Luke 23: 26-49
Mark 15: 33-39
Throughout Lent, we have tried to answer questions and explain to a wide variety of people inside and outside the Church, what we believe, and stand for, as believers, as Christians, as the Skaneateles Presbyterian Church, as The Church. This has been a CROSSROADS recognizing human diversity.
Some wanted to know about Mission in Africa, why the Church would be involved in this endeavor. Is Mission about Race, or Politics, or Peace? How can you only be involved in treating disease, without recognizing the conditions and circumstance that make people sick and die?
Others wanted to know about local missions, the Food Pantry and Presbyterian Manor, the Collective. Some have come to name Cancers, fears of mortality and loss of loved ones.
Some wanting to have children, and wanting their children to have a Chrisian Education.
Some wanting to be married and questioning the meaning of being married in the Church.
Some questioning whether the Church should be more involved in Social Justice, others asking if we should not lead these issues, and still others asking why we would be involved at all.
We have had Gospel hymns that need no accompaniment and Lenten texts that are Minor and Modal.
We have gone to worship at the Jewish Synagogue and for an Ecumenical Soup at the High School.
We have walked a LABYRINTH and STATIONS OF the CROSS, both in the drawings of our children and as a Christian Witness throughout the community.
Some looking for very traditional expressions of faith as the church, others seeking the most different.
Tonight, this night, we are at the center of Christian Faith, the crux of the matter, we have heard what are among the most passionate and painful, sincere and mystic words of our faith.
At the Center of the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scriptures is the Sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham who believed in the the PROMISE of God and followed the Promise, finally having the promise fulfilled, being asked “NOW, as an act of faith would you sacrifice what you have, your own child?”
This is the issue here as well, for God and Jesus.
What is ODD and at the same moment EXQUISITE is the juxtaposition of the words of Jesus in Luke and those in Mark and Matthew. Our faith is in Almighty God, who created the Universe and everything therein, who also loves the world so much as to listen to our prayers and concerns, knowing each one of us; even, especially entering in not only to save us, but to be one with us. From the Early Church down to present day, and especially at the Reformation from which the Presbyterian Church emerged, believers have questioned the MYSTERY of how Jesus could be both FULLY GOD and FULLY HUMAN?
According to Luke, after he knealt down and washed the dirty feet of his disciples, and being betrayed with a kiss by one whom he loved and trusted as family, after being abandoned by ALL his followers and they denied even knowing him, after being arrested, shuffled back and forth through the system, after being whipped with a cat-o-nine tails imbedded with pieces of glass and bone, after carrying the cross through the streets while people spat upon him and ridiculed him, being led to a place that in Aramaic is called Golgotha, in Latin Calvary, which in English literally means the Place of the Skull, after being stripped and having nails hammered through his hands piercing his wrists, his body being raised like a rack of meat to suffocate under its own weight, LUKE who has the greatest emphasis on the poor and the masses describes Jesus as GOD in OUR MIDST who took a phrase from the book of Psalms “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Scholars throughout history have speculated whether Jesus was speaking of the Roman Guards, or the crowds, or the Sanhedrin, or who? Trying to identify one historic group makes this a uman record and ignores the DIVINITY of Christ. Luke's point is UNIVERSAL SALVATION, that all who hear and embrace this story would understand his forgiveness. All of us. We recal Abraham Lincoln's description: “WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE, AND CHARITY TO ALL.” This is a statement of Forgiveness for all human sin. NOT only for the Presbyterians, or the Catholics, or the Gentiles, or the Jews, not only for Men, but for women, for Children, For gay and straight, and all of us, if we recognize that TO BE FORGIVEN FROM THE CROSS, IS TO BE NAMED AS HAVING CRUCIFIED HIM. The beloved Hymn, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord” is also admission that to have stood at the foot of the cross was to have participated in the act. FORGIVENESS can only come through REDEMPTION.
Last night having dinner with a couple I had never before met, they asked about the context of the War that had divided Sudan. In the knowledge of that the man inquired, so the PEACE ACCORDS begun in 2005 are based on the PROMISE and HOPE that in 2011 there will be a Referendum Vote, and the South anticipates that Sudan will be two separate nations. Why would the North, who invaded the south and oppressed the people there, why whould they vote in favor of this? The question of every human conflict... At what point do we recognize there are other concerns than winning and losing? When does our narcissistic desire to be right, to be justified, admit the humanity of others? If FORGIVENESS requires REDEMPTION, What does it take for REDEMPTION?
Mark and Matthew tell the story and the words of Jesus differently.
Instead of Jesus speaking DIVINELY of FORGIVENESS, we have this very human cry:
“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
Again, the phrase is called up directly out of the Psalms. But names the MOST BASIC of Human feelings, ABANDONMENT and LOSS, ISOLATION and the WEIGHT OF THE WORLD.
Matthew and Mark describe all the same abandonments and betrayals, scorging, and deriding, but hung on the cross to die, Jesus identifies with the MOST HUMAN of FEELINGS, with the most intimate of relaionships: FEAR.
Despite the Church's attempts to Integrate the Gospels, to have both Angels and a Star, Shepherds and Kings at the Stable in Bethlehem, throughout the history of the Church, for more than 2000 years, we have not integrated these, but recognized they are the center of the Cross, where our faith in the DIVINE intersects HUMANITY.
The Gospel of John is different than any of these. From the Cross he sees the Beloved Disciple and His own Mother, and personally, with Caring and Love, names BROTHER here is your Mother, MOTHER here is your Son. Then he breathed his last and died. John names our need to claim one another and love one another, whether united by blood at birth, or his blood, such that we all SISTERS and BROTHERS.
ABANDONMENT, LOSS, ISOLATION and FEAR, REDEMPTION and ATONEMENT, all of these will come but only by the POWER OF GOD, who after Jesus lifeless body was laid in the tomb three days, raised him from death to life.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Be Thou My Vision, March 2, 2008
I Samuel 16:1-13
John 9: 1-4
Several years ago a little book was published by Rabbi Harold Kushner, that soared to the top of all the Best Seller lists, the book was titled “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. Ironically, nearly everyone who referenced reading this misquoted the title as “Why Bad Things Happen”, because that is the question we want answered. Kushner was convinced there is no answer to WHY? Kushner had a young son with a rare disease causing rapid advancement of age, and like all of us in the midst of grief, he sought solace in sharing his story. When Bad Things Happen to Good People, we seek out others, to tell our story, in hope that they can offer comfort, or that our story will have meaning to them, because we are too close to it to perceive anything good.
“Why?” is the question Jesus' disciples asked when they first saw the man born blind. CAN A BABY, Not yet born, SIN, and therefore be born to a life of suffering? Or, was this man's physical ailment the result of his parents' sins and therefore he is atoning for things that he was not responsible for? That would be a cruel punishment indeed, for each of us when seeing a child with a simple ear infection or illness has wished they could bear this rather than see a child suffer; and for a child to bear suffering for their parents seems too much.
Jesus answers the question, that we MUST REMEMBER OUR LIVES IN RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. SO OFTEN, the question of sin, and of suffering, what theologians call SOTERIOLOGY neglects the presence of God, and focuses only upon what we have done, or what others have done and upon the Morality of Sins, without reference to the existence of GOD. Jesus answers the question of WHY by a reversal of circumstance. IF A BLIND MAN Could be made to see, is this MIRACLE the responsibility of the MAN, or of HIS PARENTS, or the COMMUNITY. If the HEALING OCCURRED on the SABBATH, when no work was to be done, would the MIRACLE BE A SIN?
We live in an era where The Church is divided against itself on what is and is not a SIN? WHO is and is not a SINNER? Is premarital intimacy a SIN, or EXPECTED? Are those Mutually Exclusive? Is UnWed PREGNANCY a SIN? When it happens, what do we as a Church do? In another Church in another community, we had a girl in the Confirmation Class who suddenly was found to be with Child, and as she Confessed her Faith taking on Adult Responsibilities in the Church, the Church came to recognize they could not abandon her. Is Homosexuality a sin? Is Euthanasia? DO we discount the CIRCUMSTANCES we know as SITUATION ETHICS. As a MAN OF GOD, what I have come to SEE, is not judging which is and is not a sin, or who is and is not; but rather recognizing WE ALL ARE SINNERS & GOD FORGIVES US.
Tomorrow afternoon Dr. David Reed, the Chairperson of Emergency Medicine at SUNY's Upstate University Hospital, returns with a 4th Year Medical Student, from their having spent a month at the Clinic in Sudan, and late this week Dr. John Covell and Melanie an LPN leave, with our prayers, for their mission experience. They go NOT ONLY to heal people afflicted with Malaria, Pneumonia, Measles, Malnutrition, Tuberculosis, which these people did not cause, nor did their parents. These missionaries from our midst go, NOT ONLY for the selfish reason of witnessing suffering no longer present in our societies, BUT also, because we live in a world so technological, so mechanized, that clinical diagnosis by MRI, CAT Scan and Specialists' Lab Tests have become our rituals; and at least once in a lifetime our most educated and most highly trained need to get in touch with the basic humanity of touch, seeing, witnessing with your own eyes and touching humanity as means of experiencing FAITH IN GOD anew.
WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN, one could & SHOULD as easily ask WHY DO MIRACLES HAPPEN? The point according to the Gospel of John, is not only that Jesus suffered and died as a sacrifice for our sins on the Cross; but that part and parcel with this is that GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD as to enter in and share in life with us. What matters are not all the individual sins of MORALITY: Did you think evil thoughts,... were you filled with lust,... have you been slothful,... greedy,... arrogant... deceitful; but the one SIN that matters, whether we reject God, or having experienced the best and worst of circumstance can we try to love, try to forgive, wrestle to understand. We make FAITH IN GOD a prerequisite for having faith, instead of wondering whether FAITH IN GOD MAY BE OUR ROAD MAP.
Painfully, we have become GOOGLE OBSESSED, believing there is a right answer we can know. FAITH is not about having the right definition or perfect directions. I recently rented a car with a GPS LOCATOR. It was seductive, all you needed to do was have a name or address, you did not even need to know where or what it was near. This seductive voice would guide you, “In one-half mile turn left. In thirty feet turn left. Turn left now.” And if for whatever reason, we ignored the seductive instructions, the voice would re-calibrate and give us new step by step directions, without criticism that we had ignored the voice's guidance, or making us turn around to do it right. Following the step by step directions, turning when the disembodied voice tells us, we never learn landmarks and reference points, turning right at the Church, going past the University, stopping briefly at the Cemetery. Life is not about the destination, or getting the answers right, not even about the prerequisites before we begin, but in those long nights of waiting and worry, we agonize over what we may be called to be, considering options we never imagined. We wonder WHY GOD? WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO SEE?
We take for granted the systems we know, as if everyone in every other country has always done what we do. Oddly, the American Presidential Election system is one of the few in all the world, one of the few in all history, where former leaders are able to leave office alive. We have assumed a natural transition from one leader to the next every four years.
In order to understand this Old Testament story, we need to recall that after the people had wandered with Moses, they came into the land and for many generations lived with each person doing what they saw right in their own eyes for themselves. Eventually the people wanted a King to lead them, and chose for themselves King Saul. He was tall and handsome, a great warrior and leader. But Saul refused to listen God. As a leader he continued to do only for himself, so God chose to have a new King. Samuel who was the last of the prophet leaders in the tradition of Moses, Joshua, Deborah and Samson and Gideon, was called to do an act of faith and righteousness with God, but an act that also would have been considered an act of treason against the King. This is a beautiful little story, because going to do an act of faith, God instructed Samuel don't try to hide the faith of what you are doing as something else. If you are going to do an act of faith, do not conspire to do some little thing, taking one handful of grain as an offering, sending your wife a card on Valentine's as an act of LOVE and DEVOTION. Instead, take a heifer, a full grown cow, enough that could feed a whole village, as an ACT OF FAITH, also do what the people need.
Second, Samuel is presented not with one son of Jesse, but seven sons, each stronger, taller and more handsome than the one before. And when each of these is just like the King already upon the throne, the MAN OF GOD dares to ask the question we routinely forget... Are there any others? Is there a FAITH RESPONSE we have not yet seen?
The reading from John is a long one, but one of the few examples in Old or New Testaments, where after the Miracle, and after the Cleansing, and after the Trial, when this MAN now sits outside the Temple, we witness seeing Jesus SEEK HIM OUT. We would want to ask: Is he better off, as a man who once was blind and now can see, seeing that the people who once surrounded him able to see were actually blind? But that is not the question of Jesus. Jesus question to the man and to us is DO YOU BELIEVE? And having healed him, sent the man to POOL CALLED SILOAM, meaning SENT OUT.
John 9: 1-4
Several years ago a little book was published by Rabbi Harold Kushner, that soared to the top of all the Best Seller lists, the book was titled “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. Ironically, nearly everyone who referenced reading this misquoted the title as “Why Bad Things Happen”, because that is the question we want answered. Kushner was convinced there is no answer to WHY? Kushner had a young son with a rare disease causing rapid advancement of age, and like all of us in the midst of grief, he sought solace in sharing his story. When Bad Things Happen to Good People, we seek out others, to tell our story, in hope that they can offer comfort, or that our story will have meaning to them, because we are too close to it to perceive anything good.
“Why?” is the question Jesus' disciples asked when they first saw the man born blind. CAN A BABY, Not yet born, SIN, and therefore be born to a life of suffering? Or, was this man's physical ailment the result of his parents' sins and therefore he is atoning for things that he was not responsible for? That would be a cruel punishment indeed, for each of us when seeing a child with a simple ear infection or illness has wished they could bear this rather than see a child suffer; and for a child to bear suffering for their parents seems too much.
Jesus answers the question, that we MUST REMEMBER OUR LIVES IN RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. SO OFTEN, the question of sin, and of suffering, what theologians call SOTERIOLOGY neglects the presence of God, and focuses only upon what we have done, or what others have done and upon the Morality of Sins, without reference to the existence of GOD. Jesus answers the question of WHY by a reversal of circumstance. IF A BLIND MAN Could be made to see, is this MIRACLE the responsibility of the MAN, or of HIS PARENTS, or the COMMUNITY. If the HEALING OCCURRED on the SABBATH, when no work was to be done, would the MIRACLE BE A SIN?
We live in an era where The Church is divided against itself on what is and is not a SIN? WHO is and is not a SINNER? Is premarital intimacy a SIN, or EXPECTED? Are those Mutually Exclusive? Is UnWed PREGNANCY a SIN? When it happens, what do we as a Church do? In another Church in another community, we had a girl in the Confirmation Class who suddenly was found to be with Child, and as she Confessed her Faith taking on Adult Responsibilities in the Church, the Church came to recognize they could not abandon her. Is Homosexuality a sin? Is Euthanasia? DO we discount the CIRCUMSTANCES we know as SITUATION ETHICS. As a MAN OF GOD, what I have come to SEE, is not judging which is and is not a sin, or who is and is not; but rather recognizing WE ALL ARE SINNERS & GOD FORGIVES US.
Tomorrow afternoon Dr. David Reed, the Chairperson of Emergency Medicine at SUNY's Upstate University Hospital, returns with a 4th Year Medical Student, from their having spent a month at the Clinic in Sudan, and late this week Dr. John Covell and Melanie an LPN leave, with our prayers, for their mission experience. They go NOT ONLY to heal people afflicted with Malaria, Pneumonia, Measles, Malnutrition, Tuberculosis, which these people did not cause, nor did their parents. These missionaries from our midst go, NOT ONLY for the selfish reason of witnessing suffering no longer present in our societies, BUT also, because we live in a world so technological, so mechanized, that clinical diagnosis by MRI, CAT Scan and Specialists' Lab Tests have become our rituals; and at least once in a lifetime our most educated and most highly trained need to get in touch with the basic humanity of touch, seeing, witnessing with your own eyes and touching humanity as means of experiencing FAITH IN GOD anew.
WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN, one could & SHOULD as easily ask WHY DO MIRACLES HAPPEN? The point according to the Gospel of John, is not only that Jesus suffered and died as a sacrifice for our sins on the Cross; but that part and parcel with this is that GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD as to enter in and share in life with us. What matters are not all the individual sins of MORALITY: Did you think evil thoughts,... were you filled with lust,... have you been slothful,... greedy,... arrogant... deceitful; but the one SIN that matters, whether we reject God, or having experienced the best and worst of circumstance can we try to love, try to forgive, wrestle to understand. We make FAITH IN GOD a prerequisite for having faith, instead of wondering whether FAITH IN GOD MAY BE OUR ROAD MAP.
Painfully, we have become GOOGLE OBSESSED, believing there is a right answer we can know. FAITH is not about having the right definition or perfect directions. I recently rented a car with a GPS LOCATOR. It was seductive, all you needed to do was have a name or address, you did not even need to know where or what it was near. This seductive voice would guide you, “In one-half mile turn left. In thirty feet turn left. Turn left now.” And if for whatever reason, we ignored the seductive instructions, the voice would re-calibrate and give us new step by step directions, without criticism that we had ignored the voice's guidance, or making us turn around to do it right. Following the step by step directions, turning when the disembodied voice tells us, we never learn landmarks and reference points, turning right at the Church, going past the University, stopping briefly at the Cemetery. Life is not about the destination, or getting the answers right, not even about the prerequisites before we begin, but in those long nights of waiting and worry, we agonize over what we may be called to be, considering options we never imagined. We wonder WHY GOD? WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO SEE?
We take for granted the systems we know, as if everyone in every other country has always done what we do. Oddly, the American Presidential Election system is one of the few in all the world, one of the few in all history, where former leaders are able to leave office alive. We have assumed a natural transition from one leader to the next every four years.
In order to understand this Old Testament story, we need to recall that after the people had wandered with Moses, they came into the land and for many generations lived with each person doing what they saw right in their own eyes for themselves. Eventually the people wanted a King to lead them, and chose for themselves King Saul. He was tall and handsome, a great warrior and leader. But Saul refused to listen God. As a leader he continued to do only for himself, so God chose to have a new King. Samuel who was the last of the prophet leaders in the tradition of Moses, Joshua, Deborah and Samson and Gideon, was called to do an act of faith and righteousness with God, but an act that also would have been considered an act of treason against the King. This is a beautiful little story, because going to do an act of faith, God instructed Samuel don't try to hide the faith of what you are doing as something else. If you are going to do an act of faith, do not conspire to do some little thing, taking one handful of grain as an offering, sending your wife a card on Valentine's as an act of LOVE and DEVOTION. Instead, take a heifer, a full grown cow, enough that could feed a whole village, as an ACT OF FAITH, also do what the people need.
Second, Samuel is presented not with one son of Jesse, but seven sons, each stronger, taller and more handsome than the one before. And when each of these is just like the King already upon the throne, the MAN OF GOD dares to ask the question we routinely forget... Are there any others? Is there a FAITH RESPONSE we have not yet seen?
The reading from John is a long one, but one of the few examples in Old or New Testaments, where after the Miracle, and after the Cleansing, and after the Trial, when this MAN now sits outside the Temple, we witness seeing Jesus SEEK HIM OUT. We would want to ask: Is he better off, as a man who once was blind and now can see, seeing that the people who once surrounded him able to see were actually blind? But that is not the question of Jesus. Jesus question to the man and to us is DO YOU BELIEVE? And having healed him, sent the man to POOL CALLED SILOAM, meaning SENT OUT.
Justified By Complaint February 24, 2008
Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
Observing people this week, was like witnessing deer in our headlights, unable to move, watching as life continues to come at us, and we never seem satisfied, joyful, even happy. We have reached that point in LENT when it is hard to imagine EASTER will ever come. February 2nd the Ground Hog saw his shadow, yet according to the DOPPLER Forecasts we are still in for another 6 to 8 weeks of cold. The candidates are campaigning, the war continues, the economy has not changed.
The first week of Lent, we recited the story of Adam and Eve and their desire to be God.
The nature of our existence has been that there are LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES and there are PROHIBITIONS, All things are Possible, but not all things are GOOD!
The Second Sabbath of Lent, we recalled our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, who lived with the promise for over twenty years, who, worried from waiting, got a child by their own means, only to have God gift them with a miracle when Abraham was 100.
This morning, we remember another of the ancient stories from which we are challenged to hope to become the People of God, a RESURRECTION PEOPLE, ather than those who go through the motions of life like deer in the headlights.
Our ancestors were oppressed Hebrew slaves of the Pharaoh of Egypt, whose entire existence had become building mauselium pyramids for the Pharaohs' burial. The people cried out to God, and God not only appointed for them a leader: Moses, God set them free! God decimated the Egyptians to free the enslaved. God brought them into a wilderness, where they could live free in relation with God. BUT, where God intended the people to live free in relation with God, the people sought a utilitarian faith... We were enslaved and God set us free, when we are hungry God can give us food, when we are thirsty God can give us drink. Just as with ADAM, Just as with ABRAM, the people sought to SATISFY THEIR DESIRES, to act as if WE WERE GOD and Almighty God were our enslaved genie.
We do not mean to make light of their needs, Abram and Sarah had been with God, holding onto a promise for over 20 years. Moses and the people were in the wilderness without food, without water where people die of MALNUTRITION & DEHYDRATION. According to Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs, Humanity cannot perceive the need for God, for bettering our selves or improving the world unless our most basic needs are met.
We are a people, whose basic needs are met.
For 99 cents we can have a hamburger cooked our way, flame broiled never fried. By pressing a spot on the refrigerator door, by lifting lever, we can have fresh pure water when ever we desire. According to the ads in magazines, on television, even at the movies, if we buy this hair conditioner, this toothpaste, this suit, this breakfast cereal, our lives will be changed forever. Even if we do not buy, if we lease the latest car, at 0% interest after we pay $3000 plus taxes, title and fees, we can have beautiful companions, clear skin and the freedom to drive off into the sunset. You don't buy it?
How can we be satisfied? How can we be changed from a needy people of wants and desires, into a people of God? The first and most problematic step is whether we know and admit to ourselves, we sin? In a time in history when we are surrounded by messages that we can have it all, we can deny what bothers us, we can horde what we have, we can indulge and never grow old, Christian faith begins with the reality, we are human, mortal, finite, and as such we sin. By thought, by word, by deed, even by avoidance, we try to convince ourselves and the world around us, we are immortal and invincible, we are as God. But, we each come to realize, when the conditioner has worn off, when the car has become old and we continue to pay, when we have had the same breakfast cereal every day, when we feel isolated and alone, we need God to be God, it is hard enough just being human. That awareness is a gift of Grace.
How can we be satisfied, how can we be justified, how can we be changed?
While Martin Luther named 95 specific issues, THIS was the fundamental separation of Catholic and Protestant from the 1500s until 2000. Luther and the Protestant Churches emphasized that we are SAVED by GRACE, an unmerited gift from God, whereas the Catholic Church had emphasized we are SAVED by WORKS of FAITH, atoning for our sins. Ultimately, after 500 years of argument the two sides realized, “We are saved by Grace, which causes us to fulfill acts of Faith.”
Were Luther to pen his theses today, it seems the common belief is not that we are Saved by Grace or by Faith or Works but that we JUSTIFY our existence by COMPLAINT.
It is not enough for us to have our needs and desires met, we want them remembered and honored, as being ours. We live in a competitive world, striving to have more, faster, to win the game of Life. Yet how small a conflict or controversy, to turn us from a contest into a fight for survival, and survival not only for our position but for the memory of what we endured.
Yet the Apostle Paul, turned this idea around. He saw our COMPLAINT, our SUFFERING as being vitally important for the human condition. None of us would be so inhuman as to cause sufering, or to wish suffering upon another. But the fact of the matter is that SUFFERING produces not only PATIENCE but ENDURANCE and PERSISTANCE and PERSEVERANCE which cannot be known, which we could never intuitively deduce except through that purification process like steel being forged of alloy, a person becoming resolved.
There are times when life seems mundane. When we go through the motions of work, of relationships, even as parents and family to one another, complaining about existence. But for us to reach EASTER, is not simply a matter of waiting another 23 days, coloring eggs and hiding chocolate; this is a dedicated period for REFLECTION, for REDEMPTION, for questioning what do I truly want to believe and work to accomplish?
It almosts sounds like a bad joke, but several years ago, University Hospital invited a Rabbi, a Priest, a Muslim Iman and a Presbyterian Minister to address questions from Medical Students about the importance of SUFFERING. The address began quite benign as the Rabbi named the SUFFERING OF JOB questioning God, Why bad things happen. Then the Priest naming that Christ suffered and died for us on the Cross, that humanity never need suffer again. Then the Muslim Imman named that according to the KORAN suffering is redemptive, it is important for the one who is ill to suffer in order to get better. The Medical Students became alarmed, never wanting to allow the Imman into a patient's room for fear what he might do to them to help them suffer! Then the Presbyterian quoted this passage from Paul, interpreting that “YES, Sufering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and Character produces hope and Hope cannot dissapoint because God's love is manifest in all this.”
So often we believe we know who we are and what we are to do, because we have our routines. In Sudan, each morning and each evening we would turn on the generator for electricity, and as if a warning bell suddenly women and young children would come running with their buckets knowing that water could be pumped from the well.
On his journeys, Jesus walked through a village of the Samaritans. His Disciples went on into the village to find food to eat, but he sat by the well in the noonday sun. A woman came to fetch water as she had every day of her life, when Jesus asked her for a sip of water. She snidely cursed how no one had use for the Samaritans, looking down upon them as a race, but when they wanted a drink of water I guess we are good enough to fetch and carry. Persevering Jesus challenged her, IF you knew whom you were talking with, you would not be content to fetch water to satisfy a drink, you would ask from him the grace which is LIVING WATER and he would gladly give it. Do we want to go through the motions, attending meetings, doing busyness. OR can the business of what we do, the SUFFERINGS of daily life challenge us to endurenence that produces character, that creates hope, hope that can be overcome because God is in it.
Romans 5:1-11
Observing people this week, was like witnessing deer in our headlights, unable to move, watching as life continues to come at us, and we never seem satisfied, joyful, even happy. We have reached that point in LENT when it is hard to imagine EASTER will ever come. February 2nd the Ground Hog saw his shadow, yet according to the DOPPLER Forecasts we are still in for another 6 to 8 weeks of cold. The candidates are campaigning, the war continues, the economy has not changed.
The first week of Lent, we recited the story of Adam and Eve and their desire to be God.
The nature of our existence has been that there are LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES and there are PROHIBITIONS, All things are Possible, but not all things are GOOD!
The Second Sabbath of Lent, we recalled our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, who lived with the promise for over twenty years, who, worried from waiting, got a child by their own means, only to have God gift them with a miracle when Abraham was 100.
This morning, we remember another of the ancient stories from which we are challenged to hope to become the People of God, a RESURRECTION PEOPLE, ather than those who go through the motions of life like deer in the headlights.
Our ancestors were oppressed Hebrew slaves of the Pharaoh of Egypt, whose entire existence had become building mauselium pyramids for the Pharaohs' burial. The people cried out to God, and God not only appointed for them a leader: Moses, God set them free! God decimated the Egyptians to free the enslaved. God brought them into a wilderness, where they could live free in relation with God. BUT, where God intended the people to live free in relation with God, the people sought a utilitarian faith... We were enslaved and God set us free, when we are hungry God can give us food, when we are thirsty God can give us drink. Just as with ADAM, Just as with ABRAM, the people sought to SATISFY THEIR DESIRES, to act as if WE WERE GOD and Almighty God were our enslaved genie.
We do not mean to make light of their needs, Abram and Sarah had been with God, holding onto a promise for over 20 years. Moses and the people were in the wilderness without food, without water where people die of MALNUTRITION & DEHYDRATION. According to Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs, Humanity cannot perceive the need for God, for bettering our selves or improving the world unless our most basic needs are met.
We are a people, whose basic needs are met.
For 99 cents we can have a hamburger cooked our way, flame broiled never fried. By pressing a spot on the refrigerator door, by lifting lever, we can have fresh pure water when ever we desire. According to the ads in magazines, on television, even at the movies, if we buy this hair conditioner, this toothpaste, this suit, this breakfast cereal, our lives will be changed forever. Even if we do not buy, if we lease the latest car, at 0% interest after we pay $3000 plus taxes, title and fees, we can have beautiful companions, clear skin and the freedom to drive off into the sunset. You don't buy it?
How can we be satisfied? How can we be changed from a needy people of wants and desires, into a people of God? The first and most problematic step is whether we know and admit to ourselves, we sin? In a time in history when we are surrounded by messages that we can have it all, we can deny what bothers us, we can horde what we have, we can indulge and never grow old, Christian faith begins with the reality, we are human, mortal, finite, and as such we sin. By thought, by word, by deed, even by avoidance, we try to convince ourselves and the world around us, we are immortal and invincible, we are as God. But, we each come to realize, when the conditioner has worn off, when the car has become old and we continue to pay, when we have had the same breakfast cereal every day, when we feel isolated and alone, we need God to be God, it is hard enough just being human. That awareness is a gift of Grace.
How can we be satisfied, how can we be justified, how can we be changed?
While Martin Luther named 95 specific issues, THIS was the fundamental separation of Catholic and Protestant from the 1500s until 2000. Luther and the Protestant Churches emphasized that we are SAVED by GRACE, an unmerited gift from God, whereas the Catholic Church had emphasized we are SAVED by WORKS of FAITH, atoning for our sins. Ultimately, after 500 years of argument the two sides realized, “We are saved by Grace, which causes us to fulfill acts of Faith.”
Were Luther to pen his theses today, it seems the common belief is not that we are Saved by Grace or by Faith or Works but that we JUSTIFY our existence by COMPLAINT.
It is not enough for us to have our needs and desires met, we want them remembered and honored, as being ours. We live in a competitive world, striving to have more, faster, to win the game of Life. Yet how small a conflict or controversy, to turn us from a contest into a fight for survival, and survival not only for our position but for the memory of what we endured.
Yet the Apostle Paul, turned this idea around. He saw our COMPLAINT, our SUFFERING as being vitally important for the human condition. None of us would be so inhuman as to cause sufering, or to wish suffering upon another. But the fact of the matter is that SUFFERING produces not only PATIENCE but ENDURANCE and PERSISTANCE and PERSEVERANCE which cannot be known, which we could never intuitively deduce except through that purification process like steel being forged of alloy, a person becoming resolved.
There are times when life seems mundane. When we go through the motions of work, of relationships, even as parents and family to one another, complaining about existence. But for us to reach EASTER, is not simply a matter of waiting another 23 days, coloring eggs and hiding chocolate; this is a dedicated period for REFLECTION, for REDEMPTION, for questioning what do I truly want to believe and work to accomplish?
It almosts sounds like a bad joke, but several years ago, University Hospital invited a Rabbi, a Priest, a Muslim Iman and a Presbyterian Minister to address questions from Medical Students about the importance of SUFFERING. The address began quite benign as the Rabbi named the SUFFERING OF JOB questioning God, Why bad things happen. Then the Priest naming that Christ suffered and died for us on the Cross, that humanity never need suffer again. Then the Muslim Imman named that according to the KORAN suffering is redemptive, it is important for the one who is ill to suffer in order to get better. The Medical Students became alarmed, never wanting to allow the Imman into a patient's room for fear what he might do to them to help them suffer! Then the Presbyterian quoted this passage from Paul, interpreting that “YES, Sufering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and Character produces hope and Hope cannot dissapoint because God's love is manifest in all this.”
So often we believe we know who we are and what we are to do, because we have our routines. In Sudan, each morning and each evening we would turn on the generator for electricity, and as if a warning bell suddenly women and young children would come running with their buckets knowing that water could be pumped from the well.
On his journeys, Jesus walked through a village of the Samaritans. His Disciples went on into the village to find food to eat, but he sat by the well in the noonday sun. A woman came to fetch water as she had every day of her life, when Jesus asked her for a sip of water. She snidely cursed how no one had use for the Samaritans, looking down upon them as a race, but when they wanted a drink of water I guess we are good enough to fetch and carry. Persevering Jesus challenged her, IF you knew whom you were talking with, you would not be content to fetch water to satisfy a drink, you would ask from him the grace which is LIVING WATER and he would gladly give it. Do we want to go through the motions, attending meetings, doing busyness. OR can the business of what we do, the SUFFERINGS of daily life challenge us to endurenence that produces character, that creates hope, hope that can be overcome because God is in it.
Foolish Promise, February 17, 2008
Genesis 12:1-4
Psalm 121
John 3:1-17
Increasingly throughout the last Century, we have pushed to separate Faith from Reality, Spirituality from Science, as if these were mutually exclusive propositions. The scientific reasoned rationalist could never believe. And the beaucoloic Father Timothy Kavanaughs of the Mitford series could never escape romantic mysticism to become real. But the point of the Scriptures is in maintaining this tension.
How different the Bible would be, if AFTER God's first experience with Adam and Eve, and God's second and third attempts with their sons Cain and Abel, then Seth, and the subsequent new beginnings of the Flood with Noah and his sons, and the sixth failed experience of God with the people settling to make for themselves a Tower of Babel, if God had chosen Abraham and Sarah fertile and fresh at the age of 19 years?
The point of the Scriptures is not simply between those who believe and those who do not; those with intellect and common sense versus those practicing rituals. God sought out Abram when Abram was already 75 years of age, and it was for Sarai FAR BEYOND her years of conception.
Abram knew and understood the ways of the world, his father and his father's father before him had all been carvers of wood and of stone in the making and selling of idols. There is a beautiful little story, that one afternoon Abram as a youth smashed and broke every idol in his father's shop. When confronted with the damage and asked what had happened, Abram described that these gods had been quarreling and their quarreling led to fighting and the idols had destroyed one another. And God said to Abram, COME be my Companion, SEARCH life in all its fullness, I will be your God, implying you will be God's people. God will make of you a GREAT PEOPLE, with a GREAT NAME, living for generation after generation POSSESSING A LAND flowing with milk and honey.
Like some great joke that gets better the longer the telling, and the further away the punch-line, over 20 years goes by, Abram and Sarai have followed where God led, they have been a faithful people trusting God, but they have no fulfillment of the promise. Without such a simple tangible thing as a child, how can they believe, how could anyone in human history believe God would fulfill the PROMISE? Then comes the punch-line, the ultimate question of faith, IS ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD?
Science, reason, intellect, rational deduction are al based on what is possible and what is probable. Faith is not a challenge to what is real, not another dimension, a parallel universe. FAITH BEGINS WHERE LOGIC AND REASON END. When we come to that which is hopeless and impossible and we know better, still to choose to believe.
If we were to tell this story today, we would begin with Sarai, who like her mother and aunt and grandmother before her had had a cancerous lump, and knowing their experiences she had had a hysterectomy. Years go by, and one day, at age 75, there is a rumble outside and Abram comes home on a motorcycle, telling his wife that they should travel the world, following where God leads. They set out and have marvelous adventures, but not a child, in 20 years of travels never a child. Is it possible, for one who has gone through all this, the surgeries, the radiation and chemo, and 20 years, for God to still work miracles through?
In the Biblical Story Abram and Sarai had tried to fulfill the promise on their own terms, doing what God did not. They had living with them their brother's son Lot; they had a baby born among their slaves (Eleazar of damascus) who being their property was their heir; through Hagar Sarah's slave they had conceived by a surrogate, Ishmael. After all this, The LORD visits Abram and Sarai, and there is this foolish juxtaposition, as Abram runs around trying to DO all this STUFF, while the LORD asks IS ANYTHING TOO WONDERFUL FOR GOD? And when Abram and then Sarah each scoff and laugh in disbelief, that is when God fulfills God's promise.
This last week was celebration of Valentine's, far more than a single day of romance, of emotion and lust, and intellectually knowing we are meant for one another to spend a lifetime together LOVE, as described by Jesus to Nicodemus, in GOD'S LOVE for the WORLD and as GOD'S TRUST, like the FAITH demanded of Abraham and Sarah, is an ACT OF WILL.
We have arrived at the height of human intellect and control that has entered into the business of love. Now, in addition to lathering yourself in a perfume to attract a mate by pheromones, and the Internet survey systems that for $49.99 can match you up on 35 personal characteristics with seven other people; you can for $95.00 submit a DNA swab for genetic matching with your soul mate. But while there is Attraction, and Lust and Romance, LOVE is a matter of WILL that allows you to bear with your parents, your partner, your children, as all of us grow and challenge and change.
The great tragedy that has befallen human society, is that we have come to believe relationships are CONTRACTUAL, that there are limits to what is possible, and what we are willing to believe and to do. Would that we could WILL Ourselves to believe, WILL OURSELVES TO TRUST RELATIONSHIPS AS A COVENANT OF LOVE, to bear with and believe ESPECIALLY when we are challenged, when we doubt and do not know.
I love the figure of Nicodemus. Like us, he wants so badly to believe, to understand, to get it right. He has succeeded at everything he has ever put his mind to. He is a scholar and teacher of religion. He knows what the law requires and allows. He has seen miracles with his own eyes, yet he does not get it, and cannot understand. I am an odd sort of pastor, because I enjoy teaching CONFIRMATION to those 13 to 17 years of age. There is something in this formative age that questions and wonders and knows that there is more than what they know. The delight is in providing knowledge to fill the foundational voids, then seeing where their own beliefs and commitments will take them.
Subtly, what Jesus tries to teach Nicodemus, is that as a learned professor of religion, a lawyer and teacher of the faith, a pharisee in all the best sense of being pure and steadfast, he needs to repent of his sins in order to ever believe. For decades, Christians have recited this passage as the importance of being “Born Again”, when that language is exactly where Nicodemus stumbles. The power of Jesus words come in the emphasis: “Unless you are baptized of WATER AND THE SPIRIT”. We have come to accept Baptism as being a ritual, a dedication, naming this child who is not able to object, with our faith and values, hopes and dreams. Nicodemus would NOT have heard reference to Baptism and Water as such. BAPTISM was the means by which Gentiles, NON-Believer Heathens Outside God's Love, Sinners were washed clean and converted to be part of the community of faith, the people of God.
Jesus' Invitation to Nicodemus, his demand of this Pharisee, is as much as saying to the POPE, to a PASTOR who has served their life in the Church, that we should recognize ourselves as sinners, truly a non-believer heathen, outside God's love, and should with all the passion and will of a Gentile trying to convert, seek to be baptized and to believe.
The great foolishness of believers, is that we become so accustomed to the promise, we take faith for granted. As believers, many of us who are pastors, elders, deacons, have served the church all our lives, we know very well how to balance a budget, how to sing an aria, how to teach a lesson, how to form a foundation, but do we still believe in the possibility of God to do the impossible? IS ANYTHING TOO WONDERFUL FOR GOD?
Making this very practical, our Nation has a budget for spending $375,000,000,000,00 in 2008, with an additional $275,000,000,000 for the fighting of the war, yet no monies have been planned for how to end the war and bring our soldiers home. Do we believe war will ever end? With Civil War now in Kenya, in Chad, in the Congo we once called Zaire, in Darfur of Sudan, and in the Middle East... DO we believe anything is too wonderful, is impossible, for God? When year after year there are atrocities of students going on killing rampages on College campuses and at high schools? Can we pray to God, can we believe that God can create Peace?
Psalm 121
John 3:1-17
Increasingly throughout the last Century, we have pushed to separate Faith from Reality, Spirituality from Science, as if these were mutually exclusive propositions. The scientific reasoned rationalist could never believe. And the beaucoloic Father Timothy Kavanaughs of the Mitford series could never escape romantic mysticism to become real. But the point of the Scriptures is in maintaining this tension.
How different the Bible would be, if AFTER God's first experience with Adam and Eve, and God's second and third attempts with their sons Cain and Abel, then Seth, and the subsequent new beginnings of the Flood with Noah and his sons, and the sixth failed experience of God with the people settling to make for themselves a Tower of Babel, if God had chosen Abraham and Sarah fertile and fresh at the age of 19 years?
The point of the Scriptures is not simply between those who believe and those who do not; those with intellect and common sense versus those practicing rituals. God sought out Abram when Abram was already 75 years of age, and it was for Sarai FAR BEYOND her years of conception.
Abram knew and understood the ways of the world, his father and his father's father before him had all been carvers of wood and of stone in the making and selling of idols. There is a beautiful little story, that one afternoon Abram as a youth smashed and broke every idol in his father's shop. When confronted with the damage and asked what had happened, Abram described that these gods had been quarreling and their quarreling led to fighting and the idols had destroyed one another. And God said to Abram, COME be my Companion, SEARCH life in all its fullness, I will be your God, implying you will be God's people. God will make of you a GREAT PEOPLE, with a GREAT NAME, living for generation after generation POSSESSING A LAND flowing with milk and honey.
Like some great joke that gets better the longer the telling, and the further away the punch-line, over 20 years goes by, Abram and Sarai have followed where God led, they have been a faithful people trusting God, but they have no fulfillment of the promise. Without such a simple tangible thing as a child, how can they believe, how could anyone in human history believe God would fulfill the PROMISE? Then comes the punch-line, the ultimate question of faith, IS ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD?
Science, reason, intellect, rational deduction are al based on what is possible and what is probable. Faith is not a challenge to what is real, not another dimension, a parallel universe. FAITH BEGINS WHERE LOGIC AND REASON END. When we come to that which is hopeless and impossible and we know better, still to choose to believe.
If we were to tell this story today, we would begin with Sarai, who like her mother and aunt and grandmother before her had had a cancerous lump, and knowing their experiences she had had a hysterectomy. Years go by, and one day, at age 75, there is a rumble outside and Abram comes home on a motorcycle, telling his wife that they should travel the world, following where God leads. They set out and have marvelous adventures, but not a child, in 20 years of travels never a child. Is it possible, for one who has gone through all this, the surgeries, the radiation and chemo, and 20 years, for God to still work miracles through?
In the Biblical Story Abram and Sarai had tried to fulfill the promise on their own terms, doing what God did not. They had living with them their brother's son Lot; they had a baby born among their slaves (Eleazar of damascus) who being their property was their heir; through Hagar Sarah's slave they had conceived by a surrogate, Ishmael. After all this, The LORD visits Abram and Sarai, and there is this foolish juxtaposition, as Abram runs around trying to DO all this STUFF, while the LORD asks IS ANYTHING TOO WONDERFUL FOR GOD? And when Abram and then Sarah each scoff and laugh in disbelief, that is when God fulfills God's promise.
This last week was celebration of Valentine's, far more than a single day of romance, of emotion and lust, and intellectually knowing we are meant for one another to spend a lifetime together LOVE, as described by Jesus to Nicodemus, in GOD'S LOVE for the WORLD and as GOD'S TRUST, like the FAITH demanded of Abraham and Sarah, is an ACT OF WILL.
We have arrived at the height of human intellect and control that has entered into the business of love. Now, in addition to lathering yourself in a perfume to attract a mate by pheromones, and the Internet survey systems that for $49.99 can match you up on 35 personal characteristics with seven other people; you can for $95.00 submit a DNA swab for genetic matching with your soul mate. But while there is Attraction, and Lust and Romance, LOVE is a matter of WILL that allows you to bear with your parents, your partner, your children, as all of us grow and challenge and change.
The great tragedy that has befallen human society, is that we have come to believe relationships are CONTRACTUAL, that there are limits to what is possible, and what we are willing to believe and to do. Would that we could WILL Ourselves to believe, WILL OURSELVES TO TRUST RELATIONSHIPS AS A COVENANT OF LOVE, to bear with and believe ESPECIALLY when we are challenged, when we doubt and do not know.
I love the figure of Nicodemus. Like us, he wants so badly to believe, to understand, to get it right. He has succeeded at everything he has ever put his mind to. He is a scholar and teacher of religion. He knows what the law requires and allows. He has seen miracles with his own eyes, yet he does not get it, and cannot understand. I am an odd sort of pastor, because I enjoy teaching CONFIRMATION to those 13 to 17 years of age. There is something in this formative age that questions and wonders and knows that there is more than what they know. The delight is in providing knowledge to fill the foundational voids, then seeing where their own beliefs and commitments will take them.
Subtly, what Jesus tries to teach Nicodemus, is that as a learned professor of religion, a lawyer and teacher of the faith, a pharisee in all the best sense of being pure and steadfast, he needs to repent of his sins in order to ever believe. For decades, Christians have recited this passage as the importance of being “Born Again”, when that language is exactly where Nicodemus stumbles. The power of Jesus words come in the emphasis: “Unless you are baptized of WATER AND THE SPIRIT”. We have come to accept Baptism as being a ritual, a dedication, naming this child who is not able to object, with our faith and values, hopes and dreams. Nicodemus would NOT have heard reference to Baptism and Water as such. BAPTISM was the means by which Gentiles, NON-Believer Heathens Outside God's Love, Sinners were washed clean and converted to be part of the community of faith, the people of God.
Jesus' Invitation to Nicodemus, his demand of this Pharisee, is as much as saying to the POPE, to a PASTOR who has served their life in the Church, that we should recognize ourselves as sinners, truly a non-believer heathen, outside God's love, and should with all the passion and will of a Gentile trying to convert, seek to be baptized and to believe.
The great foolishness of believers, is that we become so accustomed to the promise, we take faith for granted. As believers, many of us who are pastors, elders, deacons, have served the church all our lives, we know very well how to balance a budget, how to sing an aria, how to teach a lesson, how to form a foundation, but do we still believe in the possibility of God to do the impossible? IS ANYTHING TOO WONDERFUL FOR GOD?
Making this very practical, our Nation has a budget for spending $375,000,000,000,00 in 2008, with an additional $275,000,000,000 for the fighting of the war, yet no monies have been planned for how to end the war and bring our soldiers home. Do we believe war will ever end? With Civil War now in Kenya, in Chad, in the Congo we once called Zaire, in Darfur of Sudan, and in the Middle East... DO we believe anything is too wonderful, is impossible, for God? When year after year there are atrocities of students going on killing rampages on College campuses and at high schools? Can we pray to God, can we believe that God can create Peace?
The Temptations, February 10, 2008
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Matthew 4: 1-11
Having grown up in the 1960s in Detroit's Motown, I cannot see a Title like this morning's sermon, without hearing the velvetty voices of five men singing
“JUST MY IMAGINATION/ JUST MY MAGIN-A-TION RUNNIN AWAY WITH YOU”...
But, that's not so far astream,
because discussing the Temptation of Adam and Eve, or the Temptation of Jesus, what underlies the surface is The TEMPTATION of POWER: ANXIETY, IMAGINATION over against WHAT WE KNOW. The question in both passages, in most of life is “Whether we accept the parameters of Life, or out of Anxiety choose to demonstrate INDIVIDUAL POWER, ANXIETY, FEAR.”
According to Genesis, FAR MORE than a question of the Origins of Life, (Which came first and How), this is a story of WHY. Humanity was placed in the Garden with THREE INTER-RELATED IDENTITIES
1.VOCATION: Our VOCATION, our Calling, our Purpose In Being Was and is to TILL and KEEP Creation. Evolution is not a finished product, and One Identity of Humanity is to care for and nurture, plant and work Creation. Our needs and purpose are in RELATION to our Caring.
2.PERMISSION: Concerning the limits of our Abilities, we were given Absolute PERMISSION, We can go and do whatever we desire, we can eat of any plant or tree in the Garden.
3.PROHIBITION: As Creatures our authority is not limitless, we are not God, so we were given A SINGLE PROHIBITION, one Limitation, You shall not eat of the One tree God has told you not to eat.
Here the serpent is not identified as Satan or the Devil, but simply one creature out of all creation, who instead of accepting the integral inter-relationship of creation, AND of creaton with God, sought to make God an OBJECT, a 3rd Person a thing, and as such created of the words of God AN IMAGINARY PAPER TIGER. No longer accepting the Inter-relationship of our THREE Identitites Vocation, Permission and Prohibition, the question focuses on taking the one limitation out of context and misconstrues what had been said. THE POWER OF WORDS.
Eve atempts to argue with the Serpent, to defend God and preserve the balance of Creation, but ONCE SAID, once ideas and anxieties have been spoken, thoughts and fears have a reality that cannot be unspoke. What was at stake was NO LONGER KNOWLEDGE, but DOUBT, ANXIETY, FEAR.
Having made one part of our Idenitity paramount (The PROHIBITION AGAINST THE ONE TREE) and having violated that one Identity, humanity was no longer concerned with whatelse we were called to be. Never again is the question “Have we tilled and kept the Garden?” “What does Creation Need and Want?” Instead the story shifts to “I was Naked.” “I was afraid”. “I was ashamed”, “I Hid”, making eachother and God objects of blame “The Woman You gave me, She...” If anything, the knowledge we acquired by violating God's TRUST, was an in-ability to know God, to know and trust one another. Humanity that had been formed in God's hands, the creature of Dust that was given the Breath of God...The Holy Spirit as Life breathed into us, by violation of trust could only see ourselves and All Creation in response to us.
So often in the 40 Days of Lent, Believers seek a way to Give Something Up, so as to better appreciate, to repent and prepare for the coming of Easter. This Lent, we have a HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT. For the Remainder of Lent, May we give up using the Word “THEY”. No longer to Objectify. No longer to Blame. As we describe other individuals, other peoples, political parties, ANYONE ELSE in all Creation, we do so recognizing there is NO THEM, Only us, we have an identity and responsibility for tilling and keeping one another as part of God's Creation.
IT's JUST A MATTER OF IMAG-IN-A-TION..., As we imagine the world different.
The beauty of what God did at the Fall, was that God did not GROW TIRED OF US, GOD DID NOT FORGET or Abandon, When Humanity turned away from God, to see the world only through human eyes, God created new possibilities, reached out in ways we never imagined, God gave US Children.
The other night, I tried briefly to exlain to very young children about Baptism, that this is a Claiming that you belong to God, that God loves you, that God never forgets you.
The added dimension in Matthew's telling is that being Baptized, Jesus was led into the Wilderrness to be Tempted and to imagine life different because of being Baptized. What an awesome TEMPTATION that would be? If instead of dreaming of all we wanted to be, we were tempted to imagine “We are Baptized by God for a purpose, A Calling, a Vocation, to till and keep Creation, all Creation not just the parts like us, and that we are granted LIMITLESS PERMISSION, with ONE PROHIBITION that Only God can choose to be God.”
That was the Temptation of Jesus. IF All anxieties were taken away, and we had LIMITLESS PERMISSION, provided we TRUSTED GOD TO BE GOD...
Would we solve Humanity's Hunger?
Could We?
In the last several days, we have owned an ETHICAL DILEMMA, we created a Clinic in SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, where among the mortal ills that are causing peoples' deaths are dehydration and the malnutrition of poverty. Earlier this year we created an additional well, with a diesel powered electric generator to pump the water, for the medical staff to wash hands and clean the facility. This week, the other well in the Village, the one with a handpump, broke. We cannot possibly pay for enough diesel to provide water to the whole village and their cattle. DO we use money for medicines to treat malaria and measles or to pump water. More than the cost, using the pump for extended hours will mean the pump will overheat and burn out. But when the very ones we are trying to care for and to keep, the humanity being served by the Clinic are dying from dehydration, how can we not attempt to provide water?
Jesus was TEMPTED to solve SUFFERING and DANGER... Step off the Pinnacle of the Tower without falling.
A Hospital Ethics Committee was asked,
If you had a family who came to the Hospital because Grandma had a terminal illness, and had breathing problems, would you explain to the family, possibilities for extending life, would you give the family all the percentages of recovery, or would you allow the patient to die what is an easier and faster death? And the question came back, rather than trying to prevent death, or to explain all the options to extend life indefinitiely, could we control our Grandmother's suffering. Until she is without pain, without suffering, we cannot imagine questions of which way to extend and perpetuate life indefinitely.
Jesus was TEMPTED by being offered ALL POWER/ WITHOUT PROHIBITIONS to which he replied, “Begone. You shall worship the Lord Your God and God Only Shall You Serve.” We cannot isolate one part of our identity, I want all Permission and no Prohibition against anything, No Responsibility for Life. We cannot try to Be God, by trustig God to be God, we can be challenged to be human.
There is an INTEGRITY to this SACRAMENT. Years ago, there were churches that tried to separate the elements, Offering that you could have the bread representing paticipation in the Body of Christ, without the Cup. Or you could receive from the Cup of Forgiveness, without the Bread. But take a moment with those ideas. “Do we want to afirm our role and responsibility in a Broken World, having harmed God, with no forgiveness?” “Can we believe in a world of Forgiveness without Naming our responsibility our hope and prayer for redemption.” As Jesus did with his Discples, we thank God for this, and we break the bread and dip from the cup in hope. We are baptized into a three-fold identity of VOCATION GOD's CREATION of ABSOLUTE PERMISSION; and AN ABSOLUTE PROHIBITION that God be God. While each of us, all of us will at times be tempted, acting in communion with care and concern for God in God's Creation, IMAGINE what Dreams may be Realized.
Matthew 4: 1-11
Having grown up in the 1960s in Detroit's Motown, I cannot see a Title like this morning's sermon, without hearing the velvetty voices of five men singing
“JUST MY IMAGINATION/ JUST MY MAGIN-A-TION RUNNIN AWAY WITH YOU”...
But, that's not so far astream,
because discussing the Temptation of Adam and Eve, or the Temptation of Jesus, what underlies the surface is The TEMPTATION of POWER: ANXIETY, IMAGINATION over against WHAT WE KNOW. The question in both passages, in most of life is “Whether we accept the parameters of Life, or out of Anxiety choose to demonstrate INDIVIDUAL POWER, ANXIETY, FEAR.”
According to Genesis, FAR MORE than a question of the Origins of Life, (Which came first and How), this is a story of WHY. Humanity was placed in the Garden with THREE INTER-RELATED IDENTITIES
1.VOCATION: Our VOCATION, our Calling, our Purpose In Being Was and is to TILL and KEEP Creation. Evolution is not a finished product, and One Identity of Humanity is to care for and nurture, plant and work Creation. Our needs and purpose are in RELATION to our Caring.
2.PERMISSION: Concerning the limits of our Abilities, we were given Absolute PERMISSION, We can go and do whatever we desire, we can eat of any plant or tree in the Garden.
3.PROHIBITION: As Creatures our authority is not limitless, we are not God, so we were given A SINGLE PROHIBITION, one Limitation, You shall not eat of the One tree God has told you not to eat.
Here the serpent is not identified as Satan or the Devil, but simply one creature out of all creation, who instead of accepting the integral inter-relationship of creation, AND of creaton with God, sought to make God an OBJECT, a 3rd Person a thing, and as such created of the words of God AN IMAGINARY PAPER TIGER. No longer accepting the Inter-relationship of our THREE Identitites Vocation, Permission and Prohibition, the question focuses on taking the one limitation out of context and misconstrues what had been said. THE POWER OF WORDS.
Eve atempts to argue with the Serpent, to defend God and preserve the balance of Creation, but ONCE SAID, once ideas and anxieties have been spoken, thoughts and fears have a reality that cannot be unspoke. What was at stake was NO LONGER KNOWLEDGE, but DOUBT, ANXIETY, FEAR.
Having made one part of our Idenitity paramount (The PROHIBITION AGAINST THE ONE TREE) and having violated that one Identity, humanity was no longer concerned with whatelse we were called to be. Never again is the question “Have we tilled and kept the Garden?” “What does Creation Need and Want?” Instead the story shifts to “I was Naked.” “I was afraid”. “I was ashamed”, “I Hid”, making eachother and God objects of blame “The Woman You gave me, She...” If anything, the knowledge we acquired by violating God's TRUST, was an in-ability to know God, to know and trust one another. Humanity that had been formed in God's hands, the creature of Dust that was given the Breath of God...The Holy Spirit as Life breathed into us, by violation of trust could only see ourselves and All Creation in response to us.
So often in the 40 Days of Lent, Believers seek a way to Give Something Up, so as to better appreciate, to repent and prepare for the coming of Easter. This Lent, we have a HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT. For the Remainder of Lent, May we give up using the Word “THEY”. No longer to Objectify. No longer to Blame. As we describe other individuals, other peoples, political parties, ANYONE ELSE in all Creation, we do so recognizing there is NO THEM, Only us, we have an identity and responsibility for tilling and keeping one another as part of God's Creation.
IT's JUST A MATTER OF IMAG-IN-A-TION..., As we imagine the world different.
The beauty of what God did at the Fall, was that God did not GROW TIRED OF US, GOD DID NOT FORGET or Abandon, When Humanity turned away from God, to see the world only through human eyes, God created new possibilities, reached out in ways we never imagined, God gave US Children.
The other night, I tried briefly to exlain to very young children about Baptism, that this is a Claiming that you belong to God, that God loves you, that God never forgets you.
The added dimension in Matthew's telling is that being Baptized, Jesus was led into the Wilderrness to be Tempted and to imagine life different because of being Baptized. What an awesome TEMPTATION that would be? If instead of dreaming of all we wanted to be, we were tempted to imagine “We are Baptized by God for a purpose, A Calling, a Vocation, to till and keep Creation, all Creation not just the parts like us, and that we are granted LIMITLESS PERMISSION, with ONE PROHIBITION that Only God can choose to be God.”
That was the Temptation of Jesus. IF All anxieties were taken away, and we had LIMITLESS PERMISSION, provided we TRUSTED GOD TO BE GOD...
Would we solve Humanity's Hunger?
Could We?
In the last several days, we have owned an ETHICAL DILEMMA, we created a Clinic in SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, where among the mortal ills that are causing peoples' deaths are dehydration and the malnutrition of poverty. Earlier this year we created an additional well, with a diesel powered electric generator to pump the water, for the medical staff to wash hands and clean the facility. This week, the other well in the Village, the one with a handpump, broke. We cannot possibly pay for enough diesel to provide water to the whole village and their cattle. DO we use money for medicines to treat malaria and measles or to pump water. More than the cost, using the pump for extended hours will mean the pump will overheat and burn out. But when the very ones we are trying to care for and to keep, the humanity being served by the Clinic are dying from dehydration, how can we not attempt to provide water?
Jesus was TEMPTED to solve SUFFERING and DANGER... Step off the Pinnacle of the Tower without falling.
A Hospital Ethics Committee was asked,
If you had a family who came to the Hospital because Grandma had a terminal illness, and had breathing problems, would you explain to the family, possibilities for extending life, would you give the family all the percentages of recovery, or would you allow the patient to die what is an easier and faster death? And the question came back, rather than trying to prevent death, or to explain all the options to extend life indefinitiely, could we control our Grandmother's suffering. Until she is without pain, without suffering, we cannot imagine questions of which way to extend and perpetuate life indefinitely.
Jesus was TEMPTED by being offered ALL POWER/ WITHOUT PROHIBITIONS to which he replied, “Begone. You shall worship the Lord Your God and God Only Shall You Serve.” We cannot isolate one part of our identity, I want all Permission and no Prohibition against anything, No Responsibility for Life. We cannot try to Be God, by trustig God to be God, we can be challenged to be human.
There is an INTEGRITY to this SACRAMENT. Years ago, there were churches that tried to separate the elements, Offering that you could have the bread representing paticipation in the Body of Christ, without the Cup. Or you could receive from the Cup of Forgiveness, without the Bread. But take a moment with those ideas. “Do we want to afirm our role and responsibility in a Broken World, having harmed God, with no forgiveness?” “Can we believe in a world of Forgiveness without Naming our responsibility our hope and prayer for redemption.” As Jesus did with his Discples, we thank God for this, and we break the bread and dip from the cup in hope. We are baptized into a three-fold identity of VOCATION GOD's CREATION of ABSOLUTE PERMISSION; and AN ABSOLUTE PROHIBITION that God be God. While each of us, all of us will at times be tempted, acting in communion with care and concern for God in God's Creation, IMAGINE what Dreams may be Realized.
Holy Bubble, Feb 3, 2008
Exodus 24:12-18
Matthew 17:1-9
Some claim, “Good fences make good neighbors!”
“But, something there is, that does not love a wall. That wants all walls torn down.”
The title BUBBLE CHRISTIANS is not my own, but was created by a friend, describing that ORTHODOX RELIGIONS, be they chronologically Orthodox, or the Construct some have made for themselves, is a cleverly devised myth, and NOT Faith that comes by experience of what is holy. There is something about a BUBBLE that is attractive, mythic and mystic, defying the realities of life. Be it the pristine glimmer... what appears to float, defying gravity and all natural laws... the simplicity of walling in one space while simultaneously walling out all the rest. No angles, no sharp edges of confrontation, no conflicts. A bubble is A THREE DIMENSIONAL CIRCULAR WALL, a Sanctuary in time and space. The problems with a bubble, with a wall, with a construct, are TWO: that each is fragile, and as described in Frost's Poem there are places where nature so encroaches and stands in the way, our walls cannot penetrate.
The tension is that if you do not wall out, IF you permit challenge to what is secure, the firm hard boundaries, IF you allow yourself to be challenged, we make vulnerable human life, all we value as real, and all we know to be HOLY, we fear that everything is profane.
Before this year began, a 14 year old came to me, defiantly declaring he believed in dinosaurs, in science and evolution, and as this is the opposite of faith, he could not, could never believe in God. We tried to suggest that there are forces and experiences that cannot be seen, cannot be qaulified, cannot be objectively known by pure science. That there is LOVE, that there is Hate and Prejudice, that the tension between and the maturity developed by QUESTIONING WHAT WE KNOW WITH WHAT WE BELIEVE, just like questioning WHAT WE BELIEVE WITH WHAT WE EXPERIENCE AND KNOW, temper us, refine and help us develop a less fragile, more multi-dimensional reality. But at 14, he was not willing to suspend his bubble of certainty, of what is absolutely secure, for believing in what might also be.
There are many different bubbles of reality in our Post-Modern World. Each of us happily floating within our own construct of reality. Those who believe in their PRESIDENTIAL Candidate, who can see no fault. The Senator from New York is either loved or hated, with no middle ground. Republican versus Democrat, NY versus the Patriots, Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Whereas MODERNITY, the ENLIGHTENMENT, was an experimental attempt to prove Universal LAWS of the Absolute. POST-MODERN is a Subjective Tollerance that Every indivual can live their own separate fragile reality. There are of course two difficulties, there are times when our Bubbles, yours and mine, collide and being fragile both explode. There are sharp hard absolute realities in this world which a bubble cannot withstand or protect us from.
Years ago, when I left my first Call as an Assistant Pastor, The Senior Pastor questioned, you preached the sermon, you created the youth groups and served committees, but were you owned by the ministry, did you let it in to permeat your soul? A Bubble faith cannot allow that kind of challenge.
And when that BUBBLE pops, what then? I am one, who believes that The BUBBLE of the HOUSING MARKET and the Bubble of the STOCK MARKET still have great resiliency, and strength. I am an optimist. I believe in marriage when there are chronic hardships; believing in family especially when the bubbles of children and parents as adults collide. Believing there is ALWAYS possibility of FORGIVENESS, because I believe in the reality of COVENANT, THE CHALLENGE OF WRESTLING WITH THE HOLY IN THE MIDST OF LIFE.
But when we are told we have a lump, in our most intimate and private of human parts... When we lose our hair because of treatment... when we lose our friends because of a decision... When our mother, or our sister, or our baby dies... When we lose our job... When we face the reality that life will not last forever, that medicine's primary responsibility is not to cure but to relieve suffering, and when we grasp we are not 14 anymore... What can we believe? BEING IN THE MIDST OF MYST IS NOT TANGIBLE.
COVENANT is not a philosphical, theoretical, contractual agreement. Those are BUBBLE REALITIES, that provide you do your part and I do mine, given these parameters, IF this is true in an absolute world. I tried to explain to an engaged couple, that the questions of INTENTION we ask, and the VOWS we state (For Richer or Poorer, Better or Worse, Sickness and Health), Pronouncement of Marriage or Signing a State License, these are not the LIMITS OF OUR RELATIONSHIP, but rather the beginning. When your marriage reaches that moment of Bankruptcy, or Terminal Illness, or Living with Chronic Suffering, or living in Excess, living beyond the limit of decades together, beyond lust and romance, THESE are when Marriage becomes a Covenant.
The HEBREW Slaves had survived for generations obeying the laws of the Pharaohs. Suddenly, miraculously, they were on the other side of the Red Sea, FREE. They looked to Moses, and said OKAY, TELL US WHAT TO DO. You Be Pharaoh, we will be your slaves. The people tried to trade one BUBBLE FOR ANOTHER, one Pharaoh for a King. According to EXODUS, Moses did something different.
Moses sacrificed a bull, cooked it for a great feast of the people, and reserved the BLOOD, then Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of the Sacrifice. Moses MARKED THE PEOPLE not on doorposts, but phsically marked them with the sacrifice of what they experienced. They experienced something unexpected, different from all reality they had ever known. The people were set apart to be HOLY to God.
We have a reality where everything is a little dirty, sinful, dark. We have come to question all authority, to doubt all leaders, to know that ministers and priests and government officials, employers and businesses, parents and children, spouses, ALL can and will disappoint us. NOTHING is absolute. We believe in the power therapy and education to better understand, to comprehend what we did not know. We believe in our own power to anesthetize and anebriate, in order to cope with what we cannot control. CAN WE BELIEVE IN THE HOLY WITHIN THIS BUBBLE?
Simon Peter wrote the Church in the time of the Great Greek Philosophers, an era of Human History in which Prophets were claiming DEDUCTIVE REASONING, and INDUCTIVE REASONING, CONSTRUCTING and DECONSRUCTING, claiming DREAMS and VISIONS, and who atempted to discount all OTHERS as Myth. Peter described, what we expelain is not myth or theory, but what we have experienced and known from a HOLY REALITY. Testing and Challenging, Tempering what we live with God.
This pasage from EXODUS is so often overlooked, and is MONUMENTAL TO FAITH. After God had miraculously led this enslaved people to freedom, God entreated the people to come to stand before God. The people were afraid, we know we are a litle dirty, sinful, dark and God is GOD. So the people, marked with their sacrifice, stood at the base of the Mountain before God. Moses took with Aaron and Hur, and Joshua, and halfway up the mountain left them there to pray. And the CLOUD OF THUNDER and LIGHTNING, of MYST and MYSTERY overshadowed the Mountain, and MOSES WENT INTO THE CLOUD.
The HOLY not Only Marks us with the SACRIFICE, Atoning for the past, but INVITES US into relationship, into RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY and TRUST.
The challenge, the problem for us, is whether we can let go our BUBBLES, our fragile constructs and myths of what we are, to live in this reality knowing life and death, and Superbowl Victories and Defeats, Candidates Winning and Losing, Houses being Appraised for so much more or so much less which bears no reality unless we are willing and able to give it up, AND to embrace what is HOLY.
We know from EXPERIENCE that GOD is willing and able, because the Creator of all life, the Judge and ultimate Authority of Life and Death loves us so much as to take up human flesh, entering into our lives, our reality, in order to love, and to suffer and die for us, demonstrating another reality, of what it is to live in COVENANT. Can we enter in, into the fullness of LIFE with what is HOLY?
Matthew 17:1-9
Some claim, “Good fences make good neighbors!”
“But, something there is, that does not love a wall. That wants all walls torn down.”
The title BUBBLE CHRISTIANS is not my own, but was created by a friend, describing that ORTHODOX RELIGIONS, be they chronologically Orthodox, or the Construct some have made for themselves, is a cleverly devised myth, and NOT Faith that comes by experience of what is holy. There is something about a BUBBLE that is attractive, mythic and mystic, defying the realities of life. Be it the pristine glimmer... what appears to float, defying gravity and all natural laws... the simplicity of walling in one space while simultaneously walling out all the rest. No angles, no sharp edges of confrontation, no conflicts. A bubble is A THREE DIMENSIONAL CIRCULAR WALL, a Sanctuary in time and space. The problems with a bubble, with a wall, with a construct, are TWO: that each is fragile, and as described in Frost's Poem there are places where nature so encroaches and stands in the way, our walls cannot penetrate.
The tension is that if you do not wall out, IF you permit challenge to what is secure, the firm hard boundaries, IF you allow yourself to be challenged, we make vulnerable human life, all we value as real, and all we know to be HOLY, we fear that everything is profane.
Before this year began, a 14 year old came to me, defiantly declaring he believed in dinosaurs, in science and evolution, and as this is the opposite of faith, he could not, could never believe in God. We tried to suggest that there are forces and experiences that cannot be seen, cannot be qaulified, cannot be objectively known by pure science. That there is LOVE, that there is Hate and Prejudice, that the tension between and the maturity developed by QUESTIONING WHAT WE KNOW WITH WHAT WE BELIEVE, just like questioning WHAT WE BELIEVE WITH WHAT WE EXPERIENCE AND KNOW, temper us, refine and help us develop a less fragile, more multi-dimensional reality. But at 14, he was not willing to suspend his bubble of certainty, of what is absolutely secure, for believing in what might also be.
There are many different bubbles of reality in our Post-Modern World. Each of us happily floating within our own construct of reality. Those who believe in their PRESIDENTIAL Candidate, who can see no fault. The Senator from New York is either loved or hated, with no middle ground. Republican versus Democrat, NY versus the Patriots, Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Whereas MODERNITY, the ENLIGHTENMENT, was an experimental attempt to prove Universal LAWS of the Absolute. POST-MODERN is a Subjective Tollerance that Every indivual can live their own separate fragile reality. There are of course two difficulties, there are times when our Bubbles, yours and mine, collide and being fragile both explode. There are sharp hard absolute realities in this world which a bubble cannot withstand or protect us from.
Years ago, when I left my first Call as an Assistant Pastor, The Senior Pastor questioned, you preached the sermon, you created the youth groups and served committees, but were you owned by the ministry, did you let it in to permeat your soul? A Bubble faith cannot allow that kind of challenge.
And when that BUBBLE pops, what then? I am one, who believes that The BUBBLE of the HOUSING MARKET and the Bubble of the STOCK MARKET still have great resiliency, and strength. I am an optimist. I believe in marriage when there are chronic hardships; believing in family especially when the bubbles of children and parents as adults collide. Believing there is ALWAYS possibility of FORGIVENESS, because I believe in the reality of COVENANT, THE CHALLENGE OF WRESTLING WITH THE HOLY IN THE MIDST OF LIFE.
But when we are told we have a lump, in our most intimate and private of human parts... When we lose our hair because of treatment... when we lose our friends because of a decision... When our mother, or our sister, or our baby dies... When we lose our job... When we face the reality that life will not last forever, that medicine's primary responsibility is not to cure but to relieve suffering, and when we grasp we are not 14 anymore... What can we believe? BEING IN THE MIDST OF MYST IS NOT TANGIBLE.
COVENANT is not a philosphical, theoretical, contractual agreement. Those are BUBBLE REALITIES, that provide you do your part and I do mine, given these parameters, IF this is true in an absolute world. I tried to explain to an engaged couple, that the questions of INTENTION we ask, and the VOWS we state (For Richer or Poorer, Better or Worse, Sickness and Health), Pronouncement of Marriage or Signing a State License, these are not the LIMITS OF OUR RELATIONSHIP, but rather the beginning. When your marriage reaches that moment of Bankruptcy, or Terminal Illness, or Living with Chronic Suffering, or living in Excess, living beyond the limit of decades together, beyond lust and romance, THESE are when Marriage becomes a Covenant.
The HEBREW Slaves had survived for generations obeying the laws of the Pharaohs. Suddenly, miraculously, they were on the other side of the Red Sea, FREE. They looked to Moses, and said OKAY, TELL US WHAT TO DO. You Be Pharaoh, we will be your slaves. The people tried to trade one BUBBLE FOR ANOTHER, one Pharaoh for a King. According to EXODUS, Moses did something different.
Moses sacrificed a bull, cooked it for a great feast of the people, and reserved the BLOOD, then Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of the Sacrifice. Moses MARKED THE PEOPLE not on doorposts, but phsically marked them with the sacrifice of what they experienced. They experienced something unexpected, different from all reality they had ever known. The people were set apart to be HOLY to God.
We have a reality where everything is a little dirty, sinful, dark. We have come to question all authority, to doubt all leaders, to know that ministers and priests and government officials, employers and businesses, parents and children, spouses, ALL can and will disappoint us. NOTHING is absolute. We believe in the power therapy and education to better understand, to comprehend what we did not know. We believe in our own power to anesthetize and anebriate, in order to cope with what we cannot control. CAN WE BELIEVE IN THE HOLY WITHIN THIS BUBBLE?
Simon Peter wrote the Church in the time of the Great Greek Philosophers, an era of Human History in which Prophets were claiming DEDUCTIVE REASONING, and INDUCTIVE REASONING, CONSTRUCTING and DECONSRUCTING, claiming DREAMS and VISIONS, and who atempted to discount all OTHERS as Myth. Peter described, what we expelain is not myth or theory, but what we have experienced and known from a HOLY REALITY. Testing and Challenging, Tempering what we live with God.
This pasage from EXODUS is so often overlooked, and is MONUMENTAL TO FAITH. After God had miraculously led this enslaved people to freedom, God entreated the people to come to stand before God. The people were afraid, we know we are a litle dirty, sinful, dark and God is GOD. So the people, marked with their sacrifice, stood at the base of the Mountain before God. Moses took with Aaron and Hur, and Joshua, and halfway up the mountain left them there to pray. And the CLOUD OF THUNDER and LIGHTNING, of MYST and MYSTERY overshadowed the Mountain, and MOSES WENT INTO THE CLOUD.
The HOLY not Only Marks us with the SACRIFICE, Atoning for the past, but INVITES US into relationship, into RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY and TRUST.
The challenge, the problem for us, is whether we can let go our BUBBLES, our fragile constructs and myths of what we are, to live in this reality knowing life and death, and Superbowl Victories and Defeats, Candidates Winning and Losing, Houses being Appraised for so much more or so much less which bears no reality unless we are willing and able to give it up, AND to embrace what is HOLY.
We know from EXPERIENCE that GOD is willing and able, because the Creator of all life, the Judge and ultimate Authority of Life and Death loves us so much as to take up human flesh, entering into our lives, our reality, in order to love, and to suffer and die for us, demonstrating another reality, of what it is to live in COVENANT. Can we enter in, into the fullness of LIFE with what is HOLY?
Accomplishments and Attempts, Jan 27, 2008
Isaiah 9:1-4
Mathew 4:12-23
On the day of Annual Gatherings, be it for a Corporate Meeting, or a Birthday, or Anniversary, or at a Memorial at the end of a Life, there is always a question of what did we accomplish, has anything we worked at mattered, what can we point to and say this is the thing we did this year, with all we had.
Speaking with a friend serving another church, she described with pride “We increased the endowment by 20%”, which really meant someone had died and left the church a million dollars. Earlier this year, someone reflected upon our year, and described that the one thing, the only thing we had done, was to build a clinic in Africa... At the time I wanted to interrupt and ask what about, and what about, but realized that all this would do would be a defensive argument, so withdrew to a more opportune time. That is a powerful phrase that MATTHEW gives us about Jesus. None of the other evangelists use it, and Matthew describes Jesus in this way 10 times. Rather than protesting the arrest of John the Baptist, JESUS WITHDREW. Rather than fight with the crowd, JESUS WITHDREW. Having been tested by the Pharisees and Scribes, NONE DARED ASK HIM QUESTIONS and HE WITHDREW. More than a statement of Apathy or of Non-VIOLENCE, Matthew recognizes that Jesus MADE ATTEMPTS and if people did not accept he withdrew and ATTEMPTED AGAIN, ANEW. That is what God does, NOT a grand plan where every decision is PREDETERMINED for us, but in this circumstance God tries to get through to us, and if we accept well and good, if not God withdraws and ATTEMPTS ANEW, then God WITHDRAWS & ATTEMPTS ANEW. We imagine life this continuous uninterupted PATH OF ACCOMPLSHMENTS, a Ladder of Successes, stepping stones to greater responsibility, but life is more a dance, of ATTEMPTING and TRYING AGAIN.
I recall a year ago, after referencing that one of the tranisitions we had made as a congregation was acceptance of the idea of each of us “holding up and being held as a child of God”. That for the last decade the Pastor had been going out into the congregation during worship to comfort a child and using that as an image of what we each seek in worship and faith, to be UP HELD, TO BE COMFORTED, TO BE CARED FOR as if OUR PRESENCE IN LIFE MATTERED. Going a step further, we suggested that as the church is a MINISTRY OF BELIEVERS we could each hold and comfort another's child, challenge and comfort one another, and then proceeded to take every child and give them to someone else to hold and care for throughout the worship service. And very SUBTLEY, so much so you may not have noticed, Deacons and neighbors in the pew have begun to do this on a regular basis this year. Would that we could carry that even a step further. Rather than waiting for parents to have a need for someone to care for their child while they do otherwise, if we could seek others out and suggest “You had a baby six months ago, have you gotten out much since? Would you like to have tea together, or could you allow me to have time with the baby while you do something for you?
With the wisdom of Solomon, Someone offered that they would pledge a gift if others would match it, and together we would lower the Adjustable Rate Mortgaged Debt of the Church, paying of $200,000. Not only did the congregation do so, but the Session took this as a statement of faith and commitment and invaded the Church's Financial Reserves to repay the debt, by in essence borrowing from ourselves. What we had not planned on, was that another individual with a GRACE FAR SURPASSING ANNANIAS & SAPHIRA would assess their priorities and their IRA and 401K payouts and elect to begin to contribute to the Church, while they could enjoy seeing what this would do.
Over the summer those in the Bell Choir and those who just played for fellowship took a week-long class together, and out of this we now have the Chancel Bells, the Fellowship Bells, the Em-Bell-ishments and the JAZZ-iBells.
TWO SISTERS died within a year and left the church a gift that allowed us air conditioning.
A BOY who had gotten into trouble, was never forgotten/ continually prayed for, and grew into a man, now to be elected as an Officer and Servant of the Church.
I am awed and overwhelmed to describe that ecumenically, we have been invited to share in leadership at Funerals and Baptism with the catholic Church.
We were allowed to celebrate that Refugees who came to us seven years ago, have now become AMERICAN CITIZENS, one graduated CUM LAUDE from LeMoyne College and has enlisted in the UNITED STATES ARMY, others have Married and Gave us the OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE IN A WEDDING none will soon forget.
BUT ATTEMPTS are not always ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Part of what it means TO FOLLOW CHRIST is to REACH OUT without Knowing, without Controlling the Outcomes of where we go. That is hard for us to let go of. We are destination driven, outcome based and we thrive on CONTROL, on our own Self-Determination.
Years ago, in another church, there was a desire for an OUTDOOR WORSHIP AREA. Having received several small endowments we put these together and bought 40 Norway Spruce seedlings at $25 each. Carefully, we laid out a double circle, spacing the holes, filling them with peat and manure. Three times a week, every week, we watered and cared for the seedlings, until winter came. The following spring we discovered that the deer and woodchucks had had a feast, all that was left were 3 of the 40. Undaunted, someone planted a Dozen more. When the summer's drought burned up 6 of these, many began to wonder, but every year there was an attempt to plant several, knowing only a few would survive. Twenty years later, there is a beautiful outdoor Sanctuary, and the description that is upheld is “ISN'T IT WONDERFUL THAT THOSE WHO PLANTED THIS PLANTED ONLY A FEW EACH YEAR TO STAGGER THEIR HEIGHT & ARRANGEMENT.”
There is an integrity in reading these pasages together, CALL of Disciples and PARABLE of TALENTS.
FIRST because we RATIONALIZE and REASON our way through the Gospel, as if saying to ourselves we need to FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS' TEAHINGS, we TRY TO ACCEPT JESUS AS OUR PERSONAL SAVIOR, we seek to be ETHICAL and MORAL MANAGERS, making good decisions. But there is a difference, “Following the example”, trying to “accept his teachings” makes GOD INTO A LESSON, A PHILOSOPHY THAT CAN BE MASTERED. Instead, we are CALLED TO FOLLOW CHRIST and LIVE OUR FAITH to BECOME.
MANAGERS look at all the resources they have, and determine what is the least expensive, how can I best manage and distribute among what I possess. LEADERS listen and seek for what needs to be done.
There is a beauty in Jesus having caled FISHERMEN, for fishing is not a team sport of trying to outwit or outplay the other, not looking for who is fastest or strongest, or smartest. FISHING allows the individual to wade out into the water, to push off from shore, and imagine what would this element of nature desire? A fly, a spoon, a worm, a minnow, marshmallows? Be creative, imaginative, what does this we do not kn ow hunger after? Once they have taken the bait, playing, dancing, competing against the elements of nature themselves to catch what no one else ever has done. All the while knowing that n the end there is a STORY TO TELL.
This year, we attempted to have an INNOVATIVE WORSHIP ON SUNDAY NIGHTS and two people came. We had OPEN THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSIONS and one came. Sometimes we need to withdraw and try again at a different tme anew.
One of the most amazing parts of going to Sudan recently, was eharing fresh applications of the Bible. Listening as people described that LIKE THE TOWER AT BABEL people were content to settle in a place and work together, until different dialects and new words of a new generation arise. The way you form a new TRIBE is to form a new language or dialect. Listening as the Medical Professionals described that there are reasons for INFERTILITY, both natural and acquired, and how privledged we are to live in an era where our future is not determined by having numerous sons and daughters to provide for us. Learning that there is a parasite, called the GUINEAWORM that as a microscopic organism burrows up through a person's foot or hand, where it grows in the arm or leg until it dies, then the white blood cells attack this foreign body and it burns. Often described as BURNING SERPENTS, this is the story n Moses of the people who had complained being inflicted by these, and the difficulty that f you try to cut them out, or can get hold of the end, they just break off, but that piercing the arm or leg with a small sharp stick you can carefully twist winding the serpent up to extract whole, like the Doctor's symbol for medicine.
But there was yet another, so blunt and direct, it was impossible to miss. Three years ago, visiting this same place, before I left to go on a far journey returning home to America, I disributed gifts and pledges. I had been asked to carry a cardboad box full of money as years of salaries to people who had not been paid. I gave a family a significant gift that allowed them to get their son out of trouble and return a Prodigal home. I also gave a man, whom many did not, but who called himself Rural Deacon Elijah, a gift for purchase of oxen and plows to develop a cultivation program. I gave to a man who asked for $20 a twenty dollar bill. And promised, that somehow, though at the time it was unclear, we would create a clinic for health care. Returning to that Village, all those whose salaries had been reimbursed now had new jobs, the compound was greatly enhanced with trees and buildings and crops being planted. The Prodigal, had not only come home, he now owned a hotel and cars and businesses. Asking about Elijah, and describing the gift, I was taken to a neighboring village, where there was a man named Elijah, who did have the oxen and plows and was cultivating fields, but he was not the man I had given it to. Apparently, who ever accepted responsibility for this project, acquired the name Elijah and kept it going until someone else came along to con tnue it. But also, seeing the man who had asked for $20, he took me by the hand and led over to a place where he dug in the ground and pulled out a large SNAIL SHELL, inside of which was the $20, which nothing had been done to, it had not been lost, it had not been risked, it was held for the possibility you might one day return.
Mathew 4:12-23
On the day of Annual Gatherings, be it for a Corporate Meeting, or a Birthday, or Anniversary, or at a Memorial at the end of a Life, there is always a question of what did we accomplish, has anything we worked at mattered, what can we point to and say this is the thing we did this year, with all we had.
Speaking with a friend serving another church, she described with pride “We increased the endowment by 20%”, which really meant someone had died and left the church a million dollars. Earlier this year, someone reflected upon our year, and described that the one thing, the only thing we had done, was to build a clinic in Africa... At the time I wanted to interrupt and ask what about, and what about, but realized that all this would do would be a defensive argument, so withdrew to a more opportune time. That is a powerful phrase that MATTHEW gives us about Jesus. None of the other evangelists use it, and Matthew describes Jesus in this way 10 times. Rather than protesting the arrest of John the Baptist, JESUS WITHDREW. Rather than fight with the crowd, JESUS WITHDREW. Having been tested by the Pharisees and Scribes, NONE DARED ASK HIM QUESTIONS and HE WITHDREW. More than a statement of Apathy or of Non-VIOLENCE, Matthew recognizes that Jesus MADE ATTEMPTS and if people did not accept he withdrew and ATTEMPTED AGAIN, ANEW. That is what God does, NOT a grand plan where every decision is PREDETERMINED for us, but in this circumstance God tries to get through to us, and if we accept well and good, if not God withdraws and ATTEMPTS ANEW, then God WITHDRAWS & ATTEMPTS ANEW. We imagine life this continuous uninterupted PATH OF ACCOMPLSHMENTS, a Ladder of Successes, stepping stones to greater responsibility, but life is more a dance, of ATTEMPTING and TRYING AGAIN.
I recall a year ago, after referencing that one of the tranisitions we had made as a congregation was acceptance of the idea of each of us “holding up and being held as a child of God”. That for the last decade the Pastor had been going out into the congregation during worship to comfort a child and using that as an image of what we each seek in worship and faith, to be UP HELD, TO BE COMFORTED, TO BE CARED FOR as if OUR PRESENCE IN LIFE MATTERED. Going a step further, we suggested that as the church is a MINISTRY OF BELIEVERS we could each hold and comfort another's child, challenge and comfort one another, and then proceeded to take every child and give them to someone else to hold and care for throughout the worship service. And very SUBTLEY, so much so you may not have noticed, Deacons and neighbors in the pew have begun to do this on a regular basis this year. Would that we could carry that even a step further. Rather than waiting for parents to have a need for someone to care for their child while they do otherwise, if we could seek others out and suggest “You had a baby six months ago, have you gotten out much since? Would you like to have tea together, or could you allow me to have time with the baby while you do something for you?
With the wisdom of Solomon, Someone offered that they would pledge a gift if others would match it, and together we would lower the Adjustable Rate Mortgaged Debt of the Church, paying of $200,000. Not only did the congregation do so, but the Session took this as a statement of faith and commitment and invaded the Church's Financial Reserves to repay the debt, by in essence borrowing from ourselves. What we had not planned on, was that another individual with a GRACE FAR SURPASSING ANNANIAS & SAPHIRA would assess their priorities and their IRA and 401K payouts and elect to begin to contribute to the Church, while they could enjoy seeing what this would do.
Over the summer those in the Bell Choir and those who just played for fellowship took a week-long class together, and out of this we now have the Chancel Bells, the Fellowship Bells, the Em-Bell-ishments and the JAZZ-iBells.
TWO SISTERS died within a year and left the church a gift that allowed us air conditioning.
A BOY who had gotten into trouble, was never forgotten/ continually prayed for, and grew into a man, now to be elected as an Officer and Servant of the Church.
I am awed and overwhelmed to describe that ecumenically, we have been invited to share in leadership at Funerals and Baptism with the catholic Church.
We were allowed to celebrate that Refugees who came to us seven years ago, have now become AMERICAN CITIZENS, one graduated CUM LAUDE from LeMoyne College and has enlisted in the UNITED STATES ARMY, others have Married and Gave us the OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE IN A WEDDING none will soon forget.
BUT ATTEMPTS are not always ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Part of what it means TO FOLLOW CHRIST is to REACH OUT without Knowing, without Controlling the Outcomes of where we go. That is hard for us to let go of. We are destination driven, outcome based and we thrive on CONTROL, on our own Self-Determination.
Years ago, in another church, there was a desire for an OUTDOOR WORSHIP AREA. Having received several small endowments we put these together and bought 40 Norway Spruce seedlings at $25 each. Carefully, we laid out a double circle, spacing the holes, filling them with peat and manure. Three times a week, every week, we watered and cared for the seedlings, until winter came. The following spring we discovered that the deer and woodchucks had had a feast, all that was left were 3 of the 40. Undaunted, someone planted a Dozen more. When the summer's drought burned up 6 of these, many began to wonder, but every year there was an attempt to plant several, knowing only a few would survive. Twenty years later, there is a beautiful outdoor Sanctuary, and the description that is upheld is “ISN'T IT WONDERFUL THAT THOSE WHO PLANTED THIS PLANTED ONLY A FEW EACH YEAR TO STAGGER THEIR HEIGHT & ARRANGEMENT.”
There is an integrity in reading these pasages together, CALL of Disciples and PARABLE of TALENTS.
FIRST because we RATIONALIZE and REASON our way through the Gospel, as if saying to ourselves we need to FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS' TEAHINGS, we TRY TO ACCEPT JESUS AS OUR PERSONAL SAVIOR, we seek to be ETHICAL and MORAL MANAGERS, making good decisions. But there is a difference, “Following the example”, trying to “accept his teachings” makes GOD INTO A LESSON, A PHILOSOPHY THAT CAN BE MASTERED. Instead, we are CALLED TO FOLLOW CHRIST and LIVE OUR FAITH to BECOME.
MANAGERS look at all the resources they have, and determine what is the least expensive, how can I best manage and distribute among what I possess. LEADERS listen and seek for what needs to be done.
There is a beauty in Jesus having caled FISHERMEN, for fishing is not a team sport of trying to outwit or outplay the other, not looking for who is fastest or strongest, or smartest. FISHING allows the individual to wade out into the water, to push off from shore, and imagine what would this element of nature desire? A fly, a spoon, a worm, a minnow, marshmallows? Be creative, imaginative, what does this we do not kn ow hunger after? Once they have taken the bait, playing, dancing, competing against the elements of nature themselves to catch what no one else ever has done. All the while knowing that n the end there is a STORY TO TELL.
This year, we attempted to have an INNOVATIVE WORSHIP ON SUNDAY NIGHTS and two people came. We had OPEN THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSIONS and one came. Sometimes we need to withdraw and try again at a different tme anew.
One of the most amazing parts of going to Sudan recently, was eharing fresh applications of the Bible. Listening as people described that LIKE THE TOWER AT BABEL people were content to settle in a place and work together, until different dialects and new words of a new generation arise. The way you form a new TRIBE is to form a new language or dialect. Listening as the Medical Professionals described that there are reasons for INFERTILITY, both natural and acquired, and how privledged we are to live in an era where our future is not determined by having numerous sons and daughters to provide for us. Learning that there is a parasite, called the GUINEAWORM that as a microscopic organism burrows up through a person's foot or hand, where it grows in the arm or leg until it dies, then the white blood cells attack this foreign body and it burns. Often described as BURNING SERPENTS, this is the story n Moses of the people who had complained being inflicted by these, and the difficulty that f you try to cut them out, or can get hold of the end, they just break off, but that piercing the arm or leg with a small sharp stick you can carefully twist winding the serpent up to extract whole, like the Doctor's symbol for medicine.
But there was yet another, so blunt and direct, it was impossible to miss. Three years ago, visiting this same place, before I left to go on a far journey returning home to America, I disributed gifts and pledges. I had been asked to carry a cardboad box full of money as years of salaries to people who had not been paid. I gave a family a significant gift that allowed them to get their son out of trouble and return a Prodigal home. I also gave a man, whom many did not, but who called himself Rural Deacon Elijah, a gift for purchase of oxen and plows to develop a cultivation program. I gave to a man who asked for $20 a twenty dollar bill. And promised, that somehow, though at the time it was unclear, we would create a clinic for health care. Returning to that Village, all those whose salaries had been reimbursed now had new jobs, the compound was greatly enhanced with trees and buildings and crops being planted. The Prodigal, had not only come home, he now owned a hotel and cars and businesses. Asking about Elijah, and describing the gift, I was taken to a neighboring village, where there was a man named Elijah, who did have the oxen and plows and was cultivating fields, but he was not the man I had given it to. Apparently, who ever accepted responsibility for this project, acquired the name Elijah and kept it going until someone else came along to con tnue it. But also, seeing the man who had asked for $20, he took me by the hand and led over to a place where he dug in the ground and pulled out a large SNAIL SHELL, inside of which was the $20, which nothing had been done to, it had not been lost, it had not been risked, it was held for the possibility you might one day return.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)