Isaiah 49:1-16
Matthew 6: 22-31
In our prayers, we lifted up concern for Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the whole Southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Over the last many decades, each has solved the causes of infant mortality, where 4 put of every 5 birth died before age five. But with resolution of the deaths of infants, thirty and forty years later, the population began to adjust the number of children they were giving birth to. The result is a majority of the population under age 30 and ½ to ¾ of the population is unemployed. We prayed for the people of New Zealand whose homes and businesses and churches were destroyed by earth quake. We prayed for the Teachers and Legislators in Wisconsin, and across our Nation, struggling to honor the effects of past Collective Bargaining contracts, with limited tax revenues. We prayed for young adult children of this congregation, and the pastors of neighboring churches who have been affected by Cancer. And for one who is in Jail. Then we open the Gospel today, to a passage that says “BE NOT ANXIOUS!” How can we avoid anxiety! Through our choice of media, news services and the internet, we reinforce our perspective of what we know to be the answers, each of us becoming the world's experts on what we would do, as if we were God.
There are times when in preaching I feel like I am addressing myself, because I am a worrier. When in 9th grade I fret whether I could get the right combination of classes, so in 10th grade I could take the successive classes, to be able to take Driver's Ed. We worry and are anxious trying to control our fears.
You have to love the Gospel of Matthew, because he tries to apply the preaching and teaching and life of Jesus to both a formerly Jewish and Gentile now Christian congregation, tying together and making connections between everything that was said throughout the Old Testament and in the civil culture about who the Messiah is. In the midst of this, the evangelist inserts a pronoun to describe the community of believers, the church, he calls them “O Those of Little Faith.” Far different from a pejorative that says you could do better, what Matthew is identifying is this community does have faith, sincere and real faith in Christ, but like those still wet from baptism, those recently confirmed, what we have claimed is our desire to believe, and that faith is only one component in their lives. Those Of Little Faith need assurance and continual reminder of what we believe. This Gospel is a challenge to commitments, that rather than faith in God being one important element of our lives, what we do on Sunday morning: to choose to act in faith in all you do.
In essence the Gospel of Matthew is singing the old Revival Hymn “This Little Light of Mine, I'm Gonna Let It Shine,” he is taking that kernel of leaven that is the Gospel and kneading that ingredient throughout the whole loaf. Rather than a sermon about ANXIETY, what Matthew offers is ASSURANCE that we can CHOOSE TO MAKE A COMMITMENT. Matthew's Gospel is about what it is to be RIGHTEOUS, not Self-Righteous, not assuming we have a better or the true perspective others do not see. “RIGHTEOUS” according to Matthew is quite simply to re-orient our lives to be in right relationship with God. That right relationship being, to live wholly convinced that God is God, all our lives are in God's hands, we need not worry or be anxious, or try to dictate what others believe, rather we live trusting one another, trusting God.
Recently, I have had to learn all over again a basic truth of leadership and faith. In the midst of circumstance, it is difficult to gain perspective. It is easy enough to witness the different sides, to name the political and economic disparities within our Nation, and those throughout the world. It is easy to get drawn in and to take sides, or to try to rally leadership from the midst, but it cannot be done. It is easy when emotions and stressful experiences mount, for us to objectivize one another, not seeing ourselves as part of the problem or the solution. What we need instead, is to withdraw to a place apart, to gain the view from the balcony. It's difficult when you live in a place like Central New York to get the perspective of a time and place apart. As soon as you complete shoveling, there is more snow. When the snows are deep, you plan for ways to make the house more energy efficient, or to master your problems. But walking the shore, the sands extend in more grains than you could ever count, the waves lap at the shore, and as far out as you can see, on to the horizon, one suddenly realizes how insignificant they are and how little we can change or control.
The view from the Balcony is as described of Moses going up the Mountain “High and Lifted Up,” “set apart” so as to observe and gain perspective. What we often forget, is that in both Jesus going up the Mountain to pray, and Moses having done so, as often as they ascend they also come down again, because this is where the circumstance of life is worked out.
It intrigues me, that each of the previous Sanctuaries of this congregation had balconies, and this one never has. The first Sanctuary that is now the Baptist Church had a very steep balcony that wraps all the way around the three sides of the Nave. While the Sanctuary which originally stood on the site of this Church had a balcony that covered well over half the congregation below. Often the balcony is a most coveted spot, on mornings like this, it is always warmer the higher we go. But more, in the balcony, you feel as though an observer, distanced and removed, you watch what takes place without obstruction but are separate from what occurs down below. Instead, the change that has taken place in this Church in recent years is that we have gone from having the Pulpit elevated, and the choir cloistered in a box, to having the Sanctuary open and without impediment. When the choirs are leading, that other believers would take their seat in the congregation; when the choir is not leading that they are part of the congregation. When the children come forward that each feel comfortable sliding, crawling, being present at the table.
In addition to “Those of Little Faith,” Matthew's other odd phrase in this passage is “MAMMON.” Mammon was not a pagan God, it is neither good or bad, mammon is a thing, mammon is possession, mammon is acquisitions and accomplishments, mammon is accumulated wealth. The point of the Bible not translating the word mammon into the words “money” “wealth” or “property” is that it is like our capitalizing the phrase “The Almighty Dollar” it is not the mammon that is the problem, but the fear of what we have accumulated being put at risk. Here we have a choice between God and an idol, between God and that which is not God. So which will you serve. Easy enough for us to claim, we will serve God, but how often we choose to work extra hours to take on additional projects so as to provide for our families, rather than simply giving them our time and our selves.
The Bible has an implicit assumption: This life is not enough. This life and our knowledge of it, our control, are limited, we need to live our lives for something beyond ourselves, believing we can make a difference. Whether it is the soldier going off to liberate and defend. Whether it is the students protesting for democracy. Whether it is creating a business to provide what is needed. Whether it is confession that God is God and there is no other. All these are choices of what we make most important in our lives. Would that we could get the view from the balcony, of our own lives, to question when we are choosing out of anxiety to accumulate, fear of ever having enough, and when we choose to let tomorrow worry about itself, and today's own troubles be enough for today.
I said learned again, because when I was in Seminary, the Presbytery determined that a pastor should work on their anxiety and defensiveness, by serving as a Chaplain in a Hospital. The difficulty with anxiety, that our fears cause us to work harder, to try to control more. In a Hospital there is such a constant level of crisis, no one individual can master it. I was a Chaplain not just at any hospital, but at the Presbyterian Hospital in Harlem. As a Chaplain, one of the requirements is that a clergy person be present at every death, or crisis, so much like a nurse or doctor we carried a pager. I hated having the pager, because it seemed whenever I touched the thing it went off. I began to believe it was my presence that was causing the crises, within a single month we had 25 calls on my shift alone, sometimes while present at one crisis, another would occur. Suddenly you recognize that you cannot control life, you can control very little, all you can do is to provide that reassuring presence in the midst of a world of anxiety. As described by Yeats in our prayer earlier,”There are no words to take another's pain away. But we can bear witness to one another's sorrows and to each other's dreams, with a gentle presence; and live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even more passionate and fierce life, because of the resolute quiet.”
We have learned too well the image of the Good Shepherd caring for the flock, and of Jesus standing at the door knocking. We wait for God to seek us out and find us. There are times for each of us, when we believe as Israel did, that God has forgotten us. Visiting with a 90 year old, whose spouse died several years before, whose friends have passed, whose children are in their late 60s and 70s, who has seen so many changes. The question invariably is: Has God Forgotten Me here? What am I to do? Why am I here? Listening to those in their 20s and 30s there is a similar chorus, “What difference can I make?” How can I ever pay off school loans and hope to have a home, to marry to have kids? Is the dream no longer possible? Isaiah describes that God has a long and diverse memory, rather than God Growing Tired of Us, or Forgetting Us, or making it impossible for us to succeed, God allows us to live by freedom of Human Will, and periodically God begins again as God did with the Infant in the bullrushes and Pharaoh's daughter; as God did with the Nomads wandering in the wilderness for forty years; as God did with those scattered after the destruction of Jerusalem; as God did with Jesus in the Garden and on the Cross. That God reminds us of who we are and Whose we are, and ReCommissions us for a purpose. The point of acting in faith is accepting the opportunity to be a sharp arrow, to be a lamp to the world.
The charge I love, that recurs in Matthew is that You are a Light to the World, The eye is the lamp of the Body, bringing light into darkness with what you witness and see. It is not our light, that we shine, but rather God's light and what we know is our own darkness. So what is it you know better than anyone else in the world? Where is there darkness that you could provide illumination, or at least a different perspective? How can we help create a right-ness with God?
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
A Holy Social Network, February 20, 2011
Leviticus 19:1-19
Matthew 5:38-ff
This week someone sent me an email, that as I opened read “Hahaha you won't believe what this fool did. When will they realize, what you put out there lives forever, going directions you cannot control.” I thought little more of it, until about ten minutes later, I began receiving emails from one person after another who claimed to have received an email from me, reading “Hahaha, you won't believe what this fool did...” and that people on their email lists, had then received this email as coming from them.
Every few generations, we develop a new social network. Who are your friends, and who are your enemies. Who, even are your frienemies, those friends who you keep close for fear of what they might do; and how we relate to each. In ancient Israel, long before the time of Kings David or Solomon, immediately after the exodus as slaves from Egypt, Moses addressed the people, defining by LAW, the Social Network. The LORD God is holy. The LORD God loves all God's Creation. The LORD God created humanity, as set apart among God's creation, to care for God's creation. Among all humanity, out of all creation, God chose this people, setting you apart to be a people of faith. Be holy. AND among the Nation, The LORD God chose you to minister, to be a people of faith in the midst of God's faithful people. Be holy.
Being HOLY, does not require wearing a halo, acting pious, accepting to live by poverty or chastity, to live as a happy person unaffected by tragedy, or to wear a dour expression without being moved by joy. Being Holy, is a claim of faith; that life did not just accidentally happen. Your being, is neither an accident, nor fate, nor a curse. There is a God, set apart from this world, and yet who cares, who loves, and has power over this world. God cares so deeply as to make every snowflake falling from the sky unique; creating everything for its own purpose. God set apart humanity, as those who use creation's elements to create, fashioning whole new worlds and possibilities from what God has given us. To be HOLY is to be SET APART by God for a purpose. Generation after generation there have been grave concerns over whether we called ourselves a Nation Under God, a religious people, some have even wanted to say a Christian Nation; even in the book Leviticus, I do not see evidence of this coming from God, but there is the requirement that we would be Holy: loving God, loving life, and loving others as we love our own life.
People have postulated all sorts of origins for the Golden Rule, that You love your neighbor as you love yourself. That Law is named here in Leviticus, and made explicit in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, by instructing that we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The point being that when we hate, when we fear, when in our minds and hearts we make others our enemies, we objectivize them “They,” take on all the negative elements of our hate, even the shadow of ourselves. In our minds and hearts we make “them” a construct of what we do not like about ourselves. This makes the other not us, but what remains as ours is our hate, our fear, our anger, which works upon and worries upon us, until we are worn out. Instead, what Jesus instructs is that we would work at loving our enemies, replace the hate, the anger, the fear, with a desire that they would be forgiven and let the love, the desire for their forgiveness work upon us.
Just like pushing the “Open File” on an email we do not know the content of, we need to understand the culture and context of Jesus' illustrations. The Old Testament Law of “An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, was not a requirement that if someone hurt you you had responsibility to hurt them, NO. But rather, this was a limitation of force, that should someone cause you harm, even the blindness of an eye or the loss of a tooth, you could not kill them, or harm their children, the limit of vengeance in that Social Order was no greater than an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth.
YET, while not changing the Law, what Jesus described undercuts this, by shifting the SOCIAL ORDER that we not resist the other. In the Social Order of “Class structure” in the Roman World, there was created a distinction between better and worse, between rich and poor, between what is hard and soft, between external and internal. The Left Hand was used for personal hygiene, was covered and not extended publicly. As such, to be struck on the right cheek, was to be struck with the back of the hand; not just wounded, but also insulted, for one used the back of the hand to strike down in anger, or for one who was of lower esteem to acknowledge one who was greater by kissing the back of the hand. Where as the front of the hand was for a caress or the embrace of a trusting agreement. SO as means of challenging the Social Order to be HOLY, to not resist, the instruction that if one struck you with the back of the hand on your right cheek, turn to offer the left as well, required that that they had to demonstrate intimacy to you.
The HOLY SOCIAL NETWORK described in Leviticus, is that none of us are whole unto ourselves. Our identity as HOLY is in relationship to God, but also in how we relate to those in need, those with whom we work, and with our peers. Being HOLY, living our lives as a SOCIAL NETWORK with God, required that those who have received blessings provide for those without. All of this sounds much like the 10 Commandments, preventing lying, cheating, stealing, coveting and murder, yet also explicit here is instruction that we not delay in paying another their due. How easily, if we count our profit before repaying others, we count everything as our own and become jealous of having to pay out of our possession to others.
Jesus' Sermon describes “So if you are in a time of worship, and presenting yourself before God, and there remember that your brother has something against you, go first reconcile yourself, then present your gifts at the altar of the Lord.” There is a subtlety here. We expect Jesus to have said, “If you discover you have something against your brother,” but instead it is “if you discover your brother has something against you.” We have a mandate to make the first step, to reach out to those who might have reason to be angry with us.
This last line of Chapter 5 in Matthew's Gospel gives us all difficulty: “You must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Ouch. Do any of us fill that? Actually, this is what Matthew wrote, but slightly different from what Jesus could have said, because Aramaic never had the word “perfect”. Perfection was a GREEK ideal, which Matthew in presenting the Gospel to his social network accepted as an appropriate equivalent. What it appears Jesus would have said was “shalem” or “tamin” the sense of which is to be “whole,” “integrated,” “complete,” “committed as finished,” “resolute.” The meaning of which is like the Law of Leviticus, “Be Holy, because God is Holy.”
Years ago, I knew a man who late in life came to realize some pretty horrible things about himself. Struggling, he asked, “With the sins I have done, with all the wrongs I have committed, is it possible God could forgive me?” The answer I know is not that you have to have been perfect to be forgiven, but that God so loved the world that God gave God's only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but be welcomed into everlasting life. That forgiveness is not just for the problems between us as children, but for all the sins of al the world.
How different this life might be, if we owned our anger,
if we saw this life as Holy as God is holy,
if we recognized a bit of ourselves in others,
if we treated others not as those who are not for us must be against us, but rather treating our neighbor as ourselves.
If we lived a HOLY SOCIAL NETWORK.
Matthew 5:38-ff
This week someone sent me an email, that as I opened read “Hahaha you won't believe what this fool did. When will they realize, what you put out there lives forever, going directions you cannot control.” I thought little more of it, until about ten minutes later, I began receiving emails from one person after another who claimed to have received an email from me, reading “Hahaha, you won't believe what this fool did...” and that people on their email lists, had then received this email as coming from them.
Every few generations, we develop a new social network. Who are your friends, and who are your enemies. Who, even are your frienemies, those friends who you keep close for fear of what they might do; and how we relate to each. In ancient Israel, long before the time of Kings David or Solomon, immediately after the exodus as slaves from Egypt, Moses addressed the people, defining by LAW, the Social Network. The LORD God is holy. The LORD God loves all God's Creation. The LORD God created humanity, as set apart among God's creation, to care for God's creation. Among all humanity, out of all creation, God chose this people, setting you apart to be a people of faith. Be holy. AND among the Nation, The LORD God chose you to minister, to be a people of faith in the midst of God's faithful people. Be holy.
Being HOLY, does not require wearing a halo, acting pious, accepting to live by poverty or chastity, to live as a happy person unaffected by tragedy, or to wear a dour expression without being moved by joy. Being Holy, is a claim of faith; that life did not just accidentally happen. Your being, is neither an accident, nor fate, nor a curse. There is a God, set apart from this world, and yet who cares, who loves, and has power over this world. God cares so deeply as to make every snowflake falling from the sky unique; creating everything for its own purpose. God set apart humanity, as those who use creation's elements to create, fashioning whole new worlds and possibilities from what God has given us. To be HOLY is to be SET APART by God for a purpose. Generation after generation there have been grave concerns over whether we called ourselves a Nation Under God, a religious people, some have even wanted to say a Christian Nation; even in the book Leviticus, I do not see evidence of this coming from God, but there is the requirement that we would be Holy: loving God, loving life, and loving others as we love our own life.
People have postulated all sorts of origins for the Golden Rule, that You love your neighbor as you love yourself. That Law is named here in Leviticus, and made explicit in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, by instructing that we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The point being that when we hate, when we fear, when in our minds and hearts we make others our enemies, we objectivize them “They,” take on all the negative elements of our hate, even the shadow of ourselves. In our minds and hearts we make “them” a construct of what we do not like about ourselves. This makes the other not us, but what remains as ours is our hate, our fear, our anger, which works upon and worries upon us, until we are worn out. Instead, what Jesus instructs is that we would work at loving our enemies, replace the hate, the anger, the fear, with a desire that they would be forgiven and let the love, the desire for their forgiveness work upon us.
Just like pushing the “Open File” on an email we do not know the content of, we need to understand the culture and context of Jesus' illustrations. The Old Testament Law of “An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, was not a requirement that if someone hurt you you had responsibility to hurt them, NO. But rather, this was a limitation of force, that should someone cause you harm, even the blindness of an eye or the loss of a tooth, you could not kill them, or harm their children, the limit of vengeance in that Social Order was no greater than an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth.
YET, while not changing the Law, what Jesus described undercuts this, by shifting the SOCIAL ORDER that we not resist the other. In the Social Order of “Class structure” in the Roman World, there was created a distinction between better and worse, between rich and poor, between what is hard and soft, between external and internal. The Left Hand was used for personal hygiene, was covered and not extended publicly. As such, to be struck on the right cheek, was to be struck with the back of the hand; not just wounded, but also insulted, for one used the back of the hand to strike down in anger, or for one who was of lower esteem to acknowledge one who was greater by kissing the back of the hand. Where as the front of the hand was for a caress or the embrace of a trusting agreement. SO as means of challenging the Social Order to be HOLY, to not resist, the instruction that if one struck you with the back of the hand on your right cheek, turn to offer the left as well, required that that they had to demonstrate intimacy to you.
The HOLY SOCIAL NETWORK described in Leviticus, is that none of us are whole unto ourselves. Our identity as HOLY is in relationship to God, but also in how we relate to those in need, those with whom we work, and with our peers. Being HOLY, living our lives as a SOCIAL NETWORK with God, required that those who have received blessings provide for those without. All of this sounds much like the 10 Commandments, preventing lying, cheating, stealing, coveting and murder, yet also explicit here is instruction that we not delay in paying another their due. How easily, if we count our profit before repaying others, we count everything as our own and become jealous of having to pay out of our possession to others.
Jesus' Sermon describes “So if you are in a time of worship, and presenting yourself before God, and there remember that your brother has something against you, go first reconcile yourself, then present your gifts at the altar of the Lord.” There is a subtlety here. We expect Jesus to have said, “If you discover you have something against your brother,” but instead it is “if you discover your brother has something against you.” We have a mandate to make the first step, to reach out to those who might have reason to be angry with us.
This last line of Chapter 5 in Matthew's Gospel gives us all difficulty: “You must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Ouch. Do any of us fill that? Actually, this is what Matthew wrote, but slightly different from what Jesus could have said, because Aramaic never had the word “perfect”. Perfection was a GREEK ideal, which Matthew in presenting the Gospel to his social network accepted as an appropriate equivalent. What it appears Jesus would have said was “shalem” or “tamin” the sense of which is to be “whole,” “integrated,” “complete,” “committed as finished,” “resolute.” The meaning of which is like the Law of Leviticus, “Be Holy, because God is Holy.”
Years ago, I knew a man who late in life came to realize some pretty horrible things about himself. Struggling, he asked, “With the sins I have done, with all the wrongs I have committed, is it possible God could forgive me?” The answer I know is not that you have to have been perfect to be forgiven, but that God so loved the world that God gave God's only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but be welcomed into everlasting life. That forgiveness is not just for the problems between us as children, but for all the sins of al the world.
How different this life might be, if we owned our anger,
if we saw this life as Holy as God is holy,
if we recognized a bit of ourselves in others,
if we treated others not as those who are not for us must be against us, but rather treating our neighbor as ourselves.
If we lived a HOLY SOCIAL NETWORK.
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