Sermon preached October 21, 2012
Have you ever had an embarrassing moment? Have you ever felt uncomfortable in a group of people, out of place? I probably should just ask if you have experience as a human being, because occasional embarrassment or out-of-placeness just go with the territory.
The seminary I attended, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, held an annual fall retreat for students and faculty. The retreat included recreation, but also worship, lectures and small breakout groups. One year I thought it might be interesting to attend a breakout session on mystery stories. I cannot recall the specific title of the session, but I remember pondering – “theological thinking about mystery stories, that could be interesting.”
I arrived at the session and we were seated in a circle. One of the seminary faculty was the convener of the group. She said that rather than make any kind of presentation, she was assuming everyone in the group was there because they were mystery story readers and we would just be going around to share some of our favorite mystery writers. Oh no. While I was interested in mystery stories, I had come to find out more about them and something about their theological significance. I did not have any favorite mystery writers to share. I felt embarrassed, uncomfortable and out of place, though things ended up o.k.
Since then, I have acquired a few mystery writers whose works I like to tell others about: Julia Spenser-Fleming, Nevada Barr, Peter Robinson, John D. MacDonald. I enjoy a good mystery story now and again.
The Biblical book of Job is a mystery story of sorts. It is a book filled with questions. Where is God when humans suffer? Why do we sometimes assume that when people suffer, God is somehow behind it? Unlike many mystery stories, unless there is a planned sequel, Job ends up providing more questions than answers. We read this morning from some of the final chapters in the book. Job and some of his friends have had conversation about Job’s suffering. In the end of the story God responds, but with more questions. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?... Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Job is a mystery story, but of a unique kind, and the kind of mystery story Job is has something to say about our Christian faith.
When we think about mystery stories we tend to think about mystery stories that are puzzles of sorts. There is a crime – a murder, a theft, and the plot of the mystery story revolves around trying to figure out who committed the crime. Really good mystery stories, though, make their characters three-dimensional, especially the detectives. Really good mystery stories can give us insight into the human condition. But Job is not the kind of mystery story that is a puzzle to be solved.
I am also cautious when we, in religious circles, appeal too easily to mystery. Sometimes it is as if some churches want to tell people – “Quit thinking so much. It is a mystery.” If mystery stories as puzzles invite our thinking, these religious appeals to mystery want to short-circuit our thinking. Earlier this month it was reported that a Georgia congressman (Rep. Paul Broun) who sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee said at a church banquet: God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell…. I believe that [the Earth] was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. If asked how this could be given all the scientific knowledge we have, some religionists might say simply, “It’s a mystery.” Really? Does being a Christian mean that we leave our critical thinking behind, that questions are forbidden? Does being a Christian mean that if science seems to suggest something different than on understanding of the Bible, we simply say, “the Bible tells me so” and appeal to the mystery of our faith?
That’s not the kind of mystery story Job is, nor is it the kind of mystery to which we are invited as Christians.
Mystery is important in Christian faith, but mystery as understood like this – Frederick Buechner: There are mysteries which you can solve by taking thought. For instance, a murder mystery whose mysteriousness must be dispelled in order for the truth to be known. There are other mysteries which do not conceal a truth to think your way to but whose truth is itself the mystery. The mystery of your self, for example. The more you try to fathom it, the more fathomless it is revealed to be. No matter how much of your self you are able to objectify and examine, the quintessential, living part will always elude you, i.e., the part that is conducting the examination. Thus you do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery. (Wishful Thinking, 76)
I think Buechner is right about the character of mystery that is at the heart of job and Christian faith. There is something about being human that takes us beyond what our critical thinking can tell us. We don’t abandon such thinking, we push beyond it to ponder and live mystery. Even when we learn all that we can about the human brain and human body and biochemistry, it still will not explain what being a person feels like. There will always be something mysterious about being human, and particularly about being human in relation to God.
In First Corinthians 4, Paul writes, “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.” The Message renders that last part like this: “We are guides into God’s most sublime secrets.” To be Christian is to follow Jesus into the mysteries of God and of human life. It is to follow Jesus into God’s most sublime secrets. We are stewards of God’s mysteries, mysteries like those identified by the poet Denise Levertov: the quiet mystery… the mystery/that there is anything, anything at all,/let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,/rather than void: and that, O Lord,/Creator, Hallowed One, You still/hour by hour sustain it. (“Primary Wonder”)
To be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is to have some answers, yes, but maybe what we have even more are signposts pointing in a direction. You want to know something about God? You want to know something about the meaning of being human? Look in this direction – toward Jesus Christ. What we find in Jesus is not a series of bullet points, but a guide into God’s most sublime secrets. The way of Jesus is the way of the open heart, the open mind – open to the mystery of our lives, open to the mystery of the world. It is not a way that tells us to forget our brains, it is a way that says beyond what we can know through our best thinking, there may be even more to be known and experienced in a different way.
I bring with me today some testimony to the importance of mystery in Christian faith.
Kathleen Norris, poet, Christian spiritual writer, asserts that at the heart of prayer is mystery. Prayer is not doing, but being. It is not words but the beyond-words experience of coming into the presence of something much greater than oneself…. [Prayer] is ordinary experience lived with gratitude and wonder, a wonder that makes us know the smallness of oneself in an enormous and various universe. (Amazing Grace, 350, 351) Prayer can be doing. Prayer can be asking. When prayer seems to get to its deepest place in my life, there is that beyond-words experience of coming into the presence of One greater than myself, One who has depths of mystery beyond me.
God is central to Christian faith, and the God of Jesus Christ will always be sublime and mysterious. James Jones, In the Middle of This Road We Call Our Life: Language is limited by space and time, culture, and individual experience. To speak directly about God is to limit God by treating God like an object in the world of tables and chairs. That is precisely what God is not. (174) Have you ever been a little confused about some parts of the Ten Commandments, particularly the parts about idols and graven images (KJV)? Perhaps this is an invitation to take seriously the limitations of human communication when it comes to God, to remember the depths of God’s mystery, to recall just how sublime are God’s secrets.
The voice of God that calls to us as followers of Jesus will always have a certain mysterious quality to it. The Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel spoke often of the ineffable when he wrote about God. The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide…. We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore. (I Asked for Wonder, 19)
We followers of Jesus are stewards of the mysteries of God. We seek to be attentive to deeper realities and invite others to join us in paying attention. We believe we are responsible in our lives to a mysterious One who we know, but cannot fully name. We may not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure, but an adventure it is. Following Jesus in tracking the mystery of God is an adventure. Once upon a time the term “Christian” meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move around. But these days “Christian” sounds pinched, squeezed, narrow. Many people who identify themselves as Christians seem to have leapfrogged over life, short-circuited the adventure…. Curiosity, imagination, exploration, adventure are not preliminary to Christian identity; a kind of booster rocket to be jettisoned when spiritual orbit is achieved. They are part of the payload. (Patrick Henry, The Ironic Christian’s Companion, p. 8-9)
This month the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released its latest survey on religious affiliation in the United States. One in five adults now considers themselves religiously unaffiliated. Most do not consider themselves atheist, but there is something about organized religion that they are not finding helpful. Perhaps we have tried to offer pat answers rather than invite them to the adventure of following Jesus in tracing the ways of a God of love who yet remains sublime and mysterious. Perhaps the church has been a poor steward of the mysteries of God – appealing to mystery as a substitute for thinking rather than inviting to mystery that considers thinking as a companion on the way.
In a preface he wrote to a book of his poems, Abraham Joshua Heschel penned these words, words addressed to God: “I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me.” (I Asked For Wonder, 7) Pray for wonder. Embrace mystery. You will find the God of wonder and mystery embracing you. Amen.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
The Money Trap
Sermon preached October 14, 2012
Text: Mark 10:17-27
I borrow shamelessly from popular culture in coming up with sermon titles. This morning’s sermon title is the title of a movie, but it was not the movie I was thinking of. I had in mind a movie with Tom Hanks. The Tom Hanks film, co-starring Shelley Long was really called “The Money Pit.” “The Money Pit” (1986) is about a young couple trying to fix up an old, dilapidated house, and their work becomes a money pit. The film is a romantic comedy about the way home improvement projects can get carried away, and about problems with money.
“The Money Trap” (1965) is a very different movie. The movie starred Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth and Elke Summer and is about a cop with financial troubles because of his wife's constant spending. In the course of his work, he himself turns toward theft in order to make money. It doesn’t end well. There is romance here, but, even more there is tragedy.
Our relationship to money can be comic. Often it is more tragic.
Mark, in today’s gospel reading, relates a tragic story about Jesus’ encounter with a man. It is a story about money/possessions. We don’t have much description of the man here. In Matthew he is young. In Luke he is a ruler. In all the gospels the man is a person of means. Here it is said that “he had many possessions.” This man comes to Jesus, while Jesus is on a journey. He kneels before Jesus. “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus reminds him of the basic commandments – and the ones that have to do with human relationships: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”
We seem to have here, in contrast to so many others in the gospels, an honest seeker. This is someone asking Jesus questions not in order to trap him, but to move his life forward. Jesus recognizes this – “Jesus looking at him, loved him.” Yet the love with which Jesus loves can be a challenging love. “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” It is too much for the man. He is shocked and leaves grieving.
The shock of the story is not over. Jesus offers some teaching. “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God…. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” It is the disciples turn to be shocked. They are perplexed and greatly astounded. A camel through the eye of a needle? By the way, there is no gate in Jerusalem called the “eye of the needle” that camels could get through with great difficulty. Jesus is offering an astonishing image, and impossible image – except with God, anything is possible.
What Jesus is describing is the weird economics of the kingdom of God. In the weird economics of the kingdom of God, the rich are going to have a hard time of it. That is pretty astonishing.
What’s Jesus problem with wealth? Does he simply have a bad case of wealth envy? Why might I describe our relationship with money as often tragic? I want to explore how money, things, possessions can be problematic for us in our lives, our relationships to others, and our relationship to God, but first I want to acknowledge that not enough is also a problem. We cannot take this passage from Mark out of the context of the entire Bible, and the Bible indicates that God is deeply concerned with the hungry, the poor, the ill-clad or ill-housed. God is concerned with those who lack enough. In his sermon on “The Use of Money,” John Wesley encouraged Christians to “gain all you can” – that is, to work hard, though one ought not to work at things that are unhealthy. Wesley had a strong sense that we should not be Pollyannaish about money. It has its uses and not having enough is a problem.
Beyond enough, though, there are other problems – the money trap. The man who comes to Jesus is caught in a money trap, possessed by his possessions rather than possessing them. I want to describe this money trap using some quotes and stories.
After he wrote his best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough. There he quotes the psychologist Carl Jung: We overlook the essential fact that the accomplishments which society rewards are won at the cost of the diminution of personality (23)
A few weeks ago, I heard the story of a young woman in her twenties who is currently in investment banking. She is doing well, but the company she works for is doing some strange things, making her feel undervalued and underappreciated. She told a friend, “I would look for another job, but I like my lifestyle too much.” In the pursuit of enough to finance a certain lifestyle, is some part of this woman’s personality being diminished?
In 2008, the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: The country’s moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money. I found this in a book entitled Enough written by John Bogle, founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group.
Bogle also shares the story about the two writers, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. Vonnegut and Heller were attending a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. The host was a hedge fund manager. Vonnegut told Heller that their host had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel, Catch-22. Heller responded, “Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough.” (Bogle, 1) We lose our way with money and things, and we become trapped when we cannot say “enough.”
In another one of his books, Living a Life That Matters, Rabbi Harold Kushner writes about something deep inside of each of us. Our souls are split, part of us reaching for goodness, part of us chasing fame and fortune and doing questionable things along the way, as we realize that those two paths may diverge sharply. (15) Kushner argues that our chasing fame or fortune has something to do with a deep need to feel important and valued for our accomplishments. It is a desire that can be warped.
Father and son writing team of Robert and Edward Skidelsky, in their book How Much is Enough? name that warping of our desire for importance, when it becomes a warped relationship with money and things, “insatiability.” They identify a number of inner and outer forces that contribute to that sense of insatiability, that sense that even for those who already have everything, there is more to be had. Insatiability arises from an inner restlessness, a sense of joy in novelty. We like to achieve things that others do not have – positional goods, like trophies for first place. Beyond that, we seek to feel special by demonstrating our status. Having things, and consuming conspicuously, feeds status needs. (33ff)
I offer all these thoughts and resources to suggest that the money trap is out there, is real, and is something from which none of us is immune. We all want to feel as if we matter, are important. We all want our accomplishments to be valued, and the currency that seems highly valued in our society is cash. Is your work valued? Show me the money! I know I have asked myself “what if?” What if I had devoted myself to a career that had more to do with making money? I know I have daydreamed about “wouldn’t it be nice to win the lottery?” I don’t daydream enough to actually buy a ticket, though.
We all struggle with those inner and social forces that make cash the value of who we are, that make things the measure of our worth. We can get caught up in money and things in such a way that we are trapped, that we close off life-enhancing possibilities. Jesus looks into our eyes, too, with love, and invites us into a different relationship with money and things.
The money trap is there and none of us is immune. Sometimes we fall in. Jesus offers ways out. Generosity is something that lessens the grip of money and things. When we can give freely and generously to enhance the lives of others, we put money and things in their place. We will discuss that more as we approach our stewardship Sundays, but it is a good lesson to hear whenever.
But being generous is not all there is. Jesus invites us to a searching self-examination as he invited the man in this story to self-examination. In a society where having everything is still not enough, how do we keep balance – rightly prizing hard work, and hard-won income, without getting too caught up in status? How do we possess things without them possessing us? The reality is that sometimes we will get it wrong. Sometimes we will fall into the money trap, and will once again need grace. The Harvard Professor and Minister Peter Gomes argues that the primary moral of the gospel story is of our need for grace. Anything is possible for God, even helping us again and again to climb from the money trap, and maybe helping us fall into it less often. (Sermons, 60-61)
The Reverend Fred Craddock was visiting in the home of his niece. There he encountered an old greyhound, just like the ones who raced around tracks chasing mechanical rabbits. Apparently Craddock’s niece had taken the dog in to prevent it from being destroyed after its racing days were over. Anyway, Craddock strikes up a conversation with the dog – at least that’s how he tells it.
“Are you still racing?”
“No,” the greyhound replied.
“Well, what was the matter? Did you get too old to race?”
“No, I still had some race in me.”
“Well, what then? Were you not winning?”
“I won over a million dollars for my owner.”
“Well, did he treat you badly, then?”
“Oh, no,” the dog said. “We were treated quite well while we were racing.”
“Were you injured?”
“No.”
“Then why? Why aren’t you racing?”
“I quit.”
“You quit? Why would you quit?”
“I just quit because after all that running and running and running, I found out that the rabbit I was chasing wasn’t even real.” (Bogle, Enough, 211-212)
Jesus looking at him, loved him. “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded.
At its best the church, and the Jesus of the church, reminds us both of the need for enough and the trap that awaits those who continue to stretch what is enough. Jesus looks at us lovingly and offers grace, a grace that makes anything possible. The church points us in the direction of deeper values and more profound mysteries. More on that next week. Amen.
Text: Mark 10:17-27
I borrow shamelessly from popular culture in coming up with sermon titles. This morning’s sermon title is the title of a movie, but it was not the movie I was thinking of. I had in mind a movie with Tom Hanks. The Tom Hanks film, co-starring Shelley Long was really called “The Money Pit.” “The Money Pit” (1986) is about a young couple trying to fix up an old, dilapidated house, and their work becomes a money pit. The film is a romantic comedy about the way home improvement projects can get carried away, and about problems with money.
“The Money Trap” (1965) is a very different movie. The movie starred Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth and Elke Summer and is about a cop with financial troubles because of his wife's constant spending. In the course of his work, he himself turns toward theft in order to make money. It doesn’t end well. There is romance here, but, even more there is tragedy.
Our relationship to money can be comic. Often it is more tragic.
Mark, in today’s gospel reading, relates a tragic story about Jesus’ encounter with a man. It is a story about money/possessions. We don’t have much description of the man here. In Matthew he is young. In Luke he is a ruler. In all the gospels the man is a person of means. Here it is said that “he had many possessions.” This man comes to Jesus, while Jesus is on a journey. He kneels before Jesus. “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus reminds him of the basic commandments – and the ones that have to do with human relationships: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”
We seem to have here, in contrast to so many others in the gospels, an honest seeker. This is someone asking Jesus questions not in order to trap him, but to move his life forward. Jesus recognizes this – “Jesus looking at him, loved him.” Yet the love with which Jesus loves can be a challenging love. “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” It is too much for the man. He is shocked and leaves grieving.
The shock of the story is not over. Jesus offers some teaching. “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God…. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” It is the disciples turn to be shocked. They are perplexed and greatly astounded. A camel through the eye of a needle? By the way, there is no gate in Jerusalem called the “eye of the needle” that camels could get through with great difficulty. Jesus is offering an astonishing image, and impossible image – except with God, anything is possible.
What Jesus is describing is the weird economics of the kingdom of God. In the weird economics of the kingdom of God, the rich are going to have a hard time of it. That is pretty astonishing.
What’s Jesus problem with wealth? Does he simply have a bad case of wealth envy? Why might I describe our relationship with money as often tragic? I want to explore how money, things, possessions can be problematic for us in our lives, our relationships to others, and our relationship to God, but first I want to acknowledge that not enough is also a problem. We cannot take this passage from Mark out of the context of the entire Bible, and the Bible indicates that God is deeply concerned with the hungry, the poor, the ill-clad or ill-housed. God is concerned with those who lack enough. In his sermon on “The Use of Money,” John Wesley encouraged Christians to “gain all you can” – that is, to work hard, though one ought not to work at things that are unhealthy. Wesley had a strong sense that we should not be Pollyannaish about money. It has its uses and not having enough is a problem.
Beyond enough, though, there are other problems – the money trap. The man who comes to Jesus is caught in a money trap, possessed by his possessions rather than possessing them. I want to describe this money trap using some quotes and stories.
After he wrote his best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough. There he quotes the psychologist Carl Jung: We overlook the essential fact that the accomplishments which society rewards are won at the cost of the diminution of personality (23)
A few weeks ago, I heard the story of a young woman in her twenties who is currently in investment banking. She is doing well, but the company she works for is doing some strange things, making her feel undervalued and underappreciated. She told a friend, “I would look for another job, but I like my lifestyle too much.” In the pursuit of enough to finance a certain lifestyle, is some part of this woman’s personality being diminished?
In 2008, the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: The country’s moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money. I found this in a book entitled Enough written by John Bogle, founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group.
Bogle also shares the story about the two writers, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. Vonnegut and Heller were attending a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. The host was a hedge fund manager. Vonnegut told Heller that their host had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel, Catch-22. Heller responded, “Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough.” (Bogle, 1) We lose our way with money and things, and we become trapped when we cannot say “enough.”
In another one of his books, Living a Life That Matters, Rabbi Harold Kushner writes about something deep inside of each of us. Our souls are split, part of us reaching for goodness, part of us chasing fame and fortune and doing questionable things along the way, as we realize that those two paths may diverge sharply. (15) Kushner argues that our chasing fame or fortune has something to do with a deep need to feel important and valued for our accomplishments. It is a desire that can be warped.
Father and son writing team of Robert and Edward Skidelsky, in their book How Much is Enough? name that warping of our desire for importance, when it becomes a warped relationship with money and things, “insatiability.” They identify a number of inner and outer forces that contribute to that sense of insatiability, that sense that even for those who already have everything, there is more to be had. Insatiability arises from an inner restlessness, a sense of joy in novelty. We like to achieve things that others do not have – positional goods, like trophies for first place. Beyond that, we seek to feel special by demonstrating our status. Having things, and consuming conspicuously, feeds status needs. (33ff)
I offer all these thoughts and resources to suggest that the money trap is out there, is real, and is something from which none of us is immune. We all want to feel as if we matter, are important. We all want our accomplishments to be valued, and the currency that seems highly valued in our society is cash. Is your work valued? Show me the money! I know I have asked myself “what if?” What if I had devoted myself to a career that had more to do with making money? I know I have daydreamed about “wouldn’t it be nice to win the lottery?” I don’t daydream enough to actually buy a ticket, though.
We all struggle with those inner and social forces that make cash the value of who we are, that make things the measure of our worth. We can get caught up in money and things in such a way that we are trapped, that we close off life-enhancing possibilities. Jesus looks into our eyes, too, with love, and invites us into a different relationship with money and things.
The money trap is there and none of us is immune. Sometimes we fall in. Jesus offers ways out. Generosity is something that lessens the grip of money and things. When we can give freely and generously to enhance the lives of others, we put money and things in their place. We will discuss that more as we approach our stewardship Sundays, but it is a good lesson to hear whenever.
But being generous is not all there is. Jesus invites us to a searching self-examination as he invited the man in this story to self-examination. In a society where having everything is still not enough, how do we keep balance – rightly prizing hard work, and hard-won income, without getting too caught up in status? How do we possess things without them possessing us? The reality is that sometimes we will get it wrong. Sometimes we will fall into the money trap, and will once again need grace. The Harvard Professor and Minister Peter Gomes argues that the primary moral of the gospel story is of our need for grace. Anything is possible for God, even helping us again and again to climb from the money trap, and maybe helping us fall into it less often. (Sermons, 60-61)
The Reverend Fred Craddock was visiting in the home of his niece. There he encountered an old greyhound, just like the ones who raced around tracks chasing mechanical rabbits. Apparently Craddock’s niece had taken the dog in to prevent it from being destroyed after its racing days were over. Anyway, Craddock strikes up a conversation with the dog – at least that’s how he tells it.
“Are you still racing?”
“No,” the greyhound replied.
“Well, what was the matter? Did you get too old to race?”
“No, I still had some race in me.”
“Well, what then? Were you not winning?”
“I won over a million dollars for my owner.”
“Well, did he treat you badly, then?”
“Oh, no,” the dog said. “We were treated quite well while we were racing.”
“Were you injured?”
“No.”
“Then why? Why aren’t you racing?”
“I quit.”
“You quit? Why would you quit?”
“I just quit because after all that running and running and running, I found out that the rabbit I was chasing wasn’t even real.” (Bogle, Enough, 211-212)
Jesus looking at him, loved him. “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded.
At its best the church, and the Jesus of the church, reminds us both of the need for enough and the trap that awaits those who continue to stretch what is enough. Jesus looks at us lovingly and offers grace, a grace that makes anything possible. The church points us in the direction of deeper values and more profound mysteries. More on that next week. Amen.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Like Ish
Sermon preached October 7, 2012
Text: Mark 10:13-16
You all know, those of you who know me, that I like music. This summer, maybe because I had a class reunion, I started listening again to music from the 1970s and found myself rediscovering some songs from that time that I had forgotten. So here is a song I stumbled across on a CD called “AM Gold 1970.”
[Play the first part of Ray Stevens, “Everything is Beautiful”: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.]
Everything is Beautiful
Not a bad song for World Communion Sunday when we celebrate our connections with Christians from around the world.
Children. Last week I mentioned that one of my college majors was philosophy. The other was psychology, and psychology often finds children fascinating for a host of reasons. Psychologists want to know something about how we get from childhood to adulthood and what positive growth and development might be like. Freud postulated in his work that there was a lot more going on in children than most had previously considered.
One of the reasons I became a psychology major was the work of Abraham Maslow, work I first encountered in high school. Maslow’s focus was not on children per se, but on self-actualizing people. Yet Maslow had some interesting things to say about children. “The facts… seem to be that normal children are in fact often hostile, destructive, and selfish in a primitive sort of way” (Motivation and Personality, 121). Freud has postulated such things. Maslow goes on to write: “But they are also at other times, and perhaps as often, generous, cooperative, and unselfish in the same primitive style” (121). Which parts of a child predominate depends to a large degree, Maslow argued, on how well the child’s needs for safety, love belongingness and self-esteem were met. Maslow also argued that what we sometimes perceive as destructiveness in children is better considered curiosity. When a child dismantles something, she may just want to know how it works. Maslow notes, “children do not have to be taught to be curious” (50). Children have a lot going on, much good, some not so good.
Children. Jesus was not the first child psychologist, but he did pay attention to children, and, like Maslow, seemed to find something admirable about them. In a culture that did not really focus on children, Jesus embraced them warmly and held them up as examples. Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.
While the Bible points us to children as examples, it does not do so uncritically. In I Corinthians 13, Paul writes: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
Jesus encourages us to emulate children, and Paul notes that there is a time to put an end to childish ways. One way we might helpfully think about the appropriate child qualities of faith is to distinguish between like and ish – childlike and childish. When Jesus encourages us to receive the kingdom of God like a child, I think he is encouraging child-like attitudes, and not childish attitudes. There are probably times in our lives when we are more childish than child-like.
So what characteristics might we think of as childish, those attitudes to be given up as we mature? Children can be impatient. Are we there yet? While there may be a place for a certain kind of righteous impatience at times, we would do well to understand that so many good things in life take time. The world is not the way I would like it to be – too much hunger, poverty, prejudice, war, cruelty. Change is needed, but positive change can take time. Long-time enmities between people do not end overnight. A lack of patience can lead to cynicism and burnout, and cynicism is the opposite of faith.
Children can be self-absorbed. The world of infants is small. When they are hungry or wet, they cry out. It takes time to develop a wider view, and acknowledgement of the other, and frankly it is a life-long task.
Children can be masters at blaming someone else. If something is broken, it must have been a brother or sister, or the next door neighbor. Sometimes children are really creative and the problem is caused by an imaginative friend. Failing to take responsibility for our lives is a common childish quality.
Children also have a tendency to wish it would be easy. This is Scott Peck in reverse. Peck, begins his best-selling book The Road Less Traveled with a simple statement: “life is difficult.” It is, but as children we don’t necessarily see that, and maybe that’s o.k. for children. Thinking everything will be easy is childish when we cling to that idea into adulthood.
When Jesus encourages childlike qualities in us, he is not inviting us to childish impatience, self-absorption, irresponsibility, or immature wishful thinking.
Instead I think Jesus is inviting us to wonder, welcoming, delight and a kind of mature wishful thinking - child-like qualities that we should nurture in our lives throughout our lives.
Wonder. Abraham Maslow in his work on self-actualizing people argued that one characteristic of such people is “continued freshness of appreciation” (163). “Self-actualizing people have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy” (163). Children have a marvelous capacity for wonder that we lose too easily as we grow older. God’s work in the world of nurturing love, encouraging justice, creating beauty, continues, but we are not always ready to see where it is happening. Everything is beautiful, in its own way, if only we will see with childlike wonder and appreciation. One final Maslow quote. “Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important nonevil generators of human evil, tragedy, and suffering” (163). Wonder at the beauty in God’s world, gratitude for the goodness of God and God’s creativity, is at the heart of God’s kingdom work. Wonder is a child-like kingdom characteristic.
Openness and welcoming. Children have a lot to teach us about welcoming others. We have to teach our children to fear others, sometimes for their own safety, but we often take the lessons too far. Children don’t seem bothered by differences in color or abilities or orientations. They see friends first of all. The New Jerusalem Bible translates Jesus’ words in Mark 10 this way – “anyone who welcomes the kingdom of God as a child.” Welcoming and openness to others is a child-like kingdom characteristic. Jesus loves all the children of the world. On World Communion Sunday we are invited to love as openly, as freely, as widely.
Joy, delight and playfulness. The psychologist D. W. Winnicott once wrote: It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self (quoted in Cherishment, Young-Bruehl and Bethelard, 207). Being able to give ourselves to joy, to delight in experiences, to be able to play are important child-like kingdom characteristics. They display a deep faith that God continues to be at work in the world. They help us discover who we are as God’s people. One of my concerns as I look at our society is that we are diminishing the role of play in the lives of our children. We are substituting instead competition. We don’t play as much as compete, and we need to ask what we are losing if all our playing is now competition. If we lose joy, delight and playfulness in children, we will be more hard-pressed to nurture these as adults. Joy, delight and playfulness are child-like kingdom characteristics.
Mature wishful thinking. Is there such a thing? Author, minister and theologian Frederick Buechner wrote a book on theology: Wishful Thinking: a seeker’s abc. Wishful thinking and theology? Christianity is mainly wishful thinking…. Dreams are wishful thinking. Children playing at being grown-up is wishful thinking…. Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth come true on. Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it. Curiosity, creativity and imagination are child-like kingdom characteristics. Doesn’t it take some audacious imagining to celebrate World Communion Sunday in such a divided world? We imagine that sharing bread and juice together here can help bridge differences world-wide. We imagine that sharing bread and juice bring Jesus closer.
Nurturing child-like kingdom characteristics, leaving behind childishness – this is not easy, but then life is difficult sometimes. Yet this is the Jesus way. It asks of us patience. It requires giving of ourselves to something bigger – God’s dream for the world. There will be failures along the way for which we need grace. The Jesus way is the way of childlike wonder, openness, joy and delight. The Jesus way is a way in which truth comes to us on wishful wings. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen.
Text: Mark 10:13-16
You all know, those of you who know me, that I like music. This summer, maybe because I had a class reunion, I started listening again to music from the 1970s and found myself rediscovering some songs from that time that I had forgotten. So here is a song I stumbled across on a CD called “AM Gold 1970.”
[Play the first part of Ray Stevens, “Everything is Beautiful”: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.]
Everything is Beautiful
Not a bad song for World Communion Sunday when we celebrate our connections with Christians from around the world.
Children. Last week I mentioned that one of my college majors was philosophy. The other was psychology, and psychology often finds children fascinating for a host of reasons. Psychologists want to know something about how we get from childhood to adulthood and what positive growth and development might be like. Freud postulated in his work that there was a lot more going on in children than most had previously considered.
One of the reasons I became a psychology major was the work of Abraham Maslow, work I first encountered in high school. Maslow’s focus was not on children per se, but on self-actualizing people. Yet Maslow had some interesting things to say about children. “The facts… seem to be that normal children are in fact often hostile, destructive, and selfish in a primitive sort of way” (Motivation and Personality, 121). Freud has postulated such things. Maslow goes on to write: “But they are also at other times, and perhaps as often, generous, cooperative, and unselfish in the same primitive style” (121). Which parts of a child predominate depends to a large degree, Maslow argued, on how well the child’s needs for safety, love belongingness and self-esteem were met. Maslow also argued that what we sometimes perceive as destructiveness in children is better considered curiosity. When a child dismantles something, she may just want to know how it works. Maslow notes, “children do not have to be taught to be curious” (50). Children have a lot going on, much good, some not so good.
Children. Jesus was not the first child psychologist, but he did pay attention to children, and, like Maslow, seemed to find something admirable about them. In a culture that did not really focus on children, Jesus embraced them warmly and held them up as examples. Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.
While the Bible points us to children as examples, it does not do so uncritically. In I Corinthians 13, Paul writes: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
Jesus encourages us to emulate children, and Paul notes that there is a time to put an end to childish ways. One way we might helpfully think about the appropriate child qualities of faith is to distinguish between like and ish – childlike and childish. When Jesus encourages us to receive the kingdom of God like a child, I think he is encouraging child-like attitudes, and not childish attitudes. There are probably times in our lives when we are more childish than child-like.
So what characteristics might we think of as childish, those attitudes to be given up as we mature? Children can be impatient. Are we there yet? While there may be a place for a certain kind of righteous impatience at times, we would do well to understand that so many good things in life take time. The world is not the way I would like it to be – too much hunger, poverty, prejudice, war, cruelty. Change is needed, but positive change can take time. Long-time enmities between people do not end overnight. A lack of patience can lead to cynicism and burnout, and cynicism is the opposite of faith.
Children can be self-absorbed. The world of infants is small. When they are hungry or wet, they cry out. It takes time to develop a wider view, and acknowledgement of the other, and frankly it is a life-long task.
Children can be masters at blaming someone else. If something is broken, it must have been a brother or sister, or the next door neighbor. Sometimes children are really creative and the problem is caused by an imaginative friend. Failing to take responsibility for our lives is a common childish quality.
Children also have a tendency to wish it would be easy. This is Scott Peck in reverse. Peck, begins his best-selling book The Road Less Traveled with a simple statement: “life is difficult.” It is, but as children we don’t necessarily see that, and maybe that’s o.k. for children. Thinking everything will be easy is childish when we cling to that idea into adulthood.
When Jesus encourages childlike qualities in us, he is not inviting us to childish impatience, self-absorption, irresponsibility, or immature wishful thinking.
Instead I think Jesus is inviting us to wonder, welcoming, delight and a kind of mature wishful thinking - child-like qualities that we should nurture in our lives throughout our lives.
Wonder. Abraham Maslow in his work on self-actualizing people argued that one characteristic of such people is “continued freshness of appreciation” (163). “Self-actualizing people have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy” (163). Children have a marvelous capacity for wonder that we lose too easily as we grow older. God’s work in the world of nurturing love, encouraging justice, creating beauty, continues, but we are not always ready to see where it is happening. Everything is beautiful, in its own way, if only we will see with childlike wonder and appreciation. One final Maslow quote. “Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important nonevil generators of human evil, tragedy, and suffering” (163). Wonder at the beauty in God’s world, gratitude for the goodness of God and God’s creativity, is at the heart of God’s kingdom work. Wonder is a child-like kingdom characteristic.
Openness and welcoming. Children have a lot to teach us about welcoming others. We have to teach our children to fear others, sometimes for their own safety, but we often take the lessons too far. Children don’t seem bothered by differences in color or abilities or orientations. They see friends first of all. The New Jerusalem Bible translates Jesus’ words in Mark 10 this way – “anyone who welcomes the kingdom of God as a child.” Welcoming and openness to others is a child-like kingdom characteristic. Jesus loves all the children of the world. On World Communion Sunday we are invited to love as openly, as freely, as widely.
Joy, delight and playfulness. The psychologist D. W. Winnicott once wrote: It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self (quoted in Cherishment, Young-Bruehl and Bethelard, 207). Being able to give ourselves to joy, to delight in experiences, to be able to play are important child-like kingdom characteristics. They display a deep faith that God continues to be at work in the world. They help us discover who we are as God’s people. One of my concerns as I look at our society is that we are diminishing the role of play in the lives of our children. We are substituting instead competition. We don’t play as much as compete, and we need to ask what we are losing if all our playing is now competition. If we lose joy, delight and playfulness in children, we will be more hard-pressed to nurture these as adults. Joy, delight and playfulness are child-like kingdom characteristics.
Mature wishful thinking. Is there such a thing? Author, minister and theologian Frederick Buechner wrote a book on theology: Wishful Thinking: a seeker’s abc. Wishful thinking and theology? Christianity is mainly wishful thinking…. Dreams are wishful thinking. Children playing at being grown-up is wishful thinking…. Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth come true on. Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it. Curiosity, creativity and imagination are child-like kingdom characteristics. Doesn’t it take some audacious imagining to celebrate World Communion Sunday in such a divided world? We imagine that sharing bread and juice together here can help bridge differences world-wide. We imagine that sharing bread and juice bring Jesus closer.
Nurturing child-like kingdom characteristics, leaving behind childishness – this is not easy, but then life is difficult sometimes. Yet this is the Jesus way. It asks of us patience. It requires giving of ourselves to something bigger – God’s dream for the world. There will be failures along the way for which we need grace. The Jesus way is the way of childlike wonder, openness, joy and delight. The Jesus way is a way in which truth comes to us on wishful wings. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen.
Friday, October 5, 2012
It's All About Not About You
Sermon preached September 30, 2012
Text: Mark 9:38-50
Obesity is an issue in the United States. People just need to eat more healthy foods. I mean look at all those other people and their poor eating habits. They really need to make some changes. They need to watch what they eat. They need to exercise more. Of course I can handle burgers and fries sometimes. And there are lots of days when I just have to miss exercising.
And doesn’t it bug you when those people are on their cell phones while in a check out line. I mean couldn’t they just wait a bit. I am sure what they are talking about is no great emergency. They are probably reporting on the cover of The National Enquirer. Now sometimes I’ve had to be on my phone while checking out, but it is always vitally important.
And do you ever get in line at a sandwich shop behind a person who has like never been in a sandwich shop before. I mean, please – look at the menu before you get in line. Figure it out a little bit first. How hard is it to choose cheese or bread or vegetables? Of course, sometimes I just want to try something new and am not sure what that should be. Give me a little time.
As human beings we are pretty good at finding fault with others and letting ourselves off the hook for the same thing. Someone has called this a “ubiquitous human failing” (Martha Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance, 100).
Many have recognized this tendency among we humans. How many of you ever took a philosophy class? I won’t ask how many of you ever slept through a philosophy class. One of my college majors was philosophy and every few years there comes a time when I can say – “it was good that you were a philosophy major.” Today is such a day.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is a well-known name in philosophy, both for his thinking about human knowing and for this thinking about ethics. Kant tried to figure out the nature of morally right actions, and he came up with a few ways of talking about that. One of them goes like this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Kant was trying to get at the ubiquitous human problem of people exempting themselves from the rules. If you don’t think people should talk on their cell phones while in a check-out line, then the same applies to you.
Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary philosopher, and this will be the last philosopher mentioned this morning, in her recent book The New Religious Intolerance, says that Kant’s ideas have deeper roots. She finds the same message in Jesus. She cites the saying of Jesus about the beam and the speck that we used for our invitation to worship. She writes: The Gospel is saying that people have a strong tendency to self-blindness and to insulating their own faults from critique. She believes it is a “failure to acknowledge the equal reality of others” (Nussbaum, 100, 102).
We easily see the faults of others. We are willing to scrutinize others. We want to exempt ourselves. Nussbaum thinks that this is a form of considering ourselves more important than others, the center of the universe. It is a way of saying, “it’s all about me.” Nussbaum says that the testimony from Jesus to Kant is that instead we should be working toward – “it’s all about not about me.” It’s all about not about you.
I would even go a bit further. I think Jesus wants to flip the equation. Rather than being harder on others, more willing to scrutinize others, I think Jesus encourages gentleness toward others and more scrutiny of ourselves.
Mark 9. In the first part of this reading, the disciples are put out because someone was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, but he was not with the group. It’s all about us, isn’t it? Jesus tells them otherwise. His words suggest that we should celebrate good wherever we find it, and if someone else is up to it that is o.k. There is something bigger going on, God’s work in the world. It’s all about that. It’s all about not about you.
There is another wonderful illustration of this attitude in the New Testament. I was reading Philippians this week as part of my own spiritual discipline. In the first chapter we find Paul writing: Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. Not exactly complimentary. But then Paul writes, “What does it matter?”
What does it matter if good is being done by someone else, even if we may suspect some things about them? Good is being done. It’s not all about you. It’s not all about us.
The second part of Mark 9 drives home the point even more starkly, using uncomfortable imagery. Pay attention to others. Be gentle and nurturing toward others. It’s not all about you. The startling images of burning and cutting are a dramatic way of making that point. Jesus isn’t inviting self-abuse. He is pushing a point – it’s not all about you. We are good at scrutinizing others, and being gentle toward ourselves. We would do better to scrutinize ourselves and be gentle toward others. It’s all about not about you.
Yet it is all about you. I enjoy word play and this sermon title is meant to be word play. The Christian life is both all about and not about you. It is about contributing to something bigger than we are – God’s on-going work in the world. It is about celebrating the good wherever it is to be found, and encouraging and nurturing it. It is about being gentler toward others and having the courage to scrutinize ourselves.
There is a lot of “me” there. There is a lot of “you” there. The gospel reading poses the question to us of what kind of salt we will be. What kind of life will we lead?
Let me address one image in particular in this reading – the image of hell. “Hell” – where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched, a quote from Isaiah 66:24 which is not speaking of individual afterlife. Hell translates the Greek word “Gehenna,” which refers to the Valley of Hinonom. “This valley south of Jerusalem, once the site of pagan sacrifices, was later made the city garbage dump, where stench, maggots, and fire were always present” (The People’s New Testament Commentary).
What kind of life will we lead? If we don’t care, if our lives are not about service and love and helping the little ones, and contributing to something bigger than ourselves, they are like garbage. The choice is ours – fine salt, goodness, or garbage. The reality is we have some of both, but we are always better at spotting the trashy parts of other people’s lives than seeing the garbage in our own. We need to turn that around. Yet, finally, we should find that place where we can be gentle with others and with ourselves. I have long appreciated that line from Desiderata: Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. Living the Jesus way requires some self-discipline and self-scrutiny. The only way we know if we are getting that all about/not about thing right is if we are willing to look gently and firmly at our own lives – celebrating the goodness and trying to let the garbage go.
Here’s the thing. God wants to love the world through you in a way that is only through you. So you matter a great deal. It is all about you and your response to this ever present invitation from God. It is not about you in that the work to which we give ourselves is always bigger than any of us and the work needs all of us.
There is a story that comes from the Hasidic Jewish tradition . Every person, the tradition states, should carry two pieces of paper, one in the right pocket and one in the left. One of the pieces of paper should read, ‘I am but dust and ashes.” The other should read “For my sake the world was created.”
Exercise wholesome discipline. Be gentle with others. Celebrate goodness wherever it is found. Offer the cup of cold water. Nurture the little ones. Let God love the world through you. It’s all about you. It’s all about not about you. Live with it. Amen.
Text: Mark 9:38-50
Obesity is an issue in the United States. People just need to eat more healthy foods. I mean look at all those other people and their poor eating habits. They really need to make some changes. They need to watch what they eat. They need to exercise more. Of course I can handle burgers and fries sometimes. And there are lots of days when I just have to miss exercising.
And doesn’t it bug you when those people are on their cell phones while in a check out line. I mean couldn’t they just wait a bit. I am sure what they are talking about is no great emergency. They are probably reporting on the cover of The National Enquirer. Now sometimes I’ve had to be on my phone while checking out, but it is always vitally important.
And do you ever get in line at a sandwich shop behind a person who has like never been in a sandwich shop before. I mean, please – look at the menu before you get in line. Figure it out a little bit first. How hard is it to choose cheese or bread or vegetables? Of course, sometimes I just want to try something new and am not sure what that should be. Give me a little time.
As human beings we are pretty good at finding fault with others and letting ourselves off the hook for the same thing. Someone has called this a “ubiquitous human failing” (Martha Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance, 100).
Many have recognized this tendency among we humans. How many of you ever took a philosophy class? I won’t ask how many of you ever slept through a philosophy class. One of my college majors was philosophy and every few years there comes a time when I can say – “it was good that you were a philosophy major.” Today is such a day.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is a well-known name in philosophy, both for his thinking about human knowing and for this thinking about ethics. Kant tried to figure out the nature of morally right actions, and he came up with a few ways of talking about that. One of them goes like this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Kant was trying to get at the ubiquitous human problem of people exempting themselves from the rules. If you don’t think people should talk on their cell phones while in a check-out line, then the same applies to you.
Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary philosopher, and this will be the last philosopher mentioned this morning, in her recent book The New Religious Intolerance, says that Kant’s ideas have deeper roots. She finds the same message in Jesus. She cites the saying of Jesus about the beam and the speck that we used for our invitation to worship. She writes: The Gospel is saying that people have a strong tendency to self-blindness and to insulating their own faults from critique. She believes it is a “failure to acknowledge the equal reality of others” (Nussbaum, 100, 102).
We easily see the faults of others. We are willing to scrutinize others. We want to exempt ourselves. Nussbaum thinks that this is a form of considering ourselves more important than others, the center of the universe. It is a way of saying, “it’s all about me.” Nussbaum says that the testimony from Jesus to Kant is that instead we should be working toward – “it’s all about not about me.” It’s all about not about you.
I would even go a bit further. I think Jesus wants to flip the equation. Rather than being harder on others, more willing to scrutinize others, I think Jesus encourages gentleness toward others and more scrutiny of ourselves.
Mark 9. In the first part of this reading, the disciples are put out because someone was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, but he was not with the group. It’s all about us, isn’t it? Jesus tells them otherwise. His words suggest that we should celebrate good wherever we find it, and if someone else is up to it that is o.k. There is something bigger going on, God’s work in the world. It’s all about that. It’s all about not about you.
There is another wonderful illustration of this attitude in the New Testament. I was reading Philippians this week as part of my own spiritual discipline. In the first chapter we find Paul writing: Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. Not exactly complimentary. But then Paul writes, “What does it matter?”
What does it matter if good is being done by someone else, even if we may suspect some things about them? Good is being done. It’s not all about you. It’s not all about us.
The second part of Mark 9 drives home the point even more starkly, using uncomfortable imagery. Pay attention to others. Be gentle and nurturing toward others. It’s not all about you. The startling images of burning and cutting are a dramatic way of making that point. Jesus isn’t inviting self-abuse. He is pushing a point – it’s not all about you. We are good at scrutinizing others, and being gentle toward ourselves. We would do better to scrutinize ourselves and be gentle toward others. It’s all about not about you.
Yet it is all about you. I enjoy word play and this sermon title is meant to be word play. The Christian life is both all about and not about you. It is about contributing to something bigger than we are – God’s on-going work in the world. It is about celebrating the good wherever it is to be found, and encouraging and nurturing it. It is about being gentler toward others and having the courage to scrutinize ourselves.
There is a lot of “me” there. There is a lot of “you” there. The gospel reading poses the question to us of what kind of salt we will be. What kind of life will we lead?
Let me address one image in particular in this reading – the image of hell. “Hell” – where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched, a quote from Isaiah 66:24 which is not speaking of individual afterlife. Hell translates the Greek word “Gehenna,” which refers to the Valley of Hinonom. “This valley south of Jerusalem, once the site of pagan sacrifices, was later made the city garbage dump, where stench, maggots, and fire were always present” (The People’s New Testament Commentary).
What kind of life will we lead? If we don’t care, if our lives are not about service and love and helping the little ones, and contributing to something bigger than ourselves, they are like garbage. The choice is ours – fine salt, goodness, or garbage. The reality is we have some of both, but we are always better at spotting the trashy parts of other people’s lives than seeing the garbage in our own. We need to turn that around. Yet, finally, we should find that place where we can be gentle with others and with ourselves. I have long appreciated that line from Desiderata: Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. Living the Jesus way requires some self-discipline and self-scrutiny. The only way we know if we are getting that all about/not about thing right is if we are willing to look gently and firmly at our own lives – celebrating the goodness and trying to let the garbage go.
Here’s the thing. God wants to love the world through you in a way that is only through you. So you matter a great deal. It is all about you and your response to this ever present invitation from God. It is not about you in that the work to which we give ourselves is always bigger than any of us and the work needs all of us.
There is a story that comes from the Hasidic Jewish tradition . Every person, the tradition states, should carry two pieces of paper, one in the right pocket and one in the left. One of the pieces of paper should read, ‘I am but dust and ashes.” The other should read “For my sake the world was created.”
Exercise wholesome discipline. Be gentle with others. Celebrate goodness wherever it is found. Offer the cup of cold water. Nurture the little ones. Let God love the world through you. It’s all about you. It’s all about not about you. Live with it. Amen.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Try a Little Tenderness
Sermon preached September 23, 2012
Text: James 3:13-18; Mark 9:30-37
Water. This summer I had a couple of profound experiences with water. 2:45 am June 20 the phone at our house rang. That is usually not good news. It wasn’t. The Red Cross was calling to see if we would open our church as an emergency shelter because the rains had been pouring so hard that residents of Fond Du Lac and other areas were being evacuated. On my way to the church in the dark, I drove along Skyline Parkway, and just a couple of blocks from here were some cones around what looked like a deep hole with light shining out of it. Having a small car I navigated around the cones to get to the church. Later I realized I had driven right by that car that had sunk into the sink hole on Skyline. It was probably not the smartest thing I have ever done. Later that morning a couple who were at the church asked if anyone could take them down to CHUM. I agreed to do so. The rain was still falling hard, and driving downtown I could see how some avenues had become rivers, and how pavement had been torn loose. Few of us will forget what we witnessed June 20 and after here in Duluth.
Later in the summer, as part of our vacation we visited Niagara Falls. They are an amazing sight to see. We signed up for a tour, and as part of our tour, we were driven up river from the falls, toward Lake Ontario. A few miles north of the falls, at a much more serene place in the Niagara River, our driver told us that thousands of years ago, this was where the falls were located. The falls have gradually moved down stream to their current location, and the current rate of the movement of the falls is about 1 foot per year. Water falling over rock wears away at it year after year. It happens even when the water is flowing gently.
Gentleness. The American Heritage Dictionary defines gentle this way: considerate or kindly in disposition, amiable and tender. I have become impressed in more recent years by how often “gentleness” is mentioned in the New Testament, including in our readings for today. In James we read: Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom…. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
The image of Jesus is Mark 9 is an image of gentleness, along with an image of strength. The disciples argue about greatness. Jesus tells them that the greatest are those who serve. Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me. Gentleness.
I have become convinced that gentleness is a hallmark of the Christian life, of the Jesus way. Someone has written: “gentleness is a vital dimension of the kingdom of God” (John Swinton, Living Gently in a Violent World, 19). What does that mean for us who want to be on the Jesus way?
We need to know that gentleness is not weakness. The gentle Jesus welcoming children is on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to the cross. It will take deep strength to keep integrity in the midst of all that will be happening. There is remarkable strength in the gentleness of Jesus. Gentleness is the strength of a flowing stream. In the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching we find these words: The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world. (#43, translated by Stephen Mitchell). Another translation of that same text reads: The softest, most pliable thing in the world runs roughshod over the firmest thing in the world (tr. Robert G. Hendricks).
What does gentle strength look like? There could be a book in this, but I have just a few minutes. Let me quickly identify five dimensions of the gentleness of the Jesus way.
Gentleness means smoothing over rough edges. Who of us does not have some rough places in our lives – impatience, anger, less compassion than we would like, some pattern of behavior that is not life-giving? In a speech given the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Bobby Kennedy said: let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Some of that “savageness” rests inside us. We have rough edges that need smoothing inside our lives – we need some self-monitoring and self-discipline.
I have been thinking about the need for self-monitoring and self-discipline lately in regard to free speech and freedom of expression. I believe strongly in free speech and freedom of expression. I also think people need to think a bit about how they want to express their viewpoint. Is it helpful to criticize radical Islam by making an awful film trashing the prophet Mohammed? A woman named Pamela Geller is taking out ads in a few New York subway stations that will read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Is equating Islam with savagery really helpful? The violent response of some Muslims to the wretched film, “Innocence of the Muslims” is another example of expression run amok. An offensive film is no justification at all for violence and killing. On another front, is the best use of free speech the publication of topless photos of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge?
Gentleness encourages some self-restraint, self-examination, self-discipline so that rough edges in our lives can be smoothed over, making more gentle our lives and our world.
Gentleness means openness to others. Children in Jesus’ day were not given a lot of attention in the society. They were marginalized. Jesus takes time for them. Jesus embraces them. Gentleness means openness to others. We keep the possibility of friendship open with those who are different from us and those on the margins. We are able to say to others, in the words of Josef Pieper: “It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world” (quoted in Living Gently in a Violent World, 20). Let’s try it with a neighbor. It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world. Might such gentleness affect how we think about the constitutional amendments we have to vote on this fall – on marriage and on voter identification?
Gentleness as openness to others also means be willing to learn from others. I was so pleased that we held an event called “Respectful Conversations” here. It provided a structure for people to talk about the marriage amendment in a respectful way. The goal was to open and soften hearts rather than to change minds. The process can be used with other issues. Gentleness.
Gentleness entails compassion for others. When we get to know others, we may encounter suffering, and gentleness moves us to do what we can to help those who suffer. We want to make more gentle the life of this world.
Gentleness involves engaging conflict well. Gentle people will disagree with one another. James cautions us about conflict, but his words are about conflict gone awry. Engaging conflict well is a part of gentleness. I am pleased that our denomination supports an organization called JustPeace. It is a center for mediation and conflict transformation and it offers wonderful guidance for working with differences and conflicts. It starts by suggesting building strong relationships as a context for dealing with differences, relationships where we listen well and share lovingly. We cultivate in ourselves God’s love. We use processes for conversation that help us understand each other better – processes like respectful conversations or circle processes. I am going to post the JustPeace web site when I post my sermon (www.justpeaceumc.org).
Finally, gentleness has to do with recognizing that we need to give ourselves to something bigger than ourselves. I am going to explore some of this more next week in a sermon whose title will be: “It’s All About Not About You.” Here’s what I need to say this morning. In our lives, we want to leave something worthwhile behind. There is this song by Lee Ann Womack with the lyrics: I’ll probably never hold the brush that paints a masterpiece/I’ll probably never find the pen that writes a symphony/But if I will love then I will find/I’ve touched another life and that’s something/Something worth leaving behind. When we live life with that kind of gentleness, we not only leave something worthwhile behind, we give God something God can use in God’s work of building a newer world.
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes no me but the one who sent me.
The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling us to live gently. Try a little tenderness – a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. Amen.
Text: James 3:13-18; Mark 9:30-37
Water. This summer I had a couple of profound experiences with water. 2:45 am June 20 the phone at our house rang. That is usually not good news. It wasn’t. The Red Cross was calling to see if we would open our church as an emergency shelter because the rains had been pouring so hard that residents of Fond Du Lac and other areas were being evacuated. On my way to the church in the dark, I drove along Skyline Parkway, and just a couple of blocks from here were some cones around what looked like a deep hole with light shining out of it. Having a small car I navigated around the cones to get to the church. Later I realized I had driven right by that car that had sunk into the sink hole on Skyline. It was probably not the smartest thing I have ever done. Later that morning a couple who were at the church asked if anyone could take them down to CHUM. I agreed to do so. The rain was still falling hard, and driving downtown I could see how some avenues had become rivers, and how pavement had been torn loose. Few of us will forget what we witnessed June 20 and after here in Duluth.
Later in the summer, as part of our vacation we visited Niagara Falls. They are an amazing sight to see. We signed up for a tour, and as part of our tour, we were driven up river from the falls, toward Lake Ontario. A few miles north of the falls, at a much more serene place in the Niagara River, our driver told us that thousands of years ago, this was where the falls were located. The falls have gradually moved down stream to their current location, and the current rate of the movement of the falls is about 1 foot per year. Water falling over rock wears away at it year after year. It happens even when the water is flowing gently.
Gentleness. The American Heritage Dictionary defines gentle this way: considerate or kindly in disposition, amiable and tender. I have become impressed in more recent years by how often “gentleness” is mentioned in the New Testament, including in our readings for today. In James we read: Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom…. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
The image of Jesus is Mark 9 is an image of gentleness, along with an image of strength. The disciples argue about greatness. Jesus tells them that the greatest are those who serve. Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me. Gentleness.
I have become convinced that gentleness is a hallmark of the Christian life, of the Jesus way. Someone has written: “gentleness is a vital dimension of the kingdom of God” (John Swinton, Living Gently in a Violent World, 19). What does that mean for us who want to be on the Jesus way?
We need to know that gentleness is not weakness. The gentle Jesus welcoming children is on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to the cross. It will take deep strength to keep integrity in the midst of all that will be happening. There is remarkable strength in the gentleness of Jesus. Gentleness is the strength of a flowing stream. In the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching we find these words: The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world. (#43, translated by Stephen Mitchell). Another translation of that same text reads: The softest, most pliable thing in the world runs roughshod over the firmest thing in the world (tr. Robert G. Hendricks).
What does gentle strength look like? There could be a book in this, but I have just a few minutes. Let me quickly identify five dimensions of the gentleness of the Jesus way.
Gentleness means smoothing over rough edges. Who of us does not have some rough places in our lives – impatience, anger, less compassion than we would like, some pattern of behavior that is not life-giving? In a speech given the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Bobby Kennedy said: let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Some of that “savageness” rests inside us. We have rough edges that need smoothing inside our lives – we need some self-monitoring and self-discipline.
I have been thinking about the need for self-monitoring and self-discipline lately in regard to free speech and freedom of expression. I believe strongly in free speech and freedom of expression. I also think people need to think a bit about how they want to express their viewpoint. Is it helpful to criticize radical Islam by making an awful film trashing the prophet Mohammed? A woman named Pamela Geller is taking out ads in a few New York subway stations that will read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Is equating Islam with savagery really helpful? The violent response of some Muslims to the wretched film, “Innocence of the Muslims” is another example of expression run amok. An offensive film is no justification at all for violence and killing. On another front, is the best use of free speech the publication of topless photos of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge?
Gentleness encourages some self-restraint, self-examination, self-discipline so that rough edges in our lives can be smoothed over, making more gentle our lives and our world.
Gentleness means openness to others. Children in Jesus’ day were not given a lot of attention in the society. They were marginalized. Jesus takes time for them. Jesus embraces them. Gentleness means openness to others. We keep the possibility of friendship open with those who are different from us and those on the margins. We are able to say to others, in the words of Josef Pieper: “It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world” (quoted in Living Gently in a Violent World, 20). Let’s try it with a neighbor. It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world. Might such gentleness affect how we think about the constitutional amendments we have to vote on this fall – on marriage and on voter identification?
Gentleness as openness to others also means be willing to learn from others. I was so pleased that we held an event called “Respectful Conversations” here. It provided a structure for people to talk about the marriage amendment in a respectful way. The goal was to open and soften hearts rather than to change minds. The process can be used with other issues. Gentleness.
Gentleness entails compassion for others. When we get to know others, we may encounter suffering, and gentleness moves us to do what we can to help those who suffer. We want to make more gentle the life of this world.
Gentleness involves engaging conflict well. Gentle people will disagree with one another. James cautions us about conflict, but his words are about conflict gone awry. Engaging conflict well is a part of gentleness. I am pleased that our denomination supports an organization called JustPeace. It is a center for mediation and conflict transformation and it offers wonderful guidance for working with differences and conflicts. It starts by suggesting building strong relationships as a context for dealing with differences, relationships where we listen well and share lovingly. We cultivate in ourselves God’s love. We use processes for conversation that help us understand each other better – processes like respectful conversations or circle processes. I am going to post the JustPeace web site when I post my sermon (www.justpeaceumc.org).
Finally, gentleness has to do with recognizing that we need to give ourselves to something bigger than ourselves. I am going to explore some of this more next week in a sermon whose title will be: “It’s All About Not About You.” Here’s what I need to say this morning. In our lives, we want to leave something worthwhile behind. There is this song by Lee Ann Womack with the lyrics: I’ll probably never hold the brush that paints a masterpiece/I’ll probably never find the pen that writes a symphony/But if I will love then I will find/I’ve touched another life and that’s something/Something worth leaving behind. When we live life with that kind of gentleness, we not only leave something worthwhile behind, we give God something God can use in God’s work of building a newer world.
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes no me but the one who sent me.
The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling us to live gently. Try a little tenderness – a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. Amen.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Just Getting Started
Sermon preached September 16, 2012
Text: Mark 8:27-38
Thirty years ago this past summer, just about a mile from here at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, a young woman named Julie and a young man named David said “I do.” Even if I said that we were both sixteen at the time, we still would not be all that young today. Thirty years.
In those years I have had the wonderful opportunity to officiate at a lot of weddings for others. There is a great deal of work and planning that goes into most weddings, that goes into that moment when a couple says, “I do.” But that is just the beginning. Those who think that is the moment in a marriage are mistaken. It is an important moment, but only a beginning. Things are just getting started.
Thirty years ago, Julie and I made that beginning, and a lot has happened in those thirty years. We have three children, all now in their twenties. The day of their births was significant. David wanted to come early. He was born six weeks prematurely on the day one of Julie’s cousins was married. Beth arrived a little early, too. She was born on a Sunday morning right in the middle of the worship service at Roseau United Methodist Church where I was the pastor. You will be pleased to know I missed church that day. Sarah was a little early, as well. Julie was scheduled for a c-section, but Sarah could not wait and the operation happened a few days earlier than expected. Our children were born, named and baptized. But that is just getting started. It is just getting started for them. It is just getting started as a parent. As a parent you don’t just get to name your children then move on.
School began this past week. It is always fun to talk with parents and children about that. At Wednesday dinner I got to hear some wonderful stories from Abby Adamec about school. That first day when your child enters kindergarten is a milestone, for both parent and child. But it is just getting started. I went to kindergarten at Lakeside Elementary, and I was just getting started. K-12, then four years of college, then three years of seminary, then seven more years completing a Ph.D.
I like to cook. I am not a great chef or anything, but I like to cook. I know that when you get your recipe out and you put all the ingredients on the counter, you are just getting started. You don’t holler out “dinner’s ready” if that’s only how far you’ve progressed.
I remember an episode of the television show Seinfeld. It is still on quite a bit on re-runs. Jerry is going to pick up a rental car. He is told that they don’t have a car for him. “But I made a reservation.” “I know.” “Isn’t the reservation supposed to hold the car? I don’t think you understand what a reservation is.” “I know what a reservation is.” I don’t think you do. You know how to take the reservation. Anyone can take a reservation. You just don’t know how to hold the reservation, and that’s really the most important part of the reservation.” Taking a reservation is just getting started.
There is something of that just getting started thing happening in the Gospel reading for today. Jesus inquires about who people think he is, and then asks who the disciples think he is. Peter: “You are the Messiah.” It is often translated, “You are the Christ.” Apparently Peter is spot on. You get the sense from the way the conversation moves forward, however, that Peter thinks this is it. It is going to be easy street from here on out. They have discovered who Jesus is, and now it is just a matter of sliding into glory.
In the starkest, boldest terms, Jesus says, “no.” Jesus says, “you’re just getting started.” Here is how he says it. First he tells them all that suffering is on the horizon. Then he says: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. To say Jesus is the Christ is just getting started.
There is a stream in the Christian faith tradition that places a great deal of emphasis on that moment of decision for Jesus. The ministry of Billy Graham, which has influenced my life along the way, focuses a lot on that moment of decision. His radio program, which I listened to some in my teenage years was called “The Hour of Decision.” It began in 1950 and is still being broadcast. The magazine of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which I once subscribed to is called Decision. There is a stream in the Christian faith tradition that emphasizes that moment of decision. In my Christian coffee house days, I remember a song we sometimes sang. Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me. Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me. Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me. I know it was the hand of the Lord. It was on a ________, somebody touched me. We were all invited to know that day of the week on which we had made our decision for Jesus. After the sermon, we are going to sing a song that I first sang in my Christian coffee house days.
Deciding for Jesus, saying yes to Jesus in an hour of decision, whether it was at an evangelistic rally, watching Billy Graham on television, in Sunday School, at camp, or maybe just over a period of time, that is important. Such a moment of decision matters. But it is just getting started. There was a study done awhile back that indicated that a significant number of people who come forward at Billy Graham events have come forward before. Nothing wrong with that, unless they have forgotten that coming forward to decide for Jesus is just getting started. I want to give Billy Graham credit. He understands that. I remember doing some of his bible studies as a youth as one way to move forward after my hour of decision. Saying yes to Jesus, saying about Jesus, “you are the Christ,” is just getting started.
Here’s what we know about the way forward. There is some suffering along the Jesus way. This is not to say God causes our suffering to teach us something. This is not meant to be a blind acceptance of suffering, not at all. Suffering is there in the world – hunger, homelessness, abuse, addiction. There are children with distended bellies and children dying of malaria. We have a choice. We can see it, and suffer because we truly see it and respond, or we can turn away. The way of life is to look, see, respond. Those who would try to save their lives by looking away, lose their lives. Those who look, suffer and respond find their lives. I think there is some link between being able to see the hurt and pain of the world and being able to see the beauty and wonder of the world.
The way forward is the way of the cross. Here the cross is not meant only as a symbol of suffering, which is most often how we see it. Jesus’ cross was a literal cross. Our cross is living out our lives in response to God. It is to respond to God in all things. It is to live wide open and to love with abandon. This is the way of life.
To say “yes” to Jesus is just getting started. It is like saying “I do,” or the first day of school, or a birth, or getting all the ingredients ready to be prepared into a meal. It is important to say “yes,” and even more important to keep saying “yes,” top stay on the journey.
There is good news here. The good news is that this way that refuses to avoid suffering, that this way of the cross, is the way of life. There is more good news. No matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, the way is always open. And if you once said “yes,” and then gotten lost on the way, a new beginning is always possible. With Jesus you can always say “yes” again as if for the first time.
There are moments in our lives where we all may need a new beginning, a sense that we are just getting started. There is a certain joy and excitement in that. Maybe now is such a time in your life. Maybe now is such a time as we come together as a new congregation. There is joy and excitement in that.
Let’s get started again on the Jesus way. Let’s keep going in the Jesus way. Amen.
Text: Mark 8:27-38
Thirty years ago this past summer, just about a mile from here at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, a young woman named Julie and a young man named David said “I do.” Even if I said that we were both sixteen at the time, we still would not be all that young today. Thirty years.
In those years I have had the wonderful opportunity to officiate at a lot of weddings for others. There is a great deal of work and planning that goes into most weddings, that goes into that moment when a couple says, “I do.” But that is just the beginning. Those who think that is the moment in a marriage are mistaken. It is an important moment, but only a beginning. Things are just getting started.
Thirty years ago, Julie and I made that beginning, and a lot has happened in those thirty years. We have three children, all now in their twenties. The day of their births was significant. David wanted to come early. He was born six weeks prematurely on the day one of Julie’s cousins was married. Beth arrived a little early, too. She was born on a Sunday morning right in the middle of the worship service at Roseau United Methodist Church where I was the pastor. You will be pleased to know I missed church that day. Sarah was a little early, as well. Julie was scheduled for a c-section, but Sarah could not wait and the operation happened a few days earlier than expected. Our children were born, named and baptized. But that is just getting started. It is just getting started for them. It is just getting started as a parent. As a parent you don’t just get to name your children then move on.
School began this past week. It is always fun to talk with parents and children about that. At Wednesday dinner I got to hear some wonderful stories from Abby Adamec about school. That first day when your child enters kindergarten is a milestone, for both parent and child. But it is just getting started. I went to kindergarten at Lakeside Elementary, and I was just getting started. K-12, then four years of college, then three years of seminary, then seven more years completing a Ph.D.
I like to cook. I am not a great chef or anything, but I like to cook. I know that when you get your recipe out and you put all the ingredients on the counter, you are just getting started. You don’t holler out “dinner’s ready” if that’s only how far you’ve progressed.
I remember an episode of the television show Seinfeld. It is still on quite a bit on re-runs. Jerry is going to pick up a rental car. He is told that they don’t have a car for him. “But I made a reservation.” “I know.” “Isn’t the reservation supposed to hold the car? I don’t think you understand what a reservation is.” “I know what a reservation is.” I don’t think you do. You know how to take the reservation. Anyone can take a reservation. You just don’t know how to hold the reservation, and that’s really the most important part of the reservation.” Taking a reservation is just getting started.
There is something of that just getting started thing happening in the Gospel reading for today. Jesus inquires about who people think he is, and then asks who the disciples think he is. Peter: “You are the Messiah.” It is often translated, “You are the Christ.” Apparently Peter is spot on. You get the sense from the way the conversation moves forward, however, that Peter thinks this is it. It is going to be easy street from here on out. They have discovered who Jesus is, and now it is just a matter of sliding into glory.
In the starkest, boldest terms, Jesus says, “no.” Jesus says, “you’re just getting started.” Here is how he says it. First he tells them all that suffering is on the horizon. Then he says: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. To say Jesus is the Christ is just getting started.
There is a stream in the Christian faith tradition that places a great deal of emphasis on that moment of decision for Jesus. The ministry of Billy Graham, which has influenced my life along the way, focuses a lot on that moment of decision. His radio program, which I listened to some in my teenage years was called “The Hour of Decision.” It began in 1950 and is still being broadcast. The magazine of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which I once subscribed to is called Decision. There is a stream in the Christian faith tradition that emphasizes that moment of decision. In my Christian coffee house days, I remember a song we sometimes sang. Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me. Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me. Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me. I know it was the hand of the Lord. It was on a ________, somebody touched me. We were all invited to know that day of the week on which we had made our decision for Jesus. After the sermon, we are going to sing a song that I first sang in my Christian coffee house days.
Deciding for Jesus, saying yes to Jesus in an hour of decision, whether it was at an evangelistic rally, watching Billy Graham on television, in Sunday School, at camp, or maybe just over a period of time, that is important. Such a moment of decision matters. But it is just getting started. There was a study done awhile back that indicated that a significant number of people who come forward at Billy Graham events have come forward before. Nothing wrong with that, unless they have forgotten that coming forward to decide for Jesus is just getting started. I want to give Billy Graham credit. He understands that. I remember doing some of his bible studies as a youth as one way to move forward after my hour of decision. Saying yes to Jesus, saying about Jesus, “you are the Christ,” is just getting started.
Here’s what we know about the way forward. There is some suffering along the Jesus way. This is not to say God causes our suffering to teach us something. This is not meant to be a blind acceptance of suffering, not at all. Suffering is there in the world – hunger, homelessness, abuse, addiction. There are children with distended bellies and children dying of malaria. We have a choice. We can see it, and suffer because we truly see it and respond, or we can turn away. The way of life is to look, see, respond. Those who would try to save their lives by looking away, lose their lives. Those who look, suffer and respond find their lives. I think there is some link between being able to see the hurt and pain of the world and being able to see the beauty and wonder of the world.
The way forward is the way of the cross. Here the cross is not meant only as a symbol of suffering, which is most often how we see it. Jesus’ cross was a literal cross. Our cross is living out our lives in response to God. It is to respond to God in all things. It is to live wide open and to love with abandon. This is the way of life.
To say “yes” to Jesus is just getting started. It is like saying “I do,” or the first day of school, or a birth, or getting all the ingredients ready to be prepared into a meal. It is important to say “yes,” and even more important to keep saying “yes,” top stay on the journey.
There is good news here. The good news is that this way that refuses to avoid suffering, that this way of the cross, is the way of life. There is more good news. No matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, the way is always open. And if you once said “yes,” and then gotten lost on the way, a new beginning is always possible. With Jesus you can always say “yes” again as if for the first time.
There are moments in our lives where we all may need a new beginning, a sense that we are just getting started. There is a certain joy and excitement in that. Maybe now is such a time in your life. Maybe now is such a time as we come together as a new congregation. There is joy and excitement in that.
Let’s get started again on the Jesus way. Let’s keep going in the Jesus way. Amen.
Friday, September 14, 2012
All Together Now
Sermon preached September 9, 2012
Texts: James 2:1-7; Mark 7:24-37
His name was Ed. I can’t remember just what grade I was in at Lester Park Elementary when I met Ed, but Ed stood out. His skin was a little darker, though I never really thought much about that. His clothes were a little dingy. His body gave off a distinctive odor. Because of that, Ed was often teased, and often left out. I never knew much about Ed, though the story was that he had a big family and had to share a bed with brothers.
Anyway, I am not sure why, but I felt bad for Ed. I noticed the odor, but didn’t think that was enough for people to be mean. I empathized with his predicament, feeling left out. I reached out to include Ed on the playground or in class. It seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe something Iwas learning in Sunday School and at home was having an effect. After a couple of years, Ed’s family moved and he was no longer in school with me. I don’t know what ever happened to him.
I tell this story not to tout my moral heroism from childhood on. I tell it because I still remember it, and I tell it fully aware of other failings on my part to be inclusive, to reach out. Kids can sometimes be cruel and excluding. Sometimes to feel in, we collude and keep others out. Most of us know both sides of that experience – being in, feeling left out.
Thinking about this I also remember poets I read in high school. They are the only two poets I remember reading in high school though I am sure there must have been others. My love for poetry developed later. So I remember the poet Carl Sandburg, and I remember that one time he was asked what he considered the ugliest word in the English language. “The ugliest word in the English language is exclusive,” the old poet said.
I remember Robert Frost, he of the two roads diverging in a wood. In one of his poems (“Mending Wall”) Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Later in the poem he reflects, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out.”
The human experience is often of walling in or feeling walled out. Our human experience is filled with times when we have felt excluded or we have excluded. Though there may be something in us that doesn’t love a wall, the roots of exclusion run deep in the human heart. Psycho-social theorists offer a number of explanations for the human tendency to exclude, to draw lines that differentiate between in and out. That tendency is rooted in our need for self-esteem and self-significance (Rollo May, Power and Innocence). One unhealthy way we bolster ourselves is by putting others down. That tendency is rooted in our fear of death (Ernest Becker, Escape From Evil). If we can become part of a larger, exclusive group, we live on in a certain sense. That tendency is rooted in a discomfort with our own shadow side, those internal things that we project onto others so we don’t have to deal with them in ourselves (Jung, in Becker, 94-95).
We have a tendency to exclude, and when we are at our best, we struggle against that tendency. Might Jesus have been struggling with that tendency in today’s gospel story? Being fully human, he was born into a certain culture and would have been influenced, as we all are, by cultural understandings of in-groups and out-groups. Is this a story about struggling with the human tendency to exclude? Perhaps. What is most important to note is that walls are broken down, potential exclusion becomes inclusion. As a good Jew, Jesus should not have been talking to a woman, let alone a Syrophonecian woman. But he discovers a rather remarkable person – a woman displaying enormous care for her daughter, a woman of wit and intelligence. For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter. The humanity of the other person is affirmed. She is no longer outside, excluded.
The very next story continues the theme of inclusion. Jesus is traveling in Gentile territory. The Decapolis was a name for a region of ten Greek cities. Here, too, there are hurting people, and Jesus takes time for one, touching him, bringing healing.
But if you like your lessons straight up, James gives it to us that way. He recognizes the human struggle with exclusion, labeling people in and out, favored and not. My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? James pushes us to see the humanity of all and to widen the circle of care.
I can’t help but think that these scriptures might speak to us as we consider constitutional amendments about marriage and voter id in November, but I don’t want to say more about that now. We will have Faith Forum discussions about each of these issues in the coming weeks.
Friends, Christian faith is about our personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but not only about that. Christian faith is about eternal life after death, but not only about that. Christian faith is about creating community, about bringing different people together who can walk with each other on their journey with God in Jesus. It is about mutual respect and care. It is about widening the circle. It is about seeing the image of God in others, all others.
Right here, right now it is about two streams, one river. I have been using that image to talk about the coming together of Chester Park United Methodist Church and First United Methodist Church. Two streams, one river. We are all together now, and all have a place and all are important. Christian faith for us, right here, right now, has something to do with being all together now. It is not that every person here will be best friends with every other person. It will be that there are possibilities for friendship in faith here, and always mutual respect.
As we come together, the task before us is more than combining the two streams of our histories, people, and communities of faith. The task before us is to make sure the one river is a river flowing with living water. We want our river to flow with the living water of God’s Spirit. We want our river to flow with the living water of faith, hope and love. We want our river to be a river where justice flows down like water, and righteousness like and ever flowing stream.
And friends, when the river of our life together in Jesus is flowing with living water, there will always be room for more. We will keep widening the banks. God is not done adding to our river here. We will embrace any who want to join us on our journey with Jesus. We will welcome all. We will invite others who need a little of the refreshing water of God’s Spirit in their lives.
This is who we are. This is who God is calling us to be - two streams, one river, a river flowing with living water, embracing all, recognizing the image of God in all. All together now.
We are going to reaffirm our commitment to our faith and to our faith community. We are going to dedicate ourselves to the work of two streams, one river and that river to flow with the living water of God’s Spirit and God’s inclusive love. All together now.
Adapted from Ruth C. Duck, Bread for the Journey
The church is a family of people with varieties of gifts, united by the Spirit revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. It is the Spirit of caring for one another, of forgiving, of helping each other, of love revealed in the life and death of Jesus. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The church is the people of God, with a diversity of needs, ideas, and visions, inspired by the Spirit burning through the words and deeds of Jesus as recorded in Scripture. May that same Spirit rest upon us. It is the Spirit of openness to the world and to all people as our sisters and brothers, of continual searching and learning and of saying, “We believe, help our unbelief.” It is the stirring toward growth and renewal that takes many forms. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ calls us into a life of servanthood, even when it means suffering. The Suffering Servant bears the grief and sorrow of others, and trough suffering brings wholeness. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ which was present in Jesus is the Spirit of the Exodus – the Spirit that opts for liberation and justice. The cries of the brick-makers in Egypt and throughout history have been heard by the God of the Exodus. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ which was present with Jesus is the Spirit of covenant formation, of community-building. We stand in a line with a great cloud of witnesses that include Abraham and Sarah, Miriam and Moses, Esther and David, Job’s daughters and the sons of the prophets, Martha and Jesus, John Wesley, Jacob Albright, Philip Otterbein and Martin Boehm, our forefathers and foremothers from Chester Park UMC and First UMC, and brothers and sisters in our midst who stand open to the Spirit’s bidding. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ is also the Ruler of creation. The Spirit that was the creative brooding Presence in the midst of the waters of chaos is still moving in our midst and in the midst of the ongoing creation of the world to bring order out of chaos, unity in the midst of disunity, life in the midst of death. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
As followers of God in the Jesus way, we enact the embrace of God’s grace and love through the waters of baptism. Remember your baptism and be thankful.
As baptized people, we again say “yes” to God – Creator, Christ and Spirit, when we become part of the community of faith, of The United Methodist Church, and of this congregation of The United Methodist Church. I ask you all together now to renew your commitment to uphold the ministries of this church by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness, that in all things God may be glorified. All together now: YES
This is a day of new beginnings. Amen.
Texts: James 2:1-7; Mark 7:24-37
His name was Ed. I can’t remember just what grade I was in at Lester Park Elementary when I met Ed, but Ed stood out. His skin was a little darker, though I never really thought much about that. His clothes were a little dingy. His body gave off a distinctive odor. Because of that, Ed was often teased, and often left out. I never knew much about Ed, though the story was that he had a big family and had to share a bed with brothers.
Anyway, I am not sure why, but I felt bad for Ed. I noticed the odor, but didn’t think that was enough for people to be mean. I empathized with his predicament, feeling left out. I reached out to include Ed on the playground or in class. It seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe something Iwas learning in Sunday School and at home was having an effect. After a couple of years, Ed’s family moved and he was no longer in school with me. I don’t know what ever happened to him.
I tell this story not to tout my moral heroism from childhood on. I tell it because I still remember it, and I tell it fully aware of other failings on my part to be inclusive, to reach out. Kids can sometimes be cruel and excluding. Sometimes to feel in, we collude and keep others out. Most of us know both sides of that experience – being in, feeling left out.
Thinking about this I also remember poets I read in high school. They are the only two poets I remember reading in high school though I am sure there must have been others. My love for poetry developed later. So I remember the poet Carl Sandburg, and I remember that one time he was asked what he considered the ugliest word in the English language. “The ugliest word in the English language is exclusive,” the old poet said.
I remember Robert Frost, he of the two roads diverging in a wood. In one of his poems (“Mending Wall”) Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Later in the poem he reflects, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out.”
The human experience is often of walling in or feeling walled out. Our human experience is filled with times when we have felt excluded or we have excluded. Though there may be something in us that doesn’t love a wall, the roots of exclusion run deep in the human heart. Psycho-social theorists offer a number of explanations for the human tendency to exclude, to draw lines that differentiate between in and out. That tendency is rooted in our need for self-esteem and self-significance (Rollo May, Power and Innocence). One unhealthy way we bolster ourselves is by putting others down. That tendency is rooted in our fear of death (Ernest Becker, Escape From Evil). If we can become part of a larger, exclusive group, we live on in a certain sense. That tendency is rooted in a discomfort with our own shadow side, those internal things that we project onto others so we don’t have to deal with them in ourselves (Jung, in Becker, 94-95).
We have a tendency to exclude, and when we are at our best, we struggle against that tendency. Might Jesus have been struggling with that tendency in today’s gospel story? Being fully human, he was born into a certain culture and would have been influenced, as we all are, by cultural understandings of in-groups and out-groups. Is this a story about struggling with the human tendency to exclude? Perhaps. What is most important to note is that walls are broken down, potential exclusion becomes inclusion. As a good Jew, Jesus should not have been talking to a woman, let alone a Syrophonecian woman. But he discovers a rather remarkable person – a woman displaying enormous care for her daughter, a woman of wit and intelligence. For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter. The humanity of the other person is affirmed. She is no longer outside, excluded.
The very next story continues the theme of inclusion. Jesus is traveling in Gentile territory. The Decapolis was a name for a region of ten Greek cities. Here, too, there are hurting people, and Jesus takes time for one, touching him, bringing healing.
But if you like your lessons straight up, James gives it to us that way. He recognizes the human struggle with exclusion, labeling people in and out, favored and not. My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? James pushes us to see the humanity of all and to widen the circle of care.
I can’t help but think that these scriptures might speak to us as we consider constitutional amendments about marriage and voter id in November, but I don’t want to say more about that now. We will have Faith Forum discussions about each of these issues in the coming weeks.
Friends, Christian faith is about our personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but not only about that. Christian faith is about eternal life after death, but not only about that. Christian faith is about creating community, about bringing different people together who can walk with each other on their journey with God in Jesus. It is about mutual respect and care. It is about widening the circle. It is about seeing the image of God in others, all others.
Right here, right now it is about two streams, one river. I have been using that image to talk about the coming together of Chester Park United Methodist Church and First United Methodist Church. Two streams, one river. We are all together now, and all have a place and all are important. Christian faith for us, right here, right now, has something to do with being all together now. It is not that every person here will be best friends with every other person. It will be that there are possibilities for friendship in faith here, and always mutual respect.
As we come together, the task before us is more than combining the two streams of our histories, people, and communities of faith. The task before us is to make sure the one river is a river flowing with living water. We want our river to flow with the living water of God’s Spirit. We want our river to flow with the living water of faith, hope and love. We want our river to be a river where justice flows down like water, and righteousness like and ever flowing stream.
And friends, when the river of our life together in Jesus is flowing with living water, there will always be room for more. We will keep widening the banks. God is not done adding to our river here. We will embrace any who want to join us on our journey with Jesus. We will welcome all. We will invite others who need a little of the refreshing water of God’s Spirit in their lives.
This is who we are. This is who God is calling us to be - two streams, one river, a river flowing with living water, embracing all, recognizing the image of God in all. All together now.
We are going to reaffirm our commitment to our faith and to our faith community. We are going to dedicate ourselves to the work of two streams, one river and that river to flow with the living water of God’s Spirit and God’s inclusive love. All together now.
Adapted from Ruth C. Duck, Bread for the Journey
The church is a family of people with varieties of gifts, united by the Spirit revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. It is the Spirit of caring for one another, of forgiving, of helping each other, of love revealed in the life and death of Jesus. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The church is the people of God, with a diversity of needs, ideas, and visions, inspired by the Spirit burning through the words and deeds of Jesus as recorded in Scripture. May that same Spirit rest upon us. It is the Spirit of openness to the world and to all people as our sisters and brothers, of continual searching and learning and of saying, “We believe, help our unbelief.” It is the stirring toward growth and renewal that takes many forms. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ calls us into a life of servanthood, even when it means suffering. The Suffering Servant bears the grief and sorrow of others, and trough suffering brings wholeness. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ which was present in Jesus is the Spirit of the Exodus – the Spirit that opts for liberation and justice. The cries of the brick-makers in Egypt and throughout history have been heard by the God of the Exodus. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ which was present with Jesus is the Spirit of covenant formation, of community-building. We stand in a line with a great cloud of witnesses that include Abraham and Sarah, Miriam and Moses, Esther and David, Job’s daughters and the sons of the prophets, Martha and Jesus, John Wesley, Jacob Albright, Philip Otterbein and Martin Boehm, our forefathers and foremothers from Chester Park UMC and First UMC, and brothers and sisters in our midst who stand open to the Spirit’s bidding. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
The Spirit of the Christ is also the Ruler of creation. The Spirit that was the creative brooding Presence in the midst of the waters of chaos is still moving in our midst and in the midst of the ongoing creation of the world to bring order out of chaos, unity in the midst of disunity, life in the midst of death. All together now:
WE WANT TO SHARE IN THAT SPIRIT.
As followers of God in the Jesus way, we enact the embrace of God’s grace and love through the waters of baptism. Remember your baptism and be thankful.
As baptized people, we again say “yes” to God – Creator, Christ and Spirit, when we become part of the community of faith, of The United Methodist Church, and of this congregation of The United Methodist Church. I ask you all together now to renew your commitment to uphold the ministries of this church by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness, that in all things God may be glorified. All together now: YES
This is a day of new beginnings. Amen.
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