Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost: May 23, 2010
I have heard many people, including fellow pastors, say that, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the hardest to understand and relate to. It’s too ethereal, too nebulous, too much like a Halloween character. But, I actually find the Holy Spirit to be the easiest member of the trinity to understand.
God as Father is, for me, very difficult. I love my father…I do. But imagining him, only bigger and better, does not, I think, reveal much if anything of God. Perhaps the problem is that my imagination is particularly pathetic. I know some people don’t have the same problem with the Father part of the trinity. For them it is expansive and opens them to understanding God in new ways, but for me, it is distressingly limiting.
And, I like Jesus. His life is a guide for me…a plumb line. I do believe Jesus was a living Word of God. But there are limitations here as well…Jesus is historical, particular, and ultimately his life eludes me because he, the human Jesus, is not here now. He’s not here to show me what to do in the face of ethically questionable technology, military drone planes that allow us to kill from afar, mass communication that alienates us from one another as often as it connects us, and so many other ethical questions the authors of the bible could never have imagined. Jesus is situated in a time very different from ours, and so we have to extrapolate to apply his life to ours; that is not straightforward and sometimes seems downright impossible.
The Holy Spirit on the other hand is a very helpful image to me. Understanding God as a power, a movement of energy and life all around me, in and through us, pulling us in the direction of life and love really captures something with which I resonate. I can pray in order to connect with that movement and energy more easily than I can pray to God the Father. I can trust that the divine spirit moves in my context and if I can connect, God will be guiding me, nudging me here in our complex world.
I also find the metaphors the bible uses for the spirit to be particularly helpful…like the metaphor of “wind”. I mean, I live in the Midwest, for goodness sakes, and it’s spring and I have no difficulty at all relating to the idea of spirit as wind. I know wind. I can describe what wind is like. Sometimes it’s pleasant, sweeping the mosquitoes away and dissipating, at least for a moment, the humidity. And, sometimes it’s more than a little bit uncomfortable, blowing my hair across my face so I can’t see…carrying the cold that pierces me…nudging my car, and the 18 wheeler in front of me, this way and that as I drive on the interstate.
In describing what that Pentecost day was like, in trying to convey what it was like to receive the Holy Spirit, Luke, the author of Acts, turns to the wind. And I’m grateful he does, because I think it gives me a way to understand some of what might have happened that day.
In the early Christian church, this story was about the genesis of God’s Holy Spirit in our world. Jesus had been promising its arrival since before his death, and now that Jesus is gone, in comes the spirit. And Luke says this was like the coming of the wind – a violent wind, to be exact. That may seem a bit harsh and at odds with our sense that the spirit is gentle and good, but Luke is working very hard to make sure we have a sense of what they experienced that day. It wasn’t just a gentle comforting presence, it wasn’t just all good…it was challenging, and it was powerful.
The Greek word we translate as “violent” only appears as an adjective once in the bible – that’s not how you “normally” use this word. Luke used it this way for the sake of hyperbole. It’s meant to emphasize how significant this day was. Sort of like when we say “dead serious” to emphasize that this is not just the normal mode of being serious, but serious with an added graveness, and soberness.
The coming of the spirit is a major highlight for Luke. Unfortunately, I think we’ve lost this sense of occasion in our modern day Pentecost celebrations. We don’t put it in anything close to the same category as Christmas and Easter, but for Luke it WAS just as significant. This is the third part of a three-part story: the birth, the resurrection, the coming of the spirit to the whole world. Look at your book marks – look at what it says: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh!” This is as miraculous and meaning-filled as the two other occasions we celebrate so thoroughly in the church.
There are other bible translations that, instead of “violent wind”, read “mighty wind” or “strong wind”. But given how Pentecost gets short shrift in the Christian church today, recovering the jarring metaphor of “violent” is maybe not a bad idea. The very fact that it is a shocking and disturbing word is reason enough to keep it. If we’re surprised when Luke compares the spirit to a violent wind, then I’m not sure we understand the magnitude of what God’s spirit really is. I’m not sure we can really imagine what it would look like if someone was filled with the Spirit of God. Pentecost is a good time to stop and ask what we, as individuals and the church, would look like if the spirit of God was working in us like a violent wind. Our churches today, filled with spiritual descendants of those people first gathered in the house when the spirit came, should be “violent wind churches.”
What would a church look like if it were filled with this Holy spirit Luke describes? Are we a violent wind church? Barbara Brown Taylor, a priest and author, gives a pretty good description of what a violent wind church looks like. She says it’s a place “where there is such a strong wind blowing toward the open doors of the church that people would have to lash themselves to the pews in order to stay inside”…but they don’t. “Sure,” she writes, “they come back one day in seven to rally, to rest and reflect,” but then the wind starts up and it’s back into the world again.
I don’t think you would get much argument from anyone if you called our church a “quiet” church. We are people quietly going about our work and mission that we believe God is calling us to do. We don’t draw attention to ourselves, we don’t blow our trumpets and tell everyone “look at us, be like us, believe like us!!” I suspect you would agree with this – and I would go so far as to say we value being a “quiet” church. Quiet may be a good word to describe us in some ways, and I share the values it implies, but I’m not sure it captures the volume of what we really “say”. I’m not sure it gets at our “violent wind” nature.
For Luke, the spirit causes the disciples to speak in languages people can understand, even though they only knew how to speak Greek. The disciples presumably don’t speak an iota of Cappadocian and they never took Arabic 101. Yet the people there said they could hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power. I think in this context, the word “speaking” needs to be in quotations. They were “speaking”, but not with their mouths, not with words like we use in normal communication. They were speaking in some way that transcended language barriers, that bridged chasms of distances and reconciled massive differences. We all know that if we really want to be heard, words are not always the best tool to get our point across – in fact sometimes they get in the way.
I think our church speaks in ways that transcend language – our witness can be understood by all. We use very few words, which makes sense. Often the words Christians use to try to tell about the Good News divide, they cannot be “heard” by others; they do not make sense; they certainly do not help show the Spirit. One person in our church was recently wondering out loud about how we do or don’t tell others about the good news, because it seems like when some Christians try to do that, they just end up “turning people off” or upsetting them or alienating them, or making them feel bad. I think that’s because too often, the words people use draw attention to themselves, their lives, their beliefs, their expectations, their ideas. And it’s not about drawing attention to ourselves. A violent wind church is never seen, heard or felt as much as the wind carrying it into the world.
I think we are a violent wind church. We are not loud about who we are, we do not draw attention to ourselves and our beliefs, we don’t tell people what’s wrong with them and how they can fix it. Instead, the wind in this church is so strong that it blows us through the open doors and out into the world to live spirit-filled lives. We ride the wind into the world, let it push us where we are to go, and the wind does all the speaking for us. We act like people filled with the Holy Spirit Jesus promised to his disciples – the one that would allow them to do greater things than he did, that would guide them in ministry and compassion and justice. And those “words” of action speak to people, no matter what their language is, no matter what they believe or what they have experienced.
When Luke described what happened when the spirit filled the room the disciples were in, he said it looked like there were tongues of fire resting on the heads of each of them there. It’s a great picture, and it worked especially well at a time when “tongues of fire” was a widely recognized sign of power – something usually associated with rulers and kings and the gods. When I think about how it looks here and now, I think that when you all participate in the work of the Spirit, the spirit pours out of your eyes, your ears, your fingers and toes as you go about your daily lives. You radiate God and Good News. You may not say anything, but your life shouts – the spirit cannot be quiet. You may not get up in front of hoards of people and tell them about your faith in God, but the light pouring out of your body is deafening.
The spirit is at work in the world. There is a lot of grey out there, and a lot of loud voices speaking something other than God’s word, but the spirit can drown those voices out. The spirit speaks in acts of love, compassion and justice. The spirit speaks hope and reconciliation, without even saying one word about what someone else should do.
We are, I believe, a violent wind church – a violent wind people. When people look at your lives, they understand something of God’s goodness and hope even if you say nothing of Jesus and they know nothing of Pentecost. And today, we celebrate this. We celebrate the gift of the spirit – a gift from God that gives us permission to go out and live loudly. This gift is here, it’s all around us. If we connect to this violent wind – this amazing, sometimes scary, power, what a ride it will be.
We also celebrate the spirit of this church, and all churches filled with the Spirit of God. We celebrate because to say that the spirit is here, moving us, living in and through us, blowing us out of this church into the world, shining out of our eyes and ears and fingers and toes, is to say that God is not only present in this world, but is shouting out good news and hope for all. The wind is whipping through our church, our town and our homes, our work places and our world. And we celebrate because we get to be a part of the party! We get to participate in what none other than Jesus himself started – the bringing about of God’s realm into this time and place.
There are times to be quiet. There are times the spirit is gentle, comforting and peaceful. There are times the spirit is like a pleasant, breezy wind on a warm summer day. But, the spirit of God cannot be quiet for long – it does not blow gently for long. The spirit that came at Pentecost rushes through our sanctuary like a violent wind, and it lifts us right out of our seats and whooshes us out the door. It fills us with its energy and its power. Then we, in turn, hit the world like a violent wind – bringing refreshing air to people locked in stale rooms, at times we make a mess of the status quo and we break open the systems that oppress and ignore. We might blow the roofs and doors off of institutions and communities that discriminate or marginalize.
We are a violent wind church, because God has poured out the divine spirit upon all flesh. And that spirit is what makes us who we are: disciples radiating the love of God in all we do. Amen.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Easter People: Tom Chappell
Acts 5:27-32; John 17:20-26
May 16, 2010: Sixth Sunday of Easter
[Sources for Tom Chappell’s story: “Cabbie Hailed for Donating Kidney” By Steve Hartman, (Phoenix, Sept. 11, 2009) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-5301486-500803.html ; “A cabbie’s calling,” by Kimberly Hosey http://www.timespublications.com/feb10-feature1.asp . Also: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/09/07/20090907cabdriver0908.html; http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/blogs/cab-driver-kidney.php (citing the Mayo clinic); ]
In telling the stories of Easter people during these last six weeks, my hope has been to convey that God’s promise in the resurrection is something that shapes real lives in the real world – specifically shapes our real lives in our real world. But, I worry that I sometimes indirectly communicate that “Easter people” are somehow out of the ordinary – people who live their lives in ways that are dramatically different from you or I.
But “Easter people” are as common as can be. You know Easter people. You might be, or someday become, an Easter person. You see, Easter people are common; they fill our churches and communities and neighborhoods and workplaces.
The book of Acts is the Bible’s stories of Easter people. These are the stories of Jesus’ followers after Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to be with God. They are the stories of how people lived lives that were transformed by Jesus’ resurrection, and by their faith in the resurrection.
Today we have a strange little story with a fantastic ending. Paul and Silas are hanging out in Philippi. They are, yet again, headed to a place of prayer. But along the way, they run into this “slave girl,” and she is, it seems, doubly possessed. She is a slave possessed by her owners and she is possessed by a spirit. When she sees Paul and Silas, she recognizes them! They must have been making quite a splash in Philippi. This young girl starts following them, proclaiming them as the ones who know the way to salvation – to wholeness, to freedom. And it’s a little strange…Paul gets annoyed. Not just a little annoyed, like my sister was when I was young and I tried to hang out with her and her friends, but “very much annoyed,” it says.
In spite of this, he frees her – from at least one of her possessors. He orders the spirit to come out of her, and out it came. And then Paul moves on to deal with other things – namely his arrest by the Roman authorities, subsequent imprisonment, a miraculous earthquake and saving the guard in the prison in both a literal and spiritual way. It’s a strange little story, with a fantastic ending. But when we think about it, life is full of strange little stories with fantastic endings.
This week’s “Easter Person”, Tom Chappell, is a great Easter person for those of us think we can never measure up to the giants like Imaculee Ilibigiza, Julia Ward Howe and Paul Farmer, because by all accounts he lives a very ordinary life. It’s possible you could have met him, if you’ve ever taken a taxi in Phoenix, Arizona.
As a cab driver, Tom Chappell insists he never gets lost. But he might occasionally miss a turn or two. Such was the case the first time Tom went to pick up Rita Van Loenen. He got there about 30 minutes late, and she was not happy. She did not tip him. Actually, she was hoping she'd never see him again, and Tom wouldn’t have minded that either. But, over the next two months, it seemed like every time Rita called a cab, Tom was the one who was dispatched. He says at the time he was thinking, “Why Lord? Why are you picking me?"
Tom says Rita was pretty much always cranky, even when he wasn't late. It made Tom wonder about her. “I finally figured maybe there’s a reason she’s upset,” Chappell said. He wondered if her attitude had anything to do with where he was taking her all the time - a medical office with a door marked "kidney dialysis." So Tom went to the library to look up dialysis, and then he started understanding why she might be cranky.
It had everything to do with where he was taking her. Dialysis is a pretty lousy experience. It’s draining, takes several hours at a time, and can cause significant side-effects. As Rita says, “it impacts your whole body. I’m always so tense; you never know what’s going to happen. There are screaming machines, alarms beeping. Sometimes I cramp up real bad or vomit. Sometimes I cry. I just want to get there and get it over with. I am crabby when I have to go to dialysis.”
Through his library research and then from Rita, Tom learned about dialysis and learned that what Rita really needs is a kidney transplant, but none of her friends or family are suitable donors. “So I went home one night, and was taking a shower and me and the Lord had a talk,” Chappell said matter-of-factly. “He said, ‘Tom, you give it to her.’ And so I said I would. Just seeing how sick she was every time I saw her, I knew I had to do it. There’s been no second-guessing. I’ve had no doubts about it.”
Tom had always been healthy himself, a wiry guy with a bushy mustache and a baseball cap, barely a hundred and fifty pounds, active, hard working and not much in tune with medical issues.
When Tom first told Rita he wanted to be tested to see if he might be a donor, she didn’t believe him. She didn’t even know his last name! She said she was like “Okay, sure, buddy.” Other people had made similar offers, and it never went anywhere. But Rita told him where to call. She was taken aback when he really did go to the Mayo Clinic to get tested—and even more shocked when they ended up being an almost-perfect match. “It’s amazing enough that a perfect stranger would offer,” she said. “And then to be a perfect match, as good as a sibling? It’s just too good.”
From there, the process began. Tom went through extensive testing. “It was the first time I’d been to the doctor in years,” he said, “and boy, if there’s anything to find out about you, they’ll find it. They took blood. They poked and prodded me. Two weeks of going in every day for something.” He lost several pounds during the testing, but it was worth it. Doctors couldn’t find any reason not to perform the transplant.
“Everything was falling into place. I’d seen her through bad and then through worse, and now I knew I was going to help fix her. I’d tell her, ‘It ain’t gonna be long, Rita. You’re gonna be fixed. We’re gonna get you back to your life,’” he says.
In the gospel of John today, Jesus is praying. In fact it’s his last prayer before he dies – arguably his most important prayer according to John’s gospel. The disciples are listening in – as Jesus is keenly aware. Jesus is praying for them – praying that they will become one with God, one with one another, and that the world may know of God through their lives. But it’s not just a prayer for the disciples. As someone in our lectionary bible study said this week, this prayer is about all of us. Jesus prays the disciples “get” what it’s all about so that once Jesus is gone, the message will continue. In the same way, when we “get” it, the message continues through us as well.
The central theme of this prayer for the disciples and for us is unity – oneness with God, oneness with others. The focus in on relationships – divine and human – relationships characterized by love. It is not an ethereal or spiritual unity without concrete expression. It is not spiritual or intellectual only. It is not unity only on paper. It is to be as embodied as God was in Christ.
We see something of what this means when we turn to 1 John – a sermon written by the same author of John in later years. By the time that sermon had been written there had been a split in John’s Christian community. 1 John is about lack of love. It was about failure to respond to physical needs. It seemed to have been rooted in an understanding of Jesus which also denied his human aspects. Splitting up his life led to splitting up the lives of individuals into spiritual and practical concerns. It led to splitting up of the community in which, it seems, one group saw itself as the spiritual ones and neglected the rest of life.
Well, God must have answered Jesus’ prayer – the disciples must have taken to heart what Jesus said, lived it and passed it on to others, because here it all is, 2000 years later – Tom Chappell. Oneness with God, oneness with others and no one can argue that Chappell’s version of oneness is only spiritual. He is ready to give part of his body to help heal Rita’s. This isn’t just talk, and it isn’t just commiserating. It’s as fleshy as God gets in Jesus.
As the transplant date was nearing, one day Mayo Clinic had left Tom a message. He went in the next day, looking forward to setting the date. But, it was not to be. The Mayo Clinic had wanted him to come in so they could tell him in person: He would not be able to give Rita his kidney. Tom had been the one to call Rita with the good news that he’d be able to donate, and he made the call himself to tell her it was off, too.
“Tom’s taking this harder than I am,” said Rita. “He really does have a heart of gold.”
She could have added that he has “a head of granite.” Tom spent about an hour and a half at Mayo, assuring them he’d be fine. But reassurances that he was “healthy as a boar hog” didn’t sway the doctors. Tom pointed out that he had never had a sick day, that he was "raised country," and taught to tough it out and not bother doctors. "If we were sick, we just had a hot toddy, wrapped ourselves in blankets and sweated it out," he said. He also insists, "God sent me a message. The man upstairs wants me to do this!"
“I know myself,” said Tom. “I know I would be okay. I can’t see throwing away this chance because of a maybe. But they’re worried about how it would look if I got all this media attention and then something happened. I told them it doesn’t matter, but they won’t risk it.”
Tom said he felt he was "letting Rita down." But Rita understands the decision by the Mayo doctors to not take any chances with the safety and health of her new friend. She said she is overwhelmed with Tom’s kindness, his wonderful gesture and his friendship.
Now Tom is on a mission: To find a kidney for Rita. "I'm not going to stop,” he says. “I have to finish what I started. I'm not a quitter. "
Rita said the sense of hope Tom’s offer gave her “really lifted [her] spirits.” And she points to all the good that has come from this whole chance encounter. Tom has supported and energized her. And after it came out that Tom would be unable to donate a kidney, other donors have come forward to be tested. It helped energize Tom, too; he was so excited about the possibility of being a donor. “I was going to be able to give someone life,” he said. “Try not to get a lift in your boots about that. It’s one [heck] of a high.”
“I’ve never gotten to do anything real big in my life,” he says. “And this... this was my big thing. It just didn’t go the way I wanted.”
Sometimes an Easter person is someone who brings hope. Sometimes an Easter person is someone who wants from the bottom of their heart to make a difference, and is willing to put their actions behind those words. Sometimes Easter people fail despite their best efforts.
Like Paul and the slave girl, what began as an annoying little encounter ended in healing. But, I can’t help noticing the irony in this all. I think in one important way, Tom Chappell chose differently than Paul. Paul was annoyed, and he stayed annoyed. He freed the girl from the spirit that possessed her, yet never really seemed to notice her as a person. On the other hand, Tom Chappell was annoyed, but then took notice. He really saw Rita – he went out of his way to learn more about the illness that possessed her. But in the end, he wasn’t able to pull the healing off. It seems unfair in a way.
Of course, that’s not the whole story. For one thing, Paul’s healing was incomplete – maybe even cruelly incomplete. He freed her of the spirit that possessed her, but didn’t even seem to notice she was still a possession – she was a slave. I wonder if that’s because he didn’t get to know her – after all, free men really never considered the possibility of getting to know slave girls in Paul’s day. Maybe because he didn’t know her and understand her life, he wasn’t able to truly heal her – to free her from her double possession.
Rita, however, was healed in many important ways even if Tom couldn’t in the end give her his kidney. Think about how healing it is to have someone care – and not just care, but completely connect their welfare to yours. Think about how healing it is when someone not only sympathizes with you, but offers their very own self in order to help you. This is the oneness Jesus talked about – both spiritual and practical. This is what God does in Jesus…becomes one with us. It’s more than just sympathizing, it’s taking on our very lives, feeling what we feel and at every turn reaching out to heal. This is what Jesus hopes the disciples will do with each other and with those they will meet.
Easter people are as common as taxi-drivers, as common as our neighbors and friends. May we so embody the promise of Christ’s resurrection that we, too, may be Easter people. Amen.
May 16, 2010: Sixth Sunday of Easter
[Sources for Tom Chappell’s story: “Cabbie Hailed for Donating Kidney” By Steve Hartman, (Phoenix, Sept. 11, 2009) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-5301486-500803.html ; “A cabbie’s calling,” by Kimberly Hosey http://www.timespublications.com/feb10-feature1.asp . Also: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/09/07/20090907cabdriver0908.html; http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/blogs/cab-driver-kidney.php (citing the Mayo clinic); ]
In telling the stories of Easter people during these last six weeks, my hope has been to convey that God’s promise in the resurrection is something that shapes real lives in the real world – specifically shapes our real lives in our real world. But, I worry that I sometimes indirectly communicate that “Easter people” are somehow out of the ordinary – people who live their lives in ways that are dramatically different from you or I.
But “Easter people” are as common as can be. You know Easter people. You might be, or someday become, an Easter person. You see, Easter people are common; they fill our churches and communities and neighborhoods and workplaces.
The book of Acts is the Bible’s stories of Easter people. These are the stories of Jesus’ followers after Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to be with God. They are the stories of how people lived lives that were transformed by Jesus’ resurrection, and by their faith in the resurrection.
Today we have a strange little story with a fantastic ending. Paul and Silas are hanging out in Philippi. They are, yet again, headed to a place of prayer. But along the way, they run into this “slave girl,” and she is, it seems, doubly possessed. She is a slave possessed by her owners and she is possessed by a spirit. When she sees Paul and Silas, she recognizes them! They must have been making quite a splash in Philippi. This young girl starts following them, proclaiming them as the ones who know the way to salvation – to wholeness, to freedom. And it’s a little strange…Paul gets annoyed. Not just a little annoyed, like my sister was when I was young and I tried to hang out with her and her friends, but “very much annoyed,” it says.
In spite of this, he frees her – from at least one of her possessors. He orders the spirit to come out of her, and out it came. And then Paul moves on to deal with other things – namely his arrest by the Roman authorities, subsequent imprisonment, a miraculous earthquake and saving the guard in the prison in both a literal and spiritual way. It’s a strange little story, with a fantastic ending. But when we think about it, life is full of strange little stories with fantastic endings.
This week’s “Easter Person”, Tom Chappell, is a great Easter person for those of us think we can never measure up to the giants like Imaculee Ilibigiza, Julia Ward Howe and Paul Farmer, because by all accounts he lives a very ordinary life. It’s possible you could have met him, if you’ve ever taken a taxi in Phoenix, Arizona.
As a cab driver, Tom Chappell insists he never gets lost. But he might occasionally miss a turn or two. Such was the case the first time Tom went to pick up Rita Van Loenen. He got there about 30 minutes late, and she was not happy. She did not tip him. Actually, she was hoping she'd never see him again, and Tom wouldn’t have minded that either. But, over the next two months, it seemed like every time Rita called a cab, Tom was the one who was dispatched. He says at the time he was thinking, “Why Lord? Why are you picking me?"
Tom says Rita was pretty much always cranky, even when he wasn't late. It made Tom wonder about her. “I finally figured maybe there’s a reason she’s upset,” Chappell said. He wondered if her attitude had anything to do with where he was taking her all the time - a medical office with a door marked "kidney dialysis." So Tom went to the library to look up dialysis, and then he started understanding why she might be cranky.
It had everything to do with where he was taking her. Dialysis is a pretty lousy experience. It’s draining, takes several hours at a time, and can cause significant side-effects. As Rita says, “it impacts your whole body. I’m always so tense; you never know what’s going to happen. There are screaming machines, alarms beeping. Sometimes I cramp up real bad or vomit. Sometimes I cry. I just want to get there and get it over with. I am crabby when I have to go to dialysis.”
Through his library research and then from Rita, Tom learned about dialysis and learned that what Rita really needs is a kidney transplant, but none of her friends or family are suitable donors. “So I went home one night, and was taking a shower and me and the Lord had a talk,” Chappell said matter-of-factly. “He said, ‘Tom, you give it to her.’ And so I said I would. Just seeing how sick she was every time I saw her, I knew I had to do it. There’s been no second-guessing. I’ve had no doubts about it.”
Tom had always been healthy himself, a wiry guy with a bushy mustache and a baseball cap, barely a hundred and fifty pounds, active, hard working and not much in tune with medical issues.
When Tom first told Rita he wanted to be tested to see if he might be a donor, she didn’t believe him. She didn’t even know his last name! She said she was like “Okay, sure, buddy.” Other people had made similar offers, and it never went anywhere. But Rita told him where to call. She was taken aback when he really did go to the Mayo Clinic to get tested—and even more shocked when they ended up being an almost-perfect match. “It’s amazing enough that a perfect stranger would offer,” she said. “And then to be a perfect match, as good as a sibling? It’s just too good.”
From there, the process began. Tom went through extensive testing. “It was the first time I’d been to the doctor in years,” he said, “and boy, if there’s anything to find out about you, they’ll find it. They took blood. They poked and prodded me. Two weeks of going in every day for something.” He lost several pounds during the testing, but it was worth it. Doctors couldn’t find any reason not to perform the transplant.
“Everything was falling into place. I’d seen her through bad and then through worse, and now I knew I was going to help fix her. I’d tell her, ‘It ain’t gonna be long, Rita. You’re gonna be fixed. We’re gonna get you back to your life,’” he says.
In the gospel of John today, Jesus is praying. In fact it’s his last prayer before he dies – arguably his most important prayer according to John’s gospel. The disciples are listening in – as Jesus is keenly aware. Jesus is praying for them – praying that they will become one with God, one with one another, and that the world may know of God through their lives. But it’s not just a prayer for the disciples. As someone in our lectionary bible study said this week, this prayer is about all of us. Jesus prays the disciples “get” what it’s all about so that once Jesus is gone, the message will continue. In the same way, when we “get” it, the message continues through us as well.
The central theme of this prayer for the disciples and for us is unity – oneness with God, oneness with others. The focus in on relationships – divine and human – relationships characterized by love. It is not an ethereal or spiritual unity without concrete expression. It is not spiritual or intellectual only. It is not unity only on paper. It is to be as embodied as God was in Christ.
We see something of what this means when we turn to 1 John – a sermon written by the same author of John in later years. By the time that sermon had been written there had been a split in John’s Christian community. 1 John is about lack of love. It was about failure to respond to physical needs. It seemed to have been rooted in an understanding of Jesus which also denied his human aspects. Splitting up his life led to splitting up the lives of individuals into spiritual and practical concerns. It led to splitting up of the community in which, it seems, one group saw itself as the spiritual ones and neglected the rest of life.
Well, God must have answered Jesus’ prayer – the disciples must have taken to heart what Jesus said, lived it and passed it on to others, because here it all is, 2000 years later – Tom Chappell. Oneness with God, oneness with others and no one can argue that Chappell’s version of oneness is only spiritual. He is ready to give part of his body to help heal Rita’s. This isn’t just talk, and it isn’t just commiserating. It’s as fleshy as God gets in Jesus.
As the transplant date was nearing, one day Mayo Clinic had left Tom a message. He went in the next day, looking forward to setting the date. But, it was not to be. The Mayo Clinic had wanted him to come in so they could tell him in person: He would not be able to give Rita his kidney. Tom had been the one to call Rita with the good news that he’d be able to donate, and he made the call himself to tell her it was off, too.
“Tom’s taking this harder than I am,” said Rita. “He really does have a heart of gold.”
She could have added that he has “a head of granite.” Tom spent about an hour and a half at Mayo, assuring them he’d be fine. But reassurances that he was “healthy as a boar hog” didn’t sway the doctors. Tom pointed out that he had never had a sick day, that he was "raised country," and taught to tough it out and not bother doctors. "If we were sick, we just had a hot toddy, wrapped ourselves in blankets and sweated it out," he said. He also insists, "God sent me a message. The man upstairs wants me to do this!"
“I know myself,” said Tom. “I know I would be okay. I can’t see throwing away this chance because of a maybe. But they’re worried about how it would look if I got all this media attention and then something happened. I told them it doesn’t matter, but they won’t risk it.”
Tom said he felt he was "letting Rita down." But Rita understands the decision by the Mayo doctors to not take any chances with the safety and health of her new friend. She said she is overwhelmed with Tom’s kindness, his wonderful gesture and his friendship.
Now Tom is on a mission: To find a kidney for Rita. "I'm not going to stop,” he says. “I have to finish what I started. I'm not a quitter. "
Rita said the sense of hope Tom’s offer gave her “really lifted [her] spirits.” And she points to all the good that has come from this whole chance encounter. Tom has supported and energized her. And after it came out that Tom would be unable to donate a kidney, other donors have come forward to be tested. It helped energize Tom, too; he was so excited about the possibility of being a donor. “I was going to be able to give someone life,” he said. “Try not to get a lift in your boots about that. It’s one [heck] of a high.”
“I’ve never gotten to do anything real big in my life,” he says. “And this... this was my big thing. It just didn’t go the way I wanted.”
Sometimes an Easter person is someone who brings hope. Sometimes an Easter person is someone who wants from the bottom of their heart to make a difference, and is willing to put their actions behind those words. Sometimes Easter people fail despite their best efforts.
Like Paul and the slave girl, what began as an annoying little encounter ended in healing. But, I can’t help noticing the irony in this all. I think in one important way, Tom Chappell chose differently than Paul. Paul was annoyed, and he stayed annoyed. He freed the girl from the spirit that possessed her, yet never really seemed to notice her as a person. On the other hand, Tom Chappell was annoyed, but then took notice. He really saw Rita – he went out of his way to learn more about the illness that possessed her. But in the end, he wasn’t able to pull the healing off. It seems unfair in a way.
Of course, that’s not the whole story. For one thing, Paul’s healing was incomplete – maybe even cruelly incomplete. He freed her of the spirit that possessed her, but didn’t even seem to notice she was still a possession – she was a slave. I wonder if that’s because he didn’t get to know her – after all, free men really never considered the possibility of getting to know slave girls in Paul’s day. Maybe because he didn’t know her and understand her life, he wasn’t able to truly heal her – to free her from her double possession.
Rita, however, was healed in many important ways even if Tom couldn’t in the end give her his kidney. Think about how healing it is to have someone care – and not just care, but completely connect their welfare to yours. Think about how healing it is when someone not only sympathizes with you, but offers their very own self in order to help you. This is the oneness Jesus talked about – both spiritual and practical. This is what God does in Jesus…becomes one with us. It’s more than just sympathizing, it’s taking on our very lives, feeling what we feel and at every turn reaching out to heal. This is what Jesus hopes the disciples will do with each other and with those they will meet.
Easter people are as common as taxi-drivers, as common as our neighbors and friends. May we so embody the promise of Christ’s resurrection that we, too, may be Easter people. Amen.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Easter People: Julia Ward Howe
Acts 16:9-15; John 14:23-29
May 9, 2010: Sixth Sunday of Easter
When the spirit is on the loose, there’s no telling what will happen. People do unpredictable things, and sometimes they change the course of history along the way.
In John’s gospel today, Jesus is talking to his disciples shortly before his death. As their friend, he shows concern for them, knowing they might feel abandoned and lost when he dies. As God’s living presence in their midst, Jesus tells them, as he has been telling them all along, God will not abandon them, they will not be lost, and will in fact go on to do even greater things than Jesus did.
Although Jesus will be gone, the Holy Spirit will come and lead them to extraordinary lives they probably couldn’t have imagined in that moment. The spirit will be a comforter, but it will also be like the wind – blowing them in new and surely challenging directions. Jesus knows this from first hand experience, and so he encourages them; “don’t be afraid, go with bold hearts.”
Paul wasn’t there when Jesus said these words, but he sure got the message. Oh how the spirit worked in Paul and the early disciples – the spirit Jesus promised came to them, and it was exciting. We see evidence of the blowing, unpredictable spirit just by looking at their movements from one place to another as they worked with people to start house churches. They went this way and that, trying one village and then the next. They did not seem to sit still for very long. And they were directed by the spirit. In our passage, the spirit worked through a vision given to Paul. They were beckoned to Philippi.
After arriving in Philippi, on the Sabbath they go looking for a place to pray, and they find what they are looking for in a rather odd place. It’s not a synagogue. It’s outside the city – with women who were outside the community. They were on the margins. Paul already upset people because he reached out beyond the Jewish community, taking the good news of Christ to Gentiles. Now, he was going to women…women who, for some reason, were not a part of the local Jewish community. First Gentiles, now women. Paul’s spirit-led work changed the course of Christianity, opening it to all people: there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, he wrote. Where others saw barriers, where others saw divisions and categories, Paul saw the possibility for God’s love to transform lives – regardless of these cultural divisions and categories.
But the spirit was at work in more ways than one that day. The spirit was working in one of the women: Lydia. God opened Lydia’s heart, we read. And she listened to her heart, breaking from cultural norms to worship with Paul and the others – to talk with Paul, to lead her entire extended family to faith, and she chose to open her home to the disciples and likely to becoming a place of gathering and worship. She was a leader in every sense of the word – defying every sense of decorum at the time.
Another woman who was blown by the spirit to do unpredictable, amazing things was Julia Ward Howe. She went with the spirit even though people she loved and respected were telling her it wasn’t a woman’s place; even though, like Paul, she was called far beyond the boundaries and norms of her day. The spirit led her to shatter assumptions and the status quo, and through her we can see the course of human history change.
Julia Ward Howe was born in 1819 and lived to be 90 years old. Her life spanned the civil war and she, like pretty much everyone at the time, was greatly influenced by it. She was privileged in many ways. Because her family had money, she was freed from traditional female household duties. She had time to study, time to write, and her family had connections with people in “high places” as they say. Her writings reached influential audiences – and even led to a meeting with Abraham Lincoln. Julia would use these privileges well. She studied hard, wrote beautifully, and used the opportunities handed to her in ways that eventually led to large scale changes in this country.
Her religious upbringing was, like so many, steeped in pietistic theology, focusing on right behavior that, when followed, would keep you out of hell. This right behavior, however, predictably reflected the cultural norms of her day, including the confinement of women to domestic roles. But because of her studies and reflection, her faith began to change. The spirit began to move. She writes, “I threw away, once and forever, the thought of the terrible hell which till then had always formed part of my belief. In its place I cherished the persuasion that the victory of goodness must consist in making everything good, and that Satan himself could have no shield strong enough to resist permanently the divine power of the divine spirit." That power of the divine spirit would so often be what guided her life.
In a letter she wrote to her sister in 1844, when she was 25 years old, she was trying to convince her sister that she shouldn’t be brow-beaten into believing the church had the whole truth. She was advocating that, even though they were women, they needed to speak the truth. She wrote: “I think perfect and fearless frankness [is] one of our highest duties to man as well as to God…There may be a hell and a heaven, and it may be good for most people, for you and me, too, if you choose to think that is so. But there is a virtue which rises above such considerations – there are motives higher than personal fear or hope – the love of good because it is good, because it is God's and nature's law, because it is the secret of the beautiful order of things.” In other words, the church’s ideas of what someone should do is no substitute for doing what you know to be right – what the spirit has placed in your heart.
In her early years, the spirit led her to work hard as an abolitionist. She co-published the anti-slavery newspaper, The Commonwealth, with her husband. Her work and influence was through her writing. She wrote poems, plays, books, essays and eventually lots of sermons. And her writing was widely read. When the civil war began, she joined her husband and other men in supporting the Union in their fight for freedom of slaves. It was at that time she wrote one of her most famous and influential works: The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Her words became the inspiration for Union soldiers everywhere, and we know they have influenced so many others throughout history who have battled for the freedoms needed in their day.
But writing wasn’t all the spirit had planned for her. She had more to do. She had more to learn, and she had much to say – out loud, and in public. According to her daughters, the three years after the civil war ended were “notable for our mother. Heretofore her life had been domestic, studious, social; her chief relation with the public had been through her pen. She now felt the need of personal contact with her audience; felt that she must speak her message.”
One of her first public events was reading some of her essays in Washington, speaking to elected officials. This was no small thing. She encountered many hurdles – including protest from her husband and friends. But she writes, “I go in obedience to a deep and strong impulse which I do not understand nor explain, but whose bidding I cannot neglect. The satisfaction of having at last obeyed this interior guide is all that keeps me up, for no one, so far as I know, approves of my going.” A deep and strong impulse – an interior guide: That’s the Holy Spirit at work within her.
As she moved from writing to public speaking, she also changed some of her views and beliefs. Prior to this she was more than a little reluctant to join the women’s suffrage movement. But that changed. She began organizing for women’s rights, and became one of the great leaders in a movement that surely changed history. She worked for the right to vote, the right to higher education, the ability to have legal rights regarding children and property. She was also deeply concerned about the Franco – Prussian war, and this concern affected one of the most significant changes in Julia. She began to see war for what it is. Reflecting on the sheer number of lives lost in the civil war, and the men being killed on both sides of the current war, she started down the road to becoming a pacifist.
She writes, “"As I was revolving these matters in my mind, while the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, 'Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?' I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed." In 1870, she called together the World’s Council of Women on Behalf of International Peace, and she gave the opening address.
I think it’s a bit unfortunate that her best known piece of writing is the Battle Hymn of the Republic (1861). It’s true that it was fitting given her commitment to the abolition of slavery, and it was a comfort to the troops, which is hardly a trivial thing regardless of how you feel about war in general. But the hymn does not reflect her final feelings about battle. The words glorify war; they give purpose and meaning to something she later believed was futile and meaningless.
Her writings reflected this change and one of the best examples we have is especially fitting for today. That 1870 call to gather women together for peace was actually a poem, and it became known as the Mother’s Day proclamation. It called for much more than freedom through war – it called for freedom through peace. She was devastated by the loss of men, on both sides of the war. She wrote as a mother and wrote for mothers everywhere who lost their sons to war.
Today we celebrate Mother’s Day – a day rooted in the proclamation of Julia Ward Howe. Mother’s Day now is mostly about thanking and celebrating our mothers (and don’t get me wrong, I have grown to love this in the last couple of years). But when it started, it was about calling women to account for the violence in the world. It was reminding mothers of their responsibilities to end the violence – to bring about peace. We may not like remembering that part as much. But, let’s not completely forget it at a time when sons and daughters are dying the world over.
Listen now to Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day proclamation:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Amen.
May 9, 2010: Sixth Sunday of Easter
When the spirit is on the loose, there’s no telling what will happen. People do unpredictable things, and sometimes they change the course of history along the way.
In John’s gospel today, Jesus is talking to his disciples shortly before his death. As their friend, he shows concern for them, knowing they might feel abandoned and lost when he dies. As God’s living presence in their midst, Jesus tells them, as he has been telling them all along, God will not abandon them, they will not be lost, and will in fact go on to do even greater things than Jesus did.
Although Jesus will be gone, the Holy Spirit will come and lead them to extraordinary lives they probably couldn’t have imagined in that moment. The spirit will be a comforter, but it will also be like the wind – blowing them in new and surely challenging directions. Jesus knows this from first hand experience, and so he encourages them; “don’t be afraid, go with bold hearts.”
Paul wasn’t there when Jesus said these words, but he sure got the message. Oh how the spirit worked in Paul and the early disciples – the spirit Jesus promised came to them, and it was exciting. We see evidence of the blowing, unpredictable spirit just by looking at their movements from one place to another as they worked with people to start house churches. They went this way and that, trying one village and then the next. They did not seem to sit still for very long. And they were directed by the spirit. In our passage, the spirit worked through a vision given to Paul. They were beckoned to Philippi.
After arriving in Philippi, on the Sabbath they go looking for a place to pray, and they find what they are looking for in a rather odd place. It’s not a synagogue. It’s outside the city – with women who were outside the community. They were on the margins. Paul already upset people because he reached out beyond the Jewish community, taking the good news of Christ to Gentiles. Now, he was going to women…women who, for some reason, were not a part of the local Jewish community. First Gentiles, now women. Paul’s spirit-led work changed the course of Christianity, opening it to all people: there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, he wrote. Where others saw barriers, where others saw divisions and categories, Paul saw the possibility for God’s love to transform lives – regardless of these cultural divisions and categories.
But the spirit was at work in more ways than one that day. The spirit was working in one of the women: Lydia. God opened Lydia’s heart, we read. And she listened to her heart, breaking from cultural norms to worship with Paul and the others – to talk with Paul, to lead her entire extended family to faith, and she chose to open her home to the disciples and likely to becoming a place of gathering and worship. She was a leader in every sense of the word – defying every sense of decorum at the time.
Another woman who was blown by the spirit to do unpredictable, amazing things was Julia Ward Howe. She went with the spirit even though people she loved and respected were telling her it wasn’t a woman’s place; even though, like Paul, she was called far beyond the boundaries and norms of her day. The spirit led her to shatter assumptions and the status quo, and through her we can see the course of human history change.
Julia Ward Howe was born in 1819 and lived to be 90 years old. Her life spanned the civil war and she, like pretty much everyone at the time, was greatly influenced by it. She was privileged in many ways. Because her family had money, she was freed from traditional female household duties. She had time to study, time to write, and her family had connections with people in “high places” as they say. Her writings reached influential audiences – and even led to a meeting with Abraham Lincoln. Julia would use these privileges well. She studied hard, wrote beautifully, and used the opportunities handed to her in ways that eventually led to large scale changes in this country.
Her religious upbringing was, like so many, steeped in pietistic theology, focusing on right behavior that, when followed, would keep you out of hell. This right behavior, however, predictably reflected the cultural norms of her day, including the confinement of women to domestic roles. But because of her studies and reflection, her faith began to change. The spirit began to move. She writes, “I threw away, once and forever, the thought of the terrible hell which till then had always formed part of my belief. In its place I cherished the persuasion that the victory of goodness must consist in making everything good, and that Satan himself could have no shield strong enough to resist permanently the divine power of the divine spirit." That power of the divine spirit would so often be what guided her life.
In a letter she wrote to her sister in 1844, when she was 25 years old, she was trying to convince her sister that she shouldn’t be brow-beaten into believing the church had the whole truth. She was advocating that, even though they were women, they needed to speak the truth. She wrote: “I think perfect and fearless frankness [is] one of our highest duties to man as well as to God…There may be a hell and a heaven, and it may be good for most people, for you and me, too, if you choose to think that is so. But there is a virtue which rises above such considerations – there are motives higher than personal fear or hope – the love of good because it is good, because it is God's and nature's law, because it is the secret of the beautiful order of things.” In other words, the church’s ideas of what someone should do is no substitute for doing what you know to be right – what the spirit has placed in your heart.
In her early years, the spirit led her to work hard as an abolitionist. She co-published the anti-slavery newspaper, The Commonwealth, with her husband. Her work and influence was through her writing. She wrote poems, plays, books, essays and eventually lots of sermons. And her writing was widely read. When the civil war began, she joined her husband and other men in supporting the Union in their fight for freedom of slaves. It was at that time she wrote one of her most famous and influential works: The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Her words became the inspiration for Union soldiers everywhere, and we know they have influenced so many others throughout history who have battled for the freedoms needed in their day.
But writing wasn’t all the spirit had planned for her. She had more to do. She had more to learn, and she had much to say – out loud, and in public. According to her daughters, the three years after the civil war ended were “notable for our mother. Heretofore her life had been domestic, studious, social; her chief relation with the public had been through her pen. She now felt the need of personal contact with her audience; felt that she must speak her message.”
One of her first public events was reading some of her essays in Washington, speaking to elected officials. This was no small thing. She encountered many hurdles – including protest from her husband and friends. But she writes, “I go in obedience to a deep and strong impulse which I do not understand nor explain, but whose bidding I cannot neglect. The satisfaction of having at last obeyed this interior guide is all that keeps me up, for no one, so far as I know, approves of my going.” A deep and strong impulse – an interior guide: That’s the Holy Spirit at work within her.
As she moved from writing to public speaking, she also changed some of her views and beliefs. Prior to this she was more than a little reluctant to join the women’s suffrage movement. But that changed. She began organizing for women’s rights, and became one of the great leaders in a movement that surely changed history. She worked for the right to vote, the right to higher education, the ability to have legal rights regarding children and property. She was also deeply concerned about the Franco – Prussian war, and this concern affected one of the most significant changes in Julia. She began to see war for what it is. Reflecting on the sheer number of lives lost in the civil war, and the men being killed on both sides of the current war, she started down the road to becoming a pacifist.
She writes, “"As I was revolving these matters in my mind, while the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, 'Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?' I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed." In 1870, she called together the World’s Council of Women on Behalf of International Peace, and she gave the opening address.
I think it’s a bit unfortunate that her best known piece of writing is the Battle Hymn of the Republic (1861). It’s true that it was fitting given her commitment to the abolition of slavery, and it was a comfort to the troops, which is hardly a trivial thing regardless of how you feel about war in general. But the hymn does not reflect her final feelings about battle. The words glorify war; they give purpose and meaning to something she later believed was futile and meaningless.
Her writings reflected this change and one of the best examples we have is especially fitting for today. That 1870 call to gather women together for peace was actually a poem, and it became known as the Mother’s Day proclamation. It called for much more than freedom through war – it called for freedom through peace. She was devastated by the loss of men, on both sides of the war. She wrote as a mother and wrote for mothers everywhere who lost their sons to war.
Today we celebrate Mother’s Day – a day rooted in the proclamation of Julia Ward Howe. Mother’s Day now is mostly about thanking and celebrating our mothers (and don’t get me wrong, I have grown to love this in the last couple of years). But when it started, it was about calling women to account for the violence in the world. It was reminding mothers of their responsibilities to end the violence – to bring about peace. We may not like remembering that part as much. But, let’s not completely forget it at a time when sons and daughters are dying the world over.
Listen now to Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day proclamation:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Amen.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Easter People: Frederick Buechner
John 11:31-35
May 2, 2010: Fifth Sunday of Easter
Love one another. I don’t know a single Christian who doesn’t think this pretty much sums things up – do you? But the only way it becomes more than just a Christian bumper sticker – more than just a nice sentiment, is if we move from words to action. And that is one of the greatest questions of our faith: What moves us to love in deeds, not just in words and feelings?
Let’s start by admitting something: It can be genuinely hard to love someone. We’re happy to live this commandment – or try to live this commandment – with family and friends. Although, even that is challenging at times, to say the least. But let’s be honest, some people are unlovable. Their shadows are too big. Their mistakes are too unforgivable, or even just too hard to understand. Maybe the enmity is too strong, or the wounds they caused too deep. I don’t know about you, but when I’m faced with such folks, just being told to “love this person” is not enough. It’s just not. Something has to come from within me that is stronger than my initial reaction, than my judgments, stronger than my will. And, to be perfectly honest, that “something” doesn’t always come. And so sometimes, it’s not only hard to love someone – in action or otherwise; sometimes it feels just plain impossible.
Of course, the truth is, sometimes it’s also hard, if not impossible, to love myself – the shadows are too big, the mistakes too unforgivable, the wounds I’ve inflicted are too deep. And I wonder if maybe, just maybe the two things are related. Maybe, just maybe, the reasons it’s hard to love others sometimes are related to the reasons it’s hard to love myself sometimes. Maybe this is why Jesus doesn’t just say, “love one another.” Jesus tells the disciples this is a “new commandment”, which seems a little odd, doesn’t it? I doubt this was the first time in their very Jewish lives that the disciples were told to love one another. That could not have been a new commandment to them. But that isn’t all Jesus says – that’s not the whole commandment. I think the “new” part was what he tacked on to the end: “just as I have loved you.”
This clever little addition of, “as I have loved you,” packs a double punch when we remember who Jesus is. When Jesus loves someone, we get a glimpse of two things. First, we see how God loves because Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love. To know how Jesus loves us and others is to know how God loves us and others. At the same time, when Jesus loves, we see how we are to love – how human beings are called to love one another. This one sentence says two distinct yet intimately related things: you can love one another because I have loved you, and you are called to love one another as I have loved you.
When we understand this, clearly knowing how God loves us is the crux of it all. If we don’t know how God loves us, we will lack both the capacity to love others and the blue print for loving others. “Love one another,” is easy to say and hard to live. But Jesus’ addition of, “just as I have loved you,” gives us the key for moving from words to action. We can love others, even when it’s hard; but first, we have to know that we are loved – truly, deeply, fully loved, even when we don’t feel like we deserve it – even when we don’t feel that lovable.
But, understanding how God loves us is, I’m afraid, harder than it sounds. It would be nice if just saying it would make it true, wouldn’t it? But, if love is not experienced, words about love mean nothing. I can tell you over and over that God loves you – no matter what. But, if you have not stood before God, stripped of all pretenses and masks, and felt God’s love, I suspect those words ring flat. If on the other hand you have felt both completely known and loved by God – even if it was only for a fleeting moment – those words probably have the ability to stir something up in deep inside of you, even if only for a fleeting moment.
Even if we have these experiences, there are times for all of us when we find ourselves unable to connect to God’s love, and it’s nice if we can get a little help. It’s true that we have Jesus to help us, but I’m also eternally grateful for people who walk the earth in the here and now who can at least point me in the right direction. I think of them as spiritual guides. Some are individuals I know personally, and some are my spiritual guide through their writings and sermons.
Now first, I want to make a comment about what I think is a necessary quality of a spiritual guide. If they are not willing to tackle the complexity of life and the complexity of the bible, they are not helpful to me. Finding God through shadows and doubt, and through scriptures that confound as well as clarify, is hard. When someone dares down that path, I am grateful for their courage. When they do so and actually meet God along the way, I’m grateful if they take the time to erect sign posts for me to see when I come along in my own time.
Frederick Buechner is a spiritual guide that has both dared to go down the path laden with shadows and doubt, and he has blessed us with sign posts from his encounters with the divine. He embraces the complexity of life and definitely finds God deeply imbedded in that life. In the beauty and joy, and in the darkness and pain. And what he knows from those encounters with God, is that nothing is outside the reach of God’s love. Not us, not our most shameful selves, and not anyone else.
Frederick Buechner is a theologian, writer and Presbyterian minister. He was born in 1926, and so his childhood was shaped mostly by the depression. His family moved around constantly as his father chased jobs, until his father committed suicide when Frederick was 10 years old. Writing was always important for Buechner – it was his passion in school, and he won great acclaim for it. But, around 1955 he began attending Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and there he heard a call to ministry, suprising him and his pastor alike. He went to Union Theological Seminary, and while there he realized that life was not just an intellectual pursuit of truth. “No intellectual pursuit ever aroused in me such intense curiosity,” he wrote, “and much more than my intellect was involved, much more than my curiosity aroused. In the unfamiliar setting of a Presbyterian church, of all places, I had been moved to astonished tears which came from so deep inside me that to this day I have never fathomed them. I wanted to learn more about the source of those tears and the object of that astonishment.”
Buechner knew we can’t just think our way to belief and trust in God. We can’t just reason our way to discipleship. We have to find God, meet God, encounter the divine in some way in order to be transformed – in order to know what it’s truly like to be loved by God – in order to know how to truly love one another. Words are not enough.
So how do we encounter the divine? How do we experience God’s love for us? Buechner’s wisdom seems simple enough: pay attention. He writes, “Maybe it’s all utterly meaningless. Maybe it’s all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we’re in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us.”
To pay attention means to give equal attention to the beauty and the darkness in the world and in ourselves. We have to pay attention to the half we’re in love with and the half that scares us to death. Most of us have experiences of seeing God in beauty and creation – finding God in those moments of euphoria and deep gratitude. But, God is only worthy of our trust if God is found in both the beauty and the darkness – both the extraordinary and the mundane. "Listen to your life,” Buechner writes. “See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
When those moments of darkness arise within you, pay attention. God is there. And when you have that experience – that grace-filled gift – of finding God there, you realize what it means to be fully loved by the divine. As Buechner writes, "The world is full of dark shadows, to be sure both the world without and the world within ... But praise [God] for the knowledge that what's lost is nothing to what's found, and that all the dark there ever was, set next to light, would scarcely fill a cup.”
When we pay attention – when we see ourselves as we truly are and see the world as it truly is, and then find divine love in the midst of that, the words about God’s love are no longer just words. We are changed by that experience. And that experience is what enables us to love one another. We now know how to love others because we know what it’s like to be loved by God. More than that, I believe we can’t help but love others in the same way.
But there’s a trap we often fall into that gets in the way of living out this love in the world. We think it looks a certain way. We think it is a certain profession, or going into the peace corps or putting your life on the line for a cause, or moving to India to care for lepers. But it’s not that simple. Loving others doesn’t look one way. To love is our call – our vocation. The way we do this will be a unique reflection of who God created us to be.
Last week, Kathleen O’Malley spoke during worship about her trips to Iraq and her work to end the war. We were having coffee later that day and I was telling her that I felt inadequate given all she was doing. She reminded me that I missed about half of what she was saying. She said you have to start with knowing yourself deeply, knowing who God created you to be, and loving who that person is. Your path will come out of that process. “Leading with your soul,” she called it. Buechner said it this way: “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Buechner nails it on the head: “We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins.” This rings so true. This is where we need to start. But Buechner knows that is not the end of human longing. He knows we are created by God to want more than that…to hunger for more than that. He goes on to write, “We hunger not just to be fed these things, but often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better or worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in the all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.”
The commandment to love one another is not really a commandment in the sense of a rule that we can just follow. What’s new about this commandment is that it is written on our hearts, embedded in our souls. To follow Jesus’ commandment, we need only to become who we truly are. We need to tap into our own longings to be loved and there we will find the desires we have to love others. This work is not sweet or simple. It means doing the hard work of going into our deepest selves, even when we fear what we will find. It means trusting that no matter who we are, what we have done, when we get to the core we will find the person God created us to be. In fact, we will find God’s love. And all of this is the same thing as learning about what is at the core of every other person. Accepting God’s love for us means accepting God’s love for others.
I’ll end with what I think is a beautiful summary of Jesus’ commandment. Buechner writes, "Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.” Or as Jesus put it, “love one another just as I have loved you.” Amen.
May 2, 2010: Fifth Sunday of Easter
Love one another. I don’t know a single Christian who doesn’t think this pretty much sums things up – do you? But the only way it becomes more than just a Christian bumper sticker – more than just a nice sentiment, is if we move from words to action. And that is one of the greatest questions of our faith: What moves us to love in deeds, not just in words and feelings?
Let’s start by admitting something: It can be genuinely hard to love someone. We’re happy to live this commandment – or try to live this commandment – with family and friends. Although, even that is challenging at times, to say the least. But let’s be honest, some people are unlovable. Their shadows are too big. Their mistakes are too unforgivable, or even just too hard to understand. Maybe the enmity is too strong, or the wounds they caused too deep. I don’t know about you, but when I’m faced with such folks, just being told to “love this person” is not enough. It’s just not. Something has to come from within me that is stronger than my initial reaction, than my judgments, stronger than my will. And, to be perfectly honest, that “something” doesn’t always come. And so sometimes, it’s not only hard to love someone – in action or otherwise; sometimes it feels just plain impossible.
Of course, the truth is, sometimes it’s also hard, if not impossible, to love myself – the shadows are too big, the mistakes too unforgivable, the wounds I’ve inflicted are too deep. And I wonder if maybe, just maybe the two things are related. Maybe, just maybe, the reasons it’s hard to love others sometimes are related to the reasons it’s hard to love myself sometimes. Maybe this is why Jesus doesn’t just say, “love one another.” Jesus tells the disciples this is a “new commandment”, which seems a little odd, doesn’t it? I doubt this was the first time in their very Jewish lives that the disciples were told to love one another. That could not have been a new commandment to them. But that isn’t all Jesus says – that’s not the whole commandment. I think the “new” part was what he tacked on to the end: “just as I have loved you.”
This clever little addition of, “as I have loved you,” packs a double punch when we remember who Jesus is. When Jesus loves someone, we get a glimpse of two things. First, we see how God loves because Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love. To know how Jesus loves us and others is to know how God loves us and others. At the same time, when Jesus loves, we see how we are to love – how human beings are called to love one another. This one sentence says two distinct yet intimately related things: you can love one another because I have loved you, and you are called to love one another as I have loved you.
When we understand this, clearly knowing how God loves us is the crux of it all. If we don’t know how God loves us, we will lack both the capacity to love others and the blue print for loving others. “Love one another,” is easy to say and hard to live. But Jesus’ addition of, “just as I have loved you,” gives us the key for moving from words to action. We can love others, even when it’s hard; but first, we have to know that we are loved – truly, deeply, fully loved, even when we don’t feel like we deserve it – even when we don’t feel that lovable.
But, understanding how God loves us is, I’m afraid, harder than it sounds. It would be nice if just saying it would make it true, wouldn’t it? But, if love is not experienced, words about love mean nothing. I can tell you over and over that God loves you – no matter what. But, if you have not stood before God, stripped of all pretenses and masks, and felt God’s love, I suspect those words ring flat. If on the other hand you have felt both completely known and loved by God – even if it was only for a fleeting moment – those words probably have the ability to stir something up in deep inside of you, even if only for a fleeting moment.
Even if we have these experiences, there are times for all of us when we find ourselves unable to connect to God’s love, and it’s nice if we can get a little help. It’s true that we have Jesus to help us, but I’m also eternally grateful for people who walk the earth in the here and now who can at least point me in the right direction. I think of them as spiritual guides. Some are individuals I know personally, and some are my spiritual guide through their writings and sermons.
Now first, I want to make a comment about what I think is a necessary quality of a spiritual guide. If they are not willing to tackle the complexity of life and the complexity of the bible, they are not helpful to me. Finding God through shadows and doubt, and through scriptures that confound as well as clarify, is hard. When someone dares down that path, I am grateful for their courage. When they do so and actually meet God along the way, I’m grateful if they take the time to erect sign posts for me to see when I come along in my own time.
Frederick Buechner is a spiritual guide that has both dared to go down the path laden with shadows and doubt, and he has blessed us with sign posts from his encounters with the divine. He embraces the complexity of life and definitely finds God deeply imbedded in that life. In the beauty and joy, and in the darkness and pain. And what he knows from those encounters with God, is that nothing is outside the reach of God’s love. Not us, not our most shameful selves, and not anyone else.
Frederick Buechner is a theologian, writer and Presbyterian minister. He was born in 1926, and so his childhood was shaped mostly by the depression. His family moved around constantly as his father chased jobs, until his father committed suicide when Frederick was 10 years old. Writing was always important for Buechner – it was his passion in school, and he won great acclaim for it. But, around 1955 he began attending Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and there he heard a call to ministry, suprising him and his pastor alike. He went to Union Theological Seminary, and while there he realized that life was not just an intellectual pursuit of truth. “No intellectual pursuit ever aroused in me such intense curiosity,” he wrote, “and much more than my intellect was involved, much more than my curiosity aroused. In the unfamiliar setting of a Presbyterian church, of all places, I had been moved to astonished tears which came from so deep inside me that to this day I have never fathomed them. I wanted to learn more about the source of those tears and the object of that astonishment.”
Buechner knew we can’t just think our way to belief and trust in God. We can’t just reason our way to discipleship. We have to find God, meet God, encounter the divine in some way in order to be transformed – in order to know what it’s truly like to be loved by God – in order to know how to truly love one another. Words are not enough.
So how do we encounter the divine? How do we experience God’s love for us? Buechner’s wisdom seems simple enough: pay attention. He writes, “Maybe it’s all utterly meaningless. Maybe it’s all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we’re in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us.”
To pay attention means to give equal attention to the beauty and the darkness in the world and in ourselves. We have to pay attention to the half we’re in love with and the half that scares us to death. Most of us have experiences of seeing God in beauty and creation – finding God in those moments of euphoria and deep gratitude. But, God is only worthy of our trust if God is found in both the beauty and the darkness – both the extraordinary and the mundane. "Listen to your life,” Buechner writes. “See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
When those moments of darkness arise within you, pay attention. God is there. And when you have that experience – that grace-filled gift – of finding God there, you realize what it means to be fully loved by the divine. As Buechner writes, "The world is full of dark shadows, to be sure both the world without and the world within ... But praise [God] for the knowledge that what's lost is nothing to what's found, and that all the dark there ever was, set next to light, would scarcely fill a cup.”
When we pay attention – when we see ourselves as we truly are and see the world as it truly is, and then find divine love in the midst of that, the words about God’s love are no longer just words. We are changed by that experience. And that experience is what enables us to love one another. We now know how to love others because we know what it’s like to be loved by God. More than that, I believe we can’t help but love others in the same way.
But there’s a trap we often fall into that gets in the way of living out this love in the world. We think it looks a certain way. We think it is a certain profession, or going into the peace corps or putting your life on the line for a cause, or moving to India to care for lepers. But it’s not that simple. Loving others doesn’t look one way. To love is our call – our vocation. The way we do this will be a unique reflection of who God created us to be.
Last week, Kathleen O’Malley spoke during worship about her trips to Iraq and her work to end the war. We were having coffee later that day and I was telling her that I felt inadequate given all she was doing. She reminded me that I missed about half of what she was saying. She said you have to start with knowing yourself deeply, knowing who God created you to be, and loving who that person is. Your path will come out of that process. “Leading with your soul,” she called it. Buechner said it this way: “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Buechner nails it on the head: “We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins.” This rings so true. This is where we need to start. But Buechner knows that is not the end of human longing. He knows we are created by God to want more than that…to hunger for more than that. He goes on to write, “We hunger not just to be fed these things, but often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better or worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in the all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.”
The commandment to love one another is not really a commandment in the sense of a rule that we can just follow. What’s new about this commandment is that it is written on our hearts, embedded in our souls. To follow Jesus’ commandment, we need only to become who we truly are. We need to tap into our own longings to be loved and there we will find the desires we have to love others. This work is not sweet or simple. It means doing the hard work of going into our deepest selves, even when we fear what we will find. It means trusting that no matter who we are, what we have done, when we get to the core we will find the person God created us to be. In fact, we will find God’s love. And all of this is the same thing as learning about what is at the core of every other person. Accepting God’s love for us means accepting God’s love for others.
I’ll end with what I think is a beautiful summary of Jesus’ commandment. Buechner writes, "Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.” Or as Jesus put it, “love one another just as I have loved you.” Amen.
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