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Sunday, June 3, 2007
TRINITY SUNDAY
"It's a Mystery" - 06/03/07
If you have ever stretched out on your back on a summer's night and looked up at the sky full of stars, you can understand
the Psalmist's sense of wonder. "O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your
glory above the heavens...When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established..."
And yet, there is something in us that doesn't let us just stop at wonder and awe. We are compelled to ask the unanswerable
questions...What is out there? Where does it stop? What is beyond that? Where did it come from? Who made it? Why? And where
does an infinitesimal speck of dust like me fit into the whole picture? We know that we can never have definitive answers
to any of these questions, and yet we seem compelled to ask them anyway. We are uncomfortable with things beyond our comprehension,
with ambiguity, with mystery.
There was a fascinating article in Smithsonian Magazine this month about puzzle and mystery by Dr. Gregory F. Treverton,
who served as Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the Clinton Administration and is now a public policy
strategist. He writes:
"There's a reason millions of people try to solve crossword puzzles each day. Amid the well-ordered combat between
a puzzler's mind and the blank boxes waiting to be filled, there is satisfaction along with frustration. Even when you can't
find the right answer, you know it exists. Puzzles can be solved; they have answers. But a mystery offers no such comfort.
It poses a question that has no definitive answer because the answer is contingent... A mystery is an attempt to define ambiguities.
Puzzles may be more satisfying, but the world increasingly offers us mysteries. Treating them as puzzles is like trying to
solve the unsolvable - an impossible challenge. But approaching them as mysteries may make us more comfortable with the uncertainties
of our age."
I think that this is why Trinity Sunday is such an important day in the liturgical year; it's the one day we set aside
to proclaim unequivocally that God is a mystery, not a puzzle. All the Children’s Bulletin attempts to rationally
explain the Trinity ... with ice, water, and steam - or three-leaf clovers - or eggshell, white, and yolk ... all of these
are fine for children. But as adults we must get past them, for they mislead us into thinking that we can rationally solve
this mystery that we name God. They seduce us into thinking that when we can finally understand the metaphor of the Trinity,
then we will comprehend God and everything will make perfect sense.
But we are only fooling ourselves with that thinking. The more we pay attention, the more we realize just how much is
beyond our comprehension. In one of his books, Robert Farrar Capon says that when human beings try to describe God, we are
like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina. We simply do not have the equipment to understand something so utterly
beyond us..... and yet we keep trying!
Throughout the centuries - from the biblical prophets to the medieval mystics, from hymn-writers to poets to preachers,
believers have tried to describe God, but words always fall short. We cannot paint a portrait of God any more than that bed
of oysters can dance Swan Lake. The best we can do is describe what the experience of God is like - what it feels like to
be in the presence of God - not a description of God but a description of the experience of God.
And the more we compare notes with those believers through the centuries, the more we realize that this experience is
rarely the same twice in a row. Sometimes God comes as a judge, exposing all the messes we have made in our lives. Sometimes
God comes as a shepherd, fending off our enemies and feeding us with what we need. Some days God comes as a whirlwind sweeping
away everything we have taken for granted. Other days God comes as a mother hen, hiding us in the shelter of her wings. If
we were to list all the ways God comes to us, the list would go on forever...God the teacher, God the challenger, the helper,
the lover, the adversary, the river of life, the source of wisdom, the yes, the no.
God comes to us in all these ways and yet is one God. There is one God even when we experience God in ways that seem
contradictory. There is not an Old Testament God and a New Testament God. There is not a God of love and a God of judgment.
There is only one God - one incredibly awesome, surprising God - creator of all that is and was and ever shall be. That is
so difficult to wrap our minds around that we humans must come up with names and metaphors like the Trinity. But all our human
attempts to solve God like a puzzle rather than experience God as mystery fall short like the oysters and the ballerina.
In fact, I would venture to say that the part of the Trinity metaphor that best describes God is that part of it you don't
understand!
My favorite line in the movie Shakespeare in Love is spoken by Philip Henslowe, owner of The Rose Theatre, and played
by actor Geoffrey Rush. When asked to explain the business of the theatre, how they survive even when shut down by the plague,
and missing actors, and tardy playwrights, and dismal cash flow problems, Henslowe replies (on more than one occasion), "It's
a mystery."
Mr. Henslowe has discovered a great truth as well as a terrific coping mechanism. Why is it that we hold ourselves responsible
for explaining the unexplainable? Why can't we just experience the mystery of God and say, "It's a mystery!"
Albert Schweitzer once said, "Whenever we penetrate to the heart of things, we always find a mystery. Life and all
that goes with it is unfathomable. Knowledge of life is recognition of the mysteries." And Thomas Merton, the Trappist
monk, said in 1965, "Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining
through it all the time...If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently...It
becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without God. It's impossible. The only thing
is that we don't see it."
In one of my favorite Agnes cartoons (which you can still read online even though the Tribune no longer prints it,)
Agnes is in the principal's office with an ice bag tied to the top of her head. The principal says, "I can't believe
you sprained your brain doing such a simple assignment." Agnes replies, "I started out well, but then I began to
wrestle with the concept of wormholes in space and how that correlates with God and eternity." The principal shows her
a copy of the assignment and says, "It was a health report, Agnes! All you had to do was list four leafy vegetables!
See? 'List four leafy vegetables.' Very simple! Sheesh!" And in the last frame, Agnes says, "Cabbage always gets
me to thinking about salvation." And the principal bangs her head on the desk saying, "Two years 'til retirement,
two years 'til retirement."
Agnes is right, God and eternity are there in that cabbage if we choose to experience them. Perhaps if we stopped trying
to solve the God puzzle, we might realize just how often we do experience God.
We have all looked up into the night sky and felt the awe expressed by the Psalmist: "O Lord, our Sovereign, how
majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens...When I look at your heavens, the work
of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established..." We have held newborn babies, we have tasted raspberries
fresh off the bushes and still warm from the sun, we have fallen in love, we have had broken places mended. We have experienced
God.
In the Gospel of Thomas, one of the writings discovered at Nag Hammadi, Jesus says, "If you bring forth what is
within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth
will destroy you." This, of course, is the kind of thinking that got these books left out of the canon and buried in
a jar in the desert. But they were absolutely right: the mystery that is God is all around us and within us. Professor Simon
Greenberg writes, "One does not need to fast for days and meditate for hours at a time to experience the sense of sublime
mystery which constantly envelops us. All one need do is to notice intelligently, if even for a brief moment, a blossoming
tree, a forest flooded with autumn colors, an infant smiling."
This doesn't mean, of course, that we should give up scientific inquiry and rational thought. Anne McLaren, the British
geneticist once said, "You don't destroy the mystery of a rainbow by understanding the light processes that form it."
After all, even when you understand prisms and light diffraction and the color spectrum, isn't the fact that it all comes
together in a rainbow , sometimes even a double rainbow, just too amazing for words?!
"O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"
"It's a mystery!" May we never lose our sense of awe in the presence of God.
Amen.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
PENTECOST SUNDAY
Hearing in Tongues - 5/27/07
Once upon a time, people got a little too big for their britches, and thought that what their city needed was a tower
which reached all the way up to the heavens. The purpose of this tower was not to house the homeless, or to provide office
space sufficient to give each person their own private cubicle, or even to just be a thing of beauty. The purpose of the tower
was to make a name for themselves - to have the biggest tower anywhere with a bronze plaque on the front listing the architect
and the city's Mayor at the time . So in order to put these arrogant builders in their place (which was obviously NOT in the
heavens), God causes them to speak a multitude of languages, making it impossible for them to continue working together, and
thus assuring that there would be no more towers reaching to heaven. We have been struggling to communicate and to work together
successfully ever since.
This story is what is called an "etiology" - a story that explains why things are the way they are. Why can't
we get along? Why do we have so many languages, so many different peoples all over the world if we are all descended from
the same ancestors? Because of the Tower or Babel, of course.
Now while most of us do not believe that such an event actually occurred in history, the story of the Tower of Babel
is a part of our collective consciousness, our inherited story collection. And it was a part of the collective wisdom of early
Christian people as well, the people for whom Luke wrote the Pentecost story in the Acts of the Apostles. For clearly, the
story of Pentecost is an anti-Babel story, written in such a way that people could not fail to make the connection.
In the Genesis account, the people are united by their pride and arrogance, speaking a common language and fearing being
scattered throughout the world. They attempt to make a name for themselves without God, and their language becomes confused.
Luke, the master storyteller, uses all these elements in the Pentecost story, as we shall see.
The day we call Pentecost (from fifty days) was celebrated in Judaism as the Feast of Weeks, so-called because it was
a week of weeks, or seven weeks, after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It was one of the pilgrim festivals, a one-day harvest
festival which occurred at the end of the wheat harvest, fifty days after the offering of the first fruits of the barley harvest
during Passover. Devout Jews from all over the Mediterranean world traveled to Jerusalem on this day to give thanks for the
harvest.
The book of Acts tells us that on this particular Day of Pentecost, in the year Jesus was crucified and raised from the
dead, the followers of Jesus also were gathered together in Jerusalem. It was the Feast of Weeks after all, and they had been
told to wait in Jerusalem for further instructions. And so they were waiting.
All of a sudden, the wind of the Spirit whooshes through the room, and they are given the ability to speak in languages
other than their own, so that everyone in Jerusalem can listen and understand. Their diverse languages are still diverse,
but, unlike the Genesis narrative, they are no longer confused. Amazed and astonished, says Luke, but able to understand each
other.
When you give it some thought, don’t most of our problems stem from our inability to communicate with each
other? To make ourselves understood and to understand each other? And the more complex our concepts, the more difficult
this communication becomes.
There are several free translation web sites on the Internet which illustrate just how complex language nuances really
are. An enlightening and amusing exercise is to translate a phrase from English into another language and then back into English.
If you try this with the first sentence of Joel's prophecy, quoted by Peter in the Acts account, from English to German
and back again, you get: "Into the read days it wants, God of declares, that I wants pour out my mirror-image-guessed/advised
upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters sound prophesy, and your young men sound lake vision, and your old men sound
dream dreams."
If you take it another step, and go from English to French to Swedish and back to English, you get:
"In H load days it will ask, good declares, that in will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, wild duck your son's
wild duck your daughters shall bill having to sew, wild duck your young but shall see vision's, wild duck your old but shall
dream dreams."
If, however, you translate "I want my MTV" into any language, even difficult ones like Japanese and Arabic,
and back again into English, it comes out "I want my MTV." Clearly, advertisers have figured out that if you want
something to translate easily, it had better be as simple as possible. But I think the Pentecost story tells us that this
"lowest-common-denominator" kind of thinking should not be our goal as the people of God living in a complex and
diverse world.
In fact, quite the opposite. The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was not that everyone could speak and understand
the same language, but that the good news could be spoken and heard in everyone's native tongues. The anti-Babel nature of
the story was not to return to a watered-down common language, but a diversity coupled with comprehension - universal understanding
rather than universal speech. From the moment of Pentecost on, the fact that the world is a pluralistic place, with a vast
diversity of tongues and races, must no longer be viewed as a hindrance to the good news. The story of the Tower of Babel
might be used as justification for "English Only" laws in this country, but the Pentecost story turns that kind
of thinking on its head.
When Bill and I traveled to Ireland last summer, the Chorus learned the Irish national anthem in Gaelic. Now Gaelic is
a very difficult language, with many dialects, but we carefully learned the words of the anthem phonetically, and knew the
translation so that we understood what we were singing about. And everywhere we sang it - in cathedrals and chapels and a
few pubs - the people were so touched that we had taken the time to learn even those few words in their language. And they
were gracious enough to excuse our American accents. For on the day of Pentecost, the gift of the Spirit was not only that
diverse tongues were spoken, but that all of these non-native speakers were heard and understood
Luke writes in the account: Amazed and astonished they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And
how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?"
It truly was a miracle that all those people were able to hear their own languages when spoken by a bunch of redneck
Galileans. It would be as if you suddenly heard Gomer Pyle speaking a soliloquy from Hamlet. For in order to truly understand
the significance of the Pentecost event, we must understand the social status of the Galileans in the first century.
They were mostly farmers and fishers, not highly educated. And while the rest of the region spoke koine Greek, the Galilean
Jews (and the vast majority of early Christians in Jerusalem, like Jesus himself, were Galilean Jews) spoke Aramaic with a
heavy accent. An accent so pronounced that Peter is identified as a Galilean when he speaks in the courtyard of the high priest
after Jesus is arrested. If you have ever seen an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies, you can imagine what that Pentecost
scene was like - both for the Galilean followers of Jesus and for the rest of the population in Jerusalem for the festival.
But the Pentecost miracle happens. And, amazed and perplexed as they are, three thousand of these people from other places
ARE able to listen through the heavy accents and hear the message of Peter and the others.
"So those who welcomed [Peter's] message were baptized, and that day about three thousand people were added. They
devoted themselves to the apostle's teaching and community life, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers."
These three thousand, no matter how well-educated and well-traveled they might have been, were able to hear the message
of an uncultured bunch of Galileans who were making an uproar in the streets of Jerusalem. From this the Christian Church
is born. But have we lost that Pentecost ability to hear the word of God even from the most unlikely lips?
"All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability."
The gift of Pentecost is that united by the good news of the gospel, the Holy Spirit will give us the ability to be understood
- not because we force others to learn our language, but because we learn to speak theirs. And we learn to listen to voices
that speak in accents different than ours. That's why Luke includes that laundry list of nationalities represented in Jerusalem
on that day - a full third of the story! Luke wants the story of Pentecost to give us the ability to live in a pluralistic
world, without longing for that pre- Babel society of homogeneity which never really existed.
Garth House writes in his litany for Pentecost, "We remember that our church was born in wind and fire, not to sweep
heavenward like a presumptuous tower, but to guide us down the dusty roads of this world so that we may lift up the downcast,
heal the broken, reconcile what is lost, and bring peace amidst unrest."
The Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh, on all people, who are called to preach and teach and heal and love. Thanks
be to God for the gifts of the Spirit on this Day of Pentecost.
Amen.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
A Wing and a Promise - 3/4/07
This past week, I came across this poem by A. E. Houseman:
The Elephant, or The Force of Habit
A tail behind, a trunk in front,
Complete the usual elephant.
The tail in front, the trunk behind
Is what you very seldom find.
If you for specimens should hunt
With trunks behind and tails in front,
That hunt would occupy you long;
The force of habit is so strong.
It struck me that our readings for this morning talk about our human force of habit that is so strong. You can call it
human nature; some call it original sin. But whatever you call it, there is no question that it seems to be a part of human
nature no matter how hard we struggle against it. The apostle Paul described this inner conflict in his letter to the church
in Rome: "I do not understand my own actions... For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I
do."
From the moment we are born, we human beings struggle to gain independence - to prove that we are self-sufficient, self-reliant,
self-motivated, and self-determined persons. We don't want to be dependent on other people, or even on the Creator of the
Universe.
God seeks us, offering the shelter of the almighty wings, but we are so determined to be free - to go our own way. And
it is a gift of God that we are free to go our own way, even if it is the wrong way. The people of Jerusalem were free to
follow Herod the fox, killing the voices crying out for justice and calling it keeping the peace. We, too, want to be independent
so badly that we are willing to give up our relationship with God, to give up who we are, in order to achieve this so-called
self-reliance. George Buttrick, former professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, once wrote: "A fish is free only as
a fish: its bony structure and its habitat define its freedom. It cannot fly like an eagle or walk like a man; and if it should
leap out of the pond into the wider world, it would not be free: it would be dead."
Just as the fish must accept that it is a fish in order to be free, so must we accept that we are human beings who live
in covenant with the God in whom we live and move and have our being. This covenant relationship is really what the entire
biblical narrative is all about. It takes all those thousands of pages because it is a relationship we cannot quite comprehend.
It's not a legal contract, and it certainly is not an agreement made between equal parties. It involves commitment and faithfulness,
but not because the fine print requires it.
The lesson from Genesis reminds us of the ancient rituals regarding covenant, when animals were cut in half, with the
halves laid on the ground to create a sacred space between them. Abraham has become impatient with God; the promised heir
has not materialized. It is interesting that in the covenant between God and Abraham, God is the one making all the promises
- and all Abraham is required to do is to believe that God's word is good. Yet even this is hard for him to do. Apparently,
patience has never been the most prevalent virtue in the human spirit. But God once again promises that the descendants as
countless as the stars will be forthcoming. God will be faithful to the covenant, not only to Abraham, but to all the generations
to come.
We humans, of course, are less faithful than God. When we are faced with barrenness, like Abraham and Sarah, we question
God's faithfulness rather than our own. And so we keep wandering off from the shelter of the mother hen because we think we
know better. Jesus' words to Jerusalem in the gospel lesson for this morning are for us just as much as they were for that
first-century city. "How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and you were not willing!"
There is no more powerful image of God's protection, love, and even self-sacrifice for us, the chicks - the beloved ones.
The story is told of a grass fire in the barnyard. It burned through the farm, so quickly that the animals and birds
simply didn't have time to run. When the fire had burned itself out, the farmer looked at the damage. There was a mother hen,
her wings spread wide, her feathers black and burned. The hen was dead. But when the farmer picked up the dead hen, out scampered
her chicks. Just before the fire, she had gathered them under her in the face of danger. And she gave her life to save them.
She could not have saved them, of course, if they had not been willing to gather under the shelter of those wings. And
this, friends, is the core of our human condition, isn't it? We want so much to be in relationship with God, to be in covenant.
We want to believe in the promise of God's love. And yet, like Abram and Sarah, when the conditions in which we are living
make God's promises appear to be unreliable, our first instinct is not to run under the wings, but to run away - to look elsewhere
for safety and protection. Unfortunately, that elsewhere is always less reliable than God's wings.
Several years ago, one of the astronauts who walked on the moon was interviewed and asked, "What did you think about
as you stood on the moon and looked back at the earth?" The astronaut answered, "I remembered how the spacecraft
was built by the lowest bidder."
We need never fear that we were created by the lowest bidder. We are God's children and God cares for us, loves us, and
grieves for us when we are not willing to accept that love. This relationship with God, this covenant which goes back to Abram,
requires nothing of us. No sensible God would have made such a bargain. But God loves us with an amazingly extravagant love.
One day a single man asked a father of four, "Why do you love your kids?" The father thought for a minute about
the strengths and weaknesses of all four children - about the caring, frustration, exasperation, fear, pride, and hope that
were a part of loving those four people to whom he would always be connected. And then he gave his friend the only answer
he could, "I love them because they’re my kids."
This is the love our mother hen God has for us, each and every one of us - not a superficial, pie-in-the-sky love, but
a promise to be our shield when we are afraid, to bear us up when we have no more strength.
Thomas Troeger writes this hymn of God's love:
A spendthrift lover is the Lord
who never counts the cost
or asks if heaven can afford
to woo a world that's lost.
Our lover tosses coins of gold
across the midnight skies
and stokes the sun against the cold
to warm us when we rise.
Still more is spent in blood and tears
to win the human heart,
to overcome the violent fears
that drive the world apart.
Behold the bruised and thorn-crowned face
of one who bears our scars
and empties out the wealth of grace
that's hinted by the stars.
How shall we love this heart-strong God
who gives us everything,
whose ways to us are strange and odd,
what can we give or bring?
Acceptance of the matchless gift
is gift enough to give.
The very act will shake and shift
the way we love and live.
God promises to be in covenant with us forever and to gather us in as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
Are we willing to accept that gift of love?
Amen.
Sunday, October 9, 2006
"In God’s Hands" - 10/8/06
The neighbors on our cul-de-sac felt an affinity with Job this week. As the storm ripped through Monday night,
water rushed in our window wells (one of those design flaws of houses built on former swamp land). We were keeping up, with
our wet-dry vacuums and brooms and squeegees, until the power went out for 18 hours. Then the sump pump back-up batteries
failed, and the basements filled up. We had an inch or two. Our next-door neighbors had six inches. Watching the news, countless
people in Chicagoland had similar experiences. But, in spite of the annoyance, and the loss of property, and the yuckiness
of spending a day in the wet basement, we tried to remain calm and to keep things in perspective.
We loaned our wet-dry vac to our young neighbor with the six inches of water in her basement who told us,
"You guys are so cheerful through this! I’m glad I live next to you." And we replied, "Well, we’ve been through
this before. No one got hurt. Our house is still standing. You throw out what is ruined, but it’s just stuff. "
After all, our little sogginess was nothing compared to what Job experienced. He had lost everything he had
- his property is destroyed, his servants are killed, his children have their house fall on them, and then, as the final blow,
he is covered with sores. Yet in spite of all this, he tries to keep a half-full attitude. "Shall we receive the good at the
hand of God, and not receive the bad?"
But is God the source of the evil as well as the good? That is the fundamental question about the nature
of God which goes back, I believe, to the dawning of human consciousness. If God is all-good, and God is all-powerful, why
do bad things happen?
It is human nature for us to try to find someone to blame for things that go wrong - we blame ourselves, we
blame other people, we blame God. How many times have you heard someone try to rationalize suffering beyond our comprehension
by saying, "It is God’s will." Even the just, wise, virtuous Job eventually succumbs to this. He does pretty well, taking
the bad with the good, until his three insufferable friends come to "cheer him up" by telling him that his own sinfulness
must be the cause of his troubles. Job believes in his heart that he has not done anything that would deserve such extreme
punishment. So he asks God those unanswerable questions - "Why me? Why this? Why now?"
Elie Wiesel says that Job asks these questions to try to make some sense of his punishment. "Job would have
preferred to think of himself as guilty. His innocence troubled him, left him in the dark; his guilt might give the experience
some meaning... What he demanded was neither happiness nor reparations, but an answer... He wanted to hear God’s voice,
even though he knew he would be condemned. He preferred a cruel and unjust God to an indifferent God."
Like Job, we would like a simple answer to the question of suffering, a simple reassurance that the good will
be rewarded and the evil will be punished. But this would be a hollow reassurance, for we know that this isn’t true.
And in the book of Job, while such words come from the mouths of Job’s so-called friends, such simplistic answers never
come from the mouth of God.
Frederick Buechner says this about Job:
Maybe the reason God doesn’t explain to Job why terrible things happen is that he knows what Job needs
isn’t an explanation. Suppose that God did explain. Suppose that God were to say to Job that the reason the cattle were
stolen, the crops ruined, and the children killed was thus and so, spelling everything out right down to and including the
case of boils. Job would have his explanation. And then what? Understanding in terms of the divine economy why his children
had to die, Job would still have to face their empty chairs at breakfast every morning.
And so, instead of revealing to Job the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything (which
we know is 42, anyway), Job is given a glimpse of God’s glory, enough to help him realize that God is more unpredictable,
unconfined, and incomprehensible than he or his friends ever imagined. And yet, this awe-inspiring God, Creator of the Universe,
speaks to Job, and by doing so, gives Job a promise of presence in the midst of suffering. For, as the Psalmist reminds us,
although we are but tiny specks in the vastness of Creation, we are created in the image of God, unique among the creatures
of the earth.
In her article on Psalm 8 in The Christian Century (September
13, 2000), Stacey Elizabeth Simpson wrote: "The stars keep twinkling long after
we are gone. The waves of six oceans will come rolling in tomorrow just like they did yesterday and the day before and a millennium
ago. A new day will dawn whether we are here to call it a "sunrise" or not. We are nothing in comparison with the grandeur
and longevity of it all. We are specks in the context of time and history and creation. At the same time, we are of absolute
importance to God. The same God that stitched the iridescent feathers onto the littlest hummingbird fashioned a pair of eyelashes
for each human baby. The God that painted stripes on the zebra decorated human beings in a wide assortment of shades. The
God who spoke the universe into existence breathed life into a clump of dirt. That same God gave us language and emotions
and a soul, crowning us with glory and honor."
DNA research has shown that human beings share 99 percent of our genes with our nearest primate relative,
the chimpanzee. Yet that 1 percent makes all the difference in the world. It represents the gaping chasm of consciousness
that separates us from the other animals and gives us a special place in God’s creation. For while it is true that your
dog will never betray you and your goldfish will not lie to you, neither can they discuss a good book or share a good story.
And, as far as we know, they do not spend time asking existential questions either.
But Job asks those questions - Why me? Why this? Why now? - questions which are never answered. What is clear,
however, is that God never abandons Job, even though Job feels that way at first. None of the rituals of the cult can help
him, for if he is not being punished because of his sin, he cannot atone for that sin. But after God speaks to Job, he moves
from an attitude of legalism (I followed all the rules so I should be rewarded) to an attitude of awe and appreciation. For
Job is held in the hand of the Almighty God, Creator of the Universe.
For some people, being held in the hand of God is a startlingly concrete image - like the logo of the Good
Hands of Allstate Insurance or the chair I sit in on Sunday mornings. And when something bad happens, they see it as God’s
will. It reminds me of a game my kids used to play when they were little. When they got angry with each other, they would
look through their fingers, and squish. Many ancient belief systems worshiped gods who behaved just like my two kids. Have
you seen the latest Excedrin commercial? It shows a little fishing boat being tossed in a storm until the bottle of Excedrin
falls overboard. As soon as Poseidon (or Neptune or Triton depending on your pantheon of gods) takes the pills, he gets instant
relief from his headache, and all is calm on the seas again.
We no longer believe that Poseidon controls the waves or Thor sends the thunder, that Aurora opens the curtains
of the dawn or Apollo drives the fiery chariot of the sun. Yet there are those who would have you believe that God sends AIDS
to punish homosexuals, that God sends tsunamis and hurricanes to punish sinners. This is the capricious God who is described
in the reading from Job this morning - a God who is persuaded to test Job’s faith by inflicting unimaginable suffering
upon him, and by killing innocent people in order to make the test difficult enough. But Job is just one story in the biblical
narrative, and we must look at what we learn about God from it in the larger context of what we learn about God from all of
Scripture and from our own encounters with the Holy One.
The story of Job reminds us that in the midst of suffering, we can experience God - not as the cause of the
suffering but as a presence with us in our pain. And then, like Job, we can repent - not in a sense of remorse for wrongdoing,
but in the true sense of the Hebrew and Greek words - a turning, a change of heart, a new perspective.
For Job, it took stripping him of everything - his possessions, his family, his health - for him to experience
being held in God’s hand. Many of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves searching for God in pain on such
a "dark night of the soul." But many of us, like the Psalmist, have experienced being held by the hand of God by standing
out under the night sky and observing the wonder of the universe.
In Cumberland, England, there is a gravestone with this inscription:
"The wonder of the world, the beauty, and the power, the shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,
these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts."
Amen.
Sunday, September 3, 2006
"Work and Play" - 9/3/06
Some 25 million immigrants settled arrived by boat through New York Harbor between 1860 and 1920, with many
settling in New York City. They found that living conditions in the "Land of Opportunity" were not as wonderful as they had
dreamed. Often there were six families crowded into a house made for one family. Thousands of children had to go to work.
Working conditions were even worse. Immigrant men, women and children worked in factories for ten to twelve hours a day, stopping
only for a short time to eat. They came to work even if they were tired or sick because if they didn't, they might be fired.
After all, thousands more were waiting to take their places. And thus, the Labor Union movement in this country was born.
On September 5, 1882 the first Labor Day parade was held in New York City. Twenty thousand workers marched
in a parade up Broadway. They carried banners that read "LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH," and "EIGHT HOURS FOR WORK, EIGHT HOURS
FOR REST, EIGHT HOURS FOR RECREATION!" After the parade there were picnics all around the city. And at night, fireworks were
set off.
A second Labor Day Parade and picnic was held in New York the next year, and within the next few years, the
idea spread from coast to coast. However, the establishment of the national holiday has its roots much closer to home, in
Pullman, Illinois. It was here, on Lake Calumet, that George Pullman built a town to manufacture his railway sleeping cars.
All buildings in the town were company owned and rented to workers, churches and stores. After the company cut wages a number
of times in the 1880s and '90s, but failed to reduce the rent in the company owned housing, the workers were in dire economic
circumstances. And so, on May 11, 1894, the employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay. The American Railway
Union, led by a young Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation boycotted
trains carrying Pullman cars. Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued.
The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives
and interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. With the
arrest of the leaders in Chicago, the strike collapsed, and workers returned August 2, 1894.
However, Cleveland’s harsh methods angered workers across the country and made the appeasement of the
nation's workers a top political priority. In the immediate wake of the Pullman strike, legislation to establish a national
Labor Day holiday was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland's desk
just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike. Cleveland signed it quickly, (after all, 1894 was an election
year) and Labor Day was born.
For most people today, Labor Day is just the last three-day weekend of the summer, and, for the truly fashion-conscious,
the last day one is supposed to wear white shoes. But this morning, let’s take a moment to look at the scripture lessons,
remembering those banners at the very first Labor Day Parade - eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for
recreation, and consider the relationship between work and play.
Although very few people in our community are forced to work long hours like the factory workers of the nineteenth
century, many choose to work more hours for a variety of reasons, while others bring their work home, never truly taking time
for rest and recreation. Still others approach everything in their lives, even recreation as a task that must be carried out
with determination but little joy. For them, everything is work!
There is a Zen story of a martial arts student who went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I am devoted to
studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it?"
The teacher's reply was casual, "Ten years."
Impatiently, the student answered, "But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will
practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?"
The teacher thought for a moment, "20 years."
In her book "The Continuum Concept" Jean Liedloff describes her experience of living with Stone Age Indians
in the South American jungle for two and a half years. She found these people to be the happiest she had seen anywhere, for
they made no distinction between work and play, experiencing everything as play. Liedloff writes of portaging a huge dugout
canoe, able to hold seventeen people, over the rocks of Arepuchi Falls.
A quarter of the way across all ankles were bleeding. Partly by way of begging off for a minute, I jumped
up on a high rock to photograph the scene. From my vantage point and momentary disinvolvement, I noticed a most interesting
fact. Here before me were several men engaged in a single task. Two, the Italians, were tense, frowning, losing their tempers
at everything, and cursing non-stop in the distinctive manner of the Tuscan. The rest, Indians, were having a fine time. They
were laughing at the unwieldiness of the canoe, making a game of the battle, relaxed between pushes, laughing at their own
scrapes and especially amused when the canoe, as it wobbled forward, pinned one, then another, underneath it. The fellow held
bare-backed against the scorching granite, when he could breathe again, invariably laughed the loudest.
All were doing the same work, all were experiencing strain and pain. There was no difference in our situations
except that we had been conditioned by our culture to believe that such a combination of circumstances constituted an unquestionable
low on the scale of well-being, and were quite unaware we had any option in the matter.
The Indians, on the other hand, equally unconscious of making a choice, were in a particularly merry state
of mind, enjoying the camaraderie; and of course they had had no long build-up of dread to mar the preceding days. Each forward
move was for them a little victory, enjoyed to the full."
It seems to be a vicious cycle - the less joy and meaning we find in our work, the harder we work at it.
Somehow we convince ourselves that doing more things faster will be a substitute for doing the things we know we really want
and need to do. Chinese scholar Lin Yutang says, "The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the
desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make Americans so unhappy and so nervous." Even God rested. It
says so in the Bible!
And this morning, we read these words from the Song of Solomon, the book of the Bible which is probably least
read on Sunday mornings. "My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the
winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of
the turtledove is heard in our land.’"
Throughout the centuries, the love poetry which we call Song of Solomon had been understood in a variety of
different ways - as an allegory of God’s love for Israel, an allegory of Christ’s love for the church, or just
incredibly beautiful poetry about human love. An any case, I think this morning’s reading is clear - it is a call to
come out and play! The rain has stopped, it is a beautiful day, the flowers are blooming, and the birds are singing - so the
beloved one comes to the window and calls in, "Come on, stop whatever you are doing and come away!"
Even though we know that rest and recreation are important, how often do we answer that call to "come away"?
It is important, but do we see it as urgent, as something that cannot be postponed and eventually forgotten? Too often we
become slaves to what Charles Hummel referred to as the "tyranny of the urgent." He wrote,
The important task rarely must be done today, or even this week. The urgent task calls for instant action.
The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time’s
perspective, their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the vital task we pushed aside. We realize we’ve
become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.
This is not to say that we should not attend to urgent things, just that we must not consistently ignore important
things in order to attend to urgent things which may not really be all that important in the long run. It is those important
things that connect us to God, like Ariadne’s thread, which guided Theseus through the maze of the Minotaur, back up
to the surface.
Of course, we cannot discern what those important things are if we are constantly spinning our wheels, working
harder and harder. Between those words of James’ epistle about being "doers of the word" and our Protestant work ethic,
we think that we must be in a perpetual state of "doing." Even our rest and recreation must be "productive."
Most of us have a holiday tomorrow. Take a few minutes to think about what is important, not just urgent.
Balance your work with some rest and recreation. "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."
Amen.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
"What Are You Hungry For?" 8/13/06
We have all heard the old adage, "You are what you eat." And, due to the health crisis in this country caused
by our poor diet, we are slowly coming to the realization that our bodies cannot thrive on high fructose corn syrup and saturated
fats. New and improved diet plans flood the bookstore shelves, the Internet, the television talk shows. Millions of dollars
are poured into ad campaigns to convince people to follow one diet guru or another. What we eat has become big business -
REALLY big business!
Now I am the first in line to cheer on all those who are making an effort to eat healthy foods which are raised
in ways that are eco-friendly; they are not only attending to their own well-being, but also to the health of the planet and
the society. But what I want to suggest to you this morning is that attending to our physical health is just the beginning.
If we truly seek health and wholeness, we need watch more than carbs, fats, and calories.
In his book, Motivation and Personality, written in 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow outlined
what he called the hierarchy of human needs. The lower levels of the pyramid he named "d-needs" (deficiency needs). These
are the needs we must satisfy before we can move on to what he named "b-needs" (being needs).
The pyramid looks like this:
1) Physiological needs: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts
2) Safety needs: security, out of danger
3) Love needs: belonging, affiliate with others, be accepted
4) Esteem needs: to achieve, gain approval and recognition
5) Self-actualization and self-transcendence: to find self-fulfillment and realize one's potential; to connect
to something beyond oneself
There are conflicting opinions on the usefulness of Maslow’s hierarchy, but what I found most interesting
in light of this morning’s readings was his description of the first level - the physiological needs, especially hunger.
Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most pre-potent of all needs. What this means specifically is,
that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation
would be the physiological needs rather than any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem would most
probably hunger for food more strongly than for anything else.
If all the needs are unsatisfied, and the organism is then dominated by the physiological needs, all other
needs may become simply non-existent or be pushed into the background. It is then fair to characterize the whole organism
by saying simply that it is hungry, for consciousness is almost completely preempted by hunger. All capacities are put into
the service of hunger-satisfaction, and the organization of these capacities is almost entirely determined by the one purpose
of satisfying hunger. The receptors and effectors, the intelligence, memory, habits, all may now be defined simply as hunger-gratifying
tools. Capacities that are not useful for this purpose lie dormant, or are pushed into the background. The urge to write poetry,
the desire to acquire an automobile, the interest in American history, the desire for a new pair of shoes are, in the extreme
case, forgotten or become of secondary importance. For the man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests
exist but food. He dreams food, he remembers food, he thinks about food, he emotes only about food, he perceives only food
and he wants only food.
We read in scripture that Jesus understands this, understands that people cannot focus on needs of being if
their physical needs are not met. When the crowds on the hillside become hungry, he doesn’t tell them that they don’t
need to eat. He feeds them with bread for their journey, with basic food to sustain their bodies. But unfortunately, like
so many other people, they get stuck there. They follow Jesus all the way to Capernaum, not because he is a great teacher,
but because he gave them a free lunch. They ask
Jesus to prove that he is the one sent from God by giving them a sign, like Moses did with the manna in the wilderness. In
other words, they want him to do the "barley loaves for everybody" miracle on a daily basis!
Jesus reminds them that Moses didn’t give them the bread from heaven, the manna in the wilderness. It
was and is and will always be God who gives that which we need to fully live. But they were looking for loaves and fishes
- and missing the bread of life which was right in their midst.
We mustn’t judge them, of course, for we do no better. We often fail to recognize the bread of life
because it doesn’t always meet our preconceived notions of what bread should look like. What God provides for us to
give us life is always beyond our expectations and causes us to stretch and to grow. This was true in the wilderness 4,000
years ago; this was true in Galilee 2,000 years ago; and this is true now.
The Israelites in the desert were looking for bread - and they got this flaky stuff they had to gather off
the ground every day. The Galileans were looking for a king who would throw off the Roman occupation forces - and they got
Jesus, the prophet, who was killed by those very same Romans. What they thought was the bread of life was only loaves and
fish. The real bread of life was much harder for them to grasp.
And what about us... what is it we are hungry for? Are we looking only for perishable food? Are we working
harder and longer for physical security and yet somehow still feeling there is something missing? Have we been filling our
lives with spiritual junk food - empty calories that give us a sugar rush but do not nourish us? How do we find that bread
of life which will satisfy our inner cravings?
Maslow’s hierarchy suggests that we must move beyond our d-needs to our b-needs; we must work to fulfill
our potential. He wrote, "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with
himself. What a man can be, he must be." Note, however, that Maslow doesn’t stop with self-actualization, but also includes
self-transcendence at the pinnacle of the pyramid. In fact, he was criticized by some of his peers for moving beyond the realm
of psychology into the realm of religion. But I think Maslow truly understood our human needs - attending only to ourselves
will leave us hungry.
The letter to the church at Ephesus contains much good advice, but our reading for this morning contains the
ultimate challenge, the pinnacle of the pyramid, if you will. "Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live
in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
Be imitators of God. How in the world are we supposed to do that? We do it just like we change what we eat
- one bite at a time, one meal at a time, one day at a time, one decision at a time, one conversation at a time. Just as we
are what we eat, we are what we say, and think, and do. If we fill our minds with the trivial and the spiteful, that is what
we shall be. But if we choose good role models for ourselves and strive to love with God’s love, we will become imitators
of God, not only created in God’s image but fulfilling our potential as well. Crash diets don’t work - you can’t
binge one day and starve yourself the next and expect to be healthy. In the same way, we can’t be hateful and selfish
one day and expect to be extra nice the next day to make up for it. We need to be just as aware of everything we are putting
into our minds and spirits on a daily basis as we are of what we are putting into our bodies. Martin Luther once said, "You
cannot keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair."
A man named Ricardo Semler tells of a lesson he learned while working for a company called Semco. Several
departments in the company had been waiting for months for the arrival of $50,000 worth of file cabinets. Finally, in desperation,
the executives decided to stop the company for half a day and hold the First Biannual Semco File Inspection and Clean-out.
Every employee was told to look inside every file folder and throw out every nonessential piece of paper. Semler writes: "I
was one of Semco’s biggest file hogs, with four large cabinets and a request for two more. After our cleanup, I trimmed
down to a single cabinet, and that was pretty much how it went throughout the company. The cleanup went so well that when
everyone had finished, Semco auctioned off dozens of unneeded file cabinets."
It is amazing, is it not, what we collect in our closets, and dresser drawers and garages and basements and
hearts and minds. And as long as we are full of junk, we have no room for what we truly need. It is like the parable of the
foolish old farmer, who concluded one day that the oats he had been feeding his mule for years were simply costing him too
much. So he devised a plan: He mixed a little sawdust in with the feed, and then a little more the next day, and even more
the next - each time reducing the amount of oats in the mix. The mule didn't seem to notice the gradual change, so the farmer
thought things were fine and kept decreasing the proportion of oats. But weeks later, on the day he finally fed the poor beast
nothing but sawdust, the mule finished the meal ... and fell over dead.
What are you filling your life with? What are you hungry for? Remember that Jesus said, "I am the bread of
life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry."
Amen.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
"Moving On" - 9/11/05
The last weeks of summer and the first weeks of fall are always a time of moving - many families relocate
at this time of year so that the children can start school on time, young people go off to college, new college graduates
are settling into new locations. But these past days have been filled with even more moving than usual - several members of
our congregation have moved just this past week, thousands of people are in the process of relocating from New Orleans and
the Gulf states, and our refugee family will arrive tomorrow. Sometimes relocating is something we plan; sometimes it is thrust
upon us by forces beyond our control. But our scripture lessons for this morning remind us that while moving might not be
our choice, moving on is always a choice we have to make.
In the book of Exodus we read that after the angel of death strikes down the firstborn
of every household, the Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron in the middle of the night, telling them to take their flocks and
herds and to be gone! In fact, all of the Egyptians, in their grief, say to the Hebrews, "Here, take our gold and silver,
take our clothing, just leave us alone! So the former slaves plunder their rulers, taking advantage of the chaos of massive
mourning. And, after living there for hundreds of years, they take everything they can carry and leave Egypt.
The Exodus account says that a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night lead them, not in the
most direct route to Canaan, but in a very roundabout way through the wilderness of the Sinai peninsula. They reach the Sea
of Reeds, near Baal-Zephon, and camp there. In the meantime, Pharaoh has had a change of heart, and is determined to recapture
their riches and their slaves. Pharaoh gets his army ready - horses and chariots and officers and warriors - and they bear
down upon the Hebrews camped by the sea. And it is at this moment that the Israelites must choose whether they are ready to
move on or not.
Some say to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the
wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let
us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."
And the people cry out in fear to Yahweh. Moses tells them not to be afraid, for Yahweh is going to deliver them. And then
Yahweh says to Moses, "Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward."
At this point, many of the Israelites had a huge crisis of faith - go forward where? On one side was Pharaoh’s
army; on the other side was a rather substantial body of water. Just exactly where did Yahweh want them to go forward? Into
the sea to drown?
The Talmud says that in this moment, the prince of the tribe of Judah, Nahshon, son of Aminidab, has the faith
and courage to walk into the water. He continues to walk into the waves until it appears that he will drown. Moses is standing
and praying at great length, until Yahweh says to Moses, "Nahshon, my beloved one, is sinking in the water and the sea is
closing over him, the Egyptians are close behind in pursuit, and you stand here in lengthy prayer?" Moses says, "What am I
able to do to help him?" Yahweh answers, "Raise up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea. Then the children of
Israel may pass through the sea on dry ground."1
The children of Israel had to leave much behind in order to cross the sea safely. It was the heavy chariots
and war horses that got the Egyptians stuck in the mud, allowing the sea to close over them. But it was not only physical
possessions that had to be sacrificed, it was also their reliance upon Egypt and their nostalgia for the "good old days,"
which really weren’t that good, but looked better than drowning in the sea. They had to have faith in God’s promise
to lead them and to be with them as they moved into the future - a future which was beyond anything they could imagine. All
they could see was Pharaoh’s approaching army and the hostile sea. But Nahshon was willing to take what Abraham Joshua
Heschel calls a "leap of action." In his 1955 classic book, God in Search of Man, Heschel
writes:
"A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought. He is asked to surpass his needs,
to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does. In carrying out the word of the Torah he is ushered
into the presence of spiritual meaning. Through the ecstasy of deeds he learns to be certain of the hereness of God."
Annie Dillard once wrote, "If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d
never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense.
You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."
I think Annie Dillard could add "forgiveness" to her list of things we wouldn’t do if we only listened
to our intellect, for forgiveness is not a rational activity. There is a non-profit organization based in Madison, Wisconsin,
called the International Forgiveness Institute, begun in 1994 by a professor at the University of Wisconsin. On their website,
the Institute defines forgiveness as paradoxical. "It is the foregoing of resentment or revenge when the wrongdoer's actions
deserve it and giving the gifts of mercy, generosity and love when the wrongdoer does not deserve them. As we give the gift
of forgiveness we ourselves are healed."
This is why Jesus tells Peter that he must forgive, not seven times but seventy-seven. Remember that the Talmud
gives the opinion that the maximum number of times unconditional forgiveness should be given is three - precisely three. So
to Peter's credit, he did expand the forgiveness 133%, but he is still thinking in terms of measurable mercy rather than unlimited
grace. Jesus challenges him to go beyond this score-keeping forgiveness by suggesting a number that is beyond our ability
to remember with mathematical precision. Jesus is telling Peter that forgiveness comes from the heart, not from the head.
We are to forgive with God's unconditional, boundless love.
The parable of the unforgiving servant then makes this point even more forcefully. The parable servant reminds
us of the enormous disparity between our need for forgiveness and our willingness to forgive. The servant in the parable owes
ten thousand talents - and a talent is more than 15 years wages. Thus, this amount is a fantastic and unpayable sum, more
than any working person could ever repay in a lifetime. The co-worker, on the other hand, owed only 100 denarii, about four
month's wages - not an insignificant sum, but one that is manageable and understandable. Yet the servant, who had just been
forgiven an unimaginable amount, refused to forgive the co-worker even this small debt. Which then caused the king to take
back his generous offer of amnesty and demand that the servant pay the loan, which of course he could not do.
Now perhaps if he had known the consequences of his failure to forgive, the servant would have been more generous.
But what is our excuse? We know the benefits of forgiveness and the ill effects of our failure to forgive; we know what happens
when we hold on to our anger and resentment, to relive every hurtful thing ever done to us. Someone said that holding on to
anger is like eating rat poison and expecting the rat to die. But forgiveness overcomes evil with good, and helps to heal
both the person forgiving and forgiven.
The Forgiveness Project is a grassroots organization started by a London journalist, which is collecting stories
of people who have chosen to end the cycles of conflict, violence, and crime through forgiveness. On their web site, www.theforgivenessproject.com, Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, "To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest.
It is also a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never
hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.
"However, when I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person.
A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood,
making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive then you are no longer chained to
the perpetrator. You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person too."
Frederick Buechner says that "Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds,
to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come,
to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back; in many ways it is a feast
fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you." 2
In a 1993 article in Christianity Today, Lewis Smedes writes:
To forgive is to put down your 50-pound pack after a 10-mile climb up a mountain.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
To forgive is to dance to the beat of God's forgiving heart. It is to ride the crest of love's strongest wave.
Our only escape from history's cruel unfairness, our only passage to the future's creative possibilities,
is the miracle of forgiving.3
Andrew Rice, whose brother died in Tower 1 on September 11, has chosen to remember his brother David through
Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of 9/11 families who advocate non-violence, and through telling his story as part of the Forgiveness
Project, which I mentioned earlier. The words of the Project’s goal can be a beacon of hope for us in these days of
vengeance and hatemongering, "to tell the quieter, less publicized stories of reconciliation. The stories of people who have
discovered that the only way to move on in life, is to lay aside hatred and blame."
Let us learn from them, and do our best to move on. Amen.
1. Sotah 37a
2. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
3. "Forgiveness— The Power to Change the Past," Christianity
Today, January 7, 1983
Sunday, May 15, 2005
“Gift Exchange” - Pentecost Sunday - 5/15/05
Most of us have had the experience of going to one of those gift exchange parties, right? You know, the ones where you
are supposed to spend a certain amount, and everyone goes home with something that someone else bought. Well, how many of
you have come away from such a party wishing that you could have taken your own gift home because you liked it so much better
than the one you got stuck with? You brought that cute hand-painted dessert plate and you’re taking home another basket
of potpourri that makes you sneeze. And what do you want to bet that the person who is taking home the dessert plate that
you love is thinking that it is really bilious and can’t imagine serving food on it! How many times have you received
a gift that you just hated - a sweater in an ugly color or yet another smelly candle or a book about a subject you don’t
find the least bit interesting. How often have we wished that we could just buy our own gifts so that we could get something
we really wanted.
Of course, if everyone just took their own gifts back home again it wouldn’t be much of a gift exchange. And if
we just bought things for ourselves, they wouldn’t be gifts at all, because you can’t really give yourself a gift.
The whole idea of a gift is that someone else gives it to you because they want you to have it. And so we do our best to accept
all gifts with joy because we know that someone is giving them to us because they think we will enjoy them.
But what about our gifts from God? Sometimes we question the value of those as well. Take the gifts of the Holy Spirit
at Pentecost - wind and fire and an ability to communicate to humanity in all its diversity. Are these what we would have
chosen as the necessary gifts for the founding of the Christian church? If today’s church growth gurus had been around
at that first Pentecost, they would have been looking for good parking, street visibility, organizational skills, entertaining
programs, and tasty refreshments. But the Holy Spirit is not controlled by mortals, no matter how hard we try. The Spirit
moves in ways we cannot even imagine, giving gifts that we don’t always appreciate or even acknowledge.
You may remember that in John’s gospel Jesus told Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the
sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes." I think that frightens us. We want to know where we
are going and what we are doing - every minute. A sixth grader once gave this definition: “The wind is like air, only
pushier!” Sometimes when the Spirit works in the world in a powerful way, we may feel that God is getting a bit pushy.
But we must trust that God, who is the source of all good gifts, sends the Spirit to give us life, not to just push us around.
And the Spirit gives us gifts that we might indeed have life together in the body of Christ.
Paul writes to the church at Corinth, which was split in many ways, with certain members convinced that their spiritual
gifts were more important than others: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties
of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in
everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” The member with the gift of healing
is no more important to the body than the member with the gift of public speaking or long-range planning. Everyone’s
gifts are of value to the body; all are necessary for the common good.
So often we question the value of our gifts. We wish that we had the gifts of others... that we could sculpt or tapdance
or knit; that we were good with numbers or good with words or good with people. But just imagine what would happen if we concentrated
on doing the things we can do rather than whining about the things we can’t - what if we accepted our God-given gifts
as just that - as gifts, to be opened with joy. “Oh, boy! Just what I needed!”
When Irving Berlin and George Gershwin met, Berlin was already famous and Gershwin was a struggling composer, working
for $35 a week. Berlin recognized Gershwin’s talent, and offered him a job as his musical secretary, with a salary three
times what he was making as a songwriter. Needless to say, Gershwin was tempted to accept. But then Berlin had second thoughts,
and advised Gershwin not to accept his offer. “If you do, you may develop into a second-rate Berlin. But if you insist
on being yourself, someday you will become a first-rate Gershwin.”
When he was only making $35 a week, no doubt George Gershwin would have liked to exchange his gift for something a bit
more practical, like accounting or architecture. But what a loss it would have been to the world if he had not continued to
write music.
Now obviously, we are not all George Gershwin, or Mother Teresa, or Michael Jordan, or Albert Schweitzer. But each and
every one of us has gifts given by the Spirit for the common good. We need not try to be someone else, or claim someone else’s
gifts. All we need to do is accept who we are and use what we have been given.
Howard Thurman once said: “Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that.
Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” This is the ultimate gift of the Spirit, is it not? Coming
alive as the breath of God fills us. This was the gift at Pentecost - the gift that sent them running into the street as if
they were drunk, drunk with new life and new purpose. Yes, the Spirit is wild and unpredictable, and yes, there are times
when we would like to exchange our gifts for someone else’s. But if Paul is correct in saying that our gifts are given
by the Spirit for a purpose, then who do we think we are to refuse them?
Francois Fenelon, the 17th century archbishop of Cambrai, makes an important suggestion in his book, Maxims of the Saints,
written in 1697. "The wind of God is always blowing but you must hoist your own sail." You must use your gifts, and everyone
else must use theirs. And by doing so, you will come alive as your sails are filled with the breath of the Spirit.
As British priest Brian Foley’s Pentecost hymn says: Holy Spirit, come, confirm us in the truth that Christ makes
know; We have faith and understanding through your helping gifts alone. Holy Spirit, come, renew us, come yourself to make
us live; Make us holy through your presence, holy through the gifts you give. Amen.
Sunday, May 1, 2005
"Knowing God" - 5/1/05
In the 17th chapter of the Book of Acts, Paul arrives in Athens, the intellectual and cultural center of the Greek world.
Paul's first impression of Athens is not favorable - the polytheism of the Greeks weighs heavily upon his monotheistic soul.
So he preaches in the synagogue to the Jews, and in the market place to any who will listen. Some scoff and call him a "word-babbler,"
one who repeats borrowed words strung together without logic. Others, however, want to hear more, for the Athenians liked
nothing more than to hear new ideas. They escort Paul to the Areopagus, a rocky hill on which the city council met. And there
Paul makes a speech unlike any other in the Book of Acts.
What Paul says essentially in this sermon, is that although the Athenians appear to be very religious, with a statue or
idol on every corner, they didn’t have a clue who God was. He speaks about an altar he saw with the words "To an unknown
god" inscribed on it - kind of like beginning your prayer, "To whom it may concern." Paul says that this unknown God is really
Yahweh, the one God, creator of heaven and earth.
And then Paul says what I believe may be the one best thing Paul ever said, (maybe it is because when Luke writes what
Paul says it is easier to understand than when Paul writes what Paul says.) Paul says that God created all of us so that we
would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God - though indeed God is not far from each one of us. Quoting the
philosopher Epimenides, who lived six centuries earlier, "For in God we live and move and have our being."
Paul is assuring the Athenians that although they may have lost touch with God, God is not far from them. As Jesus assures
the disciples in john’s gospel, "on that day you will know that I am in God, and you in me, and I in you."
I believe that it is the desire to know God, not as some cerebral exercise but as an integral part of one’s very
being, that motivates most people into being a part of a faith community. It is clearly what attracted the people of Athens,
who were disenchanted with their distant "unknown gods", to listen to Paul’s teachings about the new movement. And it
was the desire for us to know God that was at the heart of Jesus’ ministry.
We wish that there was an easy road map for us to follow as we seek to know God, and there are many who try to convince
us that they are the only ones who have the one true map. But Paul reminds us that although we struggle to worship, to describe,
to find, and to know God, our efforts will always be met with limited success, for God can never be fully known by any of
us, and we most certainly cannot contain God to meet our needs of the moment.
Yet Paul also reminds us that we are created to search for God, and that in our search, God will never be far from us.
We are hard-wired to seek God, this unknowable God who is with us as we grope along. God is in every part of our struggles
and our seeking, for in God "we live and move and have our being."
In other words, God is both right here and more than right here, both immanent and transcendent. God is more than the sum
total of things, even as God is present everywhere. God is around us and within us and we are within God.
Meister Eckhart wrote:
The seed of God is in us,
Now
the seed of a pear tree
grows into a pear tree;
and a hazel nut
grows into a hazel tree;
a seed of God
grows into
God.
So how do we grow into God, how do we seek to know God, to grope for God and perhaps find God? The answer is both simple
and complex - we need to look. We need to be aware of the presence of God, of the "beyond in our midst," as Dietrich Bonhoeffer
put it. Or as Thomas Merton said, " We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it
all the time... everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes obvious that God
is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without [God]. It’s impossible. The only thing is that we don’t
see it."
Unfortunately, in some ways the deck is stacked against us. I read an interesting article this week on unrelenting negative
slant of the news media entitled, "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy..." In it, Richard Mahler suggests that while some of the
negativity of the news reflects reality, some of it "distorts reality in a way that seems designed to put us on edge. For
instance, TV coverage of local murders has gone up during periods when actual homicides were dropping. One study found that
71 percent of network news time depicted people who had little or no control over what happened to them." Mahler goes on to
say that this constant barrage of bad news not only puts us in a bad mood, but can also actually contribute to health problems
like high blood pressure, digestive disorders, and depression. The article suggests that it is in the best interest of our
health to be aware of how the news affects us, and to cut back on the amount of time we spend being exposed to it. Mahler
reports that since he did this, "the results are tangible. I feel more tranquil and content, and my sleep is deeper and arrive
more easily. The big blocks of time I once devoted to the news are now available for natural stress-reducers like laughing
with friends and listening to music. I still read my local daily most mornings and I regularly channel-surf between newscasts.
The difference is that I control the amount I allow inside my head, and I’m better able to gauge when I’ve had
enough."
Once we decide that we will not focus on the negative, it is amazing how many positive, wonderful things you will find.
Vincent van Gogh wrote in his autobiography, "But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things." Or,
in the well-known words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush alive with God.
Only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.
Earth is crammed with heaven - so many people and places and things in which to know God. Architect Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe said that "God is in the details," and I believe that if we would pay more attention to the amazing details in the world
around us and within us, perhaps we night get a bit closer to God. Did you know, for example, that
The human heart weighs 10 ounces, pumps 2,000 gallons of blood every day, and beats about 100,000 times every 24 hours?
The ears of a cricket are located on the front legs, just below the knee.
There are 206 bones in the adult human body and there are 300 in children (as they grow some of the bones fuse together).
If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat it measures 87 feet long.
When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of up to 3,000 miles per hour.
The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. So, if placed in water it would float.
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, but hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly backwards.
Everyone's tongue print is different.
Flea's can jump 130 times higher than their own height. In human terms this is equal to a 6ft. person jumping 780 ft. into
the air.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
In God we live and move and have our being, this God who is so much more than words can ever express and yet "right here."
Carl Jung had these words carved in Latin over his front door, "Bidden or not bidden, God is present." These words are on
his tombstone, and at another time Jung wrote, "I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped
by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God."
May we continue to search for God all our days.
Amen.
Source: "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy...", Richard Mahler, Utne Reader, May-June 2005
Palm Sunday, March 20, 2005
"What Would Jesus Drive?" - 3/20/05
Back in November of 2002, you might recall the ad campaign launched
by group of Christian ecologists called the Evangelical Environmental Network, which asked the question, "What Would Jesus
Drive?" The campaign engendered a great deal of debate, as well as a few good one-liners, like, "Jesus would drive a Plymouth,
as Genesis clearly records that ‘God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden in a Fury.’" And, "Jesus would drive
a Honda, as the gospel of John quotes Jesus as saying, ‘For I did not speak of my own Accord.’"
The ad campaign may have been misguided and has been all but forgotten
today, but the question is a good one for us on this Palm Sunday, for it points to the two lessons that are at the heart of
gospel story for this day.
The first Palm Sunday lesson is that God is intrusive - Jesus’
entry into Jerusalem is an intrusive moment. Jesus will no longer be preaching out in the boonies to crowds of hayseeds; he
has now entered the big city, where he will overturn the tables of commerce and threaten the powers that be to such an extent
that they will kill him to silence him.
The "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign was severely criticized by
those who felt that no one had the right to question what kind of vehicle they drove, and that the church had no right to
judge their vehicle choice as sinful. While I might agree that the EEN did not have the authority to call anyone’s behavior
sinful, I do agree with the basic premise for their question, which was that choosing our mode of transportation is a moral
choice, as it affects air quality and the quality of life of the whole community. The passionate nature of the debate resulting
from the question revealed that most people have a clear idea where religion and God belong, and it is not in their cars!
God belongs in church, or in the hospital room, or any time and place we feel the need for God. But any more than that is
just meddling!
Which leads us to the revelation that the reaction to the ad campaign
was not all that different than the reaction to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Jesus was welcome as long as he was healing
the sick, and the lame, and the blind. But once Jesus enters Jerusalem and begins to cause a disturbance in the financial
district, once he questions the status quo in the halls of government... well, he can kiss that the key to the city presentation
goodbye!
Pastor Hugh L. Eichelberger of North Carolina writes, "Palm Sunday
happens when we discover and hear that God has not entered our lives to help us do our work, but that has come to call us
back to do [God’s] work. Palm Sunday happens when something takes place that disturbs the normal commerce of our daily
lives. It happens when the spirit of God challenges the way our faith has entered into partnership with our pocketbook and
our religion into the service of our national interest. Jesus was welcomed because it was expected that he would be of service
to the city and of service to the national ambitions of the Jews, but instead he called the city to repentance. Whenever our
lives are disturbed in that way, Palm Sunday happens, and until something has happened that challenges the way we think of
life and of ourselves, we have probably not met the real Jesus."
It is unsettling and disturbing when God intrudes into our lives;
Palm Sunday moments upset our normal routine. And our first reaction to such an upset is hostility and fear. We are not unlike
that crowd who cries out, "Crucify him! Let our lives get back to the way they were before!" But God will not leave us alone.
Palm Sunday will continue to happen, again and again. And God assures us that we need not be afraid, for the Anointed One
comes in the name of God. We can greet Jesus’ coming as liberation, not intrusion.
Which leads us to the second lesson from the readings for this day,
and from that question about Jesus’ choice of transportation. The gospel for Palm Sunday each year is the only time
you will hear any mention of Jesus choosing a mode of transport. And what does he choose for this grand entrance into the
city? Not a huge stallion or a horse-drawn chariot which would mark him as a person of authority. No, he chooses a donkey,
a humble pack animal. As Matthew is wont to do, he says this is to fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah, "Rejoice greatly, O
daughter of Zion! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the
foal of a donkey." Unfortunately, Matthew doesn’t understand the repetitious nature of Hebrew poetry, so instead of
seeing this as a parallel description of the same animal, Matthew has Jesus riding on two animals at once. The point, of course,
is the peaceful and humble nature of the king who would come mounted on a common pack animal rather than on a war horse.
If we see Jesus as the ultimate example of human life lived fully,
we begin to realize that the good life has nothing to do with power and pomp or conspicuous consumption. We are called to
be like Jesus, to travel lightly, to be pilgrim people who understand that it is the journey that is essential, not what you
carry with you on the journey.
As Paul writes to the Philippians, "Have this mind among yourselves,
which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant...and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." This is the invitation
and challenge of this upsetting day we call Palm Sunday - that instead of seeing Jesus’ entry into our lives as an intrusion
to be met with hostility, we might see that entry as liberation - liberation from our lesser loyalties which allows us to
be emptied of our pride, our ambitions, and thus, our fears.
You might remember the controversy over the Apache Longbow attack
helicopter during the Kosovo conflict in 1999. The helicopter was an awesome war machine with one big problem, if it was carrying
a full load of fuel and missiles, it couldn’t get off the ground. An article in Mother Jones that year compared
it to buying a pickup truck and finding out that it could either carry cargo or drive on the highway, but not both at the
same time. Carrying a full complement of missiles and fuel, the VROC (vertical rate of climb) was negative 549 feet per minute.
Boeing is still manufacturing the Apache
Longbow in record numbers, so I assume they have fixed the early design flaws, but if we are honest with ourselves we will
admit that we are very much like that helicopter. We fly best when empty.
When we are full of ourselves, weighted down with self-importance,
self-doubt, self-hatred, self-centeredness, we cannot get off the ground either. Ed Dobson, who is a Baptist pastor in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, and who used to be a well-known conservative activist, speaks of his days in the media limelight. He had
just appeared on the Phil Donahue Show, was whisked from the studio to the airport in a limo, basking in his moment of celebrity.
When his wife picked him up from the airport, he bragged about the experience and his important status all the way home. She
listened quietly and then asked, "Would you take the garbage to the dump now?" Dobson says that moment made him realize ,
"Real life is not lived in the glare of the television camera. Real life is taking the garbage to the dump." Jerry Falwell
invited him to take over the PTL after Jim Bakker’s disgrace, telling him that accepting the position would make him
a household name. But Dobson turned him down, going back to being a parish pastor where he felt he could make a real difference
in people’s lives.
Palm Sunday experiences will not make us famous, or wealthy, or secure
in a worldly sense. But if empty ourselves, we might just find that we can fly. Ann Weems writes in the anthology, Kneeling in Jerusalem,
When the journey gets too hard, when we
feel depleted, when our compassion turns to complaining, when
our efforts toward justice and mercy seem to get us nowhere, it’s
time to remember the humility part - that it is God who has made us and
not we ourselves; that the saving of the world or even one part of it is not on our shoulders. It is then we can come unto him, and he will give
us rest. With rest we’ll remember what it is we are all about.
Rejoice greatly, O people of God, for the One who has come to save
you comes riding in humility, not vying for power and glory. Blessed is the One who comes in God’s name. Hosanna in
the highest!
Amen.
Source: Eric Umansky, "Chopper Troubles: The Army's
new attack helicopter has a little weight problem," Mother Jones, Jan.-Feb. 1999
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