Sermon preached March 20, 2011
Texts: Psalm 46 (Hymnal page 780)
Play a bit of The Beatles “Sexy Sadie.” Do any of you know who that song is about? Do any of you remember the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi? How about Transcendental Meditation? Beginning in the mid to late 1960s, Eastern forms of meditation became something of interest here in the United States, and in some ways they have remained of interest to many people. The Beatles traveled to India to meet with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to learn meditation. The song is about the Maharishi. The Maharishi came to the United States to teach meditation here, even establishing a university in Iowa.
Why should Eastern meditation have gained a foothold here, in a country where Christian faith is so prevalent, in a country whose roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition run so deep? I am sure there are many reasons for this interest. We are a culture that is attracted to the new, and sometimes even the exotic. Another reason I surmise is that some were looking for a certain experiential dimension to their spirituality that they were not finding in Christian practices. Growing up, “meditation” was never something I heard about in my church.
But, you might be surprised to know that it is there. There is a rich tradition of Christian meditative prayer practices that can be an important part of our prayer lives as Christians. If Transcendental Meditation caught the attention of a number of people in the late 1960 and 1970s, perhaps it is also because the church had neglected some of its own meditative traditions. They are worth recovering.
Yet when I think about this, isn’t meditation an odd fit with an understanding of prayer that sees relationship and transformation at the heart of prayer? That was my sermon last week, that the heart of prayer is found in relationship – deepening one’s relationship with the God of Jesus Christ, and in transformation – being changed by the God whose love we know in Jesus Christ. Where might meditation fit into this understanding of prayer?
Meditation often uses repetition in prayer and that isn’t necessarily the best style of communication. Repeating usually isn’t a good thing in communication. If you have to repeat yourself too many times, you wonder if your partner is listening. Or if you hear your name repeated more than twice, there is usually impatience in the tone. David, DAVID, DAVID!
However, I think models of human communication break down here when we want to discuss communication with God. In her book In God’s Presence, Marjorie Suchocki writes that “God’s guidance… is an insistent whisper” (123). If we want to listen to God, it requires quieting down in a noisy world. It requires close attention in a world where distraction reigns. Prayer as meditation understands this. Prayer as meditation deepens relationship because its foundation is openness to God’s grace. We find a home in that grace in the quiet prayers of meditation. Meditation affirms God’s grace and quiets us. Meditative prayer turns us toward God and tunes us in more deeply to God.
Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse wrote: “To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing within you” (quoted in Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 59) Henri Nouwen, who quotes Theophan goes on to reflect, “the quiet repetition of a single word can help us descend with the mind into the heart” The Way of the Heart, 64). That’s meditation, that’s meditative prayer – to use words sparingly, repetitively to descend with the mind into the heart and there encounter God in deep and profound ways.
Contemporary Orthodox author, Federica Mathewes-Green, writes this about praying the Jesus Prayer, about which I will say more in a minute: In the process you hone your ability to discern God’s presence. He is already there, of course; we just aren’t very good at perceiving it. Practicing the Jesus Prayer helps you sharpen your ability to “tune into” his presence, just as you would practice your scales to hone your ability to identify musical pitch (The Jesus Prayer, x-xi). The Jesus Prayer is a part of an important prayer tradition within Christian faith, “hesychasm,” from the Greek word “hesychia” meaning “quietness.” It is a tradition of meditation, of contemplative prayer.
So if this sounds interesting, intriguing, how does one begin? The rest of this morning’s sermon is going to be experimental and experiential. You are going to learn some forms of Christian meditation.
Psalm 46:10a: Be still and know that I am God. These simple words can become a wonderful meditative prayer, a prayer of deep gratitude for God and God’s love and grace. Pray the words one at a time forward and backward.
The Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me – was developed in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine in the early centuries of the Christian faith and the Christian church. It has been practiced in the Eastern Orthodox Church since. (Mathewes-Green, The Jesus Prayer, ix). Many have testified to its power, like St. Hesychias the Priest (8th or 9th century): Extreme watchfulness and the Prayer of Jesus Christ, undistracted by thoughts, are the necessary basis for inner vigilance and unfathomable stillness of soul, for the deeps of secret and singular contemplation, for the humility that knows and assesses, for rectitude and love. (The Philokalia, I: 164).
Use of beads. One can use prayer beads with prayers like the Jesus Prayer. The use of prayer beads is found in many traditions, and in both the Catholic rosary tradition and the Orthodox hesychasm tradition. Another wonderful repetitive prayer that works well with something like prayer beads is this: Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill my mind with your peace, fill my heart with your love, fill my soul with your joy.
Body prayer: Meditation can use the body instead of or with words. Writing about praying the Jesus Prayer, Theoliptos, Metropolitan of Philadelphia (14th century) wrote: Do not neglect prostration…. Let each prostration be accompanied by a noetic invocation of Christ, so that by falling before the Lord in soul and body you may gain the grace of the God of souls and bodies (Philokalia, IV: 185). Using our body in prayer is an important meditative technique. I once taught this body prayer, and would like to teach it to you again:
1. Create a sacred space by bringing your hands together in front of you. Be enveloped in silence and peace.
2. Stretch your arms up in praise of God and in gratitude to God for the good gifts of life.
3. Bring your arms down just a bit, forming yourself into a human chalice to receive from God blessings and peace and grace.
4. Cross your arms in front of you, letting God’s grace and peace and love penetrate deeply into your heart and mind and soul. Know that you are loved by God just because you are.
5. Open you arms in service to the world. We are not meant to hoard the good gifts of life, but to share them, to give ourselves to others in love.
6. End with the sacred space stance.
The heart of prayer is relationship and transformation. Meditation, meditative prayer, can enhance relationship and transform our lives. When our lives our different, we can make a difference in the world. Meditative prayer is not the only kind of Christian prayer there is, and is not intended to be the only kind of prayer we pray. Yet it has its place in our lives, in our relationship with God. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. Think of this river as a river of God’s grace, God’s peace, God’s love. Think of meditative prayer as allowing yourself to bathe in this river, allowing yourself to float in this river, making God glad. Amen.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Because I Said So
Sermon preached March 13, 2011
Texts: I Thessalonians 5:12-17; Romans 8:26-27; Psalm 42:1-6a
This first part is just for parents. How many of you ever heard your parents say to you, “Because I said so”? And how many of you determined, when you heard that, that you would never use that phrase with your own children? And how many of you have found yourself saying to your child, “Because I said so”? Hey, there are times when it just works!
Our Lenten emphasis this year is prayer. Already I have preached on prayer as we headed into Lent – last week, and as Lent began on Wednesday, and now I begin a specific series of sermons on prayer. I invite and encourage you to read along with others Marjorie Suchocki’s book on prayer, In God’s Presence.
But we could begin all this with a simple question. Why pray? Some might answer, “Because I said so” – the “I” here being God. That seems like a pretty powerful “I.” Why pray – because God tells us to. I Thessalonians 5:17 is read as an imperative, a command, “pray without ceasing.” Pray because God tells you to, end of story.
Let me suggest that this is not a very good reading of I Thessalonians 5:17, which seems much more a word of encouragement and invitation than a commandment, nor does this response to the question “why pray?” reflect a very mature kind of faith. “Why pray?” is a legitimate question. So, too, the question “What is the essence of prayer, what is the heart of prayer?” Let me further suggest that in answering this second question about the heart of prayer, we come pretty close to answering the first.
So what is the heart of prayer? On Wednesday evening I said that prayer was our spiritual breathing, as necessary for the health of our souls as breathing is for the health of our bodies. I believe that to be true, and it gets at the question of the heart of prayer, but does not answer it as completely as it needs to be. When we say that breathing is necessary for the health of our body, we can go deeper and describe the biochemistry of the human body and its need for oxygen and how the body uses oxygen from the atmosphere that it takes in during breathing. When I say that prayer is our spiritual breathing, I have not gone quite as deep. I have not yet described what this does for the soul which keeps it alive and healthy.
So what is the heart of prayer? Two words: relationship and transformation.
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (Psalm 42:1-2). At its heart, prayer is about a relationship with God, an on-going relationship with God. When we neglect our relationship with the God who created us in love and for love, something is amiss in our lives. St. Augustine wrote about God, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. (Confessions, I.1) It is as if we have this empty place in our souls that only God can find and occupy. Prayer is an acknowledgment of this longing for God, of this place we have for God in our hearts and souls. Prayer is also to come to understand something else Augustine wrote – God thirsts to be thirsted after (quoted in Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 85)
Prayer is about relationship. One of the real gifts of Marjorie Suchocki’s book on prayer, is the emphasis she places on prayer as relationship, as genuine give and take between a God whose very nature is relational and we human beings. Prayer is openness to the God who pervades the universe and therefore ourselves, and … prayer is also this God’s openness to us (18) …. Prayer is the act of bringing our moment-by-moment connectedness to God into our consciousness (33). Prayer is “a dance of the divine presence” (32).
God is in relationship with us, by God’s very nature. God desires that relationship to be more aware, conscious, intentional on our part. God thirsts to be thirsted after. For our part we need that relationship to God because of the God-shaped space in the depth of our lives. Prayer is about this relationship, and here is one more thing. God doesn’t just wait for us to wake up, God actively invites the relationship of prayer. Saint John Climacus described the dynamic in this way: When fire descends into the heart, it revives prayer. And when prayer has arisen and ascended to heaven, then the descent of the fire takes place in the cenacle of the soul. (Zaleskis, Prayer, 143) God’s grace is the fire that comes into our hearts and invites prayer, and as we respond with prayer, that fire of God moves more deeply into the soul. God is so desirous of a deepening relationship with us that God not only initiates that relationship again and again, God even helps us with the language of prayer – God’s “Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” Paul tells us.
If relationship is one chamber of the heart of prayer, transformation is the other. Again, Marjorie Suchocki writes wonderfully about this. Prayer also opens us to the possibility of change, with the direction of that change oriented by God’s wisdom relative to us (33)…. Recognition of God can enhance our ability to live lives of peace, justice and beauty (18). When we pray, we should expect to be made different by our praying. In that sense, prayer is risky business. The God who will not leave us alone, will not leave us the same, either. When we open up honestly to God, we may discover wounded places inside, the healing of which will mean change. Connecting with the heart of God may open our hearts in new ways to the hopes and hurts of the world, and we may find that God is inviting us to do something about them. Prayer may not only change us, but the God we encounter in prayer also wants to change the world through us.
Prayer changes us… it leads somewhere specific and is not just an aimless wandering with no discernable purpose in mind. Its purpose is exposure to everything that is in us and the willingness to receive the inevitable changes that come as a result (Ulanovs, Primary Speech, 116). These words about prayer from Ann and Barry Ulanov are another confirmation that transformation is at the heart of prayer. It is an adventure that shapes the adventurer. It is a journey that leaves the explorer changed by what she has met along the way.
Pray without ceasing. It is an invitation to a relationship with God. It is an invitation to be changed, transformed, but the love of God and the God of love. If you are wondering how – read and discuss Marjorie Suchocki’s book and come to worship in the coming week.
To end with, I want to offer a testimony to the heart of prayer. I wrote about it earlier this week on my blog. A couple of weeks ago now, I was meeting with our Board of Ordained Ministry as we interviewed persons for ordination. We meet at a Catholic monastery and retreat center, and our evening worship is shared in their chapel. This particular night, the following passage was read from Colossians: As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do , in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.As I listened to these words, I was looking up at a crucifix at the front of the chapel. The figure of Jesus grabbed my attention in a way that a crucifix never had before. There was Jesus, lightly clothed, yet I knew him to be fully clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and love. And there was this overwhelming feeling that I wanted to embrace this Jesus, to offer compassion. I could almost feel myself doing this, that I was helping carry Jesus. There was an oddly wonderful physical sense to all this, but there was more. As I feeling the presence of Jesus in this powerful way, it was as if that presence was becoming part of me, penetrating my being. It did not last long, but it was powerful. Theologically and spiritually I could make sense of all this – in life I want to clothe myself with this Jesus, to let his presence make a difference in who I am. I want to carry Jesus into the world – offering compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience.
This was a powerful moment of prayer. It was a moment of grace, a moment of closeness to God in Jesus. It was an important moment along a transformational journey. A relationship was deepened, and I am changed a bit. I am moved more profoundly to seek to embrace the Christ in me and to offer the Christ in me to the world. That is the Christian task for all of us, and prayer is a vital part of that – not because I said so but because you can test it out. Amen.
Texts: I Thessalonians 5:12-17; Romans 8:26-27; Psalm 42:1-6a
This first part is just for parents. How many of you ever heard your parents say to you, “Because I said so”? And how many of you determined, when you heard that, that you would never use that phrase with your own children? And how many of you have found yourself saying to your child, “Because I said so”? Hey, there are times when it just works!
Our Lenten emphasis this year is prayer. Already I have preached on prayer as we headed into Lent – last week, and as Lent began on Wednesday, and now I begin a specific series of sermons on prayer. I invite and encourage you to read along with others Marjorie Suchocki’s book on prayer, In God’s Presence.
But we could begin all this with a simple question. Why pray? Some might answer, “Because I said so” – the “I” here being God. That seems like a pretty powerful “I.” Why pray – because God tells us to. I Thessalonians 5:17 is read as an imperative, a command, “pray without ceasing.” Pray because God tells you to, end of story.
Let me suggest that this is not a very good reading of I Thessalonians 5:17, which seems much more a word of encouragement and invitation than a commandment, nor does this response to the question “why pray?” reflect a very mature kind of faith. “Why pray?” is a legitimate question. So, too, the question “What is the essence of prayer, what is the heart of prayer?” Let me further suggest that in answering this second question about the heart of prayer, we come pretty close to answering the first.
So what is the heart of prayer? On Wednesday evening I said that prayer was our spiritual breathing, as necessary for the health of our souls as breathing is for the health of our bodies. I believe that to be true, and it gets at the question of the heart of prayer, but does not answer it as completely as it needs to be. When we say that breathing is necessary for the health of our body, we can go deeper and describe the biochemistry of the human body and its need for oxygen and how the body uses oxygen from the atmosphere that it takes in during breathing. When I say that prayer is our spiritual breathing, I have not gone quite as deep. I have not yet described what this does for the soul which keeps it alive and healthy.
So what is the heart of prayer? Two words: relationship and transformation.
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (Psalm 42:1-2). At its heart, prayer is about a relationship with God, an on-going relationship with God. When we neglect our relationship with the God who created us in love and for love, something is amiss in our lives. St. Augustine wrote about God, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. (Confessions, I.1) It is as if we have this empty place in our souls that only God can find and occupy. Prayer is an acknowledgment of this longing for God, of this place we have for God in our hearts and souls. Prayer is also to come to understand something else Augustine wrote – God thirsts to be thirsted after (quoted in Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 85)
Prayer is about relationship. One of the real gifts of Marjorie Suchocki’s book on prayer, is the emphasis she places on prayer as relationship, as genuine give and take between a God whose very nature is relational and we human beings. Prayer is openness to the God who pervades the universe and therefore ourselves, and … prayer is also this God’s openness to us (18) …. Prayer is the act of bringing our moment-by-moment connectedness to God into our consciousness (33). Prayer is “a dance of the divine presence” (32).
God is in relationship with us, by God’s very nature. God desires that relationship to be more aware, conscious, intentional on our part. God thirsts to be thirsted after. For our part we need that relationship to God because of the God-shaped space in the depth of our lives. Prayer is about this relationship, and here is one more thing. God doesn’t just wait for us to wake up, God actively invites the relationship of prayer. Saint John Climacus described the dynamic in this way: When fire descends into the heart, it revives prayer. And when prayer has arisen and ascended to heaven, then the descent of the fire takes place in the cenacle of the soul. (Zaleskis, Prayer, 143) God’s grace is the fire that comes into our hearts and invites prayer, and as we respond with prayer, that fire of God moves more deeply into the soul. God is so desirous of a deepening relationship with us that God not only initiates that relationship again and again, God even helps us with the language of prayer – God’s “Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” Paul tells us.
If relationship is one chamber of the heart of prayer, transformation is the other. Again, Marjorie Suchocki writes wonderfully about this. Prayer also opens us to the possibility of change, with the direction of that change oriented by God’s wisdom relative to us (33)…. Recognition of God can enhance our ability to live lives of peace, justice and beauty (18). When we pray, we should expect to be made different by our praying. In that sense, prayer is risky business. The God who will not leave us alone, will not leave us the same, either. When we open up honestly to God, we may discover wounded places inside, the healing of which will mean change. Connecting with the heart of God may open our hearts in new ways to the hopes and hurts of the world, and we may find that God is inviting us to do something about them. Prayer may not only change us, but the God we encounter in prayer also wants to change the world through us.
Prayer changes us… it leads somewhere specific and is not just an aimless wandering with no discernable purpose in mind. Its purpose is exposure to everything that is in us and the willingness to receive the inevitable changes that come as a result (Ulanovs, Primary Speech, 116). These words about prayer from Ann and Barry Ulanov are another confirmation that transformation is at the heart of prayer. It is an adventure that shapes the adventurer. It is a journey that leaves the explorer changed by what she has met along the way.
Pray without ceasing. It is an invitation to a relationship with God. It is an invitation to be changed, transformed, but the love of God and the God of love. If you are wondering how – read and discuss Marjorie Suchocki’s book and come to worship in the coming week.
To end with, I want to offer a testimony to the heart of prayer. I wrote about it earlier this week on my blog. A couple of weeks ago now, I was meeting with our Board of Ordained Ministry as we interviewed persons for ordination. We meet at a Catholic monastery and retreat center, and our evening worship is shared in their chapel. This particular night, the following passage was read from Colossians: As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do , in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.As I listened to these words, I was looking up at a crucifix at the front of the chapel. The figure of Jesus grabbed my attention in a way that a crucifix never had before. There was Jesus, lightly clothed, yet I knew him to be fully clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and love. And there was this overwhelming feeling that I wanted to embrace this Jesus, to offer compassion. I could almost feel myself doing this, that I was helping carry Jesus. There was an oddly wonderful physical sense to all this, but there was more. As I feeling the presence of Jesus in this powerful way, it was as if that presence was becoming part of me, penetrating my being. It did not last long, but it was powerful. Theologically and spiritually I could make sense of all this – in life I want to clothe myself with this Jesus, to let his presence make a difference in who I am. I want to carry Jesus into the world – offering compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience.
This was a powerful moment of prayer. It was a moment of grace, a moment of closeness to God in Jesus. It was an important moment along a transformational journey. A relationship was deepened, and I am changed a bit. I am moved more profoundly to seek to embrace the Christ in me and to offer the Christ in me to the world. That is the Christian task for all of us, and prayer is a vital part of that – not because I said so but because you can test it out. Amen.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
To the Cloud
Sermon preached on Transfiguration Sunday March 6, 2011
Texts: Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9
What are some of the annual events in your life?
Every year there are things that roll around, and some bring us joy and some we dread. Last Sunday was the Oscars – the Academy Awards, our family enjoys those. I look forward to the opening of the baseball season and the World Series. I enjoy the Super Bowl and the Master’s golf tournament. Birthdays are often fun occasions, birthdays and anniversaries – though I know some birthdays are more difficult to take than others and if you have forgotten anniversaries often enough they are as much about panic as joy. We tend to dread annual events like tax day, or dental check ups or, perhaps physical exams. Every year I get my colon scoped – and this would be a great time for someone to hold up a TMI sign – too much information! Some annual events are painful because they bring with them the memory of a significant loss.
The church, of course, has its share of annual events – Christmas and Easter being among the most well-known and joyous. Confirmation is nice, and we could list others as well. But did you know that for those of us who in our preaching and worship use the ecumenical common lectionary – a three-year cycle of Scripture readings, one text comes up every year just before the beginning of Lent? It is the story of the transfiguration, the story of Jesus taking Peter, James and John up the mountain, and of their extraordinary experience of him and with him. It is a story about visions and clouds and voices.
And you know, it is an interesting story, but finding something to preach about every year using this story, well, it can be a bit of a challenge. There are a number of directions one can take: one could focus on a theological theme, preaching a Christological sermon about the nature of Jesus as the Christ. Often I have taken the tack of emphasizing the importance of going down the mountain. In our lives we may have some intense religious experiences, perhaps mystical experiences, where God seems closer to us than our own breath or heartbeat. Those experiences matter, but we are not to live as if they are all that matter. We cannot stay up on the mountaintop forever, as Peter seems to want to do. We need to go back down into the everyday life of the world, changed by what we have experienced on the mountain. There are many ways to talk about this, but they all end with the need to go down the mountain.
This year I want to turn that sermon on its head. One of the lessons of the story of the Transfiguration, and of the companion text from Exodus, is our need to go up the mountain, our need to make time and take time out and away to tend to our relationship with God, to nurture our relationship with Jesus. The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain.” Jesus took with him Peter and James, and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. I believe that God invites us up the mountain today. I believe Jesus wants to take us away for some time. We call this time, “worship.” We call this time “prayer” – our focus for the this morning.
Maybe some of you have seen these ads recently for a Windows computing platform. They end, “To the Cloud.” Apparently this technology lets you find files on your home computer while you are stuck in an airport. This technology lets you cut and paste your photos, so you can still have a wonderful family photo even if some family members were not paying attention when the picture was taken. Some of you have seen the ads. “To the cloud.”
Well, God in Jesus says something similar to us – to the cloud. Come away. Take some time. While this may be time away from other aspects of our lives, it is not an evasion of reality. Cloud computer technology promises to make waiting at airports more fun and interesting. Cloud computer technology promises that you can perfect your family in pictures. Computer technology may want to soften reality for us. Going to the cloud with God moves us more deeply into reality – the reality of our lives, the reality of God.
Barry and Ann Ulanov in their book about prayer entitled Primary Speech, write this: In prayer we say who in fact we are – not who we should be, nor who we wish we were, but who we are. Prayer begins with this confession. (1) In prayer we meet our deepest desires, our highest hopes, our darkest fears. In prayer we come clean with ourselves – where we have done well and where we have been wanting. But prayer is not a solo act, it is a relational endeavor. The great Jewish theologian of the last century, Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote, The purpose of prayer is to be brought to God’s attention: to be listened to, to be understood by [God]…. [ The human task] is not to know God, but to be known to God (The Insecurity of Freedom, 256). I am not sure he has it entirely right, but this is important. When we take time away for God in prayer, we have the opportunity to hear the deepest hopes and cries of our hearts and souls. Coming to know ourselves more deeply in prayer, we discover that there is also the God who wants to know us, who already knows us. Our praying is not crying out in the dark emptiness of night with only the wind to answer. Our praying is to God and with God; it is a response to an invitation to the cloud.
In prayer we come to know ourselves more deeply and we come to know that there is One who listens deeply. Ulanovs: God hears all the voices that speak out of us – our vocal prayer, the prayer said in our minds, the unvoiced longing rising from our hearts, the many voices of which we are not conscious but which cry out eloquently (1). We take time for God not only to speak, but also to know we are heard.
And the God who listens also speaks. Theologian Paul Tillich: No place is excluded from communicating to us a word from the Lord. It is always present and tries to be perceived by us. It is like the air, surrounding us… trying to enter every empty space. Tillich goes on to say: So… is there an empty space in your soul?... Without a soul opened for it, no word from the Lord can be received. Listening with an open soul, keeping an empty space in our inner life, sharpening our spiritual hearing: this is the only thing we can do. (The New Being, 123-124)
Have you left some space in your life to hear and respond to the voice of God – “Come up to me on the mountain”? In prayer we come to know ourselves more deeply and come to know that we are known deeply. In prayer we come to discover that we are listened to, and we find that we can listen to God.
Pay attention. Take time. Pray. I hope one of the ways you will make some time for God this Lent is to be part of our congregational book study of Marjorie Suchocki’s book In God’s Presence. Copies are available. I hope you will consider participating in a reading group with others. Sign-up and you will get an e-mail or phone call about group possibilities. Right now we have three groups, a Wednesday group, a Monday group, and a group that will be meeting starting next week during Faith Forum for three weeks. Chapters 1-3 for next Sunday! Sunday sermons during Lent are also going to focus on prayer, and as a compliment to the book. The book focuses on the what and why of prayer followed by forms of prayer. The sermons will discuss the what and why of prayer and focus on various methods for praying – some overlap and some complimentary material.
Regardless, of whether or not you choose to participate in this particular way of taking time for God, find ways to do it. Yes, we need to know that there will be work to do down the mountain. The love we feel when listened to in prayer is a love that needs to be shared. We do come down the mountain. Yet time on the mountain is not idle time, not wasted time. Without it our hearts can become discouraged in the work of love and justice in the world. Without it, our souls can wither, and our work can become soulless. We need time with God, and the invitation from the God who knows us, listens to us, and has a word for us is always there. To the cloud. Amen.
Texts: Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9
What are some of the annual events in your life?
Every year there are things that roll around, and some bring us joy and some we dread. Last Sunday was the Oscars – the Academy Awards, our family enjoys those. I look forward to the opening of the baseball season and the World Series. I enjoy the Super Bowl and the Master’s golf tournament. Birthdays are often fun occasions, birthdays and anniversaries – though I know some birthdays are more difficult to take than others and if you have forgotten anniversaries often enough they are as much about panic as joy. We tend to dread annual events like tax day, or dental check ups or, perhaps physical exams. Every year I get my colon scoped – and this would be a great time for someone to hold up a TMI sign – too much information! Some annual events are painful because they bring with them the memory of a significant loss.
The church, of course, has its share of annual events – Christmas and Easter being among the most well-known and joyous. Confirmation is nice, and we could list others as well. But did you know that for those of us who in our preaching and worship use the ecumenical common lectionary – a three-year cycle of Scripture readings, one text comes up every year just before the beginning of Lent? It is the story of the transfiguration, the story of Jesus taking Peter, James and John up the mountain, and of their extraordinary experience of him and with him. It is a story about visions and clouds and voices.
And you know, it is an interesting story, but finding something to preach about every year using this story, well, it can be a bit of a challenge. There are a number of directions one can take: one could focus on a theological theme, preaching a Christological sermon about the nature of Jesus as the Christ. Often I have taken the tack of emphasizing the importance of going down the mountain. In our lives we may have some intense religious experiences, perhaps mystical experiences, where God seems closer to us than our own breath or heartbeat. Those experiences matter, but we are not to live as if they are all that matter. We cannot stay up on the mountaintop forever, as Peter seems to want to do. We need to go back down into the everyday life of the world, changed by what we have experienced on the mountain. There are many ways to talk about this, but they all end with the need to go down the mountain.
This year I want to turn that sermon on its head. One of the lessons of the story of the Transfiguration, and of the companion text from Exodus, is our need to go up the mountain, our need to make time and take time out and away to tend to our relationship with God, to nurture our relationship with Jesus. The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain.” Jesus took with him Peter and James, and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. I believe that God invites us up the mountain today. I believe Jesus wants to take us away for some time. We call this time, “worship.” We call this time “prayer” – our focus for the this morning.
Maybe some of you have seen these ads recently for a Windows computing platform. They end, “To the Cloud.” Apparently this technology lets you find files on your home computer while you are stuck in an airport. This technology lets you cut and paste your photos, so you can still have a wonderful family photo even if some family members were not paying attention when the picture was taken. Some of you have seen the ads. “To the cloud.”
Well, God in Jesus says something similar to us – to the cloud. Come away. Take some time. While this may be time away from other aspects of our lives, it is not an evasion of reality. Cloud computer technology promises to make waiting at airports more fun and interesting. Cloud computer technology promises that you can perfect your family in pictures. Computer technology may want to soften reality for us. Going to the cloud with God moves us more deeply into reality – the reality of our lives, the reality of God.
Barry and Ann Ulanov in their book about prayer entitled Primary Speech, write this: In prayer we say who in fact we are – not who we should be, nor who we wish we were, but who we are. Prayer begins with this confession. (1) In prayer we meet our deepest desires, our highest hopes, our darkest fears. In prayer we come clean with ourselves – where we have done well and where we have been wanting. But prayer is not a solo act, it is a relational endeavor. The great Jewish theologian of the last century, Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote, The purpose of prayer is to be brought to God’s attention: to be listened to, to be understood by [God]…. [ The human task] is not to know God, but to be known to God (The Insecurity of Freedom, 256). I am not sure he has it entirely right, but this is important. When we take time away for God in prayer, we have the opportunity to hear the deepest hopes and cries of our hearts and souls. Coming to know ourselves more deeply in prayer, we discover that there is also the God who wants to know us, who already knows us. Our praying is not crying out in the dark emptiness of night with only the wind to answer. Our praying is to God and with God; it is a response to an invitation to the cloud.
In prayer we come to know ourselves more deeply and we come to know that there is One who listens deeply. Ulanovs: God hears all the voices that speak out of us – our vocal prayer, the prayer said in our minds, the unvoiced longing rising from our hearts, the many voices of which we are not conscious but which cry out eloquently (1). We take time for God not only to speak, but also to know we are heard.
And the God who listens also speaks. Theologian Paul Tillich: No place is excluded from communicating to us a word from the Lord. It is always present and tries to be perceived by us. It is like the air, surrounding us… trying to enter every empty space. Tillich goes on to say: So… is there an empty space in your soul?... Without a soul opened for it, no word from the Lord can be received. Listening with an open soul, keeping an empty space in our inner life, sharpening our spiritual hearing: this is the only thing we can do. (The New Being, 123-124)
Have you left some space in your life to hear and respond to the voice of God – “Come up to me on the mountain”? In prayer we come to know ourselves more deeply and come to know that we are known deeply. In prayer we come to discover that we are listened to, and we find that we can listen to God.
Pay attention. Take time. Pray. I hope one of the ways you will make some time for God this Lent is to be part of our congregational book study of Marjorie Suchocki’s book In God’s Presence. Copies are available. I hope you will consider participating in a reading group with others. Sign-up and you will get an e-mail or phone call about group possibilities. Right now we have three groups, a Wednesday group, a Monday group, and a group that will be meeting starting next week during Faith Forum for three weeks. Chapters 1-3 for next Sunday! Sunday sermons during Lent are also going to focus on prayer, and as a compliment to the book. The book focuses on the what and why of prayer followed by forms of prayer. The sermons will discuss the what and why of prayer and focus on various methods for praying – some overlap and some complimentary material.
Regardless, of whether or not you choose to participate in this particular way of taking time for God, find ways to do it. Yes, we need to know that there will be work to do down the mountain. The love we feel when listened to in prayer is a love that needs to be shared. We do come down the mountain. Yet time on the mountain is not idle time, not wasted time. Without it our hearts can become discouraged in the work of love and justice in the world. Without it, our souls can wither, and our work can become soulless. We need time with God, and the invitation from the God who knows us, listens to us, and has a word for us is always there. To the cloud. Amen.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Dollars and Sense
Sermon preached February 27, 2011
Texts: Isaiah 49:8-16a; Matthew 6:24-34
A priest walked into a pub and was indignant to find so many of his parishioners there. He rounded them up and shepherded them into the church. Then he solemnly said, “All those who want to go to heaven, step over here to the left.” Everyone stepped over except one man who stubbornly stood his ground. The priest looked at him fiercely and said, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?” “No,” said the man. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me you don’t want to go to heaven when you die?” “Of course I want to go to heaven when I die. I thought you were going now.” (The Heart of the Enlightened, DeMillo, 16-17).
It is not that unusual for people to try and separate their spiritual life from daily life. Spirituality, for many, has something to do with moments – times of worship or prayer, what our fate after death might be. Then there is the rest of our lives. That kind of separation does not fit well with the spirituality of the Jesus way. Eugene Peterson, pastor, scholar, translator of the Bible (The Message) says that when he is asked about being spiritual he responds by saying: How about starting by loving your husband or your kids? Even for the mystics, moments of rapture and ecstasy are rare ad unexpected. Spirituality is no different from what we have been doing for two thousand years, just by going to church, receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading the scripture rightly. It’s just ordinary stuff. (The Christian Century, April 5, 2005, p. 6)
Ordinary stuff – Jesus connects spirituality with ordinary stuff. We have been following that these past few weeks as we have been reading parts of the Sermon on the Mount. Yes, Jesus says that we are to be perfect as God is perfect – not too ordinary sounding, but when you look at what he says around that we find him talking about dealing with anger and sexuality and desire and intimacy – the stuff of life. But now Jesus is going to get very personal. He is going to talk about money and possessions. He invites us to worry less about what we are going to eat and drink and wear. He warns us – “you cannot serve God and wealth.” There are not many more ordinary things in life than food and clothing and the economic wherewithal to care for those things. Like other desires Jesus has discussed, these are not bad in themselves – the desire to eat, the desire to be clothed, the desire for a measure of economic security, but like other desires he has discussed, we can get it wrong. We can mismanage our anger. We can mishandle our sexual desires. We can muck up our most important relationships. And we can get it wrong when it comes to money. In one translation, verse 32, which we read as “it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things” reads “it is the Gentiles who long for all these things.” Our longing for money can be come inordinate, Jesus is saying. Our relationship to money and wealth can become distorted, getting in the way of a healthy spirituality. I think he is right.
Last month’s Atlantic (January/February 2011) magazine had a fascinating article on the economy. It reported this conversation at a Manhattan dinner party. “If you are going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you are going to do the NetJet thing and if you are going to have four houses, and you’re going to run four houses, it’s like you start spending some money” Another guest chimed in: “You know, the thing about 20 is 20 is only 10 after taxes.” Those around the table nodded. They were talking about 20 million dollars. It wasn’t quite enough, apparently. In this same article it was noted that the top 25 hedge-fund managers were paid, on average in 2009, more than $1 billion each. Finally in this same article, Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairperson and champion of free market capitalism is cited as worrying that our economy has become “distorted”, with high-income individuals and large corporations and banks recovering nicely while most of the rest of the economy struggling along. Has our relationship with wealth gotten distorted?
Just this past week a former Pennsylvania juvenile court judge was convicted of racketeering in a case that accused him of sending youth offenders to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illicit payments from the builder and owner of the lockups. Apparently this judge, and another, took more than $2 million in bribes from the builders of new juvenile detention facilities, after they had conspired to have the public facility closed, and also extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the facilities' co-owner. The judge filled the beds of the private lockups with children as young as 10. According to The Pennsylvania Supreme Court he ran his courtroom with "complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the juveniles," including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Did longing for wealth warp a judge?
Tom is a twenty-four year old stock broker and recent business graduate. He shared with his counselor (by the way, this is not someone I am seeing or someone in this church), he shared that when he was twelve he decided that he was going to make a million dollars and retire by the time he was 40. He felt he was right on schedule. Tom is seeing a counselor, though, because he feels he may have some unfinished issues from his childhood, and to placate his wife, who has become distressed by Tom’s occasional outbursts of rage and his extra-marital affairs. As he meets with the counselor, it becomes clear that in his own mind Tom views his wife as an obstacle to his dream of wealth and early retirement. (Miller, How To Want What You Have, 236) Has an inordinate concern for wealth brought a relationship to near ruin?
We can hear these stories and think, “how awful” or “how sad” or “I wish I had to worry about $20 million being only $10.” The truth of the matter is we live in this same society. We breathe the same cultural air, drink the same cultural water, and I think we are influenced by these distorted relationships with money, with wealth. They can affect us, and do affect us. I will only speak for myself. I remember moving back to Duluth and looking for a house and thinking about the kind of house I would have loved to buy. I know the feelings that sometimes arise when I hear about people I knew from high school who have done very well financially – that feeling not of envy, though there may be that, too, but of feeling a little bit less than. I know what it is like to fantasize about the Powerball.
We can’t just take Jesus’ words and look out there to see where a relationship with money, wealth, possessions might be off track. We also need to look in here, peer into our own hearts and minds and souls. The point is not that any desire for economic well-being is wrong. I don’t think Jesus is really saying that we should never be concerned for that part of our lives. There is a little bit of hyperbole in his statements about not worrying about food and clothing, and there is the later passage in the New Testament about “anyone unwilling to work should not eat” (II Thessalonians 3:10). Jesus is not condemning money, per se, or the search for a modicum of economic security. He is inviting us to be aware of how easily our desires in this area can get carried away, become distorted, thereby distorting our very hearts and souls.
Jesus invites us to be aware and to keep our relationship with money and wealth a healthy one. How? I find the advice offered by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism in the 1700s, continually helpful. Wesley argued that money in itself was not the problem. He said that some of the rhetoric against money was little more than an “empty rant.” Money is not bad in itself, but our relationship to it could become distorted. Sound familiar? To keep it from becoming distorted, Wesley offers three rules in his sermon “The Use of Money”: (1) gain all you can; (2) save all you can; (3) give all you can. Wesley did add a few stipulations about gain all you can, however. You should gain all you can in ways that are not harmful to your own body and mind and that do not do harm to your neighbor.
Wise advice. Who do you think is better off, the countless lottery winners who just a few years later found themselves broke or bankrupt or fighting with families or the couple in Nova Scotia who won $11 million dollars in the lottery and surprised the world by giving most of it away. Most of us would like that opportunity, but when money comes pouring in like that, most of the stories are not happy. Our relationship with money becomes easily distorted. Jesus invites awareness and caution.
But there is something even deeper here. Perhaps the deepest distortion a skewed relationship with money and wealth can inflict is the equation of one’s worth with one’s wealth. Ask someone in our culture, “What are you worth?’ and the response would move right away to financial assests. It is helpful for us to remember that most of the people listening to Jesus were people just getting by. His audience was primarily Jewish, mostly workers, laborers. The Romans were in charge, and Roman society was a stratified society where wealth and power equaled worth. Jesus’ words seem almost ironic, then. “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Many of his listeners probably worried every day about life’s necessities. But then come the remarkable words. Look at the birds – “are you not of more value that they?” Look at the flowers, the lilies, nothing compares to their beauty, and God sees your beauty too!
The only way we can really keep our relationship with our money and our possessions and wealth sane and healthy is to remember who we are – valued people in God’s sight. We fly higher than the birds. We are more beautiful than the lilies. Iin the 49th chapter of Isaiah we read, in the voice of God, these words: 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. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands (15-16a).
In the story, Hope For the Flowers the only way to keep off the climbing, scratching, gouging caterpillar pillar – which is wonderful symbol of an unhealthy relationship to money and wealth – is to remember that we are butterflies. The way to keep our desires about money and possessions straight is to remember we are God’s beloved people, worth more than the beautiful birds, worth more than the wondrous flowers. We are inscribed on the very palm of God’s hands.
Remembering who we are we may be able to keep both dollars and sense. Amen.
Texts: Isaiah 49:8-16a; Matthew 6:24-34
A priest walked into a pub and was indignant to find so many of his parishioners there. He rounded them up and shepherded them into the church. Then he solemnly said, “All those who want to go to heaven, step over here to the left.” Everyone stepped over except one man who stubbornly stood his ground. The priest looked at him fiercely and said, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?” “No,” said the man. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me you don’t want to go to heaven when you die?” “Of course I want to go to heaven when I die. I thought you were going now.” (The Heart of the Enlightened, DeMillo, 16-17).
It is not that unusual for people to try and separate their spiritual life from daily life. Spirituality, for many, has something to do with moments – times of worship or prayer, what our fate after death might be. Then there is the rest of our lives. That kind of separation does not fit well with the spirituality of the Jesus way. Eugene Peterson, pastor, scholar, translator of the Bible (The Message) says that when he is asked about being spiritual he responds by saying: How about starting by loving your husband or your kids? Even for the mystics, moments of rapture and ecstasy are rare ad unexpected. Spirituality is no different from what we have been doing for two thousand years, just by going to church, receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading the scripture rightly. It’s just ordinary stuff. (The Christian Century, April 5, 2005, p. 6)
Ordinary stuff – Jesus connects spirituality with ordinary stuff. We have been following that these past few weeks as we have been reading parts of the Sermon on the Mount. Yes, Jesus says that we are to be perfect as God is perfect – not too ordinary sounding, but when you look at what he says around that we find him talking about dealing with anger and sexuality and desire and intimacy – the stuff of life. But now Jesus is going to get very personal. He is going to talk about money and possessions. He invites us to worry less about what we are going to eat and drink and wear. He warns us – “you cannot serve God and wealth.” There are not many more ordinary things in life than food and clothing and the economic wherewithal to care for those things. Like other desires Jesus has discussed, these are not bad in themselves – the desire to eat, the desire to be clothed, the desire for a measure of economic security, but like other desires he has discussed, we can get it wrong. We can mismanage our anger. We can mishandle our sexual desires. We can muck up our most important relationships. And we can get it wrong when it comes to money. In one translation, verse 32, which we read as “it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things” reads “it is the Gentiles who long for all these things.” Our longing for money can be come inordinate, Jesus is saying. Our relationship to money and wealth can become distorted, getting in the way of a healthy spirituality. I think he is right.
Last month’s Atlantic (January/February 2011) magazine had a fascinating article on the economy. It reported this conversation at a Manhattan dinner party. “If you are going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you are going to do the NetJet thing and if you are going to have four houses, and you’re going to run four houses, it’s like you start spending some money” Another guest chimed in: “You know, the thing about 20 is 20 is only 10 after taxes.” Those around the table nodded. They were talking about 20 million dollars. It wasn’t quite enough, apparently. In this same article it was noted that the top 25 hedge-fund managers were paid, on average in 2009, more than $1 billion each. Finally in this same article, Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairperson and champion of free market capitalism is cited as worrying that our economy has become “distorted”, with high-income individuals and large corporations and banks recovering nicely while most of the rest of the economy struggling along. Has our relationship with wealth gotten distorted?
Just this past week a former Pennsylvania juvenile court judge was convicted of racketeering in a case that accused him of sending youth offenders to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illicit payments from the builder and owner of the lockups. Apparently this judge, and another, took more than $2 million in bribes from the builders of new juvenile detention facilities, after they had conspired to have the public facility closed, and also extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the facilities' co-owner. The judge filled the beds of the private lockups with children as young as 10. According to The Pennsylvania Supreme Court he ran his courtroom with "complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the juveniles," including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Did longing for wealth warp a judge?
Tom is a twenty-four year old stock broker and recent business graduate. He shared with his counselor (by the way, this is not someone I am seeing or someone in this church), he shared that when he was twelve he decided that he was going to make a million dollars and retire by the time he was 40. He felt he was right on schedule. Tom is seeing a counselor, though, because he feels he may have some unfinished issues from his childhood, and to placate his wife, who has become distressed by Tom’s occasional outbursts of rage and his extra-marital affairs. As he meets with the counselor, it becomes clear that in his own mind Tom views his wife as an obstacle to his dream of wealth and early retirement. (Miller, How To Want What You Have, 236) Has an inordinate concern for wealth brought a relationship to near ruin?
We can hear these stories and think, “how awful” or “how sad” or “I wish I had to worry about $20 million being only $10.” The truth of the matter is we live in this same society. We breathe the same cultural air, drink the same cultural water, and I think we are influenced by these distorted relationships with money, with wealth. They can affect us, and do affect us. I will only speak for myself. I remember moving back to Duluth and looking for a house and thinking about the kind of house I would have loved to buy. I know the feelings that sometimes arise when I hear about people I knew from high school who have done very well financially – that feeling not of envy, though there may be that, too, but of feeling a little bit less than. I know what it is like to fantasize about the Powerball.
We can’t just take Jesus’ words and look out there to see where a relationship with money, wealth, possessions might be off track. We also need to look in here, peer into our own hearts and minds and souls. The point is not that any desire for economic well-being is wrong. I don’t think Jesus is really saying that we should never be concerned for that part of our lives. There is a little bit of hyperbole in his statements about not worrying about food and clothing, and there is the later passage in the New Testament about “anyone unwilling to work should not eat” (II Thessalonians 3:10). Jesus is not condemning money, per se, or the search for a modicum of economic security. He is inviting us to be aware of how easily our desires in this area can get carried away, become distorted, thereby distorting our very hearts and souls.
Jesus invites us to be aware and to keep our relationship with money and wealth a healthy one. How? I find the advice offered by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism in the 1700s, continually helpful. Wesley argued that money in itself was not the problem. He said that some of the rhetoric against money was little more than an “empty rant.” Money is not bad in itself, but our relationship to it could become distorted. Sound familiar? To keep it from becoming distorted, Wesley offers three rules in his sermon “The Use of Money”: (1) gain all you can; (2) save all you can; (3) give all you can. Wesley did add a few stipulations about gain all you can, however. You should gain all you can in ways that are not harmful to your own body and mind and that do not do harm to your neighbor.
Wise advice. Who do you think is better off, the countless lottery winners who just a few years later found themselves broke or bankrupt or fighting with families or the couple in Nova Scotia who won $11 million dollars in the lottery and surprised the world by giving most of it away. Most of us would like that opportunity, but when money comes pouring in like that, most of the stories are not happy. Our relationship with money becomes easily distorted. Jesus invites awareness and caution.
But there is something even deeper here. Perhaps the deepest distortion a skewed relationship with money and wealth can inflict is the equation of one’s worth with one’s wealth. Ask someone in our culture, “What are you worth?’ and the response would move right away to financial assests. It is helpful for us to remember that most of the people listening to Jesus were people just getting by. His audience was primarily Jewish, mostly workers, laborers. The Romans were in charge, and Roman society was a stratified society where wealth and power equaled worth. Jesus’ words seem almost ironic, then. “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Many of his listeners probably worried every day about life’s necessities. But then come the remarkable words. Look at the birds – “are you not of more value that they?” Look at the flowers, the lilies, nothing compares to their beauty, and God sees your beauty too!
The only way we can really keep our relationship with our money and our possessions and wealth sane and healthy is to remember who we are – valued people in God’s sight. We fly higher than the birds. We are more beautiful than the lilies. Iin the 49th chapter of Isaiah we read, in the voice of God, these words: 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. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands (15-16a).
In the story, Hope For the Flowers the only way to keep off the climbing, scratching, gouging caterpillar pillar – which is wonderful symbol of an unhealthy relationship to money and wealth – is to remember that we are butterflies. The way to keep our desires about money and possessions straight is to remember we are God’s beloved people, worth more than the beautiful birds, worth more than the wondrous flowers. We are inscribed on the very palm of God’s hands.
Remembering who we are we may be able to keep both dollars and sense. Amen.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Parking Lot Stories
Sermon Preached on February 20, 2011
Texts: I Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-17; Matthew 5:38-48
Next week, the Academy Awards will be given out. How many of you watch the Oscars – at least sometimes? One of the films nominated for Best Picture this year is the movie The Social Network. How many of you have seen this film? I watched it a few weeks ago with my family. I don’t often see many of the nominated pictures before the awards, so this was fun. The movie is about the development of the social network site Facebook. How many of you are on Facebook? Sites like this are having a deep impact on our world, for both good and ill. Social media sites provide connections for family and friends. They help people organize, even organize to make changes in their government, as the people of Egypt have. Social media helped propel this protest. Such sites also extend opportunities for bullying – making it difficult for a young person to walk away from harassment, sometimes for tragic consequences.
The world is changing because of this new way of connecting, and we in the church have to become more savvy about using such tools for ministry.
One of the consequences of Facebook is that it is possible to connect with old friends or acquaintances. Since going on Facebook, I have made some contact with people I knew in high school. Awhile back I exchanged messages with a high school acquaintance. I told him what I was doing, and he told me he remembered this church. He wrote that he used to watch submarine races from our church parking lot!
Today is UMW Sunday – UMW = United Methodist Women. The theme for the day is Faith, Hope and Love in Action. I don’t intend to try and talk about faith, hope and love in action while people watch submarine races from our parking lot. I do, however, want to share some parking lot stories.
Church parking lots are sometimes notorious places. We refer to “parking lot” conversations as those discussion that sometimes have more impact on the life of a church than the conversations that happen inside, even at council meetings. In the parking lot sermons can be evaluated, music critiqued, events judged, decisions reconsidered. I know of a pastor who brought a proposal to his church council. The proposal had something to do with a discipleship initiative – asking the congregation to participate in a congregation-wide study and prayer initiative. The pastor was a little nervous, but the conversation with the council went well, and the decision was made to move forward. As the initiative began, however, it did not seem so well supported. People were not showing up as they said they would. The pastor began to ask a few questions and he discovered that the very night of the council meeting there was a later parking lot conversation in which most of the council agreed that they really did not support the pastor’s proposal. That parking lot conversation led to the pastor leaving that church.
But our parking lot, though I am sure it has been the site of some of those kinds of parking lot conversations – hey, we have been here for over 40 years – our parking lot has just this week been the site of some remarkable ministry. Last Sunday afternoon, over 100 people gathered in our church parking lot to stand together to support families in all their configurations. The group was a gathering of people of faith who want others to know that there are people of faith who support the right of gay and lesbian persons to have their relationships recognized. I can’t say that every person present would agree to just how that ought to be done, but we were united in our opposition to proposals that would prohibit any recognition of same-sex relationships. Pictures were taken. Videos were shot. A message was sent from this church parking lot – a message about love in action.
Thursday night, our parking lot was busy again, the crazy business that has become Ruby’s Pantry. At 2:30, two semi loads of food arrived. By three o’clock, people are beginning to arrive in our parking lot – some willing just to wait to buy their share and get their food, others to volunteer to unload and distribute the food. There is activity in the parking lot until well after 8 p.m. as undistributed food is loaded back on trucks and clean-up winds down.
These are the parking lot stories that matter most here at First United Methodist Church, because we want this to be a place of faith, hope and love in action. And among the groups that lead us in helping put faith, hope and love into action are our United Methodist Women. There is another time that our parking lot is pretty crazy, and that is on the first Sunday in November for the Coppertop Craft and Bake Sale, coordinated by our United Methodist Women. Many of you work with the UMW to make that event such a success, and we know that success has something to do with money earned. Part of the real success of that event, however, is not the money earned that day. It happens about a month later, when the money gets spent. Our United Methodist Women spend their money joyfully. They spend their money putting faith, hope and love into action. At the end of the year, the UMW distributes their money to area ministries and projects. Every year, different ministries and projects benefit. Every year, faith, hope and love are put into action in this way by the UMW.
One of this year’s recipients of UMW funds was Life House, a program that works with homeless kids in our community to get them into safe housing and help them with their education and employment. Life House helps kids like Ashley. Ashley lived in ten foster homes beginning at age one, until she found herself surviving and abusive relationship and living out on the streets. To make matters even more complicated, Ashley was a teen mom, and her greatest fear was losing her son Tayshawn. Life House has helped Ashley find stable housing, pursue her education, and develop hope for the future. Life House helps kids like Matt. Matt’s home life was such that he could not stay there, even though he had not yet finished high school. Yet Matt was a proud young man. “I’d rather sleep on the streets than ask for help.” Matt worked to support himself, but had only minimal job skills and ended up evicted because his jobs did not help him earn the money he needed for rent. At age twenty, Matt has been helped by Life House. He is in housing and has been working on education and job skills to make his life better.
Life House does great work, and it is able to do that work, in part, because of our United Methodist Women putting faith, hope and love into action.
We have a strong foundation laid for us here at First United Methodist Church. Today we are especially grateful for the role of women here in laying this foundation. As we give thanks for this, I trust we will also remember many who worked to put down a foundation of faith, hope and love on which we can build. “Each builder must choose with care how to build on it” (Paul, I Corinthians 3:10c). We have a foundation to build on here – a foundation of faith, hope and love.
We have a foundation of an open faith. We are trying to cultivate the kind of faith in Jesus Christ here that is deep enough for us to ask the most searching questions. We have faith that such questions will not lead away from Christ, but into an even deeper and more profound relationship with the Spirit of Christ.
We have a foundation here of love in action. When I think of love in action here I think about United Methodist Women, I think about Ruby’s Pantry, I think about our support for GLBT persons, I think about our anti-racism work, I think about youth working with Feed My Starving Children, I think about mission trips to Florida and Iowa and South Dakota, I think about music shared to bring joy and to bring people closer to God, I think about children collecting money for Haiti, I think about all the quiet ways we share love together with each other. We have a foundation of love in action.
We have a foundation of hope. We have an undying hope that what we do matters. We have an undying hope that what we do makes a difference in the world. We have an undying hope that what we do makes a difference to God and for God.
We have a beautiful foundation here, and according to the grace of God given to us, we need to build on that foundation.
We build on that foundation as we share good news. Here is good news – “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” God’s Spirit calls to each of us. God’s love reaches to embrace each of us. We are all important to God and have gifts of grace to share with the world.
Many years ago, two monks went from their community to visit some of the spiritual luminaries of their age. First they found the famed ascetic Abba Arsenius. He has been a wealthy senator in Rome, and was known for his profound humility, sobriety and penitence. The two monks had traveled a long way to get to his rustic cell, but once there they greeted the old man and sat with him. He said not a word, and after a time the monks became uneasy, so they left. They then went to see the former desert gang leader Abba Moses. This large, physically powerful man had been a thief and murderer before coming to Christ. Abba Moses welcomed them joyfully and took leave of them with delight – a very different experience from their meeting with Abba Arsenius.
Upon returning to their community, the two monks shared their experiences with others. One other monk became quite confused. How could these two saints of God be so very different? This confused monk prayed to God, asking for an explanation. That night he saw a vision. Two large boats we drifting down a river. In one sailed Abba Arsenius with the Spirit of God, sailing in perfect peace; and in the other was Abba Moses with the angels of God and they were all eating honey cakes.
Reflecting on this story, Frederica Mathews-Green writes: God can use any kind of personality, any kind of person…. The one light of Christ is like a flame shining out through different colored glass. You are the only person God made who is exactly like you (Federica Mathews-Green, The Jesus Prayer, 166-167).
We build on the beautiful foundation laid for us when we share the good news that God created each person to shine with their particular light.
We build on the beautiful foundation laid for us when we love – love boldly, wastefully, lavishly, love even our enemies, love even as God loves. Jesus words in Matthew 5 should startle us. “Love your enemies…. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The only thing I would add to these words is a bit of explanation – so we understand that to love in this wild way is not rolling over and being taken advantage of. New Testament scholar Walter Wink has done us all a great favor in putting these words of Jesus into their historical context (The Powers That Be, 101 ff). To turn the other cheek is not to offer to get hit again, it is to assert one’s dignity. To be struck on the right cheek would have been a backhanded blow with the right hand, a blow struck not to injure, but to insult and humiliate. By turning the other cheek, a person makes this humiliating backhanded blow impossible again. To give one your inner garment when they have sued you for your outer garment, well, in a two garment society, that idea is rather funny. It leaves naked not just the person who has given his or her clothes away, but it strips an unjust social system of its mystifying powers. Carrying someone’s gear a second mile after they have forced you to carry it for one would have put that person in violation of the Roman military code, again revealing the injustice of a system where a soldier could compel the service of others at their whim.
Jesus sites these as loving acts. They are also acts that promote dignity and justice. Loving others can mean calling them to recognize when their lives are out of order. Love is working for the well-being of others, and we are to love even those who don’t have our well-being at heart.
Today, let’s give thanks for the rich and beautiful foundations of faith, hope and love that have been laid for us. Let us rededicate ourselves to build on that foundation. May our faith, hope and love be enacted in the parking lot and from there into the streets and into the highways and by-ways. Amen.
Texts: I Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-17; Matthew 5:38-48
Next week, the Academy Awards will be given out. How many of you watch the Oscars – at least sometimes? One of the films nominated for Best Picture this year is the movie The Social Network. How many of you have seen this film? I watched it a few weeks ago with my family. I don’t often see many of the nominated pictures before the awards, so this was fun. The movie is about the development of the social network site Facebook. How many of you are on Facebook? Sites like this are having a deep impact on our world, for both good and ill. Social media sites provide connections for family and friends. They help people organize, even organize to make changes in their government, as the people of Egypt have. Social media helped propel this protest. Such sites also extend opportunities for bullying – making it difficult for a young person to walk away from harassment, sometimes for tragic consequences.
The world is changing because of this new way of connecting, and we in the church have to become more savvy about using such tools for ministry.
One of the consequences of Facebook is that it is possible to connect with old friends or acquaintances. Since going on Facebook, I have made some contact with people I knew in high school. Awhile back I exchanged messages with a high school acquaintance. I told him what I was doing, and he told me he remembered this church. He wrote that he used to watch submarine races from our church parking lot!
Today is UMW Sunday – UMW = United Methodist Women. The theme for the day is Faith, Hope and Love in Action. I don’t intend to try and talk about faith, hope and love in action while people watch submarine races from our parking lot. I do, however, want to share some parking lot stories.
Church parking lots are sometimes notorious places. We refer to “parking lot” conversations as those discussion that sometimes have more impact on the life of a church than the conversations that happen inside, even at council meetings. In the parking lot sermons can be evaluated, music critiqued, events judged, decisions reconsidered. I know of a pastor who brought a proposal to his church council. The proposal had something to do with a discipleship initiative – asking the congregation to participate in a congregation-wide study and prayer initiative. The pastor was a little nervous, but the conversation with the council went well, and the decision was made to move forward. As the initiative began, however, it did not seem so well supported. People were not showing up as they said they would. The pastor began to ask a few questions and he discovered that the very night of the council meeting there was a later parking lot conversation in which most of the council agreed that they really did not support the pastor’s proposal. That parking lot conversation led to the pastor leaving that church.
But our parking lot, though I am sure it has been the site of some of those kinds of parking lot conversations – hey, we have been here for over 40 years – our parking lot has just this week been the site of some remarkable ministry. Last Sunday afternoon, over 100 people gathered in our church parking lot to stand together to support families in all their configurations. The group was a gathering of people of faith who want others to know that there are people of faith who support the right of gay and lesbian persons to have their relationships recognized. I can’t say that every person present would agree to just how that ought to be done, but we were united in our opposition to proposals that would prohibit any recognition of same-sex relationships. Pictures were taken. Videos were shot. A message was sent from this church parking lot – a message about love in action.
Thursday night, our parking lot was busy again, the crazy business that has become Ruby’s Pantry. At 2:30, two semi loads of food arrived. By three o’clock, people are beginning to arrive in our parking lot – some willing just to wait to buy their share and get their food, others to volunteer to unload and distribute the food. There is activity in the parking lot until well after 8 p.m. as undistributed food is loaded back on trucks and clean-up winds down.
These are the parking lot stories that matter most here at First United Methodist Church, because we want this to be a place of faith, hope and love in action. And among the groups that lead us in helping put faith, hope and love into action are our United Methodist Women. There is another time that our parking lot is pretty crazy, and that is on the first Sunday in November for the Coppertop Craft and Bake Sale, coordinated by our United Methodist Women. Many of you work with the UMW to make that event such a success, and we know that success has something to do with money earned. Part of the real success of that event, however, is not the money earned that day. It happens about a month later, when the money gets spent. Our United Methodist Women spend their money joyfully. They spend their money putting faith, hope and love into action. At the end of the year, the UMW distributes their money to area ministries and projects. Every year, different ministries and projects benefit. Every year, faith, hope and love are put into action in this way by the UMW.
One of this year’s recipients of UMW funds was Life House, a program that works with homeless kids in our community to get them into safe housing and help them with their education and employment. Life House helps kids like Ashley. Ashley lived in ten foster homes beginning at age one, until she found herself surviving and abusive relationship and living out on the streets. To make matters even more complicated, Ashley was a teen mom, and her greatest fear was losing her son Tayshawn. Life House has helped Ashley find stable housing, pursue her education, and develop hope for the future. Life House helps kids like Matt. Matt’s home life was such that he could not stay there, even though he had not yet finished high school. Yet Matt was a proud young man. “I’d rather sleep on the streets than ask for help.” Matt worked to support himself, but had only minimal job skills and ended up evicted because his jobs did not help him earn the money he needed for rent. At age twenty, Matt has been helped by Life House. He is in housing and has been working on education and job skills to make his life better.
Life House does great work, and it is able to do that work, in part, because of our United Methodist Women putting faith, hope and love into action.
We have a strong foundation laid for us here at First United Methodist Church. Today we are especially grateful for the role of women here in laying this foundation. As we give thanks for this, I trust we will also remember many who worked to put down a foundation of faith, hope and love on which we can build. “Each builder must choose with care how to build on it” (Paul, I Corinthians 3:10c). We have a foundation to build on here – a foundation of faith, hope and love.
We have a foundation of an open faith. We are trying to cultivate the kind of faith in Jesus Christ here that is deep enough for us to ask the most searching questions. We have faith that such questions will not lead away from Christ, but into an even deeper and more profound relationship with the Spirit of Christ.
We have a foundation here of love in action. When I think of love in action here I think about United Methodist Women, I think about Ruby’s Pantry, I think about our support for GLBT persons, I think about our anti-racism work, I think about youth working with Feed My Starving Children, I think about mission trips to Florida and Iowa and South Dakota, I think about music shared to bring joy and to bring people closer to God, I think about children collecting money for Haiti, I think about all the quiet ways we share love together with each other. We have a foundation of love in action.
We have a foundation of hope. We have an undying hope that what we do matters. We have an undying hope that what we do makes a difference in the world. We have an undying hope that what we do makes a difference to God and for God.
We have a beautiful foundation here, and according to the grace of God given to us, we need to build on that foundation.
We build on that foundation as we share good news. Here is good news – “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” God’s Spirit calls to each of us. God’s love reaches to embrace each of us. We are all important to God and have gifts of grace to share with the world.
Many years ago, two monks went from their community to visit some of the spiritual luminaries of their age. First they found the famed ascetic Abba Arsenius. He has been a wealthy senator in Rome, and was known for his profound humility, sobriety and penitence. The two monks had traveled a long way to get to his rustic cell, but once there they greeted the old man and sat with him. He said not a word, and after a time the monks became uneasy, so they left. They then went to see the former desert gang leader Abba Moses. This large, physically powerful man had been a thief and murderer before coming to Christ. Abba Moses welcomed them joyfully and took leave of them with delight – a very different experience from their meeting with Abba Arsenius.
Upon returning to their community, the two monks shared their experiences with others. One other monk became quite confused. How could these two saints of God be so very different? This confused monk prayed to God, asking for an explanation. That night he saw a vision. Two large boats we drifting down a river. In one sailed Abba Arsenius with the Spirit of God, sailing in perfect peace; and in the other was Abba Moses with the angels of God and they were all eating honey cakes.
Reflecting on this story, Frederica Mathews-Green writes: God can use any kind of personality, any kind of person…. The one light of Christ is like a flame shining out through different colored glass. You are the only person God made who is exactly like you (Federica Mathews-Green, The Jesus Prayer, 166-167).
We build on the beautiful foundation laid for us when we share the good news that God created each person to shine with their particular light.
We build on the beautiful foundation laid for us when we love – love boldly, wastefully, lavishly, love even our enemies, love even as God loves. Jesus words in Matthew 5 should startle us. “Love your enemies…. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The only thing I would add to these words is a bit of explanation – so we understand that to love in this wild way is not rolling over and being taken advantage of. New Testament scholar Walter Wink has done us all a great favor in putting these words of Jesus into their historical context (The Powers That Be, 101 ff). To turn the other cheek is not to offer to get hit again, it is to assert one’s dignity. To be struck on the right cheek would have been a backhanded blow with the right hand, a blow struck not to injure, but to insult and humiliate. By turning the other cheek, a person makes this humiliating backhanded blow impossible again. To give one your inner garment when they have sued you for your outer garment, well, in a two garment society, that idea is rather funny. It leaves naked not just the person who has given his or her clothes away, but it strips an unjust social system of its mystifying powers. Carrying someone’s gear a second mile after they have forced you to carry it for one would have put that person in violation of the Roman military code, again revealing the injustice of a system where a soldier could compel the service of others at their whim.
Jesus sites these as loving acts. They are also acts that promote dignity and justice. Loving others can mean calling them to recognize when their lives are out of order. Love is working for the well-being of others, and we are to love even those who don’t have our well-being at heart.
Today, let’s give thanks for the rich and beautiful foundations of faith, hope and love that have been laid for us. Let us rededicate ourselves to build on that foundation. May our faith, hope and love be enacted in the parking lot and from there into the streets and into the highways and by-ways. Amen.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Let's Be Honest
Sermon preached February 13, 2011
Text: Matthew 5:21-37
Things were going so well. There was the beautiful difficulty of the beatitudes, pronouncing blessings. Then came the wonderful words – you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Now there is a shift. The tone seems to change. Did Jesus stub his toe on a stone? Did he get a thorn stuck in his sandle?
You have heard it said that you shall not murder. Most of us can check that off the list – never murdered. But have you ever been angry, angry to the point where you insulted another, angry and insulting enough to shred the very fabric of a relationship?
You have heard it said that you shall not commit adultery. Well, we are pretty sure that that is problematic and to be avoided. When it happens, it takes a lot of work to repair the relationship. So maybe we’ve avoided that too. But have you ever looked at a woman, looked at a man and felt desire, longing, lust?
Do you find yourself struggling with integrity as you say “yes” or “no”?
Have you ever divorced?
Let’s be honest, this change of tone in this speech of Jesus’, well, it is difficult. These are difficult words.
So what is Jesus up to? I thought we were salt and light. Now anger brings judgment, torn relationships are to be mended, we need to take care in how we look at women or men, if you are divorced – well that’s not good, we are to be more direct in our communication. I don’t feel so salty anymore. My light seems a little dimmer.
But that’s not the point. The point is not guilt or shame. The point is not to try and hide ourselves from ourselves. Anger, who me? Lust, never! I think the point is just the opposite – it is to foster a deeper honesty. The point of these words of Jesus is to take us deeper, deeper into our lives, deeper into what God hopes for us. God is interested in transformed lives, inside and out. God is interested in working in our lives to transform our actions, attitudes, dispositions and desires.
Before getting into that deeper stuff, I think we should remind ourselves just how important the changed behaviors Jesus identifies are. We may be wanting to go deeper than our actions, but let’s not forget how important it is to stay away from things like murder or adultery or falsehood. In a world that is all too violent, we should speak strongly for less violent behavior. In a world where sex is sometimes treated as just another physical activity, we should speak words of care and caution. In a world where it sometimes seems that what’s right is what you can get away with under the law with good legal representation, we should speak for more integrity.
Jesus is not trying to say that such things are unimportant in God’s scheme of things. They are very important. What he is trying to say is that we can avoid murder and violence, we can be sexually faithful in our relationships, we can be truthful on the surface, and still have work to do in our lives. The invitation to the Jesus way in the world is not an invitation to a series of don’ts. It is an invitation to live toward deep transformation – toward healing and wholeness in relationships, toward dealing not just with actions but also with desires.
And it begins with honesty.
Let’s be honest. We can avoid murder, avoid striking someone, yet still fall short in managing our anger or in our efforts toward reconciliation.
Let’s be honest. We can avoid adultery yet still struggle with our desires for intimacy or our desires around our sexuality.
Let’s be honest, unhealthy relationships are not just those that end in divorce. By the way, it needs saying every time we read this passage that this should never be used to be judgmental toward those who are divorced. For too long the church used this passage to beat up on divorced people, and that was a plain mis-use of this text. When you pay close attention to the text, you see that it is just addressed to men (so, it seems, is the text about lust, but I don’t want to go there now). At the time of Jesus, only men could initiate divorce and they could do so for any reason whatsoever. In a society where women were economically disempowered, not being able to own property, few job opportunities, divorce often meant ruin. This text is much more about justice and reconciliation than about divorce, per se.
Back to the main thread of the argument here. Being salt and light requires honesty. Staying salty and bright means continuing to open our lives to God’s Spirit for deep transformation, but always beginning where we are.
Last weekend I got my first look at Amsoil Arena. My son was given a couple of tickets for the UMD hockey game and he asked if I wanted to go. I was delighted. Well, when we got to the arena, it took us a little time to find our section. We found our section and our row and our seats were 7 and 8. We needed to walk past some who were already seated, but we were on the end of the row that required us to walk by more people than if we had been at the other end. A little embarrassing, but not terminal, until one guy we walked by said quite sarcastically: “Way to go guys, coming in at the wrong end of the row.” We got to our seats, but I was livid. What a jerk. It is not like we stepped on him or made him spill anything. It was not like he couldn’t stand up so we could get by – he was relatively healthy and probably a little younger than me. I suppose it didn’t help that he was a Gopher fan. I was tempted to say something to him about being rude (that was after a few other thoughts surged on by), but my anger subsided and I just wanted to enjoy the game with my son.
Is Jesus trying to tell me that my anger was akin to doing this man physical violence? I don’t think so. Is Jesus trying to tell me that just by being angry I was wrong? I don’t think so, though there were a few unkind thoughts that probably were not me at my best. What the words of Jesus do for me is make me think more deeply about my anger. Sometimes it is o.k. but that doesn’t mean I have to express it or act on it. In this case, I had to admit that my anger was mixed with my own desire not to look foolish. It would have been better had we entered the row at 1 rather than at 18, but that just happens sometimes. I need to be honest. I still have some work to do inside, and that’s o.k. to admit.
In the January/February issue of The Atlantic the following statistics were cited in an article: In 2007, a quarter of all Internet searches were related to pornography. Nielsen ratings showed that in January 2010, more than a quarter of Internet users in the United States, almost 60 million people, visited a pornographic Web site. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of people in this country, including people who are trying to follow Jesus, who may be struggling with desire, with intimacy, with lust. This is not the church saying that all sex is bad, that the naked human body is shameful, that every depiction of human intimacy is inappropriate. But that kind of traffic on the Internet says to me that there are struggles that we need to be honest about.
Psychologist Polly Young-Eisendrath writes: Bringing what is hidden out into the light and knowing the name of what troubles us are the first steps toward autonomy. They provide us with insight and understanding about our hidden desires and emotional habits. But to become the Subject of our own desires, we need the moral strength or courage to face the conflicts of our inner and outer lives as we attempt to put our insights into action. (Women and Desire, 201-202) Jesus is inviting us to bring what may be hidden into the light. He is inviting us to a searching honesty.
Young-Eisendrath goes on to write, To follow blindly your own desires will create a prison of constant craving and longing, from which you cannot escape. To refuse your desires will create another kind of prison, one in which you will feel ashamed, guilty, resentful, or even psychologically dead. (203). We are salt. We are light. We are on the Jesus way. Yet, let’s be honest, we are still working out some of the conflicting desires we find inside. God give us the moral courage for that kind of honesty.
Charles Taylor is a brilliant philosopher. In his most recent book he writes this: It is generally thought that the more clearly you see the right, and the more committed you are to it, the more you will be moved by anger and indignation at all the violations of it that one sees around you. The pure in heart are in a perpetual flaming rage, according to this view. An openness to the vertical dimension [by which Taylor means new possibilities, often possibilities offered in religious views of life] – which raises the question, how do we all have to change, in our most basic motivation, in order to live up the ideals we’ve set for ourselves? – would alert one to the dangers of this cultivation of anger (Dilemmas and Connections, 363). We are salt. We are light. We are on the Jesus way. Yet, let’s be honest, we are still working out appropriate ways to feel and express our anger in a world where there is a lot to feel angry about. God give us the moral courage for that kind of honesty.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer led an underground seminary in Nazi Germany for a time. He worked to create a meaningful common life among the students and teachers and reflected on the challenges of Christian community in a work called Life Together. There he wrote: Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream…. God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves…. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship. Bonhoeffer is saying that genuine Christian community needs to begin with an honesty that we who are salt, we who are light, we who are on the Jesus way, are also working out our salvation, are also undergoing continuing transformation by God’s Spirit as we work with anger, desire, reconciliation, and integrity. God give us the moral courage for that kind of honesty.
One last thought. We often talk about the challenge of churches in attracting young people. We often look at music and worship style and the like, and these matter. But I am convinced that one factor that has kept some young people away from the church in our inability to be honest about the struggles as well as the joys of Christian life. Too often the church has said that we are beyond struggles with desire, emotion, reconciliation. We speak as if we are never angry, and then our anger comes out sideways. We avoid as much discussion about sexuality as we can, yet none of us would be here without it Rather than do the challenging work of reconciliation, we avoid disagreements until they erupt, making reconciliation much more difficult. So let’s be honest. Our salt will be saltier. Our light will be brighter. Amen.
Text: Matthew 5:21-37
Things were going so well. There was the beautiful difficulty of the beatitudes, pronouncing blessings. Then came the wonderful words – you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Now there is a shift. The tone seems to change. Did Jesus stub his toe on a stone? Did he get a thorn stuck in his sandle?
You have heard it said that you shall not murder. Most of us can check that off the list – never murdered. But have you ever been angry, angry to the point where you insulted another, angry and insulting enough to shred the very fabric of a relationship?
You have heard it said that you shall not commit adultery. Well, we are pretty sure that that is problematic and to be avoided. When it happens, it takes a lot of work to repair the relationship. So maybe we’ve avoided that too. But have you ever looked at a woman, looked at a man and felt desire, longing, lust?
Do you find yourself struggling with integrity as you say “yes” or “no”?
Have you ever divorced?
Let’s be honest, this change of tone in this speech of Jesus’, well, it is difficult. These are difficult words.
So what is Jesus up to? I thought we were salt and light. Now anger brings judgment, torn relationships are to be mended, we need to take care in how we look at women or men, if you are divorced – well that’s not good, we are to be more direct in our communication. I don’t feel so salty anymore. My light seems a little dimmer.
But that’s not the point. The point is not guilt or shame. The point is not to try and hide ourselves from ourselves. Anger, who me? Lust, never! I think the point is just the opposite – it is to foster a deeper honesty. The point of these words of Jesus is to take us deeper, deeper into our lives, deeper into what God hopes for us. God is interested in transformed lives, inside and out. God is interested in working in our lives to transform our actions, attitudes, dispositions and desires.
Before getting into that deeper stuff, I think we should remind ourselves just how important the changed behaviors Jesus identifies are. We may be wanting to go deeper than our actions, but let’s not forget how important it is to stay away from things like murder or adultery or falsehood. In a world that is all too violent, we should speak strongly for less violent behavior. In a world where sex is sometimes treated as just another physical activity, we should speak words of care and caution. In a world where it sometimes seems that what’s right is what you can get away with under the law with good legal representation, we should speak for more integrity.
Jesus is not trying to say that such things are unimportant in God’s scheme of things. They are very important. What he is trying to say is that we can avoid murder and violence, we can be sexually faithful in our relationships, we can be truthful on the surface, and still have work to do in our lives. The invitation to the Jesus way in the world is not an invitation to a series of don’ts. It is an invitation to live toward deep transformation – toward healing and wholeness in relationships, toward dealing not just with actions but also with desires.
And it begins with honesty.
Let’s be honest. We can avoid murder, avoid striking someone, yet still fall short in managing our anger or in our efforts toward reconciliation.
Let’s be honest. We can avoid adultery yet still struggle with our desires for intimacy or our desires around our sexuality.
Let’s be honest, unhealthy relationships are not just those that end in divorce. By the way, it needs saying every time we read this passage that this should never be used to be judgmental toward those who are divorced. For too long the church used this passage to beat up on divorced people, and that was a plain mis-use of this text. When you pay close attention to the text, you see that it is just addressed to men (so, it seems, is the text about lust, but I don’t want to go there now). At the time of Jesus, only men could initiate divorce and they could do so for any reason whatsoever. In a society where women were economically disempowered, not being able to own property, few job opportunities, divorce often meant ruin. This text is much more about justice and reconciliation than about divorce, per se.
Back to the main thread of the argument here. Being salt and light requires honesty. Staying salty and bright means continuing to open our lives to God’s Spirit for deep transformation, but always beginning where we are.
Last weekend I got my first look at Amsoil Arena. My son was given a couple of tickets for the UMD hockey game and he asked if I wanted to go. I was delighted. Well, when we got to the arena, it took us a little time to find our section. We found our section and our row and our seats were 7 and 8. We needed to walk past some who were already seated, but we were on the end of the row that required us to walk by more people than if we had been at the other end. A little embarrassing, but not terminal, until one guy we walked by said quite sarcastically: “Way to go guys, coming in at the wrong end of the row.” We got to our seats, but I was livid. What a jerk. It is not like we stepped on him or made him spill anything. It was not like he couldn’t stand up so we could get by – he was relatively healthy and probably a little younger than me. I suppose it didn’t help that he was a Gopher fan. I was tempted to say something to him about being rude (that was after a few other thoughts surged on by), but my anger subsided and I just wanted to enjoy the game with my son.
Is Jesus trying to tell me that my anger was akin to doing this man physical violence? I don’t think so. Is Jesus trying to tell me that just by being angry I was wrong? I don’t think so, though there were a few unkind thoughts that probably were not me at my best. What the words of Jesus do for me is make me think more deeply about my anger. Sometimes it is o.k. but that doesn’t mean I have to express it or act on it. In this case, I had to admit that my anger was mixed with my own desire not to look foolish. It would have been better had we entered the row at 1 rather than at 18, but that just happens sometimes. I need to be honest. I still have some work to do inside, and that’s o.k. to admit.
In the January/February issue of The Atlantic the following statistics were cited in an article: In 2007, a quarter of all Internet searches were related to pornography. Nielsen ratings showed that in January 2010, more than a quarter of Internet users in the United States, almost 60 million people, visited a pornographic Web site. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of people in this country, including people who are trying to follow Jesus, who may be struggling with desire, with intimacy, with lust. This is not the church saying that all sex is bad, that the naked human body is shameful, that every depiction of human intimacy is inappropriate. But that kind of traffic on the Internet says to me that there are struggles that we need to be honest about.
Psychologist Polly Young-Eisendrath writes: Bringing what is hidden out into the light and knowing the name of what troubles us are the first steps toward autonomy. They provide us with insight and understanding about our hidden desires and emotional habits. But to become the Subject of our own desires, we need the moral strength or courage to face the conflicts of our inner and outer lives as we attempt to put our insights into action. (Women and Desire, 201-202) Jesus is inviting us to bring what may be hidden into the light. He is inviting us to a searching honesty.
Young-Eisendrath goes on to write, To follow blindly your own desires will create a prison of constant craving and longing, from which you cannot escape. To refuse your desires will create another kind of prison, one in which you will feel ashamed, guilty, resentful, or even psychologically dead. (203). We are salt. We are light. We are on the Jesus way. Yet, let’s be honest, we are still working out some of the conflicting desires we find inside. God give us the moral courage for that kind of honesty.
Charles Taylor is a brilliant philosopher. In his most recent book he writes this: It is generally thought that the more clearly you see the right, and the more committed you are to it, the more you will be moved by anger and indignation at all the violations of it that one sees around you. The pure in heart are in a perpetual flaming rage, according to this view. An openness to the vertical dimension [by which Taylor means new possibilities, often possibilities offered in religious views of life] – which raises the question, how do we all have to change, in our most basic motivation, in order to live up the ideals we’ve set for ourselves? – would alert one to the dangers of this cultivation of anger (Dilemmas and Connections, 363). We are salt. We are light. We are on the Jesus way. Yet, let’s be honest, we are still working out appropriate ways to feel and express our anger in a world where there is a lot to feel angry about. God give us the moral courage for that kind of honesty.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer led an underground seminary in Nazi Germany for a time. He worked to create a meaningful common life among the students and teachers and reflected on the challenges of Christian community in a work called Life Together. There he wrote: Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream…. God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves…. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship. Bonhoeffer is saying that genuine Christian community needs to begin with an honesty that we who are salt, we who are light, we who are on the Jesus way, are also working out our salvation, are also undergoing continuing transformation by God’s Spirit as we work with anger, desire, reconciliation, and integrity. God give us the moral courage for that kind of honesty.
One last thought. We often talk about the challenge of churches in attracting young people. We often look at music and worship style and the like, and these matter. But I am convinced that one factor that has kept some young people away from the church in our inability to be honest about the struggles as well as the joys of Christian life. Too often the church has said that we are beyond struggles with desire, emotion, reconciliation. We speak as if we are never angry, and then our anger comes out sideways. We avoid as much discussion about sexuality as we can, yet none of us would be here without it Rather than do the challenging work of reconciliation, we avoid disagreements until they erupt, making reconciliation much more difficult. So let’s be honest. Our salt will be saltier. Our light will be brighter. Amen.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Lightly Salted
Sermon preached February 6, 2011
Texts: Matthew 5:13-20
“You are the salt of the earth.” Salt – generally a good thing. This is one of the biggest weekends for snacking in our country – Super Bowl weekend, and my taste in snacks runs more toward the salty than the sweet – chips and guacamole, wings, and such things. A little salt adds flavor to food. A little salt helps us stay standing in our winter weather. We don’t mind if some of our salt gets trampled under foot. We also know that salt has some problems. Too much salt in the diet leads to high blood pressure and heart problems. Too much salt left for too long on your car can lead to corrosion. The first car I ever owned was not a car you wanted to drive on dirt roads with the windows down. The trunk had Minnesota air-conditioning from road salt and if you were on a dirt road with the windows down, the dust was just pulled right in like a vacuum.
“You are the light of the world.” Light – generally a good thing. Light helps us find our way. We need light to read. I love the Groucho Marx line: “Outside of a dog, a book is a person’s best friend. Inside of a dog it is too dark to read.” We need a little light. Too much light can be a problem, though. Drive on a dark road at night and you don’t want an oncoming car to have its bright beams on. It blinds you momentarily. In those old black and white movies, light was often used to interrogate prisoners – that light shining right in their eye. Too much light can be uncomfortable.
And salt and light don’t often mix well. In the winter, when I get too much salt on my car, I begin to notice that the headlights don’t shine as brightly. They are not as helpful as they should be.
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Good news. Good images, though they may have their limits. But Jesus is not done offering images that are intended to remind us of who we are in God and what it means to live as a follower of Jesus.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets…. Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” We who are salt, we who are light, are also to be disciplined practitioners of the ways of God. But it is no rote series of tasks Jesus invites us too. In the stories of Jesus, his own following of the law was creative and thoughtful. He understood what was most important, and he invites us to be just as creative and thoughtful in our discipleship, even as we are disciplined practitioners.
O.K. So salt and light are catchier images for the life of a follower of Jesus. What’s a creative, disciplined practitioner? Here is Anne Lamott on writing. You sit down…. You try and sit down at approximately the same time everyday. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down… you put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so…. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind… and you try and quite your mind so you can hear what the landscape or character has to say above all the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys…. But you… make yourself stay at your desk…. You clear a space for the writing voice. (Bird By Bird, 6-7).
Being a disciple of Jesus is shining and being flavorful, and also being disciplined and determined in engaging in practices, like writers working on their craft.
We just recently completed a Bible study on The Book of Acts, that part of the New Testament which tells stories of the earliest followers of Jesus after his death. You may remember that Jesus first followers were Jewish, like Jesus himself. Over time, non-Jews began to become part of the Jesus movement, the movement of the Way. A controversy arose – imagine that, controversy in the church! – a controversy arose over how much of the Jewish law and practice was required for these non-Jewish followers of Jesus. Some wanted all followers of Jesus to practice the fully Jewish way of life, following all the commandments. The main body of the church did not go that direction, yet some continued to insist on this, and they were a problem. These “Judaizers” were among those Paul wrote against in some of his New Testament letters. But the opposite position could be a problem, too – that is, asking virtually nothing of followers of Jesus. The authors of the study book we used in our Bible study called this “gentilizing.” “Gentilizing represents the erosion of the church’s identity and public practice when nothing, or too little, is expected of those who have known and experienced God’s radical grace” (Robinson and Wall, Called To Be Church, 276). The authors go on to argue that to be Christian involves one in “resurrection practices.”
I am arguing that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus offers not two but three images which help us understand who we are and how we are to live as God’s people – salt, light and the creative, disciplined practitioner. But I need to say that this third image does not function in quite the same way. It is not as important as the other two images, even if it remains essential. You see, we are salt. We are light. Practices don’t make us salt and light, that is the work of God’s radical grace in our lives. Yet practices keep our salt salty and our light bright and protected. Practices help us keep salt and light in the right proportion. Practices are part of what it means to be God’s lightly salted people.
So what are some of these practices? The authors of our Acts study book talk about resurrection practices and include: hospitality, sharing, doing justice, worship, prayer, learning. We did not need to wait for their book, however. Jesus words about salt and light and disciplined practice follow the Beatitudes, which is also a list of practices: mercy, justice, peacemaking, generosity, courage, tending the heart. Practicing such things takes discipline and creativity.
Last Sunday night some of us gathered for our Faith and Film night and we watched the movie “Invictus.” Invictus is the story of the South African rugby team and their quest for the world cup in 1995, just a short time into the presidency of Nelson Mandela (1994-1999). The story is a powerful one. Mandela was imprisoned by the white South African apartheid government for 27 years (1964-1990). Can you imagine the potential for anger, resentment and hatred is such a situation? Mandela became the first democratically elected president of the county and it first African president in 1994. Instead of enacting revenge, Mandela actively pursued reconciliation, even embracing the rugby team, the Springboks, which had been a hated symbol of white South African rule. Mandela is a creative, disciplined practitioner of peacemaking and reconciliation. It let his light shine and his salt be truly salty.
A pastor friend recently shared with me a story about a member of her congregation named Earl. Earl’s wife died a few years ago, but while she was in the hospital, Earl was by her side. One night going home from the hospital, Earl’s car broke down. Three college students helped Earl that night, helped him get home and make arrangements for his car to be repaired. One of the young men, hearing Earl’s story about his dying wife, even came and picked Earl up the next day and took him to the hospital. The practice of generosity and hospitality.
You are the salt of the earth. In another translation: “You’re here to be salt seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.”
You are the light of the world. In another translation: “You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.”
You are to be creative, disciplined practitioners of the Way. It’s how we keep our salt salty and our light bright and protected. It’s how we express our identity as God’s lightly salted people. Amen.
Texts: Matthew 5:13-20
“You are the salt of the earth.” Salt – generally a good thing. This is one of the biggest weekends for snacking in our country – Super Bowl weekend, and my taste in snacks runs more toward the salty than the sweet – chips and guacamole, wings, and such things. A little salt adds flavor to food. A little salt helps us stay standing in our winter weather. We don’t mind if some of our salt gets trampled under foot. We also know that salt has some problems. Too much salt in the diet leads to high blood pressure and heart problems. Too much salt left for too long on your car can lead to corrosion. The first car I ever owned was not a car you wanted to drive on dirt roads with the windows down. The trunk had Minnesota air-conditioning from road salt and if you were on a dirt road with the windows down, the dust was just pulled right in like a vacuum.
“You are the light of the world.” Light – generally a good thing. Light helps us find our way. We need light to read. I love the Groucho Marx line: “Outside of a dog, a book is a person’s best friend. Inside of a dog it is too dark to read.” We need a little light. Too much light can be a problem, though. Drive on a dark road at night and you don’t want an oncoming car to have its bright beams on. It blinds you momentarily. In those old black and white movies, light was often used to interrogate prisoners – that light shining right in their eye. Too much light can be uncomfortable.
And salt and light don’t often mix well. In the winter, when I get too much salt on my car, I begin to notice that the headlights don’t shine as brightly. They are not as helpful as they should be.
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Good news. Good images, though they may have their limits. But Jesus is not done offering images that are intended to remind us of who we are in God and what it means to live as a follower of Jesus.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets…. Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” We who are salt, we who are light, are also to be disciplined practitioners of the ways of God. But it is no rote series of tasks Jesus invites us too. In the stories of Jesus, his own following of the law was creative and thoughtful. He understood what was most important, and he invites us to be just as creative and thoughtful in our discipleship, even as we are disciplined practitioners.
O.K. So salt and light are catchier images for the life of a follower of Jesus. What’s a creative, disciplined practitioner? Here is Anne Lamott on writing. You sit down…. You try and sit down at approximately the same time everyday. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down… you put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so…. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind… and you try and quite your mind so you can hear what the landscape or character has to say above all the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys…. But you… make yourself stay at your desk…. You clear a space for the writing voice. (Bird By Bird, 6-7).
Being a disciple of Jesus is shining and being flavorful, and also being disciplined and determined in engaging in practices, like writers working on their craft.
We just recently completed a Bible study on The Book of Acts, that part of the New Testament which tells stories of the earliest followers of Jesus after his death. You may remember that Jesus first followers were Jewish, like Jesus himself. Over time, non-Jews began to become part of the Jesus movement, the movement of the Way. A controversy arose – imagine that, controversy in the church! – a controversy arose over how much of the Jewish law and practice was required for these non-Jewish followers of Jesus. Some wanted all followers of Jesus to practice the fully Jewish way of life, following all the commandments. The main body of the church did not go that direction, yet some continued to insist on this, and they were a problem. These “Judaizers” were among those Paul wrote against in some of his New Testament letters. But the opposite position could be a problem, too – that is, asking virtually nothing of followers of Jesus. The authors of the study book we used in our Bible study called this “gentilizing.” “Gentilizing represents the erosion of the church’s identity and public practice when nothing, or too little, is expected of those who have known and experienced God’s radical grace” (Robinson and Wall, Called To Be Church, 276). The authors go on to argue that to be Christian involves one in “resurrection practices.”
I am arguing that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus offers not two but three images which help us understand who we are and how we are to live as God’s people – salt, light and the creative, disciplined practitioner. But I need to say that this third image does not function in quite the same way. It is not as important as the other two images, even if it remains essential. You see, we are salt. We are light. Practices don’t make us salt and light, that is the work of God’s radical grace in our lives. Yet practices keep our salt salty and our light bright and protected. Practices help us keep salt and light in the right proportion. Practices are part of what it means to be God’s lightly salted people.
So what are some of these practices? The authors of our Acts study book talk about resurrection practices and include: hospitality, sharing, doing justice, worship, prayer, learning. We did not need to wait for their book, however. Jesus words about salt and light and disciplined practice follow the Beatitudes, which is also a list of practices: mercy, justice, peacemaking, generosity, courage, tending the heart. Practicing such things takes discipline and creativity.
Last Sunday night some of us gathered for our Faith and Film night and we watched the movie “Invictus.” Invictus is the story of the South African rugby team and their quest for the world cup in 1995, just a short time into the presidency of Nelson Mandela (1994-1999). The story is a powerful one. Mandela was imprisoned by the white South African apartheid government for 27 years (1964-1990). Can you imagine the potential for anger, resentment and hatred is such a situation? Mandela became the first democratically elected president of the county and it first African president in 1994. Instead of enacting revenge, Mandela actively pursued reconciliation, even embracing the rugby team, the Springboks, which had been a hated symbol of white South African rule. Mandela is a creative, disciplined practitioner of peacemaking and reconciliation. It let his light shine and his salt be truly salty.
A pastor friend recently shared with me a story about a member of her congregation named Earl. Earl’s wife died a few years ago, but while she was in the hospital, Earl was by her side. One night going home from the hospital, Earl’s car broke down. Three college students helped Earl that night, helped him get home and make arrangements for his car to be repaired. One of the young men, hearing Earl’s story about his dying wife, even came and picked Earl up the next day and took him to the hospital. The practice of generosity and hospitality.
You are the salt of the earth. In another translation: “You’re here to be salt seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.”
You are the light of the world. In another translation: “You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.”
You are to be creative, disciplined practitioners of the Way. It’s how we keep our salt salty and our light bright and protected. It’s how we express our identity as God’s lightly salted people. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
