Genesis 30: 25-43
Matthew 13: 31-35 & 44-52
Years ago, when my bride and I first married, we had very little. We lived in a Studio apartment on the Upper Westside of Harlem in Manhattan as I went to Seminary and she to Grad School. As wedding gifts her grandparents had refinished a table and chairs for us, and our most precious possession was a noisy, metal, 20 year old used window air conditioner from her uncle. Routinely, in each week's trash we would find a broken chair, a trunk painted the wrong color, and we carried these back to refinish and furnish our home. When we graduated and went to the first church, the movers said “Now all these antiques need to be insured.” Over 30 years, with two children now grown, we have accumulated a lot of stuff, and periodically we want to bring everything out, new and old, discerning what is really needed. The same is true in faith, except perhaps what is brought out of our faith is more obscure.
Parables... Guilt... Forgiveness... Predestination... Rights of a first born... Let my people Go... A 2000 year old weapon of execution... Conversion... Salvation... How do we bring out into the open, all that we have hidden and accumulated, in order to discern what we truly believe in? Recently, I learned a wonderful interpretation of “Predestination” having nothing to do with circumstances being fore-ordained, with damnation or election, but that Predestination is the response of those who do believe that who they are and what they experience in life is a gift from God. As opposed to “The Devil Made me Do It,” or “Being a Victim of Society,” or simply “Bad luck,” to intentionally claim “You are Blessed by God.”
Some of us grew up Catholic, must they throw away the Holy Rosary; some began life Jewish must they abandon the Table fellowship of the Seder and the saying of prayers to worship; Christian denominations separated 5-800 years ago are there still pieces of value that separate us, or do we cling to being separate from others? While many of us grew up as Presbyterian or Episcopalian, Baptist and Orthodox, it seems the fastest growing most prevalent faith today is what is described as “Shiela-ism.” You won't find the times of worship services for Shiela-ism listed in the newspaper, on-line or on a sign board. Shiela-ism, is Shiela or Steve or Sally deciding for themselves what they think is going to be important, making it up as they go along.
There are three primary differences in Shiela-ism and Presbyterianism. First, because Steve-ism is going to be different from Sheila-ism, Shiela-ism only has room for one, each of us individually going about life trying to make sense for ourselves. Second, because Shiela-ism is focused only on what we choose to believe, there is not even room for God, and we believe and worship only ourselves. Third, that having no one and nothing, not even God to relate to, we obsess and fill ourselves with guilt, crazy ideas others would have been able to challenge or to share, or to forgive us for ages ago, but we made ourselves the center of our identity and faith, without the ability to be forgiven or to know we are loved. Funny how much we worry about the estimated value of our homes, how much we try to effect the curb-appeal, when the value is only realized when we sell our home to move on; yet our faith in God, our ethics and values of what is really important go hidden gathering dust, until crises arise, and suddenly we desperately want prayer to work for us, suddenly we want to find the faith we used to have.
Faith is not about having occupied a pew for an hour each week, not about knowing when to stand up or how loudly we sing, not even guilt over how few Bible verses we memorized. Faith is what gives your life meaning and purpose, what would you live and die for? Part of the reason for a disconnect between that generation that fought WWII and the Generation who matured in the 1960s and 70s and between that generation and those fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq today, has been whether we knew we had something to believe in, whether we believe in our band of brothers, or whether cynically, we questioned if there was anything worth believing in. What would it be, to be working at our jobs as routine as plowing a field back and forth all day every day, when suddenly you find a buried treasure? The parable questions, would you pocket what you found, always concerned someone would contest your having it, or would you go about proving your right and ownership before claiming the prize. The underlying question however is what would it be to find a treasure in the midst of daily routine? Something worth selling everything else, risking everything, to be part of.
The ancient story of Genesis is marvelous. For while it is external, following the misadventures of all the generations of the dysfunctional family of Abraham, there are pearls here for each of us.
The story of Jacob, begins with Isaac and his wife Rebekkah playing favorites between their twin sons. Isaac loves Esau who is all boy, a hunter and fisher, an outdoorsman. Rebekkah loves Jacob, Mom's boy who helps her and takes care of whatever she needs.Through their children, Isaac and Rebekkah play out their relationship, and try to win, over each other as to who is more important, who is right. Jacob, the younger twin, the favorite of his mother, tricks his brother, deceives their father and having gotten the better of everyone has no place safe once he has won, so runs away.
Jacob returns to the land where his grandfather Abraham had grown up, goes to his mother Rebekkah's family, to Rebekkah's brother Laban. And what do expect is going to happen? Rebekkah and Isaac did not invent their relationship out of thin air, their relationship was modeled after that of their families, so right away Jacob and the extended community are contesting for who will dominate, who will win. There is a custom that everyone wait until all the sheep are brought in, and together the shepherds roll away the rock to water the flocks. In a feat of strength, challenging cultural norms and concerned only with his own success, Jacob rolls the boulder away to water the flocks of Laban's daughter Rachel. Jacob the trickster, the deceiver, now gets tricked by his uncle Laban into marrying Leah the first born as well as Rachel the wife he prefers and committing to 14 years of free labor. There is no thought to Leah's feelings, or to Rachel's, Laban like Jacob seems to see people as objects to be manipulated, possessions to be used.
Our passage this morning comes after Jacob has worked for Laban for nearly 20 years. He has two wives, and their maids, 11 sons and a daughter , the youngest of which is his favorite Rachel's first-born Joseph. With Joseph having been born, Jacob wishes to return to the promised land, but Laban does not want him to go. Laban knows that he has prospered by having Jacob work for him, so when push comes to shove offers to pay Jacob. Each one tries to manipulate and trick the other, without revealing to the other what they are really about.
How difficult to read this passage this week, as the leaders of our government contest over the Debt. Hopefully, we will not offend anyone's politics by naming what may have been hidden, that what drives the debate is not concern over the National Debt, over what will happen to our economy and future. One side wants to protect the entitlement of those who worked for and accumulated their wealth. The other side wants to protect the entitlement of programs for the marginalized. Both want to protect the wants of their constituents, both want to be re-elected, and both sides want to win by whatever means. Not far different from Laban and Jacob in their game of breeding and hiding flocks.
The contest between Jacob and Laban is finally settled by Jacob's wives, Laban's daughters who saddle their camels and making ready to leave. Returning both men to what this was really all about, Laban letting Jacob's people go, a phrase that would be echoed in future generations between Moses and Pharaoh. Yet, even then, the daughters as members of this family trick their father one last time.
Would that in the midst of this current debate, someone would question the intrinsic meaning of our DEBTS, and whether we really believe the words of Our Lord's Prayer. That we turn to God asking for daily bread, and asking that our Debts would be forgiven as we forgive our Debtors. Perhaps in that way, rather than this being an 11th hour political fight between parties, we would consider our value system, and International Debts between nations who can never repay the principle let alone compounded interest.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
"Thin Places" July 17, 2011
Genesis 28:10-ff
Luke 8:26-ff
In Ireland, they have a name for places like where Jacob slept and dreamed of the Ladder between Heaven and Earth, places like where the one whose identity was Mob/ Legion/ Demoniac met Jesus. They call these “THIN PLACES,” locations where the separation between heaven and earth are thin.
In our Feng Shui, Martha Stewart obsessed desire for perfection, we imagine places where we would meet God as being perfection. Where grass would not crunch beneath our steps from dryness, gardens would be immaculate without a weed, woodland creatures would be called Flower and Thumper, and rather than the sound of traffic, we would hear the rhythm of wind through leaves and the melody of water spilling over a brook. But the Bible is not pristine and composed, those who have shared their faith here know that life is messy and often times brutal. Thin Places more often are desolate, harsh, places of banishment where uncontrolled persons would be put away as if dead. Both passages this week are of these Thin Places, Places of Banishment, Places where Heaven and Earth meet, where we most often encounter God.
In order to receive what is here, we need to grasp what it is to be banished. In our Family Systems, our sense of Normal, when there is that which is a violation, abhorrent, something we cannot accept or tolerate, we execute a Cut-Off, we Banish. In a time in human societies when union between people of the same sex is legalized, when dictators are overthrown without being put to death, it is hard to imagine that only a generation ago for a Catholic to marry a Protestant would have been grounds for the family to never speak to their son or daughter again. Quite possibly, while televised coverage and the legalization of human rights have created safeties, prejudice and hostility are the more dangerous because they are less visible, more subversive. When Isaac realized that Jacob had tricked his Father into giving Jacob everything, when Esau knew that his own brother Jacob had stolen the blessings of his inheritance from his father, Isaac sent Jacob away.
In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is banished for the accidental killing of Juliet's cousin. Romeo describes that to be banished is worse than the punishment of Execution; to be kept alive, but sent away from everyone and everything you love, never to be able to go home, never again to embrace or simply be with your family, never again to do what is normal what was taken for granted. Imagine a family genealogy, in which there are those whom the family does not claim as being one of us.
By stealing the birthright, by claiming what was not his, by tricking everyone, Jacob has cut himself off and now as one without Country, without Family, without place or heir, he wanders through a place unknown, and exhausted lays down to sleep. We have to be careful in interpreting Holy Scripture from our contemporary understandings. We read of a son who was loved by his mother more than she loved anyone else, and we jump to Sigmund Freud; we read of Jacob having a dream of God and having been influenced by Carl Jung we look for Symbols and Archetypes behind every image. Before we suggest electro-shock therapy or lythium for the one Jesus encountered, we need to accept the importance of what is described to people of faith in their own time. This dream was not a working out of Jacob's oedipal complex. This dream was not a desire to kill his father. This dream Jacob saw as an encounter with God, as real and tangible as Moses' Burning Bush, or the parting of the Red Sea, or Isaiah having his unclean lips cauterized by a flying Seraphim. The importance of this being a Dream is simply that Jac ob could no longer control and manipulate outcomes. This is who Jacob had been, he manipulated his brother into selling his birthrights, he controlled and manipulated his father into giving him the family blessing and promise, but in our dreams we are witnesses not manipulators in control.
What Jacob witnessed, when he was not in control, is that rather than God being the Judge he anticipated, sitting in a far off Heaven, Earth and Heaven are connected. Not only is there a web of ladders connecting us, but as isolated and cut-off as he was, still God was present with him. In essence, by his trickery and manipulation, by the sins of his life, Jacob had created for himself the identity God knew Abraham and Isaac to have had. Read in this way, I am not certain Abraham or Isaac had ever claimed in their own identity that they were without Nation, without Family, without Home, without … because they had had the Promise, they were with God. What Jacob witnessed was the reality of the Incarnation, GOD IS WITH US, even when Banished, cut off, isolated and absolutely alone, without the ability to communicate or make connections, still God is with us.
In this dream, God vows three things: God re-establishes the PROMISE given to Abraham, and the INCARNATION that eventually would be promised in Jesus Christ that the Lord would be with us, but ALSO Jacob is given Hope in a future HOMECOMING. The Banished, Those in Exile, The Lost would eventually be redeemed. There is a subtlety here, that Almighty God, Eternal and Everlasting Creator, Redeemer and Judge, vows all this to Jacob, and in reply Jacob says IF, IF you will, then I vow. Imagine on your Wedding Day being invited to share your vows of Commitment, Fidelity and Loyalty and Love, and in response to the other professing For Better and Worse, Richer and Poorer, In Sickness and in Health AS LONG as we both shall ever live, you respond IF YOU DO, THEN I WILL. A Vow is not a contract, not even a Sacred promise or Covenant. A Vow is a YIELDING of our Self, rather than claiming our wants or our needs, or our desires, rather than seizing the day, and going for the gusto, a vow places ourself in relationship to fulfillment of the other's needs and wants.
The one Jesus encounters, on the other side, no longer is claimed as a human being, in his raging, in his torment, his family, friends, neighbors have found the only means they thought they could of coping. They chained him to the tombs of the dead. This is a scene filled with images. He is dead to them. Like Eve and Adam after being found sinful, he is Naked and knows he is Mortal, Sinful and LOST from God. But Jesus does not banish this one. Jesus sits down with him, treating him as a man. Ironically, here we have tried to describe him as “One” rather than The Person, or The Man, because his Town and Village and Family no longer claim him as being a person, a human being, and yet when asked his identity, this one claims so many voices in head that he is a MOB, a Military Legion of Rome WARRING inside him. The difficulty of Mental Illness is that it would be far easier if like this one, the person knew and claimed the desire to yield, but instead when a person is raging they want the rest of the world to change to fit them. Increasingly, I think our whole world is ill believing everyone and everything can be manipulated and controlled and made to fit our individual realities. The Rupert Murdocks and Bernie Madoffs, truly believe they have done nothing wrong, they each have created ethical constructs in which they are the center of their world, they are God and there can be no other. The most difficult part of this story, is not that the Savior healed this man, but that the town and village and his family preferred he had stayed as he was, because they knew how to respond to that. Accepting him as a Man, yielding to trust him again as a whole person, especially when the cure had cost them the sacrifice of a whole herd of livestock is a risk.
But the THIN PLACES of life, the SANCTUARIES are not Ivory Towers with Majestic Pipe Organs. In another church, in an earlier time, we had a man come to worship one day, saying that years ago he and his wife had lived in this community. He had devoted himself to his business and had no time for anything else. Now he was retired and she had passed, their children had their own lives. SO he wanted to make a gift to the Church. Seeing the Sanctuary had solid Oak Pews, he volunteered to donate the upholstering of cushions to make the pews more comfortable. It took the congregation 6 months and the appointing of two committees to decide to accept the gift, because they were not certain they should be comfortable in the Sanctuary, they sort of appreciated the discomfort of the hard Oak Pews.
The hardest part of REDEMPTION, the HOMECOMING promised to Jacob, is letting go our “IF-s” and choosing that we can yield to the wants and needs and desires of Vows to others.
Luke 8:26-ff
In Ireland, they have a name for places like where Jacob slept and dreamed of the Ladder between Heaven and Earth, places like where the one whose identity was Mob/ Legion/ Demoniac met Jesus. They call these “THIN PLACES,” locations where the separation between heaven and earth are thin.
In our Feng Shui, Martha Stewart obsessed desire for perfection, we imagine places where we would meet God as being perfection. Where grass would not crunch beneath our steps from dryness, gardens would be immaculate without a weed, woodland creatures would be called Flower and Thumper, and rather than the sound of traffic, we would hear the rhythm of wind through leaves and the melody of water spilling over a brook. But the Bible is not pristine and composed, those who have shared their faith here know that life is messy and often times brutal. Thin Places more often are desolate, harsh, places of banishment where uncontrolled persons would be put away as if dead. Both passages this week are of these Thin Places, Places of Banishment, Places where Heaven and Earth meet, where we most often encounter God.
In order to receive what is here, we need to grasp what it is to be banished. In our Family Systems, our sense of Normal, when there is that which is a violation, abhorrent, something we cannot accept or tolerate, we execute a Cut-Off, we Banish. In a time in human societies when union between people of the same sex is legalized, when dictators are overthrown without being put to death, it is hard to imagine that only a generation ago for a Catholic to marry a Protestant would have been grounds for the family to never speak to their son or daughter again. Quite possibly, while televised coverage and the legalization of human rights have created safeties, prejudice and hostility are the more dangerous because they are less visible, more subversive. When Isaac realized that Jacob had tricked his Father into giving Jacob everything, when Esau knew that his own brother Jacob had stolen the blessings of his inheritance from his father, Isaac sent Jacob away.
In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is banished for the accidental killing of Juliet's cousin. Romeo describes that to be banished is worse than the punishment of Execution; to be kept alive, but sent away from everyone and everything you love, never to be able to go home, never again to embrace or simply be with your family, never again to do what is normal what was taken for granted. Imagine a family genealogy, in which there are those whom the family does not claim as being one of us.
By stealing the birthright, by claiming what was not his, by tricking everyone, Jacob has cut himself off and now as one without Country, without Family, without place or heir, he wanders through a place unknown, and exhausted lays down to sleep. We have to be careful in interpreting Holy Scripture from our contemporary understandings. We read of a son who was loved by his mother more than she loved anyone else, and we jump to Sigmund Freud; we read of Jacob having a dream of God and having been influenced by Carl Jung we look for Symbols and Archetypes behind every image. Before we suggest electro-shock therapy or lythium for the one Jesus encountered, we need to accept the importance of what is described to people of faith in their own time. This dream was not a working out of Jacob's oedipal complex. This dream was not a desire to kill his father. This dream Jacob saw as an encounter with God, as real and tangible as Moses' Burning Bush, or the parting of the Red Sea, or Isaiah having his unclean lips cauterized by a flying Seraphim. The importance of this being a Dream is simply that Jac ob could no longer control and manipulate outcomes. This is who Jacob had been, he manipulated his brother into selling his birthrights, he controlled and manipulated his father into giving him the family blessing and promise, but in our dreams we are witnesses not manipulators in control.
What Jacob witnessed, when he was not in control, is that rather than God being the Judge he anticipated, sitting in a far off Heaven, Earth and Heaven are connected. Not only is there a web of ladders connecting us, but as isolated and cut-off as he was, still God was present with him. In essence, by his trickery and manipulation, by the sins of his life, Jacob had created for himself the identity God knew Abraham and Isaac to have had. Read in this way, I am not certain Abraham or Isaac had ever claimed in their own identity that they were without Nation, without Family, without Home, without … because they had had the Promise, they were with God. What Jacob witnessed was the reality of the Incarnation, GOD IS WITH US, even when Banished, cut off, isolated and absolutely alone, without the ability to communicate or make connections, still God is with us.
In this dream, God vows three things: God re-establishes the PROMISE given to Abraham, and the INCARNATION that eventually would be promised in Jesus Christ that the Lord would be with us, but ALSO Jacob is given Hope in a future HOMECOMING. The Banished, Those in Exile, The Lost would eventually be redeemed. There is a subtlety here, that Almighty God, Eternal and Everlasting Creator, Redeemer and Judge, vows all this to Jacob, and in reply Jacob says IF, IF you will, then I vow. Imagine on your Wedding Day being invited to share your vows of Commitment, Fidelity and Loyalty and Love, and in response to the other professing For Better and Worse, Richer and Poorer, In Sickness and in Health AS LONG as we both shall ever live, you respond IF YOU DO, THEN I WILL. A Vow is not a contract, not even a Sacred promise or Covenant. A Vow is a YIELDING of our Self, rather than claiming our wants or our needs, or our desires, rather than seizing the day, and going for the gusto, a vow places ourself in relationship to fulfillment of the other's needs and wants.
The one Jesus encounters, on the other side, no longer is claimed as a human being, in his raging, in his torment, his family, friends, neighbors have found the only means they thought they could of coping. They chained him to the tombs of the dead. This is a scene filled with images. He is dead to them. Like Eve and Adam after being found sinful, he is Naked and knows he is Mortal, Sinful and LOST from God. But Jesus does not banish this one. Jesus sits down with him, treating him as a man. Ironically, here we have tried to describe him as “One” rather than The Person, or The Man, because his Town and Village and Family no longer claim him as being a person, a human being, and yet when asked his identity, this one claims so many voices in head that he is a MOB, a Military Legion of Rome WARRING inside him. The difficulty of Mental Illness is that it would be far easier if like this one, the person knew and claimed the desire to yield, but instead when a person is raging they want the rest of the world to change to fit them. Increasingly, I think our whole world is ill believing everyone and everything can be manipulated and controlled and made to fit our individual realities. The Rupert Murdocks and Bernie Madoffs, truly believe they have done nothing wrong, they each have created ethical constructs in which they are the center of their world, they are God and there can be no other. The most difficult part of this story, is not that the Savior healed this man, but that the town and village and his family preferred he had stayed as he was, because they knew how to respond to that. Accepting him as a Man, yielding to trust him again as a whole person, especially when the cure had cost them the sacrifice of a whole herd of livestock is a risk.
But the THIN PLACES of life, the SANCTUARIES are not Ivory Towers with Majestic Pipe Organs. In another church, in an earlier time, we had a man come to worship one day, saying that years ago he and his wife had lived in this community. He had devoted himself to his business and had no time for anything else. Now he was retired and she had passed, their children had their own lives. SO he wanted to make a gift to the Church. Seeing the Sanctuary had solid Oak Pews, he volunteered to donate the upholstering of cushions to make the pews more comfortable. It took the congregation 6 months and the appointing of two committees to decide to accept the gift, because they were not certain they should be comfortable in the Sanctuary, they sort of appreciated the discomfort of the hard Oak Pews.
The hardest part of REDEMPTION, the HOMECOMING promised to Jacob, is letting go our “IF-s” and choosing that we can yield to the wants and needs and desires of Vows to others.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
July 10, 2011, "The Seeds that Change the Soil"
Genesis 25:19-34
Matthew 13: 1-9 & 18-23
The Parable of the Sower has been told and retold, to where even Matthew has made the telling an allegory, with a static meaning. The Trodden Path is this, the Birds refers to that, the Good Soil is what we all desire to be. But what Jesus taught was not an allegory with one singular static meaning, he shared a parable. The beauty of a parable is that it can be examined for ever fresh understandings, which because of our vantage point, our blinders, our historic perspective may have previously been limited to only particular understandings.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about understanding the Sower whom we are to emulate, or the seed, or the differing kinds of soil, or...
What has always been surprising, has been Jesus immediate description about the Sower. The Sower does not discriminate between good soil and hard or broken soil. The Sower does not treat the seed as a limited expensive commodity, but rather lavishes all the earth with a blanket of seed. How often, we treat acts of God, acts of Grace, Blessings, Good things as a rare occasion!
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point the parable could be about the miraculous abundance of the seed. Ordinarily a seed of wheat is planted, and every stalk has the potential of growing 30, 60, even 80 kernels. Some of the seed does not germinate, some does not grow, some is carried off and consumed, some choked out by weeds. So the yield of the wheat is decreased as well. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 30 would have enough to feed their family for a year. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 60 would be able to feed and care for their entire Village. But this seed the Sower sows yields 100 fold, without waste or loss.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about the power of the seed sown by the sower to change the world even hard rock. The Sower does not carefully cultivate and furrow the soil for every seed to have the optimum opportunity to yield. The Sower does not get down on their hands and knees planting individual seeds of grace. The Sower lavishes the seed upon the ground like water, as if the seed were to change the earth, rather than the earth providing nutrients to the seed. But what if that is the way of the world? A tiny seed, when planted, has the force and power to break open, sending forth microscopic hairlike tendrils, which enter the crevices and cracks between particles. The tiny tendrils then grow and swell becoming larger, and in this way break open rock.
Years ago, in another community, a child murdered both of his parents. He was sent to a Federal prison for children. I had never before known such a hard steel place of brokenness and despair. I recall driving through gates high electric fences the tops and gates with razor wire. Coming inside, you needed to empty everything from the outside into a locker, taking off belts and shoes as well. When your number was called upon, standing before a guard who opened your mouth and physically searched you. Then a door slid open in a steel wall as the guard said “Step inside.” The door slid shut and loudly clanked locked, five seconds went by before the door on the other side slid open and after you stepped through, slid shut with a metallic locking sound. At which point you were guided through a series of corridors and cell blocks. The children were each in a locked cell, with a small opening like a mail-slot about three feet from the ground. Hands reached out, eyes peered through. What I recall was the deafening silence of being surrounded by so many children not talking. At one point I remember saying to one pair of eyes “God loves you.” The words were like seed of God falling on hard steel and rock.
Last evening, a child in our community drowned and I went to Children's Hospital with the family. It was surreal, to be surrounded by room after room of children, children who I thought should be playing, reading, singing, laughing and instead were dying, suffering. It was broken hard soil where it would be easy to lose faith.
Sometimes, the hard soil, the impermeable rock is not places like prisons or hospitals, but our family systems. Each of our families behave in the ways they do because these are the only ways their parents and ancestors knew. We repeat the family systems, making the same mistakes over and over, becoming more and more intractable, harder and harder. What would it be to have a Seed of God planted?
That is the story of Jacob and Esau. Though twins, Esau was the first born and should have inherited everything. But favoritism took place, election occurred. While Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, himself the heir and fulfillment of the Promise of God, loved Esau, Rebekah loved Jacob. And God entered in giving the Promise to jacob instead of the first born. That election, that claiming by God, disrupted everything; the conflict disrupted the family. Everything about Genesis changes because Jacob receives the seed, the blessing of promise.
My own children contacted me recently to say, Dad we have watched and observed you, and in many ways we behave exactly like you. We no longer want to be treated as just your children, we want to be your confidants, your trusted colleagues, your adult children and friends. How hard it is for us to change behavior, to change our systems, to change what we have always known, and witness that the seeds of change change us as well!
This has become a Church guided by Mission. While we have a strong music program and a strong educational program, we live as a missional church. The wonderful nature of this, is that while in mission we have tried to care for others, to give to others, we have been changed by mission. This morning the Chancel of the Church is knee deep in a wall of 3500 pair of shoes, our giving of our excess to those who have none. In the process we develop different relationships with one another, we soften and yield and come to know and trust each other in ways we never would have before. Mission is not simply about writing a check, or volunteering, not only about work overseas and around the corner in our neighborhood, but the “soil of our being” being changed.
Matthew 13: 1-9 & 18-23
The Parable of the Sower has been told and retold, to where even Matthew has made the telling an allegory, with a static meaning. The Trodden Path is this, the Birds refers to that, the Good Soil is what we all desire to be. But what Jesus taught was not an allegory with one singular static meaning, he shared a parable. The beauty of a parable is that it can be examined for ever fresh understandings, which because of our vantage point, our blinders, our historic perspective may have previously been limited to only particular understandings.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about understanding the Sower whom we are to emulate, or the seed, or the differing kinds of soil, or...
What has always been surprising, has been Jesus immediate description about the Sower. The Sower does not discriminate between good soil and hard or broken soil. The Sower does not treat the seed as a limited expensive commodity, but rather lavishes all the earth with a blanket of seed. How often, we treat acts of God, acts of Grace, Blessings, Good things as a rare occasion!
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point the parable could be about the miraculous abundance of the seed. Ordinarily a seed of wheat is planted, and every stalk has the potential of growing 30, 60, even 80 kernels. Some of the seed does not germinate, some does not grow, some is carried off and consumed, some choked out by weeds. So the yield of the wheat is decreased as well. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 30 would have enough to feed their family for a year. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 60 would be able to feed and care for their entire Village. But this seed the Sower sows yields 100 fold, without waste or loss.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about the power of the seed sown by the sower to change the world even hard rock. The Sower does not carefully cultivate and furrow the soil for every seed to have the optimum opportunity to yield. The Sower does not get down on their hands and knees planting individual seeds of grace. The Sower lavishes the seed upon the ground like water, as if the seed were to change the earth, rather than the earth providing nutrients to the seed. But what if that is the way of the world? A tiny seed, when planted, has the force and power to break open, sending forth microscopic hairlike tendrils, which enter the crevices and cracks between particles. The tiny tendrils then grow and swell becoming larger, and in this way break open rock.
Years ago, in another community, a child murdered both of his parents. He was sent to a Federal prison for children. I had never before known such a hard steel place of brokenness and despair. I recall driving through gates high electric fences the tops and gates with razor wire. Coming inside, you needed to empty everything from the outside into a locker, taking off belts and shoes as well. When your number was called upon, standing before a guard who opened your mouth and physically searched you. Then a door slid open in a steel wall as the guard said “Step inside.” The door slid shut and loudly clanked locked, five seconds went by before the door on the other side slid open and after you stepped through, slid shut with a metallic locking sound. At which point you were guided through a series of corridors and cell blocks. The children were each in a locked cell, with a small opening like a mail-slot about three feet from the ground. Hands reached out, eyes peered through. What I recall was the deafening silence of being surrounded by so many children not talking. At one point I remember saying to one pair of eyes “God loves you.” The words were like seed of God falling on hard steel and rock.
Last evening, a child in our community drowned and I went to Children's Hospital with the family. It was surreal, to be surrounded by room after room of children, children who I thought should be playing, reading, singing, laughing and instead were dying, suffering. It was broken hard soil where it would be easy to lose faith.
Sometimes, the hard soil, the impermeable rock is not places like prisons or hospitals, but our family systems. Each of our families behave in the ways they do because these are the only ways their parents and ancestors knew. We repeat the family systems, making the same mistakes over and over, becoming more and more intractable, harder and harder. What would it be to have a Seed of God planted?
That is the story of Jacob and Esau. Though twins, Esau was the first born and should have inherited everything. But favoritism took place, election occurred. While Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, himself the heir and fulfillment of the Promise of God, loved Esau, Rebekah loved Jacob. And God entered in giving the Promise to jacob instead of the first born. That election, that claiming by God, disrupted everything; the conflict disrupted the family. Everything about Genesis changes because Jacob receives the seed, the blessing of promise.
My own children contacted me recently to say, Dad we have watched and observed you, and in many ways we behave exactly like you. We no longer want to be treated as just your children, we want to be your confidants, your trusted colleagues, your adult children and friends. How hard it is for us to change behavior, to change our systems, to change what we have always known, and witness that the seeds of change change us as well!
This has become a Church guided by Mission. While we have a strong music program and a strong educational program, we live as a missional church. The wonderful nature of this, is that while in mission we have tried to care for others, to give to others, we have been changed by mission. This morning the Chancel of the Church is knee deep in a wall of 3500 pair of shoes, our giving of our excess to those who have none. In the process we develop different relationships with one another, we soften and yield and come to know and trust each other in ways we never would have before. Mission is not simply about writing a check, or volunteering, not only about work overseas and around the corner in our neighborhood, but the “soil of our being” being changed.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
July 3, 2011 "How Shall We Respond"
Genesis 24: 34-67
Matthew 11: 16-30
The Scriptures appointed for this day, represent a hard word for a community of successful people, particularly on the weekend of National anniversary. For the hard sayings of Jesus are not “Well done good and faithful servants, you have succeeded! You have taken 5 talents and made 5 more. You have used your wisdom and intellect to amass great power for yourselves. You killed your enemies, now dance upon their graves!” But rather to ask, as we approach the 10th Anniversary of September 11th, what will we celebrate, what are we honoring? Do we witness great accomplishments of human achievement, passing out awards as if someone has to have this so who has not received recognition lately, do we perceive summer as reward of time off for a long year of hard work? Or is it possible for us, in the midst of life, to recognize God's hand at work, not in miraculous, magical, impossible circumstance, but with resilience: Believing and Affirming? Only, only in the midst of these challenges to why did we not witness and believe in miracles; these curses to those who believe that they have succeeded because of good looks or because they showed up, do we receive the familiar and longed for words of comfort “Take my yoke upon you.”
The Bible has a different starting point than we assume in most of life. The Bible defines our lives in Affirmation. Trust is not earned, Trust is automatic, and can be lost. Rather than approaching one another as enemies, as adversaries and competitors, rather than living life in Suspicion, to begin in Affirmation of Life as a Gift and Unmerited Gift from God. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
We have done an odd thing in our Lives, First, they are not ours but belonging to God. Related to this, Baptism is not an about birth. Graduation is not the endurance of years of schooling. Marriage is not for everyone, and does not automatically come after Graduation and before children. Communion is not a ritual or Sacrament of the Church. All of these are opportunities to name and claim Faith in God. Baptism does not make life guaranteed, inoculated, or easy, if anything the opposite, because claiming this life for God, we must then question: So God where were you, and why, and how is this life holy? Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The love affair of Isaac and Rebekah is a marvelous story of love and faith, for it is a story of Love at First Sight, and also of the Trust of an Arranged Marriage. Remember that in the Abraham narrative of Genesis, everything is about trusting the Promise. God found a couple already advanced in age and promised to bless their lives, Promising to give to them a Name and a Land and Children whose lives are a blessing from God. Time transpired, and the woman conceived and bore a child, an only child, he grew and matured, and the Promise of a Name and Land and Children as a Blessing, was passed to Isaac. The Mother died, and the question became, where is the woman worthy to continue as the new Sarah, where is the wife of Abraham's Heir, who will be the mother of God's Promise?
There is this unnamed servant who goes at the Command of Abraham, searching to fulfill the Promise. He may have thought the clouds would part and a shaft of sunlight would illumine her, that birds would sing and flowers bloom. But instead, the unnamed servant himself humbly offered a prayer to God. “LORD, May the one of Your choosing be gracious and generous, offering hospitality.” He sits beside a well in the heat of the afternoon and asks for a cup of cold water. She hears and responds in faith. Not only does she get it for him, she provides for his animals as well. What is miraculous in this story, is not trumpet blasts, not magic incantations, but rather very subtly in the text, the Bible describes that an angel has led them. How often we perceive circumstance, we see development of our accomplishments... Faith is naming the presence of God in all things. Would that we could respond to life as an affirmation!
Throughout the Bible there is recognition of covenant, commitment, loyalty and fidelity, honesty and integrity, compassion and love, but this passage also names a frequent Biblical Image of being Led. Just as the Psalms describe “You lead me beside still waters, You lead me in paths of righteousness,” as the Abraham narrative had told of Sarah and Abraham being Led, so also later with Moses and the people being Led through the wilderness for 40 years, here Rebekah is Led to Isaac. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The Love Story of Isaac and Rebekah is marvelous because their's is at the same time both the Story of Love at First Sight and an Arranged Marriage. One of the questions we ask of those getting married, is “How did you decide you were ready to be Married?” Not how did you meet. Not why is he perfect. But the realization, that while often others have not been ready, there does come a time in our lives when we want to be married. Years ago, in another congregation, there was couple who had had an arranged marriage. Until their wedding night, they had never seen one another face to face. Their description was that they were ready to be married. They trusted their family to find someone for them. And over a lifetime, you learn to love, to make accommodations and to be husband and wife to one another. Rebekah looked down over the Valley, as Isaac lifted his view, and they saw one another. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
Throughout the last two decades, those who have led us as a Nation, both Leaders of the Church and Leaders of our Governments, have been accused of abuses. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, neighboring priests and pastors, all have been given great responsibility, and are rightly revered for their accomplishments. But each has also had their dark side. As stories of abuse have come, they often felt like a Neighbor having Cancer. We recognize it as horrible, we bake a cake, or drop off flowers, but we do not allow it to affect us, this is not our problem, once we sent the card, or delivered the flowers it was not ours anymore. Then my father died and a man contacted the family to say our father was his father. His story was that this had happened between my father's marriages, lonely people comforting each other. But, the very idea was offensive, it undermined all we knew all we believed about the one we loved most. What is given to us is the greatest trust, we are to be present in the fullness of life, and in the midst to name miracles, to witness to the presence of God. As we do, we recognize human frailty and vulnerability, power corrupting, rather than affirmations of love.
This Sacrament we have shared is not about everyone closing their eyes as the priest renames what we have known as common bread and juice is now holy and miraculously different. This Sacrament we have shared is that in the hard stuff of life, we name and claim that there is brokenness, and that there is a cup of hope, there is forgiveness, as refreshing as being offered a cup of cold water. We pray God will use us for generosity and graciousness, offering hospitality to those we do not know, that through our lives God's angels may call others to believe and respond.
Matthew 11: 16-30
The Scriptures appointed for this day, represent a hard word for a community of successful people, particularly on the weekend of National anniversary. For the hard sayings of Jesus are not “Well done good and faithful servants, you have succeeded! You have taken 5 talents and made 5 more. You have used your wisdom and intellect to amass great power for yourselves. You killed your enemies, now dance upon their graves!” But rather to ask, as we approach the 10th Anniversary of September 11th, what will we celebrate, what are we honoring? Do we witness great accomplishments of human achievement, passing out awards as if someone has to have this so who has not received recognition lately, do we perceive summer as reward of time off for a long year of hard work? Or is it possible for us, in the midst of life, to recognize God's hand at work, not in miraculous, magical, impossible circumstance, but with resilience: Believing and Affirming? Only, only in the midst of these challenges to why did we not witness and believe in miracles; these curses to those who believe that they have succeeded because of good looks or because they showed up, do we receive the familiar and longed for words of comfort “Take my yoke upon you.”
The Bible has a different starting point than we assume in most of life. The Bible defines our lives in Affirmation. Trust is not earned, Trust is automatic, and can be lost. Rather than approaching one another as enemies, as adversaries and competitors, rather than living life in Suspicion, to begin in Affirmation of Life as a Gift and Unmerited Gift from God. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
We have done an odd thing in our Lives, First, they are not ours but belonging to God. Related to this, Baptism is not an about birth. Graduation is not the endurance of years of schooling. Marriage is not for everyone, and does not automatically come after Graduation and before children. Communion is not a ritual or Sacrament of the Church. All of these are opportunities to name and claim Faith in God. Baptism does not make life guaranteed, inoculated, or easy, if anything the opposite, because claiming this life for God, we must then question: So God where were you, and why, and how is this life holy? Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The love affair of Isaac and Rebekah is a marvelous story of love and faith, for it is a story of Love at First Sight, and also of the Trust of an Arranged Marriage. Remember that in the Abraham narrative of Genesis, everything is about trusting the Promise. God found a couple already advanced in age and promised to bless their lives, Promising to give to them a Name and a Land and Children whose lives are a blessing from God. Time transpired, and the woman conceived and bore a child, an only child, he grew and matured, and the Promise of a Name and Land and Children as a Blessing, was passed to Isaac. The Mother died, and the question became, where is the woman worthy to continue as the new Sarah, where is the wife of Abraham's Heir, who will be the mother of God's Promise?
There is this unnamed servant who goes at the Command of Abraham, searching to fulfill the Promise. He may have thought the clouds would part and a shaft of sunlight would illumine her, that birds would sing and flowers bloom. But instead, the unnamed servant himself humbly offered a prayer to God. “LORD, May the one of Your choosing be gracious and generous, offering hospitality.” He sits beside a well in the heat of the afternoon and asks for a cup of cold water. She hears and responds in faith. Not only does she get it for him, she provides for his animals as well. What is miraculous in this story, is not trumpet blasts, not magic incantations, but rather very subtly in the text, the Bible describes that an angel has led them. How often we perceive circumstance, we see development of our accomplishments... Faith is naming the presence of God in all things. Would that we could respond to life as an affirmation!
Throughout the Bible there is recognition of covenant, commitment, loyalty and fidelity, honesty and integrity, compassion and love, but this passage also names a frequent Biblical Image of being Led. Just as the Psalms describe “You lead me beside still waters, You lead me in paths of righteousness,” as the Abraham narrative had told of Sarah and Abraham being Led, so also later with Moses and the people being Led through the wilderness for 40 years, here Rebekah is Led to Isaac. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The Love Story of Isaac and Rebekah is marvelous because their's is at the same time both the Story of Love at First Sight and an Arranged Marriage. One of the questions we ask of those getting married, is “How did you decide you were ready to be Married?” Not how did you meet. Not why is he perfect. But the realization, that while often others have not been ready, there does come a time in our lives when we want to be married. Years ago, in another congregation, there was couple who had had an arranged marriage. Until their wedding night, they had never seen one another face to face. Their description was that they were ready to be married. They trusted their family to find someone for them. And over a lifetime, you learn to love, to make accommodations and to be husband and wife to one another. Rebekah looked down over the Valley, as Isaac lifted his view, and they saw one another. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
Throughout the last two decades, those who have led us as a Nation, both Leaders of the Church and Leaders of our Governments, have been accused of abuses. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, neighboring priests and pastors, all have been given great responsibility, and are rightly revered for their accomplishments. But each has also had their dark side. As stories of abuse have come, they often felt like a Neighbor having Cancer. We recognize it as horrible, we bake a cake, or drop off flowers, but we do not allow it to affect us, this is not our problem, once we sent the card, or delivered the flowers it was not ours anymore. Then my father died and a man contacted the family to say our father was his father. His story was that this had happened between my father's marriages, lonely people comforting each other. But, the very idea was offensive, it undermined all we knew all we believed about the one we loved most. What is given to us is the greatest trust, we are to be present in the fullness of life, and in the midst to name miracles, to witness to the presence of God. As we do, we recognize human frailty and vulnerability, power corrupting, rather than affirmations of love.
This Sacrament we have shared is not about everyone closing their eyes as the priest renames what we have known as common bread and juice is now holy and miraculously different. This Sacrament we have shared is that in the hard stuff of life, we name and claim that there is brokenness, and that there is a cup of hope, there is forgiveness, as refreshing as being offered a cup of cold water. We pray God will use us for generosity and graciousness, offering hospitality to those we do not know, that through our lives God's angels may call others to believe and respond.
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