Sermon preached on January 25, 2009
Scripture Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Mark 1:14-20
Today’s sermon is built around the Scripture readings for today and around two words – change and call. Now that’s not “change for a call.” Do you suppose two generations from now people will even know what it means to have asked for change to make a call? I picture people watching that old episode of Seinfeld where George is annoyed because he is trying to call his girlfriend from a Chinese restaurant and others keep using the phone in front of him. I can imagine people saying, “Why doesn’t he just use his cell phone?” The other day I was showing a clip of the film Million Dollar Baby to my health care ethics class and there was this scene with an old black dial phone. I wondered if any of the class had ever used such a phone.
I guess all these astute observations about contemporary life already speak to the ubiquity of change in our world. That was evident to me again this week as I attended a meeting of the Commission on Theological Education of the University Senate of The United Methodist Church – now that’s a mouthful. During the opening worship service we sang a song, it’s number 444 in our hymnal, O Young and Fearless Prophet. The man singing next to me, a former seminary president said that the song brought back fond memories for him of time in a youth group, and a woman a row ahead of us said the same. Later the man told me he had grown up in a more Pentecostal Church and that this song was his first encounter with the idea that the gospel has a social dimension to it. I confessed that I don’t think I ever sang this song before. I remember Pass It On from my youth group days – not O Young and Fearless Prophet. I hope I didn’t make him feel old. It’s not a bad hymn, though and we will sing it sometime here. Change happens.
This week represented momentous change in our national life. A candidate whose campaign slogan was “Change We Can Believe In” was sworn in as the 44th President of these United States. Not only that, but President Barack Obama is our country’s first African-American president and our first multi-racial president. He has promised to work with the American people to make changes in our national life that will help us meet the current crises we face. Whether or not you voted for him, I believe we all hope he succeeds, because change is needed right now. Our economic life is too tenuous. We have not yet done enough to meet the environmental and energy challenges of our time. Health care is in need of reform. Change is what was voted for, change is what is needed. Change is what we must all commit ourselves to.
But is change always positive? Can there be too much change? Can change run amok? Grace Valley Baptist Church has been losing about a dozen members a year for the past few years, but with their new system, they now report a 7% annual growth rate. They have decided to measure worship attendance not by the number of people present, but by weight. An industrial scale was installed under the entry way door, and the numbers look good. The holidays have been especially good for growth.
Maybe change can run amok.
A proctologist decided that he needed a change of careers. He was interested in cars and thought he would check out becoming a mechanic. He enrolled in the local technical college and found he really enjoyed the work. His first exam went extremely well – he scored 150%. While he was pleased, he was also mystified, so he went to speak to the instructor. “It’s not that I am unhappy with this evaluation, but help me understand it better.” The instructor replied, “Well, you took the engine apart perfectly, that was worth 50%. You put it back together perfectly, that was worth another 50%. I gave you an additional 50% because you did it all through the tailpipe.”
May some things shouldn’t change. Maybe change can run amok.
President Obama was elected on a platform of change, yet in his inaugural speech he said that in meeting the challenges of our day we need to return to truths deeply embedded in our history – “hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.” Not everything needs to change.
How about with God? Where does God fit into all of this – the God of our faith, the God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ. We sing in the old song, “Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise:” To all life, Thou givest, to both great and small/In all life Thou livest, the true life of all/We blossom and flourish like leaves on a tree/And wither and perish/but naught changeth thee. Change may threaten to run amok, but here we can stand on solid ground. God never changes – right? That’s what many of us have been taught.
Yet here we run into a problem - - - Jonah indicates that God changes. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed God’s mind about the calamity God said he would bring upon them; and God did not do it. God also seems to repeat Godself – God called Jonah a second time. The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. What’s going on here? Change may be needed, but shouldn’t God be a part of what remains stable?
The Jonah story also introduces the second word I said would center today’s sermon – “call.” God called Jonah, and when Jonah ran from that sense of call, only to run into problem after problem, God called Jonah a second time. How do we think about change and call together? We often hear language that suggests God’s call in our lives is singular – to one task, to one purpose, to one vocation, to a particular marriage partner. Careful – I believe God has something to do with bringing people together and certainly has something to do with couples staying together. I don’t believe that God has some single person picked out for someone – so that if you get it wrong you simply married the wrong person. Some of you may remember the popular song from the 1970s – It’s Sad To Belong to Someone Else When the Right One Comes Along – England Dan and John Ford Coley. Not a bad soft rock song, but a terrible theology.
That sense of an unchanging God issuing an unchanging call in our lives can be found in lots of places. Rick Warren, who was a part of this week’s inauguration sold many copies of a book entitled The Purpose-Driven Life. Our Tuesday morning men’s group read it together awhile back. In that book Warren writes things like: “Before you were born, God planned this moment in your life.” About calling he says things such as: “You were put on earth to make a contribution” (227), and talks about “serving God in a way that expresses your heart” (289). I agree with both these statements wholeheartedly, but then he goes on to write “to fulfill your mission will require that you abandon your agenda and accept God’s agenda for your life” (288). I find this more problematic, not that idea that God may have something different in mind for us than we have for ourselves – I am nearing 50 and am not a multi-millionaire – given my recent pension report I can tell you that I am further away than I was last summer! But the idea of “God’s agenda” matched with that sense that God has planned every moment of our lives leaves us feeling that there is just one unchanging plan and our job is to figure that out in the midst of a world that changes all the time. A similar idea is found in the book the Monday night First and Ten men’s group is reading, John Ortberg’s If You Want to Walk on Water You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. “You have a purpose – a design that is central to God’s dream for the human race” (58) – again, the language seems singular – one plan, one design, never changing. Admittedly, both Ortberg and Warren are sometimes more nuanced in exploring what that means, but they often fall into this language which suggests an unchanging God and an unchanging call.
Here’s my problem with that, the world changes. We change. We are not the same people we were five years ago. We have made decisions about our lives – some better than others. We have tried to be responsive to our sense of God’s Spirit in our lives, and sometimes we have been and other times maybe not so much. We know Jonah’s story because it is ours – we go the other way from God’s Spirit sometimes. And I believe that God genuinely responds to the changes in our lives. I believe God changes with our changes and that God’s call in our lives responds to our changing circumstances and the changing circumstances of the world.
The language in Mark’s gospel is interesting. After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.” Jesus responds to an event, John’s arrest. He preaches a message of change – God is doing something new, get on board. He calls Peter, James and John from the midst of their lives.
God calls to each of us, but we may do better to think less of “our calling” than of God calling in each moment of our lives in response to what we have chosen and the choices of others. God is responsive to our lives and to our world, and in that way, God changes. I am not saying the character of God changes – God is always love, and God’s Spirit is always working in the direction of love, reconciliation, peace, forgiveness, justice, the common good, beauty, community – what I have called God’s dream for the world. Theologian Bruce Epperly puts it well. Our callings and vocations in life are grounded in our environment, DNA, family of origin, religious upbringing, past choices, and many other factors, including God’s emerging vision for our lives. God’s basic character does not change, but God’s call in and on our lives changes in response to changes in our lives and in our world.
What does all this mean for us more concretely? Most important of all I think it means that no matter what changes in our lives and in our world, God never stops calling to us, never stops inviting us into new life, never stops luring us into a better life and toward a better world. There is nothing we can do, no decision we can make, that takes us so far from God that God does not still see a purpose for our lives, a purpose that makes a difference to the world. That is grace. That is good news.
I also believe that this idea of a responsive God who changes and whose call responds to changes in our lives and world invites us to be open to the movement of the Spirit in our individual lives. If God never stops calling us, we ought never stop listening. Sometimes that call may be to a long range plan – like becoming a pastor. God may be calling someone here to that life. I believe God calls me to be a pastor, but could God call me to something else in the future – yes. Could I do some things that require God to change my calling? Yes. I always need to pay attention – and within my calling as a pastor, I need to pay attention to the ways God calls me to live out my ministry. I truly believe God has work for us to do together here as a part of my calling and yours. We need to listen to the Spirit together.
Responding to God’s call is often less a matter of trying to figure out the rest of your life in one fell swoop than responding to the voice, the touch, the gentle inkling of God’s Spirit in your life even now. Sometimes the call may be to a life changing vocation, but more often it is the still small voice asking us to take a next step in our journey of faith.
The same is true for our congregation. I believe God continues to call us to ministry in ways consistent with our history and our values, but we need to pay attention day to day for that calling. Where is God calling us now? How is God inviting us to build on the rich history of this congregation, a congregation that has tried to unite being prayerful and progressive, a congregation that has long welcomed all and welcomed the community. I see us growing together as a congregation that nurtures others – inviting them into our community life so that all who are part of our congregation are open to these movements of God’s Spirit in our lives. I see us growing as a congregation that helps people take the next step in their journey of faith, whatever that next step may be – deeper prayer, reaching out in compassion to the world in new ways, struggling for justice, connecting faith more deeply with caring for the world, a richer reading of our scriptures. I see us growing as a congregation in our being a good neighbor in our community, seeking to make a difference in Duluth and in the world. Responding to God’s call to our congregation is not simply something I define, it is something we figure out together.
Change happens, and often needs to happen. Change happens inside the life of God, but one thing never changes – God’s desire for our lives to be all they can be, God’s desire for our congregation to be all that it can be. The exact nature of God’s call may change, but that God will call us a second time, a third time, a hundred times, that doesn’t change. How well are we listening? How well are we responding? Amen.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Body Language
Sermon preached on January 18, 2009
Texts: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; I Corinthians 6:12-20
A minister, a priest and a rabbi went for a hike together one summer afternoon. It was a very hot day, and after awhile, the three men were sweaty and tired. Fortunately, their hike took them by a small lake, and since the lake was fairly secluded, the three decided to take a swim. Removing all their clothes, they jumped in with delight. Feeling refreshed, the three got out of the water and decided to let themselves air dry, then they got the idea to pick some berries while they did so. As they moved across an open area, who should they find hiking but a group of women from town. Unable to get back to their clothes in time, the minister and the priest covered up their private areas as best they could and the rabbi covered his face as all three ran for cover. After the women had left and the men were dressed, the minister and the priest asked the rabbi why he had covered his face rather than his more private parts. The rabbi replied, “I don’t know about you, but in my congregation, it’s my face they would recognize.” (A Minister, A Priest, and a Rabbi, 170).
There is a lot of humor about the body, much of which will never be heard in a sermon on Sunday morning. We are good at making fun of the human body. He’s so thin that if he stood sideways and stuck out his tongue he would look like a zipper. He’s so fat that when his beeper goes off people think he’s backing up. She’s so big that when she wears a yellow raincoat, people holler out, “Taxi.” (Keillor, Pretty Good Joke Book, 75, 78).
We have a very interesting relationship to our bodies in our culture. We often denigrate them, think less of our bodily existence. We are often uncomfortable with our bodies in some way, and sometimes uncomfortable talking about our existence as fleshy creatures. I love these lines from an Anne Lamott essay which capture this sense of dis-ease about our bodies. This business of having been issued a body is deeply confusing – it’s another thing I’d like to bring up with God. Bodies are so messy, and disappointing. Every time I see the bumper sticker that says, “We think we’re human beings having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits, having human experiences,” (a) I think it’s true, and (b) I want to ram the car. (Plan B, 271). When you listen carefully to Anne Lamott’s words, you really do get a sense of the confusion about the body – “been issued a body” - - - what were we before being issued a body? Her words mirror some of our confusion and discomfort with bodily life.
There may be some good reasons for our confusion and ambivalence about bodily life and our bodies. Ernest Becker, who thinks profoundly about the human condition, as does Anne Lamott, but Becker does not have as light a touch (The Denial of Death, Escape from Evil), Becker writes: Man is a worm and food for worms…. He is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-grasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways – the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. (The Denial of Death, 26) I told you Becker lacked a light touch.
Becker hammers home to us the reality of our bodily existence, but he also reminds us that we seem to transcend this existence. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature. (26) Not bad.
What I really appreciate about Becker is that he gets us closer to what I think is a more biblical view of the human person, of human existence, of bodily life. Our culture tends to want to separate spirit, soul from body. Our bodies are issued to us. We are spirits having a human bodily existence. Yes, we have this deeply spiritual side, this symbolic, reflective side, but our bodies are more than just issued to some disembodied spirits. Whatever our spirits are, they are intimately connected to our bodies, body and soul, body and spirit are deeply intertwined.
One of the earliest images of the human person is the image from Genesis where God breathes into earth, clay, mud – breathes spirit. Life is always this combination of earth and spirit, inseparable. The Psalmist builds on that tradition. God is as near as our bodies. God was near as our bodies formed in our mothers’ wombs. We are fearfully and wonderfully made – “intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”
Paul also builds on this tradition, adding a specific Christian emphasis. Our bodies are a part of Christ – our bodies! He also says our spirits become one with Christ – body and spirit interconnected, intertwined. Our bodies, Paul says, are temples of the Holy Spirit, and they can glorify God. I appreciate the way Eugene Peterson renders parts of this passage in his Bible translation/paraphrase The Message. Didn’t you realize your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
That’s some significant body language – let people see God in and through your body. All this philosophical and theological speculation on the nature of the human person has a concrete pay off – pay attention to your body and let people see God in and through it. Let your body language, the language of your body, be the language of God’s love, God’s peace, God’s justice, God’s goodness. It’s Paul’s basic point, even sex should be a way in which we let our bodies speak the language of love and some kinds of sexual expression just don’t do that. Let your body language be the language of God’s love, peace, justice, goodness.
How? Glad you asked.
Love your body. Talk about a difficult and counter-cultural idea – love your body - - - and yes, the very body that got you here today with all of its extra rooms, and earned lines and hair that is places you never thought it would be or not in places you think it should be - - - the very body that sometimes lets you down. Love your body.
Among the best writing Anne Lamott does about faith is about faith and loving the body. For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms. Sometimes, in certain lights, I could see that I was beautiful, not in spite of but because of unusual features – funky teeth, wild hair, acne scars. My mother’s nose, very English, with pinched indents at the tip and what she called her horns – incredibly helpful to my self-esteem as a child and which I now call my proton nobulators. My father’s crooked teeth. Cellulite that would make Jesus weep. (Grace Eventually, 71) Her humor lets us know that while she may struggle with this sometimes, Anne can see her body as it is and love it as a beautiful work of God.
We should see the same thing when we look in the mirror. It would not be a bad spiritual practice, in fact, for us every now and again, to look in a full length mirror and thank God for the beautiful body we have been given. If you wear glasses, put them on! If you really want to be adventurous in your spiritual practice, take your clothes off before you look in the mirror. Hey, if some pastor in Florida or Texas can invite all the married couples in his congregation to make love every night for a month, I figure it is not that big a deal to invite you to take your clothes off and look at your body. You probably take your clothes off sometimes anyway. I am trying to be funny, but the point is a serious one. Look. This body is a place where God dwells. It is sacred space.
Moving on - - - Care for your body is a spiritual discipline. Spiritual disciplines/spiritual practices are ways to tend to the sacred places in our lives, and from a biblical perspective, our bodies are such spaces. Loving our bodies does not preclude the idea that we may want to change them just a bit, not so much for some cultural concept of beauty, but to keep them healthy, keep them as beautiful as they were created to be. It begins with affirming our beauty now. Anne Lamott: If you cannot see that you’re okay now, you won’t be able to see it if you lose twenty pounds (74). Affirm your beauty, affirm your body as a sacred space, then see how you might like it to be a little healthier. Positive change usually begins with a positive attitude about the present.
Last June, all the United Methodist clergy in Minnesota were given the opportunity to be part of a walking program using a pedometer. You wear the pedometer, and it plugs into your computer and lets you know how much you are walking. I decided to participate. I knew my exercise was not what I wanted it to be. Exercise will not make me Brad Pitt, but I want to be as healthy as I can be. I have worn my pedometer every day since I got it programmed right, and I like how it is helping me think about caring for my body. I have a goal of walking 10,000 steps every day, and if I don’t get there just by my activity, which is most days, I make sure I spend some time on our treadmill until I get to 10,000 steps. This is a part of my spiritual practice, of taking time to tend to the sacred in my life. The treadmill is a great place to pray, to reflect, or just to celebrate life while listening to some music.
I continue to try and love my body, and also take better care of it. I would still like to lose some weight. This Lent I am considering giving up red meat as a spiritual practice. I think it would set me on a little better course for the future. There is much to be said for the positive social effects of eating less red meat. I am in the discernment phase of this, but I feel like it’s what I want and need to do. It will be part of a spiritual practice of caring for my body.
Knowing that our bodies are sacred places is one root of our concern for human bodily existence, for seeing that people are fed, are clothed are housed. Every body is a sacred place, a place where God dwells. No body deserves to be without the necessities of life. To speak the language of God with our bodies, to let people see God through our bodies is to be concerned with the bodily well-being of others, and with the well-being of the planet which sustains us. It is to do what we can to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, bring medical care to the sick, lessen our negative impact on the planet.
Because we are concerned with the bodily well-being of others and the well-being of the planet itself, we need to use our bodies to speak the language of God’s love and justice in very concrete ways. We have many who have gone this way before us, whose example and inspiration gives us courage and spurs us on. One such person is the man whose birthday our country celebrates this weekend – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King knew what it was like to use his body, a sacred place, for the sacred purpose of tearing down walls that divide, for the sacred purpose of reminding us all that sacred bodies come in all shades and hues.
Sermon, “Loving Your Enemies” (Strength to Love, 40): While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community. To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as co-operation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. What powerful images these are of using the sacred place that is the body for the sacred purpose of justice and love. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched with his body, stood with his body, took hits to his body, spoke with the voice of his body the language of God’s justice and love.
April 3, 1968, the night before he died, at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, Memphis, TN: It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night. And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. (A Testament of Hope, 286) If we are a little closer to God’s dream for the world, God’s promise land, it is because of people like Martin Luther King, Jr. who used his body to speak the language of God’s justice, God’s love.
Your body is sacred space, a place where God dwells. Love your body. Take care of your body. Let your body language be the language of God’s love, God’s justice, God’s peace, God’s goodness. You don’t have to be a Martin Luther King, Jr. to do it. Your own body will work just fine. Amen.
Texts: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; I Corinthians 6:12-20
A minister, a priest and a rabbi went for a hike together one summer afternoon. It was a very hot day, and after awhile, the three men were sweaty and tired. Fortunately, their hike took them by a small lake, and since the lake was fairly secluded, the three decided to take a swim. Removing all their clothes, they jumped in with delight. Feeling refreshed, the three got out of the water and decided to let themselves air dry, then they got the idea to pick some berries while they did so. As they moved across an open area, who should they find hiking but a group of women from town. Unable to get back to their clothes in time, the minister and the priest covered up their private areas as best they could and the rabbi covered his face as all three ran for cover. After the women had left and the men were dressed, the minister and the priest asked the rabbi why he had covered his face rather than his more private parts. The rabbi replied, “I don’t know about you, but in my congregation, it’s my face they would recognize.” (A Minister, A Priest, and a Rabbi, 170).
There is a lot of humor about the body, much of which will never be heard in a sermon on Sunday morning. We are good at making fun of the human body. He’s so thin that if he stood sideways and stuck out his tongue he would look like a zipper. He’s so fat that when his beeper goes off people think he’s backing up. She’s so big that when she wears a yellow raincoat, people holler out, “Taxi.” (Keillor, Pretty Good Joke Book, 75, 78).
We have a very interesting relationship to our bodies in our culture. We often denigrate them, think less of our bodily existence. We are often uncomfortable with our bodies in some way, and sometimes uncomfortable talking about our existence as fleshy creatures. I love these lines from an Anne Lamott essay which capture this sense of dis-ease about our bodies. This business of having been issued a body is deeply confusing – it’s another thing I’d like to bring up with God. Bodies are so messy, and disappointing. Every time I see the bumper sticker that says, “We think we’re human beings having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits, having human experiences,” (a) I think it’s true, and (b) I want to ram the car. (Plan B, 271). When you listen carefully to Anne Lamott’s words, you really do get a sense of the confusion about the body – “been issued a body” - - - what were we before being issued a body? Her words mirror some of our confusion and discomfort with bodily life.
There may be some good reasons for our confusion and ambivalence about bodily life and our bodies. Ernest Becker, who thinks profoundly about the human condition, as does Anne Lamott, but Becker does not have as light a touch (The Denial of Death, Escape from Evil), Becker writes: Man is a worm and food for worms…. He is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-grasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways – the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. (The Denial of Death, 26) I told you Becker lacked a light touch.
Becker hammers home to us the reality of our bodily existence, but he also reminds us that we seem to transcend this existence. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature. (26) Not bad.
What I really appreciate about Becker is that he gets us closer to what I think is a more biblical view of the human person, of human existence, of bodily life. Our culture tends to want to separate spirit, soul from body. Our bodies are issued to us. We are spirits having a human bodily existence. Yes, we have this deeply spiritual side, this symbolic, reflective side, but our bodies are more than just issued to some disembodied spirits. Whatever our spirits are, they are intimately connected to our bodies, body and soul, body and spirit are deeply intertwined.
One of the earliest images of the human person is the image from Genesis where God breathes into earth, clay, mud – breathes spirit. Life is always this combination of earth and spirit, inseparable. The Psalmist builds on that tradition. God is as near as our bodies. God was near as our bodies formed in our mothers’ wombs. We are fearfully and wonderfully made – “intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”
Paul also builds on this tradition, adding a specific Christian emphasis. Our bodies are a part of Christ – our bodies! He also says our spirits become one with Christ – body and spirit interconnected, intertwined. Our bodies, Paul says, are temples of the Holy Spirit, and they can glorify God. I appreciate the way Eugene Peterson renders parts of this passage in his Bible translation/paraphrase The Message. Didn’t you realize your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
That’s some significant body language – let people see God in and through your body. All this philosophical and theological speculation on the nature of the human person has a concrete pay off – pay attention to your body and let people see God in and through it. Let your body language, the language of your body, be the language of God’s love, God’s peace, God’s justice, God’s goodness. It’s Paul’s basic point, even sex should be a way in which we let our bodies speak the language of love and some kinds of sexual expression just don’t do that. Let your body language be the language of God’s love, peace, justice, goodness.
How? Glad you asked.
Love your body. Talk about a difficult and counter-cultural idea – love your body - - - and yes, the very body that got you here today with all of its extra rooms, and earned lines and hair that is places you never thought it would be or not in places you think it should be - - - the very body that sometimes lets you down. Love your body.
Among the best writing Anne Lamott does about faith is about faith and loving the body. For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms. Sometimes, in certain lights, I could see that I was beautiful, not in spite of but because of unusual features – funky teeth, wild hair, acne scars. My mother’s nose, very English, with pinched indents at the tip and what she called her horns – incredibly helpful to my self-esteem as a child and which I now call my proton nobulators. My father’s crooked teeth. Cellulite that would make Jesus weep. (Grace Eventually, 71) Her humor lets us know that while she may struggle with this sometimes, Anne can see her body as it is and love it as a beautiful work of God.
We should see the same thing when we look in the mirror. It would not be a bad spiritual practice, in fact, for us every now and again, to look in a full length mirror and thank God for the beautiful body we have been given. If you wear glasses, put them on! If you really want to be adventurous in your spiritual practice, take your clothes off before you look in the mirror. Hey, if some pastor in Florida or Texas can invite all the married couples in his congregation to make love every night for a month, I figure it is not that big a deal to invite you to take your clothes off and look at your body. You probably take your clothes off sometimes anyway. I am trying to be funny, but the point is a serious one. Look. This body is a place where God dwells. It is sacred space.
Moving on - - - Care for your body is a spiritual discipline. Spiritual disciplines/spiritual practices are ways to tend to the sacred places in our lives, and from a biblical perspective, our bodies are such spaces. Loving our bodies does not preclude the idea that we may want to change them just a bit, not so much for some cultural concept of beauty, but to keep them healthy, keep them as beautiful as they were created to be. It begins with affirming our beauty now. Anne Lamott: If you cannot see that you’re okay now, you won’t be able to see it if you lose twenty pounds (74). Affirm your beauty, affirm your body as a sacred space, then see how you might like it to be a little healthier. Positive change usually begins with a positive attitude about the present.
Last June, all the United Methodist clergy in Minnesota were given the opportunity to be part of a walking program using a pedometer. You wear the pedometer, and it plugs into your computer and lets you know how much you are walking. I decided to participate. I knew my exercise was not what I wanted it to be. Exercise will not make me Brad Pitt, but I want to be as healthy as I can be. I have worn my pedometer every day since I got it programmed right, and I like how it is helping me think about caring for my body. I have a goal of walking 10,000 steps every day, and if I don’t get there just by my activity, which is most days, I make sure I spend some time on our treadmill until I get to 10,000 steps. This is a part of my spiritual practice, of taking time to tend to the sacred in my life. The treadmill is a great place to pray, to reflect, or just to celebrate life while listening to some music.
I continue to try and love my body, and also take better care of it. I would still like to lose some weight. This Lent I am considering giving up red meat as a spiritual practice. I think it would set me on a little better course for the future. There is much to be said for the positive social effects of eating less red meat. I am in the discernment phase of this, but I feel like it’s what I want and need to do. It will be part of a spiritual practice of caring for my body.
Knowing that our bodies are sacred places is one root of our concern for human bodily existence, for seeing that people are fed, are clothed are housed. Every body is a sacred place, a place where God dwells. No body deserves to be without the necessities of life. To speak the language of God with our bodies, to let people see God through our bodies is to be concerned with the bodily well-being of others, and with the well-being of the planet which sustains us. It is to do what we can to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, bring medical care to the sick, lessen our negative impact on the planet.
Because we are concerned with the bodily well-being of others and the well-being of the planet itself, we need to use our bodies to speak the language of God’s love and justice in very concrete ways. We have many who have gone this way before us, whose example and inspiration gives us courage and spurs us on. One such person is the man whose birthday our country celebrates this weekend – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King knew what it was like to use his body, a sacred place, for the sacred purpose of tearing down walls that divide, for the sacred purpose of reminding us all that sacred bodies come in all shades and hues.
Sermon, “Loving Your Enemies” (Strength to Love, 40): While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community. To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as co-operation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. What powerful images these are of using the sacred place that is the body for the sacred purpose of justice and love. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched with his body, stood with his body, took hits to his body, spoke with the voice of his body the language of God’s justice and love.
April 3, 1968, the night before he died, at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, Memphis, TN: It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night. And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. (A Testament of Hope, 286) If we are a little closer to God’s dream for the world, God’s promise land, it is because of people like Martin Luther King, Jr. who used his body to speak the language of God’s justice, God’s love.
Your body is sacred space, a place where God dwells. Love your body. Take care of your body. Let your body language be the language of God’s love, God’s justice, God’s peace, God’s goodness. You don’t have to be a Martin Luther King, Jr. to do it. Your own body will work just fine. Amen.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Let It Shine
Sermon preached January 4, 2009 (I will not be preaching on January 11, so the next post will be after my January 18 sermon)
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
On Sunday evening December 28, a small group of us gathered for the monthly Faith and Film night to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. It came at the end of a chaotic series of days for me, and truth be told there was a part of me that would not have been crushed had no one shown up. That’s not about them, it is about how I was feeling. Christmas had been busy, which it always is, but the business and chaos was compounded by my father’s dying process and my fender-bender. I had spent part of the afternoon on Sunday at St. Mary’s hospital where my dad had returned briefly – he is in a nursing home. Anyway, people came and we screened the film and had a wonderful time.
It’s a Wonderful Life is enjoyable, and it has the capacity to teach. We miss some of that because of the neat ending to the story, but when we are willing to penetrate the movie a bit more deeply, there are all kinds of life lessons there. I am not alone in thinking this. In the December 26 issue of The Week, the magazine published an article on It’s a Wonderful Life telling the story of the movie from its release in 1946, to its failure at the box office, to its comeback in the 1970s, to its enormous popularity today. The film still works, the article says, because “it plays on people’s great ambivalence about Christmas. For many, the holiday is a time of both great joy and mournful introspection. By deftly poising those two themes on an emotional knife-edge [the movie] touched America’s collective heart.” Stephen Spielberg: “It’s a Wonderful Life shows that every human being on this Earth matters and that’s a very powerful message.”
Days later, the January 5, 2009 issue of The New Yorker contained a commentary by Adam Gopnik about the economy, and he drew lessons from It’s a Wonderful Life. Gopnik argued that the economy cannot be understood simply by thinking in terms of “rational economic” behavior, but needs to consider “social-emotional” behavior. Mr. Potter may have been greedy and power hungry, but in terms of economic models, he is the rational actor – not willing to risk loans to people he considers too unworthy. George Bailey, in the article is a “Capraesque Keynesian.” That’s a lot to take from a simple 1946 movie.
Yet the movie is deeper than we may imagine. Behind the feel-good ending we get glimpses of a man whose dreams have been stymied by the death of his father, by his desire to help his younger brother, by circumstances of his own choosing. In the movie there are moments of genuine anguish and despair, and a central scene in the movie involves suicidal despair. From that perspective this hardly seems like a light holiday film. There is also greed, money and power in the film. There really is a lot there to chew on.
A lighter scene which remains significant for the whole film is one in which Mary, played by Donna Reed, and George, played by Jimmy Stewart, are walking home after Mary’s high school graduation dance. You want the moon, Mary? Just say the word and I’ll put a lasso around it and pull it down for you. I’ll take it. Then what? Then you could swallow it. And it’ll all dissolve, see and the moonbeams would shoot out your fingers, and your toes and the ends of your hair. Of course, George cannot pull down the moon, though that image returns again and again is a picture Mary creates for him. By movie’s end, we know Mary has a light inside of her that shines. In the end, George discovers that he has a light too, a light that has touched countless lives and a light that needs to stay lit.
Our Scripture texts for today remind me of this particular scene from It’s a Wonderful Life. In the traditional story of the coming of the magi, the wise men from the east, there is a star that guides them to the place where they will find Jesus. Of course, the star is only intended to point to the more significant light coming into the world. Augustine reminds us “Christ was not born because the star shone forth, but the star shone forth because Christ was born” (Feasting On the Word). With Christ, something will change in history, something outside the usual structures of power. Herod remains clueless. Something is happening in this Christ child that will draw people even from distant places. A new inclusivity is being inaugurated.
Because light has come into the world in Jesus the Christ, as Christians we hear the words of Isaiah in a new way – “Arise, shine your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” The light arrives, even when darkness seems to cover the earth, even thick darkness – the darkness of a world at war, the darkness of despair over dreams lost, the darkness of economic uncertainty, the darkness of planetary peril. The light arrives and our response is to shine. We take in the Christ, and want the beams of his light, grace, love, compassion to shine through our fingers and toes and the ends of our hair (or our scalps as may be appropriate).
I think there are two parts to letting our lights shine. We need to care for the light within, to polish our lamps in a manner of speaking. Our bishop calls this “spiritual vitality.” Have you ever reached for a flashlight when the power has gone out, only to discover that the batteries you put into it months before have gone dead? When batteries just sit, they still lose power. So in our lives, when we don’t care for the light within, it dims. Traditionally, Christians call the things we do to care for the light inside spiritual disciplines or spiritual practices. Traditionally they have included things like prayer in all its wonderful variety, Scripture reading, shared worship including communion. They have also included compassionate action and work for justice and the common good – but more about these shortly. There has been a deep and renewed interest in Christian spiritual practices in recent years, and this is to the good. The lists of activities that can become spiritual practices has expanded. Here is a list from a web site called Spirituality and Practice, a web site I found through a clergy friend:
Attention
Beauty
Being Present
Compassion
Connections
Devotion
Enthusiasm
Faith
Forgiveness
Grace
Gratitude
Hope
Hospitality
Imagination
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Listening
Love
Meaning
Nurturing
Openness
Peace
Play
Questing
Reverence
Shadow
Silence
Teachers
Transformation
Unity
Vision
Wonder
X - The Mystery
Yearning
You
Zeal
Our texts speak about receiving gifts. Keeping our inner light bright is being open to receiving the grace and love and passion of God into our lives, and spiritual practices are doing those things that help that grace, love and passion enter and shape us deeply.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is never simply about receiving, about polishing our inner light. It is also always about letting that light shine out into a world. We shine because the world needs to be touched by light. The darkness is deep indeed, and we need to let the light of Christ shine through us to make the world a little less dark. Serendipitously, letting our light shine also keeps that light bright.
Washington Gladden, a powerful preacher at the turn of the last century, in a speech given in 1907 urged his listeners “to see the church as a manifestation of Christ.” Gladden believed that one of the most important reasons for the life of Christ and for the life of the church was “to make men and women feel that the great joy of life… is the joy of service; to populate this world with… people whose central purpose it shall be, not to get as much as they can, but to give as much as they can – this is what Jesus came into this world to do” (Feasting on the Word). Let your light shine.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, a shining light in his own right shares the story of another woman who has let her light shine – Angela Rackstraw (Ode, January/February 2009, p. 58). In the 1980s, the apartheid government of South Africa was cracking down on black communities that were centers of protest, including the small community of Crossroads in Cape Town. Crossroads was divided by factions, one of which was a government paid group whose mission was to destroy anti-government activists. At the time, Angela Rackstraw was a member of Christ Church, Kenilworth, an Anglican parish deeply committed to social justice and the common good. The parish provided food and blankets to activists in Crossroads, often working late at night to foil the government. Angela was a nurse and she rode along on one of the deliveries to see what was happening. What she saw shocked her to the core. Children were playing in the street, jumping over humps in the road. Coming closer, she saw the humps were the dead and dying, victims of the latest shootout. Angela wondered what would happen to children who witnessed such violence, and she knew that it was likely they would become teenagers who would kill or be killed. Angela decided she needed to do something, something beyond nursing. She decided that she might be able to help by becoming an art therapist. To do so, she would need further training – in both psychology and art, even though she was an artist already. She began to study at the University of Cape Town. The University of Hereford in the U.K. offered a degree in art therapy and admitted her, but the cost was more than she could afford. She struggled to come up with the funds for tuition and travel, and managed to do that. She studied for four years in the U.K., working nights in a nursing home to cover her living expenses, and earned her master’s degree in art therapy.
Returning to Cape Town she found no jobs, so she began the Community Art Therapy program. The program has grown and expanded, though finances are always a challenge. Archbishop Tutu writes about her: Her work with children and women may be a drop in the ocean considering the thousands upon thousands who live in our sprawling townships, often in the most appalling conditions, where they become victims of abuse, violence, and exploitation. But for those who come to Angela, she’s a healer who endows them with hope. She gives children a future, and that’s a gift to us all.
Arise, shine, for your light has come. You have a light within, let it shine. Only you have your light – let it shine. Only you can do the good you can do. Let your light shine. Keep your light bright within, but always let it shine. The darkness may be deep in our world, and we sometimes feel the darkness creeping within us, but let your light shine. Amen.
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
On Sunday evening December 28, a small group of us gathered for the monthly Faith and Film night to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. It came at the end of a chaotic series of days for me, and truth be told there was a part of me that would not have been crushed had no one shown up. That’s not about them, it is about how I was feeling. Christmas had been busy, which it always is, but the business and chaos was compounded by my father’s dying process and my fender-bender. I had spent part of the afternoon on Sunday at St. Mary’s hospital where my dad had returned briefly – he is in a nursing home. Anyway, people came and we screened the film and had a wonderful time.
It’s a Wonderful Life is enjoyable, and it has the capacity to teach. We miss some of that because of the neat ending to the story, but when we are willing to penetrate the movie a bit more deeply, there are all kinds of life lessons there. I am not alone in thinking this. In the December 26 issue of The Week, the magazine published an article on It’s a Wonderful Life telling the story of the movie from its release in 1946, to its failure at the box office, to its comeback in the 1970s, to its enormous popularity today. The film still works, the article says, because “it plays on people’s great ambivalence about Christmas. For many, the holiday is a time of both great joy and mournful introspection. By deftly poising those two themes on an emotional knife-edge [the movie] touched America’s collective heart.” Stephen Spielberg: “It’s a Wonderful Life shows that every human being on this Earth matters and that’s a very powerful message.”
Days later, the January 5, 2009 issue of The New Yorker contained a commentary by Adam Gopnik about the economy, and he drew lessons from It’s a Wonderful Life. Gopnik argued that the economy cannot be understood simply by thinking in terms of “rational economic” behavior, but needs to consider “social-emotional” behavior. Mr. Potter may have been greedy and power hungry, but in terms of economic models, he is the rational actor – not willing to risk loans to people he considers too unworthy. George Bailey, in the article is a “Capraesque Keynesian.” That’s a lot to take from a simple 1946 movie.
Yet the movie is deeper than we may imagine. Behind the feel-good ending we get glimpses of a man whose dreams have been stymied by the death of his father, by his desire to help his younger brother, by circumstances of his own choosing. In the movie there are moments of genuine anguish and despair, and a central scene in the movie involves suicidal despair. From that perspective this hardly seems like a light holiday film. There is also greed, money and power in the film. There really is a lot there to chew on.
A lighter scene which remains significant for the whole film is one in which Mary, played by Donna Reed, and George, played by Jimmy Stewart, are walking home after Mary’s high school graduation dance. You want the moon, Mary? Just say the word and I’ll put a lasso around it and pull it down for you. I’ll take it. Then what? Then you could swallow it. And it’ll all dissolve, see and the moonbeams would shoot out your fingers, and your toes and the ends of your hair. Of course, George cannot pull down the moon, though that image returns again and again is a picture Mary creates for him. By movie’s end, we know Mary has a light inside of her that shines. In the end, George discovers that he has a light too, a light that has touched countless lives and a light that needs to stay lit.
Our Scripture texts for today remind me of this particular scene from It’s a Wonderful Life. In the traditional story of the coming of the magi, the wise men from the east, there is a star that guides them to the place where they will find Jesus. Of course, the star is only intended to point to the more significant light coming into the world. Augustine reminds us “Christ was not born because the star shone forth, but the star shone forth because Christ was born” (Feasting On the Word). With Christ, something will change in history, something outside the usual structures of power. Herod remains clueless. Something is happening in this Christ child that will draw people even from distant places. A new inclusivity is being inaugurated.
Because light has come into the world in Jesus the Christ, as Christians we hear the words of Isaiah in a new way – “Arise, shine your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” The light arrives, even when darkness seems to cover the earth, even thick darkness – the darkness of a world at war, the darkness of despair over dreams lost, the darkness of economic uncertainty, the darkness of planetary peril. The light arrives and our response is to shine. We take in the Christ, and want the beams of his light, grace, love, compassion to shine through our fingers and toes and the ends of our hair (or our scalps as may be appropriate).
I think there are two parts to letting our lights shine. We need to care for the light within, to polish our lamps in a manner of speaking. Our bishop calls this “spiritual vitality.” Have you ever reached for a flashlight when the power has gone out, only to discover that the batteries you put into it months before have gone dead? When batteries just sit, they still lose power. So in our lives, when we don’t care for the light within, it dims. Traditionally, Christians call the things we do to care for the light inside spiritual disciplines or spiritual practices. Traditionally they have included things like prayer in all its wonderful variety, Scripture reading, shared worship including communion. They have also included compassionate action and work for justice and the common good – but more about these shortly. There has been a deep and renewed interest in Christian spiritual practices in recent years, and this is to the good. The lists of activities that can become spiritual practices has expanded. Here is a list from a web site called Spirituality and Practice, a web site I found through a clergy friend:
Attention
Beauty
Being Present
Compassion
Connections
Devotion
Enthusiasm
Faith
Forgiveness
Grace
Gratitude
Hope
Hospitality
Imagination
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Listening
Love
Meaning
Nurturing
Openness
Peace
Play
Questing
Reverence
Shadow
Silence
Teachers
Transformation
Unity
Vision
Wonder
X - The Mystery
Yearning
You
Zeal
Our texts speak about receiving gifts. Keeping our inner light bright is being open to receiving the grace and love and passion of God into our lives, and spiritual practices are doing those things that help that grace, love and passion enter and shape us deeply.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is never simply about receiving, about polishing our inner light. It is also always about letting that light shine out into a world. We shine because the world needs to be touched by light. The darkness is deep indeed, and we need to let the light of Christ shine through us to make the world a little less dark. Serendipitously, letting our light shine also keeps that light bright.
Washington Gladden, a powerful preacher at the turn of the last century, in a speech given in 1907 urged his listeners “to see the church as a manifestation of Christ.” Gladden believed that one of the most important reasons for the life of Christ and for the life of the church was “to make men and women feel that the great joy of life… is the joy of service; to populate this world with… people whose central purpose it shall be, not to get as much as they can, but to give as much as they can – this is what Jesus came into this world to do” (Feasting on the Word). Let your light shine.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, a shining light in his own right shares the story of another woman who has let her light shine – Angela Rackstraw (Ode, January/February 2009, p. 58). In the 1980s, the apartheid government of South Africa was cracking down on black communities that were centers of protest, including the small community of Crossroads in Cape Town. Crossroads was divided by factions, one of which was a government paid group whose mission was to destroy anti-government activists. At the time, Angela Rackstraw was a member of Christ Church, Kenilworth, an Anglican parish deeply committed to social justice and the common good. The parish provided food and blankets to activists in Crossroads, often working late at night to foil the government. Angela was a nurse and she rode along on one of the deliveries to see what was happening. What she saw shocked her to the core. Children were playing in the street, jumping over humps in the road. Coming closer, she saw the humps were the dead and dying, victims of the latest shootout. Angela wondered what would happen to children who witnessed such violence, and she knew that it was likely they would become teenagers who would kill or be killed. Angela decided she needed to do something, something beyond nursing. She decided that she might be able to help by becoming an art therapist. To do so, she would need further training – in both psychology and art, even though she was an artist already. She began to study at the University of Cape Town. The University of Hereford in the U.K. offered a degree in art therapy and admitted her, but the cost was more than she could afford. She struggled to come up with the funds for tuition and travel, and managed to do that. She studied for four years in the U.K., working nights in a nursing home to cover her living expenses, and earned her master’s degree in art therapy.
Returning to Cape Town she found no jobs, so she began the Community Art Therapy program. The program has grown and expanded, though finances are always a challenge. Archbishop Tutu writes about her: Her work with children and women may be a drop in the ocean considering the thousands upon thousands who live in our sprawling townships, often in the most appalling conditions, where they become victims of abuse, violence, and exploitation. But for those who come to Angela, she’s a healer who endows them with hope. She gives children a future, and that’s a gift to us all.
Arise, shine, for your light has come. You have a light within, let it shine. Only you have your light – let it shine. Only you can do the good you can do. Let your light shine. Keep your light bright within, but always let it shine. The darkness may be deep in our world, and we sometimes feel the darkness creeping within us, but let your light shine. Amen.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Timing Is Everything
Sermon preached on December 28, 2008
Scripture Readings: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40
I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and that the remaining days of 2008 have enough joy and hope to carry you into the new year with energy. I hope you enjoyed singing some of the songs we have sung together. Thanks for your help with that.
As I have been preparing for today, my mind was shifting to other songs. There is a part of me that simply thinks in musical terms. If you could plug my brain into a computer to see some of its contents, there would be a significant section that looked a little like an 80 gig iPod register. Today’s sermon had me thinking about songs like: Time Has Come Today , The Chambers Brothers; Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper; If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, I’ve Got the Time, Willie Nelson; Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is, Chicago; Time Passages, Al Stewart; Time, Pink Floyd. You don’t have to be attuned to subtlety or schooled in nuance to know where I am headed today – time.
More specifically, I want to reflect on the idea of timing, because it is a prominent theme in our Scriptures for this morning. Timing – and timing matters.
Two businessmen friends went to the local bank on their lunch hour. While they were waiting in line, two other men came into the bank to rob it. They locked the doors, moved all the customers along one wall and began collecting their watches, jewelry, wallets and handbags. Standing in the line, one businessman felt his friend stuff something into his pocket. The man asked, “What are you doing? What is this?” to which the other replied, “Remember that $100 I owe you…” Timing matters.
Not long ago in Green Bay a 31 year-old woman named Wendy Brown was arrested and charged with identity theft. She enrolled in high school pretending to be her 15 year-old daughter (who actually lives in Nevada). One reason she gave for going back to high school was to fulfill her life-long dream of being a cheerleader. It worked for awhile. She attended practices and made the cheerleading squad even though some noticed that she looked a little older than the other girls. (Funny Times, December 2008, 17). Timing matters.
Timing matters in all kinds of ways. Last Monday, I was in a car accident. I was traveling south on Lake Avenue to go and visit two of our shut-ins at the Franciscan Health Center on Park Point. One lane was closed on the Lift Bridge as I was crossing, and cars ahead of me, going over on that one lane, were stopped. I applied my brakes and felt just how icy it was. I slid and stopped just as I touched the car in front of me – no damage to either vehicle, but the truck coming from behind had no such luck. It hit my van and did some significant damage to the back bumper. Thankfully no one was hurt, though I did fall on the ice as I went to look at the damage. It was glare ice.
Car accidents are never fun to deal with, but on top of everything else it all felt surreal. This was just two days after I found out my father has inoperable liver cancer and only weeks to live. When I got home that night I told my son it almost felt like I was in some kind of movie – father dying, car accident. Of course, in a movie I would be single and a beautiful woman would come along and help me get through all this. I quickly told my son it was a good thing I already had a beautiful woman in my life! Timing matters.
Our Scriptures are, in many ways, about timing. Galatians 4:4-5 is Paul’s Christmas story. Good thing we have more than that on which to base Christmas songs and pageants! “When the fullness of time had come, God sent God’s son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.” In the fullness of time – Paul had a sense that with Jesus a new time had begun, and he was writing to a group of Gentile Christians to remind them how wonderful this new time was. It was a time when all people might know that they were children of God.
The language Paul uses is not terribly revolutionary to us, but it certainly was in his day and time. Paul was telling Gentiles that they could come to know God without following the law, the way Paul’s own people had known God. This was a revolutionary concept to the Jewish people of Paul’s day. Even more revolutionary is Paul’s assertion that we can all be children of God, that we can all call God “Father.” In that day, there was a person officially proclaimed to be son of god – that person was the emperor. In that day, as well, paternity often limited destiny. Your father’s identity and background was made all the difference. Paul undermines both systems of stratification and division. You are children of God. This is not an exclusive title for the emperor. God is your father, you need not be limited by the status of your biological father. Timing is everything, and Paul thought this was a wonderful time in so many ways.
Timing mattered to Simeon and Anna too. Simeon had been looking forward to the redeeming of Israel, now under Roman rule. Simeon witnesses a different kind of liberation beginning with the child Jesus, a liberation that would include the Gentiles – there’s that wonderful inclusiveness again. Anna, too, held such expectations, even in her older years – of course 84 today is not what it was then – I hear 84 is the new 70. Both these characters in Luke’s larger Christmas story are beneficiaries of being a part of a special time.
Both these texts have lessons for us about the importance of timing in our own lives, lessons that may serve us well as this year comes to an end and a new one begins.
The first lesson may be that we don’t always control the timing of events in our lives and so patience, openness and receptivity are often needed. That we don’t control everything about our lives is not an easy lesson to learn, and it is only one side of a larger truth. It must always be held in balance with the idea that we are often more powerful than we imagine. We should not simply give in to all the circumstances of our lives, yet we do not control all those circumstances either. None of us chooses when, where and to whom we will be born. We don’t control all of the economic and political realities in our world, though we have something to say about some of them. We cannot change the fact that we age. At some point it is no longer appropriate to pursue the dream of being a high school cheerleader. God’s purposes for our lives are always responsive to the circumstances of our lives – so patience and openness and receptivity are important so that our action in the world will be timely.
The spiritual teacher Jack Kornfield writes in his book, A Path With a Heart: Each stage of our life holds the seeds for our spiritual growth. Our spiritual life matures when we consciously accept the life tasks appropriate for us (174). Franciscan priest and writer Richard Rohr writes, “Christianity teaches you a process of humility waiting, ego surrender, patience and trust, much more than giving you prefabricated content to defend or prove” (Hope Against Darkness, 158-159). Timing matters and the timing that matters most in our lives is to be attuned to who we are, where we are, and where God is in the midst of our lives.
Irwin Kula is a rabbi, an eighth-generation rabbi. He tells a story about his life and teaches us something about timing, about patience, about openness and receptivity. Joy and sorrow, good and evil, greatness and triviality, hope and anxiety, the ideal and the actual: The ability to live with these seeming contradictions and the ambivalence and tension they create is what gives rise to wisdom…. The first time I felt this in my bones was a few minutes after my younger daughter, Talia, was born…. As we walked to the hospital a few blocks away, doing her Lamaze breathing, the streets of Manhattan were transformed; every street light shone more brightly; every car sweeping by seemed to move in slow motion…. It felt like a dream as Dana held our new baby just minutes after she emerged. Tears flowed down our cheeks. We felt joy and gratitude mixed with exhaustion and the final release of Dana’s pain; blood and body fluids were everywhere, and there was that perfect child. Then I had a thought that knocked the wind out of me. Just about one year earlier Dana had suffered a miscarriage. If she hadn’t, Talia would not be in this world. In that moment I was filled with both sadness and peace. I felt the terror of that memory and the gratitude of this moment at the same time…. It wasn’t that the birth of Talia made the miscarriage okay or that “it happened for a reason…. It was the realization that chaos and coherence are indistinguishable and awe-full. (Yearnings, 45-46).
Simeon and Anna must have wondered at times, what they were waiting for, wondered if God would ever touch their lives in a way they were hoping for. Their patience and openness led to their being witness to a wonderful work of God in the world. And they were there just at the right time.
A second lesson from these texts is that there is never a time in our lives when we can’t serve God, when we cannot further God’s purposes in the world. We are never too old or too young to be a part of God’s work of loving the world, of extending justice and compassion and beauty and peace.
A riot was raging through La Mesa prison in Tijuana, Mexico. Twenty-five hundred fed-up prisoners, packed into a compound built for six hundred, angrily hurled broken bottles at police, who fired back with machine guns. Then, as the peak of pandemonium, came a startling sight: A tiny, five-foot-two, sixty-three-year-old woman in an immaculate nun’s habit calmly strolled into the battle, hands outstretched in a simple gesture of peace. Ignoring the shower of bullets and flying bottles, she stood quietly and ordered everyone to stop. Incredibly, they did.
The diminutive nun, Sister Antonia, was once a woman named Mary Clarke. Mary grew up in Beverly Hills where he father owned a successful office supply company. Clarke grew up during the heyday of Hollywood – big stars, lavish musical productions – and during World War II. After high school, Mary was married and raised seven children in a fine Granada Hills home. But twenty-five years later the marriage ended in a divorce. With her children grown, and on her own, Mary sought to help those less fortunate. The suffering of others had always affected her deeply and now she sought to help in new ways. In the mid-60s she began traveling across the Mexican border with a Catholic priest to take medicines and supplies to the poor. Once she and the priest got lost and wound up at La Mesa by mistake. She was moved by what she saw, and began spending nights there sleeping on a bunk in the women’s section, learning Spanish, assisting inmates and their families in any way she could. In 1977, Mary Clarke became Sister Antonia, and La Mesa prison became her permanent home. She was 50 years old. In 1997, at age 70, Sister Antonia turned her work into a religious community, The Servants of the Eleventh Hour. (Everyday Greatness, 10-13, and on-line material)
Simeon, Anna, Sister Antonia remind us that there is never a time in our lives when we cannot further God’s purposes of love, justice, peace, compassion and beauty.
Finally, these stories remind us that timing is important and that NOW is always the time to renew our faith, hope and love so that our lives reflect the light of Christ, whose birth we continue celebrating. One of the best reminders of this I know of is the short poem/meditation by Howard Thurman called “The Work of Christmas.”
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins.
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner,
To teach the nations,
To bring Christ to all,
To make music in the heart.
May it be so with us. While timing may not be everything, it matters, AND NOW is always the time. Again, Merry Christmas, and may we all join together in the work of Christmas, open to the world and God’s presence there. Amen.
Scripture Readings: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40
I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and that the remaining days of 2008 have enough joy and hope to carry you into the new year with energy. I hope you enjoyed singing some of the songs we have sung together. Thanks for your help with that.
As I have been preparing for today, my mind was shifting to other songs. There is a part of me that simply thinks in musical terms. If you could plug my brain into a computer to see some of its contents, there would be a significant section that looked a little like an 80 gig iPod register. Today’s sermon had me thinking about songs like: Time Has Come Today , The Chambers Brothers; Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper; If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, I’ve Got the Time, Willie Nelson; Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is, Chicago; Time Passages, Al Stewart; Time, Pink Floyd. You don’t have to be attuned to subtlety or schooled in nuance to know where I am headed today – time.
More specifically, I want to reflect on the idea of timing, because it is a prominent theme in our Scriptures for this morning. Timing – and timing matters.
Two businessmen friends went to the local bank on their lunch hour. While they were waiting in line, two other men came into the bank to rob it. They locked the doors, moved all the customers along one wall and began collecting their watches, jewelry, wallets and handbags. Standing in the line, one businessman felt his friend stuff something into his pocket. The man asked, “What are you doing? What is this?” to which the other replied, “Remember that $100 I owe you…” Timing matters.
Not long ago in Green Bay a 31 year-old woman named Wendy Brown was arrested and charged with identity theft. She enrolled in high school pretending to be her 15 year-old daughter (who actually lives in Nevada). One reason she gave for going back to high school was to fulfill her life-long dream of being a cheerleader. It worked for awhile. She attended practices and made the cheerleading squad even though some noticed that she looked a little older than the other girls. (Funny Times, December 2008, 17). Timing matters.
Timing matters in all kinds of ways. Last Monday, I was in a car accident. I was traveling south on Lake Avenue to go and visit two of our shut-ins at the Franciscan Health Center on Park Point. One lane was closed on the Lift Bridge as I was crossing, and cars ahead of me, going over on that one lane, were stopped. I applied my brakes and felt just how icy it was. I slid and stopped just as I touched the car in front of me – no damage to either vehicle, but the truck coming from behind had no such luck. It hit my van and did some significant damage to the back bumper. Thankfully no one was hurt, though I did fall on the ice as I went to look at the damage. It was glare ice.
Car accidents are never fun to deal with, but on top of everything else it all felt surreal. This was just two days after I found out my father has inoperable liver cancer and only weeks to live. When I got home that night I told my son it almost felt like I was in some kind of movie – father dying, car accident. Of course, in a movie I would be single and a beautiful woman would come along and help me get through all this. I quickly told my son it was a good thing I already had a beautiful woman in my life! Timing matters.
Our Scriptures are, in many ways, about timing. Galatians 4:4-5 is Paul’s Christmas story. Good thing we have more than that on which to base Christmas songs and pageants! “When the fullness of time had come, God sent God’s son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.” In the fullness of time – Paul had a sense that with Jesus a new time had begun, and he was writing to a group of Gentile Christians to remind them how wonderful this new time was. It was a time when all people might know that they were children of God.
The language Paul uses is not terribly revolutionary to us, but it certainly was in his day and time. Paul was telling Gentiles that they could come to know God without following the law, the way Paul’s own people had known God. This was a revolutionary concept to the Jewish people of Paul’s day. Even more revolutionary is Paul’s assertion that we can all be children of God, that we can all call God “Father.” In that day, there was a person officially proclaimed to be son of god – that person was the emperor. In that day, as well, paternity often limited destiny. Your father’s identity and background was made all the difference. Paul undermines both systems of stratification and division. You are children of God. This is not an exclusive title for the emperor. God is your father, you need not be limited by the status of your biological father. Timing is everything, and Paul thought this was a wonderful time in so many ways.
Timing mattered to Simeon and Anna too. Simeon had been looking forward to the redeeming of Israel, now under Roman rule. Simeon witnesses a different kind of liberation beginning with the child Jesus, a liberation that would include the Gentiles – there’s that wonderful inclusiveness again. Anna, too, held such expectations, even in her older years – of course 84 today is not what it was then – I hear 84 is the new 70. Both these characters in Luke’s larger Christmas story are beneficiaries of being a part of a special time.
Both these texts have lessons for us about the importance of timing in our own lives, lessons that may serve us well as this year comes to an end and a new one begins.
The first lesson may be that we don’t always control the timing of events in our lives and so patience, openness and receptivity are often needed. That we don’t control everything about our lives is not an easy lesson to learn, and it is only one side of a larger truth. It must always be held in balance with the idea that we are often more powerful than we imagine. We should not simply give in to all the circumstances of our lives, yet we do not control all those circumstances either. None of us chooses when, where and to whom we will be born. We don’t control all of the economic and political realities in our world, though we have something to say about some of them. We cannot change the fact that we age. At some point it is no longer appropriate to pursue the dream of being a high school cheerleader. God’s purposes for our lives are always responsive to the circumstances of our lives – so patience and openness and receptivity are important so that our action in the world will be timely.
The spiritual teacher Jack Kornfield writes in his book, A Path With a Heart: Each stage of our life holds the seeds for our spiritual growth. Our spiritual life matures when we consciously accept the life tasks appropriate for us (174). Franciscan priest and writer Richard Rohr writes, “Christianity teaches you a process of humility waiting, ego surrender, patience and trust, much more than giving you prefabricated content to defend or prove” (Hope Against Darkness, 158-159). Timing matters and the timing that matters most in our lives is to be attuned to who we are, where we are, and where God is in the midst of our lives.
Irwin Kula is a rabbi, an eighth-generation rabbi. He tells a story about his life and teaches us something about timing, about patience, about openness and receptivity. Joy and sorrow, good and evil, greatness and triviality, hope and anxiety, the ideal and the actual: The ability to live with these seeming contradictions and the ambivalence and tension they create is what gives rise to wisdom…. The first time I felt this in my bones was a few minutes after my younger daughter, Talia, was born…. As we walked to the hospital a few blocks away, doing her Lamaze breathing, the streets of Manhattan were transformed; every street light shone more brightly; every car sweeping by seemed to move in slow motion…. It felt like a dream as Dana held our new baby just minutes after she emerged. Tears flowed down our cheeks. We felt joy and gratitude mixed with exhaustion and the final release of Dana’s pain; blood and body fluids were everywhere, and there was that perfect child. Then I had a thought that knocked the wind out of me. Just about one year earlier Dana had suffered a miscarriage. If she hadn’t, Talia would not be in this world. In that moment I was filled with both sadness and peace. I felt the terror of that memory and the gratitude of this moment at the same time…. It wasn’t that the birth of Talia made the miscarriage okay or that “it happened for a reason…. It was the realization that chaos and coherence are indistinguishable and awe-full. (Yearnings, 45-46).
Simeon and Anna must have wondered at times, what they were waiting for, wondered if God would ever touch their lives in a way they were hoping for. Their patience and openness led to their being witness to a wonderful work of God in the world. And they were there just at the right time.
A second lesson from these texts is that there is never a time in our lives when we can’t serve God, when we cannot further God’s purposes in the world. We are never too old or too young to be a part of God’s work of loving the world, of extending justice and compassion and beauty and peace.
A riot was raging through La Mesa prison in Tijuana, Mexico. Twenty-five hundred fed-up prisoners, packed into a compound built for six hundred, angrily hurled broken bottles at police, who fired back with machine guns. Then, as the peak of pandemonium, came a startling sight: A tiny, five-foot-two, sixty-three-year-old woman in an immaculate nun’s habit calmly strolled into the battle, hands outstretched in a simple gesture of peace. Ignoring the shower of bullets and flying bottles, she stood quietly and ordered everyone to stop. Incredibly, they did.
The diminutive nun, Sister Antonia, was once a woman named Mary Clarke. Mary grew up in Beverly Hills where he father owned a successful office supply company. Clarke grew up during the heyday of Hollywood – big stars, lavish musical productions – and during World War II. After high school, Mary was married and raised seven children in a fine Granada Hills home. But twenty-five years later the marriage ended in a divorce. With her children grown, and on her own, Mary sought to help those less fortunate. The suffering of others had always affected her deeply and now she sought to help in new ways. In the mid-60s she began traveling across the Mexican border with a Catholic priest to take medicines and supplies to the poor. Once she and the priest got lost and wound up at La Mesa by mistake. She was moved by what she saw, and began spending nights there sleeping on a bunk in the women’s section, learning Spanish, assisting inmates and their families in any way she could. In 1977, Mary Clarke became Sister Antonia, and La Mesa prison became her permanent home. She was 50 years old. In 1997, at age 70, Sister Antonia turned her work into a religious community, The Servants of the Eleventh Hour. (Everyday Greatness, 10-13, and on-line material)
Simeon, Anna, Sister Antonia remind us that there is never a time in our lives when we cannot further God’s purposes of love, justice, peace, compassion and beauty.
Finally, these stories remind us that timing is important and that NOW is always the time to renew our faith, hope and love so that our lives reflect the light of Christ, whose birth we continue celebrating. One of the best reminders of this I know of is the short poem/meditation by Howard Thurman called “The Work of Christmas.”
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins.
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner,
To teach the nations,
To bring Christ to all,
To make music in the heart.
May it be so with us. While timing may not be everything, it matters, AND NOW is always the time. Again, Merry Christmas, and may we all join together in the work of Christmas, open to the world and God’s presence there. Amen.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Shhh!
Sermon preached on December 21, the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Text: Luke 1:26-38
This sermon is based around two characters. Here is the first one:
“Be very very quiet - - - haaaaaaa…..” Of course, Elmer Fudd wanted quiet because it was hunting season – duck or rabbit.
Elmer Fudd’s words are not easy to observe. We live in a decidedly noisy society. And we keep thinking of ways to make it noisier. Have you ever felt frustrated when you were trying to call someone on their cell phone, and they did not answer right away? Haven’t our expectations for being able to talk with someone risen dramatically? It has become so much easier to carry around large quantities of music. I can carry around all the Beatles music on a small Mp3 player. When I first started buying music to listen to, it would have required carrying around a stack of record albums, and then something to play them on – a portable turntable. Our cars are equipped with CD players, Mp3 players, some still have cassette tape decks, they have radios. When we shop at the stores, many have background music playing continually. It is not that difficult to conceive of an entire waking day without a time when there is no human produced noise.
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once defined religion as “what the individual does with his own solitariness” (Religion in the Making in Alfred North Whitehead: An Anthology, 472). What would Whitehead, who lived in the early part of the twentieth century make of our time when quiet solitariness is at a premium?
In our noisy world, this is a noisy season. The music in the stores is Christmas music. At least two Duluth radio stations have gone with an all-Christmas music format. We hear bell ringers standing by Salvation Army kettles. People sing for others in Christmas caroling. These are all good things, and they add to the noise of our world. Maybe because we live in such a noisy world, some of my favorite Christmas songs are quiet ones – Vince Guaraldi, “Christmas Time is Here,” “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Even so, I can play them often enough so that I leave myself little sense of quiet.
I think our lack of quiet is problematic. I would argue that a measure of quietness, stillness, solitude are essential as we prepare to open our lives to the Christ anew – which is what this season of Advent is all about. Quiet, solitude, stillness are not only important for Advent, they are vital to Christian spiritual life. To be sure, different people have different needs for such quiet, but I can’t think of anyone whose life and relationship to God and the world would not benefit from a measure of quiet.
This brings me to the second person who frames this morning's sermon
This is Henry Ossawa Tanner’s 1898 painting “The Annunciation.” Tanner was the son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister. The annunciation story is what we read from Luke today, the story of how the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to announce that she is favored by God and will bear a special child.
The Mary portrayed in Luke’s gospel is a model for a person of Christian faith. She has an encounter with God and opens herself to God’s purpose for her life and the world. She is willing to be a part of God’s impossible possibilities.
Notice one phrase in particular in this story. The angel Gabriel greets her and it says, “but she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be” (v. 29). One thing I really like about Tanner’s painting is that it evokes that feeling of quiet, stillness, wonder, pondering. The presence of God through the messenger Gabriel is so wonderfully done. Mary takes all this in, ponders, acts. She followed God’s way out of a quiet and still center.
Advent is a good time to remind ourselves of the importance of a little quiet, a little stillness, a little pondering in our own live. In the rest of this morning’s sermon, I want to offer testimonies to quietness, stillness, pondering.
Charles S. Peirce is well-known to students of American philosophy, but perhaps not to many others. He deeply influenced William James. He believed that at its heart Christian faith was a way of life defined by love. In one of his essays on God, Peirce wrote about the importance of what he called “musement” (Selected Writings, 360), the pure play of the mind. Peirce was convinced that as people engaged in this kind of thinking, the idea of God would become more convincing. In the Pure Play of Musement the idea of God’s Reality will be sooner or later to be found an attractive fancy, which the Muser will develop in various ways. The more he ponders it, the more it will find response in every part of his mind, for its beauty, for its supplying an ideal of life, and for its thoroughly satisfactory explanation of his whole environment. (365) Because of the promise of taking time to ponder, to muse, Peirce recommended the practice highly. Enter your skiff of Musement, push off into the lake of thought, and leave the breath of heaven to swell your sail. With your eyes open, awake to what is about or within you, and open conversation with yourself; for such is all meditation. (362)
St. Hesychios was the abbot of the Monastery of the Mother of God of the Burning Bush at Sinai, probably sometime in the eighth or ninth century. His work, “On Watchfulness and Holiness” is a part of the Philokalia, the remarkable collection of Christian spiritual writings from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Hesychios thought one important aspect of “watchfulness” is “freeing the heart from all thoughts, keeping it profoundly silent and still” (volume 1, p. 164). Of this practice he writes, “Just as a man blind from birth does not see the sun’s light, so one who fails to pursue watchfulness does not see the rich radiance of divine grace” (165).
Parker Palmer is a teacher, author and lecturer. In one of his early works, The Company of Strangers, Palmer wrote about people of Christian faith and the renewal of public life. His words remain powerful as we seek to renew public life yet again in the United States. Christians need to engage the world to foster community, to work for peace, to build justice. Such action, Palmer argues is “promising, important, even obligatory for Christians” (154). We miss an important part of the annunciation story if we miss its political side. There is a child to be born, a child who will rule, a child who will be called “Son of God.” Well, according to the ruling Roman power, there was already one born son of god, and that one was the emperor. Why would God choose this young, poor woman in backwater Palestine to give birth to God’s new thing? Wouldn’t it make more sense to work with the powerful government in Rome? In the song that follows shortly after the verses we read today, it says that God is one who brings down the powerful from their thrones, who scatters the proud, who fills the hungry with good things. We call this song of Mary, the Magnificat. Action for justice is part of this story.
But Palmer is concerned that we not become overly busy doing all the time. My hope, as a Christian, is grounded not in our own ability to solve problems but in God’s love, God’s justice, God’s promise of fidelity to us…. If we are to know hope in God’s will , then inward quest is necessary, for it is inwardly, in the stillness of prayer and contemplation, that God’s word is most often clearly heard…. If our public action is not to lead to burn-out and despair, the inward quest is necessary once more, for it is inwardly that we renew the wellsprings of faith which sustain action. (154-155) Out of the quiet of her pondering, Mary said “yes” to God and God’s work of love, beauty and justice.
Writer Annie Dillard shares a story about living for a time on a farm on an island in the Puget Sound off the coast of Washington (“A Field of Silence” in Teaching a Stone to Talk). She writes about it with a beauty and thoughtfulness that is uniquely hers, and those of you who have read Annie Dillard know what I am talking about. But she shares of an experience she had one morning and of its aftermath. Standing looking at the fields around the farm, she writes, The silence gathered and struck me. It bashed me broadside from the heavens above me like yard goods; ten acres of fallen invisible sky choked the fields. The pastures on either side of the road turned green in a surrealistic fashion, monstrous, impeccable, as if they were holding their breaths…. All the things of the world – the fields and the fencing, the road, a parked orange truck – were stricken and self-conscious. A world pressed down on their surfaces, a world battered just within their surfaces, and that real world, so near to emerging, had got stuck. There was only silence. I hope you get some sense of this profound experience of the silence, one that was almost oppressive to Dillard at the time. Only later she would say something remarkable. Several months later, walking past the farm on the way to a volleyball game, I remarked to a friend, by way of information, “There are angels in those fields.”… I’ve rarely been so surprised at something I’ve said…. I had never thought of angels, in any way at all….From that time I began to think of angels. I considered that sights such as I had seen of the silence must have been shared by the people who said they saw angels. I began to review the thing I had seen that morning. My impression now of those fields is of thousands of spirits – spirits trapped, perhaps, by my refusal to call them more fully, or by the paralysis of my own spirit at the time – thousands of spirits, angels in fact, almost discernable to the eye, and whirling…. Their motion was clear… and their beauty unspeakable. Out of silence, Annie Dillard finds herself in touch with a profound sense of divine beauty and mystery.
One night a number of years ago I was driving home to Alexandria, Minnesota from leading a church conference somewhere north and west of Park Rapids. Snow had started falling as I left and it got heavier and heavier as I drove. The highway that would take me into Park Rapids, and lead toward home, skirted the edge of Itasca State Park. I wanted to try and get home that night, and so was making the best time I could. In one stretch of highway, with tall pines becoming covered with a blanket of bright new snow, and the large flakes falling with a beauty and grace no movie could replicate, and the road becoming covered with snow, I had this strong sense that I should pull to the side of the road and get out of the car – just for a while. I steered my car to the shoulder and turned it off, leaving the lights on in case another car should come by, though there was none in sight. I got out of the car and stood there, listening to the silence – no cars, no music, no phone, only the wind blowing through the trees, blowing the snow around. To try and put words to what I felt seems to betray the experience. There was something of God in that moment for me, and sometimes when I am struggling with a day, I try and remember that moment, for it was only a few moments before I got back in the car and headed for home, I try and remember that moment – the quiet, the stillness, the aloneness yet not feeling alone.
Carve out a few moments of quietness, stillness, pondering, musement this Advent. See if the Christ does not find a new way to be born into your life this Christmas.
(The sermon was followed by a time of silent prayer. A gong was used before and after the silence)
Text: Luke 1:26-38
This sermon is based around two characters. Here is the first one:
“Be very very quiet - - - haaaaaaa…..” Of course, Elmer Fudd wanted quiet because it was hunting season – duck or rabbit.
Elmer Fudd’s words are not easy to observe. We live in a decidedly noisy society. And we keep thinking of ways to make it noisier. Have you ever felt frustrated when you were trying to call someone on their cell phone, and they did not answer right away? Haven’t our expectations for being able to talk with someone risen dramatically? It has become so much easier to carry around large quantities of music. I can carry around all the Beatles music on a small Mp3 player. When I first started buying music to listen to, it would have required carrying around a stack of record albums, and then something to play them on – a portable turntable. Our cars are equipped with CD players, Mp3 players, some still have cassette tape decks, they have radios. When we shop at the stores, many have background music playing continually. It is not that difficult to conceive of an entire waking day without a time when there is no human produced noise.
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once defined religion as “what the individual does with his own solitariness” (Religion in the Making in Alfred North Whitehead: An Anthology, 472). What would Whitehead, who lived in the early part of the twentieth century make of our time when quiet solitariness is at a premium?
In our noisy world, this is a noisy season. The music in the stores is Christmas music. At least two Duluth radio stations have gone with an all-Christmas music format. We hear bell ringers standing by Salvation Army kettles. People sing for others in Christmas caroling. These are all good things, and they add to the noise of our world. Maybe because we live in such a noisy world, some of my favorite Christmas songs are quiet ones – Vince Guaraldi, “Christmas Time is Here,” “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Even so, I can play them often enough so that I leave myself little sense of quiet.
I think our lack of quiet is problematic. I would argue that a measure of quietness, stillness, solitude are essential as we prepare to open our lives to the Christ anew – which is what this season of Advent is all about. Quiet, solitude, stillness are not only important for Advent, they are vital to Christian spiritual life. To be sure, different people have different needs for such quiet, but I can’t think of anyone whose life and relationship to God and the world would not benefit from a measure of quiet.
This brings me to the second person who frames this morning's sermon
This is Henry Ossawa Tanner’s 1898 painting “The Annunciation.” Tanner was the son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister. The annunciation story is what we read from Luke today, the story of how the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to announce that she is favored by God and will bear a special child.
The Mary portrayed in Luke’s gospel is a model for a person of Christian faith. She has an encounter with God and opens herself to God’s purpose for her life and the world. She is willing to be a part of God’s impossible possibilities.
Notice one phrase in particular in this story. The angel Gabriel greets her and it says, “but she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be” (v. 29). One thing I really like about Tanner’s painting is that it evokes that feeling of quiet, stillness, wonder, pondering. The presence of God through the messenger Gabriel is so wonderfully done. Mary takes all this in, ponders, acts. She followed God’s way out of a quiet and still center.
Advent is a good time to remind ourselves of the importance of a little quiet, a little stillness, a little pondering in our own live. In the rest of this morning’s sermon, I want to offer testimonies to quietness, stillness, pondering.
Charles S. Peirce is well-known to students of American philosophy, but perhaps not to many others. He deeply influenced William James. He believed that at its heart Christian faith was a way of life defined by love. In one of his essays on God, Peirce wrote about the importance of what he called “musement” (Selected Writings, 360), the pure play of the mind. Peirce was convinced that as people engaged in this kind of thinking, the idea of God would become more convincing. In the Pure Play of Musement the idea of God’s Reality will be sooner or later to be found an attractive fancy, which the Muser will develop in various ways. The more he ponders it, the more it will find response in every part of his mind, for its beauty, for its supplying an ideal of life, and for its thoroughly satisfactory explanation of his whole environment. (365) Because of the promise of taking time to ponder, to muse, Peirce recommended the practice highly. Enter your skiff of Musement, push off into the lake of thought, and leave the breath of heaven to swell your sail. With your eyes open, awake to what is about or within you, and open conversation with yourself; for such is all meditation. (362)
St. Hesychios was the abbot of the Monastery of the Mother of God of the Burning Bush at Sinai, probably sometime in the eighth or ninth century. His work, “On Watchfulness and Holiness” is a part of the Philokalia, the remarkable collection of Christian spiritual writings from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Hesychios thought one important aspect of “watchfulness” is “freeing the heart from all thoughts, keeping it profoundly silent and still” (volume 1, p. 164). Of this practice he writes, “Just as a man blind from birth does not see the sun’s light, so one who fails to pursue watchfulness does not see the rich radiance of divine grace” (165).
Parker Palmer is a teacher, author and lecturer. In one of his early works, The Company of Strangers, Palmer wrote about people of Christian faith and the renewal of public life. His words remain powerful as we seek to renew public life yet again in the United States. Christians need to engage the world to foster community, to work for peace, to build justice. Such action, Palmer argues is “promising, important, even obligatory for Christians” (154). We miss an important part of the annunciation story if we miss its political side. There is a child to be born, a child who will rule, a child who will be called “Son of God.” Well, according to the ruling Roman power, there was already one born son of god, and that one was the emperor. Why would God choose this young, poor woman in backwater Palestine to give birth to God’s new thing? Wouldn’t it make more sense to work with the powerful government in Rome? In the song that follows shortly after the verses we read today, it says that God is one who brings down the powerful from their thrones, who scatters the proud, who fills the hungry with good things. We call this song of Mary, the Magnificat. Action for justice is part of this story.
But Palmer is concerned that we not become overly busy doing all the time. My hope, as a Christian, is grounded not in our own ability to solve problems but in God’s love, God’s justice, God’s promise of fidelity to us…. If we are to know hope in God’s will , then inward quest is necessary, for it is inwardly, in the stillness of prayer and contemplation, that God’s word is most often clearly heard…. If our public action is not to lead to burn-out and despair, the inward quest is necessary once more, for it is inwardly that we renew the wellsprings of faith which sustain action. (154-155) Out of the quiet of her pondering, Mary said “yes” to God and God’s work of love, beauty and justice.
Writer Annie Dillard shares a story about living for a time on a farm on an island in the Puget Sound off the coast of Washington (“A Field of Silence” in Teaching a Stone to Talk). She writes about it with a beauty and thoughtfulness that is uniquely hers, and those of you who have read Annie Dillard know what I am talking about. But she shares of an experience she had one morning and of its aftermath. Standing looking at the fields around the farm, she writes, The silence gathered and struck me. It bashed me broadside from the heavens above me like yard goods; ten acres of fallen invisible sky choked the fields. The pastures on either side of the road turned green in a surrealistic fashion, monstrous, impeccable, as if they were holding their breaths…. All the things of the world – the fields and the fencing, the road, a parked orange truck – were stricken and self-conscious. A world pressed down on their surfaces, a world battered just within their surfaces, and that real world, so near to emerging, had got stuck. There was only silence. I hope you get some sense of this profound experience of the silence, one that was almost oppressive to Dillard at the time. Only later she would say something remarkable. Several months later, walking past the farm on the way to a volleyball game, I remarked to a friend, by way of information, “There are angels in those fields.”… I’ve rarely been so surprised at something I’ve said…. I had never thought of angels, in any way at all….From that time I began to think of angels. I considered that sights such as I had seen of the silence must have been shared by the people who said they saw angels. I began to review the thing I had seen that morning. My impression now of those fields is of thousands of spirits – spirits trapped, perhaps, by my refusal to call them more fully, or by the paralysis of my own spirit at the time – thousands of spirits, angels in fact, almost discernable to the eye, and whirling…. Their motion was clear… and their beauty unspeakable. Out of silence, Annie Dillard finds herself in touch with a profound sense of divine beauty and mystery.
One night a number of years ago I was driving home to Alexandria, Minnesota from leading a church conference somewhere north and west of Park Rapids. Snow had started falling as I left and it got heavier and heavier as I drove. The highway that would take me into Park Rapids, and lead toward home, skirted the edge of Itasca State Park. I wanted to try and get home that night, and so was making the best time I could. In one stretch of highway, with tall pines becoming covered with a blanket of bright new snow, and the large flakes falling with a beauty and grace no movie could replicate, and the road becoming covered with snow, I had this strong sense that I should pull to the side of the road and get out of the car – just for a while. I steered my car to the shoulder and turned it off, leaving the lights on in case another car should come by, though there was none in sight. I got out of the car and stood there, listening to the silence – no cars, no music, no phone, only the wind blowing through the trees, blowing the snow around. To try and put words to what I felt seems to betray the experience. There was something of God in that moment for me, and sometimes when I am struggling with a day, I try and remember that moment, for it was only a few moments before I got back in the car and headed for home, I try and remember that moment – the quiet, the stillness, the aloneness yet not feeling alone.
Carve out a few moments of quietness, stillness, pondering, musement this Advent. See if the Christ does not find a new way to be born into your life this Christmas.
(The sermon was followed by a time of silent prayer. A gong was used before and after the silence)
Friday, December 19, 2008
Edison Stole the Idea
Sermon preached on Sunday December 14
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28
Someone recently shared with me a number of notes children wrote to God. They are wonderful and I will share them with you from time to time. Here are just a couple. Dear God, I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that o.k.? Neil 2: Dear God, maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother. Larry. 3: We read Thomas Edison made light. But in Sunday School they said you did it. So I bet he stoled your idea. Sincerely, Donna.
So Thomas Edison stole the idea of light! Of course Edison did not invent light, so I guess it makes no sense to accuse him of stealing from God. Instead he figured out a way to have electric current flow through a carbon filament to create light out of electricity. This occurred in the late 1870s. Until that time, and for many years afterward, until electricity was brought to nearly every area of the country, people burned oil lamps or candles for light once darkness had descended. Light in darkness, maybe Edison stole that idea from the writer of John’s gospel, for he uses it quite a bit.
Surrounding the passage we read today about John the Baptist, the writer of the gospel (who is not the John who is John the Baptist) says things like all things came into being through the Word, including life – “and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” Light, darkness, life – if you read John’s gospel you will encounter these themes again and again. The gospel writer uses the images in chapter one to say that something wonderful and awe-inspiring and life-giving and life-changing and history-changing has happened. He wants to say that God has been at work in a wonderful way, that God has touched our lives and our world in the life of a man named Jesus. It is like light shining in the darkness.
We need to use this image with care and with intelligence. We use it with care because such images have reinforced racial stereotypes, and that is not what they are about. Darkness in the Bible can be a frightening, dangerous place, but also a place where God is found in unique ways. John uses it to describe a kind of life that is less than life, a life filled with fear, a life blind to beauty and possibility. John, the gospel writer writes centuries before Edison, during a time when darkness was terribly dark. Once the sun set, there were no street lights to illumine dark places. If you wanted to see at night inside, you needed to burn candles or oil, but these might be in short supply, especially if you were poor. In the dark, those who would do you harm might feel freer to strike. The darkness could be a time of violence and robbery. Even today, people are cautioned if they are out well after dark to walk in lighted places. The gospel writer uses a common, everyday image to try and share something about what God has done in the life of Jesus – brought light and life into a dark world.
It is almost redundant then to share this story about John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s function is the same as the writer’s function – to testify to the light. God can be at work in the world, but God is always looking for people to share the story, to witness, to testify. God always calls people to see, to hear, to pay attention, and then to tell others about where God is at work.
The dynamic of God inviting people to witness, to testify, has a long history in the Bible before the Gospel of John. John the gospel writer, in fact, turns to an older biblical text to describe the testifying and witnessing work of John the Baptist. He is like the voice of one crying in the wilderness – a quote from Isaiah 40. Isaiah also writes about a person filled with the Spirit sent to bring good news. This could be John the Baptist too. God’s movement in the world, God’s Spirit touching lives, is meant to be witnessed. Good news is meant to be shared. The good news of Christian faith is that light of God’s love shines into the darkness of our lives and our world. The good news of Christian faith is that God continues to inspire so that the oppressed are given justice, the brokenhearted are healed, the captives are set free, those who mourn are comforted, faint spirits are strengthened. Peter Gomes from Harvard has said succinctly that the good news is “You don’t have to be as you are” (The Christian Century, December 15, 2008, p. 37). I would add, “The world doesn’t have to be as it is.” Such good news needs a witness. Such good news needs one to testify on its behalf.
I can testify to the light of God’s love. I can witness to the difference God’s grace, God’s love makes in a human life. I have not shared a great deal about the family I grew up in, in large measure because I know some of you know my parents. I intend to remain somewhat circumspect about this, but for me to testify to the power of God’s love in my life, you need to know a little bit about my background.
My parents divorced when I was in my early twenties. I don’t think it would be sharing too much to say that the tensions which resulted in that divorce were felt in our family for a number of years. It added some challenges to growing up. As I have learned more about my family history, I know that there are issues going back further than my parent’s marital tensions. Both sets of grandparents had alcohol problems, though they were significantly less pronounced in my grandmother who is still living at age 96. Alcohol contributed to the deaths of my other three grandparents and to my mom’s brother – who died in his late 50s. Who can say what those issues ended up contributing to my own parent’s marital discord. In the past few weeks, I have heard a story that goes even further back in my family history. My great-grandmother, who lived to be 94 and who I remember well, in fact she died twenty years ago this past week, my great-grandmother divorced her husband in 1946. She was 52 and Catholic. She had been suffering from bleeding for a time, but her husband told her she would be just fine and forbid her from seeking medical attention. She worked with some of her children to come to Duluth to get the attention she needed, and she determined that she would never return to her husband.
One of the issues that divided my parents was church. My dad had been raised Catholic, but never attended church when I was growing up. My mother did not drive, but would walk us to church when we went. I suppose I could tell you I was always excited to go to church, but I was not. I remember trying to pretend I was sleeping and hoping my mom would not wake me to go to church. It was when I was in the eighth grade at my home church that I had a powerful experience of God’s love and grace, an experience that has shaped me ever since. I didn’t fall down on my knees in a flash of blinding light or go forward at a mass evangelism rally. I had a teacher who told me of God’s love and over time I became convinced of that love and believed I needed to respond. I can do all kinds of analyzing of this time in my life – tensions at home, feeling awkward at school in so many ways (it was eighth grade!) – all of that no doubt contributed to what I experienced, but I trust that God was in the midst of that, calling me by name, letting me know that I was beloved. That’s what my name in Hebrew means – David, much loved. It was at that time I first considered becoming an ordained minister.
But there was not a straight line from eighth grade to this moment standing here today. In later high school and college, I questions, I explored, I drifted. My mind expanded but my faith did not immediately follow. When Julie and I started dating in college, she was probably the more traditional Christian than me. But in the midst of all this, the church, which was not always a kind place to me as I have shared before, my church was a kind place, a welcoming place, a place that gave me room to explore – or at least welcomed me as I explored. Even as I entered seminary, it was less a vocational choice than the next step in my spiritual journey, my journey of faith. But I had been touched by a light, embraced by a love and I found my way back to that faith – a different faith perhaps, but a faith for a new day a new time in my life. Two quotes come to mind to describe this part of my journey – one I have loved for a long time and one I have just discovered.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” (Four Quartets, 59)
The supreme choice facing every person of faith, namely, whether or not to update and transform our psychical image of God
Kirk Bingamon (in Cooper-White, p. 23)
Finding my faith again, renewed, transformed, a faith able to grow, to handle questions even as it continued to question me, led to hearing a call from God to ordained ministry. I have continued to try and follow that call and the way of Jesus and Christian faith in my life. I am not perfect at it. I know those places in my life where I can be unloving. I know the struggles I have within. I know when my “spiritual disciplines” are faintly followed. The way of Jesus is a challenging way. To be open to all the world is not easy. I have never related well to those stories of faith where a person finds Jesus and then they just skate along. That’s not been true for me. What I can testify to is that there has been a powerful love in my life which continues to call me, shape me, form me, invite me to be my best self and to care about the world. Because of that love maybe I’ve been able to resist passing on some of the less helpful parts of my family history, and perhaps have passed on some better ones. I am still growing and developing, still asking questions and exploring, but I know that a light has been shined into the darkness. I know I can be different than I am now, that the rough places can be smoothed out. I know that the world can be different and I will do what I can to make it so. Like John the Baptist, I testify to the light.
You can too. You have stories to share about how God’s love has made a difference in your lives. You have stories to share about how Christian faith, the Bible, church, make a difference for you. And people need to hear your stories. One part of sharing your story is to invite others to this community of faith. Frankly it is often easier to begin with that kind of invitation than to share your whole life story with someone, but the two go together.
We invite people to church and to faith by sharing our faith story. We invite people to church because we know that there are many stories of faith to be heard, and in a way the job of testifying to the light of God’s love in our lives belongs to us all, and belongs to us all together. We share our stories and invite people here because we want others to know God’s love, to have some sense of the joy and peace and direction and even challenge we know in our lives. We invite people because we want them to know God’s love and to live God’s love with us.
In recent newsletters I have written a lot about inviting, about radical hospitality, about sharing what we have here with others. I know that this is a little uncomfortable because I have heard from some that it is. Shouldn’t the church be interested in others and not itself? You have a point there – but what if what others need as much as anything in their lives is a sense of community, a people with whom to ask questions, a place to search out their spirituality, people who will laugh with them and cry with them? Don’t we have that to offer? Why wouldn’t we offer it?
I am going to be straightforward with you. I would like to see this church grow. I would like to see both our worship services average near 150 in attendance. I would like to see more small groups. But churches grow in all kinds of ways and growth in numbers is not as important as helping people grow in faith, as growing in our sense of community with each other – love for each other, as growing in our ministry to our community and world – a ministry of compassion and justice. I would like to see our church grow because I believe people need what we have – each other, a faith that enriches our lives and challenges us to be better and a God who loves us even when we fail. I would like to see our church grow because I believe the world needs what we have – people committed to a more just, peaceful, compassionate and green world. My primary reason for wanting to see this church grow is to connect people with God’s love, to help them grow in their understanding and experience of that love, and to live that love more fully in their lives. That’s so important to me that I tell people who may be checking us out, “if this is not the place you need for your faith right now, for your spiritual journey, I will help you find another congregation in town that may be more helpful.”
What we are about is connecting people to God’s love, to each other and inspiring people to live God’s dream for the world. That’s the light that shines in the darkness, and I want people to find a place where that light shines most brightly from them.
But if we don’t testify to the light, if we don’t invite people, we never give them the opportunity to think about their lives in some new ways. And you need to find your way to do it. You will do this in your way, not mine. You will do it in a way that avoids all the obnoxiousness that too often comes with discussions of faith and invitations to church.
Dan Dick, a United Methodist pastor shares the story of a time in an airport when he was between flights. A woman approached him. “Do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” Dan said he was startled by the woman and tried to ignore her. She persisted. “You may think I’m weird, but I need you to know that you are in danger of eternal damnation if you don’t accept Jesus. TODAY!” “Thanks, ma’am, but I’m a United Methodist pastor.” “Yes, but are you saved?” Irritated, Dan looked her straight in the eye and said, “I just told you I’m a minister.” “But you said you were Methodist. I want to know if you’re Christian.” (Bursting the Bubble, 93)
You have my permission and deep encouragement not to do that!!! But find ways to testify to the light in your life. Find ways to invite others to journey with you and with us. To give you a little help and encouragement, you will find an invitation to Christmas Eve services in your bulletin. You are invited. I invite you to invite someone else. Testify to the light. Amen.
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28
Someone recently shared with me a number of notes children wrote to God. They are wonderful and I will share them with you from time to time. Here are just a couple. Dear God, I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that o.k.? Neil 2: Dear God, maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother. Larry. 3: We read Thomas Edison made light. But in Sunday School they said you did it. So I bet he stoled your idea. Sincerely, Donna.
So Thomas Edison stole the idea of light! Of course Edison did not invent light, so I guess it makes no sense to accuse him of stealing from God. Instead he figured out a way to have electric current flow through a carbon filament to create light out of electricity. This occurred in the late 1870s. Until that time, and for many years afterward, until electricity was brought to nearly every area of the country, people burned oil lamps or candles for light once darkness had descended. Light in darkness, maybe Edison stole that idea from the writer of John’s gospel, for he uses it quite a bit.
Surrounding the passage we read today about John the Baptist, the writer of the gospel (who is not the John who is John the Baptist) says things like all things came into being through the Word, including life – “and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” Light, darkness, life – if you read John’s gospel you will encounter these themes again and again. The gospel writer uses the images in chapter one to say that something wonderful and awe-inspiring and life-giving and life-changing and history-changing has happened. He wants to say that God has been at work in a wonderful way, that God has touched our lives and our world in the life of a man named Jesus. It is like light shining in the darkness.
We need to use this image with care and with intelligence. We use it with care because such images have reinforced racial stereotypes, and that is not what they are about. Darkness in the Bible can be a frightening, dangerous place, but also a place where God is found in unique ways. John uses it to describe a kind of life that is less than life, a life filled with fear, a life blind to beauty and possibility. John, the gospel writer writes centuries before Edison, during a time when darkness was terribly dark. Once the sun set, there were no street lights to illumine dark places. If you wanted to see at night inside, you needed to burn candles or oil, but these might be in short supply, especially if you were poor. In the dark, those who would do you harm might feel freer to strike. The darkness could be a time of violence and robbery. Even today, people are cautioned if they are out well after dark to walk in lighted places. The gospel writer uses a common, everyday image to try and share something about what God has done in the life of Jesus – brought light and life into a dark world.
It is almost redundant then to share this story about John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s function is the same as the writer’s function – to testify to the light. God can be at work in the world, but God is always looking for people to share the story, to witness, to testify. God always calls people to see, to hear, to pay attention, and then to tell others about where God is at work.
The dynamic of God inviting people to witness, to testify, has a long history in the Bible before the Gospel of John. John the gospel writer, in fact, turns to an older biblical text to describe the testifying and witnessing work of John the Baptist. He is like the voice of one crying in the wilderness – a quote from Isaiah 40. Isaiah also writes about a person filled with the Spirit sent to bring good news. This could be John the Baptist too. God’s movement in the world, God’s Spirit touching lives, is meant to be witnessed. Good news is meant to be shared. The good news of Christian faith is that light of God’s love shines into the darkness of our lives and our world. The good news of Christian faith is that God continues to inspire so that the oppressed are given justice, the brokenhearted are healed, the captives are set free, those who mourn are comforted, faint spirits are strengthened. Peter Gomes from Harvard has said succinctly that the good news is “You don’t have to be as you are” (The Christian Century, December 15, 2008, p. 37). I would add, “The world doesn’t have to be as it is.” Such good news needs a witness. Such good news needs one to testify on its behalf.
I can testify to the light of God’s love. I can witness to the difference God’s grace, God’s love makes in a human life. I have not shared a great deal about the family I grew up in, in large measure because I know some of you know my parents. I intend to remain somewhat circumspect about this, but for me to testify to the power of God’s love in my life, you need to know a little bit about my background.
My parents divorced when I was in my early twenties. I don’t think it would be sharing too much to say that the tensions which resulted in that divorce were felt in our family for a number of years. It added some challenges to growing up. As I have learned more about my family history, I know that there are issues going back further than my parent’s marital tensions. Both sets of grandparents had alcohol problems, though they were significantly less pronounced in my grandmother who is still living at age 96. Alcohol contributed to the deaths of my other three grandparents and to my mom’s brother – who died in his late 50s. Who can say what those issues ended up contributing to my own parent’s marital discord. In the past few weeks, I have heard a story that goes even further back in my family history. My great-grandmother, who lived to be 94 and who I remember well, in fact she died twenty years ago this past week, my great-grandmother divorced her husband in 1946. She was 52 and Catholic. She had been suffering from bleeding for a time, but her husband told her she would be just fine and forbid her from seeking medical attention. She worked with some of her children to come to Duluth to get the attention she needed, and she determined that she would never return to her husband.
One of the issues that divided my parents was church. My dad had been raised Catholic, but never attended church when I was growing up. My mother did not drive, but would walk us to church when we went. I suppose I could tell you I was always excited to go to church, but I was not. I remember trying to pretend I was sleeping and hoping my mom would not wake me to go to church. It was when I was in the eighth grade at my home church that I had a powerful experience of God’s love and grace, an experience that has shaped me ever since. I didn’t fall down on my knees in a flash of blinding light or go forward at a mass evangelism rally. I had a teacher who told me of God’s love and over time I became convinced of that love and believed I needed to respond. I can do all kinds of analyzing of this time in my life – tensions at home, feeling awkward at school in so many ways (it was eighth grade!) – all of that no doubt contributed to what I experienced, but I trust that God was in the midst of that, calling me by name, letting me know that I was beloved. That’s what my name in Hebrew means – David, much loved. It was at that time I first considered becoming an ordained minister.
But there was not a straight line from eighth grade to this moment standing here today. In later high school and college, I questions, I explored, I drifted. My mind expanded but my faith did not immediately follow. When Julie and I started dating in college, she was probably the more traditional Christian than me. But in the midst of all this, the church, which was not always a kind place to me as I have shared before, my church was a kind place, a welcoming place, a place that gave me room to explore – or at least welcomed me as I explored. Even as I entered seminary, it was less a vocational choice than the next step in my spiritual journey, my journey of faith. But I had been touched by a light, embraced by a love and I found my way back to that faith – a different faith perhaps, but a faith for a new day a new time in my life. Two quotes come to mind to describe this part of my journey – one I have loved for a long time and one I have just discovered.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” (Four Quartets, 59)
The supreme choice facing every person of faith, namely, whether or not to update and transform our psychical image of God
Kirk Bingamon (in Cooper-White, p. 23)
Finding my faith again, renewed, transformed, a faith able to grow, to handle questions even as it continued to question me, led to hearing a call from God to ordained ministry. I have continued to try and follow that call and the way of Jesus and Christian faith in my life. I am not perfect at it. I know those places in my life where I can be unloving. I know the struggles I have within. I know when my “spiritual disciplines” are faintly followed. The way of Jesus is a challenging way. To be open to all the world is not easy. I have never related well to those stories of faith where a person finds Jesus and then they just skate along. That’s not been true for me. What I can testify to is that there has been a powerful love in my life which continues to call me, shape me, form me, invite me to be my best self and to care about the world. Because of that love maybe I’ve been able to resist passing on some of the less helpful parts of my family history, and perhaps have passed on some better ones. I am still growing and developing, still asking questions and exploring, but I know that a light has been shined into the darkness. I know I can be different than I am now, that the rough places can be smoothed out. I know that the world can be different and I will do what I can to make it so. Like John the Baptist, I testify to the light.
You can too. You have stories to share about how God’s love has made a difference in your lives. You have stories to share about how Christian faith, the Bible, church, make a difference for you. And people need to hear your stories. One part of sharing your story is to invite others to this community of faith. Frankly it is often easier to begin with that kind of invitation than to share your whole life story with someone, but the two go together.
We invite people to church and to faith by sharing our faith story. We invite people to church because we know that there are many stories of faith to be heard, and in a way the job of testifying to the light of God’s love in our lives belongs to us all, and belongs to us all together. We share our stories and invite people here because we want others to know God’s love, to have some sense of the joy and peace and direction and even challenge we know in our lives. We invite people because we want them to know God’s love and to live God’s love with us.
In recent newsletters I have written a lot about inviting, about radical hospitality, about sharing what we have here with others. I know that this is a little uncomfortable because I have heard from some that it is. Shouldn’t the church be interested in others and not itself? You have a point there – but what if what others need as much as anything in their lives is a sense of community, a people with whom to ask questions, a place to search out their spirituality, people who will laugh with them and cry with them? Don’t we have that to offer? Why wouldn’t we offer it?
I am going to be straightforward with you. I would like to see this church grow. I would like to see both our worship services average near 150 in attendance. I would like to see more small groups. But churches grow in all kinds of ways and growth in numbers is not as important as helping people grow in faith, as growing in our sense of community with each other – love for each other, as growing in our ministry to our community and world – a ministry of compassion and justice. I would like to see our church grow because I believe people need what we have – each other, a faith that enriches our lives and challenges us to be better and a God who loves us even when we fail. I would like to see our church grow because I believe the world needs what we have – people committed to a more just, peaceful, compassionate and green world. My primary reason for wanting to see this church grow is to connect people with God’s love, to help them grow in their understanding and experience of that love, and to live that love more fully in their lives. That’s so important to me that I tell people who may be checking us out, “if this is not the place you need for your faith right now, for your spiritual journey, I will help you find another congregation in town that may be more helpful.”
What we are about is connecting people to God’s love, to each other and inspiring people to live God’s dream for the world. That’s the light that shines in the darkness, and I want people to find a place where that light shines most brightly from them.
But if we don’t testify to the light, if we don’t invite people, we never give them the opportunity to think about their lives in some new ways. And you need to find your way to do it. You will do this in your way, not mine. You will do it in a way that avoids all the obnoxiousness that too often comes with discussions of faith and invitations to church.
Dan Dick, a United Methodist pastor shares the story of a time in an airport when he was between flights. A woman approached him. “Do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” Dan said he was startled by the woman and tried to ignore her. She persisted. “You may think I’m weird, but I need you to know that you are in danger of eternal damnation if you don’t accept Jesus. TODAY!” “Thanks, ma’am, but I’m a United Methodist pastor.” “Yes, but are you saved?” Irritated, Dan looked her straight in the eye and said, “I just told you I’m a minister.” “But you said you were Methodist. I want to know if you’re Christian.” (Bursting the Bubble, 93)
You have my permission and deep encouragement not to do that!!! But find ways to testify to the light in your life. Find ways to invite others to journey with you and with us. To give you a little help and encouragement, you will find an invitation to Christmas Eve services in your bulletin. You are invited. I invite you to invite someone else. Testify to the light. Amen.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
What's a Nice Boy Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
I did not preach this past Sunday. It was our children's and youth Christmas program. I thought I would post a sermon I preached awhile back - May 6, 2007.
Scripture Readings: John 13:31-35; Acts 11:1-18
After church one Sunday morning, a boy suddenly announced to his mother, “Mom, I’ve decided I’m going to be a minister when I grow up.” “That’s okay with us, but what made you decide you wanted to be a minister?” “Well,” the boy replied, “I’ll have to go to church on Sunday anyway, and I figure it will be more fun to stand up and yell.” (Pretty Good Joke Book, 106)
I was born at St. Luke’s Hospital here in Duluth in 1959. For my first six years of life I lived in a duplex on 43rd Avenue East. Then we moved to 5430 Avondale St. I attended Lester Park Elementary, Ordean Junior High, East High School, UMD. The first thing I remember wanting to be when I grew up was a police officer. That was in third grade. It was in eighth grade that I first though about becoming a minister – and that idea came and went a few times before it stuck.
When I came here to interview with the Staff-Parish Relations Committee in late March of 2005, as the person the Bishop wanted to appoint to First United Methodist Church, the committee told me that this was a Reconciling Congregation and asked if I could be supportive of that. A Reconciling Congregation is one that has publicly declared that it will be open to, welcome and affirm gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons – GLBT persons. The official position of our denomination is that all persons are of sacred worth and yet we believe the practice of homosexuality to be incompatible with Christian teaching. As a reconciling congregation we have said we stand in opposition to the last part of that and we will welcome GLBT persons and let them participate fully in our congregation, as fully as our denomination allows.
Thankfully, I knew that when I was asked about it by the Staff-Parish Committee. I’m not sure what would have happened had I said, “a reconciling what?” I told the committee that I could and would be supportive of the church’s reconciling position. What I could not honestly say was, “You know, ever since I was a kid I aspired to be the pastor of a Reconciling Congregation.” I just could not say that. And sometimes I even wonder, what’s a nice boy from Lester Park doing trying to talk about such matters in this setting? How did I get here? I want to say a few words about that today, because it has everything to do with the Scripture readings for this morning and I’ll make that connection shortly.
When I was growing up, I never knew much about GLBT persons or issues. I did not have a closeted uncle or aunt. My siblings are straight – divorced, but straight. In junior high and high school, we used to throw the term “fag” around kind of loosely. When a few of us looked up the word in a dictionary and found it could also mean a “bundle of sticks” we used to tease each other by calling out “you bundle of sticks.” Who can explain adolescent boys? But to be honest, though I would sometimes use such words, and probably sometimes in anger, I never really thought that anyone I ever called a bundle of sticks really might be different, really might be gay. It just never crossed my mind. I do remember reading some Christian literature that talked about the issue. David Wilkerson a pastor and author of The Cross and the Switchblade, wrote about the issue. Homosexuals are not “queers.” They are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters from all walks of life involved in a serious problem…. So-called homosexual Christians can never be acceptable in the eyes of God if they live in their sin (Jesus People Maturity Manual). I read the words, but what did they have to do with me?
In college I guess I became more aware that there were really GLBT people, but again, what did that have to do with me? I wasn’t one, and did not care much if they were who they were. I don’t recall my pastor ever talking about the issue – and about now some of you may be wishing for the same thing. We don’t need to hide the fact that we get a little uncomfortable talking about human sexuality.
When I got to seminary, however, I came face-to-face with GLBT issues, because for the first time I came face-to-face with gay and lesbian persons. This was unfamiliar territory for me, and uncomfortable. Some of the words I had read in the past remained a part of my thinking, no doubt. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. I also became much more aware of how difficult and divisive an issue this was for the church.
There were those Scriptures of our faith that seemed to present a pretty negative take on GLBT persons – Levitcus (two verses), for instance. But it became puzzling to me that we could take a verse or two from this book so seriously, yet let others slide by so easily. In the same chapter of Leviticus that seemingly condemns a man lying with a man as with a woman, the Israelites are told to put to death those caught in adultery and those who curse their mother or father. In the very next chapter, the following types of people are prohibited from becoming priests, or serving as priest while these conditions persist: one who has a blemish, the blind or lame, one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, one who has a broken hand or foot, “or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs, or crushed testicles” (Leviticus 21: 18-20). Our Conference Board of Ordained Ministry does not ask clergy candidates about such things.
And in a few places Paul writes rather disapprovingly about same-sex relationships. He looked around his culture and saw things he disapproved of, but we are not sure just what it is Paul was concerned about. In the words of theologian William Placher, in his book Jesus the Savior: “We are not sure why Paul condemned what he saw…. Would very different forms of homosexual activity have seemed wrong in the same way to Paul? We cannot summon him up from the dead… and find out what he would have thought” (100). Placher, in fact, makes a strong point in his book. It is hard to imagine how anyone, reading the Bible through, could come up with homosexuality as one of the central topics it lays out for ethical reflection (96). Texts that address GLBT issues are very few, and are open to genuine interpretive differences.
At the same time I struggled with Scripture, I was hearing stories like one shared by Parker Palmer. Stuart Mathis was a gay man who grew up in a religious community that regards homosexuality as a sin. His church insisted that he “change his sexual orientation,” and when he found it impossible to do so, he committed suicide, leaving these words behind: [My] church has no idea that as I type this letter, there are surely boys and girls on their callused knees imploring God to free them from this pain. They hate themselves. They retire to bed with their fingers pointed to their heads in the form of a gun. I am now free. I am no longer in pain and I no longer hate myself. As it turns out, God never intended for me to be straight. Perhaps my death might be a catalyst for some good. (A Hidden Wholeness, 41)
I was also meeting people who were wonderful Christians, and gay. It remained rather uncomfortable territory. Even as a senior in seminary I confessed to a friend that I still found something about all this a bit “unnatural.” Yet something continued to simmer inside of me.
Peter could not imagine less unnatural a thing than that God’s Spirit might be at work in uncircumcised, non-Jewish people – Gentiles. Jesus had been Jewish. He taught in synagogues. He worshipped at the Temple. He was a rather faithful follower of the law, even as he criticized some of it. While he often told stories that made heroes out of non-Jews, and seemed at times willing to reach beyond his people, his first followers were all Jewish and it seems they expected that those who would follow Jesus would be Jewish too. But a wild dream experience compels Peter to reach out to Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort. When he goes to see Cornelius, he finds that God’s Spirit was also present. Peter, in giving his report to skeptical believers in Jerusalem says, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”
Peter moved by the Spirit of God, compelled by the words of Jesus himself (I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.) Peter goes beyond his comfort zone. Love brought him to a new place. The Spirit took him into unfamiliar territory. His mind was changed about who was acceptable to God and to whom God might give God’s Spirit.
I have had no wild dream like experience and I cannot even tell you when exactly I came to this point, but love and God’s Spirit brought me to a new place – at first uncomfortable, unfamiliar, but a new place. I say in Peter’s words, if God is at work in the lives of GLBT people, and I have witnessed that time and again, who am I that I should hinder God?
Now I don’t have to say that everything any GLBT person does is o.k. just as I would not say that everything a heterosexual person does is o.k. The Christian faith has consistently maintained that all persons are vulnerable to sin, and that may include sexual sin, and in fact, all have sinned. But at its best our faith knows that the essence of sin is a violation of the command to love. It is refusal to love. I don’t see homosexuality in itself as sinful.
So here I am, a kid from Lester Park, pastor of First United Methodist Church, Duluth, a Reconciling Congregation. And I am proud to be here. And I also want this church to be a place that welcomes those who may not be in complete agreement with our reconciling stance, who may be at a different place on the journey. How hypocritical it would be for me, who took a journey himself to say, “if you are not where I have arrived at, you are not welcome.” For above all, a Reconciling congregation should be a place that takes seriously the idea that God’s Spirit moves in surprising ways, invites us into unfamiliar and sometimes challenging places, but always in service of God’s love. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. And who knows where love may take us? Amen.
Scripture Readings: John 13:31-35; Acts 11:1-18
After church one Sunday morning, a boy suddenly announced to his mother, “Mom, I’ve decided I’m going to be a minister when I grow up.” “That’s okay with us, but what made you decide you wanted to be a minister?” “Well,” the boy replied, “I’ll have to go to church on Sunday anyway, and I figure it will be more fun to stand up and yell.” (Pretty Good Joke Book, 106)
I was born at St. Luke’s Hospital here in Duluth in 1959. For my first six years of life I lived in a duplex on 43rd Avenue East. Then we moved to 5430 Avondale St. I attended Lester Park Elementary, Ordean Junior High, East High School, UMD. The first thing I remember wanting to be when I grew up was a police officer. That was in third grade. It was in eighth grade that I first though about becoming a minister – and that idea came and went a few times before it stuck.
When I came here to interview with the Staff-Parish Relations Committee in late March of 2005, as the person the Bishop wanted to appoint to First United Methodist Church, the committee told me that this was a Reconciling Congregation and asked if I could be supportive of that. A Reconciling Congregation is one that has publicly declared that it will be open to, welcome and affirm gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons – GLBT persons. The official position of our denomination is that all persons are of sacred worth and yet we believe the practice of homosexuality to be incompatible with Christian teaching. As a reconciling congregation we have said we stand in opposition to the last part of that and we will welcome GLBT persons and let them participate fully in our congregation, as fully as our denomination allows.
Thankfully, I knew that when I was asked about it by the Staff-Parish Committee. I’m not sure what would have happened had I said, “a reconciling what?” I told the committee that I could and would be supportive of the church’s reconciling position. What I could not honestly say was, “You know, ever since I was a kid I aspired to be the pastor of a Reconciling Congregation.” I just could not say that. And sometimes I even wonder, what’s a nice boy from Lester Park doing trying to talk about such matters in this setting? How did I get here? I want to say a few words about that today, because it has everything to do with the Scripture readings for this morning and I’ll make that connection shortly.
When I was growing up, I never knew much about GLBT persons or issues. I did not have a closeted uncle or aunt. My siblings are straight – divorced, but straight. In junior high and high school, we used to throw the term “fag” around kind of loosely. When a few of us looked up the word in a dictionary and found it could also mean a “bundle of sticks” we used to tease each other by calling out “you bundle of sticks.” Who can explain adolescent boys? But to be honest, though I would sometimes use such words, and probably sometimes in anger, I never really thought that anyone I ever called a bundle of sticks really might be different, really might be gay. It just never crossed my mind. I do remember reading some Christian literature that talked about the issue. David Wilkerson a pastor and author of The Cross and the Switchblade, wrote about the issue. Homosexuals are not “queers.” They are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters from all walks of life involved in a serious problem…. So-called homosexual Christians can never be acceptable in the eyes of God if they live in their sin (Jesus People Maturity Manual). I read the words, but what did they have to do with me?
In college I guess I became more aware that there were really GLBT people, but again, what did that have to do with me? I wasn’t one, and did not care much if they were who they were. I don’t recall my pastor ever talking about the issue – and about now some of you may be wishing for the same thing. We don’t need to hide the fact that we get a little uncomfortable talking about human sexuality.
When I got to seminary, however, I came face-to-face with GLBT issues, because for the first time I came face-to-face with gay and lesbian persons. This was unfamiliar territory for me, and uncomfortable. Some of the words I had read in the past remained a part of my thinking, no doubt. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. I also became much more aware of how difficult and divisive an issue this was for the church.
There were those Scriptures of our faith that seemed to present a pretty negative take on GLBT persons – Levitcus (two verses), for instance. But it became puzzling to me that we could take a verse or two from this book so seriously, yet let others slide by so easily. In the same chapter of Leviticus that seemingly condemns a man lying with a man as with a woman, the Israelites are told to put to death those caught in adultery and those who curse their mother or father. In the very next chapter, the following types of people are prohibited from becoming priests, or serving as priest while these conditions persist: one who has a blemish, the blind or lame, one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, one who has a broken hand or foot, “or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs, or crushed testicles” (Leviticus 21: 18-20). Our Conference Board of Ordained Ministry does not ask clergy candidates about such things.
And in a few places Paul writes rather disapprovingly about same-sex relationships. He looked around his culture and saw things he disapproved of, but we are not sure just what it is Paul was concerned about. In the words of theologian William Placher, in his book Jesus the Savior: “We are not sure why Paul condemned what he saw…. Would very different forms of homosexual activity have seemed wrong in the same way to Paul? We cannot summon him up from the dead… and find out what he would have thought” (100). Placher, in fact, makes a strong point in his book. It is hard to imagine how anyone, reading the Bible through, could come up with homosexuality as one of the central topics it lays out for ethical reflection (96). Texts that address GLBT issues are very few, and are open to genuine interpretive differences.
At the same time I struggled with Scripture, I was hearing stories like one shared by Parker Palmer. Stuart Mathis was a gay man who grew up in a religious community that regards homosexuality as a sin. His church insisted that he “change his sexual orientation,” and when he found it impossible to do so, he committed suicide, leaving these words behind: [My] church has no idea that as I type this letter, there are surely boys and girls on their callused knees imploring God to free them from this pain. They hate themselves. They retire to bed with their fingers pointed to their heads in the form of a gun. I am now free. I am no longer in pain and I no longer hate myself. As it turns out, God never intended for me to be straight. Perhaps my death might be a catalyst for some good. (A Hidden Wholeness, 41)
I was also meeting people who were wonderful Christians, and gay. It remained rather uncomfortable territory. Even as a senior in seminary I confessed to a friend that I still found something about all this a bit “unnatural.” Yet something continued to simmer inside of me.
Peter could not imagine less unnatural a thing than that God’s Spirit might be at work in uncircumcised, non-Jewish people – Gentiles. Jesus had been Jewish. He taught in synagogues. He worshipped at the Temple. He was a rather faithful follower of the law, even as he criticized some of it. While he often told stories that made heroes out of non-Jews, and seemed at times willing to reach beyond his people, his first followers were all Jewish and it seems they expected that those who would follow Jesus would be Jewish too. But a wild dream experience compels Peter to reach out to Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort. When he goes to see Cornelius, he finds that God’s Spirit was also present. Peter, in giving his report to skeptical believers in Jerusalem says, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”
Peter moved by the Spirit of God, compelled by the words of Jesus himself (I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.) Peter goes beyond his comfort zone. Love brought him to a new place. The Spirit took him into unfamiliar territory. His mind was changed about who was acceptable to God and to whom God might give God’s Spirit.
I have had no wild dream like experience and I cannot even tell you when exactly I came to this point, but love and God’s Spirit brought me to a new place – at first uncomfortable, unfamiliar, but a new place. I say in Peter’s words, if God is at work in the lives of GLBT people, and I have witnessed that time and again, who am I that I should hinder God?
Now I don’t have to say that everything any GLBT person does is o.k. just as I would not say that everything a heterosexual person does is o.k. The Christian faith has consistently maintained that all persons are vulnerable to sin, and that may include sexual sin, and in fact, all have sinned. But at its best our faith knows that the essence of sin is a violation of the command to love. It is refusal to love. I don’t see homosexuality in itself as sinful.
So here I am, a kid from Lester Park, pastor of First United Methodist Church, Duluth, a Reconciling Congregation. And I am proud to be here. And I also want this church to be a place that welcomes those who may not be in complete agreement with our reconciling stance, who may be at a different place on the journey. How hypocritical it would be for me, who took a journey himself to say, “if you are not where I have arrived at, you are not welcome.” For above all, a Reconciling congregation should be a place that takes seriously the idea that God’s Spirit moves in surprising ways, invites us into unfamiliar and sometimes challenging places, but always in service of God’s love. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. And who knows where love may take us? Amen.
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