"Choosing Between" July 30, 2017

Genesis 29: 15-28 Matthew 13: 44-52 How quick we are to judge and choose between options, as being wrong, rather than recognizing how blessed we are that we live in a time and place that we have choices. In Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom, would you value farmland because it is fertile and healthy, or only if you find a treasure in it? As a Jeweler, would you disregard a string of pearls for One of Great Value? All M&Ms in a bag for One green one? Over the last several weeks, I have listened to Grandparents describe that their grandchildren were not being raised with the same boundaries, traditions and customs that they had raised their kids, instead of recognizing we have the joy of grandchildren, and share miraculous resources as normal! The story of Jacob’s marriages and family, describe the circumstance of a family, having their customs, their faith and traditions, their identities based on birth-order, passed on from generation to generation; which then are challenged by a stranger, who demonstrates other ideas that are not wrong they are just different, and we have the choice between and maybe to include both. We probably need to insert the disclaimer here that Television and Radio shows do: “This morning’s sermon will include matters that may not be suitable for children... “Beauty, Love, Marriage, Infertility, Fertility drugs, Genetics, S-E-X.” Before you ask, there is no theme running here, that this week is about SEX and last week about Drugs and Rock & Roll, we just preach what the Bible and Holy Spirit give us! Jacob walked across the desert. Arriving at a Watering hole he does the unthinkable: Jacob asks for directions! Only to discover he is already, where he wanted to be! According to Tradition, the Shepherds of several different flocks patiently wait until all others have arrived, to share together in opening the floodgates, so to water their sheep equally. Jacob asked if they knew his Uncle Laban, and they respond that “Yes, Laban is known, He is very prosperous, and by the way here is his daughter.” Wanting to get Rachel alone, Jacob suggests that all the others leave so as to have her to himself, when they refuse because they have not yet watered their sheep, Jacob picks up the boulder it took several shepherds to move, and he waters their sheep himself! Break all customs of patiently waiting, working together, sharing water equally, Jacob has other ideas. Then, in addition to knowing she was his “wealthy relative’s” daughter, Jacob literally is knocked down by how drop-dead gorgeous Rachel is. He kisses her hand and weeps over how beautiful she is. Laban hears there is a stranger asking about him, so comes to the watering hole to meet Jacob and invite him home for dinner. Over the meal and the next few days, Jacob tells their family story to Laban, all about his parents…Laban’s sister & Isaac the brother-in-law, but also the time Jacob got the better of his brother Esau for a pot of stew, and how he tricked his father into giving him what the father intended for Esau. Much like the family stories that are told among our own kin over vacation. At which Laban affirms: “You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” In my own family, my grandfather began a tradition, that when a couple is married, the night before the wedding, the father-in-law presents the bride with a pearl necklace. My Grandfather did so to my mother; my father gave my wife a pearl necklace; and as the minister in the family called upon to officiate weddings, not only do I have necklaces in case either of my sons ever marry, but I have given them to each of my nieces and cousins as I blessed their marriages. It is a family tradition. Laban responded to Jacob, “So if I give you a job, what wages do you desire?” Having not read President Trump’s The Art of The Deal, Jacob blurts out that he wants Rachel, and instead of negotiating a dowry of cattle, or working several years, he commits to seven years of hard labor to possess her. Laban agrees that trusting him is better than a stranger. There is this wonderful statement of love, that to Jacob 7 years passed as a few days! We are known for having Celebrations, especially Weddings, but Jacob’s Wedding lasted 7 days & nights, of feasting and drinking. However, the morning after the wedding night, Jacob discovers Laban tricked him, to consummate the marriage with Leah instead of her sister Rachel. Laban explains it is against their tradition and customs to marry a younger daughter before the first-born. There is an irony here, for Jacob who stole Esau’s right of first-born. At which Laban offers, that Jacob not give up, but finish out the week-long Wedding celebration, at the end of which he will be married to Rachel as well, if Jacob works another 7 years. Poor Rachel not only has to share her husband with sister, she does not get her own wedding! Now there is an odd translation here, because the same word in Hebrew could mean Weak or Beautiful. So either Leah, had Weak eyes, meaning she was near-sighted, squinted, her eyes were dull, had no sparkle, OR where her little sister was gorgeous …the only thing beautiful about Leah, was her eyes. Which again is ironic in a culture where women are veiled from head to foot, so the only thing visible was her eyes. While it is not our tradition to have more than one spouse at a time, the reality is that we marry: the strengths & weaknesses in one another, for better & worse. The difficulty in this story being that the two sisters compete for Jacob’s affections. When Leah does not have Jacob’s love, she consoles herself by bearing the children Rachel cannot. In rapid succession Leah gives birth to the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. HOWEVER, because she cannot conceive, Rachel is unsatisfied with Jacob’s love; and he reacts “Am I God, to grant you children or deny you?” Using the tradition of Jacob’s Grandma Sarah, Rachel produces the sons she desires: Dan and Naphtali, by Jacob through her slave Bilhah. Not to be outdone, Leah has Jacob impregnate her slave Zilpah, for children named Gad and Asher. Incorporating another family custom, the Superstition of Old Wives’ tales, there was a Fertility drug made from wild Mandrake Root. We probably know this better from the Harry Potter series, Mandrake roots bear a resemblance to a newborn baby, HOWEVER, Mandrake can produce the side-effects of :Total Paralysis, Psychotic Hallucinations, Death, Blurred Vision, Dilation of Pupils, Dry Mouth, Difficulty Urinating, Dizziness, Headache, Vomiting, Blushing, Rapid Heart Rate, Hyperactivity, Unconsciousness, Rheumatoid pains, Melancholy, Convulsions, Madness, and did we say Death! Really puts you in the Mood, does it not! And like several medications today, should not be handled by children. One day, Leah’s eldest son Reuben finds and pulls up several roots. Desperate for children, Rachel sells her sister a night in Jacob’s bed for Leah’s son’s mandrakes. No good turn goes unpunished, and Leah is suddenly able to get pregnant again, giving birth to Issachar, Zebulun, and a daughter Dinah. And finally a year after purchasing the mandrakes, Rachel becomes pregnant with Joseph. Having acquired 2 wives, 2 concubines, 11 sons and a daughter, Jacob wants to leave, to go home. But Father Laban says, “I have been blessed for having Jacob here; so tell you what, if you work for me another 6 years, for a total of 20, I will give you all the sheep and goats of my herd, that are born speckled or spotted, or anything but wholly black or white.” But, trying to fix the deal, that night Laban steals from the herd all the sheep that are in any way spotted, striped or marked, sending these off with his sons, leaving only all black or all white sheep and goats. A few years ago there were a series of books published about what you needed to do to have a female baby, versus a male, what foods to eat, what positions… Jacob believed that if while the sheep were breeding, they looked on stripes or spots, that is what would be born. So he whittled stripes and spots on sticks. Further tradition, is that he only put the striped and spotted sticks in front of the strongest and healthiest of sheep. So by the end of the 6th year, Jacob had the majority of the herd, and Laban’s were weak and sickly, while the sheep and goats of Jacob were strong. Realizing each has been tricked by the other, Laban and Jacob break all relationship with one another, cutting off each other, by establishing a Stone Altar, as a dividing line between them, with the vow “The Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from another.”

"Stairway to Heaven" July 23, 2017

Genesis 28: 10-22 Matthew 13: 24-43 Several years ago, a friend asked if I could come to their church to preach, and these were the passages. Looking for an illustration, and uncertain what I would find there, I went to Marcellus Hardware for “Nightingale’s Best Mixture” of Fescue, Rye and Blue. I did not need pounds of the stuff for a sermon prop, asking for a few pinches of seed, they charged me only 10 cents and separated this into two baggies one for good seed one for weeds that looked just the same. Arriving at Security, the Homeland Security Guard asked “What’s in the Baggies?” And I replied “2 Nickel Bags of Grass and Weed!” which made him jump up off the stool he was sitting on. He said “What?” and I responded “Jesus has this parable in Matthew about Grass and Weeds, so I was bringing along my own weed.” Which did not improve matters… So I switched to the Old Testament Passage from Genesis, and Jacob’s Dream of a Ladder to Heaven. The last several weeks as we have reflected on Genesis, we have come to know Abraham Sarah and Isaac who married Rebekah, and they had twins Jacob and Esau. I’ve always thought, Jacob makes it hard to love to him. Last week we read of how Jacob was born grasping at the heel of his brother, trying to be first. While Isaac favored his son Esau, Rebekah made certain Jacob was always her baby. Like being bribed by your brother to eat his vegetables, or choosing the largest dessert, Jacob bought Esau’s birthright for a bowl of Soup, the insult of which is that a person of faith is to always demonstrate hospitality, giving soup to a stranger. Then Jacob tricked their aged, blind father, sick in bed into giving him everything the father had to him in an irrevocable blessing. This morning, Rebekah is saying to her husband, “You know we have to launch Jacob, marrying him off to a nice girl. Not one of those trashy Hittite girls like his brother Esau married, but a good girl from the families in our hometown… Maybe my brother Laban knows some nice girls…” With that, Jacob is sent off to live with Uncle Laban, but it’s a long way to walk back to Ur of Chaldea, so on the way, Jacob lays down with a rock for a pillow. During the night he dreams dreams and visions. The Irish describe “Thin Places,” much like Skaneateles Lake, a natural place filled with emotions, a point where Heaven and Earth meet almost to touch, and Angels go back and forth between. At that time, Houses of worship were built in the shape of a beehive, called a Zugarat with stairs going up the outside. The size of the House of worship was not determined by the size of the congregation, but by how big and how high up in heaven was your God. For me, those thin places, connections between the reality of Earth and Heaven have not so much been places, as points in life, summers at the lake, mission trips, falling in love, being Ordained, the Baptisms our Children. Jacob did not awaken completely converted. The Hebrew has a wonderful word, to describe Jacob, he awakes “Over Raw” not Overwrought, but so exceedingly raw, there has to be another word for the experience. Jacob recognizes this as the Doorway to the House of God, so names the place “House of God”, Beth-el. He does not yet claim The Lord of his ancestors as being his God. He wants more. To some extent, Jacob is like the couple who desire to be married in their parents’ church, not their church, not their God, but the God who was faithful to ancestors, whom they will give a token if God will show them all the blessings they desires as well. There is no explanation or interpretation about the dream, all of that has come over time, by other people. Rarely do we hear the promise of Jacob to God. I think, that may be because it is too much like us, with flaws and weaknesses as well as strengths. When he awakes, Jacob makes an altar out of the pillow he dreamt upon… Except in typical fashion for Rebekah’s baby, Jacob still wants to barter and make deals for himself… Much like Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, he defiantly raises his fist to Heaven: “IF God will be with me, and IF God will keep me safe in the way I go, and IF God will give me bread to eat, water to drink, and clothes to wear, and IF I come to my father’s house again in peace, THEN the God of my ancestors will be my Lord, this rock shall be an altar to God and out of all that is given me by God, I will return 1/10th.” 40 years ago when I graduated High School, Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was at the Top of the Charts, though it was never released as a single. According to the History of Rock & Roll, “Stairway to Heaven” is the 3rd most requested, recognized song in history! “Stairway to Heaven” was the theme for our Homecoming and our Prom, everyone knew that Guitar Solo by Jimmy Page and Robert Plan. But what I find amazing is how well the words describe Jacob’s Mother, Rebekah… “There’s a lady whose sure, All that glitters is gold, AND She’s BUYing a Stairway to Heaven! When she gets there she knows, if the doors are all closed, with a word she can get what she came for. There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure, ‘cause you know words can have 2 meanings.” She believes in material things, and that possessing it all, is her stairway to heaven; even if when we get there all the doors are closed to her. The point this morning is that Heaven is not a place we built for God to dwell in, separate from earth with all our resources. All the universe belongs to God, the world is not left on remote control distant from God. These two realities, this life and the life-everlasting are intricately intertwined and inter-dependent. I grew up in a minister’s family, we went to church every Sunday, because it was what we did, in part because at that time there was nothing else on Sunday’s… but at a number of different points in life, I gave up the faith of my father for my own faith in God. God confirmed that this life, our lives are heaven and hell on earth.

"Ordinary Things" July 16, 2017

Genesis 25: 7-10, 19-34 Matthew 13: 1-23 I do not know why, but I walked to church today, and on the way to Church today, I was stopped by a friend, who thanked me for coming to his wife's Memorial. He said, she had had a terrible Cancer for years, and finally one day, having tried everything else I prayed for a miracle. It did not cure her cancer, but I got two miracles. First, the final morning of her life, I called my son to say she was passing, and he drove 11 hours, and was able to be here to hold her in his arms as she died. Second, all the churches, all the ministers and congregations, where I have preached and worshipped all came for her Memorial... In the midst of projects, replacing the floor in our home, which I call a vacation, a friend phoned, saying that her son and his wife and their 8 year old were visiting. The boy’s father was Christian and his mother Jewish, they wanted to wait until he was of age to decide for himself what to believe. Except how could he make a decision, when he had never been taught the truths of Judaism or Christianity? Suddenly this summer he had been filled with questions about God, so could they bring him over for me as the God-guy, to answer all his questions? Sitting in rocking chairs on the porch, trying to answer all the questions of an 8 year old, I believe may be as close as any of us will ever have to the experience of Jesus teaching parables from a boat off shore. My problem, like Jesus’, was how do you step into the middle of a person’s life, to tell them both what they want to know and what you believe is everything they need to know? We as human beings have a basic desire to understand life, we have questions about love and marriage, birth, death and meaning. We have been carefully taught over our lifetimes, that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. But Jesus’ parables and the stories of the Bible are not one person’s explanation of everything; instead, using ordinary things, events we all might be able to relate to, the Bible in 1st Testament and Gospels, provides us analogies, which are like looking through a lens at who God is. Later this summer, on August 21st, there is to be a Total Eclipse of the Sun. We know this to be an exceedingly rare phenomenon, and that when it happens, you cannot look directly at it for fear of burning your retinas, instead, we look through refracted lenses, that is what a Parable or Bible story is. After so many torrential storms this summer, I thought about changing our sermon, to Noah and Ark, as something we all could relate to. But the point of that story is not that it rained for 40 Days and 40 Nights without ceasing, not that flooding and erosion took place that we can identify with; the point is that humanity had forgotten all about God and were each abusing others for what they wanted, so God determined to begin again with a remnant, one couple and their off-spring protected from chaos in an Ark of the Covenant. The point of that story is not how much it rained that summer, but our recognition of the sins in our lives, and that God could a would begin again with a precious remnant. Generations after Noah, instead of the story being explanation of all the World through Science, God chose a particular couple, whom we may see as like us: Abraham and Sarah. Now while their story is told for several chapters, the stories connect to significant events in their life. Their Calling from God, and their wandering in foreign places with other people; their infertility and desire for fulfillment by any means and the problems created; testing whether their desire after fulfillment, is as great as their trust in God? The death of a spouse and marriage of one’s adult children. The faith being carried on in the next generation, even with their own infertility. Infertility is treated as an ordinary thing, and a hard issue in the Bible. Today, 10% of the American population struggles with infertility. But in the Bible, the point of infertility was not just ability to conceive, but whether your life was blessed by God or hopes and dreams were denied you. Hard to understand in the moment, difficult circumstance sometimes prepare us for miracles, we otherwise would not see. But Isaac and Rebecca then give birth to twins. As familiar as this has become to us, even with fertility drugs and surgery, only about 3% of births are multiples. Imagine the difficulty this week in South Sudan, of twins being born to a woman, without all of our Western Medical intervention, only two Midwives, and the twins happened to present Breech! I think part of the importance of this, is the Bible explaining there are multiple ways to God, like twins wrestling in our womb, only one of which can we follow. What has been routinely neglected, that I think is the most wonderful part of the Story of Abraham, is that when he died, Isaac and Ishmael BOTH, TOGETHER, ancestor of Judaism and Christianity and the ancestor of Islam, buried their father. In the midst of this miracle, comes this oracle in verse 23 that “The One shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the Younger.” This is not the way of the world. There is something dark in Jacob, always insisting, grasping for more, exploiting opportunities. This is a profound theological claim, that all opportunities are not open to us. It does not suggest we are denied freedom, but there is destiny. Some options are closed, some choices denied; YET God has the power to make Promises and fulfill them in spite of human expectations. We are not FATED to the way the world is presented to us. Primogeniture, the rights of the first-born, was not a Law from God, it is cultural tradition, human nature. Jacob will contest with the way things are. There is nothing wrong, or evil in Esau, he simply had the context of being Jacob’s twin. Over the centuries, people have interpreted this parable of Jesus in so many ways. What is fabulous about parables, is there is no one way to interpret, and our ordinary circumstance routinely brings new understanding. What I love about the Story of the Sower of Seeds, at this point in life, is that God is the sower of grace, and as precious as God’s Grace is, God does not sow miracles as if single seed planted for maximum yield and productivity. I have a brother who is a specialist in Dairy Science, he is paid to walk onto your farm knowing how to increase the maximum output from each cow. God is unconcerned with maximum output or efficiency, Grace is scattered by God like a carpet upon the earth. There are abundance for everyone, if we only have eyes to see. The secret to life is knowing what is in your control and what is not. In the ministry, there is a lot that we have absolutely no control over. Oh, we try to do things in the most efficient manner, with the greatest of expertise, but the number of Baptisms, Believers, Births, The number of Weddings, the number of Funerals, are not in our control. But we can help with the ordinary things, listening to the questions of an 8 year old, and trying to respond as best we can.