"Final Words" November 25, 2012

2nd Samuel 23:1-7 John 18: 33-37 This is a unique day in a unique year. Most frequently, the Sunday after Thanksgiving signals the beginning of Advent, and we progress full speed from Labor day to Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year's. But there were 5 Thursdays in November this year, so we are able to pause, to reflect, to claim this as The Final Sunday in the Church year, Christ the King Sunday. In addition to seasons of waiting, the birth of innocence, the temptations and journey of Jesus, the crucifixion and resurrection, the season of Pentecost when we acknowledge the Holy Spirit with us, at Christ the King we name: Jesus Christ is Our Lord and Savior, our identity is as children of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, we are the Church. On this day, we pay attention to the Final Words of King David, the final examination and indictment of Jesus by Pilate. Final words have special meaning for us, as if all our lives were cumulative, building to this final conversation in which truth can be revealed. The Final Episode of a favorite show, the final words of a story, the last words charged and spoken. But life is not cumulative, often we do not know that these are going to be our last words, our final declaration. There are instead numerous events each year of our lives, in which we are able to reflect on all we know, to claim relationships and identities we desire. There are moments throughout life, in which we reveal to ourselves and to all the world who we are and what is important. We have so many different stories about David. The youngest son of Jesse, whom the last of the Judges Samuel, anointed to be King. Little David who slew Goliath with a slingshot. David the shepherd boy who played the harp to soothe the rage of King Saul. David who led an army against Israel. David who brought the Ark of the Covenant home dancing. David who wanted to build a house for God, and instead God created a new covenant that the House of David would rule Israel as a dynasty. David who committed adultery with Bathsheba, then murdered her husband Urriah. David whose own son Absalom waged war against him. Yet here, in what are named as The Final Words of the King, there is no mention of these truths, these real human failures, only the revelation of glory in having been used as the instrument of God. All our sins, all the individual events of our lives can be forgiven. What matters is the revelation of who we are before God and the community. When we recite the lineage of our ancestors, we do not name our great great great grandparents as having been found guilty and exiled to live in America; instead we describe the bravery of those ancestors who risked three month long ocean crossings to come to this new world with hope, establishing roots for who we have become. Decades ago, in the 1950s, The Baby Doctor prescribed that it was natural for children when they came of age, realizing they were not in control, to want to run away from home. Dr. Spock encouraged trying to talk rationally as friends/equals, to explore if they had thought through where they would go, what they would do, if they were running away to join the circus or to live in a cave, whether they had enough food and clean socks.The idea being to make the ideas become so real before setting foot out the door, they would choose instead to stay; or if not, that you had a clue where they might be going. Current wisdom is different, instead of trying to understand, to rationalize and reason with a 3 year old, family need to emphasize that “We are part of one another. We belong together. We cannot run away because we are running away from ourselves.” This morning's sacrament, everything about this day, is revelation that we belong, we are integral to who one another truly are. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Representative of Rome for the Occupied territory of Palestine whose capital was Jerusalem. Throughout the Gospel, those who have questioned Jesus' authority to teach, to heal, to preach, have been the Pharisees and Saducees; but here Pilate instead represents all the power of the Roman Empire. While the leaders of the Religious community had charged Jesus with Blasphemy of usurping the power of God to heal and to forgive, Rome had a different power base and different concern: Treason. When we seek decisions, what is our concern? Is it power? Is it vindication of our rights? The origin of this congregation in this community, had as our primary concern: FORGIVENESS. What will it take when you are wronged, to forgive? Rome's concern was to conquer the world. Through the Roman Legion to dominate and control the entire known world as the Empire under the rule of Caesar. Pilate perceived Jesus to be a man, only a man, not even a Citizen of Roman but a Jewish man; therefore if he must lower himself to deal with this, Pilate will make an example of Jesus. This is not a typical trial, not a standard indictment of one who is accused of a crime. Pilate is attempting to make a political statement about power. Pilate deals only in fact, in what can be proven. Jesus here is describing a different reality. Pilate questions whether Jesus is King of a Kingdom that can challenge The Empire of Rome. Jesus' implies that instead the Empire of Rome is part of the Kingdom of God. Where Pilate attacks Jesus for what he represents, Pilate represents Roman Authority, Jesus King of the Jews; Jesus asks Pilate to consider what he himself believes. What Jesus challenges Pilate to consider is not what is factual, what is truth, what are your rights and powers, but what is being revealed by the ways we live? This child baptized this day, needs more than to be fed and cleaned and allowed to sleep. A child, each of us need to belong, need identity as being part of something greater than ourselves, and understanding our role and responsibilities within that.

November 25, 2012, "Thanks Giving"

II Samuel 9 Mark:13:1-8 There are two vastly different starting points for a life of faith. One searching for what is spiritual in innocence, experiencing the world around us as new and grand, awesome and beyond reason. Exploring for ourselves what God's Plan might be for us. The other spiritual in thanksgiving after innocence was lost. When you are newly weds, it seems as though you are the discoverers of “love.” When you give birth to a baby, you witness a newborn's cuticles and eyelashes. When you have gone away to college and experienced life on your own, being presented with ideas and thoughts you never knew... Everything is new, all life is different, as you and loved ones journey to meet family, as together you prepare a holiday meal, as together you buy a tree creating memories for the first time. All of life, seems to have been created for you this day. And life is far bigger, more wonderful than ever you imagined life could be. This has been the theme of spirituality throughout recent years. After the turn of the Century, as we came to recognize the search to master and know, did not provide all of life's answers. Through a fresh examination of the Sacred Texts, trying ancient Spiritual Disciplines, acts of hospitality and discerning what is meant in Hospitality, The Church (and believers) have found new faith in mission and missiology. But there is another starting point, which has served believers for hundreds of years. We go to the shore, certain that while there are high tides and low, the waves only come so far. Building bricks, steel and concrete blocks are cemented together for all time. The World's Economies support one another in growth and expansion. We have seen hurricanes (not tornadoes) but hurricanes in Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio. Tsunamis have come ashore with a force that wipes away cities. We have seen steel twisted and concrete become rubble. The roller coaster of Atlantic City that turns our stomachs over was not the one made of steel and wood, but the wind and waves and fire and snow that have changed the coastline. “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines, this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.” To have done without during economic depression, to have lost your job, your career and to survive... to have lived through the devastations of war, bombardment and killing... to have had Cancer or Mental Illness, any chronic disorder and come through to the other side, creates a feeling of thanksgiving, that inspires belief, that perhaps God has a plan for us more grand than that we would die and be buried. How do we live, when we have survived surviving? When our deepest fears and greatest accomplishments have been resolved, what then? The Puritans had fled generations of religious extermination. As at the decree of a Catholic Queen protestants were put to death; following which when a Protestant Monarch sat upon the throne, the Catholics were expelled. In hope of a new and different life, they spent everything they had to charter ships for the new world. But the voyage had been delayed and they arrived too late for planting. The Pilgrims endured the first harsh winter in this new world, with disease and starvation and cold, knowing only that they could not go back. The indigenous peoples showed them how to plant and hunt in this wilderness, and the first Thanksgiving was about giving thanks to God for hope beyond everything they had ever known. After the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and WWI and WWII there was an attitude of thanksgiving, simply for being alive. Our Scriptures this week are about the practice of faith after everything we have lived through is done. Jesus' disciples asked “Tell us when this will be, what will be the sign when all things have been accomplished?” Our Old Testament Lesson names a time when The Promise has been fulfilled. The children of Abraham, those who crossed the Red Sea into the wilderness with Moses, those who crossed the Jordan to fight against the Canaanites, are settled in the land. After the time of the Judges when each one did what was right in his own mind, they came together as a nation under a king, who has now been replaced by a dynasty. David the Shepherd boy, anointed by Samuel, who slew Goliath, who fought against Saul's army to be the Beloved Shepherd King of Israel sits on the Throne in peace. After everything has been done, David asks so is there anyone of the House of Saul who is not dead? One of the servants of King Saul is found, who tells a story from the earliest days of this civil war. That decades ago when David's guerrilla warriors first attacked the capital city, King Saul and his son Jonathan were fighting on the battlefields. Surprised by an attack on the Palace in the night, the nursemaid took up the toddler child of Jonathan, grandchild to Saul, in his blankets. As she rushed to get out of the King's Palace she tripped, and the full weight of the woman landed upon the infant child crushing his tender legs. All these years, the last surviving member of the House of Saul has been in hiding. King David sends his troops to find this lame child of Jonathan, the grandchild of Saul called Mephibosheth. Imagine that you are the last surviving member of the family of the former King. All your life, there has been war and killing, while you have been in hiding. Your legs, both, were broken by those trying to hide you away. Your life, your whole identity has not been about the pride of being royalty, the power of being a grandson to the King, but instead your identity has been about “shame.” For all the decades of your life, you have lived in the shadows, hiding, broken, knowing that as the surviving member, there was a reward for killing you, your secret cannot be found out. Then one day, as you are hiding in a hovel, in a forgotten little town, there is panic in the streets. At the horizon, you can see the flags and standards of the Soldiers of the King. You have been found out. Your secret has been revealed. The battalion of soldiers has come for you. They pound upon the door, crying out your name, and you are overcome by the shame of your family, the shame of everything that has happened in your life. Unable to walk, you balance on your crutch, as the door bursts open, and the soldiers of your family's enemy grasp you by the shoulders and legs and carry you out into the sunshine. The troops carry you, not as a redeemed hero, but as the child of the vanquished. They carry you where you most do not want to go. They carry you to the Capital City, to the Palace where your legs had been broken, to the thrones where your father and his father had ruled, and now instead King David sits. But instead of an order of execution, the King of Israel pronounces a blessing upon you. Your image, as the broken child of the hated king, is broken. Your shame is destroyed, as King David describes that for ever more you and your descendants will have a place at the King's Table. The King will not eat, until you are there. What happens when all the accomplishments are over, when the battle is finally done? Then Shame is redeemed. Images of hatred and loss are destroyed. Peace is not about the absence of war, but about the redemption of the lost. What do we do when we have survived the Cancer we believed would kill us? We live life in giving thanks to God, taking on challenges we never believed possible, because we have survived survival, and life itself has become a blessing. This Thanksgiving, may we do more than cook a bird, than watch a parade and a game and gorge ourselves to sleep. Instead, at this time of giving thanks to God, may we redeem the shamed. May we search for the lost of our lives, destroying the images which divided and separated us. This Thanksgiving, may we give thanks to God that we have survived surviving and are able to give thanks.

"Irony's Reversal", November 4, 2012 All Saints

Ruth 1: 1-18 Mark 12:28-34 This last week, rather than a Tornado in Kansas taking one house, Dorothy and her dog Toto to Oz, a Hurricane swept 19 States and the Emerald City of New York felt the force of Fire, Flood and Wind. In the wake of destruction, we know that God was not in the Fire, Flood or Wind, and in the still small silence we have been asking ourselves “What are we doing here?” “What meaning is there?” The last many weeks we have read the Book of Job, and in the midst of suffering had wondered WHY, Why do bad things happen, not only to Good people, not only Terrorism, but disasters that destroy so much? Our passages this morning address faith from a different perspective. Rather than the bold question WHY God? these passages are stated in IRONY, recognizing that there is devastation, there are horrible things that happen in life. The question of IRONY is WHETHER ANYTHING IS SACRED! When your home and neighborhood and everything you have ever known is destroyed what Meaning is there, what Purpose? If life is not a Prosperity Gospel where you pay by doing all the right things and receive God's Blessings, then what? If life is not as simple as Do Good and receive blessings, do evil and bear the curses, can we be faithful to God? Is it possible for us as a Human Creatures to practice the fidelity of Scripture, being faithful to God No Matter What? When a Hurricane destroys everything we have ever known? When flooding holds fire fighters from fighting fires, and whole neighborhoods: 110 houses in one place are reduced to ash? When our loved ones have catastrophic illnesses? When we lose our lobs? When we go through divorce? When there is no food to put on the Table? When we are diagnosed with chronic illness? When circumstance is hopeless, will we be faithful with the kind of loyalty God shows us, or will we give up on God? According to The Book of Leviticus (the LAWS of what it is to be a Holy People), when our ancestors were in the wilderness, when they had been rescued from Pharaoh and from the Red Sea, Moses stated the core of all belief: HEAR O ISRAEL, THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE, GOD ONLY SHALL WE SERVE, GIVING TO GOD OUR FULL HEART & SOUL & STRENGTH. According to Moses this was more than the First Commandment, this was the foundation for Living. The Holiness Code has many other restrictions, regarding what can and cannot be done on the Sabbath, Divorce, Race and intermarriage, regarding the eating of Shell fish, how long a period of mourning should be observed. All of which may have a place in a utopian society, in the wilderness apart from the rest of the world. But when there is crisis, when economic hardship and war and human struggle threaten life itself, do we adhere to all the moral restrictions, or to any, or what? To understand Ruth we need to read beneath the surface. We need to pay attention to the meaning of Names, the meaning of Actions, the meaning of Relationships. Are we animals grazing, breeding, sleeping and dying, or as Creatures in the image of God, Beings who have tasted of the Fruit of Knowledge, shall we use the minds we were given to look for meaning in life? There once was a Man of the House of Levi, whose name was Elimelech. The Nation of Israel understood itself not simply as ONE NATION UNDER GOD, but as a Holy Nation, a Chosen People. This man of the Nation of Israel, had a name meaning THE LORD IS MY GOD. He was of Bethlehem, which in addition to being the City of David and the Birthplace of Jesus, the meaning of the name BETHLEHEM was THE BREADBASKET. This was a place where food was in abundance, where crops were grown to feed the Nation. And in Bethlehem there was FAMINE. When there is famine in the Breadbasket of the Promised Land, what shall a man of Israel whose names means The Lord is My God, do? Elimelech took his family and fled, went away to a different nation, he abandoned everything, he banished himself. And when they had settled in Moab, he died. Living in the land of Moab, apart from Israel, the sons took foreign wives, wives of Moab, and after a decade, the sons whose names mean SICKLY and GONNA DIE, both become ill and died. Following all the jots and tiddles of the Morality Laws, this family broke the rules and suffered for it. HOWEVER, all of that is only the preamble to the book of Ruth, the question that must be answered is Now What? Naomi decides that even if it means death, she must return to Israel. Out of loyalty to family the widowed daughters pledge they will go with her. Naomi appeals to logic and reason, that she cannot provide for them. Over and over they demonstrate loyalty to her, but in the end Orpah weeps upon Naomi's shoulder and goes home.The distinction between Orpah and Ruth has nothing to do with one being good and another evil, one being of one family and one of another. The difference between Orpah and Ruth is that Orpah's loyalty is to Naomi and to family, where Ruth's loyalty is to the One True God. English does not do justice to the tone of Ruth's words, for as Naomi entreats her to go back, Ruth responds that what she asks is an attack on her faith/an attack on her loyalty to God/a shaming of Ruth whose very name means LOYALTY & COMPASSION. In the Book of Ruth, Morality Laws are identified as being secondary to the basic integrity of faith and loyalty to God. Simply because we are logical, or because we followed all the right things, does not guarantee a faithful relationship with God. However, even if we were not of the Chosen People, if we have absolute trust in God, everything else will naturally follow. Orpah is remembered as one who showed loyalty to Israel. Ruth is remembered thousands of years afterward as one who showed absolute loyalty to God, and was an ancestor to David and Solomon and eventually Jesus. Putting this conviction, of what is really at stake, what is important in faith, to the test, the Gospel of Mark described Jesus having entered the City of Jerusalem where he threw over the tables of money changers in the Temple. Priests, Pharisees and Saducees all challenged and tested Jesus about meaning. Having listened to this, a scribe (whose identity was encapsulated in making certain to copy down literally every dot and cross every T in all the Laws), asks Jesus a question: What is the First Commandment? Jesus repeats the Law of Moses, Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is One, there is no other. And you shall worship the Lord with all your Heart and Soul and Strength, but Jesus also includes with all your mind. It is not enough to have conviction and the heat of passion about being a believer, faith also requires having the light of reason and understanding. To this, Jesus also responds, that equal to and related to this, is to love neighbor as we love our own lives. It is not enough to believe in God, to follow a philosophy, we also need to practice what we believe caring for others. Because of circumstance, Death had always been a had issue for me. As such, I have had to struggle with the meaning of death and through that the meaning of life. What I have come to has been two inter-related thoughts. First, that as much as our lives are measured by degrees & accomplishments, by some in terms of wealth and possessions, or influence and power... when we die our lives are reduced to an Obituary, which overtime becomes fewer and fewer words, dropping all the degrees, all the accomplishments, and truly we cannot take possessions with us, until what we are known for, and remembered by is our relationships. A Neighbor who was like an Aunt to us. ALSO, that while it was once easy to glorify those who had died, and to provide a beautiful memorial, now those who have died are more than Names, more than Members of the Church, or Community, they are also Loyal Friends.

"Beyond Being Naive," October 28, 2012

Job 42 Mark 10:46-52 This week, one of the Board Members responsible for building the Clinic in Sudan, described that in retrospect what we had done was “Beyond naïve.” For our pastor, to volunteer to go into a war-zone, was beyond naïve. To have recognized there were no ATMs or Banks or Stores of any kind, so to carry packs of hundred dollar bills hidden in his shoes and taped to his own chest, was beyond naive. For us to think, that we could load everything and anything necessary, not only to build a clinic but to operate as one, into cargo containers in Arkansas to be shipped around the world, then trucked across open Savannah where there are no roads. To receive word one of the containers was stolen and to believe the other was lost, and still to send volunteers after them to build it was beyond naïve. To be at the Equator, needing water for survival, and to make concrete, let alone to provide health care, only to discover after arrival that the only existing well had run dry, all of that was beyond being naïve. And yet only when we venture into circumstances which are completely impossible can we allow our egos and intellects and desire for control to get out of the way, for us to witness miracles. Faith cannot be planned for, or orchestrated, or made to happen, if circumstances necessitate, then what we believe in is not faith, is not the act of God, but our own deceptions. These last four weeks we have been recounting the story of Job. Reading this together, I cannot fathom a passage any better fashioned for our time. For here is an adult man, who like many of us has always believed in God, always worshipped and trusted, and life had been good. 90% of Job's early success was simply in showing up. Naïvely, Job believed that good things happen to good people, so do what is expected, get an education, get a job, get married, work hard and you will live happily ever after. That is how the Fairy Tales we told our children end, is it not? Yet, suddenly both the Stock Market and the Housing Market collapsed, and the climates changed, there were Wars in multiple places, and catastrophic chronic illnesses attacking our bodies and in depression attacking our minds. Job lost his employment and his reputation; he lost his children and their home, their marriage and friends all turned away. Job's own life seemed to attack his body. Yet, where Job's spouse and friends all told him that God was not real, either give up on God, or just go through the motions of repentance regardless of what you believe, still Job held fast to the conviction that God is real, but Job came to recognize that perhaps his faith and life had been naïve. Beyond naïvely going through the motions of life, the seasons change time evolves and a different faith, different practices may be called for as life's circumstance change, not necessarily in a straight line of progression. Struggling with God, arguing with God, lamenting the circumstance of life, all were very real. We have been carefully acculturated to not lament. Lamentation is not wallowing in self-pity, but instead claiming what was, reflecting upon how important different relationships and circumstances were to us, is an essential stage of grieving so as to be able to move on. Without lamentation we would keep making the same mistakes over and over, without considering whether to change and why. Responding to God as real and living, in the end, regardless of what he had come to, Job would be blessed by God for having been faithful to believing in a living God, which Job's friends did not. The story of Job is a very real and appropriate book of faith for us and for our circumstances. Our times and place and culture are vastly different, yet the loss of jobs and foreclosure of homes, the eroding of marriages, the illness and death of children, attacks upon our reputation, shame, the loss of identity, and everything we thought we knew, ALL are very human realities and very similar occasions where some lose their faith in God. The great challenge to the church today, is not over the music we sing, not over the traditions we follow, not over the many and various socio-political issues that have divided the church, faith has survived all these. The great challenge to faith, today as in every time, is over whether we continue to believe in a living faith in a living God or whether we give up. Uniquely different, from the time of Job, is that the Messiah has come. God did not leave us in our circumstance, but like Pygmalian, the Creator so believed in and loved the Creation, that the Creator stepped into and became one with Creation. Even more, that the Creator so loved Creation, that the Creator sacrificed the Creator's own life to change Creation from a naïve faith, to something far beyond naïve. As we read this passage from Mark's Gospel, we recognize that this is the final miracle Jesus is requested before going into Jerusalem and to the Cross. We recognize also, that Jesus has healed many unnamed people along the way, those possessed with demons, those who are deaf and lame and unable to speak, children who have died, and adults with incurable diseases, the very first of which had also been a man who was blind. Reading of this second healing of a blind man, we have to wonder what is different, what has changed, we no longer naïvely doubt if Jesus can heal blindness we have seen it, so why describe the restoration of sight as a second miracle? Three things immediately are visible. In the first healing, Jesus must heal the man twice. The first time, the man opens his eyes, suddenly for the first time he can see, but people appear as if trees walking. The things of reality, the circumstances are indistinct and undefined, requiring Jesus healing his blindness a second time. Having followed Jesus through these last two chapters, this second blind-man is healed because Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants Jesus to do for him. Second, that Jesus had just posed that exact same question to two his disciples. James and John had come to Jesus as if Trick or Treating, asking him to give them whatever they want. Jesus responded to his own disciples “What do you want me to do for you?” and they had asked for power, to first among equals, that when he came into power that they would sit for eternity at his right and left hand. Having heard two of his favorite disciples' request, Jesus asks the exact same question of a blind beggar, who does not ask for power, but only for healing. Third, of all the people that Jesus heals in the Gospel according to Mark, Bartimaeus the blind beggar, is the only person who is named. Why, Who is he? We need to remember the context, the circumstance of when and how the Word of God has come to us. After the Egyptian Pharaohs, after the rise of Israel with King Saul, King David and King Solomon, came the Babylonians, then the Persian Empire, then the Empire of Medes, then advanced Alexander the Great and the Greeks with the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and these gave way to the Roman Empire of the Caesars. Different from earlier transitions, the Romans preserved the teaching and philosophy of the Greeks. Anyone who was learned, anyone who had been taught to read and write had read Homer and Plato's Republic, and another discourse by Plato named after the principle philosopher in the piece “Timaeus.” Plato was in awe of the reasoned orderly intelligent design of the universe. According to Plato in Timaeus, in the beginning there were three forces, Chaos, Intelligence and Necessity. The eternal Craftsman of life, applied intelligence and necessity to the chaos that was, and from that point forward necessity and intelligent response have evolved all that is. Now according to Plato, these three are perpetually in tension, so when creatures do not behave intelligently or respond to necessity, they can also devolve toward chaos. According to Timaeus, Plato reasoned that if people have been “airheads” in this life they would be reincarnated next as birds. And according to Plato, remember this is Plato not me, when a man was weak or cowardly, they would be reincarnated as a woman. But, this theory being put forward by the philosopher Plato, the highest achievement of a man would be to be a philosopher, one who devoted their life to intellectual pursuit of what is necessary and how to build success upon success, achievement upon achievement, so as to become as powerful and wealthy and unconcerned about this life as a god. More than this, according to the Greeks there was physical sight and blindness, and also in philosophy, in understanding what is not perceived by the senses but only by the mind a true visionary would be blind in this life. We read this second story of healing a man, a blind beggar, not naïvely as the healing of blindness, but undercutting Plato, this son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, has come to recognize that despite all his achievements, all his philosophy and understanding still he is blind and the only way to truly see is to come to Jesus, to ask for healing from God. Before leaving Job, we need to name, that in order for Job's friends to be healed, in order for the blessings to be conferred upon Job and his daughters, first his friends needed to lament their own failings and hardships and faith struggle. Then Job needed to make an offering for them. What we do as the church is more often than not, for others in the community, in the world and in future generations, and not for our benefit. Our responsibility as the people of faith, as the sons of Timaeus and the daughters of Job, is to accept and embrace what is beyond naïve, to struggle with the realities of life and to struggle with God believing in miracles beyond our understanding, but miracles we have seen.

"Trusting God to Be God" Oct 21, 2012

Job 38: 1-11 & 34-41 Mark 10: 35-45 Among the classic beloved old hymns are: I come to the Garden in prayer when the dew is still on the roses and He walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am his own... Jesus loves me this I know... What a Friend we have in Jesus... Each of which assume this Biblical identity of God being like us, God is not a force, an unseen power, an electric current; God has hands and feet, the heart of a warrior, the compassion of a midwife or nursemaid. To a God like us, we can confess all that troubles us, knowing that God is just, God understands, cares, the dilemma we struggle with is whether God is All Powerful or All Good? For if God is all good and God is all powerful, then why, why is there pain and suffering and evil in the world? Either God is not ALL powerful, so as to allow evil to at times take over. Or God is not ALL good, and while often God blesses us, God also can be quite cruel. This is Job's complaint: Life is not fair, where is God! There are those who have come to believe that God cannot be both at the same time. Some who theorize that God is All Powerful over the stuff that is God's, Creation, Nature, Destiny, but God has also given us Free Will, which created a realm where God is not. Within the areas of our domination and control, we can bring evil upon ourselves, upon one another, upon the world, and even God cannot stop this. Because God is All Powerful over that which God controls, but Free Will enables us to control and abuse and neglect what we control outside of God. Therefore, God is ALL Good and All Powerful except where we have not allowed God in. There are others who speculate that truly God is ALL Powerful, but the definition of Good is not all left to God. We each are able to claim and determine what we desire to be Good, and what may appear Good to some may at the same time inflict suffering upon others. There is a give and take to life, as we contest for who's Good will be revealed in the end. According to these believers God is ALL Powerful, but the definition of what is Good is up to the beholder, and all the elements of the Universe cannot have their Good at the same time. Part of the problem with human understanding is that the foundations of knowledge, our foundations of everything we know, are based in earlier times. For the entire history of humanity up until 350 years ago, we perceived the world not only as Anthropomorphic, but also as Anthropocentric. Anthropomorphic refers to our expectation that all creatures at their most basic are just like us. Where we have feet, fish have a tail; where we have arms birds have wings, but reptiles, fish, birds, mammals all have two eyes, a nose, ears, a heart and brain. We can each know creation through our senses, so also all these living creatures like us, can experience life and know what we feel. All of which is based on a projection of life, even a projection of God, as being like us. Likewise, to describe the universe as Anthropocentric is to believe that all the universe revolves around us. When Copernicus theorized the existence of a Solar System with a sun at the center as a star, and all the planets including our own orbiting around that sun, what he was challenging was not only the placement of planets, whether the earth was the center of the universe or if the sun could be, but Anthropocentrism, and whether we/each of us are the center of our universe. The ramifications of Copernican Theory, not only deal with space travel and the possible existence of life elsewhere, but Copernican Theory challenges all our assumptions about time and space, even whether if we are not the center of the universe, does Creation even need humanity at all? This morning we Baptized two infants, Audrey and Grayson. Suddenly, miraculously a few months ago, the lives of each of these families changed, the center of their universe seemed to shift. Now sleep is determined by these tiniest of humans. It was difficult enough at your weddings to change your last name, your family identity, now rather than being Lauren and Joshua, Ben and Kerrie, you have become Grayson's Mom and Dad, Audrey's Father and Mother, and by extension we have all new identities. Such has been the power of Anthropocentism, and the challenge of Copernican Theory. God's response to Job, names that instead of being the center of our worlds, the center of the universe with our God, we are no more important than mosquitos or gnats. From this vision of Creation, we can imagine God reaching down from heaven to scratch the backs and stroke the ears of God's favorite pets which are not you and me, but Leviathan and Behemoth, Sea monsters like Loch Ness, Moby Dick or the Crocodile. All the questions of God to Job, reframe that rather than our being the center of our universe, we are merely human creatures, mortal and relative, and God is God. While Job has raised his fist at the sky and struggled for answers “WHY?” God has showered upon Job a thousand questions of Who, How, When, What, and Where. Do you know all the circumstances of life? When your child will be born, this is a human question. What will be their identity? What will your identity be? Who will they become? How will we live? When will we die? What happens then? All these are human questions. WHY, that is a question for us to trust God to know, believing God to be ALL powerful and ALL Good. The disciples James and John come to Jesus with a very human question they were not supposed to ask. We know they knew they were not supposed to ask it, because they introduce the question by asking for a guarantee...Will you do whatever we ask? Matthew's Gospel goes even further, and rather than John and James asking the question, he claims it was their mother who asked it for them. The painful irony of the Gospel is that Jesus had just described, now for the 3rd time, that being the Messiah he was going to be arrested and to suffer and to die, and instead of asking How, When, Where or even risking Why, the sons of Zebedee asked the very human question, SO, will you allow us to sit at your right and left ? And even worse, we each of us seem to have the gene of Zebedee DNA in our systems, we seek domination, our desire is to win. Rather than listening and hearing one another, rather than having concern and compassion for the whole of creation, we question how do we get connected to power, how do we get noticed, how do we get to be first. Imagine a woman driving her car during a rainstorm, when suddenly the car is struck by lightning. She returns home and relates the story to her family, and her son responds “Let's go buy a Lottery ticket! They say that you have the same chance of winning the Lottery as being struck by lightning!” We are very human. William Sloan Coffin was one of the great preachers of the 20th Century, Coffin described having been a College student at Yale, with three close friends. On their way back from Thanksgiving break the other three had been driving together, when the one at the wheel had fallen asleep, all three were killed. Coffin related his feelings of anger at the funeral hearing the words from Job: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” He was so frustrated, Coffin considered reaching his leg out from the pew to trip the Priest as he walked down the aisle. Just as he was about to do so, a voice inside him asked: Which part of what he said are you angry at? Coffin claimed the second, Who was God to have taken them all away! Then the first part occurred to him, “The Lord giveth,” their lives were not his to control, he was just a man, he could not be God and had to trust God to be God. We can be Baptized in Christ's Baptism. We can serve one another and share in communion. We can forgive one another. But all of this we do, because Christ first did so for us.

Oct 14 "Judged and Being Judged"

Job 23 Matthew 10:17-31 Of all the personalities, in all the Bible, none are more Judged than Job and the Rich, Young Ruler! Saul who persecuted the Christians, who would not even dirty his hands to pick up a rock himself but held the coats of others while they stoned Stephen to death, becomes the Apostle Paul. Simon who always jumped to the wrong conclusion, Jesus gave all authority for the Church as Peter. Even the Tax Collector Zacheus, because he wanted to catch a glimpse of Jesus is redeemed as a child of Israel. Sarah who laughed at God, became the mother of Isaac and grandmother to all Israel. Mary Magdalene who according to some reports had sold herself for money and possessed became a disciple. But the Rich Young Ruler was shocked by Jesus' words and went away sorrowful. What he represented was what our culture aspires to, he was affluent, influential, powerful, and young, we would guess highly educated from the very best of families. According to his own testimony he was moral and ethical and Church-going, who respected God and loved his mother. The only offense he made was that he sought out Jesus, he came asking what he must do to have Eternal Life? He did not try to buy it as Simon the Magician, he did not try to use Jesus' name, he was not seeking power or authority as James and John had asked wanting to sit at Jesus' right hand. He had not sought justification like Pilate questioning “What is Truth?” He wanted Eternal Life, is this not description of wanting Christian faith? The judgement against the Rich, Young Ruler, the sin of this man, was that he was like us, succeeding at all the world has to offer, he recognized this is not enough, there must be more, and that more is faith, but faith requires giving up everything else. Like it or not, we are continually judging and being judged. Buddhism has a very different starting point than most of us are accustomed to. Pregnancy makes a woman feel ill. Morning sickness makes you want to vomit, giving birth is the most exhausting marathon a body can endure. According to Buddhism, from the moment of birth we are dying. Life is a series of sicknesses as we age and wear out, until we discern that the only way out is to seek a different reality. The ultimate relief in Buddhism is to die, so as to become something else. Like Job's wife, we are left believing that if there is a God, God must be a vindictive merciless evil, and one's affirmation of faith becomes “Curse God and Die!” Judaism and Christianity have a very different starting point. In the Beginning God saw every element as it was made and pronounced it good, saw all of life in completeness and pronounced it very good. The great difficulty of living in a world we believe to be Good, is how we explain judgement and suffering. Job's friends suggest the world is a rational and ordered place. The first suggests: “You must have done something wrong.” Judgement is a punishment for sin. The only obstacle to a right relationship with God becomes confessing what you did, so you can be forgiven. In true works-righteousness, we need to confess our sins, and atone for them to be forgiven. A second friend says, “Well if not your guilt, then the sins of your parents and grandparents.” Like Freudian psycho-analysis we have to search through all our past to find our most deep seated guilt. Our family systems perpetuated from one generation unto the next, repeat broken relationships. The third describes “Job, it is not your fault, it is all humanity. As in the days of Noah, God looked on all the world and saw corruption. Someone had to pay, somebody needed to make things right and God chose you.” This is where our Old Testament lesson for this morning begins. Job is not satisfied with the answers from any of his friends or his wife. One of the great gifts of Judaism to Christianity is a tenacity of faith that does not stop with I'm Okay, you're Okay, let's do no harm to anyone, but a faith which argues with God. Like his friends, Job believes the world is ordered and rational, so what Job desires is his day in court. Job wants his opportunity to face God toe to toe and plead his case. I am not certain if I am like everyone else, but on long drives in the car, I often replay old circumstance from life. If only I had been able to to say... to justify my actions... to present my side of the story... surely I could be vindicated! The difficulty with those one-sided conversations is the ultimate reality that we have been doing all the talking, and in those original circumstance as well as today we probably needed to listen and to hear the other-side. Judgement is a hard reality, because as much as we want to be right, as mortal creatures what we seek in life is consolation, to know that we were not forsaken, we were not thrown under the bus. How often we read the 23rd Psalm, with words of comfort “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want” when the psalm just prior is this one, “My God, My God Why? Why have you forsaken me?” These are the words of one who feels judged. These are the words of Jesus on the Cross, feeling the shame of isolation and betrayal. But there is redemption in this Psalm as well, because the speaker does not cry out to an unknown God, but with great intimacy “My God, My God Why?” and this is followed with a recitation that God had always been faithful to our ancestors, and from the moment of our birth, when we were taken from our mothers' wombs and laid upon her breasts, we were cared for, provided for, loved. I think perhaps we have read something into the text of Matthew, that is not there. This man comes to Jesus, falls down before his feet and asks what is needed for eternal life. Jesus does not answer that question, instead Jesus describes The Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus describes what is required to be faithful and this man with honesty describes he has done this all his life. Jesus tells the man what he must do, and the man is stunned, the man is shocked and he goes away. What do we imagine this man did? Because he is male, affluent, well-educated, influential, and young, do we assume he went back to work scoffing “Well that was a waste of time”? Do we imagine suicide, that he just gave up? Actually, the text does not say any of that. Confronted with life changing circumstance, we would be shocked and stunned and go away to think. Receiving notice of a lay-off, or a cancer or divorce, that our child has to undergo open-heart surgery, that our parents or peers are dying. these are not the actual end of the world, but in that moment it can feel like it. Part of our cultural crisis is that we have made transitions too easy, planned for and anticipated. The child leaving their Mother to go to school, first has play-dates, then half-day, so when the full-day of separation comes we expect it. Leaving home and family to travel across the country or the world for an education, begins with smaller experiences. Death itself, instead of working up until the moment we cannot, we retire, then move to assisted living, eventually to Hospice Care where slip away. All of which sounds lovely and painless, but the fact of the matter is, ones whom we have trusted and loved all our lives are taken from us and at some point we need to grieve, we need to wrestle with why Lord? There was an era in American history in which we went straight from our parents' home to that with our husband or wife, and if that ever went poorly we went from one relationship to another never having to face who we are all alone before God. There is an importance to being shocked and stunned and thinking about who we are and what is important. This morning's Call to Confession came from the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, claiming and affirming that we have a Great High Priest as our intercessor with the Judge of life and death. This priest is Jesus himself, who can empathize with us because he has been fully human, and who will appeal our case before God because he is fully God. All we need do is to love the Lord, follow the commandments, and continually follow him in giving all we are for what is truly important.

October 7, 2012, Testimony and CounterTestimony

Job 1:1 Mark 10:2-16 The Book of Job begins, and we know something is wrong, there is going to be a set up. “There once was a man from Uz, blameless and upright before the Lord, he did what was right and he was blessed!” Each of us at times have perceived there being someone who was always blessed, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like a cat always landing on their feet, where other people seem to stumble into trouble, these always are blessed. As a pastor of 29 years, I can tell you that behind the facade is one who stares out the window sleepless nights, that despite the smile and grace of lines in another's face, the staring at the floor rather than looking others in the eye, tell the story of worry and doubt and fears. There is an ancient Sioux Indian prophecy that we need to expect bad things to happen, only when we have endured getting through the hardships are we ready and able to find and appreciate the good. The alternative would be the question many of us find ourselves asking, why do bad things happen to good people, what is the will of God, is God good or evil, is life cruel or are we set-up for challenge? 30 years ago Rabbi Harold Kushner published a bestseller in which he explained When Bad Things Happen to Good People? Yet even to this day, if you ask the title of the book, most will respond Why Bad Things Happen? Many came away from reading this saying, “Yes But,” he told stories of people struggling, and it is true that misery loves company, but we were looking for Why bad things happen to good people. The answer to WHY is what the Book of Job and Jesus' Hard Teachings are about. When I was in 3rd Grade, we were carefully instructed in learning The Scientific Method...that there are GIVENs about the way the world works, and whenever we create a new THEORY about what could be true, we need to test our theory with a HYPOTHESIS, we operationalize a test with STANDARDIZED QUANTIFIED METHODS, we OBSERVE, we draw CONCLUSIONS, and we prove or disprove our Hypothesis allowing us to believe our theory identifying new Givens, or we disprove this as wrong. All through Junior and Senior High and College and Grad School, we followed the procedures of The Scientific Method in both Natural and Social Sciences. When suddenly in the mid 1980s someone asked whether all the results always fit the Hypothesis? And the answer was NO, for nearly every question that is asked, every hypothesis, nearly all of the results fit but there are routinely a few that do not, these are categorized as spurious, random chance, fate. The question then became, if there are always some results which are spurious, maybe it is not that some individuals are wrong, some circumstances do not fit, but rather that we were asking the WRONG QUESTIONS, possibly event that our Scientific Method does not provide a complete understanding. Those researchers determined that rather than writing Theses PROVING CONCLUSIONS the purpose of research was to document and describe Case Studies, and the reader, the observer, the listener seeking answers would be able to determine for themselves if this answered their unique experience. Many approach reading the Bible as if a Book of Law, Instruction. That reading the Bible, we would know right and wrong, and how we are to live our lives. There are books, like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, which are books of Law, naming that when you do right you will be blessed, and when you do wrong you bring curses upon yourself. Like a Two year old being told “Must Not Touch! The Stove Will Burn You” we tempt and test. If I touch the handle of the stove? If I touch it when it is turned off? How about when it turns Red? We learn there is Testimony that is true, but there also need to be Counter-Testimonies which together provide a more complete understanding, of what is true and what might be when what we assumed would be true happened differently. A week ago, meeting with the Confirmation Class, we reviewed the first half of the Book of Genesis, asking the question WHY? Why is Creation described in seven days, the very last thing named before the Sabbath being Humanity out of the Humus; and why, in the next section is the Human the first thing created and God brings everything to the Human? Suddenly it occurs to me, that perhaps the Biblical Testimony is Genesis 1. The Biblical TESTIMONY of TRUTH is that all life is this interconnected web, with the seeds of the future in each. But that rather than our being the center of our universe, long long before we ever existed, at the foundation of life itself, before there was an Atmosphere, or Matter, or Life, at our very Core Our World was a Dark and Shapeless Void, a place of Nothingness and Fear, AND there was and Is GOD. And with a word, speaking an idea, God rules Creation, to balance everything, and in that balance is the answer to our fears and to life. This Testimony explains all of life, as named in Genesis, AND IT WAS GOOD, VERY GOOD. But in our world, we also know ourselves to have a dominance, control over life and death. So what is the COUNTER-TESTIMONY that is also true where we are the center, the foundation, the first thing? There is the story of Creation at Chapter 2, with Adam being the first Creation, naming all the creature God creates, and through naming giving each identity in relationship to us, and following the story through with Humanity placed at the Center of the Universe rather than God, this also becomes the creation of Sin, as we seek to make decisions, to live life without God. The delicate balance of Testimony and Counter-Testimony is when the world begins to believe the Counter-Testimony only, to take the Exception as if The Rule. To do so is to ask Wrong Questions. The Covenant with God is often described as being THE LAW. However, the failure of religion has been that rather than perceiving the Covenant with God as Relationship, as a give and take tension of life, The Law became codified as an absolute. When we break the Law, we must confess, we must make an offering to demonstrate both our humility before God and our Thanksgiving to God, so in every worship service, there needs to be Confession and Offering and Thanksgiving, regardless of what we believe, or have done, or feel. In the time of the New Testament, the Lawyers (the Pharisees) brought to Jesus a question of Law. If Religion is The Law given by God, and if you are the Messiah, the Son of God, then interpret the Law! Much like our own time, for humanity is humanity, Divorce had become common. Men routinely went into marriage with the assumption that if it does not work, all I have to do is appear before the Rabbi and state three times I want a Divorce from her, and being in control of my life I can create my reality. Rather than a purely Jewish State, this was now a Roman Culture with Roman Laws, one of which was that Women could also bring suit against their husbands for divorce. With this new Roman interpretation added to the laws about Divorce, the Pharisees brought question to Jesus: What do you think about Divorce? Jesus' point is not to Condemn Divorce, or to condemn those divorcing. I remember when I was first Ordained, a woman in the congregation asked “DOES DIVORCE MAKE ONE A SINNER?” What she was asking was “My daughter is in abusive relationship. She took her children and left her husband. Regardless of who did what, because she is getting a divorce, does this mean God does not love her anymore, and that I cannot love her?” I have to believe that the answer is “GOD LOVES YOU!” The agony of this passage in Mark, is that the Pharisees assumed the reality of Divorce, assumed marriage was all about the division of assets and property and what belongs to whom to which Jesus replies THE INTENT OF GOD IS THAT YOU WOULD CLEAVE TOGETHER. Counter-Testimony is important. Counter-testimony provides balance with the Truth and Givens as we know them. The story of Job is Counter-testimony, when the LAW is questioned whether doing right you will be blessed and doing wrong you will be cursed. What happens when one who was blameless and upright and blessed has pain and sorrow heaped upon them? In C.S. Lewis' classic Screwtape Letters the old devil:Screwtape mentors the young devil Wormwood and describes “Evil is never more in danger, than when a human no longer wanting to be on God's side looks round upon the universe from which every trace of God seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, yet still believes in God and obeys. Such a testimony of Faith is much more than a means to a selfish end.”