Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Just As You Are

Mark 4:35-41
June 21, 2009

About 3 or so years ago, on a Sunday morning during worship, one of my worst fears was realized. I was giving the sermon, and about 2/3 of the way through, I ran out of pages. I was missing the last 1/3 of my sermon. Now, for those of you who don’t know me, having my sermon written out and in front of me is…well…important to me . I had had nightmares exactly like this; a minister’s version of having a final exam and then not being able to find the right place to take it. But, this wasn’t a dream. I felt immediately exposed. I had to rely on my memory, and of course the Holy Spirit – our version of Jesus since we don’t get the actual human. In the moment, I have to say it really didn’t feel like the Holy Spirit was all that concerned with my sermon. I felt abandoned. Internally, I was crying, “Jesus, Wake up! Wake up! I need you.”

I can’t say for sure if the Holy Spirit showed up. I know she didn’t take over my body and speak through me directly. It’s possible that somehow she calmed the storms brewing inside me by reminding me I was amidst a loving and forgiving people, and with the storms calmed I could stumble my way through – and stumble I did. So, the Holy Spirit may have shown up, but, according to the gospel of Mark, Jesus seems to think that she could have slept through the whole thing and I would have been just fine, just as I was.

Let’s face it; Jesus is weird in this passage. He does some very suspect things. Right before this, Jesus had been hanging out by the sea of Galilee trying to teach people about the kingdom of God – using parables and lots of “seed planting” metaphors. He has marginal success. Then, he switches gears: he moves from words to action. He turns to the disciples and announces that it’s time to move on.

“Let’s go to the other side,” he says. And this is a pretty bold request. The other side of the sea was Roman territory, home of the pagans. These folks had little tolerance for Jewish people and their practices. The disciples should definitely get credit for saying “yes” to such a mission. So Jesus sets the course. And then…

he becomes completely passive. Mark writes that the disciples “took Jesus with them”, as if he wouldn’t have come otherwise, or without an invitation. And then come the words that stand out most for me: They took him “just as he was.” It reminds me of something from my childhood where we had “just as you are” parties. One of your so-called friends would surprise you at home to take you to their house for a party, but you had to drop everything and go just as you were. The kicker was they almost always came early in the morning while you were still in pjs and your hair had not yet connected with a brush. Mortification for a pre-teen girl.

So, they take Jesus, apparently in his pjs and still quite sleepy, to the boat. At least I’m guessing he was in his pjs, because the next thing he did was fall asleep. He knew where they were headed and this was not a pleasure ride. Shouldn’t they be talking about what the plan was when they arrived in not-so-friendly territory? They’re going over to a place where pretty much people only go if they are taking with them weapons and armor. And they brought Jesus along “just as he was”: which was tired; probably a little disappointed in people for not “getting in”; maybe weary; and of course, resolute about heading into dangerous waters with only himself and his words.

From where I sit, I have to say Jesus leaves them all very vulnerable. And sure enough, the storm hit and Jesus was sleeping away below.

Now, believe the storm the disciples encountered was less like the Perfect Storm George Clooney and his friends battled in that epic move years ago, and more like the storms we all battle from time to time in ourselves and in the world. One person called them “monsters of chaos”. For the disciples, getting into the boat and heading toward this Roman city unleashed the monsters of chaos and uncertainty for them, both internally and, as we know from the rest of the story, externally as well.

These disciples were leaving their land, what they knew, and crossing a kind of border from the known to the unknown, from comfortable to great discomfort. They would have to wrestle their own demons and fears – face their limitations and find their courage. They would also face the external monsters of violence and oppression. In this one decision, storms began brewing on multiple fronts.

There’s a reason people stay in their own neighborhoods. There’s a reason we maintain borders, build fences, equip armies. We’re trying to keep the chaos monsters away. Most of us don’t feel equipped to deal with these monsters, whether they be internal or external.

But there’s Jesus suggesting they take a ride, and then getting into the boat “just as he is”; no weapons, no gear, no strategy, setting a course for confrontation. And then, he goes to sleep. Pretty odd even for Jesus, don’t you think?

Well, of course we know he does step up. When the disciples are totally overwhelmed, they seek out their leader and ask him to make it all better. And Jesus does. The truth is, I think this is a really tender moment. As I said before, Jesus was probably exhausted. He likely really did want to just rely on these sea-worthy friends to get him from one side to the other. He knew – even if they didn’t – that they were perfectly capable of dealing with all kinds of storms, literal and otherwise. They let him down. But, here’s where we see that he really did love these people – not in some abstract way, but as one loves their closest frieds. Although he may have trusted their abilities to face the storm more than they did, I think he was filled with compassion. He sees their anxiety, their uncertainty, the terror in their eyes as they slowly realize what he is really asking them to do. He gets up and he calms their storms…those places inside of them of chaos and uncertainty.

The gospel tells us Jesus calms the sea, and the image is wonderful of him standing on the boat and miraculously affecting even nature itself by speaking three words. But, the threatening sea, deep and wide, is better understood as a source of the unknown, home of demons, the abyss. And, the extraordinary image of Jesus commanding the elements has less to do with managing nature than with compassion and love – and a tinge of disappointment mixed with the continued belief in the potential of his friends.

The gospel of Mark is about identifying the powers that destroy and distort and endanger and then seeing salvation as the overcoming, the liberation from such powers. Mark often uses the metaphors that speak more to people in antiquity than to us. Mark often uses the language of demons and exorcisms. These things can make the message seem remote. But don’t we, today, experience powers that destroy and distort? That doesn’t feel remote. And seeing salvation as liberation from these powers can make sense – and can apply to us and our world. Some of us have experiences of just such a liberation, and most of us yearn for it in some way.

This battle between Jesus and the demons, between liberation and oppression, has both personal and political dimensions. For Jesus, salvation is the coming of God’s reign, the kingdom of God. If the world were to shift in this way, it would liberate both individual people imprisoned by their demons and entire nations seized by powers that build oppressive, violent and unjust systems. Remember where they were headed. Immediately upon his arrival “on the other side”, Jesus would cast out more demons in individuals, but in doing so, he was noticed by the Romans – it was political as well as personal.

So, how did Jesus face the demons, these monsters of chaos, the threatening storms? Directly, yet armed with only the good news. Jesus was not, as much as it might be hard for us to think, sweet and passive. He spoke directly to the storm, and the storm responded. He says, “Peace! Be Still!” This peace is not the peace that is absence of war. Jesus is not saying “peace, man”, in a hippie kind of a tone. He is saying “Hold your peace! Shut up!” He said things throughout the gospel in such a direct way, he was killed by those who thought his words subverted their world and incited revolt among the people.

Jesus goes straight toward monsters, sails right into the mouth of the beast, and he faces them directly. And he does so without violence, sword, or armor. He believes that the power of his message, the power of his healing and forgiveness is enough. He does not need to bring anything with him…he is enough just as he is.

When Jesus is offered a choice between flight and fight, he finds a third way. He goes with direct engagement. Jesus will talk to anyone: members of opposing parties, hostile foreign heads of state, sinners, Samaritans, people who are out to destroy him. Anyone. He doesn’t take up arms against violent enemies – he doesn’t fight. And he certainly doesn’t retreat, no matter how difficult and dangerous it was to not opt for flight.
His words are greater than the winds, greater than the waves, greater than our fear of conflict, greater than our drive for power and dominion, greater than sin, greater than death. His is the word that is able to bring calm where calm seems out of the question. This is how Jesus faced storms: Directly and armed with only the Word of God.

So, how does this help us? God knows, we’re not Jesus. Most of us can’t even master the smaller, internal, non-global monsters of chaos unleashed when we set out from our safe surroundings into unknown, even hostile, territory. We’re safe on land, nicely snuggled in to our well known community. For example, living near my own family, I feel safe knowing they are always there for me and Lydia when we need them. What kind of monsters would be unleashed if something happened and I didn’t have them any more? That is a monster I can’t face.

If I can’t even do that, how am I supposed to deal with the “big stuff” – hostile nations and going where it’s not safe? Jesus is taking these disciples into the “big stuff”. These are the storms that could kill, not just the ones that make us uncomfortable. I don’t know about you, but I would wake Jesus up! Surely they brought him along for this reason. Jesus may have gone along just as he was, but the disciples brought Jesus, because they didn’t believe they could manage “just as they were”.

There is a Buddhist expression: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” That doesn’t quite translate into Christianity, because of course when the world did meet Jesus, they killed him; which is definitely not what this quote is about. But it is an appropriate quote for this passage. It speaks to the very human tendency to fall in love with our mentors, and set them on pedestals, refusing to see their flaws and regarding them as bigger than life. In the process, we lose ourselves and stop believing that we are capable of living without a master – always ready to take over when it gets hard.

I think we see in the gospels that one of the things Jesus tried to do was to “diminish” himself to avoid this sort of projection and to let the disciples be free of their mentor. The disciples had projected the entire messianic baggage on Jesus, as well as a load of personal needs and longings. Jesus was gracious enough to carry these projections, but he also attempted to get the disciples to withdraw them. Jesus knew he wouldn’t always be there. That’s just one of those consequences of being human.

A storm threatened to engulf tem. Jesus was asleep in the stern. They might have reproached him with, “don’t just lie there – get up and help with the bailing!”This is what you would say to a friend, a companion on the journey. Instead, they attack him personally: “Teacher, do you not care that we are dying!?!?” They personalize the storm, almost as if he has sent it against them spitefully. They address him not as another available hand in a crisis but as their master. Jesus is with the disciples as a friend, taking a break down below after a tough week, and they treat him like a ready-made savior akin to a genie in a bottle.

The good news for hapless disciples like us is that because Jesus is who he is, we’re enough too. He takes us just as we are. He doesn’t wait for us to be ready. If he did, we’d never set foot in the boat. And, Jesus being who Jesus is – the Holy Spirit being filled with compassion and love for us just as we are – there are times when the Spirit will show up when we call to calm the storms of chaos so we can move forward in our boats on the uncertain seas of life. But, the Spirit comes as a cohort. God comes as partner – an ever-present, ever-loving companion on the journey.

Because Jesus shows us the third way, we can, if we so choose, face those storms directly, trusting that the words and actions of the gospels are the only thing that will ultimately calm the storm and tame the monsters – both internally and externally. And even though it doesn’t feel like it, even though it feels like the storm could swallow us up at any moment if we don’t retreat while someone else handles it, we can do this – without any further training, without being any more that we are right now, without a more perfect faith and more trusting spirit. We are ready to join Jesus as partner; to get in the boat and head out on the mission. We are ready, just as we are. Amen.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Seeds of Hope

1 Samuel 15:34 – 16:13 ; Mark 4:26-34
June 14, 2009

There is a part of me that hesitates to preach on the Old Testament. My belief that there are ways to do it that are potentially helpful and meaningful overrides that hesitation most of the time. But there is an inherent problem in how we read and preach on these texts.

Last week we talked about the call of Isaiah – the beautiful, fantastic, dramatic scene where Isaiah’s lips are touch with coal being held by seraphim. And, we talked about it in complete isolation from the rest of Isaiah’s life, an approach that could be seen as irresponsible. While I think there were valid, possibly important, insights that could be gleaned from last week’s text, we most certainly missed some meaning by not looking at all of Isaiah’s career at the same time we looked at his call. And this is at the heart of my hesitation.

The stories of the Hebrew bible are long, complicated, and span thousands of years. In our day and age and in our church we are not accustomed to gathering together and reading through all of 1 and 2 Samuel in one sitting. We don’t have long conversations about these faith ancestors and tell and retell the stories so that we know them backward and forward. The Israelites living in exile 3000 years ago did. There is an overall arc to the whole of the Old Testament that really can only be understood by looking at all of the long, complicated sagas that we find within these books we call scripture.

I bring that up because this week I have included – or actually the lectionary has included – another call story of sorts, and we run into the same issue. So, in an effort to expand what meaning we might draw from this passage in 1 Samuel, I am going to give a very, very brief overview of the larger story in which it sits.

Together, 1 and 2 Samuel tell us about the transition between two systems of government in the early Israelite community. Samuel is the last of the judges. Judges were the closest thing to organized government the Israelites had, and they ruled from the beginning of the Hebrew people’s time in Canaan, the promised land. Judges were leaders raised up by God only when they were needed for particular events in history. There was no king, no centralized authority. But, the people convinced God to help them move from a nation of disjointed tribes led by peculiar judges, to a nation united under a king. God eventually relented and then turned to Samuel and told him that he would be responsible for anointing the new king.

Saul was the first king of this united nation. Samuel anointed him but, as we later learn, he was working more on his own – or at the behest of the people – than in concert with God. Saul seemed like such an obvious, natural choice. He was the best hope for defeating the Philistines who were threatening Israel’s very existence. But, while Saul had some initial success, he proved to be unstable and unreliable as a ruler. God made it clear that Saul was a failure and it was time to try again.

The next king was anointed by Samuel, but this time with God’s approval – if not the people’s. And the choice was David – the youngest; the runt of the litter. Saul was a mighty warrior, David tended the family sheep. Not exactly what the people expected. Which brings us to this morning’s reading.

God begins by sending Samuel to the house of Jesse – a name that should sound familiar to us Christians as the root of Jesus’ family tree. As the drama unfolds, each child of Jesse passed before Samuel to determine whether they were to be the next king of Israel. I can only imagine the surprise and dumbfounded looks when it wasn’t the oldest son. And that surprise surely grew each time the next son was rejected. But it was so inconceivable that David would be anointed that Jesse didn’t even bring him to meet Samuel. Samuel, being the brilliant deducer that he was, had to guess that there was a 8th son because God had rejected the first seven.

Sure enough, David is the one God chooses, and clearly God is using a different set of criteria than everyone else. David is not obviously a king on the outside. He’s not as old, as big, as powerful as his brothers. But God makes it clear that these are not necessarily the qualities of a good leader. God tells Samuel, “Yahweh does not see as mortals see; mortals look at outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.”

We all know that outward appearances, like looks and brute strength, eventually change and might even disappear. The heart, on the other hand, is what’s left in the future. When you look up the word leban – the word we translate as “heart” – in the Hebrew dictionary, the definition seems to go out of its way to indicate how expansive the meaning of this word is. Leban has 10 alternate definitions. But more importantly, the primary definition, before we even get to the alternates, reads: inner human being, mind, will, heart, soul, understanding. That is far more expansive than what any one word can indicate. We often find distinctions in these words: heart, soul, mind, understanding, will. But given this definition, we see there is meant to be no distinction between them. Heart – leban – is the true, whole person.

God is looking at the whole of David when deciding on the next king of Israel, because it is the whole of David that will be present even as the outer self fades away. God is looking toward the distant future, as well as the present. The hope for Israel is not just in what David can accomplish right now – like maybe fighting some great war – but in what David will be long into the future.

So far, this sounds like a Disney movie. The unlikely runt becomes the god hearted king and everyone rejoices. But, when God looks at such deep and intimate parts of a human being to know who they are and will be, God sees what we all know is present in our own hearts, souls, and minds – a mix of goodness that comes from being created in God’s image, and shadows from which we are capable of defying God’s Word and causing harm to ourselves and others.

As we continue to tell the longer story, now moving past our text into the future, we find that David would prove to be just a human being – not a Disney king. He did amazing things, but he would give into the shadow side in very destructive and repulsive ways. But, like every human being, he had a choice – God knew that. David had inside of him the capacity to choose to be a king that was concerned with building and protecting God’s realm or to choose to be a king building his own kingdom and protecting his own self interests.

In the beginning, in the anointing by Samuel, there was great hope. But in the end, our analysis would surely have to be that this hope was both realized at times but left ultimately unrealized as God’s realm did not come in full to the people of this world. David did succeed in uniting Israel into one, great country. But he also raped a woman and killed her husband to cover it up. He was definitely a mix.

But it’s that hope that I find most fascinating and challenging. Could David have really chosen otherwise? Is there ever truly hope that any human being can choose to be completely obedient to God? Is there hope in David’s story that we can take for ourselves, or does it just invite resignation to a cycle of progress and regression that continues forever?

I would never claim that I would do any better than David, or Clinton or Bush or Obama for that matter. Leading is not only hard, but the power given to leaders almost inevitably evokes the worst in them at some point. But isn’t there hope in God choosing us, no matter how unlikely we are, how powerless, how runt-like? God believes that we – even us – have the heart necessary for building God’s realm here on earth. That’s hopeful to me. And I don’t think it’s naïve hope. It is possible for us to choose God’s way, because we have God’s image stamped on our hearts. More importantly, God has built hope into the very fabric of creation. It’s what I call the constant tug of creation; it is the pull toward God we all feel if we are attuned to the best of who we are and what creation can be. This built-in hope never goes away – we can’t destroy it.

This is affirmed in the ongoing stories of both the Hebrew bible and New Testament. David was not the first, and David was not the last runt “tapped” by God. God the creator – creation itself – it seems, never gives up. When this story is read in context, as a small part of a much, much larger story, we realize that this passage is not about David. It’s about all who came before and all who came after. It’s about us – and it’s about the ongoing presence of hope.

Look at the first parable in our passage from Mark. It affirms this presence of hope – of constant possibility in creation itself. The realm of God is like this: growth and goodness is always possible, no matter how carelessly the seeds have been sown. In fact it is what is meant to happen. The character of the soil, of creation, is what makes growth inevitable. “The earth produces of itself,” Mark writes.

If God is creation, the earth that produces of itself, then we are both seed and sower. As the sower, it is our free will and our choices that affect how we participate or don’t participate in the building of God’s realm – we can choose how well we do at planting the seeds so they will grow fully until harvest. At the same time, as seeds, our very nature, our heart/soul/mind/understanding/body/whole of human being, is part of the fabric of creation that is always being drawn toward the good, sometimes even in spite of our sower-selves. We will grow regardless of how and where we are planted – maybe not to fullness in this life time, but Jesus says it is inevitable for this world because of who we all are at our core: which is people with good hearts.

Both of the parables are pointing out a contrast between what we see now and what we will see. It is the same contrast in the anointing of David. God sees the hope – the possibility – in a person that appears to others like an unpromising, poorly planted seed. And that is because hope is found not just in us. It is found in all of us together with creation. Ultimately, hope’s goal is not a state of individual bliss, but a community of justice and peace.

But, asserting hope can be rather meaningless unless we have some experience of fulfilment in the here and now. Certainly Jesus' word about future hope never came true for most of the poor and hungry. Hope takes a hit when someone walks into a museum in Washington D.C. and tries to kill people because he hates Jews. Hope is empty if we can see no evidence of it at all. Which brings us back to the larger view – we can, most of the time, only see the seeds and not the full plant. We are asked to trust in something only God can see. There are no short-cuts and most of us aren’t waiting for quick-fix divine interventions. There is a big picture which can only ever come partially into view.

Look at the bible – the whole thing. In some ways it tells the same story over and over and over again. Promise and hope in a new beginning, then shattering that hope through human failure, suffering terrible consequences, then a new start through God’s love and forgiveness. One way to look at that cycle is with pessimism and resignation. Another way is to see the hope in such a story.

There is a school of thought in psychology that I find compelling. I also think it is consistent with what we see in our scriptures. The idea is that we are constantly, subconsciously replaying our own stories, as individuals, and I would argue as humanity, until we get it right. We are built this way. We are drawn again and again to things we know are destructive to us and others because our deepest desire is to actually do it differently this time. In the present, it can be immensely frustrating and feel hopeless. Why do I keep setting myself up this way? Why can’t I do it differently when I know I should? How did I end up here again and again even when I know this is not where I want to be? But I think this dynamic is really grounded in hope…hope that we will change, that we will do it differently this time.

Our inner selves, our hearts, take us back through the story because we desire change in our souls. The hope that we can choose differently is imbedded in our heart – our leban. Obviously, if it were true that nothing ever changed, this would be cause for hopelessness. But, each of us can surely point to something in our lives and the lives of others that has changed for the better. We do change. That experience is what keeps hope alive – not just for us, but for humanity.

The story contained in the books of Samuel tells of the extraordinary change in the way Israel is governed. In some ways they did end up just playing out the same old story…but in some ways they broke through. David becomes a model of hope as well as a model of flawed human being. But the story goes on. And in the end, we learn that Jesus is descended from David – that flawed little runt. David was the seed of our savior. Amen.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Touch My Lips

Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-12
June 7, 2009

At the most recent Presbytery meeting, Dennis Day and I listened to a great sermon given not by one of the ministers in the Presbytery, but by an elder from the church in Ankeny. It was a refreshing sermon because she was talking about being called by God – and so often when we hear the word “call” we think that applies only to ordained ministers. But here was someone who had no intention of ever working in the church, but nonetheless felt a deep sense of call at many different points in her life.

She challenged all of us there to expand our understanding of this word. Pastors need to remember that we are not the only ones called. The truth is, being a minister does not automatically mean that you are doing what God intends for you. Someone might become a minister to avoid their true calling, and for sure some pastors have misunderstood their call. In fact, this preacher at Presbytery said, being called has less to do with what job you are in than with how you live your life in whatever place you find yourself at any given moment.

Each of you is called. That is part of our faith. We call it “the priesthood of all believers”. The priesthood of all believers doesn’t mean that we are all priests in the institution of the Church. It means that each of us has a priestly call of some sort.

There’s a passage in 1 Peter to remind us all of this:

“[Y]ou are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation…as a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for God called you out of the darkness into the wonderful light.”

You are royal priests, Peter writes, a holy nation. Not just one person or some people, but the entire nation. Everyone. This means each of us is a priest in every part of our lives, in every moment. We are to forgive, make things sacred, remind others of God’s Holy presence, show others the goodness of God. You are a priest in this way, and so am I because God has called us all out of the darkness and into the light. And that has nothing to do with whether we went to seminary.

So, we are all called by God; which means each of us is responsible for listening for that call – for discerning what God is asking us to do. But how are we called? How do we know for sure what our calling is?

There are many people in this world and throughout history who have had a powerful personal experience of God calling them to something very specific. Maybe you have. So, I’m wondering if any of you would like to come on up and share what it was like when you heard God call to you. Where were you? What did God sound like? What did you see? What did you feel?

Probably most of you are hesitant to do that. Even if I gave you fair warning and you did share what it is like to be called by God, I suspect not many people would have a story like the one David just read – Isaiah’s call story.

Seraphim speaking, buildings shaking, smoke pouring forth from nowhere, speaking directly with God. This scene from Isaiah is so extraordinary. And to be honest, on some level I think I don’t even really believe it. I don’t think that kind of thing is possible – at least not in the scientific, rational world.

As a minister I often get asked about my experience of call; because people incorrectly believe that ministers are somehow more “called” than others and they should have a good story about hearing God beckon them to seminary. And I have always said something to the effect that I didn’t have a dramatic moment when I all of sudden felt called by God to go into the ministry. I heard no voice, nothing shook, no heavenly choirs. It was a process over time. And I’m not sure God called me, specifically, to go into the ministry specifically. I mean, how can we ever really know?

And when I say all this in response to such a question, I don’t say it sheepishly or as if there is something wrong with that. I am quite pleased with my answer because I actually distrust call experiences like Isaiah’s. Surely he is just making it up, or over exaggerating, or embellishing. At worst, I think, he is just trying to legitimate his own life, claiming a dramatic call by God to make himself and others believe he has a divine mandate to do whatever he wants.

But…I have been rethinking my thinking this week. In more ways than one. First, I have been questioning whether I am writing off experiences like Isaiah’s and others out of something more like fear than because I know better. Second, I am rethinking the fact that I trust thinking more than any other path to knowing God. But what else is there? How else, besides our rational minds, can we gain knowledge of God and God’s will for us?

When we read Isaiah, it seems like he experienced a kind of sensory overload – and it was that multi-sensory experience which led to a direct, clear encounter with God where he was left with no doubt about what God wanted of him.

We’re quick to rationalize a like this passage away. I mean, it’s pretty “out there”. But, this morning, let’s not be too quick to dismiss his words. Let’s assume that what Isaiah reports in this passage is what actually happened. We can discount it later if we want, but I’m going to ask you to suspend your disbelief with me for a moment.

The first thing I notice in this passage is that Isaiah’s senses were alert; his sense of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Isaiah sees smoke and the fire of the altar, and of course the seraphim. He even sees God. And, although he was surely afraid, he did not retreat. In part, because he knew, based on what he saw, that this was the Holy One speaking to him. He knew it very, very clearly. His sight led him to knowledge of the divine.

Isaiah also hears things. And he trusts that what he hears is real and significant. He hears the seraphim sing Holy, Holy, Holy, and we know, he doesn’t just see God, but he hears God speak. His ears were perked and he heard the sounds of the visions he saw. And he knew that it was God’s voice calling to him. His hearing led him to knowledge of the divine.

Isaiah not only sees and hears things others probably don’t, he feels things too – physically feels things. The foundation of the temple shook. And his lips were touched. For Isaiah, there was no mistaking that all that he was experiencing was real. You can imagine you see things, you can hear voices as figments of your imagination, but when something reaches out and touches you, you know it’s not just your imagination. He felt the coal touch him and immediately confer forgiveness and grace. And it touched his lips – surely he could also taste it. His sense of touch and his sense of taste led him to knowledge of the divine.

For Isaiah it was his sight, his hearing, how he was touched, his smelling the smoke, his tasting the coal that led him to knowing God and how God was calling him. It wasn’t that he read the Torah, thought about what it meant, and through this thinking came to believe that God called him to be a prophet. It’s after this multi-sensory experience that he is convinced. We can’t read between the verses, but given the way Isaiah reported this experience, I suspect he didn’t hesitate for a moment when God asked who should go and speak on God’s behalf: Here am I! Send me! And notice, he says this with absolutely no indication of where Yahweh will send him and what he will be asked to do.

There are other stories like Isaiah’s of prophets being called through extraordinary, and what we would consider implausible, means. And most of us haven’t had an experience like these. This all has me wondering: Maybe the prophets felt such a strong call because they heard and saw and felt things more deeply than other people. Maybe they were more in tune with their five senses and they trusted what they learned through these senses as much as what they learned with their thinking.

I, on the other hand, am a concrete person. I trust science and the laws of nature. Being a concrete person has, without a doubt, served me well over the years. But is it possible that it has also stifled my imagination and creativity and therefore cut me off from any knowledge of God that might come from the less-than-concrete world. Because I shut off my senses, trusting only what I can make sense of with my brain, I miss all of these avenues to knowing and understanding. And maybe I miss God’s powerful call to me to be a prophet.

Most of us are more like Nicodemus than Isaiah. Nicodemus relies heavily on what he knows to be rational and logical. Bu clearly, in this passage, Nicodemus misses something important. He is a Pharisee; he’s someone who believes in God, goes to synagogue, reads the bible and tries hard to live like he thinks a good Jew should live. Nicodemus trusts the law as God’s voice and so he believes the Law will lead him and others to God.

But Jesus tries to give him a new way of knowing, and Nicodemus just can’t quite accept it. Jesus says, no one can “see” the realm of God without being born from above – as if it’s possible to actually see with our own eyes the realm of God. We are all rational people. We know the realm of God is not some concrete place here on earth. There is no place where wolves and lambs lie down together, where all swords are turned into plowshares, where there is no weeping, where the poor are the honored guests at banquets.

And like Nicodemus we don’t know any physical experience of birth except through the mother’s womb. But Jesus invites us into an image – being born from above – that can only be experienced via our whole selves if we are to believe it – to know it in our souls as well as our heads. Otherwise, we remain in the concrete world and we will not see God’s realm. Maybe we will be able to think about it, ponder it, see it as a metaphor, but our sight will be terribly limited and consequently, our knowledge about God and God’s realm will always fall short.

Well, I can’t keep my disbelief suspended indefinitely and maybe you can’t either. The truth is, I don’t believe that the seraphim really flew and the coal touched Isaiah’s lips and that God spoke with a voice just like a human being’s. What I suspect, from my concrete, post-enlightenment point of view, is that Isaiah is describing a dream. But, even if that were true, that it was just a dream, I’m not sure that diminishes the power of Isaiah’s call or how important a role our senses play in knowing God. Maybe Isaiah trusted that what he experienced in his dreams was as real as what happened in his waking life. While that may seem strange to some of us, there are certainly those in this day who do think our dream lives are significant and we can potentially gain great insight through our dreams and visions, even if those dreams include such implausible things as flying angels touching coal to our lips.

We miss things if we are only concrete people who distrust visions, dreams, experiences where our senses are evoked in new and strange ways. Maybe these two passages give us permission to trust all of our senses as guides to knowing God. Maybe Jesus invites us, along with Nicodemus, to leave the concrete world for a while in order to see something we’ve never seen before, and feel something we can’t think our way into. Maybe we should value our dreams a little more than we do now. Maybe we should take time to cultivate our senses – that is if we really do want to expand the ways that we know God and understand what God intends for you.

Which for me is a big “if”. After all, what Jesus promises is that the Holy Spirit will blow us in whatever direction she pleases. If we are attuned to that spirit with all of our senses and allow that spirit to guide our decisions and lives, we really don’t know where it will take us. And we might not be ready for that – and that’s okay. But, maybe here in worship, just during this hour on Sundays, we could try to engage some of our senses as well as our minds in an attempt to meet and experience God in new and deeper ways. We could try to really see the table and the font and contemplate what they might be saying to us just by their visible presence in the sanctuary. We could try to really smell the bread and taste the juice see what happens. When we pass the peace, we touch one another, and for some of this is our favorite part of the worship. We long for touch and maybe there is something divine in that longing, and when we touch one another, maybe we learn something about how God reaches out to us. Maybe we try to let our minds go silent when the music begins and close our eyes and let our hearing be the conduit of God’s musical voice. And maybe, if we’re really daring and ready to take a risk, in our prayers we might ask the spirit to touch our lips, consecrate us in a way that we can feel it with our whole selves. Maybe then we might hear God’s call, and without hesitation we will answer, “Here am I. Send me.” Amen.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Christ as Verb: Fulfill

Luke 4:14-21 ; Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost: May 31, 2009

Luke 4 marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and Acts 2 is traditionally seen as the beginning of the church. From one man to the institution, some might say. And depending on who that “someone” might be, they might say it with a hint of derision. We have all heard it; the church is nothing like what Jesus would want. The perception is that we only care about maintaining the institution for its own sake and judging who is righteous and who is not. In one poll I saw recently, one of the most common reasons people gave for leaving the church was the hypocrisy – people saying one things on Sundays and doing whatever they want Monday – Saturday.

I would like to humbly challenge these critiques of the church. Not necessarily because they are entirely off base, but because they miss the much bigger picture. The church tries over and over, every day as best we can, to be the realm of God here on earth. Of course the church is hypocritical. If you are only going to be a part of the church until that day when you see hypocrisy in the church, I can save you the trouble. It’s here.

Theologian and fellow church-lover Walter Brueggemann points this out in a refreshing way. To paraphrase him, “Every Christian knows that with some regularity what is said and done and what must be proclaimed as possible inescapably exposes her as something of a fraud, because proclaiming the ideal must speak a truth that the Christian’s own life does not always attest to.” In other words, we are proclaiming something that we ourselves cannot accomplish in full. But, here’s the thing: We must proclaim it. Only by proclaiming what is possible, what we are called by God to do and be, do we have a chance of moving in that direction. And only by proclaiming it does the world see what is possible for all of humanity and creation.

In Luke, after Jesus says what he has come to do, he wraps it up by saying, “today the scripture has been fulfilled.” But we know that scripture is a story that never ends. The scripture that he declares fulfilled is this one from Isaiah that announces a ministry – an ongoing ministry. Jesus is announcing the beginning of a ministry that will continue through the ages to even us. We too must continue to fulfill this scripture – to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives and freedom to the oppressed.

And we do. Not perfectly, but we do. How? I think by being the church in all its churchyness. Each week of Easter we have talked about how in our actions – through verbs – Christ is manifest. And each week we have seen how when we become these verbs, it looks different from how those verbs operate in the rest of the world. We are called farther, to go beyond and above, to be radical in our actions. We should, in many ways, look very different from the world. And when the church is being the church, we do.

Even all the “regular” things we do here every week are actually the extraordinary things of the church! We learn the crazy, counter-cultural stories of the scriptures, we sing out loud about our love for and trust in a God of weakness and mercy, we exercise a preference for the poor and outsider, we pass this gold plate each week and put in our hard earned money, we take communion and say it represents the body and blood of Christ, we pour water on people’s heads claiming it has sacred significance, we gladly humble ourselves and serve others in joy.

Each week, every day, the church in all its churchyness gives a glimpse of the realm of God, which is both near and not yet. We are at times undoubtedly anything but a glimpse of this realm, but we are the hope for the world of being the realm not just here on Sundays, but out in the world as we love, feed, visit, share, forgive, befriend. And the world needs that. The world needs us to be different and to go above and beyond. I truly believe that. There is good in the world, but there are also ways in which humanity and creation are fundamentally broken, ways that make suffering and violence and hate virtually inevitable.

Today we celebrate the children and youth in the church. We do this for a number of reasons. First, this is yet another way we are proclaiming the realm of God and acting it out in our own small ways. Children, Jesus insisted, are a part of the realm of God – an essential part. The world needs the church and the church needs the children. Without them, we will necessarily fall short. We need them, and they need us. We are training the new disciples so the church will continue. We let them hear the ideal even as we live the imperfect. With their natural idealism, I think they can see images, visions in the words of the prophet Joel, and they can prophesy to something we can’t yet imagine.

Second, celebrating our young people this morning this is a very small way that the whole church can see what these teachers have been doing on our behalf. We handed over to them one of the most important things we do to fulfill the promise we make at baptisms to provide for Christian growth and education. We are a part of what they do, and we are obligated to know and participate in any way we can.

Third, we must celebrate the many ways that our young people fulfill the scripture too. We all have a part – even Slane in her baptism began the journey initiated through our bizarre ritual, thus playing her part in our community. Everyone must do their part to fulfill the scriptures. And when we see each of these children, we will know and understand how they are doing that in both little and large ways.

So let's bring up our young people now...
[kids are invited forward]

Christ as Verb: Forgive

Matthew 18:15-33
Seventh Sunday of Easter: May 24, 2009

In a story on NPR’s, All Things Considered, two people, Jennifer and Ronald, tell their story about forgiveness. Jennifer begins: “I picked Ronald out as the man who had raped me, only to learn 11 years later that I had made a mistake. That was unbearable. Discovering the truth filled me with overwhelming guilt and shame for mistakenly putting an innocent man in prison. Meanwhile, the guilty person was left to commit further crimes on women. I found it almost impossible to forgive myself.

I ask Ron if he would ever forgive me. And with all the mercy in the world, he took my hands and with tears in his eyes, he told me he had forgiven me a long time ago. At that moment I began to heal.”

Then Ronald shares his side: “Forgiving Jennifer for picking me out of that lineup as her rapist took less time than people think. I knew she was a victim and was hurting real bad. Jennifer and I are friends. And some people don’t really understand it. But we were the victims of the same injustice by the same man, and this gave us a common ground to stand on. Together we were able to help each other heal through a shared experience. I could choose to be bitter; I could hate the prison guards and the system. But I choose to forgive them all, so that I stay free and not be a prisoner for the rest of my life.”

These are the kind of stories we always hear in church when the subject of forgiveness comes up. They are so inspiring. OR, more likely, they become hammers of guilt for those us unable to forgive someone in our life that has hurt us so badly.

You might be surprised to know that for some pastors – myself included – it is very hard to preach about forgiveness. The problem is mostly that a sermon is a terrible way to talk to people about forgiveness. It seems like a pastor’s job, in light of passages like this, is to challenge everyone to forgive, regardless of circumstances or how hard it is. But that ideal principle often leaves folks with questions like, “Am I really supposed to forgive my rapist?” Or, “if I’m supposed to forgive 77 x 7 times, what does that look like if my husband is beating me? How do I forgive that? And what does it mean to forgive someone who never admits or acknowledges they did wrong?”

If I were speaking with anyone pastorally about such questions, I would never counsel forgiveness if it means forgetting what happened and the impact it had. I would certainly never advocate forgiveness if it means abuse of some kind would just continue. And personally, I’m a big fan of forgiveness coupled with justice. Most pastors have seen the deep pain and hurt experienced by victims who are suffering a double portion – they have been hurt, and now, because of some notion of forgiveness they learned about in church, they are feeling guilty because they cannot just forgive and forget like Christians are supposed to.

So, I always hesitate to take on the topic of forgiveness in a sermon, worried that it will just hurt victims more and justify forgiveness without accountability. At the same time, I do think that we are called to a radical kind of forgiveness, in the same way we have been called to radical notions of loving, feeding, sharing and friending in these last few weeks.

At first glance, in this passage it seems like Jesus is asking us to forgive no matter what and no matter how often we are hurt. So immediately my hackles are raised. But, once we take a second look, we will see that Jesus isn’t talking about whether a victim should forgive the one who wronged them. That’s just not what this passage is about. This is about the church and this is about power.

Peter’s question about how many times we should forgive is surrounded by two stories. One is about the church and one is about power. First, before Peter’s question, we have the instructions to the church on how to deal with someone who sins.

Then, we have Peter’s question. How often should I forgive? And Jesus answers, “not seven times, but seventy times seven times.” I did the math: we should forgive 539 times. Of course, that isn’t what Jesus intended – that we do the math. He is suggesting an infinite amount with his use of the numbers 7 and 77. 7s indicate completeness, universality, infinite amounts. He is stressing that forgiveness is never worn out.

Finally, we have the story of the unforgiving servant. A man owes someone a lot of money – in fact more money than he could ever realistically repay. The one he owes has every right to have him thrown in debtor’s prison. But, after begging for mercy, he is forgiven his debt. Then we are told that someone owes this same man money that they are unable to pay. Even though he had been forgiven his own debt, he refuses to forgive the one who owes him.

Three parts – all about forgiveness in some way. Clearly, Jesus is saying that forgiveness is a fundamental value and necessary practice. But we have to look carefully at the context to see what Jesus exactly means by forgiveness. Notice, he is clearly talking to the disciples, the seeds of the early church, not the sinners. These are the insiders. This is about the church.

Here’s the scene: Jesus is sitting down at a session meeting with the elders and pastor. The session is debating how to handle people in the church who do something terrible, really hurtful to a person or the whole community. Because, they tell Jesus, you just know that will happen. It always happens. And we want to be Christian about how we handle it. And Jesus says, “it’s a lot of work. Are you sure you’re up for it?” “Yes,” they reply in unison, as any good session would do. “Well, you have to do whatever you can to help this person understand and repent and so be forgiven and remain a part of the family. First one person – a really wise, compassionate person, should go talk to him. If that doesn’t work, take someone else. And if that doesn’t work, then the whole church needs to give it a shot.”

“And,” one elder asks, “if that still doesn’t work?”

Jesus smiles every so slightly. He looks at his friends and says, and “if that doesn’t work, then they become like Gentiles and tax collectors”. And after a brief silence while the words sink in, the session members begin to smile ever so slightly and some give up a half chuckle. They get the joke. Time and time again, who is it that Jesus spends time with, heals, forgives, restores to community, eats with, cares most about? Gentiles and tax collectors. After all that work trying to get someone to recognize they have sinned, and they just don’t repent, now they’re to treat them like the ones Jesus call us to love the most. Funny.

Only they know the joke isn’t actually all that funny. In the same moment that they are grasping the irony of what Jesus has just said, they understand the heavy obligation that places on them and the church. Sure, there may be times when, in order to maintain the integrity of the community, you have to ask someone to leave. But you still have an obligation to remember and love the outcast with the goal always being to restore them to community. They are now the lost sheep you seek. They are the tax collector you love and eat with. This is about the church.

This is also about power. We know Jesus isn’t answering the question of how many times I have to forgive the person who stole my car, so what question is Jesus answering. We find it in the first verse of chapter eighteen. The disciples ask Jesus: “Who is greatest in God’s realm?” This is about power. The insiders are asking Jesus about power, and in part Jesus responds with the parable of the unforgiving servant.

In this parable, we aren’t even dealing with someone who has hurt another person. This isn’t about sins that need to be forgiven. This is about debt. In our world, the ones with the power are the ones to whom things are owed. Whether that is money, or respect, or time, or a favor. In God’s realm, the greatest one is the one who gives up this power by forgiving any and all debts – anything that is owed her.

Jesus basically tells them that not only does it not make sense to ask, “who is greatest in God’s realm?”, he suggests that if you don’t give up all your power, you won’t even get to see God’s realm. The only way in is through weakness – through forgiving anyone who owes you anything.

And that shouldn’t surprise us at all. It makes complete sense when we look at Jesus’ life. The weak, the powerless, the victims, the marginal, the hopeless. These are the ones Jesus included in his family, in his realm of healing and love and forgiveness and hope.

It seems that in Matthew’s day, the church needed to be reminded that they had power. They had power to say who was in and who was out. They had the power to forgive sins. And apparently they were not always exercising their power in a Christ-like way.

I do believe that when we are hurt, even hurt badly, forgiveness is still the goal. But it isn’t always clear to me exactly what forgiveness looks like from the place of the powerless, the abused, the victim. What I do know is that psychologists rightly tell us that if we forgive too soon, if we try to forget and move on before we have worked through what happened, the hurts will come back to haunt us and those we love. We need time to be angry, afraid, sad and whatever else comes up when are badly hurt. Often we need justice – we need to feel how much that matters to us, even if we will never get it. Only after working through all that, are we really able to freely forgive and move on in a healthy way.

We also know that holding on to those intense feelings for too long – not being able to let go of the anger and not being able to move from that place of victim, will eat away at us over time. Forgiveness really can heal and free the forgiver as much as the forgiven. But how long all of that takes varies wildly depending on the circumstances.

We won’t figure out how to forgive in these situations by listening to a sermon on forgiving 77 x 7 times. It needs to be worked through with trusted friends, in a pastor’s office or in counseling. Surely forgiveness is the goal, but forgiveness from the standpoint of a victim – someone with no power – does not look the same as the forgiveness of debt offered by the rich man to the beggar.

At the very least, one thing each of us can do in light of this passage is to look more critically at how the Church talks about forgiveness, and to see the role of power in forgiveness, and challenge those ideas of “forgiveness” that merely continue hurting the victim and protecting the abuser. But more than that, as the church, we also have to ask ourselves some hard questions about forgiveness. They go something like this: Who is indebted to us? Who have we hurt through use and abuse of power, and where do we start looking for them so we can repair the damage? Do we really need to forgive all debts owed to us? Always?

Sometimes we, like the disciples, can get too focused on whether we are good enough – whether we believe the right things – whether we’re a part of the right church that pleases God most – whether God really loves us because we go to church and eat vegetarian . Wondering how we will fit into God’s realm, whether we are going to be “in” our “out”, is really a luxury for insiders. And it looks tragically funny when at the same time we ignore the outsider and ignore how we and our systems and our institutions might be hurting others.

Given the context of church and power, when Peter asks how many times one should let someone sin against him, I think he’s asking how many times someone can sin and still be a part of the church. It’s a question about what people in the church should look like. How good do they need to be? How closely do they need to follow church law? How much do they need to fit in with the others? I think he’s asking about what the church should be like. And Jesus says, “Well, if it’s anything like the realm of God, it will be full of sinners…Gentiles and tax collectors. There’s no way around this. You all are imperfect to the core and I love you for it. And the church, if it’s anything like the realm of God, will hold power over absolutely no one. Everyone’s debts will be forgiven, and everyone will forgive any debt owed them.”

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We know the truth – we pray it every week. Forgiveness, radical forgiveness, always starts with God. God has forgiven us – God forgives us over and over and over again…maybe even more than 539 times. And God forgives us not out of power, but by becoming humble and becoming human, just like us Gentiles and tax collectors. God gives up everything to be in relationship with us so that we might find freedom and forgiveness without shame or guilt. And now, we are called to go and forgive likewise. So, is our church like the realm of God? How well do we practice forgiveness? Amen.