, 34).  When we are kind, we open ourselves to the hurt and pain of others.  Brown writes, “love is a form of vulnerability [and] vulnerability is life’s great dare.  It’s life asking, “Are you all in?...  Answering yes… is not weakness: It’s courage beyond measure.  It’s daring greatly.” (Daring Greatly, 43)  We don’t want to be weak, but can we shift from thinking of kindness as weakness to see kindness as an adventure, as courageous?

            Finally, kindness, because it entails vulnerability, does open us up to the pain of others and the pain of the world.  Phillips and Taylor write: In one sense kindness is always hazardous because it is based on a susceptibility to others, a capacity to identify with their pleasures and sufferings.  Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable.  Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness, 5).  It is not easy to open ourselves to the pain of others and the pain of the world, but kindness is often a response to such pain, hurt, disappointment, suffering.  Kindness is more than the kind word offered, or smile given, when we greet someone.  It takes us to difficult places.  As George Saunders writes, “kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include… well, everything” George Saunders, Congratulations, By The Way).

            Meeting all these obstacles to kindness requires courage.  It might be just as true to say that Christianity is about courage as to say it is about kindness.  Christian faith is about the courage to be kind, and about the courage to receive kindness from God and others.

            But one last problem with kindness.  Kindness don’t feed the bulldog.  Kindness seems so small.  It strikes us as so small and ineffective when matched up against the massive problems of the world.  The world is so full of deep struggles, profound suffering, systemic issues and difficulties.  What good is kindness among all this?

            Kindness is more than an interpersonal quality.  It has social dimensions.  While these can be complicated, it does not mean they are non-existent.  Robert Neville: Sometimes it is hard to tell in what kindness consists.  Whether a social welfare system is ultimately kind if it creates a long-term dependent class of people is a debatable point at this stage, and how to amend it to make it more kind is also debatable (Symbols of Jesus, xviii).  We can debate the social meaning of kindness, but embodying kindness remains our goal.  And as the philosopher Martha Nussbaum notes, the kindness of love matters for justice.  Respect grounded in the idea of human dignity will prove impotent to include all citizens on terms of equality unless it is nourished by imaginative engagement with the lives of others and by an inner grasp of their full and equal humanity….  The type of imaginative engagement society needs… is nourished by love.  Love, then, matters for justice. (Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions, 380).

            Kindness may seem small, but “the quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another” in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Sojourners, July 2014).  Even small kindnesses, a warm welcome, a cold cup of water, a smile, a hug, being with someone in their moment of grief or triumph, can make a significant difference in the world.  Kindness participates in the “butterfly effect.”  It seems that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in South America may make a difference for the course of a tornado in North America.  It is not the only factor, but one influencing factor.  The world needs more of the butterfly wings of kindness.

            One of my favorite stories, and the one I will end with today, about the great effect of small things is the story inspired by the late naturalist Loren Eisley.  A man was walking on the beach one day and noticed a boy who was reaching down, picking up a starfish and throwing it in the ocean.  As he approached, he called out, “Hello!  What are you doing?”  The boy looked up and said, “I’m throwing starfish into the ocean”.  “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the man.  “The tide stranded them.  If I don’t throw them in the water before the sun comes up, they’ll die” came the answer.  “Surely you realize that there are miles of beach, and thousands of starfish.  You’ll never throw them all back, there are too many.  You can’t possibly make a difference.”  The boy listened politely, then picked up another starfish.  As he threw it back into the sea, he said, “It made a difference for that one.”  (see Loren Eisley, The Star Thrower)

            In our complicated, competitive world, kindness can seem so small, so weak, so vulnerable.  Kindness can seem to take us to hazardous places.  Yet kindness makes all the difference in the world.  The God of Jesus Christ is a God whose character is lovingkindness.  God grant us the courage and sense of adventure to live more kindly, and when we do, we will live lives that have something worth leaving behind – and isn’t that something!  Amen.

Quotes and Questions for Reflection

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

                                                Robert Cummings Neville, Symbols of Jesus

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

How true to these identified obstacles to kindness ring to you?:

·        Some people are just getting their comeuppance

·        Kindness opens us up to pain (see Phillips and Taylor below)

·        Kindness often makes one appear weak

How do we work with such obstacles?

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

                                                Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness

Empathy requires some vulnerability… but it’s worth it.

                                                Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

Kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include… well, everything.

                                                George Saunders, Congratulations, By The Way

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

                                                Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions

Be kind to each other: It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness.

                                                Mother Teresa, No Greater Love

The quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another.

                                                Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sojourners, July 2014

Err in the direction of kindness.

                                                George Saunders, Congratulations, By The Way

If I will love then I will find

I have touched another life

And that’s something

Something worth leaving behind.

                        Brett Beavers and Tom Douglas, “Something Worth Leaving Behind”

                        (sung by Lee Ann Womack)

Hagar Treated Horribly

Sermon preached June 22, 2014

Text: Genesis 21:8-21

            Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrY9eHkXTa4

            This is a redemption story.  It is a very human story, with characters whose actions and feelings we recognize.  It is a story, as well, about God.

            The text we read today is only part of the story, so let me share more of what happens before and after.  Our Scripture reading begins with the early years of Isaac, the biological child of Sarah and Abraham.  What has come before (Genesis 16) is that Sarah, not conceiving any children of her own instructs Abraham to “go into my slave girl... that I shall obtain children by her.”  The slave girls name was Hagar, and she was an Egyptian.  “And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai” (Genesis 16:2) Hagar became pregnant, and the relationship with Sarah deteriorated.  At one point, Hagar tried to run away from the harsh treatment of Sarah.  She is met by an angel of God who promises her that her son, Ishmael, shall be the beginning of a great people.

            Later, Sarah herself becomes pregnant, gives birth, and this child’s name is Isaac.  Isaac grows and Sarah sees him playing with his half-brother Ishmael.  The sight disturbs her and she tells Abraham to cast Hagar – “this slave woman” - and Ishmael out.  Abraham is distressed, but senses the voice of God, and sends Hagar and Ishmael away, giving them some bread and a skin of water.

            The water runs out, and Hagar is now the one distressed.  Seeing little hope, and sure that her child is going to die out in the wilderness, she places Ishmael under a tree and walks away, because she does not want to watch her child die of dehydration.  Hagar weeps, but apparently so does the child, for “God heard the voice of the boy” and God responds. God calls Hagar by name, she is not just the “slave woman” in God’s sight.  God’s angel speaks words of assurance – “do not be afraid.”  Water is found, and “God was with the boy.”

            That is the end of our reading for today, but the story continues.  When Abraham dies “his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him” (Genesis 25:9).  We get a report about the descendants of Ishmael, and then we lose his story.  But in Islam, Ishmael’s story has additional features.  In the Quran, and in other Islamic sources, the story is told that Hagar and Ishmael end up in the vicinity of Mecca in Arabia.  The story goes on to say that before he dies, Abraham finds Hagar and Ishmael in the area of Mecca, and that when they are reunited, father and son rebuild the Kaaba, a temple to the one true God said to have originally been built by Adam. (Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, 5-6.  Also The Quran: 3:84, 4:163, 14:39; and especially 2:125-129).  The annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Islam is rooted in this story.

            This is a very human story.  There is sex and childbearing and jealousy and relationship issues and slavery and surrogate parenting and death.  This is also a story about God and about redemption.  Theologian Frederick Buechner characterizes the Hagar story this way: The story of Hagar is the story of the terrible jealousy of Sarah and the singular ineffectuality of Abraham and the way Hagar, who know how to roll with the punches, managed to survive them both.  Above and beyond that, however, it is the story of how in the midst of the whole unseemly affair the Lord, half tipsy with compassion, went around making marvelous promises, and loving everybody, and creating great nations, like the last of the big-time spenders handing out hundred dollar bills. (Peculiar Treasures, 52)

            This is a story about God, about a God who may be characterized as “half tipsy with compassion.”  It is about a God who acts to redeem.  Redemption is an interesting word.  It has something to do with exchange or purchase (redeem a coupon), with buying back or recovering ownership (redeem a ring from a pawn shop), with setting free or deliverance (redeem a slave), with restoring the honor or worth or dignity of someone (redeeming oneself).  In this story it is a difficult situation - a poor, single slave woman and her young son out in the wilderness running out of water – that needs redeeming. Here redemption has to do with restoration, with freedom, with recovery.  Out of this difficult, hurtful, horrendous set of circumstances God restores possibilities for life.  God sets free for new life.  God helps Hagar and Ishmael recover hope.  God, half tipsy with compassion, redeems an ugly situation where Hagar has been treated horribly.

            God as redeemer.  It is a familiar phrase to those of us in the church, and we Christians often most associate God’s activity as redeemer with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  This story reminds us that while there is something unique about God’s redeeming work in Jesus, God has been about redemption from early on.  God does not simply become half tipsy with compassion in Jesus, that’s who God is.  God’s creative love is always at work toward redemption – toward freedom, restoration, recovery.  God is always at work taking difficult, hurtful, even horrendous circumstances and turning them so that some good can emerge.  And God’s creative redeeming love is a responsive love, responsive to all the circumstances of human existence.  Is even God surprised in this story, as someone in the Bill Moyers discussion group on Genesis suggested?  Sarah acts, and not well, and God responds.  Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away, and God responds.  Hagar sets her son beneath a tree and walks some distance, unable to bear the slow death of her son, and God responds.  I think human freedom is genuine, is real, and I think God’s creative love is always responsive to the circumstances we create.  God’s response is always in the direction of redemption, and there is no situation beyond God’s redemptive activity.  There is no situation beyond God’s redemptive activity.

            So what do we do with this?  We are invited to see God’s redemptive activity in our lives and in the world.  We are invited to participate in God’s redemptive activity in our lives and in our world.  See God’s redemptive activity.  Be part of God’s redemptive activity.  There are personal and social dimensions to this seeing and being.

            One of the interesting moments in the story of Hagar which we read is that no one calls her by name until God does, and by the way the language of the angel of the Lord was a way that the ancient Israelites talked about God’s presence with a person.  In Genesis 16, where an angel first appears to Hagar, she calls God “Elroi” – one who sees and says, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”  So in Genesis 21, Sarah simply refers to Hagar as “this slave woman.”  Even God, in speaking to Abraham, only refers to Hagar as “your slave woman.”  Later, hearing the cry of Ishmael, God addresses her, “What troubles you, Hagar?  Do not be afraid.”

            Sometimes redemption in our lives comes with being known, trusting that God knows us, knows us by name, and cares for us.  Where have you had those redemptive moments in your life?  Where have you heard God call your name and speak those wonderful biblical words, “Do not be afraid”?  And there are also redemptive moments when we can, in a sense, be the voice of God for others, reminding them of their importance to God, of their status as beloved of God, where we can help them recover their dignity and sense of worth.

            I read a powerful story about social redemption this week.  Adriaan Volk was South Africa’s minister of law and order between 1986 and 1991.  It was a strange and strained time in South Africa.  The government was under increasing pressure for its apartheid racial policies.  The white government wanted to retain power, yet also appear “humane.”  Volk’s police “resorted to dark, cloak-and-dagger tactics to dispose of apartheid’s enemies” (The New Republic, June 30, 2014, p. 37).  Anti-apartheid activists were kidnapped, drugged, and some killed.  One strange plot involved the Rev. Frank Chikane.  Chikane interdenominational church group was suspected for harboring armed militants.  Volk’s police force poisoned a pair of Chikane’s underwear, lacing them with a potent insecticide.  Chikane was so sickened that he had to be flown to the United States for medical treatment.

            August 1, 2006, Volk appeared at Chikane’s office.  Chikane was now part of the government of South Africa.  Volk pulled out his Bible, and spoke words that were difficult for him.  “I have sinned against the Lord and against you.  Will you forgive me?”  He handed his Bible to Chikane and took out a rag and a basin.  “Frank, please, would you allow me to wash your feet?”  “Why would you want to do that?”  “I must humble myself before you, for what we did, for what we were trying to do.” For Volk it was a redemptive moment.  He realized for just how long he had viewed himself as superior to South African black.  He sought out others to wash their feet.  This is a story of social redemption.  At a time that still can be tense between blacks and whites in South Africa, Volk is witnessing to a way forward.  We need to see such redemptive moments in our world.

            We can also be part of redemptive moments in the world.  The precise nature of redemption in the wider world can be more difficult to discern.  Part of being a redemptive presence in the world is to hear the cries of the hurting, the dispossessed, the children.  But what might redemption look like for the crying children detained at the U.S. Mexico border, many of them fleeing violence in their own countries?  I am not sure.  Part of redemption is seeing the situation as something more than persons trying to enter our country illegally.  It is trying to discover why children would undertake such an arduous journey.

            What of the relationship between Jews and Christians and Muslims in our world?  What might redemption look like?   Can we feel something of the poignancy of Isaac and Ishmael together burying their father, and in that sense that we share something together as Christians and Muslims and Jews?  Perhaps part of redemption is working to avoid the broad negative stereotypes of Muslims that are too common, finding the worst in Islam and painting all Muslims with that same brush.  Would we consider it fair to have all Christians portrayed as Fred Phelps or as the pastor in Florida wanting to start a bonfire with Qurans?  I think redemption in interreligious relationships looks like friendship as written about by United Methodist theologian Marjorie Suchocki in her book on religious pluralism, Divinity and Diversity: Friendship requires a forthrightness about who we are, and an eagerness to listen to who the other is.  Friendship requires knowing one another, which requires witnessing to one another about our experiences, our beliefs.  And friendship involves us in working together for the common good of a world of peace, of sustainable lifestyles, of care for the planet and all its inhabitants. (11)

            So we have this story of Hagar, of Hagar treated horribly, and of God, of a God who, half tipsy with compassion is always working to redeem, restore, set free, turn things toward the good.  This God who called Hagar by name continues to call each of us by name and continues to work redemptively in our lives and in our world.  Do you hear God calling you by name?  Do you see redemptive moments?  Are you willing to be a redemptive presence in the world?  Amen.

“Faith Forum After Hours”:  The following questions were included in the bulletin and used for that discussion.

Questions for Reflection

What are some of your initial reactions to this story?

What do you think of this characterization of the entire Abraham, Sarah, Hagar story?

The story of Hagar is the story of the terribly jealousy of Sarah and the singular ineffectuality of Abraham and the way Hagar, who knew how to roll with the punches, managed to survive them both.  Above and beyond that, however, it is the story of how in the midst of the whole unseemly affair the Lord, half tipsy with compassion, went around making marvelous promises, loving everybody, and creating great nations, like the last of the big-time spenders handing out hundred dollar bills.  

                                                            Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures

How do you understand God in this story?  Is God in control all the time and over all the circumstances or is God responding creatively in love to human choices?  What do you think about this question posed to the story?  But does that mean that even God is surprised – that like Sarah, who didn’t anticipate her emotional reactions to Hagar being pregnant, God didn’t know He would respond this way to the child? (Bharati Mukherjee in Bill Moyers, Genesis)

In Islam, the story is told of how Abraham is later re-united with Hagar and Ishmael.  Abraham finds them near present-day Mecca.  He and Ishmael rebuild the Kaaba, believed to have been originally built by Adam as a temple to the one true God.  The Muslim practice of taking a pilgrimage to Mecca is rooted in this story.  Do you think the story of Abraham and Hagar and Ishmael, as found in Genesis, provides any resources for thinking about the relationship between Jews, Christians, and Muslims?

Where have you seen redemption - difficult, hurtful, even horrendous circumstances shifted so that good emerges – in the world?  Where have you experienced redemption in your life?

Don't Know What You've Got

Sermon preached June 15, 2014

Texts: Genesis 1:1-2:4a

            Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

Counting Crows, “Big Yellow Taxi” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU

            It is appropriate to begin this sermon with this song.  Obviously I think it is fitting to begin most any sermon with a song, but there is something particularly appropriate this morning.  It is appropriate to begin with this song because we will return to its theme later, but also appropriate because one creative endeavor deserves another.

            Genesis 1 is a creative endeavor.  It is wonderfully written, beautifully constructed.  It flows like poetry.  It is rich in meaning.  This morning, I want to offer three thoughts about this passage.

            The first thing that I want to say, that I think needs to be said is that Genesis one is not science.  Now I don’t want to say that science writing cannot be beautiful and creative.  It can be.  But Genesis 1 is not science.  It is not biology.  It is not geology.  It is not geography.  It is not oceanography.  It is not climatology.  Genesis 1 is a theo-poetic writing, a piece of writing that combines theology and poetry.  When we were in New York we visited the American Museum of Natural History.  There was a wonderful display about human evolution and within it was a video of a number of scientists who addressed the compatibility between religious faith and evolutionary science.  The need for this arises out of frequent mis-reading of Genesis 1.

            As best we can tell, this writing was probably finalized during the time that the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon.  Just a quick bit of history here.  Israel was a united kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon.  After Solomon, the nation divided between North and South – Israel and Judah.  In 722 BCE the Assyrian Empire defeated the Northern Kingdom and part of the strategy of conquering empires was to send significant numbers of people into exile.  In 587 BCE, the Babylonian empire conquered the Southern Kingdom and sent people into exile in Babylon.  This was a time of great political crisis, but also a time of great theological crisis.  Where is God?  Who is God?

            The Babylonians had an answer.  There were many gods, with the king of the gods being Marduk.  The basic Babylonian creation epic (Enuma Elish) is the story of the power of Marduk over all the other gods.  In the epic, human beings were made from the blood of a murdered god and were created for the purpose of serving the gods.  Marduk’s closest representative on earth was the king of Babylon.  It is the king who is the image of God. (Walter Wink, Just Jesus, 103-104).

            The contrast with Genesis 1 is stark.  Genesis 1 is a theo-poetic celebration of the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the importance of the human person, male and female.  “God saw everything that had been made, and indeed, it was very good.”  “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  In the midst of political defeat and exile, an Israelite theologian-poet, inspired by God, pens words about the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the dignity of the human.  This is not a biology that tells us how we came to be.  It is a theology that tells us who we are and what it means to be human.

            In addition to being a celebration of the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the dignity of the human this theo-poetic writing is a celebration of God’s creativity, and an invitation for human creativity.

            The very first words of the Bible are, “In the beginning when God created.”  God is one who in the midst of chaos and darkness creates order and light.  This creative God creates abundantly.  “The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.”  “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”  “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind.”  God’s creativity is abundant and abounding.  We who are created in the image of God are created to create.

            Linking God’s creativity with human creativity the late Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman wrote: Humans did not bring the world into being, and it is not we who sustain it….  There is a powerful, awe-inspiring creativity manifest in our world – and, indeed, in ourselves: the new, the novel, the unforeseeable, the previously unheard of, break forth roundabout us and in our midst; and human life continues to be sustained from beyond itself….  We are called to participate ever more fully and effectively in the creative transformation of our existence. (Gordon D. Kaufman, In the Beginning… Creativity, 70)

            Much earlier, the twelfth-century abbess, mystic and artist, Hildegard of Bingen, wrote: Humankind, full of all creative possibilities, is God’s work.  Humankind is called to co-create…  God gave to humankind the talent to create with all the world. (in Matthew Fox, Creativity, 230)

            The kind of creativity to which we are invited is not the artistic creativity of geniuses, though some of you may have such gifts.  It is not necessarily what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called “special-talent creativeness.”  Rather it is a creativity that can be expressed in every area of life.  Maslow:  Whatever one does can be done with a certain attitude, a certain spirit that arises out of the nature of the character of the person performing the act.  One can even see creatively – a greater freshness, penetration, and efficiency of perception. (Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2^nd Edition, 170, 171).  God is creative, and we, created in the image of God, are invited to be co-creators of the world.  We are invited to live every day with a certain creativity.  We are invited to see the world in new and fresh ways, making new ways of living possible.  In New York this past week we visited the Museum of Modern Art.  I know I do not have that kind of artistic talent, but I find that art inspires me to find my own creativitiy.

            If this story is a celebration of creativity and an invitation to creativity, it is also an invitation to care.  That is the third thing I want to say.  This theo-poetic piece is not science, but is a celebration of and invitation to creativity, and an invitation to care.

            God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”….  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work he had done in creation.

            It is important to think through some of these words – subdue, dominion.  I think they have to do with responsibility, not with wastefulness or abuse.  I love how the poet Denise Levertov conceives of the human vocation based on this story.

Miswritten, misread, that charge:

subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.

Surely we were to have been

earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.

Surely our task

was to have been

to love the earth,

to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden.

That would have been our dominion:

to be those cells of the earth’s body that could

perceive and imagine, could bring the planet

into the haven it is to be known,

(as they eye blesses the hand, perceiving

its form and the work it can do).            (“Tragic Error” from The Life Around Us, 13)

            We are to be earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.  Our task is to love the earth, to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden – a garden that does not appear in this creation story but in the second creation story in Genesis that begins in chapter 2.  That story is not science either.  Our dominion is to be those cells of the earth’s body that can perceive and imagine.  Our dominion is to bring the planet into the haven it is to be known.

            How are we doing here?  Like many, I am concerned.  Environmental care issues have become too politicized and polarized.  We have some whose environmental concern seems deeply out of touch with the necessary tragedies of life, that all animal life lives to by devouring other life, even if it is plant life.  There are others who seem to think that resources are there to be used for the economy as we now conceive it, almost regardless of the long run consequences for air and water.  The issue of climate change has become so politicized that for some even to ask about it is overly political.

            Shouldn’t the church, though, shouldn’t we who are invited and called to care for creation at least be able to ask tough questions about how we are caring for the environment?  Shouldn’t we be able to ask about climate change and to have civil conversations about it?

            This year, The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fifth assessment report arguing for the human impact on climate and for the increasing impact of climate change on the world.  This spring the White House released the National Climate Assessment.  Over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly. Increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change.  Critics claim that both these organizations are too politically motivated.  How about the University of Minnesota Alumni Association?  The Summer 2014 has on its front cover “What Can We Do About Climate Change? Plenty”  Jonathan Foley, Director of University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment: “There is no doubt that the effects of human activities, especially the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through our burning of fossil fuels and our land use practices, are changing our climate.”

            What if we are part of the problem, but fail to acknowledge it?  How will we be judged in our care of creation?  What if there are some things we can do, and perhaps this is where we need to be spending more time and attention discussing possible actions, but what if there are some things we can do, but never get around to discussing the possibilities or doing anything at all?  How will we be judged in our care of creation?  Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.  Will that be our situation someday down the road?  I thought about some of the potential impacts of our changing climate this week.  If the sea rises, parts of Manhattan will be under water.  The impact of climate change will affect the poorest on the planet.

            When I read Genesis 1, I am moved, deeply moved.  Inspired by the Spirit of God, the writer of this theo-poetic piece speaks of God’s goodness and God’s creativity to a people in exile, to a people who perhaps don’t see much goodness or creativity.  The piece celebrates God.  The piece invites us to live into the image of God.  There is an invitation here in our own challenging situation to use our creativity, to use our best science, to do what we can to be earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source, to care for the earth like tending a garden.  The piece invites us to creative courage, which the psychologist Rollo May defines as “the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built” (The Courage to Create, 13).  Hear the call to creative care and creative courage, modeled on God and on the writer of this beautiful t

theo-poetic.  Amen.

This Sunday we began a “Faith Forum After Hours” time for sermon feedback.  The following questions were included in the bulletin and used for that discussion.

Questions for Reflection

“Genesis 1 is not science.”  When you hear that so starkly stated, how do you feel?  How does this have an impact on your understanding of the Bible?

Humans did not bring the world into being, and it is not we who sustain it….  There is a powerful, awe-inspiring creativity manifest in our world – and, indeed, in ourselves: the new, the novel, the unforeseeable, the previously unheard of, break forth roundabout us and in our midst; and human life continues to be sustained from beyond itself….  We are called to participate ever more fully and effectively in the creative transformation of our existence. (Gordon D. Kaufman, In the Beginning… Creativity, 70)

            Humankind, full of all creative possibilities, is God’s work.  Humankind is called to co-create…  God gave to humankind the talent to create with all the world. (Hildegard of Bingen in Matthew Fox, Creativity, 230)

            Whatever one does can be done with a certain attitude, a certain spirit that arises out of the nature of the character of the person performing the act.  One can even see creatively – a greater freshness, penetration, and efficiency of perception. (Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2^nd Edition, 170, 171). 

Reading these three quotes, how do you think about the idea of being a co-creator with God?  Where do you experience your creative best?

Miswritten, misread, that charge:

subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.

Surely we were to have been

earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.

Surely our task

was to have been

to love the earth,

to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden.

(Denise Levertov, from“Tragic Error” in The Life Around Us, 13)

If part of our task as created in God’s image is to love the earth how can the church foster constructive conversations about environmental issues which often get pushed into narrowly partisan political frames?  How can we talk about climate change?

What might we be doing to love the earth better?

Jesus is Just Alright

Sermon preached June 1, 2014

Texts: Acts 1:6-14

            “Jesus is Just Alright” The Byrds.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpKAQacDkFo

            With this sermon title there was really no mystery about a song I might play this morning, that is, for those of us who know about this song.  The only mystery may have been – The Byrds or The Doobie Brothers.  This was The Byrds.

            Jesus is just alright.  Yes.  But Jesus is really more, so much more for Christians.  He is absolutely central to and for our faith and life.  At the heart of the Christian Bible we have four stories about the life of Jesus, four stories – the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The story is told with different emphases and nuances four times because of the importance of Jesus.

            Here is a small sampling of quotes from theologians and biblical scholars about Jesus and Christian faith.  People are Christians because Jesus is basic to their belief (Douglas John Hall, Why Christian?, 18).  For those who identify themselves as Christians… Jesus is the author of our humanity (Walter Wink, Just Jesus, 15).  For Christians, Jesus is utterly central.  In a concise sentence, Jesus is for Christians the decisive revelation of God. (Marcus Borg, Jesus, 6. Also Convictions, 15)

            Jesus is utterly central.  He is at the heart of Christian faith.  He tells us about God.  He tells us about the possibilities for our lives, what being human can mean.  Christians are people who are passionate about Jesus.  So what might today’s rather strange story being trying to say to us about this Jesus?  Let’s admit it; this is a rather strange story.

            The disciples are together with the risen Jesus.  They are wondering what happens next.  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  The question is one that seems to indicate that they still have not really grasped the mission of Jesus, which is not the restoration of a nation, but the transformation of the world.  Jesus shifts the conversation to that transformative work.  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

            What happens next is the strange part.  When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  Suddenly, woosh, and Jesus is just gone.  The strangeness continues.  While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly, two men in white robes stood by them.  They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  Seems like kind of a silly question.  Wouldn’t you be looking up as Jesus is wooshed away?

            But what is this story trying to tell us about Jesus, who is central to our faith, the decisive revelation of God?  How about this – maybe we can get Jesus wrong.  Maybe it is important to let certain of our ideas and/or images of Jesus go so we can go and be better witnesses to Jesus with our words and our lives.  Just as the old Zen master said “if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him” perhaps there are times when we have to grow beyond some of our ideas of Jesus so the power of Jesus can reach us again.

            When you read this text from Acts, we still see the disciples struggling to understand just what Jesus was up to, even after the resurrection.  “When are you going to restore the fortunes of Israel?” they wonder.  But Jesus is not a nationalistic hero whose task was to restore the fortunes of a particular people.  Jesus is about transformation, about the power to be more human, about relationship to God.

            At the end of his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg describes his understanding of what Jesus means.  Discussing the Greek and Latin roots of the English word “believe,” and noting that they have to do with “giving one’s heart” rather than intellectual assent, Borg writes: Believing in Jesus… means to give one’s heart, one’s self at the deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus, who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit (137).  This giving is not simply a one-time thing in Borg’s understanding, a single statement of commitment.  Rather it is an on-going journey, “a journeying with Jesus” (135).  This journey means continuing to learn and grow.  It means to be in a community with others on the way.  It means becoming more compassionate. (Borg, 135-137).  By the end of our text for today, there are the beginnings of the disciples getting it.  They are together.  They are praying.  They are widening the circle to include women.  This community of prayer will become a community of prayer and  power in the next chapter, fearless, courageous, Spirit-filled as they carry on the work of Jesus in the world.

            I think we get Jesus wrong, get our relationship with Jesus wrong, when we see it as too passive and/or as too static.  Giving one’s self at our deepest level to Jesus is not simply staring into space saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”  “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  There are moments for that, to be sure, but it is not all of the Christian life.  Giving one’s self at our deepest level to Jesus is not a one-time commitment, it is not saying “yes” and standing still.  It is not simply saying that I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and stopping there.  It is a journey of growth and adventure.  In the process some of our ideas about Jesus and the Christian life may be wooshed away.

            Rather than being passive or static, our relationship to Jesus, to God through Jesus, is a relationship of maturation.  In the first chapter of Colossians, Paul writes about wanting everyone to be “mature in Christ” and goes on to say, “for this I toil and struggle with all the energy that God powerfully inspires within me” (Colossians 1:28-29).  In Ephesians, he writes about growing to “maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:14).  The writer of James encourages his readers to become “mature and complete, lacking nothing” (1:4).  Another way to think about this idea of maturing in faith is to remember that Jesus, in John 15, shifts the language about his relationship to the disciples.  “I do not call you servants any longer… but I have called you friends” (15:15)

            If we really want to grab hold of the meaning of the ascension story, perhaps we need to look inward.  Someone has written that “the ascension confirms the belief that what is highest above human beings is what is most inward” (Walter Wink, The Human Being, 156, refers to Ricouer, Symbolism of Evil, 270).  Jesus is wooshed away, but Jesus remains present within.  There is the power of the Spirit in our lives, a power for growth, for maturing, and a power that moves us out into the world to offer words of grace and forgiveness and engage in compassionate healing action.  We are to grow and mature, to the measure of the full stature of Christ, or in Eugene Peterson’s rendering, grow into “fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”  To be fully alive like Jesus is inward development and outward compassion.

            For Christians Jesus is central, but we can get Jesus wrong.  We can become too passive or too static rather than be on the journey of maturing, of working with the power of the Spirit to become fully mature adults, mature within and without, fully alive in Christ.  To live the Jesus’ life is to become friends with Jesus, to share his journey, to be about his transformative work in the world.

            Christians are people passionate about Jesus, because he is the author of our humanity, the one in whom we become fully mature and fully alive, the one in whom we see God.  It is not always easy to be passionate about Jesus when Jesus gets used to justify being anti-gay, or anti-science, or when people are threatened with Jesus – “turn or burn.”  Yet we are a people passionate about Jesus, even as we seek to get Jesus right.  This week, I want you to take some time to think about your relationship with Jesus.  How has being on the journey with Jesus made a difference for you?  How has giving your deepest self to the power of Jesus’ Spirit made a difference for you?  Where has Jesus helped you to be more fully mature, more fully alive?  What would you tell someone if they asked you about your faith?

            Christians are people who are compassionate.  We seek to make the world more whole, to offer grace, healing, food for the hungry, justice for the oppressed, peace in the midst of conflict.  An old hymn says, “Jesus, thou are all compassion.”  I think that gets Jesus right.  How has giving your deepest self to the power of Jesus’ Spirit moved you to compassionate action in the world?  Where might the Jesus Spirit of compassion be leading you next?  Ask yourself that this week, too.

            Christians are on a thoughtful journey.  Maturing is being able to ask questions and to engage in self-reflection.  Are there place where your understanding of Christian faith has itself become a problem to your growth and development?  Are there places where you need to let certain ideas or images about Jesus or faith be wooshed away, so you can be filled anew with the life-changing power of God’s Spirit?  Take some time this week for that reflection.

            Passionate, compassionate, thoughtful – fully mature adults, fully developed within and without – for this we struggle with all the energy God powerfully inspires within us.  We are not those who just stand there looking to the sky.  We give our deepest selves to Jesus and join him on the journey of transformation.  Amen.

Through It All

 Sermon preached May 25, 2014

            One of my favorite movies turns twenty next year.  Mr. Holland’s Opus is a movie about a music teacher, and we follow him through his career.  In one memorable scene, Mr. Holland attends the funeral of a former student killed in Vietnam, and we hear the voice of the gym teacher reading a familiar poem.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

            The poem, written by a Canadian soldier in World War I, goes on from there.  It is a familiar poem, perhaps especially this weekend, when we as a nation recall all those who fought and died and are buried in various Flanders fields.

            War.  Loss.  Death.  “Life is difficult,” so Scott Peck tells us at the beginning of The Road Less Traveled, a book now well over thirty years old.  But Peck goes on to say, “once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult.” (15)

            With all due respect, I disagree with the last part of Peck’s statement.  Simply understanding that life is difficult does not seem to dispense with its difficulties.  Even Peck, himself, hedges.  What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one.  Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair.  These are uncomfortable feelings….  And since life poses and endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy. (16)  Simply understanding does not make the pain and difficulty all disappear.

            When I was a younger man, I expected the world to be in better shape than it is now.  This week I was at the Damiano Center with some of the youth going to New York in June.  I asked about how the center began.  It started in 1982 when there was a deep economic crisis in Duluth, and across the country.  It began as a temporary effort to provide food for folks until the economy got better.  Thirty some years later it is still going, busy as ever.

            A former president, in a State of the Union speech said the following: The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?  Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions.  It has become a common cause of all the people of this country….  Clean air, clean water, open spaces – these should once again be the birthright of every American.  The date was January 22, 1970, the president was Richard Nixon.  A great question of the seventies is now a great question of the teens, but now there seems a great partisan divide over environmental issues, especially climate change.

            Heroin, a scourge of an earlier drug abuse age, something that seemed entirely frightening to me as a teen, heroin is making a comeback, enslaving people, taking lives.

            In Nigeria, over 300 girls have been kidnapped in the name of a fundamentalist brand of Islam by an organization called Boko Haram for seeking an education.  Boko Haram itself means something like “Western education is forbidden.”

            I thought the world would be doing better by now.  Life is difficult.

            But we need not only look out at the world to experience the difficulty of life.  As Scott Peck wrote in his book, we know life is difficult from our own experience.  There are inner difficulties we experience.

            Over thirty years ago, psychologist Carl Rogers noted: to a degree probably unknown before, modern man experiences his loneliness, his cut-off-ness,his isolation both from his own deeper being and from others (A Way of Being, 166-167).  There has always been a degree of loneliness and isolation in human existence, but something about modern society makes our experience of this even more acute. Life is difficult.

Poet William Stafford, in a notebook penned this: You had your wound – now the healing starts.  The wounding is clean, but the healing hurts.  (Sound of the Ax, 67)  Healing, as necessary and needed as it is, can also be painful.

One of the reasons I love the Psalms is that they do not turn away from the difficulty of life.  They are honest.  They take the challenges, pains, hurts, disappointments, difficulties of life seriously.  Life is such that our feet can slip, and sometimes they do.  Sometimes we get trapped, sometimes because of our own choices.  Life can feel like a burden laid upon our backs.  Sometimes in life it feels like people ride over our heads, that we have to go through fire and water.

I love the Psalms because they are honest.  Now the Psalms wonder about the place of God in all the difficulties of life, and here the writer suggests that God lets it all happen.  I would argue with the Psalmist there, but that is another sermon, another discussion.  The bottom line in the Psalm is that life presents us with difficulties, hurts, challenges, pains.

While the Psalms often offer unflinching looks at life’s difficulties, struggles, pains and sorrows, they also offer something else.  They offer an invitation to see more, to see God, and to trust God through it all.

Through it all, God has kept us among the living.  Through it all, God has brought us out to a spacious place. Life sometimes gives us reason to cry aloud, yet God listens. God hears the cries of our hearts, when the cries are cries of pain, when the cries are shouts of joy.  Through it all, God never removes God’s steadfast love from us.

In the Psalms we see life is difficult and we see that life is beautiful.  That’s important.  An honest faith needs to look at all of life, all of the world.  If we ignore life’s difficulties, we paint a skewed picture of the world and we find that we cannot speak to many people of our faith.  If we ignore life’s beauty and joy, we miss the on-going activity of the Spirit in the world and we have a no less skewed view of the world.

Life is difficult and life is beautiful.

The writer Annie Dillard speaks so eloquently of this.  Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery….  There seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous….  Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them.  The least we can do is try to be there. (from Pilgrim At Tinker Creek in The Annie Dillard Reader, 286-287)

The writer John Updike is equally eloquent.  In his “Forward” to his collection of early short stories, Updike writes: But when has happiness ever been the subject of fiction?  The pursuit of it is just that – a pursuit.  Death and its adjutants tax each transaction.  What is possessed is devalued by what is coveted. Discontent, conflict, waste, sorrow, fear – these are the worthy, inevitable subjects (xiv, The Early Stories).  Yet Updike says he finds in his stories “no lack of joy… no lack of affection and goodwill.”  “Art hopes to sidestep mortality with feats of attention, of harmony, of illuminating connection” (xiv).  Updike said he wrote to “give the mundane its beautiful due” (xv).

Life is difficult.  Life is beautiful.  The question before us is a question of where to place our trust.  Do we trust that the grace, goodness and beauty have deeper roots, have a power that finally will not be extinguished by the struggles, hurts, pains, cruelties of the world?  Do we trust that God’s steadfast love, which is grace, beauty, goodness, remains and seeks always to lead us out to a spacious place, even if we cannot simply stay there forever?  The pain won’t simply go away.  The struggles and difficulties do not magically disappear.  Healing can still be painful.  Do we trust that through it all, God is with us?  Do we trust that through it all, God continues to incarnate love, joy, beauty, grace and goodness?  Do we trust deeply enough to stake our lives on it, to live differently, to live for love, joy, beauty, grace and goodness?

Walter Wink was a New Testament scholar – a pastor, theologian, political activist and writer.  Wink died of dementia in 2012.  His last book was published earlier this year – it is a memoir of sorts entitled  Just Jesus.

My perfectionism did not arise from any form of indoctrination from fundamentalism.  It came straight out of my desperate desire to win my parents’ – and God’s love (28-29)…  There still remains a wound at the core of my existence. Why did I have to struggle so hard to overcome its consequences?  I know this: without that wound, I would have become a shallow caricature of a person (30)…  I understand that God worked for my healing…  How did God use my wound to heal me? (30)…  But I still struggle to become a human being. (32)

Wink writes movingly and convincingly about the joys and struggles of life and faith, of coming to spacious places.  Speaking of his parents: Over time, I realized that… my refusal to love and forgive them had robbed all of us of much deserved happiness (32).  And what sustains Walter Wink in all of this?  The Human Being keeps us going (34) – the Human Being, the son of the man, God incarnate in Jesus the Christ.

Life is difficult.  Life is beautiful.  Healing hurts.  Beauty and grace are performed whether we will or sense them.  Through it all, God is with us, listening to the cries of our hearts.  Through it all, God seeks to incarnate joy, beauty, grace goodness, love.  Through it all, God never removes God’s steadfast love from us.  Through it all, trust that love.  Amen.

Jesus the Fifth Beatle

May 18, 2014

Texts: I Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

            The Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LOgMWbDGPA&feature=kp

            The year is 1966.  In August, The Beatles release Revolver, their seventh studio album, though if you know something of the history of The Beatles you know that albums were released differently in the United States, and this was their eleventh US album.  Someone has written of Revlover “This almost flawless album can be seen as the peak of the Beatle’s creative career” (The Beatles: an illustrated history, 54).  “Eleanor Rigby” comes from this album.

            The Beatles were a phenomenon.  Ever since they hit the shores of  the United States in February 1964, the world was struck with Beatlemania.  Given the proliferation of media outlets I don’t think we will ever see something quite like the Beatles again.  Beyond all the hype and publicity, though, the songs have held up well over time.

            Given their success, there were people who wanted to attach themselves to the group in one way or another.  Occasionally, someone would try and claim the title “the fifth Beatle.”  One of the first to do so was a New York disc jockey named Muarry the K.  Doesn’t that sound like the 1960s!  At times other musicians were given the title the fifth Beatle – Harry Nillson, Billy Preston.

            For The Beatles, 1966 was also a year marked by controversy.  Early in the year, John Lennon had given an interview with a British journalist in which he said about The Beatles, “we’re more popular than Jesus now.”  Months later the remarks were reported in the United States, and they created an uproar.  Radio stations in Alabama and Texas banned Beatle’s music from being played.  Some organized Beatle’s record burnings, as did other groups.

            If being the fifth Beatle means doing something rather “Beatle-like,” maybe Jesus would qualify.  Listen to these words again from John 14.  “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”  Greater than Jesus!  When John Lennon was making his rather awkward comment on Jesus, he was trying to say something about the state of the church in England at that time, echoing things even English church observers were noting about the decline of the church in that country in the 1960s.  When Jesus was speaking, he was making a more dramatic claim.

            If Jesus can be thought of as the face of God turned toward us, we are often the face of Jesus for the world.  Jesus wants to touch the world through us.  God wants to love the world through us.

            The year is 1966.  A cornerstone is placed in a building constructed at the intersection of Sixth Avenue East, Mesaba Avenue, and Central Entrance.  It is our cornerstone, but we are now inheritors of the traditions of two earlier churches, Chester Park United Methodist Church – for many years at 18^th Avenue East, and First Methodist Church, formerly at Third Avenue East and Third Street.  While we have a cornerstone that turns fifty in just a couple of years, our inner cornerstone is Jesus himself – a living stone, and we are being “built into a spiritual house.”  It is another image for this idea that Jesus wants to touch the world through us, that God wants to love the world through us.  Those who live the Jesus way, the Jesus truth, the Jesus life, are involved in the very work of Jesus, and may even do some greater things, touch more people, bringing good news to wider circles, feed thousands.

            So what are we up to?  How are we doing?  Just this week, we distributed over 220 shares of food through Ruby’s Pantry, which is now nearing the end of its fourth year here.  In speaking with someone earlier in the week, I was told just how helpful Ruby’s Pantry has been to their family, and how they share some of the food they get here with others.  Thank you for being about the work of Jesus, for letting Jesus touch the world through you, letting God love the world through you.

            The end of the week, our social hall became a mobile packing site for Feed My Starving Children.  It was part of an effort by The United Methodist Church in Minnesota to pack one million meals to be sent to hungry people across the world.  Our site packed over 100,000 meals Friday evening and Saturday.  Thank you for being about the work of Jesus, for letting Jesus touch the world through you, letting God love the world through you.

            We served our roast beef dinner last week.  While it is indeed a significant fund-raiser for the church, we are also giving to others through this dinner.  This summer we will help feed youth on a mission trip to this area with some of the leftover beef.  Following the dinner, we took some meals to Harbor House Crisis Shelter in Superior, and heard back this week about how for many it was the best meal they had eaten in awhile.  They were very grateful.  Thank you for being about the work of Jesus, for letting Jesus touch the world through you, letting God love the world through you.

            We heard some this morning again about our on-going work with Lake Superior Elementary – mentoring, the clothes closet.  Thank you for being about the work of Jesus, for letting Jesus touch the world through you, letting God love the world through you.

            This week we ministered to the grieving.  I officiated at a service for Bill Sharp.  Yesterday we hosted a service for Elsa Hurmi Campbell, a long-time member.  We walk with people in grief.  We are all saddened this week by the death of our friend Dave Miller.  I know how much your love and care and prayers have meant to Dave’s family as they walked the journey of his last days.  Thank you for being about the work of Jesus, for letting Jesus touch the world through you, letting God love the world through you.

            Letting Jesus touch the world through us, letting God love the world through us is not just a matter of what we do, of being busy all the time.  It is about the work, but it is also about becoming certain kinds of people.  It’s not just what we do, but also who we are.  “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light.”  We are being made different, shined up a bit, so that God’s love, care, compassion radiate just a little bit more brightly in our lives.  Thank you for letting God’s Spirit continue to form your hearts, for letting Jesus touch the world through you, letting God love the world through you.

            We are not perfect.  We mess up.  I know I mess up.  But we are on a journey together.  We are on the way.

            The year is 1963.  John F. Kennedy is president.  The Beatles had released two albums in the United Kingdom, but none yet in the United States.  Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Jewish theologian sends a telegram to the president, the day before a scheduled meeting with him which will include other religious leaders.  He writes the president about civil rights, which will be the topic of the discussion.  Heschel writes: “Please demand of religious leaders personal involvement not just solemn declaration.  We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate the Negros.”  Heschel, whose daughter I had the pleasure of knowing a bit at Southern Methodist University, Heschel ends his telegram: “the hour calls for high moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”

            Jesus makes an audacious claim, that others will be bigger than him.  “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”  We continue to try and take that seriously here – doing the work of Jesus, being people of the Spirit, letting Jesus touch the world through us, letting God love the world through us.  It is all pretty audacious, but should our response to God in Jesus ever be anything less than moral grandeur and spiritual audacity?  Amen.