“He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
--Robert Blake
From where I sit at my computer at home, I can see out the window into our backyard where our green wooden swing set sits. It is a breezy, albeit chilly afternoon, and we have had a brief reprieve from rain as the sun has slowly settled out for its late afternoon debut. And on that swing set, flying “Superman style,” that is, lying on his stomach across the swing and kicking his green frog galoshes behind him, is my just-turned four-year old son.
This is Grayson’s favorite place to be in the whole world--in his own backyard, wearing his rain boots and a grubby gray sweatshirt, with our dachshund cavorting around him.
While I was sitting inside in front of my computer screen, cup of coffee at my side, laboring over a turn of phrase for a sermon, pondering the meaning of the words of Jesus, trying to find the perfect way to convey what it was I thought should be said, and fretting all the while and taking myself very seriously, I heard something in the backyard. I peered through the lace curtains and saw Grayson, smile on his face swinging near the branches of the pine trees yelling at the top of his voice, “I love the world! I love this world! I love it!”
While I, intent on my book-learning and heady theologizing, was puzzling over the wonder of God’s word, a four-year-old was experiencing God’s world. When did I forget how to be rather than to do? When did I become so mired in my adult world that I forgot the simple and truth of the child’s universe? How is it that I have neglected to kiss the joy as it has gone flying by?
As the weather turns warmer (we hope!), and as the grasses turn greener, and as tulips poke their heads out of the soil, may we each find at least a few moments to make our way into that place of wonder, and may we too remember to kiss the joy.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Discipline of Keeping Sabbath--Sermon 3/27/11
The Discipline of Keeping Sabbath
Sabbath is mentioned in the Bible 157 times. In 157 different locations the word Sabbath is used. And anytime something is mentioned this often, we might do well to perk up our ears and listen. The Bible is filled in minute detail with how important Sabbath is—which is very. The Bible can tell us exactly how we should celebrate and remember the Sabbath—which is by resting and turning our hearts toward God. And The Bible can tell us exactly what happened to some people who forgot, or who had no use for the Sabbath—they were struck dead. Need the scriptures be any clearer about Sabbath? Probably not. But do we listen?
On our Lenten journey we are talking about different spiritual disciplines. We have already talked about the importance of turning toward God in reverence and awe, the importance of singing our praises to God, and this morning we will be talking about the discipline of keeping Sabbath. Of course we take our cues from our Jewish ancestors here who begin their Sabbath from the time one could see three stars in the sky on Friday evening until Saturday at dusk. From dusk to dusk observant Jews do no work, including for some orthodox, even the work of tearing toilet paper off the spindle, or pushing buttons on elevators or phones. The rules of the Sabbath could be just as strict in Jesus’s day, and we 21st century Americans for the most part have grown pretty lax about what we can and cannot do on Sundays, the cultural Sabbath for Christians.
This week as I was thinking about Sabbath I was remembering a long standing argument my ex-husband and I used to have. The argument often happened in the spring, on those sunny first Sunday afternoons in late April or early May. In those days when the weather first hits the upper-60s and we realize that winter’s grip has finally and truly been broken. On those days when your fingers itch to get outside and dig in the dirt. Ken and I lived in a small town, in a small brick house right off the main street. And as any pastor of a church in a small conservative town can tell you, there are eyes on you at all times. The argument would often start like this, on that first sunny Sunday of the spring season I would wander out from the bedroom decked out in my old overalls and gardening clogs and say, “Well, I’m headed out to the yard to have a go at the first weeds of the season.” And Ken, who was raised in a more traditionally conservative faith tradition than I was, would get a pained look on his face and say, “But it’s Sunday!” And I would stare back at him, perplexed and confused, or wondering if I was supposed to be proud of him for remembering the days of the week or something. And then every season the same argument would be rehashed. He’d pause and say logically, “You can’t work in the garden on the Sabbath, because what if someone from your congregation comes by and sees you?” To which I often suggested a variety of disguises I could wear, including my Groucho Marx glasses and nose. But, if, heaven forbid they did see me, I would tell Ken, I will just wave at them. At this point in our seasonal debate he would remind me not to be duplicitious and would then explain again why he felt so strongly about this. You see, when Ken was growing up he wasn’t allowed to mow the lawn of the church or parsonage where his parents were pastors on Sunday, he couldn’t mow any lawn on Sunday, and that was incredibly difficult for him, because he had a riding lawn mower, and well, he really, really liked to fly through that grass on a sunny Sunday. But, his parents were sticklers about this, and Ken had decided that there were some Sabbath rules which were inviolable. Some things which were simply struck in stone.
I joke about that argument now, but with ten years of hindsight, I feel a deep sense of regret over that debate. Because I could not articulate my understanding of Sabbath, I could not articulate then what I have come to believe. Sabbath-keeping should draw us toward God, simply put and end of story. And if there are things that draw you into relationship with your creator, and if they rejuvenate your soul, then why could that not be a way of celebrating all of creation? There is a poem called “Welcoming Sabbath” from the New Union Prayer Book which names Sabbath in this way, “On this day we shall not do, but be.”
The word “Sabbath” derives from the Hebrew word “Shabbat,” which means, literally, to cease or desist. On Sabbath, one is called to cease from all working, to cease from all worrying, to cease from all the weekly concerns which ensnare us and keep us from focusing our energies on nurturing our souls in God’s grace. The origins of this Sabbath time are found in Genesis 2, where God stops creating and rests, where the action ceases and the blessing occurs. Old Testament scriptures tell us that there are certain things which must not be done on the Sabbath. Things like gathering food, plowing or reaping, kindling fire, or chopping wood. Preparations for most of these things must be done the previous day so that the Levitical laws could be obeyed. In the earlier times, even in the earlier times of some of you in this congregation, Sabbath meant a day when games were not played, when heavy meals were not cooked, when the house was kept in quiet. Sabbath was a day of dread for some children as they had to keep wearing their church clothes and sit quietly. As Barbara Brown Taylor said in her book, An Altar in the World, “for all practical purposes the commandment might as well have read, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it boring.’ (p. 127). For those who follow this rigid interpretation of Sabbath, mostly it seems to mean, “obey the rules” as if we creations of God are all just timid children.
The New Testament, however, paints a very different picture for us. Jesus, rule-breaker that he was, threw the Pharisees a few curve balls about the Sabbath. Jesus colored outside the lines a bit and recreated for us what the Sabbath ought to be. Throughout his ministry, Jesus used several opportunities to speak, teach, and even (gasp) heal on the Sabbath. The man with the withered hand, a demoniac, a man with an unclean spirit, Simon’s mother-in-law, the bent-over woman, and countless others all benefited from the lax laws that Jesus observed, and the grace he invited about Sabbath keeping. And when Jesus was tested by those same Pharisees and the priests of the law his answer was a jubilant “yes!” He said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath!” Jesus gave a joyful affirmation to the Sabbath as celebration, as liberation, as invitation to intimacy with God. The God who smiles down on this Sabbath is a God who is humored by our delight, a God who welcomes whatever attempt we make to connect, at whatever time we can find.
I have become convinced of the need for Sabbath, especially now, as one who uses her Sabbath to preach to you about Sabbath…hmmm…I think that we all need Sabbath in some capacity or another, whatever the day is, for however long we can carve out the space for it, because, friends, life goes by quickly. And we are so, so frenetic. Our culture goes fast. There are 24-hour-news cycles and Facebook updates and Twitter feeds and more information being transmitted to us than we can absorb. Our day-timers are penciled in to the margins and rule our existence. We judge our successfulness on how many hours we spend each week at the office, or on how many widgets we counted. Productivity is our goal. To stop or slow down is guilt-inducing. We keep running around on our little hamster wheels, running and running and running as fast as our little legs can carry us. And so perhaps, to honor the Sabbath the first thing we need to learn how to do is to just say no every once inawhile. Barbara Brown Taylor says it this way, “I know that saying no is a more difficult practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row—because while all of those worthy activities may involve saying no to something else so that I can do them instead, they still amount to doing more instead of less.” (125). Sabbath, the need to have times when we do less, doesn’t jive with our culture. And to tell someone that you’ve penciled in a spot on your calendar to simply come out and play with God could result in some skeptical looks.
Friends, as followers of Christ we have an obligation to say no to the chaos of our lives, and say yes to the one who invites us to rest and relationship with God. There is a purpose for it, an urgent need. And Sabbath is not meant to be some passive activity, but is an active way of reclaiming our lives and bringing ourselves back into right relationship with God. I don’t think it matters when we do it, but I think it matters that we do it.
And so my commission to you in this week is that you say no to the distractions of the world, even if only for an hour or so, and say yes to strengthening your ties with your creator. I wish I had answers for each of you for how you can best renew your spirit in Sabbath space, but I have the sense that it comes for each of us differently. For some it has more to do with digging fingers in loamy soil, and for some it means lying on backs at night watching stars. For some it is a simple as closing one’s eyes and sitting in pure silence for an hour or so, and for others it means losing oneself in a Bach cantata. For some it is feeling your feet pound on pavement as you walk or run into God’s world, and for others it is kneading dough and watching it rise. For some it is that long afternoon nap and the luxury of curling up like a cat in the sun, and for some it is the words on the page that beg to be read. I can’t be you own personal spiritual trainers recommending your Sabbath renewal exercise, but I trust that in your heart is already the answer of what deeply needs to be kindled in you in your own spiritual life.
In closing, let me offer you these words as we each contemplate what Sabbath means for us personally and corporately, words from the theologian Renita Weems. She writes, “The Lord’s day allows us to bring our souls, our emotions, our senses, our vision, and even our bodies back to God so that God might remember our tattered broken selves and put our priorities back in order.” I couldn’t have said it better. My hope for each of us, indeed, for this body of Christ which is Peace United Church of Christ, is that we can offer to God our tattered and broken selves on this particular day of rest so that we might renew our vision and dream God’s dreams. For Sabbath is not about the rules and regulations, not about the laws and restrictions, but about the call to deepen your faith, and to come out and play with the one who delights in our creation.
May it be so.
Amen.
Sabbath is mentioned in the Bible 157 times. In 157 different locations the word Sabbath is used. And anytime something is mentioned this often, we might do well to perk up our ears and listen. The Bible is filled in minute detail with how important Sabbath is—which is very. The Bible can tell us exactly how we should celebrate and remember the Sabbath—which is by resting and turning our hearts toward God. And The Bible can tell us exactly what happened to some people who forgot, or who had no use for the Sabbath—they were struck dead. Need the scriptures be any clearer about Sabbath? Probably not. But do we listen?
On our Lenten journey we are talking about different spiritual disciplines. We have already talked about the importance of turning toward God in reverence and awe, the importance of singing our praises to God, and this morning we will be talking about the discipline of keeping Sabbath. Of course we take our cues from our Jewish ancestors here who begin their Sabbath from the time one could see three stars in the sky on Friday evening until Saturday at dusk. From dusk to dusk observant Jews do no work, including for some orthodox, even the work of tearing toilet paper off the spindle, or pushing buttons on elevators or phones. The rules of the Sabbath could be just as strict in Jesus’s day, and we 21st century Americans for the most part have grown pretty lax about what we can and cannot do on Sundays, the cultural Sabbath for Christians.
This week as I was thinking about Sabbath I was remembering a long standing argument my ex-husband and I used to have. The argument often happened in the spring, on those sunny first Sunday afternoons in late April or early May. In those days when the weather first hits the upper-60s and we realize that winter’s grip has finally and truly been broken. On those days when your fingers itch to get outside and dig in the dirt. Ken and I lived in a small town, in a small brick house right off the main street. And as any pastor of a church in a small conservative town can tell you, there are eyes on you at all times. The argument would often start like this, on that first sunny Sunday of the spring season I would wander out from the bedroom decked out in my old overalls and gardening clogs and say, “Well, I’m headed out to the yard to have a go at the first weeds of the season.” And Ken, who was raised in a more traditionally conservative faith tradition than I was, would get a pained look on his face and say, “But it’s Sunday!” And I would stare back at him, perplexed and confused, or wondering if I was supposed to be proud of him for remembering the days of the week or something. And then every season the same argument would be rehashed. He’d pause and say logically, “You can’t work in the garden on the Sabbath, because what if someone from your congregation comes by and sees you?” To which I often suggested a variety of disguises I could wear, including my Groucho Marx glasses and nose. But, if, heaven forbid they did see me, I would tell Ken, I will just wave at them. At this point in our seasonal debate he would remind me not to be duplicitious and would then explain again why he felt so strongly about this. You see, when Ken was growing up he wasn’t allowed to mow the lawn of the church or parsonage where his parents were pastors on Sunday, he couldn’t mow any lawn on Sunday, and that was incredibly difficult for him, because he had a riding lawn mower, and well, he really, really liked to fly through that grass on a sunny Sunday. But, his parents were sticklers about this, and Ken had decided that there were some Sabbath rules which were inviolable. Some things which were simply struck in stone.
I joke about that argument now, but with ten years of hindsight, I feel a deep sense of regret over that debate. Because I could not articulate my understanding of Sabbath, I could not articulate then what I have come to believe. Sabbath-keeping should draw us toward God, simply put and end of story. And if there are things that draw you into relationship with your creator, and if they rejuvenate your soul, then why could that not be a way of celebrating all of creation? There is a poem called “Welcoming Sabbath” from the New Union Prayer Book which names Sabbath in this way, “On this day we shall not do, but be.”
The word “Sabbath” derives from the Hebrew word “Shabbat,” which means, literally, to cease or desist. On Sabbath, one is called to cease from all working, to cease from all worrying, to cease from all the weekly concerns which ensnare us and keep us from focusing our energies on nurturing our souls in God’s grace. The origins of this Sabbath time are found in Genesis 2, where God stops creating and rests, where the action ceases and the blessing occurs. Old Testament scriptures tell us that there are certain things which must not be done on the Sabbath. Things like gathering food, plowing or reaping, kindling fire, or chopping wood. Preparations for most of these things must be done the previous day so that the Levitical laws could be obeyed. In the earlier times, even in the earlier times of some of you in this congregation, Sabbath meant a day when games were not played, when heavy meals were not cooked, when the house was kept in quiet. Sabbath was a day of dread for some children as they had to keep wearing their church clothes and sit quietly. As Barbara Brown Taylor said in her book, An Altar in the World, “for all practical purposes the commandment might as well have read, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it boring.’ (p. 127). For those who follow this rigid interpretation of Sabbath, mostly it seems to mean, “obey the rules” as if we creations of God are all just timid children.
The New Testament, however, paints a very different picture for us. Jesus, rule-breaker that he was, threw the Pharisees a few curve balls about the Sabbath. Jesus colored outside the lines a bit and recreated for us what the Sabbath ought to be. Throughout his ministry, Jesus used several opportunities to speak, teach, and even (gasp) heal on the Sabbath. The man with the withered hand, a demoniac, a man with an unclean spirit, Simon’s mother-in-law, the bent-over woman, and countless others all benefited from the lax laws that Jesus observed, and the grace he invited about Sabbath keeping. And when Jesus was tested by those same Pharisees and the priests of the law his answer was a jubilant “yes!” He said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath!” Jesus gave a joyful affirmation to the Sabbath as celebration, as liberation, as invitation to intimacy with God. The God who smiles down on this Sabbath is a God who is humored by our delight, a God who welcomes whatever attempt we make to connect, at whatever time we can find.
I have become convinced of the need for Sabbath, especially now, as one who uses her Sabbath to preach to you about Sabbath…hmmm…I think that we all need Sabbath in some capacity or another, whatever the day is, for however long we can carve out the space for it, because, friends, life goes by quickly. And we are so, so frenetic. Our culture goes fast. There are 24-hour-news cycles and Facebook updates and Twitter feeds and more information being transmitted to us than we can absorb. Our day-timers are penciled in to the margins and rule our existence. We judge our successfulness on how many hours we spend each week at the office, or on how many widgets we counted. Productivity is our goal. To stop or slow down is guilt-inducing. We keep running around on our little hamster wheels, running and running and running as fast as our little legs can carry us. And so perhaps, to honor the Sabbath the first thing we need to learn how to do is to just say no every once inawhile. Barbara Brown Taylor says it this way, “I know that saying no is a more difficult practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row—because while all of those worthy activities may involve saying no to something else so that I can do them instead, they still amount to doing more instead of less.” (125). Sabbath, the need to have times when we do less, doesn’t jive with our culture. And to tell someone that you’ve penciled in a spot on your calendar to simply come out and play with God could result in some skeptical looks.
Friends, as followers of Christ we have an obligation to say no to the chaos of our lives, and say yes to the one who invites us to rest and relationship with God. There is a purpose for it, an urgent need. And Sabbath is not meant to be some passive activity, but is an active way of reclaiming our lives and bringing ourselves back into right relationship with God. I don’t think it matters when we do it, but I think it matters that we do it.
And so my commission to you in this week is that you say no to the distractions of the world, even if only for an hour or so, and say yes to strengthening your ties with your creator. I wish I had answers for each of you for how you can best renew your spirit in Sabbath space, but I have the sense that it comes for each of us differently. For some it has more to do with digging fingers in loamy soil, and for some it means lying on backs at night watching stars. For some it is a simple as closing one’s eyes and sitting in pure silence for an hour or so, and for others it means losing oneself in a Bach cantata. For some it is feeling your feet pound on pavement as you walk or run into God’s world, and for others it is kneading dough and watching it rise. For some it is that long afternoon nap and the luxury of curling up like a cat in the sun, and for some it is the words on the page that beg to be read. I can’t be you own personal spiritual trainers recommending your Sabbath renewal exercise, but I trust that in your heart is already the answer of what deeply needs to be kindled in you in your own spiritual life.
In closing, let me offer you these words as we each contemplate what Sabbath means for us personally and corporately, words from the theologian Renita Weems. She writes, “The Lord’s day allows us to bring our souls, our emotions, our senses, our vision, and even our bodies back to God so that God might remember our tattered broken selves and put our priorities back in order.” I couldn’t have said it better. My hope for each of us, indeed, for this body of Christ which is Peace United Church of Christ, is that we can offer to God our tattered and broken selves on this particular day of rest so that we might renew our vision and dream God’s dreams. For Sabbath is not about the rules and regulations, not about the laws and restrictions, but about the call to deepen your faith, and to come out and play with the one who delights in our creation.
May it be so.
Amen.
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Spiritual Discipline of Waking Up--Sermon 3/13/11
The Spiritual Discipline of Waking Up
And so we have begun our Lenten journey together. We will be walking through these longer spring days and allowing the light to lead us. Historically, the early church fathers called people to fast during the Lenten season, giving up one’s portion of meat or fish to give to the poor. It was a way to remember the generosity of Christ’s all-inclusive love and care for those in need, but somehow throughout the centuries the focus was more on the fast and the idea of self-sacrifice. The focus was on deprivation and not on grace. This is a shame, I believe, for I don’t believe God wants any of us to suffer, just as I don’t believe he wanted his own son to suffer on the cross. Instead, I believe that those who first adopted the practice of Lent in about the 4th century had it right. Let’s choose to do something in these six weeks that helps those in need, or let’s choose to do something that calls us into deeper discipleship. Rather than simply refraining from something which we know in our heart of hearts we will simply revert to doing again in six weeks, thankful that the six weeks is over, let’s add a new dimension to this Lenten season and grow into our faith in ways that shape us for the journey throughout the rest of life.
During the next six weeks of Lent I invite you on a journey of finding the sacred in the ordinary, of allowing yourself to be drawn deeper into your faith, of recognizing that our faith is a deep pool of grace that we have the chance to dive into in each moment. During the next six weeks of Lent we will be exploring scriptural examples of holy disciplines, and the thoughts of homiletics professor and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Altars in the World, which is what we will be studying in our Tuesday evening Lenten book group as well. We will explore all sorts of spiritual disciplines—some as simple as walking, connecting with nature, and observing Sabbath and some as messy as being part of community, physical labor, and finding vocation. And it is my fervent prayer that our Lenten season may be one not of depravation, but one of growth and focus. And so it only seems right that we begin this morning with the first discipline, that of waking up to the sacred in our midst.
This morning’s scripture is jam packed with juicy details and strange nocturnal imaginings. The main character of the story, Jacob was still a young man. And as we pick up the story in the twenty-eight chapter of Genesis he had just left Beer Sheba, on the run because his “whole screwy family had finally imploded.” (Taylor, p 2). Jacob’s father was a classic Hospice candidate, dying a slow death, and hungry to pass his wisdom and blessing on to his sons so that he could die in peace. But, Jacob had colluded with his mother to steal the birthright and blessing from his twin brother, Esau. And as sometimes happens in deeply dysfunctional families, Esau had flown into a rage and Jacob quickly realized that there was no way for him to keep his life and remain with his family of origin. Jacob really was sort of a scoundrel at this point; he hadn’t exactly been honest and upright in the whole inheritance thing. But, he is not the first person, nor will he be the last who falls short of God’s hopes and then is still called by God. It is refreshing, actually, that those of us who have made mistakes have Jacob as a model. For if rascally Jacob can find the divine, than surely we can as well.
Jacob’s advance into the wilderness and away from the wrath of his brother led him into a desolate place, and as it was dark and there was no where else for him to go, he made a bed under the night sky with only a stone for a pillow. And that’s when the dreaming began—the dream of the angels traveling up and down the ladder. But perhaps more than this bizarre image was the power of the words which were spoken, the words of God saying, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Even scoundrels like Jacob are not abandoned by God.
But the story continues. Ushered in to the holy of a dream, Jacob chooses to trust that the vision was from God. It would have been easy to write off those angels traveling up and down that ladder as the remnants of that funky left over beef jerky the night before, or to discount the dream as the wild nighttime ramblings of a busy mind. But Jacob wakes a believer. And more, commemorates his revelation by creating a stone pillar and pouring precious, expensive oil on it and declaring it a holy place.
Barbara Brown Taylor describes it this way, “Even if Jacob could never find the exact place where the feet of that heavenly ladder came to earth—even if he could never find a single angel footprint in the sand—his life was changed for good. Having woken up to God, he would never be able to go back to sleep again.” (Taylor, p. 4).
And so I believe our first Lenten discipline must be to wake up to God, to wake up to the divine which lurks all around us. Too often in our world we have demarked the sacred and the profane. We draw a line in the sand between what can be holy—church, well-behaved children, butterflies, rainbows, teaching the world to sing and what we would see as mundane—a common streetcorner, a piece of trash blowing next to the highway, the woman in front of us in line at Walmart. By creating the designations in our heads, the labels of where we plan to see or not see God, we but on spiritual blinders and we forget to look for evidence of our creator. There are ways that our ideas and definitions of what is sacred keep us from holding God’s creation at arm’s length.
Throughout scripture we see God show up in any number of guises…God is found under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the top of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes and perfect strangers, (Taylor, p 13) and so who are we to define where God would and wouldn’t be now?
When I turned thirty-four, and after Robert and I had been married for three years, the yearning for me to have a baby was palpable. I mistakenly assumed that now that the time was right for me to conceive, that now that our universe was at rights, that it would be a simple process to have a child. I was wrong. I was heartbreakingly wrong. And month after month would pass with mourning, and rage, and a sense of loss I could barely contain. We did the round of doctors visits, and met with fertility folks, and investigated reproductive technology options. And after two years of trying, I was miserable. One day during that time, I wandered into a little store on my lunch hour and found a basket full of stones with the word “hope” etched on them. I practically snarled in derision and anger, the irony of that word an insult to my raging sense of injustice, but I still bought all eight of them. And then I found myself putting them everywhere that I could see them. By my phone at work, on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, next to my bed where they would be the first thing for me to see in the morning. It was the only way that I could hold my prayer and my intention tangibly. The only way that I could wake myself up to the reality that there was a world of sacred hope that was still beckoning me. I could not control the outcome of our infertililty. And I could not make a baby magically appear in our lives. But, I could remind myself to rest in hope, and I could remind myself that God was hoping along with me. By placing those stones in my daily path, I was, unintentionally, creating my own sacred altars. Crying out to a God who promises us that all will be well, and that we are not abandoned, whatever the outcome, whatever the path.
Barbara Brown Taylor talks of her own waking up in this way, “I can set a little altar in the world or in my heart. I can stop what I am doing long enough to see where I am, who I am there with, and how awesome that place is. I can flag one more gate to heaven—one more patch of ordinary earth with ladder marks on it—where the divine traffic is heavy when I notice it and even when I do not. I can see it for once, instead of walking right past it, maybe even setting a stone or saying a blessing before I move on to where I am due next.”
This morning during the final hymn I will be wandering among you passing out smooth stones, smooth stones to create altars of your own. Altars to place somewhere in your home, or to carry with you and rub your fingers across. Altars which are meant to draw your intention to God’s presence. When you see these stones, remember the sacredness of the one who told Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Use these stones as reminders, lest you forget, that God promises the same to us. In short, allow these stones to invite you to wake up!
I want to close this morning with a poem by the Persian poet, Rumi.
The breeze of dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
On this first step in our Lenten journey may we walk with intention across that threshold where we meet our God, and may we know that “the earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” (Taylor, p 15).
Amen.
Works Cited
Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. Harper One Press, 2009.
And so we have begun our Lenten journey together. We will be walking through these longer spring days and allowing the light to lead us. Historically, the early church fathers called people to fast during the Lenten season, giving up one’s portion of meat or fish to give to the poor. It was a way to remember the generosity of Christ’s all-inclusive love and care for those in need, but somehow throughout the centuries the focus was more on the fast and the idea of self-sacrifice. The focus was on deprivation and not on grace. This is a shame, I believe, for I don’t believe God wants any of us to suffer, just as I don’t believe he wanted his own son to suffer on the cross. Instead, I believe that those who first adopted the practice of Lent in about the 4th century had it right. Let’s choose to do something in these six weeks that helps those in need, or let’s choose to do something that calls us into deeper discipleship. Rather than simply refraining from something which we know in our heart of hearts we will simply revert to doing again in six weeks, thankful that the six weeks is over, let’s add a new dimension to this Lenten season and grow into our faith in ways that shape us for the journey throughout the rest of life.
During the next six weeks of Lent I invite you on a journey of finding the sacred in the ordinary, of allowing yourself to be drawn deeper into your faith, of recognizing that our faith is a deep pool of grace that we have the chance to dive into in each moment. During the next six weeks of Lent we will be exploring scriptural examples of holy disciplines, and the thoughts of homiletics professor and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Altars in the World, which is what we will be studying in our Tuesday evening Lenten book group as well. We will explore all sorts of spiritual disciplines—some as simple as walking, connecting with nature, and observing Sabbath and some as messy as being part of community, physical labor, and finding vocation. And it is my fervent prayer that our Lenten season may be one not of depravation, but one of growth and focus. And so it only seems right that we begin this morning with the first discipline, that of waking up to the sacred in our midst.
This morning’s scripture is jam packed with juicy details and strange nocturnal imaginings. The main character of the story, Jacob was still a young man. And as we pick up the story in the twenty-eight chapter of Genesis he had just left Beer Sheba, on the run because his “whole screwy family had finally imploded.” (Taylor, p 2). Jacob’s father was a classic Hospice candidate, dying a slow death, and hungry to pass his wisdom and blessing on to his sons so that he could die in peace. But, Jacob had colluded with his mother to steal the birthright and blessing from his twin brother, Esau. And as sometimes happens in deeply dysfunctional families, Esau had flown into a rage and Jacob quickly realized that there was no way for him to keep his life and remain with his family of origin. Jacob really was sort of a scoundrel at this point; he hadn’t exactly been honest and upright in the whole inheritance thing. But, he is not the first person, nor will he be the last who falls short of God’s hopes and then is still called by God. It is refreshing, actually, that those of us who have made mistakes have Jacob as a model. For if rascally Jacob can find the divine, than surely we can as well.
Jacob’s advance into the wilderness and away from the wrath of his brother led him into a desolate place, and as it was dark and there was no where else for him to go, he made a bed under the night sky with only a stone for a pillow. And that’s when the dreaming began—the dream of the angels traveling up and down the ladder. But perhaps more than this bizarre image was the power of the words which were spoken, the words of God saying, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Even scoundrels like Jacob are not abandoned by God.
But the story continues. Ushered in to the holy of a dream, Jacob chooses to trust that the vision was from God. It would have been easy to write off those angels traveling up and down that ladder as the remnants of that funky left over beef jerky the night before, or to discount the dream as the wild nighttime ramblings of a busy mind. But Jacob wakes a believer. And more, commemorates his revelation by creating a stone pillar and pouring precious, expensive oil on it and declaring it a holy place.
Barbara Brown Taylor describes it this way, “Even if Jacob could never find the exact place where the feet of that heavenly ladder came to earth—even if he could never find a single angel footprint in the sand—his life was changed for good. Having woken up to God, he would never be able to go back to sleep again.” (Taylor, p. 4).
And so I believe our first Lenten discipline must be to wake up to God, to wake up to the divine which lurks all around us. Too often in our world we have demarked the sacred and the profane. We draw a line in the sand between what can be holy—church, well-behaved children, butterflies, rainbows, teaching the world to sing and what we would see as mundane—a common streetcorner, a piece of trash blowing next to the highway, the woman in front of us in line at Walmart. By creating the designations in our heads, the labels of where we plan to see or not see God, we but on spiritual blinders and we forget to look for evidence of our creator. There are ways that our ideas and definitions of what is sacred keep us from holding God’s creation at arm’s length.
Throughout scripture we see God show up in any number of guises…God is found under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the top of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes and perfect strangers, (Taylor, p 13) and so who are we to define where God would and wouldn’t be now?
When I turned thirty-four, and after Robert and I had been married for three years, the yearning for me to have a baby was palpable. I mistakenly assumed that now that the time was right for me to conceive, that now that our universe was at rights, that it would be a simple process to have a child. I was wrong. I was heartbreakingly wrong. And month after month would pass with mourning, and rage, and a sense of loss I could barely contain. We did the round of doctors visits, and met with fertility folks, and investigated reproductive technology options. And after two years of trying, I was miserable. One day during that time, I wandered into a little store on my lunch hour and found a basket full of stones with the word “hope” etched on them. I practically snarled in derision and anger, the irony of that word an insult to my raging sense of injustice, but I still bought all eight of them. And then I found myself putting them everywhere that I could see them. By my phone at work, on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, next to my bed where they would be the first thing for me to see in the morning. It was the only way that I could hold my prayer and my intention tangibly. The only way that I could wake myself up to the reality that there was a world of sacred hope that was still beckoning me. I could not control the outcome of our infertililty. And I could not make a baby magically appear in our lives. But, I could remind myself to rest in hope, and I could remind myself that God was hoping along with me. By placing those stones in my daily path, I was, unintentionally, creating my own sacred altars. Crying out to a God who promises us that all will be well, and that we are not abandoned, whatever the outcome, whatever the path.
Barbara Brown Taylor talks of her own waking up in this way, “I can set a little altar in the world or in my heart. I can stop what I am doing long enough to see where I am, who I am there with, and how awesome that place is. I can flag one more gate to heaven—one more patch of ordinary earth with ladder marks on it—where the divine traffic is heavy when I notice it and even when I do not. I can see it for once, instead of walking right past it, maybe even setting a stone or saying a blessing before I move on to where I am due next.”
This morning during the final hymn I will be wandering among you passing out smooth stones, smooth stones to create altars of your own. Altars to place somewhere in your home, or to carry with you and rub your fingers across. Altars which are meant to draw your intention to God’s presence. When you see these stones, remember the sacredness of the one who told Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Use these stones as reminders, lest you forget, that God promises the same to us. In short, allow these stones to invite you to wake up!
I want to close this morning with a poem by the Persian poet, Rumi.
The breeze of dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
On this first step in our Lenten journey may we walk with intention across that threshold where we meet our God, and may we know that “the earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” (Taylor, p 15).
Amen.
Works Cited
Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. Harper One Press, 2009.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Aglow--Sermon 3/6/11
Aglow
As a church, this morning, we gather with Christians across the world on this Sunday in remembrance of the Transfiguration. On this last Sunday before the Lenten season begins we remember that trek Jesus took which led to a mountain top revelation. While in New Orleans this week, the Mardi Gras festival will come alive with the attaining of beads and wearing of masks and assorted debauchery, and early this week on Shrove Tuesday thousands upon thousands will gorge themselves on pancakes and other assorted sweets as a final hurrah before they get down to the business of fasting, this Sundays meaning often gets left in the dust. While pre-Lenten overconsumption and madcap shenanigans play prominently in our religious psyche for the next three or four days, our secular world will likely neglect the story of the Transfiguration, leaving it in the dust of antiquity. There are times, I think, when our post-modern world seems to think it has outgrown this quaint story of metamorphosis and transformation. This story where Jesus shines with an almost eerie light and communes with the prophets of old. One wonders if we haven’t dismissed this story for it is hard for our 21st century minds to adopt the visions of those four disciples who traveled with Jesus that day. Hard for us to imagine what occurred on that mountain top two thousand and something years ago. We are too rational, too skeptical to wrap our heads around whatever it was that happened on that hill in the middle east. We question whether the sacred could truly burst into the ordinary with such force.
We all know the story. Accounts of it are listed not just in the gospel of Matthew, but in the gospels of Mark and Luke as well, and the perspectives of each writer are all very similar. Obviously it was a story that “made the cut” into the final version of the Bible and so the early church believed in making sure the account was told. And, yes, there probably was a bit of a political agenda to the sharing of the experience as well. The writer of Matthew was adamant about trying to convince a Jewish audience that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. And so what better way for the authority of Jesus to be conveyed than by making sure it was known that he kept company with Moses and Elijah? And then to have God pronounce again the words first declared at the baptism of Jesus, “This is my Son, the beloved.” Well, it is a pretty spectacular moment, filled with all the lights and wonder we have come to expect from a majestic God. And surely the disciples who saw it were stunned too, for they knelt in silent awe and fear. And their only response was to want to build monuments to the moment, to capture it for all time. Too much light, too much of the sacred can leave us awestruck and speechless I believe, or leave us yearning to somehow control the encounter by wanting to freeze it in our memory.
When the holy comes knocking, aren’t we often, like the disciples reluctant to accept it for what it is? Afraid of what it might mean? And how it might change us? And wanting to somehow capture it, rather than allowing it to capture us?
William Willimon, a United Methodist pastor and homiletics professor names the importance of the transfiguration in this way, “For a brief shining moment on the migration to Jerusalem and the cross, God gave the disciples what they needed to believe.” And perhaps that is the truest message of the transfiguration experience, that there are times when we see the divine clearly, and with stunning clarity and there is a sense of the ineffable which gives us reason to continue to believe, even if we cannot explain what happened. There are those transformative moments when the veil between heaven and earth is thin, and the sacred pierces our soul and hurts our eyes, and we have to hold on to those, to protect them and allow their memory to lead us when days are dim.
I may feel a special affinity for this story this week for a reason. As many of you know, I spent three days this past week on retreat. And while I was not on a mountain top in the desert in Israel, I was in my own netherworld in the hills of Michigan. I have stayed at GilChrist retreat center in the woods outside of Three Rivers for more than ten years on various excursions. Each hermitage, a one room cabin, of which there are ten on the land has its own flavor and feel. And because I was late in making reservations this season, I ended up in a new cabin, and for someone who isn’t keen on change this was not a welcome transition. I was housed in a place not nestled in the heart of the valley in woods where I felt safe and protected, but instead atop the highest hill in the area. My little aerie was called “Hawk’s Nest” and there were times when I looked out the window and literally thought I was going to tumble forward, because I was perched so high and could see so far. It was my own personal mountain, right in the heart of Michigan.
Being away on a retreat allows the world to slip away in bits and pieces, and allows for a clarity of vision. I pondered often as I planned for our Lenten season in the silence what it means for the sacred and profane to cross paths, for the mountain-top experience to immerse itself in the daily world. I wondered what the transfiguration would look like to our modern eyes. What it would take for us to see Christ in dazzling form in this time and place.
On my first evening away I was feeling especially raw. Silence, I’ve found, can do that. A few hours in the wilderness has the power to unnerve me and shake loose all the chaos and craziness of my mind. Buddhists who meditate regularly like to call this “monkey mind,” which makes perfect sense to me. A mentor of mine, a wise woman and pastor named Louie, once told me that in the first hours of retreat the only thing one can do is allow one’s mind to go blank…to stare out the window and let yourself soak into the landscape. And so after unpacking, I simply sat in the rocking chair and slipped into the quiet as I watched woodpeckers and robins and bluejays dart between the trees and onto my deck to gingerly feed from the birdfeeder not six feet from my window. But my monkey mind was not drifting into studied meditation on the transfiguration, or into disciplined prayer, but was instead dwelling on this friend, Louie. For Louie died tragically in a car accident two years ago, and it is a grief which still is quite raw for me. And a grief I push away in my day to day life.
One of the things I was remembering about my friend was her love of bold color. She grew up in Africa and she basked in the warm sun, in seeing the batik prints of the Nigerian villagers. Louie’s philosophy was “the brighter the better” and so when I picked out gifts for her I always veered toward the red spectrum. This has morphed into a ritual of sorts since her death of pausing when I see a cardinal, honoring those reds that Louie loved, and stopping short in my path and holding her memory and wisdom near me.
All afternoon on Tuesday I worked in my little hill-top nest. I read. I wrote. And that night after thinking about the message that Jesus gave on that mountain, after he revealed to the disciples the light which radiated from him, I stopped and reflected again on Louie and the gaping hole her death has left in this world of the light that was extinguished for me on the cold December day when she was killed. I put my laptop aside, and got out my journal and began to write about her and the legacy she left, and then, suddenly something caught my eye. And I share this story with all the conviction of a woman who has never really been all that convinced of “ooh-wah” signs from God. Despite the title of “reverend” in front of my name and that certificate claiming I have a masters in divinity I still tend to lead with my head. But this occurance I cannot deny. For there on the deck outside my patio doors alit a bright red cardinal, almost iridescent in the last blues and pinks of the dusk sky. And I held my breath as it turned and cocked its head at me, watching. It was the only cardinal I had seen all day. Indeed, the only cardinal I saw from my window after that.
And for this reason, the story of the transfiguration came alive anew, and I could almost imagine the shimmer of the face of the Christ aglow. For in that time and place on that mountain the holy and the ordinary had somehow found its way into the human world to those disciples. And while we may not understand it, we may not be able to wrap our brains around the details of it, there was power in it. And we can, and do, in our own way have our own little wee tiny mini-transfiguration moments which call us into places of holy awe. There are still times when we stumble into those thin places where the instersection of the sacred and divine meet. And there are still fleeting glimpses and signs in our lives where we know that something surely more than just coincidence and logical linear fact are at work.
And so I have to ask, “Does it matter if Jesus really appeared to those disciples? If there were indeed Moses and Elijah, alive and in the flesh, all actually communing with Jesus? Does it matter if heaven and earth truly and factually met in those moments so that radiant and blinding light was cast around?” Perhaps instead of seeking the science of it the answer lies in what we allow ourselves to believe. Perhaps the answer lies more in how we allow the story to change us. Perhaps the wisdom of the transfiguration is in how we allow ourselves to trust in the blinding light that shone from the face of Christ our teacher. And how we allow that light to reveal itself in our daily life even now.
In her book, “Home by Another Way” Barbara Brown Taylor says, “There is no shortage of epiphanies in this world. Those of us who have not yet glimpsed the brightness of the Lord may still behold his glory, reflected all around us.” And so as we discipline ourselves to journey with Christ again in this Lenten season, I invite you to immerse yourself in the light of the mystery of the one who shone dazzling white for all, and scan the horizon for your own cardinals. For we are awash in the glory of God, may we have the eyes to see the glow.
Amen.
As a church, this morning, we gather with Christians across the world on this Sunday in remembrance of the Transfiguration. On this last Sunday before the Lenten season begins we remember that trek Jesus took which led to a mountain top revelation. While in New Orleans this week, the Mardi Gras festival will come alive with the attaining of beads and wearing of masks and assorted debauchery, and early this week on Shrove Tuesday thousands upon thousands will gorge themselves on pancakes and other assorted sweets as a final hurrah before they get down to the business of fasting, this Sundays meaning often gets left in the dust. While pre-Lenten overconsumption and madcap shenanigans play prominently in our religious psyche for the next three or four days, our secular world will likely neglect the story of the Transfiguration, leaving it in the dust of antiquity. There are times, I think, when our post-modern world seems to think it has outgrown this quaint story of metamorphosis and transformation. This story where Jesus shines with an almost eerie light and communes with the prophets of old. One wonders if we haven’t dismissed this story for it is hard for our 21st century minds to adopt the visions of those four disciples who traveled with Jesus that day. Hard for us to imagine what occurred on that mountain top two thousand and something years ago. We are too rational, too skeptical to wrap our heads around whatever it was that happened on that hill in the middle east. We question whether the sacred could truly burst into the ordinary with such force.
We all know the story. Accounts of it are listed not just in the gospel of Matthew, but in the gospels of Mark and Luke as well, and the perspectives of each writer are all very similar. Obviously it was a story that “made the cut” into the final version of the Bible and so the early church believed in making sure the account was told. And, yes, there probably was a bit of a political agenda to the sharing of the experience as well. The writer of Matthew was adamant about trying to convince a Jewish audience that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. And so what better way for the authority of Jesus to be conveyed than by making sure it was known that he kept company with Moses and Elijah? And then to have God pronounce again the words first declared at the baptism of Jesus, “This is my Son, the beloved.” Well, it is a pretty spectacular moment, filled with all the lights and wonder we have come to expect from a majestic God. And surely the disciples who saw it were stunned too, for they knelt in silent awe and fear. And their only response was to want to build monuments to the moment, to capture it for all time. Too much light, too much of the sacred can leave us awestruck and speechless I believe, or leave us yearning to somehow control the encounter by wanting to freeze it in our memory.
When the holy comes knocking, aren’t we often, like the disciples reluctant to accept it for what it is? Afraid of what it might mean? And how it might change us? And wanting to somehow capture it, rather than allowing it to capture us?
William Willimon, a United Methodist pastor and homiletics professor names the importance of the transfiguration in this way, “For a brief shining moment on the migration to Jerusalem and the cross, God gave the disciples what they needed to believe.” And perhaps that is the truest message of the transfiguration experience, that there are times when we see the divine clearly, and with stunning clarity and there is a sense of the ineffable which gives us reason to continue to believe, even if we cannot explain what happened. There are those transformative moments when the veil between heaven and earth is thin, and the sacred pierces our soul and hurts our eyes, and we have to hold on to those, to protect them and allow their memory to lead us when days are dim.
I may feel a special affinity for this story this week for a reason. As many of you know, I spent three days this past week on retreat. And while I was not on a mountain top in the desert in Israel, I was in my own netherworld in the hills of Michigan. I have stayed at GilChrist retreat center in the woods outside of Three Rivers for more than ten years on various excursions. Each hermitage, a one room cabin, of which there are ten on the land has its own flavor and feel. And because I was late in making reservations this season, I ended up in a new cabin, and for someone who isn’t keen on change this was not a welcome transition. I was housed in a place not nestled in the heart of the valley in woods where I felt safe and protected, but instead atop the highest hill in the area. My little aerie was called “Hawk’s Nest” and there were times when I looked out the window and literally thought I was going to tumble forward, because I was perched so high and could see so far. It was my own personal mountain, right in the heart of Michigan.
Being away on a retreat allows the world to slip away in bits and pieces, and allows for a clarity of vision. I pondered often as I planned for our Lenten season in the silence what it means for the sacred and profane to cross paths, for the mountain-top experience to immerse itself in the daily world. I wondered what the transfiguration would look like to our modern eyes. What it would take for us to see Christ in dazzling form in this time and place.
On my first evening away I was feeling especially raw. Silence, I’ve found, can do that. A few hours in the wilderness has the power to unnerve me and shake loose all the chaos and craziness of my mind. Buddhists who meditate regularly like to call this “monkey mind,” which makes perfect sense to me. A mentor of mine, a wise woman and pastor named Louie, once told me that in the first hours of retreat the only thing one can do is allow one’s mind to go blank…to stare out the window and let yourself soak into the landscape. And so after unpacking, I simply sat in the rocking chair and slipped into the quiet as I watched woodpeckers and robins and bluejays dart between the trees and onto my deck to gingerly feed from the birdfeeder not six feet from my window. But my monkey mind was not drifting into studied meditation on the transfiguration, or into disciplined prayer, but was instead dwelling on this friend, Louie. For Louie died tragically in a car accident two years ago, and it is a grief which still is quite raw for me. And a grief I push away in my day to day life.
One of the things I was remembering about my friend was her love of bold color. She grew up in Africa and she basked in the warm sun, in seeing the batik prints of the Nigerian villagers. Louie’s philosophy was “the brighter the better” and so when I picked out gifts for her I always veered toward the red spectrum. This has morphed into a ritual of sorts since her death of pausing when I see a cardinal, honoring those reds that Louie loved, and stopping short in my path and holding her memory and wisdom near me.
All afternoon on Tuesday I worked in my little hill-top nest. I read. I wrote. And that night after thinking about the message that Jesus gave on that mountain, after he revealed to the disciples the light which radiated from him, I stopped and reflected again on Louie and the gaping hole her death has left in this world of the light that was extinguished for me on the cold December day when she was killed. I put my laptop aside, and got out my journal and began to write about her and the legacy she left, and then, suddenly something caught my eye. And I share this story with all the conviction of a woman who has never really been all that convinced of “ooh-wah” signs from God. Despite the title of “reverend” in front of my name and that certificate claiming I have a masters in divinity I still tend to lead with my head. But this occurance I cannot deny. For there on the deck outside my patio doors alit a bright red cardinal, almost iridescent in the last blues and pinks of the dusk sky. And I held my breath as it turned and cocked its head at me, watching. It was the only cardinal I had seen all day. Indeed, the only cardinal I saw from my window after that.
And for this reason, the story of the transfiguration came alive anew, and I could almost imagine the shimmer of the face of the Christ aglow. For in that time and place on that mountain the holy and the ordinary had somehow found its way into the human world to those disciples. And while we may not understand it, we may not be able to wrap our brains around the details of it, there was power in it. And we can, and do, in our own way have our own little wee tiny mini-transfiguration moments which call us into places of holy awe. There are still times when we stumble into those thin places where the instersection of the sacred and divine meet. And there are still fleeting glimpses and signs in our lives where we know that something surely more than just coincidence and logical linear fact are at work.
And so I have to ask, “Does it matter if Jesus really appeared to those disciples? If there were indeed Moses and Elijah, alive and in the flesh, all actually communing with Jesus? Does it matter if heaven and earth truly and factually met in those moments so that radiant and blinding light was cast around?” Perhaps instead of seeking the science of it the answer lies in what we allow ourselves to believe. Perhaps the answer lies more in how we allow the story to change us. Perhaps the wisdom of the transfiguration is in how we allow ourselves to trust in the blinding light that shone from the face of Christ our teacher. And how we allow that light to reveal itself in our daily life even now.
In her book, “Home by Another Way” Barbara Brown Taylor says, “There is no shortage of epiphanies in this world. Those of us who have not yet glimpsed the brightness of the Lord may still behold his glory, reflected all around us.” And so as we discipline ourselves to journey with Christ again in this Lenten season, I invite you to immerse yourself in the light of the mystery of the one who shone dazzling white for all, and scan the horizon for your own cardinals. For we are awash in the glory of God, may we have the eyes to see the glow.
Amen.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Salt and Light
Salt and Light
In my last year at Bethany Theological Seminary I was part of a musical acting troupe which presented a month’s worth of productions of the Steven Schwartz musical, “Godspell.” A musical which recounts the entire book of Matthew in song. Most of you have probably seen it, perhaps some have even acted in it. The catchiest number, by far, is the rollicking “Light of the World,” and each night I sang the words with enthusiasm. But as I found myself reflecting on the words this week, and humming the song incessantly, unceasingly, it occurred to me that that salt part, the part about being salt didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. Light on a hill, sure. City of God, yep. But salt?
I did a little research and learned that salt was considered a most valuable commodity in ancient times, in fact if you were a worker circa 20 or 30 A.D. you may have been paid in salt, rather than coins. And that little fact has led to the etymological twist of the word “salary.” Which, I would not advise you to share with your employers as the current market value of salt won’t enhance your 401K much…it might be better to stick to the dollar for now…
What Jesus was sharing with his disciples in his continued foray on that mountain is that those who teach about the kingdom of God, those who live into the coming world of hope, those who act as if the reign of God has come down now, will be valued and their lessons will be as common and useful as that commodity which seasons and spices our foods. Indeed, that we must be salt, by seasoning the culture with the vision that Jesus offered.
I want to share with you a story this morning, this morning as we remember our call to be agents of healing, and proclaimers of the kingdom, and actors of the Word. This morning as we think of light and salt.
In a time before time, when the world was young, two brothers shared a field and a mill. Each night they divided evenly the grain they had ground together during the day. Now, as it happened, one of the brothers lived alone; and the other had a wife and a large family. One day, the single brother thought to himself: “It isn’t really fair that we divide the grain evenly. I have only myself to care for, but my brother has children to feed.” So each night, he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s grainery to see that he was never without.
But the married brother said to himself one day: “It isn’t really fair that we divide the grain evenly, because I have children to provide for me in my old age, but my brother has no one. What will he do when he is old?” So every night he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s grainery. As a result, both of them always found their supply of grain secretly replenished in the morning.
Then one night in their evening sneaking the brothers met each other under the moonlight halfway between their houses and suddenly realized what had been happening. They embraced each other in love there in the darkness. The story is, that God witnessed their meeting and proclaimed, “This is a holy place, a place of love, and here it is that my temple shall be built.”
I think just as likely God could have said, “In this holy place my community is being established, or in this holy place my light is being shone, or in this holy place you are being seasoning salt by allowing yourselves to be used sacredly.” The point is that the brother’s sense of generosity and authentic love was ushering in the kingdom, right there, in that space between their homes. They were on the threshold of heaven as they embraced under the moonlight, as they lived into a vision of equality and abundance, each putting the others needs first.
This morning we have been waltzing among our own kingdom thresholds. Our children gathered all those cans of soup, soup that their parents and grandparents and friends purchased, soup that will feed hungry bellies. Pantries will be filled to overflowing which will undoubtedly relieve worried parents who may wonder where the next meal will come. We usher in the kingdom of God in this way as we respond to the needs of the hungry in our community. We act as salt and as light.
And as Christians we must, for The Christian Century magazine last month reported that the total number of people in poverty is 43.6 million—the highest number since the 1950s. But unlike the 1950s, the greatest increase in poverty is among children. One in five children is affected. One in five of our youngest and most vulnerable don’t have enough to eat! One in five. And with all the resources and technology of our world, with our abilities to send satellites into space and to fight wars in countries who struggle with their own issues of destabilization we cannot yet feed that fifth child who stands before us hungry? Think about that. We are the wealthiest nation in the world and we cannot feed our children? How is that possible? And how far must we be from the kingdom that Jesus envisioned if we have those kinds of numbers? He who welcomed children and sustained those who were hungry.
David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, talks about the disparities in our country and the problem of hunger and says that he believes the problem of poverty in the US is uncomfortably close to us, and it overwhelms us, so in frustration and fear we simply turn away. It could be us, we think, there but for the grace of God go I we sigh, and we choose to shield our eyes because it is just too overwhelming.
And so what can our Christian response be? How can we be salt in this world? How do we shine the light? Where is the holy threshold which will bring us back near the kingdom? This morning is a start, these cans of soup, these dollar bills and quarters. These are wonderful first steps, and they are important steps but I think that there is more. More that can happen to draw the community of God near.
David Beckmann argues, in his role as advocate for the hungry, that there is one other thing we can do as committed Christians, and I share it with you at the risk of sounding too political in the pulpit, so I beg your understanding and grace in advance. Regardless of your political affiliation, wherever you stand in your beliefs about how our country should be run or who should run it, there is, I believe an imperative as Christians which we must take seriously. Beckmann reports that when he asks Christians how they help the hungry, most claim to contribute to food charities, as we do faithfully here at Peace. But when he asks them how many have contacted their elected officials to urge support of food stamp programs and school lunch programs, very few people raise their hands. It seems to me that wherever we are politically this is a reasonable and important response, another way to affirm our role as disciples to usher in the kingdom so that that fifth child gets fed, another way to draw the kingdom of heaven down to earth. A place where under the moonlight we meet our brother and know we walk on the sacred ground of God’s grace and love.
This morning there is a table set for us as well. A place where we can come to have the aching sense of discontent, and frustrated feeling of powerless soothed. There is a place for you at the table of our Lord, the one who welcomed all to the table. This is a place where we sit arm in arm with the hungry and know ourselves as no different. This is the sacred table where we break the bread and divide it so that all are fed and filled. Around this table we shake off our shackles of disillusionment and judgment and imagine ourselves as salt, pure and worthy. And as we look around the table, we gaze into the eyes of our brothers and sisters and know that in those eyes we see light, the light of our God.
Amen.
In my last year at Bethany Theological Seminary I was part of a musical acting troupe which presented a month’s worth of productions of the Steven Schwartz musical, “Godspell.” A musical which recounts the entire book of Matthew in song. Most of you have probably seen it, perhaps some have even acted in it. The catchiest number, by far, is the rollicking “Light of the World,” and each night I sang the words with enthusiasm. But as I found myself reflecting on the words this week, and humming the song incessantly, unceasingly, it occurred to me that that salt part, the part about being salt didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. Light on a hill, sure. City of God, yep. But salt?
I did a little research and learned that salt was considered a most valuable commodity in ancient times, in fact if you were a worker circa 20 or 30 A.D. you may have been paid in salt, rather than coins. And that little fact has led to the etymological twist of the word “salary.” Which, I would not advise you to share with your employers as the current market value of salt won’t enhance your 401K much…it might be better to stick to the dollar for now…
What Jesus was sharing with his disciples in his continued foray on that mountain is that those who teach about the kingdom of God, those who live into the coming world of hope, those who act as if the reign of God has come down now, will be valued and their lessons will be as common and useful as that commodity which seasons and spices our foods. Indeed, that we must be salt, by seasoning the culture with the vision that Jesus offered.
I want to share with you a story this morning, this morning as we remember our call to be agents of healing, and proclaimers of the kingdom, and actors of the Word. This morning as we think of light and salt.
In a time before time, when the world was young, two brothers shared a field and a mill. Each night they divided evenly the grain they had ground together during the day. Now, as it happened, one of the brothers lived alone; and the other had a wife and a large family. One day, the single brother thought to himself: “It isn’t really fair that we divide the grain evenly. I have only myself to care for, but my brother has children to feed.” So each night, he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s grainery to see that he was never without.
But the married brother said to himself one day: “It isn’t really fair that we divide the grain evenly, because I have children to provide for me in my old age, but my brother has no one. What will he do when he is old?” So every night he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s grainery. As a result, both of them always found their supply of grain secretly replenished in the morning.
Then one night in their evening sneaking the brothers met each other under the moonlight halfway between their houses and suddenly realized what had been happening. They embraced each other in love there in the darkness. The story is, that God witnessed their meeting and proclaimed, “This is a holy place, a place of love, and here it is that my temple shall be built.”
I think just as likely God could have said, “In this holy place my community is being established, or in this holy place my light is being shone, or in this holy place you are being seasoning salt by allowing yourselves to be used sacredly.” The point is that the brother’s sense of generosity and authentic love was ushering in the kingdom, right there, in that space between their homes. They were on the threshold of heaven as they embraced under the moonlight, as they lived into a vision of equality and abundance, each putting the others needs first.
This morning we have been waltzing among our own kingdom thresholds. Our children gathered all those cans of soup, soup that their parents and grandparents and friends purchased, soup that will feed hungry bellies. Pantries will be filled to overflowing which will undoubtedly relieve worried parents who may wonder where the next meal will come. We usher in the kingdom of God in this way as we respond to the needs of the hungry in our community. We act as salt and as light.
And as Christians we must, for The Christian Century magazine last month reported that the total number of people in poverty is 43.6 million—the highest number since the 1950s. But unlike the 1950s, the greatest increase in poverty is among children. One in five children is affected. One in five of our youngest and most vulnerable don’t have enough to eat! One in five. And with all the resources and technology of our world, with our abilities to send satellites into space and to fight wars in countries who struggle with their own issues of destabilization we cannot yet feed that fifth child who stands before us hungry? Think about that. We are the wealthiest nation in the world and we cannot feed our children? How is that possible? And how far must we be from the kingdom that Jesus envisioned if we have those kinds of numbers? He who welcomed children and sustained those who were hungry.
David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, talks about the disparities in our country and the problem of hunger and says that he believes the problem of poverty in the US is uncomfortably close to us, and it overwhelms us, so in frustration and fear we simply turn away. It could be us, we think, there but for the grace of God go I we sigh, and we choose to shield our eyes because it is just too overwhelming.
And so what can our Christian response be? How can we be salt in this world? How do we shine the light? Where is the holy threshold which will bring us back near the kingdom? This morning is a start, these cans of soup, these dollar bills and quarters. These are wonderful first steps, and they are important steps but I think that there is more. More that can happen to draw the community of God near.
David Beckmann argues, in his role as advocate for the hungry, that there is one other thing we can do as committed Christians, and I share it with you at the risk of sounding too political in the pulpit, so I beg your understanding and grace in advance. Regardless of your political affiliation, wherever you stand in your beliefs about how our country should be run or who should run it, there is, I believe an imperative as Christians which we must take seriously. Beckmann reports that when he asks Christians how they help the hungry, most claim to contribute to food charities, as we do faithfully here at Peace. But when he asks them how many have contacted their elected officials to urge support of food stamp programs and school lunch programs, very few people raise their hands. It seems to me that wherever we are politically this is a reasonable and important response, another way to affirm our role as disciples to usher in the kingdom so that that fifth child gets fed, another way to draw the kingdom of heaven down to earth. A place where under the moonlight we meet our brother and know we walk on the sacred ground of God’s grace and love.
This morning there is a table set for us as well. A place where we can come to have the aching sense of discontent, and frustrated feeling of powerless soothed. There is a place for you at the table of our Lord, the one who welcomed all to the table. This is a place where we sit arm in arm with the hungry and know ourselves as no different. This is the sacred table where we break the bread and divide it so that all are fed and filled. Around this table we shake off our shackles of disillusionment and judgment and imagine ourselves as salt, pure and worthy. And as we look around the table, we gaze into the eyes of our brothers and sisters and know that in those eyes we see light, the light of our God.
Amen.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Admiring Instructions, Fearful Implications
I’m not sure when it was that the signs started popping up in our neighborhood. Perhaps two or three years ago, Grayson was still in a stroller. I began to notice in my evening walks one summer through our neighborhood that there were more and more plastic signs in front of houses which said, “We believe in the ten commandments.” And there right there, like their own little personalized tablets from Mt. Sinai, pressed in blue ink onto plastic yardsigns were the commandments given to Moses from the book of Exodus. I was intrigued, at first, and thought, well, okay, good to know. Nice for you to affirm that as I’m walking in front of your house with my child in a stroller you will not kill me, or covet my stroller (as I am your neighbor and all…). With each evening’s walk more signs seemed to be popping up first here and then there like dandelions in August. I wasn’t sure who was giving them out, a local church? A neighbor? It was theologically intriguing, but puzzling all the same. But what was even more puzzling was that in almost every house I surveyed often right next to these ten commandment proclamations, there stood a few feet away, maybe to the right or the left another sign, the sign which identified the security system that protected the house, or in a few cases even a third sign that reminded people that “no tresspassers” were allowed on the property. And so I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps these yard declarations of faith might be less about proclamation of hope, and more about defensive statements of fear. Less about claiming their desire for unity and more about holding brothers and sisters at arm’s length. Hard to say, really, but something to chew on this morning. Especially on this morning when we study what has been understood by theologians to be Matthew’s attempt to connect Jesus to Moses. The sermon on the mount being claimed as the new ten commandments. Not to replace, but to fulfill.
This week, I had a brilliant idea. I thought, as I pondered this Moses-Jesus connection what would it mean for me to name my faith. And, also start a trend in the yard sign movement in our Crown Colony neighborhood. What if I called 1800-yard-signs and ordered my statement of faith. What would I say? What if I posted the Beatitudes on a big sign in my yard? But then I quickly realized that if I wanted to be true to the intent I’d have to really act on it, so there’d have to be another sign, maybe a sign welcoming people into my home, where the door stood open to embrace anyone who came. And the ability to offer to offer shelter to anyone who asked, and the grace to listen to others without reservation or hesitation, and the willingness to be persecuted for what I believed. Could I ever be that brave? Would it be naïve? I think, if nothing else, it could be a theological science test of sorts. For what would it mean for our nation, for our world, to be saturated in proclamations of the coming community of God rather than restricted by a list of “thou shalt nots?”
As a little aside, I actually did spend a little time googling this week, in my nerdy quest to follow this theological yard sign hypothesis and found that my brilliant beatitudes yard sign idea had alas, already been patented, patented by those same people who make the ten commandments signs, but whereas the ten commandments sign google search yields 56,800 options to adorn your home, the beatitudes only yield 19,800. So what, a ration of about, roughly, five to one? I still don’t entirely understand why the beatitudes are given such short shrift in the yard art business? Perhaps because if we really followed them it might be too revolutionary.
Many of us know the beatitudes, if Jeopardy named it as a category, we could probably clear the board, right? [“Alex, I’ll take beatitudes for $800, please...who are the pure in spirit?”] Some of us have them cross-stitched on pillows, or calligraphied in frames in our homes. They are that beautiful, and that poignant, and that meaningful. But I confess that sometimes even while I have memorized them and can recite them by rote, that perhaps I forget their radical message. And if I do that, I wonder if perhaps you do too.
The Sermon on the Mount occurs in the fifth chapter of the book of Matthew. It happens immediately after the calling of just four of the disciples, and so those who climbed up that mountain to hear Jesus could have been anyone, and if we consider the scriptures alive and moving work than it could be any of us today. The sermon is one of Jesus’s first teachings, an inauguration of sorts, and for his first homily, I’d say he picked a doozy. Jesus was speaking in a way familiar to his listeners, those who would have been steeped in the ways of Jewish wisdom traditions. Jesus spoke here as the devout priests and leaders who had gone before him did. A beatitude, or a makarism as it is called in the Greek is an interesting way to use language which was very familiar to those who lived two thousand year ago. And there are ways in which it has been confused in translation for readers of our time. Beatitudes were spoken not as commandments or as entrance requirements but as reminders and blessings for a world in transition. People didn’t have to be persecuted to receive a blessing, people didn’t have to mourn to be welcomed in the kingdom of heaven. These were not rules for being disciples. To understand fully what they were we must remember that the audience to whom Jesus spoke were living in a land occupied by Roman oppressors. Those in power were elite imperialists who had no use for the common masses. The common people who followed Jesus were hungry for a new way to live, and for a realm of justice, and the craved redemption from oppression. The beatitudes offered them words of comfort and hope. The beatitudes said, “I know, my beloved community, I know what you face, and I promise it won’t always be this way. I offer you a new vision of how our world can be if God is at the heart.”
We need to remember as we read through these axioms that the translation of the word “blessed” or “happy”, do not hold as their opposite the word “unhappy.” Instead, the opposite of “blessed” would be “cursed.” And so just as surely as Jesus was offering a word of hope to those downtrodden and hungry, he also, in a not too subtle way was making a political statement about how different the nature of God’s kingdom is. In God’s reign the hungry will be fed, the last will be first, the poor will be wealthy, those picked last for the dodgeball team will be the captains. It is radically different from the realm in which those with power rule with an iron hand and where those with might sneer at those whose voices cry out for justice.
The first thing it seems Jesus wants desperately to offer in these twelve short verses is spiritual bread for the journey, and assurance that even in the most difficult times there is hope. Jesus must have looked out over his meager band of followers and seen those who were mourning, or poor in spirit, or meek, or yearning for something more and known that they needed a reminder of what God wanted for them. But just as surely as Jesus offered hope, his words also rang with revolutionary zeal. What he said was this: we must make the kingdom of heaven here on earth, even if we are reviled and persecuted, even if we are seen as daydreamers and unrealistic fools. Even if we put beatitudes signs in our yards and open our hearts and minds to all without reservation or hesitation.
In 1964 the artist Sister Mary Corita was asked to submit a piece of art to the New York World’s fair and the piece she created was filled with vibrant color and said, “On a mountain, Christ said these words, the Beatitudes. Ever since then men [sic] have said these words to each other each time with different gestures. Said yes, this is how it should be. This is the way to be happy.” And then she used the bold colors of yellow, and orange, and cobalt, and magenta and added the words of peacemakers and prophets throughout time: Anne Frank and Dag Hammarskjold, Albert Einstein and John F. Kennedy to name a few.
And so what brave gesture will we use to make the world more congruent with the vision Jesus offered on that mountain? How brave can we afford to be and how revolutionary? Perhaps, simply, we start in our own lives.
Brendan Freeman, a Trappist monk from Iowa, says this, “[The Beatitudes] draw our hearts out of themselves into a new way of understanding our lives…they are deliberately incomplete. They await the inclusion of our lives. Each person fills in the blank spaces with the details of his or her own life situation.”
Perhaps, we walk this journey step by step by first rediscovering the beatitudes in a new way, having them spoken with different voices and in different translations. Hearing them as a rallying call to be more true in our discipleship. Listening for the nuances of the language, and being ready to live out the truth of their meaning.
This week I read Eugene Peterson’s version of the beatitudes in The Message, a contemporary version of the Bible. And while I had read bits of The Message before, I’m not sure I had ever read the fifth chapter of Matthew before. And I was startled into newness as the beatitudes issued forth with a new translation. Let me share them with you now:
You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought. You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat. You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for. You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete and fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family. You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom. Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak likes about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Gospel Medicine, says this, “Much of the power of the Beatitudes depends on where you are sitting when you hear them. They sound different from on top than they do underneath. They sound different up front than they do in back. Upon front with the religiously satisfied and self-assured, they sound pretty confrontational…but way in the back, with the victims, the dreamers, the pushovers and the fools, the Beatitudes sound completely different…They are the same words in every place, of course. It is just the ears that change.”
This morning may you embrace the Beatitudes anew as you embark on the ministry that Christ calls you to do. May you hear with new ears the promises of the coming reign of God. And let there be no mistake, we are the ones who are called to make that world a reality.
Amen.
This week, I had a brilliant idea. I thought, as I pondered this Moses-Jesus connection what would it mean for me to name my faith. And, also start a trend in the yard sign movement in our Crown Colony neighborhood. What if I called 1800-yard-signs and ordered my statement of faith. What would I say? What if I posted the Beatitudes on a big sign in my yard? But then I quickly realized that if I wanted to be true to the intent I’d have to really act on it, so there’d have to be another sign, maybe a sign welcoming people into my home, where the door stood open to embrace anyone who came. And the ability to offer to offer shelter to anyone who asked, and the grace to listen to others without reservation or hesitation, and the willingness to be persecuted for what I believed. Could I ever be that brave? Would it be naïve? I think, if nothing else, it could be a theological science test of sorts. For what would it mean for our nation, for our world, to be saturated in proclamations of the coming community of God rather than restricted by a list of “thou shalt nots?”
As a little aside, I actually did spend a little time googling this week, in my nerdy quest to follow this theological yard sign hypothesis and found that my brilliant beatitudes yard sign idea had alas, already been patented, patented by those same people who make the ten commandments signs, but whereas the ten commandments sign google search yields 56,800 options to adorn your home, the beatitudes only yield 19,800. So what, a ration of about, roughly, five to one? I still don’t entirely understand why the beatitudes are given such short shrift in the yard art business? Perhaps because if we really followed them it might be too revolutionary.
Many of us know the beatitudes, if Jeopardy named it as a category, we could probably clear the board, right? [“Alex, I’ll take beatitudes for $800, please...who are the pure in spirit?”] Some of us have them cross-stitched on pillows, or calligraphied in frames in our homes. They are that beautiful, and that poignant, and that meaningful. But I confess that sometimes even while I have memorized them and can recite them by rote, that perhaps I forget their radical message. And if I do that, I wonder if perhaps you do too.
The Sermon on the Mount occurs in the fifth chapter of the book of Matthew. It happens immediately after the calling of just four of the disciples, and so those who climbed up that mountain to hear Jesus could have been anyone, and if we consider the scriptures alive and moving work than it could be any of us today. The sermon is one of Jesus’s first teachings, an inauguration of sorts, and for his first homily, I’d say he picked a doozy. Jesus was speaking in a way familiar to his listeners, those who would have been steeped in the ways of Jewish wisdom traditions. Jesus spoke here as the devout priests and leaders who had gone before him did. A beatitude, or a makarism as it is called in the Greek is an interesting way to use language which was very familiar to those who lived two thousand year ago. And there are ways in which it has been confused in translation for readers of our time. Beatitudes were spoken not as commandments or as entrance requirements but as reminders and blessings for a world in transition. People didn’t have to be persecuted to receive a blessing, people didn’t have to mourn to be welcomed in the kingdom of heaven. These were not rules for being disciples. To understand fully what they were we must remember that the audience to whom Jesus spoke were living in a land occupied by Roman oppressors. Those in power were elite imperialists who had no use for the common masses. The common people who followed Jesus were hungry for a new way to live, and for a realm of justice, and the craved redemption from oppression. The beatitudes offered them words of comfort and hope. The beatitudes said, “I know, my beloved community, I know what you face, and I promise it won’t always be this way. I offer you a new vision of how our world can be if God is at the heart.”
We need to remember as we read through these axioms that the translation of the word “blessed” or “happy”, do not hold as their opposite the word “unhappy.” Instead, the opposite of “blessed” would be “cursed.” And so just as surely as Jesus was offering a word of hope to those downtrodden and hungry, he also, in a not too subtle way was making a political statement about how different the nature of God’s kingdom is. In God’s reign the hungry will be fed, the last will be first, the poor will be wealthy, those picked last for the dodgeball team will be the captains. It is radically different from the realm in which those with power rule with an iron hand and where those with might sneer at those whose voices cry out for justice.
The first thing it seems Jesus wants desperately to offer in these twelve short verses is spiritual bread for the journey, and assurance that even in the most difficult times there is hope. Jesus must have looked out over his meager band of followers and seen those who were mourning, or poor in spirit, or meek, or yearning for something more and known that they needed a reminder of what God wanted for them. But just as surely as Jesus offered hope, his words also rang with revolutionary zeal. What he said was this: we must make the kingdom of heaven here on earth, even if we are reviled and persecuted, even if we are seen as daydreamers and unrealistic fools. Even if we put beatitudes signs in our yards and open our hearts and minds to all without reservation or hesitation.
In 1964 the artist Sister Mary Corita was asked to submit a piece of art to the New York World’s fair and the piece she created was filled with vibrant color and said, “On a mountain, Christ said these words, the Beatitudes. Ever since then men [sic] have said these words to each other each time with different gestures. Said yes, this is how it should be. This is the way to be happy.” And then she used the bold colors of yellow, and orange, and cobalt, and magenta and added the words of peacemakers and prophets throughout time: Anne Frank and Dag Hammarskjold, Albert Einstein and John F. Kennedy to name a few.
And so what brave gesture will we use to make the world more congruent with the vision Jesus offered on that mountain? How brave can we afford to be and how revolutionary? Perhaps, simply, we start in our own lives.
Brendan Freeman, a Trappist monk from Iowa, says this, “[The Beatitudes] draw our hearts out of themselves into a new way of understanding our lives…they are deliberately incomplete. They await the inclusion of our lives. Each person fills in the blank spaces with the details of his or her own life situation.”
Perhaps, we walk this journey step by step by first rediscovering the beatitudes in a new way, having them spoken with different voices and in different translations. Hearing them as a rallying call to be more true in our discipleship. Listening for the nuances of the language, and being ready to live out the truth of their meaning.
This week I read Eugene Peterson’s version of the beatitudes in The Message, a contemporary version of the Bible. And while I had read bits of The Message before, I’m not sure I had ever read the fifth chapter of Matthew before. And I was startled into newness as the beatitudes issued forth with a new translation. Let me share them with you now:
You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought. You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat. You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for. You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete and fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family. You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom. Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak likes about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Gospel Medicine, says this, “Much of the power of the Beatitudes depends on where you are sitting when you hear them. They sound different from on top than they do underneath. They sound different up front than they do in back. Upon front with the religiously satisfied and self-assured, they sound pretty confrontational…but way in the back, with the victims, the dreamers, the pushovers and the fools, the Beatitudes sound completely different…They are the same words in every place, of course. It is just the ears that change.”
This morning may you embrace the Beatitudes anew as you embark on the ministry that Christ calls you to do. May you hear with new ears the promises of the coming reign of God. And let there be no mistake, we are the ones who are called to make that world a reality.
Amen.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Breaking Light--Sermon 1/23/11
I’m sure I was introduced to the poetry of Emily Dickinson earlier than my junior year of high school, but it was in that year, that Ms. Longtine piqued my interest by reciting Dickinson’s poems with such ardor and passion that despite my fellow 11th grade friends’ snickers and whispers, I was transported. She has remained one of my favorite poets. Her writing is as fragile and as sensitive as she was. She who never worked a regular job her entire life. She who never married and lived as a recluse in many ways. She who wrote thousands of poems alone in the bedroom of her father’s house showing them to hardly anyone until they were discovered on scraps of paper after her death. Her whole life has been shrouded in secrecy, and she never referred to anyone by name in her poems. But her biographers have of late pieced together the story of a crucial even in her life.
It is believed that when she was 28, when her father was a congressman in Washington, that she stopped on the way from the capital to her home in Massachusetts to visit family friends in Philadelphia. There, apparently, she met and fell in love with a man who was to dominate her thoughts for many years. But this love story is a tragic one. For he was unattainable. He was married, and he had a family. And therefore, both being noble during those Victorian times, they prohibited themselves from being together.
Dickinson returned home, having been awakened to love, but aware that this love could never be hers and penned one of her first poems, scratching her grief and depression into these words:
Will there really be a ‘morning’?
Is there such a thing as ‘day’?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
Oh some scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called ‘morning’ lies!
Her question was not fanciful. It was real. “Will there really be a morning?” Will there come a time when light will break upon the darkness of my soul? Will I ever see the first rays of the sun?
And so in this season of Epiphany as we ponder the light of the Christ, as we ponder the meaning of light in a season of cold and darkness we do well to consider what we can learn, and where we can be led by God into light.
Have there been times in your own lives when you have asked “Will there be a morning?” Have you ever waited through the dark hours of a long night wondering if you could make it until dawn? Have you ever known a night that lasted a week, or a month, or a year? A time when hope was hollow and you had to ask whether you could even go on?
When I ask myself this question I think of a particular night in the fall of 2007, a night when I was awakened from my sleep with the hacking seal-like coughs of a six-month-old baby who lay feverish and gasping. It was my first experience of croup with a child and in that dark night I remember rushing with a crying child from steam-filled bathroom to bundling him in blankets while we stood in the cold late October air. I remember feeling so alone, and so helpless, and the darkness felt especially close. And as I walked up and down the front walk, trying to coax Grayson into taking big gulps of that night air I wanted nothing more than to see the light. For I trusted that with light things would seem clearer, life would seem more orderly. If I could simply wait for the light to break.
The scripture from the book of Matthew this morning tells a story of light breaking, and of hope coming. The story opens in a time of darkness. Jesus had just come out of his wilderness sojourn where he was tempted and alone. And word had just been received that John, the one who inspired Jesus and baptized Jesus and was kin to Jesus had been arrested. And Jesus made his way from Nazareth to the lakeside village of Capernaum. Times were hard then. The people were oppressed. Taxes had gone higher and higher, not out of necessity but to punish the people. There was a foreign government that ruled the people with an iron fist and used espionage and threats and wrongful imprisonments to harass and punish them. And a revival leader like John the Baptist had been imprisoned, never to be released again. The people were scared. It was a time of darkness.
And it was there, into that landscape, and that political situation that Jesus burst onto the scene. It was then that Jesus, he who had never spoken a word publicly, never yet soothed a broken body with his healing touch, never told a single parable about his elusive kingdom, began his ministry. In a dusty town nestled on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum. It wasn’t a big city, wasn’t a place of culture, not somewhere well-known. Just some buildings overlooking a lake, really. A place with a reputation for being un-religious, actually. Matthew tells us that Jesus went there because it was what the Old Testament predicted. Listen: People who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And for those who sat in shadows, light had dawned. And so it was, in that place of darkness light began to shine. With no fanfare, no showmanship, no triumph. In this place Jesus began his public ministry and began to invite others to join him. And these people who he asked, they weren’t the “Who’s Who” of Capernaum, they weren’t big names, they weren’t high profile kind of guys. Instead they were laborers, common folk, fishermen. And so it was into this world, into this out-of-the-way place with these everyday people that the first rays of light first shone. And that shimmer would grow, and spread, brightness that arose from a world of darkness. Morning did come. Light did break.
I have recently finished the book Home by the British historian Bill Bryson, some of you may know of his writings. He is a social historian who makes the past come alive. And in his latest book he examines the origins of domestic life, and how the common things that we take for granted came to be. As Bryson spoke of the discovery of electricity, he told a story about life in London as the war began. The Germans would bomb the city at night, and the only protection that the British had was to blacken their windows and turn out all streetlights so there were virtually no targets for the Germans to attack. The people lived in darkness and Bryson notes that more people died in auto accidents, or by mishaps that happened because of the darkness than those who were killed by the bombings themselves. The explosions would rock the city but because of the fires that the bombings could start, fires which could trap people in basements the call when bombing started was “to the roofs!” There the people of London would place themselves, one or two to a roof, protected only by tin helmets, searching for any fires that might spring up, and then stamping them out as quickly as possible, all in darkness. Winston Churchill told the story once of looking out across London and seeing all those figures, perched on the top of the buildings, anxious and tired as the first light of dawn would break over the city. And how, more often than not, as the rays of sun would pierce the horizon audible cheers would ring from roof to roof. For morning had come, and they had made it. Light again broke the darkness.
On this chilly Sunday, on this frigid morning, we again welcome the unquenchable light that breaks upon us even in the dark nights of our own souls. The one who has been called the light of all people again walks among the common folk, and invites us to follow him, to use what gifts we have in this broken world to bring more light to the darkness. Jesus invites us, just as he invited the first disciples to cast aside our nets and walk into the first pink and orange rays of the dawn. For a new day awaits. And there is work to be done. Morning has come. And Jesus calls.
Amen.
It is believed that when she was 28, when her father was a congressman in Washington, that she stopped on the way from the capital to her home in Massachusetts to visit family friends in Philadelphia. There, apparently, she met and fell in love with a man who was to dominate her thoughts for many years. But this love story is a tragic one. For he was unattainable. He was married, and he had a family. And therefore, both being noble during those Victorian times, they prohibited themselves from being together.
Dickinson returned home, having been awakened to love, but aware that this love could never be hers and penned one of her first poems, scratching her grief and depression into these words:
Will there really be a ‘morning’?
Is there such a thing as ‘day’?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
Oh some scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called ‘morning’ lies!
Her question was not fanciful. It was real. “Will there really be a morning?” Will there come a time when light will break upon the darkness of my soul? Will I ever see the first rays of the sun?
And so in this season of Epiphany as we ponder the light of the Christ, as we ponder the meaning of light in a season of cold and darkness we do well to consider what we can learn, and where we can be led by God into light.
Have there been times in your own lives when you have asked “Will there be a morning?” Have you ever waited through the dark hours of a long night wondering if you could make it until dawn? Have you ever known a night that lasted a week, or a month, or a year? A time when hope was hollow and you had to ask whether you could even go on?
When I ask myself this question I think of a particular night in the fall of 2007, a night when I was awakened from my sleep with the hacking seal-like coughs of a six-month-old baby who lay feverish and gasping. It was my first experience of croup with a child and in that dark night I remember rushing with a crying child from steam-filled bathroom to bundling him in blankets while we stood in the cold late October air. I remember feeling so alone, and so helpless, and the darkness felt especially close. And as I walked up and down the front walk, trying to coax Grayson into taking big gulps of that night air I wanted nothing more than to see the light. For I trusted that with light things would seem clearer, life would seem more orderly. If I could simply wait for the light to break.
The scripture from the book of Matthew this morning tells a story of light breaking, and of hope coming. The story opens in a time of darkness. Jesus had just come out of his wilderness sojourn where he was tempted and alone. And word had just been received that John, the one who inspired Jesus and baptized Jesus and was kin to Jesus had been arrested. And Jesus made his way from Nazareth to the lakeside village of Capernaum. Times were hard then. The people were oppressed. Taxes had gone higher and higher, not out of necessity but to punish the people. There was a foreign government that ruled the people with an iron fist and used espionage and threats and wrongful imprisonments to harass and punish them. And a revival leader like John the Baptist had been imprisoned, never to be released again. The people were scared. It was a time of darkness.
And it was there, into that landscape, and that political situation that Jesus burst onto the scene. It was then that Jesus, he who had never spoken a word publicly, never yet soothed a broken body with his healing touch, never told a single parable about his elusive kingdom, began his ministry. In a dusty town nestled on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum. It wasn’t a big city, wasn’t a place of culture, not somewhere well-known. Just some buildings overlooking a lake, really. A place with a reputation for being un-religious, actually. Matthew tells us that Jesus went there because it was what the Old Testament predicted. Listen: People who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And for those who sat in shadows, light had dawned. And so it was, in that place of darkness light began to shine. With no fanfare, no showmanship, no triumph. In this place Jesus began his public ministry and began to invite others to join him. And these people who he asked, they weren’t the “Who’s Who” of Capernaum, they weren’t big names, they weren’t high profile kind of guys. Instead they were laborers, common folk, fishermen. And so it was into this world, into this out-of-the-way place with these everyday people that the first rays of light first shone. And that shimmer would grow, and spread, brightness that arose from a world of darkness. Morning did come. Light did break.
I have recently finished the book Home by the British historian Bill Bryson, some of you may know of his writings. He is a social historian who makes the past come alive. And in his latest book he examines the origins of domestic life, and how the common things that we take for granted came to be. As Bryson spoke of the discovery of electricity, he told a story about life in London as the war began. The Germans would bomb the city at night, and the only protection that the British had was to blacken their windows and turn out all streetlights so there were virtually no targets for the Germans to attack. The people lived in darkness and Bryson notes that more people died in auto accidents, or by mishaps that happened because of the darkness than those who were killed by the bombings themselves. The explosions would rock the city but because of the fires that the bombings could start, fires which could trap people in basements the call when bombing started was “to the roofs!” There the people of London would place themselves, one or two to a roof, protected only by tin helmets, searching for any fires that might spring up, and then stamping them out as quickly as possible, all in darkness. Winston Churchill told the story once of looking out across London and seeing all those figures, perched on the top of the buildings, anxious and tired as the first light of dawn would break over the city. And how, more often than not, as the rays of sun would pierce the horizon audible cheers would ring from roof to roof. For morning had come, and they had made it. Light again broke the darkness.
On this chilly Sunday, on this frigid morning, we again welcome the unquenchable light that breaks upon us even in the dark nights of our own souls. The one who has been called the light of all people again walks among the common folk, and invites us to follow him, to use what gifts we have in this broken world to bring more light to the darkness. Jesus invites us, just as he invited the first disciples to cast aside our nets and walk into the first pink and orange rays of the dawn. For a new day awaits. And there is work to be done. Morning has come. And Jesus calls.
Amen.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The One Who Claimed--Sermon 12/19/10
The One Who Claimed: A Movement in Three Parts
As we near the end of our Advent journey, as the anticipation builds, and the prospect of the holy child’s birth beckons, we linger one more Sunday with the people who live the Advent story. And while last week we looked at Matthew’s account of the impending birth of Jesus through Mary’s eyes, this week we look at them through the eyes of Joseph.
We aren’t accustomed to thinking about Joseph as much, are we? The early church especially placed so much focus on Mary, given that she was the chosen vessel to carry God’s child. And Joseph, poor Joseph, he got a little left behind in all the fuss. Instead, he was the one to accompany, he was the one to take the back seat, he was the one meant to lead the donkey. In my mind’s eye we’ve sometimes relegated him to the role of body guard, surrogate, groomsman. As I was sharing about this week’s sermon topic, and talking about the role of Joseph with a group of you on Tuesday, a true confession emerged from a beloved member of this congregation. And the revelation that she shared was this: in the late 1960s she found a crèche on sale at Murphys downtown. And that crèche was a beautiful thing, and it’s price was dramatically slashed, and this self-proclaimed frugal person, who didn’t want to miss a bargain, and whose name will not be mentioned but who might be singing in the choir, and who might have a name that begins with a “P” and rhyme with “Mat”, decided to take that crèche home and make it her very own. There was only one little tiny issue with the crèche, only one small hang-up…turns out it was on sale at such a deep discount because there was no, well, no Joseph. No male role model in that holy family. And so each year the figurines come out at the Sterling home on Homestead Road, Mary, and the wise men, and the angel, the sheep with the broken ear and that sweet little baby Jesus in the manger and each year lest Mary look like a single mother, a shepherd stands in as understudy for Joseph, I mean they both have that same burly Joseph-like working class quality, right?
Of course I’m teasing about Pat’s crèche, but isn’t it true that the Christian church has often overlooked poor Joseph? In the Catholic Church especially Mary has been elevated, dressed in blue, a look of serene piety on her face as she holds that tiny Christ child. And Joseph, well, if he’s lucky he’s relegated to a corner of a cathedral with a modest icon nearby. In fact it wasn’t until 1870 that Pope Pius IX declared him a Patron of the Universal Church. Poor Joseph, he gets no respect!
So let’s delve into the text, shall we? And I want to warn you ahead of time that the text may sound a little familiar to you, for it is the exact same text as last week [rest assured, I did that on purpose]. But this week, I’d like to read the scripture throughout the sermon for Joseph’s journey is more a movement in three parts, and there are places where we need to pause and allow the depth of his character to sink into our own souls. This morning I’ll be reading to you from Eugene Peterson’s contemporary translation of the Bible, The Message.
The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they came to the marriage bed, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.
The writer of the book of Matthew doesn’t mince words as he tells the story of the birth of Jesus, does he? While Luke’s gospel which we focused on at the beginning of December as we fleshed out the stories of Elizabeth and Mary waxes poetic with all sorts of juicy details and unfolds the story of Mary’s impending pregnancy with astounding poetic description (remember the angel visitation to inform the young Mary? And then that harrowing journey she took through the hills to see Elizabeth for wisdom? And the leaping of the baby in the womb, and then Mary’s eloquent operatic aria of the Magnificat?) Matthew is more a “just the facts, Ma’am” kind of writer. Matthew gives us the who’s and how’s, straight up, unvarnished and raw. There are these two people. Mary and Joseph. And they were engaged (which in Jewish tradition was a binding legal agreement already, to be engaged carried with it all the responsibilities and commitments to fidelity that marriage does in our culture). And lo and behold, Joseph learns an uncomfortable and startling truth, this woman that he loves, this woman who has committed himself to him, is pregnant with another’s child.
And the very first thing we learn of Joseph, the first claim that we can make of him is that he is sensitive and discreet. In the face of what must have felt like betrayal and perhaps even deceit, he does not condemn Mary. He does not lash out at her or try to tarnish her reputation. Instead, he chooses to do the honorable thing, and privately release her from her vows of betrothal. He does not do what the law would allow or perhaps even encourage him to do, for the patriarchal legal system of the time would call for the stoning of any woman found guilty of adultery, and certainly Mary’s pregnancy would have been proof of her infidelity. But instead he offers her a tender mercy, and a quiet grace, and even as he must have been nursing his own broken heart, and asking his own anguished “why?” He chooses to release her quietly from her bonds to him. There will be no disgrace. There will be no condemnation. There will be no judgment. Joseph’s choice will be a merciful one. And he will claim no call for retribution. Instead his claim will be that he will be a man who offers grace.
While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream. God’s angel spoke in the dream: “Joseph, son of David, don’t hesitate to get married. Mary’s pregnancy is Spirit-conceived. God’s Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus—‘God saves’—because he will save his people from their sins.” This would bring the prophet’s embryonic sermon to full term: Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son, They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God with us”). Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary. But he did not consummate the marriage until she had the baby.
And so we move into the second movement of our story.
Many of you already know that for the past three years or so I have struggled with insomnia. While my dream life used to be rich and rewarding, now I am either restlessly tossing and turning or completely zombified by the Ambien I allow myself to take every third night or so. My husband, however, has a glamorous and elaborate fairy tale world of dreams that he allows me to visit as he regales me with the stories of where his dreams took him. When he’s not flying through the air, one of his common dream-time reveries, he is enjoying the company of famous celebrities. A few months back on a Saturday morning we lay in bed, Grayson climbing over us, and Robert said, “You know, last night Barbara Bush and I were singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ in the hallway of the college administration building. It was really quite touching.”
I miss my regular sleep habits, but the truth is, I miss the dreaming. For I believe our souls need to dream. I believe that it is one of the few legitimate ways that we allow God to get our attention sometimes. Where else but in this liminal place, the place of moonlight and hush, are our hearts soft enough to allow God to drop into them? Where else do we free ourselves to trust that God is really afoot and that answers may come?
While Joseph isn’t granted a burning bush moment, or a face-to-face angel encounter as Mary had, he still gets a subtle word from God. The angel appears to him and lets him in on the secret that Mary already knew. And Joseph asks no questions, doesn’t utter a word, but implicitly trusts God and immediately acts. How many of us would be tempted to brush off those night-time musings and assume it was just our imagination, or just too much strange food we’d eaten. God comes to Joseph and Joseph stakes his claim on God’s word. And claims his destiny as the earthly father of this newborn. Joseph will chose to claim trust.
And finally the third movement. And it is a simple and profound one. One sentence.
He named the baby Jesus.
It was not Mary who named the child. It was Joseph. In ancient Israelite culture, to name a child was to offer a blessing. Naming was a powerful symbolic gesture in which the hopes and dreams of the child were placed upon the young. And when you named someone you claimed them as well. It was not Mary who claimed the child as her own, but Joseph. And by so doing, Jesus was adopted into the whole Davidic lineage which came through Joseph’s blood.
I am remembering this morning a Sunday when I stood in the front of the congregation of the Manchester Church of the Brethren on a sunny fall morning and held in my arms a then nine-month-old Elliott Beecher Tae-Soo Shaum. Eli was the son of one of my closest friends and he was a child who was long in coming to his family. His mother, Lynn, had been through years of fertility treatments and two surgeries and when interventions were not successful she and her husband, Steve, had begun the lengthy process of adopting a child from Korea. Perhaps some of you have walked your own journeys through adoption, or been with those who have wanted so desperately to have a child to call their own. And as I held that child in my arms on that morning, speaking his name and offering him a blessing, my eyes also rested on his parents, who wept their own silent tears. And years later when Robert and I also struggled with infertility it was Eli’s mother who said to me fiercely, “Eli is my son. He is my child. And what you need to remember, Christen, is that while my son did not grow in my body, he was conceived by my dream. And that makes him no less my own.”
Joseph’s message is the message of Eli’s mother’s as well. And the message is this: it is our task in this world to expand our definition of family. It is our job to extend our arms wider to invite others into our hearts. It is our mandate as children of the One God to cradle all babies as our own babies, nurturing them and comforting them. It is our commandment as children of the One God to nurture all youth as our own youth and raise the next generation with love. It is our commandment as children of the One God to welcome all people as our own sisters and brothers and encircle those in need. It is our commandment as children of the One God to care for all of our elderly and wise ones as our own parents and grandparents and protect their dignity and honor their history. It is our responsibility as children of the One God, our responsibility and our privilege.
And we do this not in some namby-pamby, Coca-Cola “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” Hallmark photo op moment, but through consciously making decisions which we believe align with God’s dreams for humanity. Through our charitable giving, and through our lobbying for affordable health care for all. Through our demand for an end to poverty and through setting our sights on declaring war on hunger, which is a much more formidable enemy right now than terrorism.
This morning we follow in the footsteps of our brother Joseph, who acted as father to the Christ. And we walk this road of discipleship with intention. We walk this road knowing that it will not be easy. We walk this road with deliberation. We walk this road with obedience. And we walk together, placing our trust in God. And allowing ourselves to be divine instruments who claim the ways of peace.
May it be so.
Amen.
As we near the end of our Advent journey, as the anticipation builds, and the prospect of the holy child’s birth beckons, we linger one more Sunday with the people who live the Advent story. And while last week we looked at Matthew’s account of the impending birth of Jesus through Mary’s eyes, this week we look at them through the eyes of Joseph.
We aren’t accustomed to thinking about Joseph as much, are we? The early church especially placed so much focus on Mary, given that she was the chosen vessel to carry God’s child. And Joseph, poor Joseph, he got a little left behind in all the fuss. Instead, he was the one to accompany, he was the one to take the back seat, he was the one meant to lead the donkey. In my mind’s eye we’ve sometimes relegated him to the role of body guard, surrogate, groomsman. As I was sharing about this week’s sermon topic, and talking about the role of Joseph with a group of you on Tuesday, a true confession emerged from a beloved member of this congregation. And the revelation that she shared was this: in the late 1960s she found a crèche on sale at Murphys downtown. And that crèche was a beautiful thing, and it’s price was dramatically slashed, and this self-proclaimed frugal person, who didn’t want to miss a bargain, and whose name will not be mentioned but who might be singing in the choir, and who might have a name that begins with a “P” and rhyme with “Mat”, decided to take that crèche home and make it her very own. There was only one little tiny issue with the crèche, only one small hang-up…turns out it was on sale at such a deep discount because there was no, well, no Joseph. No male role model in that holy family. And so each year the figurines come out at the Sterling home on Homestead Road, Mary, and the wise men, and the angel, the sheep with the broken ear and that sweet little baby Jesus in the manger and each year lest Mary look like a single mother, a shepherd stands in as understudy for Joseph, I mean they both have that same burly Joseph-like working class quality, right?
Of course I’m teasing about Pat’s crèche, but isn’t it true that the Christian church has often overlooked poor Joseph? In the Catholic Church especially Mary has been elevated, dressed in blue, a look of serene piety on her face as she holds that tiny Christ child. And Joseph, well, if he’s lucky he’s relegated to a corner of a cathedral with a modest icon nearby. In fact it wasn’t until 1870 that Pope Pius IX declared him a Patron of the Universal Church. Poor Joseph, he gets no respect!
So let’s delve into the text, shall we? And I want to warn you ahead of time that the text may sound a little familiar to you, for it is the exact same text as last week [rest assured, I did that on purpose]. But this week, I’d like to read the scripture throughout the sermon for Joseph’s journey is more a movement in three parts, and there are places where we need to pause and allow the depth of his character to sink into our own souls. This morning I’ll be reading to you from Eugene Peterson’s contemporary translation of the Bible, The Message.
The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they came to the marriage bed, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.
The writer of the book of Matthew doesn’t mince words as he tells the story of the birth of Jesus, does he? While Luke’s gospel which we focused on at the beginning of December as we fleshed out the stories of Elizabeth and Mary waxes poetic with all sorts of juicy details and unfolds the story of Mary’s impending pregnancy with astounding poetic description (remember the angel visitation to inform the young Mary? And then that harrowing journey she took through the hills to see Elizabeth for wisdom? And the leaping of the baby in the womb, and then Mary’s eloquent operatic aria of the Magnificat?) Matthew is more a “just the facts, Ma’am” kind of writer. Matthew gives us the who’s and how’s, straight up, unvarnished and raw. There are these two people. Mary and Joseph. And they were engaged (which in Jewish tradition was a binding legal agreement already, to be engaged carried with it all the responsibilities and commitments to fidelity that marriage does in our culture). And lo and behold, Joseph learns an uncomfortable and startling truth, this woman that he loves, this woman who has committed himself to him, is pregnant with another’s child.
And the very first thing we learn of Joseph, the first claim that we can make of him is that he is sensitive and discreet. In the face of what must have felt like betrayal and perhaps even deceit, he does not condemn Mary. He does not lash out at her or try to tarnish her reputation. Instead, he chooses to do the honorable thing, and privately release her from her vows of betrothal. He does not do what the law would allow or perhaps even encourage him to do, for the patriarchal legal system of the time would call for the stoning of any woman found guilty of adultery, and certainly Mary’s pregnancy would have been proof of her infidelity. But instead he offers her a tender mercy, and a quiet grace, and even as he must have been nursing his own broken heart, and asking his own anguished “why?” He chooses to release her quietly from her bonds to him. There will be no disgrace. There will be no condemnation. There will be no judgment. Joseph’s choice will be a merciful one. And he will claim no call for retribution. Instead his claim will be that he will be a man who offers grace.
While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream. God’s angel spoke in the dream: “Joseph, son of David, don’t hesitate to get married. Mary’s pregnancy is Spirit-conceived. God’s Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus—‘God saves’—because he will save his people from their sins.” This would bring the prophet’s embryonic sermon to full term: Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son, They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God with us”). Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary. But he did not consummate the marriage until she had the baby.
And so we move into the second movement of our story.
Many of you already know that for the past three years or so I have struggled with insomnia. While my dream life used to be rich and rewarding, now I am either restlessly tossing and turning or completely zombified by the Ambien I allow myself to take every third night or so. My husband, however, has a glamorous and elaborate fairy tale world of dreams that he allows me to visit as he regales me with the stories of where his dreams took him. When he’s not flying through the air, one of his common dream-time reveries, he is enjoying the company of famous celebrities. A few months back on a Saturday morning we lay in bed, Grayson climbing over us, and Robert said, “You know, last night Barbara Bush and I were singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ in the hallway of the college administration building. It was really quite touching.”
I miss my regular sleep habits, but the truth is, I miss the dreaming. For I believe our souls need to dream. I believe that it is one of the few legitimate ways that we allow God to get our attention sometimes. Where else but in this liminal place, the place of moonlight and hush, are our hearts soft enough to allow God to drop into them? Where else do we free ourselves to trust that God is really afoot and that answers may come?
While Joseph isn’t granted a burning bush moment, or a face-to-face angel encounter as Mary had, he still gets a subtle word from God. The angel appears to him and lets him in on the secret that Mary already knew. And Joseph asks no questions, doesn’t utter a word, but implicitly trusts God and immediately acts. How many of us would be tempted to brush off those night-time musings and assume it was just our imagination, or just too much strange food we’d eaten. God comes to Joseph and Joseph stakes his claim on God’s word. And claims his destiny as the earthly father of this newborn. Joseph will chose to claim trust.
And finally the third movement. And it is a simple and profound one. One sentence.
He named the baby Jesus.
It was not Mary who named the child. It was Joseph. In ancient Israelite culture, to name a child was to offer a blessing. Naming was a powerful symbolic gesture in which the hopes and dreams of the child were placed upon the young. And when you named someone you claimed them as well. It was not Mary who claimed the child as her own, but Joseph. And by so doing, Jesus was adopted into the whole Davidic lineage which came through Joseph’s blood.
I am remembering this morning a Sunday when I stood in the front of the congregation of the Manchester Church of the Brethren on a sunny fall morning and held in my arms a then nine-month-old Elliott Beecher Tae-Soo Shaum. Eli was the son of one of my closest friends and he was a child who was long in coming to his family. His mother, Lynn, had been through years of fertility treatments and two surgeries and when interventions were not successful she and her husband, Steve, had begun the lengthy process of adopting a child from Korea. Perhaps some of you have walked your own journeys through adoption, or been with those who have wanted so desperately to have a child to call their own. And as I held that child in my arms on that morning, speaking his name and offering him a blessing, my eyes also rested on his parents, who wept their own silent tears. And years later when Robert and I also struggled with infertility it was Eli’s mother who said to me fiercely, “Eli is my son. He is my child. And what you need to remember, Christen, is that while my son did not grow in my body, he was conceived by my dream. And that makes him no less my own.”
Joseph’s message is the message of Eli’s mother’s as well. And the message is this: it is our task in this world to expand our definition of family. It is our job to extend our arms wider to invite others into our hearts. It is our mandate as children of the One God to cradle all babies as our own babies, nurturing them and comforting them. It is our commandment as children of the One God to nurture all youth as our own youth and raise the next generation with love. It is our commandment as children of the One God to welcome all people as our own sisters and brothers and encircle those in need. It is our commandment as children of the One God to care for all of our elderly and wise ones as our own parents and grandparents and protect their dignity and honor their history. It is our responsibility as children of the One God, our responsibility and our privilege.
And we do this not in some namby-pamby, Coca-Cola “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” Hallmark photo op moment, but through consciously making decisions which we believe align with God’s dreams for humanity. Through our charitable giving, and through our lobbying for affordable health care for all. Through our demand for an end to poverty and through setting our sights on declaring war on hunger, which is a much more formidable enemy right now than terrorism.
This morning we follow in the footsteps of our brother Joseph, who acted as father to the Christ. And we walk this road of discipleship with intention. We walk this road knowing that it will not be easy. We walk this road with deliberation. We walk this road with obedience. And we walk together, placing our trust in God. And allowing ourselves to be divine instruments who claim the ways of peace.
May it be so.
Amen.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Hearing from the Baptist--Sermon 11/28/10
It is hardly possible to me that I have been your pastor for near six months now and that we are already cruising in to our first Advent season together. One of the things I have learned about you is the wide array you of distinct stories you each have to tell. I am fascinated by the particularities and peculiarities which make you each a part of this body of Christ, and I realize the richness and depth of character we have among us. And so as we begin this season of Advent, I wanted us to journey together into the realm of story. I wanted us to have the chance to reintroduce ourselves to the characters and major players in this Advent drama, for they are part of our family as well. And their ancient stories shape the human story. Each week through Epiphany Sunday we will unearth one of the movers and shakers of this time, one of the cast of characters who heralded the birth and ministry of the Messiah. And this morning we begin with perhaps one of the most animated of all, John the Baptist.
It is a strange twist of the liturgical calendar which places a lectionary story about John the Baptist as a man in his 30s preaching in the wilderness a mere Sunday or two before stories about his mother, Elizabeth, who at the time we will meet her next week is pregnant with him. A bit of reverse foreshadowing, perhaps. I still have yet to figure out the mysterious and at times downright strange ways of the lectionary. But, I guess we should never be surprised when things get a little wacky when John the Baptist is involved, for he is not one who would be called orthodox, nor would we name him king of the understatement.
John wasn’t your average devout Jew circa late 20s A.D. First, there was that whole style thing. While most men were covering up from the sun by wearing soft linen or wool robes (but never both together, for that was taboo, and definitely a fashion no-no as well), John the Baptist distinguished himself by dressing in the fur of camels, which would have been like saying he chose his clothes out of the bin out back behind the Salvation Army store, in the pile of what was rejected. His clothes were styled after those of the Bedouin Shepherds who dressed for protection as they traveled through the middle of nowhere in the wild wilderness east of Jerusalem and they weren’t the standard dress of the day. And the food he ate, well let’s just say that he was not a gourmand by any stretch of the imagination. He wouldn’t have known a balanced meal if it was placed in front of him. John subsisted on a starvation diet of mostly wild locusts which rained down in abundance from the trees, and a bit of wild honey which could be easily found in the area. A diet perhaps less tasty than crunchy. But more important than what John put in his mouth were the words that were shouted out from it. For John the Baptist was a take-no-prisoners, fire-and-brimstone, holy-roller, preacher (with a capital “P”), and he minced no words as he rattled off the inequities, sins, wrongs, and hypocrisies he was witnessing. He was rough around the edges and not afraid of conflict. His admonitions and prophesies were scathing and his locust-scented breath blew across the wilderness wrathfully. He was, as the theologian Barbara Brown Taylor has written, “God’s own air raid siren.”
And yet, John’s message was reaching people, for he had amassed quite a following. Taylor goes on to say that “A helicopter flying over the desert east of Jerusalem would have looked down on a colorful string of pilgrims that stretched from the city to an encampment by the river—John’s church—where he heard people’s confessions and renewed their hope that God had not abandoned them.” (http://www.nationalcathedral.org/worship/sermonTexts/bbt981213.shtml)
The baptizer’s voice was heard in the midst of the sands of nowhere and his words had drawn the attention of not just the marginalized and helpless, but also of the most religious, the Sadducees and the Pharisees who loaded themselves onto their camels to make their way out to the margins to listen to what this shabby hooligan was saying, or rather who he was saying it about.
I want to interrupt our little story before we get into John’s loud pulpit-pounding phase of the story, the narrative hook of the Advent and tell you a little secret. John the Baptist has not been my favorite Advent character. This particular forerunner of the Messiah always scares me a little with his bombastic voice, with his strange diet, with his condemnation. He reminds me a little of a second cousin of mine, a loud and dear man in oversized spectacles who was always a just little too loud when he pontificated on local politics, someone who could stir my Swedish grandfather into enough of a frenzy that my he might start saying words like “criminy.” This cousin usually was speaking the social gospel, and I grew up to love him and his ideas, but his bluster and his passion and the way he could sometimes spit food out of his mouth when he got really worked up at the holiday table always turned me away a little first. I would imagine I’m not alone here as we talk about our brother John the Baptist, for we Midwestern UCC folk aren’t usually those who prefer to have our pastors shake their fists and call thunder down upon them. Or perhaps if you are, you called the wrong pastor into your fold…
Advent is not generally a time when we want to hear John’s loud, threatening voice, even if we are intent on preparing the way for the one who proclaims. For we may have different ideas. We like our Advent warm. We like to approach the coming of the Christ child, the coming of a soft baby with cozy expectation. We like to bask in the quiet reflective nuanced hushes, the soft dim lights and hushed hymns. It doesn’t always seem fair that we have this lunatic evangelist in our face screaming with all this moral righteousness, does it? Can’t we just fast-forward to the stable, and the angels, and that smell of soft baby hair as the infant lies his head in the crook of our neck? Can’t we just breathe a sigh of relief that God makes a way to us again, this year, in this human form?
No. No, friends. I’m sorry. We can’t. I can’t. For to reach that place of peace there’s some stuff we’ve got to do first. And John the Baptist does have a message for us to hear and understand, across time and distance. There is a truth he speaks that must be proclaimed as we turn our hearts toward the Advent mystery.
First of all, as we unpack John’s rant we need to remember that he was not exactly preaching to us. Matthew is recounting for us a little confab between John the Baptist and the Pharisees and the Sadducees who had traveled out to the wilderness to hear him speak. Those who were the priestly, law-abiding Jews, those who were obsessed with dotting every “I” and crossing every “T.” Those who had felt threatened by the power of this unknown prophet in the wilderness. John reminded them, without mincing words, that their obsession with the law and with the rules and with the politics of the day, was blinding them to a few things. And they couldn’t be saved by who they knew, or what prophet they followed. He reminded these priests and leaders that they seemed to be forgetting their covenant with God, forgetting that it was their job to usher in the reign of God’s love. “And oh by the way,” the Baptist said, “by aligning yourself with the powerful families and special interest groups for your own political gain, you’ve gotten a little too big for your britches.”
In short, John was preaching a message of hope wrapped up in a scathing rebuke, a reminder that by participating in a dry, same-old same-old ritual of religion, that these Pharisees and Sadducees had forgotten to grow in their faith and neglected the important work of preparing for the coming Messiah who had been promised. And so John’s most scathing words, you know, the ones about being a brood of snakes, was not really meant for our ears, but for theirs.
But even having recognized that, I’m not sure we’re off the hook (and here’s where I go all John the Baptist on you, so get ready). John the Baptist has another admonition which is universal in its appeal. One which I think we dare not lose sight of, those of us who begin the Advent journey this season in 2010, and it is this, “Repent.”
Repentance is sort of an overwhelming word, isn’t it? It’s not one we hear a lot in the UCC. Not one we hear a lot from this pulpit, but maybe we should. To repent means to “turn around” or rather, “to chose to turn toward God.” And what is so frightening about that? In fact isn’t that exactly what our Creator calls us to do on a regular basis? Aren’t we called to become new? Aren’t we asked to hear the voice of the one who invites us to awaken? To seek light in the dark cave of our hearts? To allow ourselves to prepare a space that Christ may be born again this year? To proclaim our “yes” to the hope that truth and justice may find a way to the earth again? To name ourselves as bearers of that Christ light? To be active participants in building the community of God here on earth?
The writer Frederick Buechner says it better than I ever could in his book Wishful Thinking, “To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ than to the future and saying, ‘Wow!’” ( p. 96).
It is the first Sunday of Advent. And it is time for us to repent, collectively and individually. It is time for us to heed the call of our crazy uncle John the Baptist, the one who we may want to dismiss, the one who scares us a little with the loud voice, the one who isn’t exactly the life of the party. But, friends, he is the one who we need to hear as we begin this church year. He is the one who still asks the right questions about what and who we place at the center of our lives. And he is the one who cuts to the heart of the matter about where our priorities must be if we are to proclaim the good news .
It is time on this first Sunday of Advent for us to turn our faces toward the light of God, to make in souls space to bear new life. It is time for us to align ourselves with God’s call for peace, and equality, and justice. It is time for us to look honestly into our own souls and decide what changes need to be made. For we only have four weeks, and new life shimmers on the horizon, and all we can do is murmur in wonder an awed, “Wow.”
Amen.
It is a strange twist of the liturgical calendar which places a lectionary story about John the Baptist as a man in his 30s preaching in the wilderness a mere Sunday or two before stories about his mother, Elizabeth, who at the time we will meet her next week is pregnant with him. A bit of reverse foreshadowing, perhaps. I still have yet to figure out the mysterious and at times downright strange ways of the lectionary. But, I guess we should never be surprised when things get a little wacky when John the Baptist is involved, for he is not one who would be called orthodox, nor would we name him king of the understatement.
John wasn’t your average devout Jew circa late 20s A.D. First, there was that whole style thing. While most men were covering up from the sun by wearing soft linen or wool robes (but never both together, for that was taboo, and definitely a fashion no-no as well), John the Baptist distinguished himself by dressing in the fur of camels, which would have been like saying he chose his clothes out of the bin out back behind the Salvation Army store, in the pile of what was rejected. His clothes were styled after those of the Bedouin Shepherds who dressed for protection as they traveled through the middle of nowhere in the wild wilderness east of Jerusalem and they weren’t the standard dress of the day. And the food he ate, well let’s just say that he was not a gourmand by any stretch of the imagination. He wouldn’t have known a balanced meal if it was placed in front of him. John subsisted on a starvation diet of mostly wild locusts which rained down in abundance from the trees, and a bit of wild honey which could be easily found in the area. A diet perhaps less tasty than crunchy. But more important than what John put in his mouth were the words that were shouted out from it. For John the Baptist was a take-no-prisoners, fire-and-brimstone, holy-roller, preacher (with a capital “P”), and he minced no words as he rattled off the inequities, sins, wrongs, and hypocrisies he was witnessing. He was rough around the edges and not afraid of conflict. His admonitions and prophesies were scathing and his locust-scented breath blew across the wilderness wrathfully. He was, as the theologian Barbara Brown Taylor has written, “God’s own air raid siren.”
And yet, John’s message was reaching people, for he had amassed quite a following. Taylor goes on to say that “A helicopter flying over the desert east of Jerusalem would have looked down on a colorful string of pilgrims that stretched from the city to an encampment by the river—John’s church—where he heard people’s confessions and renewed their hope that God had not abandoned them.” (http://www.nationalcathedral.org/worship/sermonTexts/bbt981213.shtml)
The baptizer’s voice was heard in the midst of the sands of nowhere and his words had drawn the attention of not just the marginalized and helpless, but also of the most religious, the Sadducees and the Pharisees who loaded themselves onto their camels to make their way out to the margins to listen to what this shabby hooligan was saying, or rather who he was saying it about.
I want to interrupt our little story before we get into John’s loud pulpit-pounding phase of the story, the narrative hook of the Advent and tell you a little secret. John the Baptist has not been my favorite Advent character. This particular forerunner of the Messiah always scares me a little with his bombastic voice, with his strange diet, with his condemnation. He reminds me a little of a second cousin of mine, a loud and dear man in oversized spectacles who was always a just little too loud when he pontificated on local politics, someone who could stir my Swedish grandfather into enough of a frenzy that my he might start saying words like “criminy.” This cousin usually was speaking the social gospel, and I grew up to love him and his ideas, but his bluster and his passion and the way he could sometimes spit food out of his mouth when he got really worked up at the holiday table always turned me away a little first. I would imagine I’m not alone here as we talk about our brother John the Baptist, for we Midwestern UCC folk aren’t usually those who prefer to have our pastors shake their fists and call thunder down upon them. Or perhaps if you are, you called the wrong pastor into your fold…
Advent is not generally a time when we want to hear John’s loud, threatening voice, even if we are intent on preparing the way for the one who proclaims. For we may have different ideas. We like our Advent warm. We like to approach the coming of the Christ child, the coming of a soft baby with cozy expectation. We like to bask in the quiet reflective nuanced hushes, the soft dim lights and hushed hymns. It doesn’t always seem fair that we have this lunatic evangelist in our face screaming with all this moral righteousness, does it? Can’t we just fast-forward to the stable, and the angels, and that smell of soft baby hair as the infant lies his head in the crook of our neck? Can’t we just breathe a sigh of relief that God makes a way to us again, this year, in this human form?
No. No, friends. I’m sorry. We can’t. I can’t. For to reach that place of peace there’s some stuff we’ve got to do first. And John the Baptist does have a message for us to hear and understand, across time and distance. There is a truth he speaks that must be proclaimed as we turn our hearts toward the Advent mystery.
First of all, as we unpack John’s rant we need to remember that he was not exactly preaching to us. Matthew is recounting for us a little confab between John the Baptist and the Pharisees and the Sadducees who had traveled out to the wilderness to hear him speak. Those who were the priestly, law-abiding Jews, those who were obsessed with dotting every “I” and crossing every “T.” Those who had felt threatened by the power of this unknown prophet in the wilderness. John reminded them, without mincing words, that their obsession with the law and with the rules and with the politics of the day, was blinding them to a few things. And they couldn’t be saved by who they knew, or what prophet they followed. He reminded these priests and leaders that they seemed to be forgetting their covenant with God, forgetting that it was their job to usher in the reign of God’s love. “And oh by the way,” the Baptist said, “by aligning yourself with the powerful families and special interest groups for your own political gain, you’ve gotten a little too big for your britches.”
In short, John was preaching a message of hope wrapped up in a scathing rebuke, a reminder that by participating in a dry, same-old same-old ritual of religion, that these Pharisees and Sadducees had forgotten to grow in their faith and neglected the important work of preparing for the coming Messiah who had been promised. And so John’s most scathing words, you know, the ones about being a brood of snakes, was not really meant for our ears, but for theirs.
But even having recognized that, I’m not sure we’re off the hook (and here’s where I go all John the Baptist on you, so get ready). John the Baptist has another admonition which is universal in its appeal. One which I think we dare not lose sight of, those of us who begin the Advent journey this season in 2010, and it is this, “Repent.”
Repentance is sort of an overwhelming word, isn’t it? It’s not one we hear a lot in the UCC. Not one we hear a lot from this pulpit, but maybe we should. To repent means to “turn around” or rather, “to chose to turn toward God.” And what is so frightening about that? In fact isn’t that exactly what our Creator calls us to do on a regular basis? Aren’t we called to become new? Aren’t we asked to hear the voice of the one who invites us to awaken? To seek light in the dark cave of our hearts? To allow ourselves to prepare a space that Christ may be born again this year? To proclaim our “yes” to the hope that truth and justice may find a way to the earth again? To name ourselves as bearers of that Christ light? To be active participants in building the community of God here on earth?
The writer Frederick Buechner says it better than I ever could in his book Wishful Thinking, “To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ than to the future and saying, ‘Wow!’” ( p. 96).
It is the first Sunday of Advent. And it is time for us to repent, collectively and individually. It is time for us to heed the call of our crazy uncle John the Baptist, the one who we may want to dismiss, the one who scares us a little with the loud voice, the one who isn’t exactly the life of the party. But, friends, he is the one who we need to hear as we begin this church year. He is the one who still asks the right questions about what and who we place at the center of our lives. And he is the one who cuts to the heart of the matter about where our priorities must be if we are to proclaim the good news .
It is time on this first Sunday of Advent for us to turn our faces toward the light of God, to make in souls space to bear new life. It is time for us to align ourselves with God’s call for peace, and equality, and justice. It is time for us to look honestly into our own souls and decide what changes need to be made. For we only have four weeks, and new life shimmers on the horizon, and all we can do is murmur in wonder an awed, “Wow.”
Amen.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Thin Places--Sermon 10/31/10
Sermon for All Saint's Day.
Thin Places
If you are one who likes celebrations, than the next few days offer a whole plethora of sacred and secular holidays in which to indulge. Of course our society’s consumerist cash cow of a holiday will come tonight when oodles and oodles of cowboys and princesses and batmans and pumpkins and puppies show up at your door, with already heavy-laden bags in hand brimming with M&M’s and Smarties for the time honored tradition of trick or treating. As many of you already know, Halloween’s roots lie in the pagan tradition of Samhain, which was essentially the time of year when the fields were fallow and the inedible parts and bones of the cattle were burned after they rest of their meat was cured. Samhain was considered the “new year” as the earth’s seasonal cycle came full circle again. The early church, however, in an effort at conversion of the country dwellers who had their own folk traditions, agreed that if the pagans were going to have a party, that it made sense for Christians to one up them with a bigger celebration, with a more elaborate feast, call it an early evangelism effort. An almost “Annie Get Your Gun-esque” version of anything you can do we can do better. And so, November 1st was declared by the church as “All Saint’s Day.” And just to be sure we made our point, November 2nd was declared “All Soul’s Day.” All bases were covered. The pagans may be celebrating the death of the harvest, the earth, the fallow time before winter, but we Christians could still one-up them by celebrating the death of our saints, those who have carried forward their faith. And if that wasn’t enough. We’d celebrate the saints in our midst. Take that, pagans. Church 1, or wait with All-Soul’s Day let’s make that 2, Pagans 0. However, time unfolded a different tale and both traditions survived, although Samhain’s name was changed to “All Hallow’s Eve” or just “Halloween.” Both the secular and the sacred are part of our cultural heritage and just as we live between the tensions in December of Santa and the Baby Jesus story, and the cultural tug of war in spring between little easter bunnies and a risen savior, this Sunday as well places the church betwixt and between. Between culture and religion. Between society and spirituality. Between the dominant paradigm and the subculture of the sacred. A thin place of sorts.
This brokenness, this living between, is something which can be perplexing. Especially for children. My parents have told the story before of how I used to enjoy playing with the plastic crèche that was set up each Christmas in our family home, how I would often make parades with the animals, the donkey, the camels, the sheep, and a few reindeer ornaments thrown in for diversity and then I’d have the wise men and shepherds tagging behind, and Mary and Joseph holding their baby and finally, at the back of the line like the grand poobah of the parade, Santa Claus, with the angel flying over the whole event doing loop de loops and giving color commentary from the air. It was the only way my four-year-old head could live in these tensions. I knew there was a baby Jesus, but I also had heard of this Santa. And somehow I had to make him fit into the story. And so, even though he seemed to be a dwarf, coming from a Fisher Price set, and even though he towered a good three inches lower than the smallest Shepherd, he was tacked onto the story as well.
But this dualism, this push and pull of story hasn’t always been there, and doesn’t need to divide us I don’t believe. There were others in our Christian tradition, renegades of sorts, who I believe offer us a different perspective, a more holistic vision of history, and I’d like us to turn our attention there this morning. Let us fix our eyes back to a different time, to the sixth and seventh century in Ireland when Christianity was slowly immersing itself in the Celtic culture. Because Ireland was off the beaten path, and came to be at a time before the Christian church began to rationalize and centralize in Rome, there was a different feel to it. There was a more mystical bent, a more tolerant acceptance of other religions, a more softened orthodoxy. Because of their geographical separation their faith developed differently. The Celts learned to find the spirit of Christ in a way very different than the centralized church in Rome. And this freedom allowed them to incorporate the divine in the midst of nature, in the midst of the people, in the midst of the land. For Celtic Christianity there was a more organic unity. God was among God’s people, and the sacred was all around even in the most common and ordinary of experiences. And while there may have been two different cultures in Ireland, their own tension between the secular and sacred—the Celts believed that there had to be a way to incorporate them into the unity of Christ’s vision for all. And so the spirituality and Christianity which was part of that time was unlike any we know now.
The Celtic Christians spoke freely of thin places. Those were the places where the earth seemed more holy, were the veil between heaven and earth seemed more transparent. But thin places referred to time as well as space. When one stumbled into the holy as they sat at the bedside of one who was dying, or where a woman was struggling with the birth pangs so that a baby might be born, one was in a thin place. When one realized in the midst of ordinary conversation that the person they were talking with was listening with a compassion bordering on heavenly, when one looked into the eyes of another and saw empathy and grace pooling forth, one was in a thin place. When one heard the truth spoken to power even when there may be repercussions and when forgiveness was offered even in the face of unimaginable sin, one was in a thin place. A place where the veil between God’s world and the human world was near, and the holy was afoot.
The writer of the book of Revelation knew a bit about those thin places, and on this celebration of All Saint’s Day, it seems an obvious place to turn. Tradition maintains that it was the apostle John who wrote the book of Revelation, but truth be told we really have no way of knowing. The visions and dreams we see in the book offer complex testimonies and even some uncomfortable scenes. And deciphering Revelation is complex. But, there are these snippets of grace found there as well, these offerings of what life in God’s realm may be and John walks right into these thin places in his dreams. There is in the author’s revelation a promise for the faithful, and a glimpse of what may come. It is a vision of unity where those from every nation, and every tribe, all people and all languages, all colors and all shapes are welcomed. A vision of praise where God’s power and love are acknowledged and where the canopy of grace of wide. Those who reside with God there will be sheltered, and will know no hunger or thirst. Those who find home with God will be guided to springs of the water of life where God will wipe away every tear from every eye.
I believe that on this day, on this day when we remember the faithfulness of those who have served God, and who must reside now in God’s realm of love, we feel a little bittersweet. While part of us honors the legacies of these servants and swells with pride to see their names read in the rollcall of the faithful, another part of us mourns afresh the veil that separates us from them and misses the very real human embraces they could give. While part of us smile in fond remembrance at the quicks and curiosities of our loved ones and carry with us a suitcase full of happy memories to share with our children, another part of us grieves the pain of unresolved relationships and questions left unanswered and truths unspoken. All-Saint’s Day is a bittersweet day in the life of the church, when we both celebrate and offer poignant pause. The bells toll, the candles lit, the names read, and we realize that we are ushered into a thin place.
The late Carlyle Marney a great Southern Baptist preacher from North Carolina once shared a story about what All Saint’s Day is. He believed that each of us is like a house. There are different rooms in the house that is you, he said. A parlor to welcome guests, a kitchen and dining room for eating, a bedroom where you sleep, a basement where you store your trash. The house also has a balcony, he said, and on that balcony are all the people who have exerted good and positive and gracious influences in your life. They are your balcony people. “Walk outside and look up and see who’s up there on our balcony looking down at you,” he would suggest. “Wave to them. They are your saints.” I believe that this is our job on All Saint’s Day, to turn and wave to the saints on our balcony. [John M. Buchanan editorial in Christian Century, November 15, 2003]
And so this morning I invite you to consider your balcony-sitters. Consider those to whom you turn and wave on this holy day as we dwell in the land where the veil is thin between heaven and earth. Who sits in your balcony and watches down on you with eyes gleaming with love? Who hovers above you ready to cheer you on? Who quietly lingers, aching to offer you some wisdom? To whom must we turn and wave this morning?
There is a poignant song by the group Kindling, a little known folk group comprised mostly of members of the Church of the Brethren, called “All that Remains is the Love” and the words have echoed in my mind all week as I’ve considered this Sunday. It is the song written by my friend, Lee Krahenbuhl, after visiting a family graveyard and realizing the legacy of those balcony-sitters in his own time. Hear his as blessing and benediction as we linger in the thin places this morning:
I hope I am returning all the best you gave the world
And thank you for the gift of your mistakes
I’m trying not to live my life in anger or in fear
And power isn’t worth the hate it takes
And since everything I build will turn to dust in time
And riches disappear like morning mist
Family and friends and lovers now will be my only song
Until I come to join you and they visit me like this..
And All that remains is the love
All that remains is the love bravely expressed.
On this All-Saints Day as we remember, and as we celebrate those who have gone before, may we live in the reality of the thin place, where all is sacred, and bound together by God’s inclusive love.
Amen.
Thin Places
If you are one who likes celebrations, than the next few days offer a whole plethora of sacred and secular holidays in which to indulge. Of course our society’s consumerist cash cow of a holiday will come tonight when oodles and oodles of cowboys and princesses and batmans and pumpkins and puppies show up at your door, with already heavy-laden bags in hand brimming with M&M’s and Smarties for the time honored tradition of trick or treating. As many of you already know, Halloween’s roots lie in the pagan tradition of Samhain, which was essentially the time of year when the fields were fallow and the inedible parts and bones of the cattle were burned after they rest of their meat was cured. Samhain was considered the “new year” as the earth’s seasonal cycle came full circle again. The early church, however, in an effort at conversion of the country dwellers who had their own folk traditions, agreed that if the pagans were going to have a party, that it made sense for Christians to one up them with a bigger celebration, with a more elaborate feast, call it an early evangelism effort. An almost “Annie Get Your Gun-esque” version of anything you can do we can do better. And so, November 1st was declared by the church as “All Saint’s Day.” And just to be sure we made our point, November 2nd was declared “All Soul’s Day.” All bases were covered. The pagans may be celebrating the death of the harvest, the earth, the fallow time before winter, but we Christians could still one-up them by celebrating the death of our saints, those who have carried forward their faith. And if that wasn’t enough. We’d celebrate the saints in our midst. Take that, pagans. Church 1, or wait with All-Soul’s Day let’s make that 2, Pagans 0. However, time unfolded a different tale and both traditions survived, although Samhain’s name was changed to “All Hallow’s Eve” or just “Halloween.” Both the secular and the sacred are part of our cultural heritage and just as we live between the tensions in December of Santa and the Baby Jesus story, and the cultural tug of war in spring between little easter bunnies and a risen savior, this Sunday as well places the church betwixt and between. Between culture and religion. Between society and spirituality. Between the dominant paradigm and the subculture of the sacred. A thin place of sorts.
This brokenness, this living between, is something which can be perplexing. Especially for children. My parents have told the story before of how I used to enjoy playing with the plastic crèche that was set up each Christmas in our family home, how I would often make parades with the animals, the donkey, the camels, the sheep, and a few reindeer ornaments thrown in for diversity and then I’d have the wise men and shepherds tagging behind, and Mary and Joseph holding their baby and finally, at the back of the line like the grand poobah of the parade, Santa Claus, with the angel flying over the whole event doing loop de loops and giving color commentary from the air. It was the only way my four-year-old head could live in these tensions. I knew there was a baby Jesus, but I also had heard of this Santa. And somehow I had to make him fit into the story. And so, even though he seemed to be a dwarf, coming from a Fisher Price set, and even though he towered a good three inches lower than the smallest Shepherd, he was tacked onto the story as well.
But this dualism, this push and pull of story hasn’t always been there, and doesn’t need to divide us I don’t believe. There were others in our Christian tradition, renegades of sorts, who I believe offer us a different perspective, a more holistic vision of history, and I’d like us to turn our attention there this morning. Let us fix our eyes back to a different time, to the sixth and seventh century in Ireland when Christianity was slowly immersing itself in the Celtic culture. Because Ireland was off the beaten path, and came to be at a time before the Christian church began to rationalize and centralize in Rome, there was a different feel to it. There was a more mystical bent, a more tolerant acceptance of other religions, a more softened orthodoxy. Because of their geographical separation their faith developed differently. The Celts learned to find the spirit of Christ in a way very different than the centralized church in Rome. And this freedom allowed them to incorporate the divine in the midst of nature, in the midst of the people, in the midst of the land. For Celtic Christianity there was a more organic unity. God was among God’s people, and the sacred was all around even in the most common and ordinary of experiences. And while there may have been two different cultures in Ireland, their own tension between the secular and sacred—the Celts believed that there had to be a way to incorporate them into the unity of Christ’s vision for all. And so the spirituality and Christianity which was part of that time was unlike any we know now.
The Celtic Christians spoke freely of thin places. Those were the places where the earth seemed more holy, were the veil between heaven and earth seemed more transparent. But thin places referred to time as well as space. When one stumbled into the holy as they sat at the bedside of one who was dying, or where a woman was struggling with the birth pangs so that a baby might be born, one was in a thin place. When one realized in the midst of ordinary conversation that the person they were talking with was listening with a compassion bordering on heavenly, when one looked into the eyes of another and saw empathy and grace pooling forth, one was in a thin place. When one heard the truth spoken to power even when there may be repercussions and when forgiveness was offered even in the face of unimaginable sin, one was in a thin place. A place where the veil between God’s world and the human world was near, and the holy was afoot.
The writer of the book of Revelation knew a bit about those thin places, and on this celebration of All Saint’s Day, it seems an obvious place to turn. Tradition maintains that it was the apostle John who wrote the book of Revelation, but truth be told we really have no way of knowing. The visions and dreams we see in the book offer complex testimonies and even some uncomfortable scenes. And deciphering Revelation is complex. But, there are these snippets of grace found there as well, these offerings of what life in God’s realm may be and John walks right into these thin places in his dreams. There is in the author’s revelation a promise for the faithful, and a glimpse of what may come. It is a vision of unity where those from every nation, and every tribe, all people and all languages, all colors and all shapes are welcomed. A vision of praise where God’s power and love are acknowledged and where the canopy of grace of wide. Those who reside with God there will be sheltered, and will know no hunger or thirst. Those who find home with God will be guided to springs of the water of life where God will wipe away every tear from every eye.
I believe that on this day, on this day when we remember the faithfulness of those who have served God, and who must reside now in God’s realm of love, we feel a little bittersweet. While part of us honors the legacies of these servants and swells with pride to see their names read in the rollcall of the faithful, another part of us mourns afresh the veil that separates us from them and misses the very real human embraces they could give. While part of us smile in fond remembrance at the quicks and curiosities of our loved ones and carry with us a suitcase full of happy memories to share with our children, another part of us grieves the pain of unresolved relationships and questions left unanswered and truths unspoken. All-Saint’s Day is a bittersweet day in the life of the church, when we both celebrate and offer poignant pause. The bells toll, the candles lit, the names read, and we realize that we are ushered into a thin place.
The late Carlyle Marney a great Southern Baptist preacher from North Carolina once shared a story about what All Saint’s Day is. He believed that each of us is like a house. There are different rooms in the house that is you, he said. A parlor to welcome guests, a kitchen and dining room for eating, a bedroom where you sleep, a basement where you store your trash. The house also has a balcony, he said, and on that balcony are all the people who have exerted good and positive and gracious influences in your life. They are your balcony people. “Walk outside and look up and see who’s up there on our balcony looking down at you,” he would suggest. “Wave to them. They are your saints.” I believe that this is our job on All Saint’s Day, to turn and wave to the saints on our balcony. [John M. Buchanan editorial in Christian Century, November 15, 2003]
And so this morning I invite you to consider your balcony-sitters. Consider those to whom you turn and wave on this holy day as we dwell in the land where the veil is thin between heaven and earth. Who sits in your balcony and watches down on you with eyes gleaming with love? Who hovers above you ready to cheer you on? Who quietly lingers, aching to offer you some wisdom? To whom must we turn and wave this morning?
There is a poignant song by the group Kindling, a little known folk group comprised mostly of members of the Church of the Brethren, called “All that Remains is the Love” and the words have echoed in my mind all week as I’ve considered this Sunday. It is the song written by my friend, Lee Krahenbuhl, after visiting a family graveyard and realizing the legacy of those balcony-sitters in his own time. Hear his as blessing and benediction as we linger in the thin places this morning:
I hope I am returning all the best you gave the world
And thank you for the gift of your mistakes
I’m trying not to live my life in anger or in fear
And power isn’t worth the hate it takes
And since everything I build will turn to dust in time
And riches disappear like morning mist
Family and friends and lovers now will be my only song
Until I come to join you and they visit me like this..
And All that remains is the love
All that remains is the love bravely expressed.
On this All-Saints Day as we remember, and as we celebrate those who have gone before, may we live in the reality of the thin place, where all is sacred, and bound together by God’s inclusive love.
Amen.
Wild and Precious Gifts--Sermon 11/14/10
This was my sermon for Stewardship Sunday at Peace UCC.
And so we have arrived. After hearing top ten reasons about stewardship, after receiving letters in the mail and filling out pledge cards, after prayerfully considering our gifts, or even after hastily scribbling in a number in a mad dash to get out the door this morning for worship, we have reached the culmination of our stewardship campaign, or perhaps I should say that the culmination will come with the “Beth Ring cake” after worship. I confess that I am accustomed to treating stewardship emphasis sermons like pledge week on NPR or PBS, and if you are like me, it probably a relief to get this “money talk” out of the way so we can go on to our “regularly scheduled program.” But I have a hunch that there’s more to it than that, I have a hunch that on a deeper level, we in the church aren’t always that comfortable talking about money. For those of us who make enough of it, there can be a sense of guilt. For those of us who don’t make enough of it, there can be a source of shame. Money, like sex, is something we don’t talk about publicly. There is an unspoken taboo there, isn’t there? It’s not supposed to be anyone else’s business? Right? So talk of money, seems a little threatening, and there is a sense in the church where we want to say, “Okay, okay I get it…here, let me surreptitiously hand you this pledge card and let’s get on with it, now get back to our regular programming…”
But I think that when we feel a little itchy about something, I little uncomfortable, than there is a bit of a poke from God, a little nudge to consider where we need to turn our attention.
It’s stewardship Sunday. We’re going to talk about our gifts, and our talents, and our faith. I promise no hard sells, no pulpit pounding, no altar calls, no guilt ridden lectures. It’s stewardship Sunday and we need to turn our attention to the teachings of Jesus, the one who taught us the truth of what it means to be a faithful caregiver of the gifts of God.
The parable of the talents is one which I wrestle with. It’s one of those texts which has always stuck in my craw, and because I believe Jesus to be a prophet who promotes liberation for all, justice and peace, love as all powerful and prominent, I figured it was about time for me to get over my reservations and hesitations and plow into it and figure out what I was missing before.
It has been said that every preacher has only one good sermon theme in them, and that every other sermon is just a riff of that one. It has been said that pastor’s often preach to themselves in every sermon they speak. And, so I speak confessionally when I say, that I look at this verse through the Christen Pettit Miller filter, just as each of you see it through your own independent lens as well. Let me tell you a little about what the Christen Pettit Miller history is. As a white middle-class woman living in an affluent country, as a person with what I now believe must be a learning disability when it comes to finances and a sense of helpless inadequacy when it comes to investments I read this story and place myself in the role of the one who really disappointed the master. I would be the one who buried her share of her supervisor’s money in an effort to just keep it safe and intact. And so with each reading of this parable in previous years, I have ended up scratching my head and furrowing my brow and feeling a little perplexed with exactly what the point is.
You’ve all heard the story. Chris just read it for you again. There are three people. They are all given three different amounts of money. They each make choices about what to do with it. And then they are rewarded or punished based on their choices. The moral of the story, seems to be, simply put, use it or lose it. And when one places this in a financial context, as we are apt to do with a first read, it can be a little uncomfortable, or, heck, downright painful to hear. Especially if we are ones who believe that Jesus sided with the powerless, especially if we are ones who dislike the analogy of Jesus promoting venture capitalism, or introducing us to a God who condemns those who don’t make money, or rather make sound investments. The parable of the talents, on the surface, can be a sticky one. That is, if we chose to take this parable at face value only.
Friday afternoon was sermon grappling day with me. I was picking apart the text, looking through interpretations, living through the various perspectives, placing myself in the story, trying to get my head around the words, and as is sometimes the case when I become blocked, I sent a little note out into the universe via Facebook message to a group of my closest friends, we who call ourselves the sisters, eight of us scattered across the country, the women who offer my counsel and hold me accountable, and help me see light when I can only see darkness. The message simply said, “Help! I don’t get it…” and then sent the text. And within a half hour my in box had two responses. The first said, “This is why I’m not a pastor.” Which was honest, but not all that helpful…and the second said simply, “It’s not about money. Think about it!”
Whoa! The parable of the talents is not about money? Whoa! Who knew? I was credulous but read it again taking money out of the equation and lo and behold, things started to click.
Jesus spoke in parables because the people of the time loved stories, and these stories were just that, they were stories, they weren’t instruction manuals for what exactly should happen if our boss handed us $633,000, which is the modern day equivalent of only one talent, or fifteen times the average American household income. The parable isn’t a story about investment strategy, or market climate. Instead it is a story about our gifts, and what gifts we offer to the Creator, and thus, to the world.
A talent, in ancient Palestine, was a measure of weight which later came to denote a fixed amount of silver or gold. A talent was a way to describe money, but in an interesting etymological phenomenon, a language twist of fate, the word “talent” morphed into the word that we know as talent in the English language, one’s gift, or one’s God-given ability or skill. The word talent, comes directly from this parable. And so, it appears, interpreters throughout the ages have understood this parable far better than your humble pastor, go figure.
The parable of the talents is about what we give to the church, about what we give to our families, our friends, our communities, and the world. And the parable of the talents is about investing wisely in discerning these gifts. The parable of the talents is about the sharing of ourselves, the sharing of those skills and abilities we have honed. And the parable of the talents is about recognizing our talents as valuable, and important, and necessary to the world, and not something God wants us to bury. It about all of this, but perhaps most importantly, the parable of the talents is about taking a risk. It is about the call to become involved in the messy and beautiful life of community. It is about the summons to commit ourselves body and soul to the ministry of relationship. It is about recognizing that the world is hungry for our commitments, and we can’t just glide through life on cruise control.
And so this Sunday, as we turn in our pledge cards having made our financial decisions to support the ministry of this church and the wider world beyond, as we bind ourselves to one another through the money we will combine to insure economic viability as a church, I ask you to consider something more. You’ll notice in your bulletins this morning there is a different sort of pledge card, it is a pledge of your time, a pledge of your gifts, a pledge of your talents. Take it out of your bulletin, take a look at it, ponder what you can offer, you can even fill it out now while I’m talking, I don’t mind…for this promise and commitment is placed before you as well.
On this stewardship Sunday, I ask you to do more than to consider what your money can do. On this stewardship Sunday I ask you to consider instead what gift you have buried. What do you have to offer the church and the world that needs to be dug out of its hole, brushed off, and held up to the light of the sun, to be used for the glory of God and your neighbor’s good?
In the Gospel of Thomas, one of those Gnostic Gospels which never made it into the Biblical canon, we’ve been mentioning a few of these in Sunday school lately, Jesus is said to have told his disciples, “If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you.” But the teacher went on to warn, “If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.” I believe each of us is called by God to bring forth that which has been given to them, to bring forth that joy, that story, that song, that presence that we may have been reluctant to share. We care called by our Creator to bring forth that skill, that art, that talent which we may have been holding back. For this is what it means to be a good steward; and if we deny that which we should share, we deny the God who gave us these gifts to begin with.
Frederick Buechner writes, “the place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And so this morning I invite you to pause. As we commit ourselves to a new year of faithful stewardship, a new year of financial giving to meet the deep hungers of this community and the world, I ask you to consider one other question, what spiritual gifts are you willing to risk giving this year? What deep gladness lies buried within you that begs to be unearthed and shared with others? How brave will you dare to be in sharing yourself with your brothers and sisters? What risks do you promise to make to become necessary to someone in need? What are you being called to bring forth?
For what we are called to give today is more than just our money; we are called to give no less than our whole selves.
The poet Mary Oliver puts it more eloquently and boldly in her poem “Summer Day” when she asks, “Tell me what it is that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
The world is waiting. And it is hungry for what you have to offer. What wild and precious gift do you bring forth?
Amen.
And so we have arrived. After hearing top ten reasons about stewardship, after receiving letters in the mail and filling out pledge cards, after prayerfully considering our gifts, or even after hastily scribbling in a number in a mad dash to get out the door this morning for worship, we have reached the culmination of our stewardship campaign, or perhaps I should say that the culmination will come with the “Beth Ring cake” after worship. I confess that I am accustomed to treating stewardship emphasis sermons like pledge week on NPR or PBS, and if you are like me, it probably a relief to get this “money talk” out of the way so we can go on to our “regularly scheduled program.” But I have a hunch that there’s more to it than that, I have a hunch that on a deeper level, we in the church aren’t always that comfortable talking about money. For those of us who make enough of it, there can be a sense of guilt. For those of us who don’t make enough of it, there can be a source of shame. Money, like sex, is something we don’t talk about publicly. There is an unspoken taboo there, isn’t there? It’s not supposed to be anyone else’s business? Right? So talk of money, seems a little threatening, and there is a sense in the church where we want to say, “Okay, okay I get it…here, let me surreptitiously hand you this pledge card and let’s get on with it, now get back to our regular programming…”
But I think that when we feel a little itchy about something, I little uncomfortable, than there is a bit of a poke from God, a little nudge to consider where we need to turn our attention.
It’s stewardship Sunday. We’re going to talk about our gifts, and our talents, and our faith. I promise no hard sells, no pulpit pounding, no altar calls, no guilt ridden lectures. It’s stewardship Sunday and we need to turn our attention to the teachings of Jesus, the one who taught us the truth of what it means to be a faithful caregiver of the gifts of God.
The parable of the talents is one which I wrestle with. It’s one of those texts which has always stuck in my craw, and because I believe Jesus to be a prophet who promotes liberation for all, justice and peace, love as all powerful and prominent, I figured it was about time for me to get over my reservations and hesitations and plow into it and figure out what I was missing before.
It has been said that every preacher has only one good sermon theme in them, and that every other sermon is just a riff of that one. It has been said that pastor’s often preach to themselves in every sermon they speak. And, so I speak confessionally when I say, that I look at this verse through the Christen Pettit Miller filter, just as each of you see it through your own independent lens as well. Let me tell you a little about what the Christen Pettit Miller history is. As a white middle-class woman living in an affluent country, as a person with what I now believe must be a learning disability when it comes to finances and a sense of helpless inadequacy when it comes to investments I read this story and place myself in the role of the one who really disappointed the master. I would be the one who buried her share of her supervisor’s money in an effort to just keep it safe and intact. And so with each reading of this parable in previous years, I have ended up scratching my head and furrowing my brow and feeling a little perplexed with exactly what the point is.
You’ve all heard the story. Chris just read it for you again. There are three people. They are all given three different amounts of money. They each make choices about what to do with it. And then they are rewarded or punished based on their choices. The moral of the story, seems to be, simply put, use it or lose it. And when one places this in a financial context, as we are apt to do with a first read, it can be a little uncomfortable, or, heck, downright painful to hear. Especially if we are ones who believe that Jesus sided with the powerless, especially if we are ones who dislike the analogy of Jesus promoting venture capitalism, or introducing us to a God who condemns those who don’t make money, or rather make sound investments. The parable of the talents, on the surface, can be a sticky one. That is, if we chose to take this parable at face value only.
Friday afternoon was sermon grappling day with me. I was picking apart the text, looking through interpretations, living through the various perspectives, placing myself in the story, trying to get my head around the words, and as is sometimes the case when I become blocked, I sent a little note out into the universe via Facebook message to a group of my closest friends, we who call ourselves the sisters, eight of us scattered across the country, the women who offer my counsel and hold me accountable, and help me see light when I can only see darkness. The message simply said, “Help! I don’t get it…” and then sent the text. And within a half hour my in box had two responses. The first said, “This is why I’m not a pastor.” Which was honest, but not all that helpful…and the second said simply, “It’s not about money. Think about it!”
Whoa! The parable of the talents is not about money? Whoa! Who knew? I was credulous but read it again taking money out of the equation and lo and behold, things started to click.
Jesus spoke in parables because the people of the time loved stories, and these stories were just that, they were stories, they weren’t instruction manuals for what exactly should happen if our boss handed us $633,000, which is the modern day equivalent of only one talent, or fifteen times the average American household income. The parable isn’t a story about investment strategy, or market climate. Instead it is a story about our gifts, and what gifts we offer to the Creator, and thus, to the world.
A talent, in ancient Palestine, was a measure of weight which later came to denote a fixed amount of silver or gold. A talent was a way to describe money, but in an interesting etymological phenomenon, a language twist of fate, the word “talent” morphed into the word that we know as talent in the English language, one’s gift, or one’s God-given ability or skill. The word talent, comes directly from this parable. And so, it appears, interpreters throughout the ages have understood this parable far better than your humble pastor, go figure.
The parable of the talents is about what we give to the church, about what we give to our families, our friends, our communities, and the world. And the parable of the talents is about investing wisely in discerning these gifts. The parable of the talents is about the sharing of ourselves, the sharing of those skills and abilities we have honed. And the parable of the talents is about recognizing our talents as valuable, and important, and necessary to the world, and not something God wants us to bury. It about all of this, but perhaps most importantly, the parable of the talents is about taking a risk. It is about the call to become involved in the messy and beautiful life of community. It is about the summons to commit ourselves body and soul to the ministry of relationship. It is about recognizing that the world is hungry for our commitments, and we can’t just glide through life on cruise control.
And so this Sunday, as we turn in our pledge cards having made our financial decisions to support the ministry of this church and the wider world beyond, as we bind ourselves to one another through the money we will combine to insure economic viability as a church, I ask you to consider something more. You’ll notice in your bulletins this morning there is a different sort of pledge card, it is a pledge of your time, a pledge of your gifts, a pledge of your talents. Take it out of your bulletin, take a look at it, ponder what you can offer, you can even fill it out now while I’m talking, I don’t mind…for this promise and commitment is placed before you as well.
On this stewardship Sunday, I ask you to do more than to consider what your money can do. On this stewardship Sunday I ask you to consider instead what gift you have buried. What do you have to offer the church and the world that needs to be dug out of its hole, brushed off, and held up to the light of the sun, to be used for the glory of God and your neighbor’s good?
In the Gospel of Thomas, one of those Gnostic Gospels which never made it into the Biblical canon, we’ve been mentioning a few of these in Sunday school lately, Jesus is said to have told his disciples, “If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you.” But the teacher went on to warn, “If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.” I believe each of us is called by God to bring forth that which has been given to them, to bring forth that joy, that story, that song, that presence that we may have been reluctant to share. We care called by our Creator to bring forth that skill, that art, that talent which we may have been holding back. For this is what it means to be a good steward; and if we deny that which we should share, we deny the God who gave us these gifts to begin with.
Frederick Buechner writes, “the place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And so this morning I invite you to pause. As we commit ourselves to a new year of faithful stewardship, a new year of financial giving to meet the deep hungers of this community and the world, I ask you to consider one other question, what spiritual gifts are you willing to risk giving this year? What deep gladness lies buried within you that begs to be unearthed and shared with others? How brave will you dare to be in sharing yourself with your brothers and sisters? What risks do you promise to make to become necessary to someone in need? What are you being called to bring forth?
For what we are called to give today is more than just our money; we are called to give no less than our whole selves.
The poet Mary Oliver puts it more eloquently and boldly in her poem “Summer Day” when she asks, “Tell me what it is that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
The world is waiting. And it is hungry for what you have to offer. What wild and precious gift do you bring forth?
Amen.
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