Strange King, Weird Kingdom

Sermon preached November 22, 2015

Texts: Jeremiah 29:10b-11; John 18:33-37

            So last week I preached about risk, vulnerability and courage.  I also mentioned that Julie and I did not do so well with the board game Risk.  Well, how can you speak about risk without taking a risk with Risk?  So we did, and we are still here together.  We managed it all pretty well.

            So you may be curious about the result?  Here is a song that sums up how I did: Seals and Croft, “The King of Nothing” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvCEjcLrFSs  I ended up the king of nothing, not great for a game about global domination!

            Jesus is before Pilate, the Roman authority in Palestine.  He has been arrested and charged with sedition, with undermining the authority of the empire and creating a ruckus among the Jewish people, who were often problematic for the Romans.  Pilate asks him about the charge, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus eventually answers, “My kingdom is not from this world.”

            What kind of king is this?  What sort of kingdom is not from this world?  Strange king, weird kingdom.

            Isn’t being a king exactly about this world?  Isn’t the very definition of being a king that you accrue power and wealth?  Even the Cowardly Lion knows this.  “If I were King of the Forest…. I’d command each thing be it fish or fowl with a woof and a woof and a royal growl.”  Doesn’t being a king entitle you to command?

            Jesus doesn’t seem to understand.  To be a king is to consolidate power and to centralize authority.  He is kind of a strange king.  His kingdom is kind of a weird kingdom.

            Jesus is a king who is about sharing power, about empowering others, about setting people free.  All over John’s gospel, we read things like:  I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (10:10).  You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (8:32).  If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed (8:36).  Perhaps strangest and most audacious of all, Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these (14:12).

            What sort of king says such things?  What sort of king gives back power, sets people free, tells others that they will be even greater than he?  Jesus, strange king that he is.  Strange king, weird kingdom.

            And Jesus does not seem to understand consolidating authority, building a castle, a capital.  Yes, the Christian Church through the centuries has built magnificent cathedrals, and at least one pretty nice “Coppertop” church.  But churches are not like castles, they are more like missions – diplomatic establishments, with groups of people to enhance relationships and provide assistance.  We are here to extend the mission of this weird kingdom of Jesus, the mission of life, freedom, of creating beauty, of doing justice, of expressing compassion, of seeing the humanity of each person and finding ways to help it grow, of seeing where the world is going wrong and trying to repair it.  We invite others to join us in all this.

            That’s what we are all about here in this mission of the kingdom called First United Methodist Church, “the Coppertop Church.”  This is ultimately what our capital campaign is about.  Yes, we are doing building stuff, but it is in the service of being a mission, of following this strange king, of being part of this weird kingdom. 

            We are Jesus’ people.  We are a kingdom place.  Our purpose is to extend that kingdom.  It is to help all know God’s love, for all are welcome.  It is help all grow in God’s love.  It is to help all discover and use their wonderful and beautiful gifts to show God’s love in the world.  We are a people and a place of promise – the promise of new life, of freedom from all that gets in the way of new life.  We are a promise that we want to extend into the future.

            Once upon a time there was a man who had twelve cows, and he cared well for his cows.  Every morning and evening he would praise them for the amount of milk they were giving and praise them for their beauty.  One morning he noticed that the amount of milk was less.  Each day for a week he noticed the same thing.  So that night he decided to stay up and see what was going on.

            About midnight, he happened to look up at the stars, and he saw one star that seemed to be getting larger and brighter.  It got brighter and larger as the star came closer and closer to earth.  It came straight down toward his cow pasture and stopped a few feet from him in the form a great ball of light. Inside the light there was a beautiful and luminous woman.  Just as her toes touched the earth, the light disappeared, and she stood there like an ordinary woman, ordinary but extraordinarily lovely.

            The man said to her, “Are you the one who has been taking milk from my cows?”  “Yes,” she said, “my sisters and I like the milk from your cows very much.”  He said, “You are very beautiful.  And I am glad that you like my cows.  Here is what I would like.  If you marry me, we can live together, and I will be kind to you and you won’t have to take care of the cows all the time, we can share the chore.  Will you marry me?”  She said slowly, “Yes, I will, but there is one condition.  I have brought this basket with me, and I want you to agree that you will never look into this basket.  You must never look into it, no matter how long we are married.  Do you agree to that?”  “Yes, oh yes, I do,” he said.

            They married and lived together well for six or seven months.  Then one day, while his wife was out herding the cows, the man noticed the basket just sitting in the corner of the room.  His curiosity got the best of him, and he even rationalized it quite well, saying to himself, “Well, you know, now that we are married, her basket is also my basket.”  He opened the basket and began to laugh.  “There’s nothing in the basket.   There’s nothing in the basket.  There’s absolutely nothing in the basket!  Nothing!”  He kept repeating this to himself and laughing.  Even though she was herding the cows, his wife began to hear her husband’s voice and laughter from the house.

            She came into the house and asked, “Have you opened the basket?”  He began laughing again.  “Yes, yes I did.  There’s nothing in the basket.  There’s absolutely nothing in the basket – nothing at all!”

            She said, “I must go now.  I have to go back.”  The man began to plead, “Please don’t go.  Don’t leave me!”  She said, “I have to go back now.  What I brought with me was spirit.  It’s so like human beings to think that spirit is nothing.”

            Pilate says to Jesus, “So you are a King!?”  Jesus has already told him, “My kingdom is not from this world.”  Strange king, weird kingdom, and we are a part of it.  We witness to something more to life and to something else about life – spirit, soul, the heart.  We tend that here.  We nurture that here.  Together we seek courage from the Holy Spirit to live with heart, soul and spirit every day.  We want to know God’s love thoughtfully and deeply.  We want to grow in God’s love, grow as people of heart, soul and spirit.  We want to show God’s love by living with compassion and seeking peace and justice in the world.  Some may consider this a kind of nothing, but we know that we are simply following a rather strange king and are part of a rather weird kingdom, and we are deeply grateful for here we find life at its deepest, richest and best.  Amen.

Risk: It's Not Just a Board Game

Sermon preached November 15, 2015

Texts: I Samuel 1:4-20

            My wife Julie and I have been married for over thirty-three years.  I feel blessed that we enjoy each other’s company, that we laugh often, and that we have three pretty wonderful children.  It is our daughter Sarah’s birthday today.  It might not have been, however.  Our relationship struggled with Risk.  I’m not talking about taking chances, I am talking about the board game Risk, the game of global domination.

            Neither Julie nor I are the most competitive people I know.  I compete more with myself than with others, though, if I go golfing and am not doing so well it is some small consolation if I am doing a little better than someone else.  Mostly, I just want to do well.  Risk, especially when only two play pits person against person, and when one is winning the other is losing.  Early in our relationship, playing that game – well, they weren’t our best moments.

            I asked Julie permission to tell our Risk story, and we both are wondering what it might be like to play the game again.  If Julie isn’t in church some coming Sunday, well….

            Risk – it’s not just a board game.  Risk seems to me to be an important element in the life of faith in the God of Jesus, an important part of following Jesus, of living in the Spirit.  In his justly-celebrated book, The Road Less Traveled published now over thirty-five years ago, Scott Peck wrote: On some level spiritual growth, and therefore love, always requires courage and involves risk (131).  He goes on: All life represents a risk, and the more lovingly we live our lives the more risks we take (134).  If Scott Peck were alive today, he died in 2005, he might be on TED talks.  One writer who has become well-known through TED talks, Brene Brown (https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en ), in fact over 22 million people have listened to her TED talk on vulnerability, Brene Brown echoes some of the thoughts of Scott Peck in more recent writings.  To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain (The Gifts of Imperfection, 73)

            Risk, it’s more than just a board game.  To live life fully, to follow Jesus, to have faith in God, to live in the Spirit, entails risk.  Hannah’s story is a story about risk – and about vulnerability, and about courage and about love.  I want to reflect on this story and how it might speak to us of life, faith, love and risk – the importance of risk for life, faith and love.

            Hannah risks genuine feeling, complex feeling, and that challenges us in a relatively shallow age.  Hannah weeps, deeply distressed.  She weeps bitterly.  She weeps embarrassingly. Elkanah is uncomfortable with her distress, and makes a rather feeble attempt to close off her pain.  “Am I not more to you than ten sons?”  Eli thinks she is inebriated.   She weeps from the depth of who she is.  She feels her pain, her deep anxiety. Later she feels joy. She is open to herself, even if it is painful right now.  She is open and honest with God, feeling deeply and complexly.

            Brene Brown wisely writes: We cannot selectively numb emotions.  When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions (The Gifts of Imperfection, 70).  Yet we live in an age of numbing, of keeping things shallow.  Are we willing to risk deep and genuine feeling, complex feeling?  In the wake of the tragedy in Paris, there is anger.  Are we also willing to feel all the feelings – anger, grief, sadness, compassion?

            Hannah risks heartbreak in the cause of a larger heart, and that challenges us in a defensive age.  Hannah feels, and what she feels in this story is a lot of heartache.  Her heart is broken.  We may not quite get it, though if you have ever been in conversations with couples who want to have a child and are having difficulty, you know the depth of this heartbreak.  In Hannah’s culture, a woman’s worth was tied up in providing her husband with a male child.  Barrenness was considered something of a curse.  Elkanah’s other wife Peninnah, who had given Elkanah both sons and daughters, reminds Hannah of her sorry state.  Hannah feels heartbreak over the way things are.

            Parker Palmer writes insightfully about heartbreak.  There are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken.  One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about – a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid.  The other is to imagine the heart broken open into a new capacity – a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome.  As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world’s suffering and joy, despair and hope. (A Hidden Wholeness, 178)

            There is a Hasidic tale about the heart.  A pupil comes to his teacher.  “Rebbe, why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’?  Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?”  The teacher answers, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts.  So we place them on top of our hearts.  And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks, and the words fall in.” (In Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness, 181)

            Heartbreak, hearts broken open into new capacities, so new words can fall in – are we willing to risk having our hearts broken by the gap between what is and what could be in an age that encourages defensiveness against just such heart break?

            Hannah risks looking foolish, and that challenges us in a cynical age, when caring to the point of looking foolish is considered silly.  Hannah appears inebriated, at least to the priest Eli.  Both Elkanah and Eli consider her foolish, overwrought.  Then, toward the end of the story, Hannah, feeling assured that something is different, tries again with Elkanah.  If you are going to have a child, you need to do such things as might make that possible.  Hannah tries again.  She acts as if things could be different, as if God really might be at work in the world to make things different.

            We live in a time of great cynicism.  People don’t engage in the public arena because there are convinced that it will do no good.  People don’t re-examine the relationship that doesn’t seem to be working, convinced that nothing can be done.  To be sure, change can come slowly.  To be sure, that is true for individuals as well as for the larger world.  Yes, history is littered with nations blundering into war, and people oppressing people.  Cynicism can make sense – the closed heart, the shallow emotions, not investing too much of myself in others or in causes.  Yet cynicism is a kind of numbing, and we cannot numb selectively.

            Hannah risked showing up and letting herself be seen.  Brene Brown in her book Daring Greatly writes: Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging….  Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional.  Our only choice is a question of engagement.  Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measures of our fear and disconnection….  We must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. (2)  The story of Hannah is a story about a woman who engages her vulnerability and dares to show up and be seen.  Are we willing to do the same?

            It is asking a lot of ourselves to engage in such “risky” behavior – risk deep, genuine and complex feeling, risk heartbreak in the service of a larger heart, risk looking foolish in the service of larger questions and causes and personal growth, risk showing up and being seen.  It is good to remind ourselves of the promise of this way.  Brene Brown: Vulnerability [uncertainty, risk, emotional exposure] is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.  It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path. (Daring Greatly, 34)

            It is good to have contemporary confirmation of the insights of ancient stories.  Hannah understands and lives risk, vulnerability, courage, and love, and in the end she finds life – literally and metaphorically.  Woven throughout this story, though, is a deep trust in God.  What makes the courage to risk, to be vulnerable, possible for Hannah, and for us, too, I think, is deep trust that God walks with us, cares for us, loves us, wants us to grow, needs us to work with God for a newer world.  The God of the Hannah story is a God of grace, goodness, surprises, delight – a God who delights in bringing those on the margins into the center of the story, a God who delights in bringing joy out of mourning, a God who delights in new life.

            Hannah’s story will echo in other stories we will read soon as the season of Advent and Christmas arrive – the story of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, the story of Mary, mother of Jesus.

            Trusting God, may we risk feeling and heartbreak and foolishness and showing up.  May we risk praying to this God of grace, goodness, surprises and delight: In grace, make us more sensitive to the stirrings of your Spirit.  Move us, shake us, shape us, embrace us.  Form us in your creative and responsive love.  Nurture in us songs of hope, audacious visions, essential questions, prophetic boldness, the strength to love.  Grant us the courage to live the way of Jesus.  It is a risky prayer, maybe just the kind of prayer God enjoys most.  It is a risky prayer, but a necessary one in a world so in need of songs of hope, audacious visions, essential questions, prophetic boldness, the strength to love.  Amen.

Naked as a Jaybird

Sermon preached November 8, 2015

Texts: Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Mark 12:38-44

            Ray Stevens, “The Streakhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtzoUu7w-YM

            Some of you may remember the odd fad in the 1970s – “streaking.”  It involved a person or persons running through some public event, naked as a jaybird, with nothing on but a smile.  Years later, the tv show, Seinfeld, brought us a reminder of the fad.  George Costanza, trying to get fired from his job with the New York Yankees, streaks at a Yankee game.  George is too self-conscious to actually streak so he wears a body suit.  He becomes “body-suit man.”

            By the way, the phrase “naked as a jaybird” is a little mysterious.  Apparently the 19^th century phrase was “naked as a robin,” but neither bird loses its feathers.  I did run across another explanation for the phrase.  In the 1920s and 30s in the United States, prisoners, “jail birds” or “j-birds” would often disembark a bus, strip down, and have to walk naked across the yard to the showers when they first entered the prison.  There is your Jeopardy moment for today.

            Wherever the phrase comes from, the idea behind being naked as a jaybird is pretty uncomfortable for most of us.  Streaking was not a long-lived fad, and it has not returned.  Recently I a friend told me that she had booked a hotel for a vacation, but was a little concerned about it.  Further research indicated that the resort was “clothing optional.”  She quickly cancelled that reservation and made a new one.  In Genesis 2:25 “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.”  I am thinking that was probably about the last time people were not uncomfortable about their unclad bodies.

            But the focus of this morning is not on nudity, but on naked spirituality.  Brian McLaren, well-known author and former pastor, penned a book a few years ago which he entitled Naked Spirituality.  Early in the book he quotes another well-known Christian spiritual writer, Richard Rohr.  The goal of all spirituality is to lead the “naked person” to stand trustfully before the naked God.  The important thing is that we’re naked; in other words that we come without title, merit, shame, or even demerit.  All we can offer to God is who we really are, which to all of us never seems like enough. (McLaren, Naked Spirituality, 3)

            McLaren tells a story that is attributed to the life of Mother Teresa, though he admits he is not sure of whether this really happened to her or not.  Mother Teresa was asked by a reporter what she said to God when she prayed.  She replied, “Mostly I just listen.”  Asked what God said to her, Mother Teresa replied, “Mostly God just listens.”  McLaren goes on to comment, “Could it be that the loving, attentive, mutual listening of the soul and the Spirit constitute the greatest expression of spirituality?”  (223)  This is what McLaren means by naked spirituality.

            That kind of naked spirituality has deep roots in the Bible.  Now no one is actually naked in today’s gospel reading, but it is about naked spirituality.  In the first part of the story, the scribes are layered.  They walk around in long robes.  They like the honor and prestige of their position.  They make a show of their piety.  They are clothed not only with long robes, but with pretension.  Yet they don’t seem honest with themselves.  Underneath it all, Jesus notices that they “devour widows’ houses.”  These are folks who have wrapped layer upon layer around themselves, and their souls are dying.  If they could be honest with God, they would see they are not spiritually robust, but spiritually emaciated.

            Contrast that with the widow Jesus notices in the next scene.  He is watching as people, crowds, contribute to the Temple treasury.  Many wealthy come with their gifts, large sums.  This is impressive.  People would pay attention to this, and perhaps some of these folks are like the scribes, they like the attention.  Perhaps some are getting caught up in that.  Jesus also notices a nobody, someone with no status.  To be a widow in Jesus time was really difficult.  Women had virtually no economic standing, and few economic opportunities.  This widow was also poor.  She comes and drops two coins into the treasury, two coins of the lowest value.  Jesus notices her gift, and in the strange kind of math that often characterizes Jesus, he says that she has “put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.”  He goes on, “All of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

            Jesus is good at puzzling us.  This text is not really about giving it all away, emptying our pockets, wallets, bank accounts into the offering plate.  It has something to do with generosity, though, generosity in the widest sense which includes financial generosity.  It is about heart, soul, spirit, about naked spirituality.  This is about opening oneself, without layers and pretensions.  It is about allowing oneself to be vulnerable.  It is about trusting, trusting that as we open the whole of our lives to God, we will discover life at its best.  When we are open and vulnerable, our hearts grow, and it is giving from our generous hearts that matters most deeply.

            We cannot leave this text without noting some irony.  Jesus has just called out the scribes for being pretentious, for being spiritually layered, not open and vulnerable.  One evidence of this is that they “devour widows’ houses.”  Next we have a widow who lives on the margins giving, and who does her gift help support?  The scribes.  Jesus seems both to be noticing the widow for her naked spirituality – her openness, vulnerability and trust, and cautioning that such openness and trust can be manipulated.  Perhaps a naked spirituality requires both soft hearts and keen minds – wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

            Naked spirituality can also be found in the story of Ruth.  In that story there is literal nakedness, but more importantly naked spirituality – openness, vulnerability, trust.  It is helpful to recall a little more of the story.  Ruth is not an Israelite.  She is a foreigner who has married an Israelite.  Naomi is her mother-in-law.  Both women are widowed, thus put in precarious positions.  However, Naomi has a well-to-do relative named Boaz.  The story we read today is about how Ruth and Boaz eventually become coupled.  The entire story is one of openness, vulnerability, and trust.  The end is blessing.  Boaz and Ruth have a son, Obed, who is the father of Jesse, who is the father of David – who will become king.  A poor, foreign, widow who is open, vulnerable and trusting, who stays with her widowed mother-in-law, is part of the lineage of Israel’s great king.

            Naked spirituality, openness, honesty, vulnerability, trust.  A widow giving deeply of herself, another widow refusing to abandon her mother-in-law but instead staying with her.  People on the margins trusting that their lives matter to God.

            The kind of spirituality to which we are invited in Jesus Christ is this naked spirituality in two dimensions.

            The first dimension is openness, honesty, vulnerability and trust in God.  Brian McLaren offers words from another Christian spiritual teacher that are again helpful (Kenneth Leech): True religion helps us to grow, but pseudo-religion hinders growth, for it creates and maintains obstacles and barriers.  Thus it is that much religion merely censors experience and does not liberate it, stifles human potential and does not allow it to blossom. Much religion is superficial and does not help the journey inwards, which is so necessary to spiritual health.  There has to be a movement toward the still center, the depths of our being, where, according to the mystics, we find the presence of God. (13)

            To grow as a human person, to grow in our relationship with God requires openness and vulnerability, the willingness to look inside.  We need to deal with guilt or shame we may carry.  We need to be honest with ourselves and God about our thoughts and feelings, our questions and quandaries.  We need to be honest about our wounds and scars.  We open all of our life to God, becoming vulnerable to God’s love and Spirit, and trusting that love to help us heal and grow.

            The second dimension is openness and vulnerability to others, trusting that God will strengthen us to do justice and engage in compassionate action.  Reflecting on the word “righteous” in her book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris writes: The word “righteous” used to grate on my ear; for years I was able to hear it only in its negative mode, as self-righteous, as judgmental.  Gradually, as I became more acquainted with the word in its biblical context, I found that it does not mean self-righteous at all, but righteous in the sight of God.  And this righteousness is consistently defined by the prophets, and in the psalms and gospels, as a willingness to care to the most vulnerable people in a culture, characterized in ancient Israel as orphans, widows, resident aliens, and the poor. (96)

            Naked spirituality is both about moving deeply inward, and about reaching outward in compassion and care.  It is about knowing God’s love and about knowing ourselves in God’s love.  It is about showing God’s love through compassionate living in the world.

            Streaking, thankfully, is a fad whose time has come and gone.  Naked spirituality, however, is always in season.  Amen.

The Living Dead

Sermon preached November 1, 2015

Texts: John 11:32-44

            The story begins simply enough.  “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany.”  It has a bit of a “Once upon a time” feel to it.  There is a connection between this man, his sisters, and Jesus.  Jesus loved Lazarus.  His sisters think Jesus would like to know about this, so they send word.  Jesus does not come right away, however.  He is on a mission, to share good news about God, to let God’s glory shine through him.

            His work done across the Jordan, Jesus determines to return to Judea, but Judea seems a dangerous place.  Jesus has already experienced threats there, but he does not let fear hamper his mission.  Judea, indeed, turns out to be a dangerous place, for just after our reading for today we would read about the conspiracy to have Jesus killed.  Fearing what Rome might do given Jesus work a decision is made that it is better for one man to die than for a whole people to be destroyed.

            The verses we read are in the middle of the sweep of this story.  Lazarus has died.  Jesus has told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.”   This is not simply something for the future, but something for now, and soon Jesus will demonstrate that.  Jesus enters into all that is happening.  Seeing the grief, he feels “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”  He weeps.  His friend has died, and he knows and feels something of the grief and loss people are feeling.  It is as he is fully present, emotionally present, that he is able to move forward with his mission here, as well, to share good news about God, to let God’s glory shine through him.  Jesus calls to Lazarus, “Come out!”  He responds and Jesus tells others “Unbind him, and let him go.”

            This can be a puzzling text for we moderns.  In our experience, dead is dead. Sure there are significant debates in bio-medical ethics about how we might define that moment of death – is it loss of cardio-pulmonary functioning, the complete and irreversible loss of brain activity, of higher brain activity?  But once death comes, we experience it as irreversible.

            To get too caught up in what happened questions, though, is to miss the point and power of the text.  The gospel writers, including the author of the Gospel of John were focused on the “why” more than the “what.”  They were not interested so much in journalism as in evangelism – sharing good news.  The focus of this story is Jesus as one through whom the glory of God shines and touches other lives.  In Jesus we find resurrection and life.  In Jesus we see God’s loving power even over death.  In Jesus, we discover God’s gift of new life, new existence.  One scholar wrote that what we have here is an “elaborate object lesson of God’s life-giving power.”

            And it is something that is present, not just something that is future.  Jesus’ words are not meant only to be assurance about those who have died, though they certainly are that, and I speak them at every funeral I officiate at.  Jesus’s word are also about life now.  Even now, Jesus enters into our grieving, our sorrow, our moments when we are greatly disturbed in spirit, and he feels with us and brings new life.  In Jesus there is a new way to live, and in Jesus we are deeply connected with each other.  In some ways this is a kind of love story – the power of love to bring new life, the power of love which strengthens connections – Martha, Mary, Lazarus, Jesus.

            We might say life in Jesus is about soul.  The writer and scholar Mark Edmundson distinguishes between the State of Self and the State of Soul.  In the State of Self “we live for our personal desires; we want food and sex, money and power and prestige.  We aspire to health.” (Self and Soul, 14)  Another kind of existence is possible, the State of Soul.  “Then we live not for desire but for hope.  We live for the fulfillment of ideals.” (15)  In the book in which he writes about this, Edumudson says that he “seeks the resurrection of Soul” (15). 

Essayist and novelist Marilynne Robinson, who spoke at The College of St. Scholastica a few years ago, has written recently about fear.  “Contemporary America is full of fear….  Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” (The Givenness of Things, 125)  Paradoxically, she goes on to write, “As Christians we are to believe that we are to fear not the death of our bodies but the loss of our souls” (125).  To be too filled with fear is to lose our souls.

Life in Jesus is about soul.  It is about living with hope and living for ideals, ideals like compassion, justice, reconciliation, grace, beauty, kindness, and love.  It is about living with hope and for ideals in the messiness of the world, engaging that world fully, being fully present in times of grief, sorrow and when people are greatly disturbed in spirit.  That is the way of life and to find it is to experience a resurrection of soul.  Jesus offers us such resurrection and life.

Soul life is also connected life.  Jesus brings people together into community.  Jesus creates new kinds of connections that are like family.  And those connections remain even in death.  Death does not eliminate the bonds that connect us, the tissues that encircle us.  Here the dead are also the living.

Novelist William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.” (Requiem for a Nun, 80). In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which is, in part about his experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, therapist Victor Frankl wrote: Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being (131).  Such statements are even truer in Jesus, true in an even deeper sense.  We remain connected not only with our own past, but with the people who have been part of us in Jesus.  This might more adequately be expressed by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who writes of God as “a tender  care that nothing be lost….  A tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved” (Process and Reality, 525)  In Jesus we are a community, and a community that continues to include those who have gone before.

I invite us then, in Jesus, who is resurrection and life, to remember.  Remember those whose names we will read.  Remember those who sat with you in this place.  Remember those who in their lives did soul work and helped you do soul work.

I invite us then, in Jesus, who is resurrection and life, to hold grief and gratitude together and to “be stretched large by them” (Francis Weller, interview in The Sun, October 2015, p. 7).

I invite us then, in Jesus, who is resurrection and life, to continue our soul work, knowing that we are connected to each other in Jesus, and always will be.  Amen.

Desire

Sermon preached  October 25, 2015

Texts: Mark 10:46-52

            U2, “Desire” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8rQ575DWD8

            Just so you know, the second choice for a song this morning was Tame Impala, “Desire Be Desire Go.”  I want you to know that I listen to music made in this century, even if my Halloween costume is from the middle of the last century.

            So this is supposed to be a beatnik outfit.  The entire “beatnik” phenomenon of the 1950s was, in many ways, a media creation, highlighting very shallow aspects of what was a deeper literary movement of writers seeking spiritual connection and meaning.  One of the central writers of the Beat Generation was novelist Jack Kerouac, whose novel On the Road, published in 1957 was an important book for this group of writers.  Just over twenty years after its publication, I discovered the book in my early college years.

            The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes “Awww!”(On the Road, 9)  Kerouac describes something of the human condition, filled with desire.

            The story of Aladdin and the magic lamp, a story familiar to us from movies or fairy tales is a story of desire.  Aladdin is sent into a cave by his uncle Mustafa and there discovers an old lamp, but a special lamp.  The genie of the lamp has the power to grant three wishes.  Aladdin wishes to be sent home.  He wished for riches and happiness.  He marries well, there is trouble, but the ending is a happy one.  The whole genie and the lamp idea gets spoofed often.  An insurance company ad asks, “Well, did you know genies can be really literal?”  A man asks for one million bucks, and what does he get but antlered animals.  Desire gone wrong, but who of us would turn away a large sum of money, or a magic lamp?  Among our qualities as humans is that we desire, and our desires are multiple.

            Our desires are multiple and trying to follow them pulls us in different directions.  We wish for a million bucks, get a million antlered animals and then have to wish them away, and with our one wish left some trivial idea makes its way to our lips and we have lost the power of the lamp.  Yes, this is a folk tale, and a folk tale gone wrong, but it is also a glimpse into who we are.  What do we do with our multiple desires pulling us in different directions – desires for love, for intimacy, for security, for meaningful work, for companionship, for a good meal, for a bit of notoriety, desire for some quiet time, but desire not to be lonely, for something nice to wear?  What do we do?

            Much of our Christian tradition is suspicious of human desire.  Pleasure and distress, desire and fear, and what follows from them, were not originally created as elements of human nature….  These things were introduced as a result of our fall from perfection.  St. Maximus the Confessor (Philokalia, II: 178).  One cannot drive away impassioned thoughts unless he watches over his desire and incensive power.  Evagrios the Solitary (Philokalia, I: 39)

            Yet listen to the question Jesus asks Bartimaeus.  “What do you want me to do for you?”  Jesus and his disciples are making their way toward Jerusalem.  They are leaving Jericho amid a large crowd.  Along the side of the road is a blind man, Bartimaeus, a beggar.  He shouts out to Jesus, but many only wanted him to be quiet. He has caught Jesus’ attention.  “Call him here.”  The crowd changes its tune.  “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”  “What do you want me to do for you?”  It seems a silly question, doesn’t it?  If you are blind, wouldn’t you want your sight returned?  Why even ask?  Indeed, this is what Bartimaeus asks, but the pause and phrasing make us feel that something more is going on here.  “My teacher, let me see again.”  He is asking for sight, but also for deeper insight.  “Go; your faith has made you well.”  Bartimaues regains sight, but also gains insight -  a deeper desire hidden within is met.  He is a person of faith, discovers that, and as such, he follows Jesus on the way.

            What do you want?  If we ask that question deeply and profoundly enough, can we make some sense of our multitudinous desires?

            Let me hit the pause button here for just a moment.  Let’s acknowledge that we are fortunate to be able to be here in this place asking such questions.  Mari Ruti is a professor at the University of Toronto whose writings on love and a meaningful life are wonderfully thought-provoking.  In one of her books, though, she acknowledges that she can ask such questions while some suffer from “structural inequalities that make it difficult for many… to think beyond our daily survival” (Reinventing the Soul, xii)  If we are starving, or realistically afraid that we will find ourselves on the verge of homelessness, or starvation, or violence against our person, what we want is a modicum of security, enough to eat, a warm place to sleep.  It is a little like the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s work where he argues that “for the [person] who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food” (Motivation and Personality, 37)  Asking the question of what we want assumes some measure of security in having our basic needs met.  That’s what drives my passion for seeking a world where everyone has enough, where no one starves, where all have adequate shelter.  It is then that deeper questions might be asked, deeper desires felt.

Interestingly, Bartimaeus, a beggar, does not ask for food, he asks to see.  If we ask ourselves “What do you want?” deeply and profoundly enough, I think we find a desire to be whole.  I think we find a desire to live life fully.  I think we find a desire to develop.  I think we find a desire to connect with God and grow in that connection.  I think we desire a deep connection with others.  I think we desire to contribute.  I would wrap all these together into a deep desire to live fully and to be whole.

The testimonies to such a profound desire in us to live fully and be whole run deep.  St. Augustine, in famous words from his work The Confessions, writes: For you [O God] have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until is rests in you (Book I, Chapter 1).  The nineteenth-century Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote a book, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, and what was that one thing?  Genuinely to will the Good, as an individual (206).  Death camp survivor and therapist Victor Frankl movingly wrote about Man’s Search for Meaning.  Man’s search for meaning is a primary force in his life….  Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked.  In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to live he can only respond by being responsible. (154, 172)  One final testimony, Joseph Campbell, interviewed by Bill Moyers (The Power of Myth): People say what we’re all seeking is meaning for life.  I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking.  It think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our own life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our inner most being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. (4-5)

All these voices speak a little differently, but they point in a single direction.  There is a profound and deep desire in us for life, for living well, for developing our capacities, for relating to God, for joy, for relationship – to live fully and be whole.  To touch that deep yearning, that profound desire, helps us order our other desires.  Following Jesus on the way isn’t to get rid of our human desires, it is to order them in light of this deepest desire.  Such ordering is very important in our noisy culture that would often use our desires against us.  Ads blare at us all day long, pulling at this desire or that desire, elevating it to the most important thing, while perhaps drowning out that deepest desire to be whole, to live fully and feel alive, to know God, to grow, to connect.  Wendy Farley: Surging underneath our ordinary desires is a brilliant desire that makes us glisten like stars (The Wounding and Healing of Desire, 3).  We want to glisten like stars.

The beat writer Jack Kerouac was not about berets or other shallow expressions that came to be associated with beatniks.  He really wanted to live fully and be whole.  He wanted to make that deep and profound desire of the human heart more plain in his writings.  Unfortunately, he, himself got caught up in the whirlwind of human desires.  He lost track of that deep desire for wholeness.  Fame overcame him.  Alcohol got the best of him, and he died before reaching age 50.

An eighty-five-year-old woman was being interviewed on her birthday.  “What advice would you give to people who want to be as vibrant as you are when they are eighty-five?” the reporter asked.  “Well, at our age it is very important to keep using all our potential or it dries up.  It is important to be with people and, if at all possible, to earn one’s living through service.  That’s what keep us alive and well.”  “May I ask exactly what it is you do for service at your age?”  “Why yes, I look after an old woman in my neighborhood.”  (Anthony DeMillo, The Heart of the Enlightened, 146)

What do you want?  We follow Jesus on the way to sharpen the question and to have it answered, to have our deepest desire, our most profound yearning for wholeness met, and to have our other desires affirmed and ordered.  Amen.

Nothing From Nothing

Sermon preached October 18, 2015

Texts: Mark 10:35-45

Billy Preston, “Nothing From Nothing” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuaG-TCpbtw

At an Ash Wednesday service, the pastor of a church suddenly interrupts the flow of the service and kneels at the altar, crying out, “O God, before you I am nothing!”  So moved by this demonstration of piety, the lay leader of the church, a prominent community member immediately comes forward, kneels next to the pastor and cries out, “O God, before you I am nothing!”  Then another member of the congregation, a person of much more modest means, comes forward, kneels and says, “O God, before you I am nothing!”  The lay leader nudges the pastor and says, “Look who thinks he’s nothing.”

Who is something in the Jesus scheme of things?  Do you have to be nothing to be something?  Jesus and his disciples are on the road going to Jerusalem.  Jesus keeps telling them that in Jerusalem he faces arrest and execution.  So naturally, two of the disciples, brothers James and John, ask him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”  And what do they want?  “Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory.”  Have they not been listening?  Jesus has not been talking about glory but about trouble – arrest and death.  The disciples often seem one French fry short of a Happy Meal in the Gospel of Mark.

Jesus asks them if they are able to follow his way, to which they say “yes.”  The other disciples pick up on the conversation.  They are not pleased with James and John.  Jesus uses it as a teachable moment.  You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.  I appreciate the newer translation, The Common English Bible, in its rendering of that last sentence.  For the Human One didn’t come to be served but rather to serve and to give his life to liberate many people.

In the end, Jesus is not harsh with James and John.  He does not criticize them for wanting to be important or significant or to matter.  What he does do is redefine what it means to be important, to be significant, to matter.  Jesus redefines greatness.  Greatness, importance are found in service, not in wielding unchecked power over others.

If you have ever heard Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1968 sermon “The Drum Major Instinct,” it is difficult to read this text from Mark and not think about that sermon.  It was the final sermon King preached before his assassination, and it was adapted from an earlier sermon of J. Wallace Hamilton, a well-known, liberal, white Methodist preacher.  We used part of it in the “Invitation to Worship” earlier.  I want to share just a bit more of it.

[Jesus] said in substance, "Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you're going to be my disciple, you must be." But he reordered priorities. And he said, "Yes, don't give up this instinct. It's a good instinct if you use it right. It's a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love.  I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do."  And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness….  If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.  And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve….  You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. (http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_the_drum_major_instinct/)

But here is where it can still get messy.  We humans can warp even this, and we are good at that kind of thing.  Good ideas can also be misused.  Look who thinks he’s nothing!  We can even turn servanthood into a competition.  We may want to get noticed for our servanthood, for our giving.  Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) amassed one of the greatest fortunes of the nineteenth century.  When he retired in 1901 he was the richest man in the world.  Then he spent the rest of his life giving his money away.  By the time of his death, he had donated over $350 million to charity, an astounding sum at the time.  He wrote a book entitled The Gospel of Wealth in which he argued that the rich should give their wealth away to those less fortunate.  In all this, Carnegie, I think, deserves praise.

What is also interesting to me is that Carnegie’s name was attached to many of his donations.  When you go by a library building he built, you see etched in stone “Carnegie Library.”  The famous music hall he built in New York is “Carnegie Hall.”  Here in Duluth we have “Amsoil Arena.”  Now that’s o.k.  It is good that people of means donate to help others.  If any of you are wanting to donate to pay for the windows up here and would like you name attached, I am all ears.  What I simply want to note is that even in giving and service there is something of that sense of self-importance.  Most of the time that is a good thing.  Sometimes it is not, as perhaps when a generous donor puts too many stipulations on the gift.  To my knowledge Andrew Carnegie gave for libraries, but did not demand that they each had multiple copies of his book – but some would do just that.

Even Dr. King had this interesting internal struggle in his sermon “The Drum Major Instinct.”  King eerily reflects on his own death, and what he would like said about his life.  If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.  I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody….  I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.   Nicely put, yet he also mentions his Noble Prize and his education even as he says they are not what matter most.  And it is o.k.

The bottom line is this.  Greatness is about giving – about giving oneself.  Greatness is about service – about doing justice, fostering reconciliation, creating beauty, loving.  Even just a bit more deeply it is about creating the kind of heart that can love and give and serve without being too self-conscious about it.  There is nothing wrong about naming rights, or mentioning academic achievement.  I’d like my obituary to mention that I have a Ph.D.  In following Jesus, though, it is about developing a heart that can hold that kind of thing lightly.

In the Jesus scheme of things, it is not about being nothing, but about having such a strong sense of self, rooted in knowing that we are loved by God, that we don’t have to keep reminding others that we are somebody.  We already know that.  It is having such a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love that giving flows out of us greatly, without us being too worried about others thinking we are great.  Theologian Walter Wink puts it well.  You serve out of joy, not obligation….  Ambition can be positive or negative.  In his vision of the new order of God, Jesus offers us a way to pour ourselves into an ambition worthy of our lives. (The Human Being, 95)

You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be.  If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful.  Remember that greatness is about a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.

So be great in the ways only you can be great, knowing that you are loved deeply by God in Jesus Christ.  Grow your heart and soul.  Develop your capacities for loving and serving and giving.  Share yourself with others and with the world.  Know God’s love in Jesus.  Show God’s love in the world.  We can each do that just where we are and out of who we are.

About a month ago, I wrote a column in The Duluth Budgeteer about my high school homeroom teacher, Nancy Collyard.  I had gone on-line and discovered that she had died in Hibbing in 2009 at the age of 69.  It was a time of holding grief and gratitude together.  I wrote about how she had been helpful to me during those challenging years of adolescence.  I post my stories on my Facebook page.  I am not above some self-promotion!  The response was pretty amazing.  I heard from a number of high school classmates who had also been touched by Mrs. Collyard.  Here was a woman from Hibbing who died there quietly, who had touched a lot of lives.  That’s greatness.

This week, on Facebook, the birthdate of a friend of mine popped up.  Only this friend died in January 2014.  Facebook can be a little bit creepy that way.  Jim Perry was a United Methodist clergy person who was a Minnesota Conference staff person who worked a lot with other clergy.  He was a friend and I miss him.  I posted a couple of items about Jim on my Facebook page offering gratitude for who he was, the work he did, and the friendship he gave.  Again, the response was pretty amazing.  Others testified to how Jim touched their lives, or at least hit the “Like” button.  Jim was from Vermont.  That’s where he died, quietly.  Yet his life touched other lives.  That’s greatness.

Be great in the ways only you can be great, knowing that you are loved deeply by God in Jesus Christ.  Grow your heart and soul.  Develop your capacities for loving and serving and giving.  Share yourself with others and with the world.  Know God’s love in Jesus.  Show God’s love in the world.  We can each do that just where we are and out of who we are.  We can all be great because we can all develop hearts filled with grace, and souls generated by love.  Amen.

It Ain't Easy

Sermon preached October 11, 2015

Texts: Mark 10:17-31

Ringo Starr, “It Don’t Come Easy” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvEexTomE1I

We are rightly focused on the upside of being followers of Jesus, people of Christian faith.  As the late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “discipleship is joy” (The Cost of Discipleship, 41).  In a time when so much weighs so heavily upon us, we need to hear words about joy.  Yet the book in which Bonhoeffer penned these words is a book entitled “The Cost of Discipleship,” and just prior to the proclamation that discipleship is joy, Bonhoeffer wrote: And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us?  What decisions and partings will it demand?  Decisions and partings, perhaps discipleship don’t come easy.

A man approaches Jesus and kneels before him.  The kneeling gesture may have meant he was seeking some kind of healing.  At the very least, it was a gesture of deep respect offered by someone who apparently was well off.  We are told later in the story that he had many possessions.  He asks Jesus a question, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  This man seems to be sensing a certain emptiness in his life.  Something is amiss.  Jesus reminds him of the commandments, and the man replies that he has been keeping them since his youth.  They were not enough.  The sense of emptiness remained.  Jesus senses the depth of the man’s questioning and seeking.  In love Jesus offers something else.  “Go, and sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  The man’s despair is deepened.  When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

It ain’t easy – following Jesus.  It don’t come easy – needed change in our lives.  Let’s not kid ourselves about this.  Discipleship, it ain’t easy.

Think with me about our individual lives.  Sometimes we may experience a certain emptiness, a sense of something important missing, a sense of lost connection with the vital springs of life, a feeling of being distant from God.  The man in the story wanted more.  There must be more to life than being well-off and doing what’s expected.  It was quite self-sufficient, but it was not enough.  The therapist Michael Eigen describes this kind of situation well in his book Faith.  Compulsive success in making and controlling wealth spirals to a point of destructiveness of the welfare of many, even destructive of the psychological-spiritual well-being of “winners.” (4)  Perhaps that was what the man was experiencing and change was needed, a kind of spiritual therapeutics.  But change can be difficult, can be experienced like a camel going through the eye of a needle.

Here is what Eigen writes later in his book about change and our resistance to it.  To avoid psychic pain, one may attempt to destroy capabilities that experience it, including the possibility of destroying one’s own mind in order to avoid contact with intolerable perceptions, intolerable emotional realities.  Instead of facing and modulating – destruction. (56)  The answer, the spiritual therapy required is to face the difficult emotions, face our own fears, face how we have been working against our own well-being even when it is difficult and painful.

Jesus uses a remarkable image in Mark, “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.”  By the way, that story about a gate in Jerusalem that was called the “Eye of the Needle” through which a camel could go if it kneeled down lowly enough, that story is not true.  Jesus image is as stark as it seems.  It is an image about the difficulty of change, I think.  About the image, C. S. Lewis wrote this brief poem:

All things (e.g. a camel's journey through

A needle's eye) are possible, it's true.

But picture how the camel feels, squeezed out

In one long bloody thread, from tail to snout.

That’s how change can feel in our lives, even when we need to change to be connected to life again.  It ain’t easy.

            Following Jesus has something to do with giving of ourselves, and that can be difficult.  Jesus asks the man to give away all that he has and give the money to the poor.  Jesus does not ask that of everyone, but he does ask us to give, to give of ourselves, to give of our time, our talent, our energy, our resources.  We are in the early stages of a capital campaign to work on this building, a facility that will be fifty years old next year.  There are just some things that need doing, just like around our houses there are things that need to be cared for – roofs and floors and bathrooms and windows.  We are doing this so we can continue the work to which Jesus calls us as a congregation.  It can feel risky.  Will we be here in another fifty years?  Aren’t we tired of investing in a building?  We give because we have been touched by God’s love and grace here.  We give to extend our work here.  There are no guarantees about the future, only the promise that comes with doing our best in following Jesus as this church. 

            There are no guarantees when we give of our time, energy and talents.  Will the work we do really make a difference?  Sometimes we get to see that it does, and sometimes we have to give of ourselves and trust God will use our efforts in ways we will not see.  That kind of giving is difficult, and it is part of following Jesus.  It don’t come easy.

            The last challenge I want to explore with you this morning as we seek to think about the meaning of following Jesus is the challenge of the open heart.  I recently read an interview with a guy named Francis Weller.  I had never heard of him before, but in the interview he said something that has stayed with me.  The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched by them.  How much sorrow can I hold?  That’s how much gratitude I can give.  If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair.  If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering.  Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.

(Francis Weller, The Sun, October 2015)

            Part of what is happening in Jesus encounter with the rich man in Mark is that Jesus invites this man to openness of heart, and to open his heart to the grief and pain of the world.  “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.”  Had this man, in his self-sufficiency closed himself off from the poor, from seeing the pain and hurt in his world and feeling some grief about it?

            I think of the words of Parker Palmer.  There are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken.  One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about – a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid.  The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity – a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome.  As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world’s suffering and joy, despair and hope. (A Hidden Wholeness, 178)

            Following Jesus has something to do with being able to have our hearts broken in that way – to have hearts that can hold grief and gratitude, that have greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world’s suffering and joy, despair and hope.

            Earlier this week I was listening to National Public Radio.  It is running a new series, #15Girls, exploring the lives of 15-year-old girls who are seeking to take control and change their fate.  The story for the day was about fifteen year-old girls in El Salvador.  Gangs in El Salvador control much of the country and the violence there is so endemic that someone dies there, on average, every hour. [http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/05/445985671/never-leave-your-house-survival-strategies-for-el-salvador-s-15girls]

            In the story I heard about Marcella, age 15.  Marcella’s boyfriend was a bus driver in a gang-controlled neighborhood.  First, he started getting threats – “Help the gang or we will kill you.”  He disappeared.  Then Marcella began getting threats, and one day, walking in San Salvador with her sister, Marcella was executed by a gang member.  She may have been targeted for not wanting to become a gang member’s girlfriend, or for refusing to help the gang in some other way.

            In the story I heard about a fifteen year old named Jessica.  Jessica began being bullied at school by another girl.  The girl would ask for things, and threaten her with being beaten up after school.  The bullying girl had a brother who was a gang member.  One day the girl asked Jessica for a pencil, Jessica had only one, so she refused.  Jessica has now disappeared.

            In the story I heard about a girl who may not make it to fifteen.  The girl got caught in Tampico, Mexico trying to make her way to the United States. She had traveled more than 1,000 miles and was only a few hours from the U.S.  The smuggler her family paid for left her alone on a bus. She fell asleep, got caught by Mexican immigration and was sent back to El Salvador.  Why was she leaving El Salvador?  The girl said her father is in one of El Salvador's two main gangs. He's in prison for murder. And now he says if his ex-wife, the girl's mother, doesn't give him $50,000 when he gets out, he'll have the girl raped and killed.

            Heartbreaking stories.  I know that I cannot do much about these situations.  I can pray.  I can think a little bit differently about some of those trying to come into the United States from Central America.  Here’s what I don’t think I can do if I am to follow Jesus.  I cannot turn away.  I cannot not care.  I need to hold this grief.  I need to let my heart be broken, but broken open.

            What must we do to be part of God’s work in the world, God’s dream for the world, have a part in eternal life?  And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us?  What decisions and partings will it demand?  Be open to change, to giving, to holding grief.  Let your heart be broken so it can grow bigger, be broken open.  It ain’t easy.  But as Bonhoeffer reminds us, Jesus never seeks to destroy life, but to foster, strengthen and heal it and the way of Jesus is a road of boundless mercy and discipleship is joy (The Cost of Discipleship, 40, 41).  As Jesus tells Peter, Truly I tell you there is no one who has left house or brothers or sister or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with troubles – and in the age to come eternal life.  It is another way of saying while it don’t come easy, discipleship is joy.  Amen.