Two Revs Plus Two

An Idol Tale

2010-09-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached for morning worship on September 12, 2010 at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. The readings for the day were Exodus 32: 1-14 (The Golden Calf) and Luke 15: 1-7.

Our reading today from the book of Exodus is a famous one. It takes place just a few months after the people of Israel have made their great escape from the land of Egypt, as they wander in the wilderness en route to the Promised Land. They are still learning, sometimes the hard way, what it means to be God’s Chosen People—and how to live and work and worship in an authentic way as the people of God.

It’s hard to be God’s people in the wilderness. The newly freed people of Israel are struggling with what it means to be free—they are hungry, and thirsty, and afraid—they press their leader Moses to the limits of his patience and complain about their plight even when God ‘s grace is tangible all around them in the incredible gift of manna falling from heaven.

It’s hard to be God’s people in the wilderness. The newly freed people of Israel are impatient and distrustful, and when Moses is called by God up to Mount Sinai to receive God’s continuing revelation to them—including the Ten Commandments, laws of conduct and order, instructions for the construction of a tabernacle and the Ark of the covenant—the people start to get uncomfortable. By the time Moses has been holed up with God on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights –they’re more than uncomfortable. They’re restless, they feel abandoned, they don’t know who’s in charge, they’re maybe a little—or a lot—afraid. Needing reassurance, they tell Moses’ brother Aaron, “Make a god for us.”

And so Aaron does the only thing he can think of to calm the people down—he oversees the creation of a golden calf—and this golden calf isn’t just any old idol to be worshipped. This golden calf, Aaron tells the Israelites, is an image of “Your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And no doubt relieved and reassured by having a familiar god right there that they can see and touch and understand, the people begin to worship and celebrate.

They’ve made a terrible mistake.

When God sees his chosen people dancing and drinking and making sacrifices in his name to the golden calf, he is furious at their lack of patience, their lack of loyalty, their lack of understanding, and he’s almost ready to bring an end to this whole experiment with the Israelites and destroy them altogether. Despite all that they’ve been through and experienced, despite coming to know God as the one who led them out of slavery in Egypt, despite the guidance of the Ten Commandments (as in “you shall have no other gods before me. . . you shall not make for yourself an idol. . .”), the people still don’t get that God is not a golden calf who can be seen or touched or made into an image or an object.

The golden calf called for by the people and created by Aaron is an offense against God because no finite image can ever fully capture the infinite God. God is indescribable and elemental. God calls himself “I am who I am”—which is on the one hand completely obvious but on the other hand completely mysterious. God can be known, or experienced, or revealed but can never, ever be domesticated, described, or completely understood.

I wish I could tell you that this episode of the golden calf was the last time any of God’s people got it wrong and started worshipping a false image of God instead of God himself. But I’m afraid that worshipping false images and idols is a pretty common preoccupation of all times including ours. Certainly theologians and preachers have railed against this kind of thing for centuries—one might even say millennia.

I know that you’ve all heard this before in one sermon or other—that we all worship something, even those of us who don’t acknowledge the presence of God. We worship, as one commentator puts it, things like “money, power, fame, career, self, or the Minnesota Vikings.” We worship the ideal of the perfect body, or a political perspective we know is right, or a movie star, or a particular brand of craft-brewed beer.

As churchgoing Christians, we’ve pretty much internalized the idea that we shouldn’t be worshipping these things instead of God; that instead of putting our faith, and our hope, and our trust in these kind of things, that we need to put our faith in God as revealed through Jesus Christ.

But just like Aaron, who was doing the best he could with his limited understanding, and set up the golden calf not as a new god but as an image of the One True God, the God who had brought the Israelites out of Egypt—just like Aaron, we can still sometimes set up idols for ourselves that are false images of the true God.

Rolf Jacobsen, an Old Testament scholar at Luther Seminary, puts it this way:

“. . .Idols can also be our false images of the true God. Things that we associate so much with God, that we worship them instead of God—the church building, the old liturgy, the retired pastor, the painting above the altar, a doctrine to which we cling too tightly. . . This form of idol can actually be even more dangerous to faith than outright idols.”

Furthermore, Professor Jacobsen tells us that the story of the golden calf, “. . . exposes what happens when God's people fall prey to the temptation of confusing the human "image of God" that is a spiritual leader (a pastor, parent, bishop, teacher, mentor) with God. When that leader disappears, humans can lose sight of God and lose faith in their direction.”

Just like Aaron, we can be going along our own spiritual path, confident of our direction, our traditions, our doctrines, even our leadership—and we can still get ourselves in trouble because no finite image—even if that image is a principle, a doctrine, a building, or a person--can ever fully capture the infinite God.

God is who God is. God can be known, or experienced, or revealed but can never, ever be domesticated, described, or completely understood.

But where does that leave us? If every tradition, doctrine, building, and person is a potential false image of God, how in the world are we supposed to figure out the difference? How are we supposed to worship in spirit and in truth? And there is a larger question, too. How in the world are we supposed to live as God’s people in the world if God himself can’t be described, or imagined, or understood?

Of course I’m not advocating that we all run screaming from the sanctuary at the impossibility of these questions. Instead, I do have a few ideas about how to tackle these questions, ideas drawn from the scriptures we read today. No doubt many of you will have more, drawn from other sources, and I hope you will share them with me. For now here’s some ideas to start with.

The first thing is humility.

I believe that the episode of the golden calf calls all of us to humility. Just like Aaron and the Israelite people here in our passage from Exodus, we all have ideas, and images, and experiences that have shaped our understanding of who God is and how God would have us worship and live. But unlike Aaron and the Israelite people, we need to have the humility to acknowledge that our understanding is imperfect and our ideas are just too small and incomplete to adequately or completely describe the God Who Is.

And here’s a quote to chew on, something that was on my mind a lot this week as I considered both this passage about the golden calf and the various controversies about Muslims and mosques and Koran-burnings that were spinning out of control in the media. It’s a quote from spiritual writer and fellow Presbyterian Ann Lamott. She says: “You can tell you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

We may not be able to avoid setting up idols for ourselves as we struggle to understand and describe God; but we have to have the humility, as God’s people, to acknowledge and to discard those idols and images when we catch a better glimpse—or a different glimpse—of who God is and how God is working in the world.

The second thing I think we can glean from this passage is about trust—trusting in God’s leadership, God’s revelation, and God’s provision. Scripture tells us that the people of Israel in the Sinai wilderness are impatient, restless, and afraid because Moses “delayed to come down from the mountain” and they “did not know what had become of him.” They’ve lost sight of the fact that it wasn’t Moses, but God who delivered them from slavery and brought them up out of Egypt.

The Israelites have also lost sight of the fact that the God who delivered them from slavery hasn’t really gone anywhere--he is still there with them. God has provided manna from heaven to assuage their hunger, and even as the Israelites pout and agitate for their golden calf God is working, just a ways up the mountain with Moses, providing guidance, and comfort, and principles for living their common life together as God’s people.

Even as his people betray him, God is working to lead them, to reveal himself to them, and to provide for them. God loves us, is faithful to us, and is reaching out to us even when we turn our backs on him. That’s something we can trust.

So, humility. And trust. Those are two things we can hold on to as we try to know God authentically, to worship God truthfully, and to live as God’s people in the world.

There’s something else, too, that I think we can glean from today’s scripture readings—and I’m not really sure how to say it best, so I’ll just try and you can tell me if I’ve succeeded and it makes sense to you.

It seems to me that we—in our post 9/11 world—with all the best intentions in the world—have participated in setting up an idol—an image that we worship, that keeps us from living as God’s people in the world-- fully free, fully redeemed, fully infused with God’s grace. And that idol is—the notion of safety.

We seem to have this idea these days that safety is a right; that we all should be safe, from everything, all the time. We should be safe from terrorists. From bombs. From oil spills. From disease. From injury. From abuse. From emotional distress. From death even.

This belief in the ideal of safety—or maybe I should say the idol of safety—is an undercurrent that seems to run beneath everything we say and everything we do, as individuals and as a society—whether it’s making foreign policy, adjudicating legal cases, considering what medicines and treatments we want to pursue, deciding where we live, or who our friends should be.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not wishing bombs, oil spills, disease, injury, abuse, emotional distress, or death on anyone—ever, any time. And I certainly do believe in the ideal of safety.

But here’s how safety becomes an idol for us: when safety becomes the value that determines our every action and reaction and emotion and commitment; when our desire for safety trumps love, or trust, or respect, or hope; when our desire for safety keeps us from talking to people, reaching out to others, working to ease another’s pain; when our need for safety prompts us to hate, to scorn, to betray, to vandalize or to burn; when being safe means more to us than being authentic people of God.

In today’s passage from Exodus, the Israelites set up their golden calf precisely because they want to feel safe. It’s risky business being out there in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land; it’s risky business being a free people; it’s risky business following a God you can’t see or touch. But that place of risk is exactly where they’re supposed to be. That place of risk is exactly where God has led them to--where they encounter God--and where God reveals himself to them.

If we had time to look at our gospel passage for today, I might point out that the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep in the wilderness to go after one that is lost isn’t pursuing a strategy that any of us would consider safe. Wouldn’t it be safer to just cut your losses and focus on keeping the 99 together and out of danger? One out of 99—isn’t that an acceptable loss? Pursuing the one at the expense of the safety of the 99, or at the expense of yourself is a strategy of risk.

There’s nothing safe about seeking and searching—about reaching out, extending oneself, exploring the different or the unknown. There’s nothing safe about loving God or loving our neighbor as ourselves.

And looking at the bigger picture of the Gospels, there was nothing safe about Jesus’ life in the midst of humanity, his association with sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors, his defiance of religious and political authority figures, and his criminal’s death on the cross. And there was nothing safe about the lives of the saints and sinners who followed him and endured prison, torture, and martyrdom for the sake of faith in Christ—except, of course, for the ultimate safety offered to them, and to us, in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and in his redeeming promise of eternal life in the presence of God.

Today’s scriptures remind us how easy it is to let impatience, or fear, or any of a number of golden calves, distract us from knowing and experiencing, and following, the God Who Is.

Today’s scriptures remind us that being God’s people involves humility—and trust—and the willingness to take the risk of loving, of reaching out, of following God into the wilderness and into freedom.

Today’s scriptures remind us that not even our own safety can trump our walk as God’s people and our work as Christians in the world--and that our only true safety is to be found in God’s presence, whether it is God’s presence here in this life, or God’s nearer presence in the eternal life to come.

Amen.

A Face In the Crowd

2010-03-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached for Palm Sunday on March 28, 2010 at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. The day's Gospel reading was John 12: 12-16.

What’s the biggest crowd you’ve ever been in? As I think back on my own life experiences, I would have to say that the biggest crowd I’ve ever been in was in Boston in the mid 1980’s, when I went to one of those Fourth of July Boston Pops concerts on the Esplanade in front of the Hatch Shell—the one where they play the 1812 overture with cannons, and then follow up with fireworks. It was already crowded when we got to the Esplanade early in the morning and spread out our blanket—and by concert time some 12 hours later—8:30 pm—I was just one of about 500,000 people waiting for the festivities to begin.

I bet some of you have stories that would put that one to shame. Maybe you’ve been in Times Square for New Year’s eve, or in New Orleans for Mardi Gras,—or maybe you were in Paris on VE Day in 1945, or listening to Martin Luther King in Washington, DC in 1963, or in London for Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.

Or maybe the biggest crowd you’ve ever experienced was somewhat closer to home—a basketball game at the Rose Quarter, or the Rose Festival Parade, or a political rally at Waterfront Park.

How do you feel when you’re in a crowd? Are you thrilled? Are you energized? Are you comfortable? Do you feel powerful? Do you feel claustrophobic? Do you feel confident? Or are you afraid?

In today’s gospel reading, as well as all the ceremony and festivity of this day, Palm Sunday, we as readers and listeners and believers are not only brought together as a people in worship—but we are also brought together as participants in the sacred story—as members of the celebratory crowd that surrounds Jesus with waving palms, and shouts of “Hosanna!”

The word “liturgy”—the word we use for the order of worship itself—comes from the greek word “leiturgia,” meaning “work of the people”—and our work for today is to be part of the story—to celebrate this miracle-working Messiah who arrives in triumph.

Like the palm-waving crowds lining the Jerusalem road, straining to catch a glimpse of this superstar riding into town, we know who Jesus is, and we just can’t contain our excitement. Jesus will be our leader. We know he will be our savior. We know he will embrace his own power, rescue us from Roman occupation and restore us to our rightful place before God and in the world. We know he will do great things, and he’s going to do them for us.

And today, just for today, we are confident enough and courageous enough to dance in the aisles and proclaim the new reality we know is coming: “Hooray for Jesus! He is the King of Israel! God bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

But if you’re following the story in the gospel of John, you know that all of the excitement and celebration of the palm-waving crowd on this day are only a brief respite from the clouds that have been gathering over Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, and the shadows that await him after he enters the city.

The authorities have been plotting to discredit and arrest Jesus almost continuously through John’s gospel, but after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead in Chapter 11, just before the jubilant crowd’s palm parade in chapter 12, the authorities’ plots take a more sinister turn—as John tells us in chapter 11 verse 53, “From that day on, the council started making plans to put Jesus to death.”

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is a celebration—but by entering the city and revealing himself in such a public way, Jesus is making himself a very visible target for those who would arrest him and do him harm. He is also making himself the focus of the crowd’s messianic, political, and revolutionary expectations—high expectations that he will not fulfill in a way they can understand or expect.

Before the week is out, Jesus will be betrayed, and beaten, and bound; and as he stands for judgement before Pilate, the crowd outside—perhaps some of the very same people who danced around with palm branches—will be a street mob, angry and frustrated over unfulfilled expectations, howling “Crucify him! Crucify him!” and demanding his execution.

As we follow the story of Jesus—here in John, and as we come to it in worship throughout this Holy Week leading up to Easter—I think we have to acknowledge that if we see ourselves as part of the jubilant crowd, we can also, with a terrible convicting honesty, know that we have it in us to be part of the angry mob as well.

Could that be us, there in the streets of Jerusalem, one moment celebrating the arrival of the Messiah, and the next moment demanding the execution of the lamb of God? The gospel of John thinks so, and part of the ironic power of the Palm Sunday story is the way it requires us to hold up the mirror of truth and see ourselves in it—see our fickle, and frustrated, and fearful selves as we really would have been, and perhaps even now as we really are.

I’ve been thinking about the power of crowds—and the power of mobs—quite a bit these past few weeks as I’ve watched the health care debate and advocates both for and against the health care bill kindle debate and discussion—and also incite anger, and fear, and polarization.

I’ve seen some really ugly things happen this week—people getting spit on and called names—acts of violence, death threats—and I will confess to you that I have had some really unpleasant moments in my own heart as I read postings and blogs and heard comments from old and dear friends of mine that revealed their thinking on this issue is different from mine—and I’ve been so tempted to just cut off all those people I disagree with—“well, if that’s the way you think, we can’t be friends!”.

I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to get polarized, to see issues and relationships in terms of winning and losing; I’ve been thinking about all the times I’ve been right about something and all the other times I’ve been wrong. I’ve been thinking about the crowd that first celebrated Jesus and then demanded his death, and how we are all so much like them, and how it is so hard—when we stand at a liminal moment, a doorway moment between one event and the next, between one reality and the next, between one stage of life and the next, between one relationship and the next, between one destiny and the next—how it is so hard, standing in that doorway, to see what lies ahead, to understand it—and how important it is that we choose how we react—that we choose how we treat one another—that we choose to trust the future to God.

The crowd that celebrated Jesus with palms when he entered Jerusalem knew what they wanted—a Savior and a King—they were so angry and disappointed when they didn’t get it that they turned into a mob and turned their backs on Jesus.

What the crowd didn’t understand was that God’s heart, God’s wisdom, God’s providence was bigger than they could possibly imagine; that what God was accomplishing through Jesus wasn’t just the salvation of a person, or a people, a city or a country, but the salvation of the world itself.

Remember that saying, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it? Despite their frustration, their fickleness, their fearfulness, and their fury--this crowd got so much more than they were asking for, more than they could ever have imagined—forgiveness, redemption, eternal life and joy--and so did we, and our children, and our children’s children, to the end of days.

How hard it is, when we are in a liminal moment—a doorway moment between one stage of life and the next—it is so hard, standing in that doorway, to see what lies ahead, and to understand it. John’s gospel tells us that we can trust the future to God—and that in those moments of frustration, of fearfulness, of fury—it matters most how we treat one another.

Imagining ourselves as part of the crowd on Palm Sunday, and as part of the mob on Good Friday, helps us to understand that neither of those things—crowd or mob—is who Jesus calls us to be. Instead, we can look again to the gospel of John—to the next chapter, when Jesus gathers the disciples around him and bends to wash their feet—to see the kind of relationship Jesus calls us to have with him and with each other.

Jesus washes the disciples feet and then he tells them, “I am giving you a new command. You must love each other, just as I have loved you. If you love each other, everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

Jesus calls us to be not members of a crowd, but members of a community.

At a time of social upheaval and unrest not too far in our past, Rev Martin Luther King spoke time and time again about the potential for non-violence to create something he called “The Beloved Community.” Dr. King said,

"Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight fire with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the problem."

Members of a crowd can keep score. Members of a crowd can be winners or losers, can dominate and punish, hurt and exploit. Members of a crowd can indulge in fear-mongering and one-upmanship and hate. Members of a crowd can give tit for tat and blackmail and payola.

Members of a community, on the other hand, know each other; are invested in each other; are honest with each other; hold each other accountable; live with each other; serve each other; comfort each other. Members of a community love each other and work together. Members of a community trust one another and trust in God.

We as a church are called to be not a crowd but a community. We are called not to jostle one another for position or privilege but to wash each other’s feet, to learn from one another, to pray for each other, to see the face of God in one another.

We are called not to compete with each another but to love one another; not to dominate each other but to serve one another; not to stir up fear in each other but to build up hope in one another. We are called to join hands with one another and to trust in God. And in living this way we not only claim the gospel promises for ourselves, but we proclaim them for others. “If you love each other,” Jesus says, “everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

Like people throughout the ages, we live in turbulent times. As we navigate our own stormy waters--as we travel into the gathering shadows of Holy Week—let us live and let us worship not as a crowd but as a community—as a Beloved Community—serving one another and loving one another and putting our trust in God.

Amen.

It's Not All In Your Head

2010-01-20T21:10:00.000-08:00

This sermon was preached on January 17, 2010, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. Texts for the day were Luke 18: 9-14 and 1 Thessalonians 5: 12-18.

What a lot of praying—and thinking about praying—we’ve been doing lately. There’s the weekly “Teach Us To Pray” class. There’s the 100 Days of Prayer project that many in this congregation are embarked on. There’s this sermon series on prayer, of which this is the second installment. There are the heartfelt prayers we’ve lifted up to God as a congregation during this winter season as we celebrated births here and far away; as we mourned loved ones who have died; as we gave support and comfort to those in our church and neighborhood who have suffered unemployment, poverty, or illness; and as we pondered the future of our own community of faith. In the ecumenical community, tomorrow marks the beginning of the annual observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

And I know that during this past week all of us have been in prayer for the people of Haiti, who have suffered so much in their history and are suffering unbearable losses and pain as a result of Tuesday’s earthquake. When we look upon the horrors of this far off disaster, when our eyes are wet and our hearts are breaking, when we so much want to help brothers and sisters in need and we feel like there’s nothing much we can do, we pray. Prayer has always been, and must be now, our guide and companion during times like these.

There are so many times when prayer seems like the simplest, most natural thing in the world. Overcome with love, or fear, or grief, or weariness, we put our head in our hands--we fall to our knees—or leap to our feet. We bow our heads—or lift up our arms. In hushed and reverent tones—or shouts of joy—or screams of anguish—we cry out to God.

There are so many times when turning to God in prayer seems like the simplest, most natural thing in the world. And yet, sometimes, prayer does sometimes present us—at least it presents me-- with some difficulties.

Twenty five years ago, when I was just beginning to hear my call to the ministry, I was very, very nervous about prayer—about my own prayer life, which I had a sneaking suspicion didn’t measure up to the ministerial gold standard. I’d never been much of a pray-er.

Praying seemed so easy for some people--but I was very, very nervous. I was particularly nervous about praying in front of people or leading a group in prayer. I was afraid that I wouldn’t do it right. I was afraid that I’d stumble over my words, or repeat myself, or forget what I was saying—that I’d ask for something inappropriate, or in the wrong way—that all my prayer inexperience would be revealed for all to see.

Or worse, I was afraid that I would open my mouth and nothing would come out—that I would have nothing at all to say, and that there would be long, embarrassing silences. And how could I be a minister, and hope to lead a congregation, if I didn’t know what to say to God—and how to say it? And what if my prayers were so bad, so awkward, that God Himself was offended?

Am I alone in that? Do you all sometimes feel like that too? I am imagining that some of you have experienced those obstacles—and some of you might be experiencing them right now. I am thinking particularly about those of us who are participating in the 100 days of prayer and praying together in triads—scheduling prayer time, taking turns praying, voicing out loud your hopes, dreams, and desires of the heart.

I can imagine that you might be pretty self-conscious in a situation like that. Maybe you’re together in groups with people you hardly know, or people who are very different from you; or people you’ve been feuding with for the past 50 years. Maybe you’re with people who have more—or less—experience at this Christianity thing than you have, or whose ideas of how we should pray, what we should pray for, or what we want from God, don’t match with yours at all.

How do we pray? What do we say? How do we say it? What do we ask for? And how do we know we’re doing it right?

The scriptures, as you know, are full of advice about who and what to pray for and where and how to pray.

In our gospel reading for this morning, taken from Luke, we hear Jesus tell a parable about acceptable and unacceptable ways of praying, describing with favor the humble prayer of a tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”—and declaring that “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Elsewhere in Luke, of course, when the disciples beg Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray,” Jesus advises them, "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” And this, what we call the Lord’s Prayer, is the granddaddy of all Christian prayers, the heart and the backbone of our prayer life at home and in worship.

Our scripture lesson today from Thessalonians also brings us prayer advice, this time from the apostle Paul. The letter to the Thessalonians, reflects Paul’s intense relationship with the Christian community in Thessalonica and reveals his advice to that community at a time of difficult challenges, both external and internal.

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul exhorts the community to “pray without ceasing” and to “be at peace among yourselves” – listing for them things that make for peace.

One thing I find interesting about this passage is that its directive to “pray without ceasing” is only one of a long list of activities that, for Paul, characterize the practice of Christianity and show forth the presence of Christ in the midst of the community.

Prayer is one strand of authentic Christian practice. In Thessalonians, we see that strand of prayer gathered together with other strands that witness to Christ’s presence--being patient, rejoicing always, giving thanks, helping the weak—and woven together to form a strong rope that defines and undergirds the community.

For Paul, prayer is completely integrated into all aspects of the authentic Christian life; prayer is not passive but active—it is an action that powers, pervades, and proclaims that the Thessalonian community is living out “the will of God in Jesus Christ.”

Another interesting aspect of this passage is that Paul’s directive to “pray without ceasing,” and his calling prayer one of the things that “makes for peace,” shows the Thessalonians, and us, that prayer is a powerful resource for Christians in community who seek, who grope, who yearn for unity with one another and with the world. Paul makes clear here that unity—agreement on doctrine, or purpose--isn’t a prerequisite for prayer—but that conversely, prayer is a prerequisite for unity.

In other words, we don’t pray together and for each other because we are a community. We pray together and for each other because we want to be a community. Paul’s words in Thessalonians assure us that in the spiritual practice of praying together and for each other--we become a community.

According to Oxford professor and priest Jane Shaw, one of our greatest worship resources—the Anglican Book of Common Prayer—came to being out of this notion of forming a community around a shared practice of prayer. Dr. Shaw notes that the goal and the hope of Thomas Cranmer, author and compiler of the Book of Common Prayer, was to

". . . create a prayer book that . . . all (worshippers) could and would use. As he was writing his prayer book in the 1530s and 40s, he looked across to central Europe and saw that people were killing each other because of what they had to confess – mostly about how they were saved or what they believed about the nature of the Eucharist, whether it was a mere memorial, bread and wine or transformed into the body and blood of Christ. He wanted to try and avoid that sort of confessionalism and bloodshed. He hoped that everyone could just show up and say together, in their own language, common prayers for common sins, common prayers for common thanksgivings, common prayers for common praise – ‘common’ meaning in this instance ‘shared’.”

Thirdly—let’s talk about what Paul might mean here in Thessalonians when he says “pray without ceasing.” This notion of ceaseless or constant prayer is one Paul returns to over and over again in his writings.

For Paul, authentic prayer means praying “Always” and “unceasingly”; as one scholar has put it, this means that

". . .Prayer is then not merely a part of life which we can conveniently lay aside if something we deem more important comes up; prayer is all of life. Prayer is as essential to our life as breathing. . . .To pray does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things or to spend time with God in contrast to spending time with our family and friends. Rather, to pray means to think and live our entire life in the Presence of God. . . .Our whole life, every act and gesture, even a smile must become a hymn or adoration, an offering, a prayer. We must become prayer--prayer incarnate."

For me, Paul’s idea of “praying without ceasing” opens the door to a whole new way of thinking about prayer. If we think about how to weave ceaseless prayer into the fabric of our lives, it seems to me that the questions about prayer that worry us and make us nervous--How do we pray? What do we say? How do we say it? What do we ask for? How do we know we’re doing it right? And what will other people think?—suddenly become unimportant.

Maybe you have heard the saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. I recently read a variation on this saying, coined, I think, by popular spiritual writer Max Lucado which goes like this: Pray all the time. If necessary, use words.

What if prayers aren’t about the words we say, but about who we are and who we want to be?

What if praying isn’t asking God for something, but about being in God’s presence?

What if prayers aren’t limited to our heads or our mouths, but dwell in our hearts and souls and bodies?

And what if praying isn’t communication with God—but communion with God?

When I was in seminary, and experiencing for the first time the diversity of Christian practices different from my own Presbyterian upbringing, I was introduced to a traditional spiritual discipline and mystical practice from the Orthodox tradition: the Jesus Prayer. Have any of you heard of it?

The Jesus Prayer goes like this: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." It is used, according to Orthodox theologians, “to enter more deeply into the life of prayer and to come to grips with St. Paul's challenge to pray unceasingly . . .The Jesus Prayer is offered as a means of concentration, as a focal point for our inner life.”

Praying the Jesus prayer is deceptively simple. You just say it, those simple words, over and over and over. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." And so on, and so on.

According to those who use this prayer as a spiritual practice, as you begin to speak the words of the prayer over and over, the words are simply that—words—“a prayer of the lips, a simple recitation.”

As you say the prayer again and again, you enter a second level of prayer, a deeper level of concentration, a state in which, Orthodox scholars tell us, we may “pray without distraction”: “the mind is focused upon the words" of the Prayer, "speaking them as if they were our own."

The ultimate goal of praying the Jesus prayer is to reach the third and final level of prayer in which the words you are saying are no longer the content of the prayer. This is a level of prayer which is not intended to transcend the body, but to unite the body and the soul in a state of mystical experience called “prayer of the heart.”

At this stage prayer is no longer something you do but who you are. It is part of the rhythms of your body; your heart beats to it, your breath moves to it; you are the prayer, you live the prayer, and as you live and move, you are praying without ceasing.

Now is this really possible? I don’t know. But the idea of praying without ceasing, moving past the words and becoming a living prayer, of attaining that physical union with God, is a powerful one that has inspired many people to try this practice, and to write about it.

What if prayers aren’t about the words we say, but about who we are and who we want to be?

What if praying isn’t asking God for something, but about being in God’s presence?

What if prayers aren’t limited to our heads or our mouths, but dwell in our hearts and souls and bodies?

And what if praying isn’t communication with God—but communion with God?

What other ways could we find to pray that get us out of our normal patterns, out of our heads, out of our dependence on the words we say and how we say them?

Our Presbyterian tradition (believe it or not!) offers us some ideas about praying without words—and here I’m quoting from our own Presbyterian Book of Order:

One may wait upon God in attentive and expectant silence.

One may meditate upon God’s gifts, God’s actions, God’s Word, and God’s character.

One may contemplate God, moving beyond words and thoughts to communion of one’s spirit with the Spirit of God.

One may draw near to God in solitude.

One may take on an individual discipline of enacted prayer through dance, physical exercise, music, or other expressive activity as a response to grace.

One may enact prayer as a public witness through keeping a vigil, through deeds of social responsibility or protest, or through symbolic acts of disciplined service.

What ways can you think of to bring prayer without words into your prayer life at home, in worship, and in the 100 Days of Prayer?

Will you walk a labyrinth? Attend a protest? Do an art project? Knit or quilt together? Spend time prayerfully gardening with your hands and your hearts working God’s good earth? Will you hold hands in attentive silence? You’re a creative group. I can’t wait to hear your ideas.

Pray without ceasing. If necessary, use words.

We’ve been praying a lot lately. My hope, and my challenge, for all of us, is that in all our prayers--easy and difficult, spoken and silent, wordy and wordless--we might know the inspiration, and hope, and transformation of an encounter with the living God—and that we might use all our resources and traditions and creativity to know Christ, to inform our faith, and to form us into a community.

Amen.

Stuck In The Middle With You

2009-06-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached on June 28, 2009, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the day was John 5: 1-9. For the children's message, we talked about the story from Winnie-the-Pooh in which Pooh gets stuck in the doorway to Rabbit's house (having eaten so much honey)--and I referred to it during the sermon--so a portion of that story is reproduced here.

"So (Pooh) started to climb out of the hole. He pulled with his front paws, and pushed with his back paws, and in a little while his nose was in the open again ... and then his ears ... and then his front paws ... and then his shoulders ... and then-'Oh, help!' said Pooh, 'I'd better go back,' 'Oh bother!' said Pooh, 'I shall have to go on.' 'I can't do either!' said Pooh, 'Oh help and bother!' ...

Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn't because he was so tightly stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said: 'Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?' So for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end... and in between Bear felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer. And at the end of the week Christopher Robin said, 'Now!'

So he took hold of Pooh's front paws and Rabbit took hold of Christopher Robin, and all Rabbit's friends and relations took hold of Rabbit, and they all pulled together ... And for a long time Pooh only said 'Ow!' ... And 'Oh!' ... And then, all of a sudden he said 'Pop!' just if a cork were coming out of a bottle. And Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all relations went head-over-heels backwards ...and on top of them came Winnie-the-Pooh free! "

A. A. Milne

Well, here we are, beginning the fifth chapter of John, and already we are beginning to see the Gospel writer introducing a different mood into his narrative. The first four chapters have been rich with signs and scriptures, prophecies and callings, miracles and metaphors.

We’ve seen Jesus’ divinity announced by John the Baptist and we’ve heard Jesus call the first disciples. We’ve seen Jesus turn water into wine at Cana, drive the moneychangers out of the temple in Jerusalem, and heal the son of a royal official of Capernaum. We’ve seen Jesus reach out to Nicodemus the Pharisee and the Samaritan woman at the well, and we’ve heard Jesus teach about living water and being born of the Spirit. And with these signs, and miracles, and metaphors, Jesus has proclaimed his identity as the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the World—and he has drawn many of the people around him to faith.

When we reach the fifth chapter of John, we begin to become aware that, as Jesus the Light of the World reveals himself more and more clearly, there are clouds looming on the horizon—clouds of opposition and persecution that begin here in chapter 5 and gather strength and force in chapters 6 and 7—so much so that, in chapter 7, the religious authorities have already reached the boiling point and sent temple police to arrest him.

Our reading for today from chapter 5, the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda, marks a turning point in John’s story, the moment when the Pharisees decide that Jesus must be stopped. From chapter 5 onward, the religious authorities begin to understand just who and what Jesus is claiming to be—and they are determined to do away with him. As time goes on, their opposition to him only intensifies.

But that’s not where we’re headed today. Today, we’re going to focus on the miracle.

In today’s reading we see Jesus, in Jerusalem for a festival, approach the pool of Bethesda. Jesus sees many people lying around this pool—the gospel tells us, “many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed’—all hoping to find a cure for their ailments in the healing waters. Jesus focuses all of his attention on one man—a man who, we are told, has been ill for thirty-eight years, and asks him what at first glance seems to be an obvious question: “Do you want to be made well?”

Instead of answering Jesus with a yes or a no, the man begins to make excuses: “Sir I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me”—and I know it doesn’t say this directly in the text, but it certainly implies it—that not only has the man been disabled for 38 years, but he’s been sitting beside the pool for 38 years--trying to get into the water for 38 years, and never making it to the front of the line—for 38 years. Over and over, again and again, for 38 years, this man has been doing the only thing he knows to do in pursuit of healing—and over and over again, for 38 years, the healing just hasn’t happened.

So I see this as a Dr. Phil moment. Imagine Dr. Phil, the afternoon TV psychologist, leaning out over the pool, fixing his eyes on this disabled man, and saying in that inimitable Texas drawl, “So son, how’s that workin’ for you?”

The disabled man may want to be healed. But what he’s doing about it just isn’t working. He’s doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result—insanity, right? He’s stuck—stuck in a system, stuck in a groove, stuck in old patterns, stuck in the past. Stuck, like Pooh in the rabbit hole, a "wedged bear in great tightness."

Maybe this man thinks he’s doing the only right thing in the only right way; but certainly, he can’t imagine or envision any other way a different way of thinking, or doing, or being—any other way out of his dilemma. His paralysis is not only physical—it’s mental, and emotional, and spiritual as well.

In fact, he seems to meet all the criteria for being “stuck” itemized by one personal trainer I read about—and the personal trainer was talking, of course, about being “stuck” in your process of diet and exercise, but it’s a pretty good description of our man by the pool nevertheless: “ Your energy drops dramatically; You suddenly become undecided, confused as to your next step; Now, playing the game becomes more important than achieving results.”

That certainly seems about right, doesn’t it? Especially that part about playing the game being more important than the results. The man by the pool seems much more committed to the process of getting to the water than he is to the result of being healed.

That place by the pool of Bethesda isn’t so different from the world we’re living in right now. And aren’t we all now, or haven’t we all been in the past, “stuck”—physically, emotionally, mentally—or spiritually?

I think it would be very hard right now not to feel stuck—and if you’re not, I congratulate you! I feel stuck every time I turn on the TV or open a newspaper. It is very hard to see the American automobile industry floundering. It is very hard to see newspapers going bankrupt and folding up. It is awful to see banks fail, and homes foreclosed, and jobs lost, and our wars go on and on. It is hurtful to see churches getting smaller. It is harrowing to be stuck in relationships that stagnate, or to watch someone you love sink into dementia, or to flounder in the grip of unremitting depression.

Or maybe, if we look deep within ourselves, our stuckness is really a stuckness in behaviors or ways of thinking that are easy, compelling, and destructive—or maybe, like Pooh with his little "honey problem," we’re stuck in the grip of sin, floundering around with something we know is wrong, we know needs to change, we know needs to be healed, and yet—we just can’t find a way to stop.

Whatever our issues may be at any moment of our lives, it is excruciating to feel the world changing shape around us, and to feel that the rules and relationships and institutions which have served us so well in the past might just be becoming irrelevant. We may want to heal ourselves, our culture, our economy—maybe find a new direction for our church—but we feel like we don’t have the tools—like the disabled man at Bethesda pool, and indeed all the people gathered by that pool to compete for healing--we’re so stuck in what is that we can’t imagine or envision what could be.

I recently read a wonderful article, an interview with a professor from Harvard Business School named Timothy Butler, called “Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse.”

In the article, Professor Butler—who is also a psychologist, psychotherapist, and career development counselor-- talks about this experience we all face from time to time in our lives—this sensation of “feeling stuck”—as a time of crisis for us, and as a time of opportunity. In fact, he says, “Without it we cannot grow, change—and—eventually—live more fully in a larger world.”

Dr. Butler calls this time of “being stuck” a time of “impasse.” He says, “The meaning of an impasse is a request for us to change our way of thinking about ourselves and our place in the world. At impasse our model—our cognitive map of life and of the way we’re going to fit into it—is no longer working. Continuing with our usual approaches to problem-solving will not help us break through. Impasse means that we need to change our whole approach to the problem. We need to change our repertoire of ways in which we approach life’s challenges.”

In our gospel story, the disabled man at the pool is at an impasse. He is stuck; his map of life and the way he’s going to solve his problems is no longer working. He needs to change his whole approach to the problem.

And sure enough, someone—someone named Jesus --reaches out to the disabled man—across the void of impasse-- and gives him something new to try—a completely new approach—something undoubtedly out of his comfort zone. “Do you want to be made well?” he asks him. “Stand up, take your mat, and walk.”

Now, this is a man who can’t even get himself to the edge of the pool. Jesus tells him to do something unexpected, impossible, beyond his imagination, and ours—and he even does it on the Sabbath, a time when work of any kind—even a healing like this—would have been against the religious law.

And therein we have the miracle. Jesus tells the man to get up and walk—and at once the man is made well, and he takes up his mat, and he walks. Jesus’ miraculous and gracious intervention changes the man’s whole approach to his problem, sets him free to live more fully in a larger world, and transforms the time of impasse into a time of redemption and grace.

Jesus’ healing of the man by the Bethesda pool shows us that despite getting stuck in old patterns of being and doing; stuck physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually; that we need to face those times of impasse with new eyes and new ears, with a willingness to leave behind patterns and processes that just aren’t working any more, and with attention to new ways of interpreting and ordering our life experience.

Jesus’ healing of the man by the Bethesda pool shows us that it is Jesus’ presence, and power, that can make us whole: that can push, or pull us, out of the depths of sin, or hopelessness, or despair--and that we need to be alert, awake, and attentive to his presence and his voice as he calls out to us.

By bringing healing to the man by the Bethesda pool in an unconventional and unexpected way, Jesus challenges our conventional understandings of what the world is like, and how the world is ordered, what God is like, and how God chooses to be active in the world. Jesus shows us that new possibilities for understanding the world and our place in it exist, and that the way to these new possibilities is in him and through him.

Like the man by the Bethesda pool, sometimes when we’re stuck—whether we’re stuck in emotional distress, in physical need, in sin, or some combination of the above--, it isn’t tradition, or routine, or persistence that’s going to get us moving again. Sometimes, when we’re stuck, we have to give up our reliance on the past, and our investment in the safe and the familiar, and take a leap of faith.

Sometimes, when we’re stuck, what we really need to do is to take Jesus’ hand and trust in him. Or we need to see in the outstretched hands of our community--pushing us, pulling us, prodding us--the outstretched hand of God.

In his article, Dr. Butler talks about that time of being stuck, that time of impasse, as an opportunity to look at our situation with new eyes and ears; an opportunity to listen, to begin to go deeper into the self; and an opportunity to deepen our insight into the nature of who we are. “Each impasse we face,” he says, “is an opportunity to look a little deeper and understand better what works for us. The more we know ourselves, the less we are thrown by the next impasse.”

And I am pretty sure Dr. Butler wouldn’t mind if I added just one more thought here: that each impasse we face is also a spiritual opportunity--an opportunity for a deepening of our insight into the nature of God.

Pooh certainly takes the time for some spiritual reflection when he asks for "a sustaining book, such as would help and comfort a wedged bear in great tightness." And who helps Pooh to reflect, and grow--or in his case, shrink!--and then to be popped free of his great tightness? His companions and friends, of course--his fellowship. You could even say that Pooh turns his time of impasse into a time of redemption and grace.

The miracle at the Bethesda pool shows us in a powerful way that the God we worship--the Christ we know—reaches out to us when we’re stuck, calls us out of our sin, and pain and paralysis, and—if we choose to take his hand and believe in him--both sets us free to live more fully in a larger world, and transforms the time of impasse into a time of redemption and grace.

The miracle shows us that God is always calling us out of ourselves and into something new. It brings us confidence that, in partnership with God in Christ, we can discover new, unprecedented, creative ways of knowing and worshipping God-- organizing the life of faith and organizing our lives in faith—and bringing God’s kingdom to reality in our church and in our world.

And most of all, Jesus’ healing of the man by the Bethesda pool shows us that, ultimately, it is Jesus’ presence, and power, that makes us whole: that can push, or pull us, out of the depths of sin, or hopelessness, or despair—restore our relationships—and bring us the healing, the redemption, and the new life we seek.

As people of faith, let us know in our hearts the confidence promised by the gospel. Let us leave our stuckness, our sins and systems behind and get up, take up our mat, and walk. Let us take Christ’s hand, follow him out of the impasse of the past, and into the graceful future of life in him.

Amen.

Hello, It's Me

2009-06-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached on June 21, 2009, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. There were two texts for the day--Exodus 3: 13-15 and John 4: 19-26.

For those of you who were here last Sunday, our destination this morning in John’s gospel—chapter 4—is familiar territory. We spent some time in last week’s sermon looking at the first part of this chapter, listening in as Jesus, resting beside a well on his way back to Galilee, encounters a Samaritan woman and asks her for a drink of water. When she wonders aloud that he would choose to speak or interact with a Samaritan such as she, Jesus tells her, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

But that isn’t the end of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman—in fact, Jesus talks at greater length to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in any of the gospels. Our scripture reading today continues their conversation as they move from the subject of water—and living water—to a discussion of right worship, which we know from Biblical scholarship was a source of conflict and bad feelings between the Samaritans and the Jewish people of that time.

The woman opens the topic, telling Jesus that “Our ancestors”—the Samaritans—“worshipped on this mountain”--a place called Mount Gerishim in Samaria—“but you”—the Jews—“say that the place the people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

It’s a seemingly unresolvable religious conflict between their peoples: but Jesus surprises the Samaritan woman when, as so often seems to happen in John’s gospel, Jesus changes the ground rules and lifts their conversation from concrete physical place to expansive spiritual concept: “God is spirit,” Jesus tells her, “and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Worship in spirit and truth.

So what kind of worship is that? Do Jesus’ words, directed at the Samaritan woman and her faith community so long ago, have anything to do with us? We’re not Samaritans, we’re Christians—and not only Christians, we’re Presbyterians. We’re already believers. We’re already here sitting in church on Sunday morning showing, as my mother in law would say, “whose side we’re on.” We’re reading Scripture, and singing hymns, and hearing a sermon, and talking and thinking about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know how to do church. We’ve got this spirit and truth thing down!

And of course we do. But.

I know that you as a congregation have been in dialogue recently about your ministry, what the future holds for this church, and how God is leading you to serve him and the community. It’s an opportunity to speak a prophetic word, to explore new things, to take a leap of faith, to use your holy imaginations in co-creation with Christ.

I also know that for all of us times of transition and change—even if that transition and change is barely visible on the horizon—can be deeply unsettling, and even frightening—as we imagine—or fail to imagine—a new reality, and wonder about our place in it.

And this experience isn’t new, or unique to this congregation in this place and this time--Portland, Oregon in 2009. It’s an experience that has faced every Christian community, in every place, in every time that Christians have gathered together. In a very real way we could say that every moment in our congregational life is—and has been—and will be—and perhaps should be—a moment of change, a moment of challenge, a critical moment on which the future of our fellowship turns.

At this particular moment in our community of faith, it seems to me that we, like so many other Christian communities before and after us, can look to Jesus’ words about worshipping “in spirit and in truth” to guide us, to form us, to reassure us, and to challenge us as we ponder and strategize and dream together about ministry, and worship, and being church—now and into the future.

Let me hold up for you this morning a few of the things I see in this passage, and in the concept of worshipping in spirit and in truth—a few of the things that speak to us where we are today and illuminate what is—for us as a congregation and a community—the very thing that makes of us a church—that makes us an authentic community of Christian faith.

Pastor Greg was kind enough to give me a wonderful book on the Gospel of John, called “Written That You May Believe” by new testament scholar Sandra Schneiders. One of the things she says characterizes this gospel is that, in John, there are no “second generation” Christians—people who never meet Jesus for themselves. Time after time in this gospel, the telling of the good news and the hearing of good news is always followed up with an authentic personal encounter with Jesus.

We see this in our gospel passage for today; the Samaritan woman forsakes her water jar, goes into the Samaritan village and tells the Samaritans there about Jesus; but they come to belief only after they come to Jesus and see and hear him for themselves. In verse 42, we read that the Samaritans say to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” As John envisions it, it is the personal encounter between us and Jesus that calls us into relationship and brings us to faith; and it is in the context of that relationship that we find the truest expression of worship in spirit and in truth.

So that’s the first word for us this morning. Worship in spirit and in truth happens in the context of our relationship with Jesus. It is the result of our personal encounter with him—not only that one first, blinding moment of personal salvation but an ongoing, unfolding, living, growing, covenantal revelation that continues to touch us, and move us, and guide us, and companion us, all the days of our individual lives and all the days of our life together as a congregation.

The second element of today’s text that I’d like to lift up for your consideration—and the element I believe is really the heart of what it means to worship in spirit and in truth—is found in verse 26, when Jesus tells the Samaritan woman something amazing. He says, “I am he”—incredibly, entrusting his heretofore hidden identity as the Messiah to this chance-met Samaritan woman, persuading her to abandon her errand and her water jar, and sending her forth to proclaim Christ to her people.

Jesus says, “I am he.” It is the first of what we call the “I am” statements that fill the gospel of John: “I am the gate,” “I am the good shepherd,” “I am the way,” and “I am the vine.” But more than that. Jesus isn’t just saying in some kind of obscure way, “Hi, it’s me, nice to meet you.” In the original Greek text this phrase is “ego eimi”—and we could translate it as simply “I am.”

“I am.” That’s right, it’s strikingly similar to God’s revelation of himself to Moses in our first reading this morning from the book of Exodus: where Moses, astonished by the bush that burns and is not consumed, says to God, “What shall I tell the Israelites is the name of the God of our ancestors?” and God replies “I am who I am. Tell them ‘I am’ sends you.”

When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman “I am,” he is not only claiming to be the promised Messiah. He is claiming to be nothing less than God himself. He is revealing himself as the God of Moses and our ancestors—and he is also revealing himself as the God who calls all people, even the Samaritans—into relationship with him.

Jesus is telling the Samaritan woman that the first, most critical element of worshipping in spirit and in truth is not the “where” of worship—or indeed the when, or even the how-- but “whom.”

True worship is not achieved by doing the right things in the right way, saying the right words, singing the right songs. True worship is not achieved by doing at all. It is achieved by being; it is achieved by drawing near to God, experiencing God face to face and heart to heart, entering into relationship with the One Who Is, in whose presence we can be who we truly are.

One of my hospice chaplain friends tells the story of a man who had everything going for him. Let’s call him Dan. Dan had a prestigious job as a top administrator of a computer company in Silicon Valley, a seven figure income, a beautiful, palatial home. He had a Mercedes, a Porsche, and a Jaguar. Dan’s wife was beautiful and loving, and his kids were high achievers. And on top of all those other things, Dan was a gifted musician. He was a genius with the guitar, played guitar like Eric Clapton.

And then Dan got a very cruel disease, ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. And everything changed.
Dan became progressively paralyzed and weak. He lost the ability to drive the Mercedes, the Porsche, and the Jaguar. As time went on, he couldn’t work. He lost his income and his home. He lost the ability to hug his kids, be intimate with his wife, or even go to the bathroom by himself. And the worst moment of all, the very last straw, came when Dan’s son put his beloved guitar into his arms and Dan couldn’t play it any more—even worse, it slipped out of his hands to the floor.

This man told his hospice chaplain that if he could have taken his own life at that moment, he would have. He had lost everything that had once defined him as a person. He couldn’t “do” anything any more—he couldn’t even move. He could just lie there in the bed. That was his existence, and he was in an existential crisis.

And yet. All that time and space of lying in the bed, unable to move, eventually brought Dan an amazing revelation. He had lost everything that had defined him—and yet—he realized that he was still there. The awful and devastating disease made him understand that he—Dan—the real Dan, the essence of Dan, the authentic Dan, you could even call it the soul of Dan—was more than the sum of his roles, responsibilities, and actions in the world. He was truly and deeply and simply himself. If you will, he had become spirit. He had become “The Dan Who Is.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about yourself that way, thought about who you are—who you really are—I know I don’t think about it very often. It’s a little scary to think about, actually. Who am I, down deep, if I’m not mom, or daughter, or wife, or the one who works, or the one who likes romance novels, or the one who eats pie before dinner, or the one who preaches, or the one who drives kids around town.

Who are you--the Terri who is, the George who is, the Pat who is—once you’ve peeled back all the layers of your roles, and responsibilities, and activities—all the layers of the “You who does.” It’s kind of a mystical notion, kind of hard to get your head around.

But John is a pretty mystical gospel. And I’m pretty convinced that when the “You who is” comes together with the “God who is”—that this coming together in relationship of our authentic selves with God’s authentic self in Christ is worshipping in spirit and in truth as the Gospel of John envisions it.

The coming together of our authentic selves with God’s authentic self is how we can make worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our own lives. And the coming together of our authentic corporate self—“the congregation who is”—with God’s authentic self is how we make worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our congregational life—whatever the words or music we use, whatever the location or circumstance we might find ourselves in, whatever the leadership, whatever the budget, whatever the choices or challenges. When the God who is comes together with the congregation who is—now that’s worship. That’s ministry. That’s the church.

There’s one more aspect of this gospel passage that struck me as I prepared this sermon and that I want to lift up to you today as we consider this notion of worshipping in spirit and truth. And that is, did you notice that the Samaritan woman asks questions? She asks: “How is it that you ask a drink of me?” “Where do you get that living water?” and then, even after meeting Jesus and believing in him, she says to the Samaritans in the form of a question, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

And Jesus doesn’t seem at all threatened or irritated by her questions. On the other hand, he seems to welcome them, and to use her questions to draw her closer to himself.

Meeting Jesus and coming to believe in him does not answer all the Samaritan woman’s questions. It doesn’t stop her from thinking, and wondering, exploring and growing.

Perhaps meeting Jesus, believing in him, and coming into relationship with him, has given her the opportunity, and the confidence, and the curiosity, to keep asking questions. Perhaps it is in the questions—and not the answers-- that she continues to grows closer to the God who is, and comes to know her true authentic self, the Samaritan woman who is. Perhaps this questioning, curious seeking is also a hallmark of worshipping in spirit and in truth.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens in the context of our relationship with Jesus. It is the result of our personal encounter with him—an ongoing, unfolding, living, growing, covenantal revelation that continues to touch us, and move us, and guide us, and companion us, all the days of our life and all the days of our life together as a congregation.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens when the "God who is" encounters the "you who is"; and it is the coming together of our authentic corporate self—“the congregation who is”—with God’s authentic self that makes worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our congregational life—whatever the location or circumstance we might find ourselves in.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens when we are not afraid to be questioning, curious, seeking—knowing that God is not threatened by the questions, that God welcomes the questions—and that the questions are evidence not of our doubt, or of our disbelief—but just the opposite—visible and concrete evidence of our deep, ongoing and authentic relationship with God.

On this day--and all of our days--let us worship together in spirit and in truth.

Amen.

Living Water

2009-06-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached on June 14, 2009 at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the morning was John 4: 7-14, and the worship service included a baptism.

It’s just water—just ordinary water from the tap. It came to us today, as the Portland Water Bureau motto says, “from forest to faucet”—from the Bull Run watershed high in the Mount Hood National Forest, through lakes and streams and dams and pumps, through miles and miles of industrial piping underneath our streets and yards and sidewalks, carried in a pitcher from the church kitchen sink, and poured out here into our baptismal font. It’s just water, ordinary water from the tap.

And yet, when little Oliver received the sacrament of baptism in our midst a few minutes ago, this water wasn’t ordinary at all. This water, so familiar and so useful to us for drinking, and cooking, and bathing, and swimming, and washing the car, and doing the dishes—when we used it in baptism, this water became more than ordinary. It became sacramental: a central sign, and seal, and symbol of our Christian faith. It was set aside for sacred use. You might even say it became living water.

Our gospel reading for today from the fourth chapter of John, which tells us of an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well, is not primarily about baptism. But it brings us, in compelling and evocative terms, the image of living water that illuminates not only our understanding of baptism but our understanding of the Christian faith that we profess to live and live to profess –our understanding of the nature of God, the person of Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

In our gospel passage, Jesus pauses by a well, and strikes up a conversation with a Samaritan woman who has come to draw water. Jesus doesn’t wait to be recognized or greeted; instead he reaches out, asks this woman, a stranger, for a drink of water. When she responds to him in astonishment, Jesus reveals that he is the bearer of living water, telling her, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Now Jesus isn’t talking here about literally whipping out some hidden canteen of water from underneath his robe. Jesus is talking, as he so often does in John’s gospel, in metaphor; he is offering the Samaritan woman, and all of us, no less than himself, the Son of God, the promised Messiah; he is offering the Samaritan woman, and all of us, the spiritual reality of his presence and his power. The living water he offers the Samaritan woman, and all of us, is nothing less than life itself, life in him, and life forevermore.

It is this same living water Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman that little Oliver experienced today in the sacrament of baptism. Before he can even form the idea of God, or say God’s name, Jesus has called him by name into the Christian community, claimed him as his own, and offered him the living water of grace, redemption, and eternal life. And it is this same living water that Jesus offers to all of us, freely and unconditionally and graciously, today, on our own baptismal days, and every day of our lives.

If you do a little research on “Jacob’s well,” the place where Jesus and the Samaritan woman talked about “living water,” you’ll find that it’s a little bit special. It’s a famous well, a place that the gospel of John’s original readers would have certainly known about, just the same way we know about the origins of, say, Perrier, or some such.

In particular, Jacob’s well is said to tap into not an underground cistern or area of still water, but instead it seems to tap into an underground river, so that the water isn’t just sitting there, quiet and contained, but sweeping along of its own volition—powerful and uncontrollable, lively, fresh, and always renewing itself. It’s an appropriate setting, isn’t it, for a discussion of “living water,” especially when we remember that medieval theologian Meister Eckhart famously said, “God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.”

The image of God as a living, rushing river is beautifully captured by the Christian singer/songwriter Stephen Curtis Chapman, in his song “Dive,” which is one of my very favorites. Perhaps some of you know it? Chapman writes:

There is a supernatural power
In this mighty river's flow

It can bring the dead to life
And it can fill an empty soul

And give a heart the only thing
Worth living and worth dying for

But we will never know the awesome power
Of the grace of God

Until we let our selves get swept away
Into this holy flood

So if you'll take my hand
We'll close our eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith

Come on let's go

I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in

How interesting, and how fitting, that Jesus and the Samaritan woman ponder the nature of God and the presence of the Messiah, as somewhere deep beneath their feet a living river rushes by—a physical representation of the spiritual reality of the living water they discuss.

And now, I’d like to think a little bit about Perrier.

If you go to France, and sit down in a bistro or restaurant, and order a drink of water—“boisson de L’eau”—the waiter will ask you something puzzling. It’s especially puzzling if you speak really bad French, as I do! The waiter will ask you “avec gaz?” Which means essentially exactly what it sounds like—with gas.

What he’s offering you is a choice between still water—water from the tap, or in a bottle like this—and sparkling water, like this Perrier right here. And let me ask you what’s the difference? There’s a little something extra in this one, the Perrier. It’s infused with little bubbles of gas—we Americans call it carbonation—little bubbles of gas that move, and pop, and fizz, and tickle your nose. And if you shake up this bottle and open the lid, what will happen, do you think? Perhaps those little bubbles will get all excited and push the water out of the bottle in a great foaming gush.

This Perrier water has bubbles of gas—maybe we could say, air, or breath, or spirit—that make it move, and sparkle, and expand, and seem to breathe.

Here’s the thing. Perhaps the gas that infuses the water in the Perrier bottle is kind of like the Holy Spirit—the breath of God--that infuses our ordinary baptismal water and makes it sacramental. Perhaps it is the movement of the Holy Spirit—the breath of God—that infuses our ordinary lives in baptism and makes us not only receivers of living water but enables us to be that living water for others.

So I hope that the next time you sip a “boisson de l’eau avec gaz,” whether in Paris, in downtown Portland, or at your own dining room table, that you will remember the Holy Spirit; that you will remember your baptism; and that you will experience, again, the presence and the power of God in your life, bubbling and splashing and overflowing.

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “The water that I will give will become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” As theologian Jurgen Moltmann puts it in his book The Spirit of Life, “ The well of life is not in the next world, and not in the church’s font. It is in human beings themselves. If they receive the life-giving water, they themselves become the well-spring of this water for other people.”

As we experience it in baptism, living water is water infused with the Holy Spirit to become that visible sign of the invisible grace we know as the living love and presence of the risen Christ. As we are touched and washed and made wet by the physical water which sprinkles on us, pours over us, or immerses us--so are we touched and washed and made new by the living water of the Spirit working in us, and with us, and through us—quenching our spiritual thirst; claiming us as members of God’s family, and, as Jesus puts it in our scripture passage for today, equipping us to “gush up to eternal life”—or as we say in our rite of baptism, “to continue forever in the risen life of Christ.”

The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive--

On our baptismal day, on this day, and every day,
Let us say together,

We’re diving in!

Amen.

Thanking It Forward

2008-11-23T14:10:00.000-08:00

This sermon was preached on November 23, 2008, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. There were two texts for the day--Luke 17: 11-19 and 2nd Corinthians 9: 6-15 --and the sermon and worship service followed a Thanksgiving theme.

“Thanksgiving is a time for families and friends to gather together and express gratitude for all that we have been given, the freedoms we enjoy, and the loved ones who enrich our lives. We recognize that all of these blessings, and life itself, come not from the hand of man but from Almighty God.”

Those are the words that begin this year’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, signed on Friday by President Bush at the White House. As most of us learned in school, the celebration of Thanksgiving and its attendant prayers and feasting was traditionally thought to begin with the friendly gathering of Pilgrims and Native Americans in 1621, continuing for years, officially and unofficially, throughout the early years of our country. And each year since President Lincoln officially revived the tradition in 1863, each President of the United States—no matter what his party, religious tradition, or philosophical convictions-- has made an annual proclamation declaring a national day of thanksgiving.

As I prepared this sermon, I browsed through close to 150 years worth of Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamations online—the internet is a wonderful thing!—and I was struck by all the ways each year’s proclamation reflected the personality of the president and the tenor of the time in which it was issued. (For example, it won’t surprise any of you when I tell you that some of the very longest proclamations seemed to have been written by Bill Clinton!)

Many of the proclamations recount the story of the first Thanksgiving and quote stirring words from George Washington, William Bradford, or other historic figures; many of them list particular achievements and accomplishments of the year just past, and call for Americans to pray for particular goals to be accomplished; and all of them state unequivocally that our blessings as a people and as a nation are not of human creation, but are gifts bestowed by God—and urge us to to set aside time, together, to offer God our thanks.

Thanksgiving is a distinctively American holiday (although, to be strictly accurate, it’s also celebrated by our neighbors in Canada). But the idea of thanksgiving—of devoting concentrated time and conscious energy to recognizing and giving thanks for our blessings and God’s love and care for us—the idea of thanksgiving is, and has always been, central to our understanding of our belief, our worship, and our lives as Christian people, followers of Jesus and members of his church in the world.

In fact, since we’re going to be dusting off our Greek a little bit in this sermon, we might as well begin by talking about the Greek word for Thanksgiving—a word that is used throughout the New Testament. Does anyone know what it is? The Greek word for thanksgiving --thankfulness, gratitude, giving of thanks-- is “Eucharistia”—and it’s from that word for Thanksgiving that we Christians derive one of our common terms for communion, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper—one of our most important moments shared together as a community of believers in Christ. We call it “The Eucharist.” And in fact, “Eucharist” is the preferred term for communion used by many of our brothers and sisters in the Christian community, including Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, United Methodists, and Lutherans.

Each time we meet as a community of believers at Christ’s table in communion, we meet in Eucharist—thanksgiving—offering to God our prayers, and our praises, and sharing together in the gifts of Christ’s body and blood, given for us. You can’t get any closer to the heart of our faith than Eucharist—you can’t get any closer to the heart of our faith than the idea of thanksgiving.

There are so many passages in the Bible that give us insight into the idea of thanksgiving—that speak of giving thanks to God as a necessity, a spiritual practice, and a way of life for God’s people. We have read two of those passages from scripture this morning. These passages are probably familiar to you, and each one has something to say to us about what thanksgiving is, and the spiritual gifts that a life of true thanksgiving imparts—principles that can guide us on Thanksgiving day and all the ordinary, but no less important, days that follow it. Interestingly enough, our first reading, from Luke, is all about thanks; the second reading, from 2nd Corinthians, is all about giving.

In our Luke passage, we see Jesus traveling between Samaria and Galilee, on his way to Jerusalem. Along the way, he encounters ten people with leprosy, who call out to him and beg him to have mercy on them. They want to be healed of their painful and disfiguring disease. Jesus tells them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” and as they go on their way, they discover that their leprosy has disappeared.

Nine of the ten keep going on their way; only one turns back, throws himself at Jesus’ feet, and thanks him. And Jesus, after wondering that only one of the ten would return to give thanks, tells him, “Your faith has made you well” (that's the NRSV translation).

So we can learn from this passage that giving thanks is good—that it’s something Jesus approves of. But there’s more. If we dig a little deeper and look at the words Luke uses in the original Greek text, we can see that one particular word, katharidzo, means “they were made clean” in verses 14 and 17; and another word, iaomai, means “healed” in verse 15.

And yet—in verse 19, when Jesus says “Your faith has made you well,” he uses a different word entirely from those two. He uses the Greek word sodzo, the meaning of which doesn’t really come through here in our English translation. The meaning of sodzo is much better captured in the King James translation where we read that Jesus says: “ Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.” Or you could put it this way: “Your faith has saved you.”

In this story from Luke’s gospel Jesus shows us clearly that healing is not the same as wholeness. All ten of the people with leprosy are healed, but only one—the one who returns to acknowledge Jesus and give thanks, is made whole in a spiritual sense; only one, the one who gives thanks, is restored to right relationship with God; only one, the one who gives thanks, is given his salvation.

I see this difference between healing and wholeness every day in my work at hospice. We care for people for whom healing is impossible—our patients have a terminal illness and an expectation of less than 6 months to live. Of course, we have doctors and nurses who attend to our hospice patients’ physical symptoms, and yet all of us know that physical healing is no longer the goal of our care.

Instead, each day I see many of our patients take steps on the journey to wholeness. Assisted by our social workers, our chaplains, our volunteers, and everyone on the hospice team, I see patients reconcile with estranged family members, come to terms with disappointment and regret, explore the meaning of their life’s work, find comfort and peace, and --maybe most importantly-- say those things to their loved ones and to God that bring their lives and their relationships to spiritual wholeness and completion: I forgive you. Will you forgive me? Thank you. I love you. And goodbye.

By showing us the difference between healing and wholeness, the story of the ten people with leprosy from Luke’s gospel teaches us that giving thanks is more than the spiritual equivalent of an obligatory thank you note to God. Giving thanks isn’t just going through the motions, giving credit where credit is due, or counting blessings on our fingers. The story of the ten people with leprosy teaches us that giving thanks is a deep spiritual journey of return and restoration to right relationship which acknowledges Jesus as Lord, brings us closer to God’s infinite wholeness, and reaffirms for us the reality of our salvation.

In our passage from 2nd Corinthians, we find a different insight into thanksgiving as a spiritual task. Whereas the story of the ten lepers is about thanks, this passage is about giving.

Here we find the apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, encouraging them to do their part in taking up a collection for the struggling and poverty-stricken Christian community in Jerusalem. Paul urges them to give generously, for “God loves a cheerful giver.” And he tells them that “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.”

For Paul, thanksgiving is found not just in raising words of thanks to God, but in performing acts of generosity and service to others. Paul tells us that it is the giving—the giving of our selves—the giving of our time, our resources, our ministry—that truly gives thanks to God.

This idea of giving to others as thanksgiving to God might make us re-evaluate that question we’ll no doubt hear a lot this week—“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” What would our holiday look like if each of us took our cue from Paul and spent our day not cooking for our own family, but serving in a soup kitchen for the hungry; not napping on the couch, but opening our doors to those who sleep outside; not counting our own blessings but trying to be a blessing to others? What would our every day look like if we took our cue from Paul and lived each day of our lives this way—giving thanks to God by giving of ourselves?

Well, I think it might look a little bit like the idea called “Pay it forward.” Have any of you seen that movie? It came out some years ago. It’s based on a book of the same name, and is probably still available on DVD, if you’d like to see it or see it again.

In the movie, an 11 year old boy named Trevor, who comes from a troubled home is given an unusual assignment in his social studies class at school -- think up a practical way to make the world a better place, and put it into action.

Trevor comes up with an idea that he calls “Pay It Forward" -- do a needed but unexpected favor for three different people without being asked. And then, when each recipient asks, “How can I pay you back?”—tell them, “Don’t pay it back, pay it forward”—asking each recipient in their turn to go out and do an unexpected favor for three other people.

Now in the movie, Trevor doesn’t make the wisest choices when he tries to put this into practice, and his three favors-- letting a junkie stay in his home, fixing up his mother with his teacher, and trying to rescue one of his schoolmates from a bully—don’t seem to work out. And yet, amazingly, one day a journalist comes to Trevor’s door asking about “Pay it forward” because someone has done him a favor and he’s traced the idea back to Trevor—and Trevor learns that his idea has caught on and is becoming a movement far beyond his own home town.

Maybe—if each of us, in the spirit of the apostle Paul’s vision of giving as thanksgiving, were to live each day not paying it forward, but thanking it forward, we might start a movement that grows far beyond our home town—and maybe, we might get a little closer to being God’s beloved community and bringing Christ’s community to fulfillment on earth.

As we know from the Biblical witness and from our rich, ongoing Presbyterian tradition of worship and service, the notion of thanksgiving is a central part of our faith and our lives as Christians. Each time we meet as believers at Christ’s table in communion, we meet in Eucharist—thanksgiving—offering to God our prayers, and our praises, and sharing together in the gifts of Christ’s body and blood, given for us.

As we see from the story of the ten people with leprosy, thanksgiving is about thanks— it's about returning to God in thanks to acknowledge Jesus as Christ and Lord, to restore our relationship with God and to be made whole in the spirit of joy and salvation.

As we learn from Paul in 2nd Corinthians, thanksgiving is also about giving— it's about giving to others in a spirit of generosity and love. It is about thanking it forward, not only on one holiday a year but on each day of our lives as people of faith who claim Christ’s beloved community as our own.

As we gather at table on this coming Thursday, our national Thanksgiving Day— as we gather with loved ones, friends, fellow citizens, and the whole family of God, in all its beauty and joy, in all its brokenness and sorrow-- may we resolve, together, to weave the strands of Eucharist, of thanks, and of giving, into our relationships and our celebrations—and into the beautiful, and challenging, fabric of our lives.

Amen.

Plants, Parables, Perspectives

2008-08-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached on August 24, 2008, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the day was Matthew 13: 1-17, The Parable of the Sower.

Planting a seed that grows into a flower, or a tree, or a strand of wheat. Is it easy, or is it hard? What do you think? Who here thinks it’s easy?

And you're right! Nothing easier in the world. You take a seed, put it in the soil, give it a little sunshine and water, and before you know it you have a plant. It is the nature of a seed to sprout and grow. It happens millions and billions of times every day, all over the earth, in every kind of condition or climate, with or without human intervention. It’s a very, very simple, very ordinary process.

Planting a seed that grows into a flower, or a tree, or a strand of wheat. Is it easy, or is it hard? Who here thinks it’s hard?

And you also would be right! Just open up any biology textbook and you’ll see that planting a seed is just one part of an incredibly complicated biological process in which an embryonic plant, contained within the seed coating, is influenced to germinate and grow only with the confluence of perfect internal structure and perfect external conditions—proper amounts of temperature, water, oxygen, and light. In fact, some seeds won’t germinate and grow unless something fairly complicated or dramatic happens to them--like heating in a fire, or soaking in a body of water, or passing through an animal's digestive tract. It’s not a simple process—in fact, it’s a miracle that any seed, anywhere, sprouts and grows at all.

Is planting a seed easy or hard? Really, it depends on your perspective—but I would feel pretty comfortable saying that it’s both.

Now that we’ve discussed botany, let’s talk about the parables of Jesus. Is understanding the parables of Jesus easy, or is it hard?

On the one hand, scholars tell us that Jesus taught in parables in order to communicate great spiritual truths in simple ways that ordinary people could relate to and understand. So we have the parable of the sower. It would be easy to interpret even without Jesus explaining it, but in fact he does just that in Matthew 18-23, the passage immediately after the words we read for today.

God is the sower who throws seeds over the path. The seeds represent the word and the way of God--and the different soils and conditions in which that seed takes root represent the different kinds of people who hear that word, and the ways that they grow and flourish in that word—or not.

Jesus tells us, “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

It’s a simple parable, and a simple interpretation. Or is it?

One of the things that makes it so tricky to preach on the parables is this sneaking sense I always get that the more I study them, the more there is in them to see; and the more I see in them, the more complicated they get; and the more complicated they get, the more there is to say.

And the parable of the sower fits right into that category. It gets more and more complicated the more I think about it. And here’s the thing. I think it’s meant to.

In one of the articles I read while preparing this sermon I found an interesting story. A minister is friends with an artist, a painter, and goes to visit him in his studio. The painter shows the minister one of his finished paintings, and the minister, impressed, says to the painter, “What does that painting mean?” And the painter tells him, “If I tell you, that’s all you will ever see there.”

I think the parables of Jesus are like that painting. Yes, they have an obvious interpretation. But if we stop there, and that’s all we ever see, we’ll miss the fact that they offer us so much more.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus speaks not only to those historical people gathered on that beach in first-century Palestine. He speaks not only to us as his people. He also speaks to each of us individually. And like the artist’s paintings, what we hear in Jesus’ words not only concretely describes a spiritual truth—but it speaks to our hearts, and our souls, and our sense of imagination as well.

“Listen!” Jesus tells the crowd, “Let anyone with ears listen!” and again, “Hear then the parable of the sower!”

Jesus isn’t calling for memorization and repetition or a formulaic interpretation. He is calling for us to listen, and to be ready; to open our ears, our eyes, our hearts, and our minds to the movement of the spirit. Jesus is telling us that if we are ready to listen there will always be something for us to hear: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see,” he says, “And your ears, for they hear.”

Jesus is telling us that in the parable of the Sower, as in all of scripture, each of us will always hear not only Jesus’ clear call to salvation and the life of faith, but our own pitch-perfect and uniquely resonant call to meaning and ministry in Jesus’ name—if we are willing not to sit passively and be only receivers of information—if we are willing to open ourselves, sit up, pay attention and be active listeners--to hear, to look, to think, and to imagine.

In the parable of the Sower, Jesus is telling us to listen. But he is also telling us to trust.

Now those of you who are master gardeners and experts at growing things: What do you think of the Sower’s planting technique as Jesus describes it for us in this passage?

It’s a planting technique that would have been commonly seen in Jesus’ day. A farmer puts a bag of seed over his shoulder and sets off through the field, throwing seed all around him as he walks. After he’s done sowing, he might get out a plow and go over the field a few ties to work some of the seed into the soil. But only some of those seeds sown so abundantly will grow into a viable crop. Many of the seeds will fall onto the path and be snapped up by birds. Still more will fall onto rocks, get poorly rooted, and have a precarious existence. Still others will find their hopeful shoots choked to death by weeds. And some of the seeds that have just the right conditions, the right temperature, the right soil, the right water, and the right light—even some of those won’t germinate and grow, for no good reason that anyone can tell.

Now doesn’t that seem just wasteful to you? Surely seed is a precious commodity—each one a valuable potential plant—not to be thrown profligately and inefficiently into places where it will never grow, or will grow badly, or get eaten by birds.

Those of you who are gardeners—don’t you treat your seeds and seedlings a little better than that? After all, you want your plants and flowers to grow! You have a plan! You want your garden to look a certain way. You don’t just throw the seed out over your shoulder and hope, do you? What if none of it came up—or it came up at the wrong time, or in the wrong place?

But you know, it isn’t the parable of the Seeds, or the parable of the Master Gardener, or the parable of the Landscape Architect. It’s the parable of the Sower. And Jesus tells us in the parable that when the Sower throws seeds extravagantly, abundantly, generously, over every kind of soil and in every earthly direction, a bountiful crop comes up—Jesus says, “a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

Jesus is telling us to trust in the harvest.

And Jesus is telling us that, in spiritual matters, trusting the harvest is not about calculation, or even preparation-- but about grace.

Jesus is telling us that whatever spiritual seed we’re planting and whatever we hope will grow—in God’s garden, in our church, or in our ministry in the world--our sowing should not focus on efficiency, or yield, or cost/benefit analysis, or spreadsheets, or the bottom line.

Whether it’s money we’re worried about, or mission, or members—or the future of this or any church—Jesus is telling us to use all that we have and all that we are, to sow our gifts extravagantly, and generously, and joyfully—maybe even foolishly—confident, and trusting, that the Harvest belongs to God, the God of Grace, the God of Provision, the God who holds us and holds the future.

We can’t be afraid to give away our time, and our talent, and our treasure. We must sow our seeds, throw them out to the winds, give them over to God’s Grace and God’s directing. We must trust in the Harvest, in God’s harvest, even if it’s a harvest we’ll never know or see.

I want to read you some of a little essay by author Nicole Johnson. It’s really a meditation on motherhood, and it appears in her book entitled “Invisible Women.” It’s told from the point of view of a mother named Charlotte who is lamenting about how no one in her family notices all the things that she does.

It started to happen gradually…
One day I was walking my son Jake to school. I was holding his hand and we were about to cross the street when the crossing guard said to him, “Who is that with you, young fella?”
“Nobody,” he shrugged.
Nobody? The crossing guard and I laughed. My son is only five, but as we crossed the street I thought, oh my goodness, nobody?
I’m invisible.
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” Obviously not. No one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.
I’m invisible.
Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more.
Can you fix this?
Can you tie this?
Can you open this?
Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being.
I’m a clock to ask, “What time is it?”
I’m a satellite guide to answer, “What number is the Disney Channel?”
I’m a car to order, “Right around 5:30, please.”
I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude – but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again.
One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out of style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a banana clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it.
I was feeling pretty pathetic when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package and said, “I brought you this.”
It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription. “To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.”
In the days ahead I would read, no, devour, the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I would pattern my work:
• No one can say who built the great Cathedrals—we have no record of their names.
• These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.
• They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
• The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.
A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, “Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.”
And the workman replied, “Because God sees.”
I closed the book, feeling the missing piece just push into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, “I see you Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one else does. No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.”
I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who will show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on . . . and one day it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

Nicole Johnson points out in this essay how easy it is to get discouraged when you work faithfully, day in and day out, without appreciation or recognition or even visible results. It’s easy for mothers to feel invisible, get discouraged, swallowed up by caring and caregiving, dirty socks and whining and soccer games and hair with peanut butter in it.

It’s easy for churches—especially small ones like Laurelhurst—to feel invisible too--to feel that maybe the glory years have passed us by, that the ground is no longer fertile, that no matter how much seed we throw out there, nothing is going to grow, that nothing we do can make a difference. Yet Nicole Johnson points to the great cathedrals as lasting symbols of what faithful people—faithful mothers-- working day by day, little by little, loving deed by loving deed, on a job they will never see finished, can accomplish to the glory of God.

In the parable of the Sower, Jesus asks us to pay attention to God’s word, to sit up and listen for God’s voice calling us to lives of meaning and ministry. Jesus urges us to sow extravagantly, not to count and measure the seeds but to throw our gifts and our resources and our talents to the wind of the Spirit for planting. And Jesus asks us to trust in the grace and provision of God—to trust that God will bring those seeds to sprout, to flower, to fruition and to bountiful harvest—that God will use our ministry to the glory and increase of his Kingdom—even if it’s a harvest we never get to see.

Planting a seed that grows into a flower, or a tree, or a strand of wheat—or a child, or a ministry, or a great cathedral. Is it easy, or is it hard?

For certain it’s a work of generosity, a work of beauty, a work of grace.

Amen.

Do I Know You?

2008-04-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached on April 6, 2008 at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the day was Luke's account of Jesus' post-resurrection appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24: 13-35. It was also communion Sunday.

I’ve lived in Portland for almost 20 years—the longest period of time that I’ve lived anywhere. And I’m often amazed —delighted— sometimes embarrassed— that wherever I go now in the city, I seem to run across someone I know. This has happened to you, too, I’m sure of it. For a big city, Portland is a very small town.

This past week, as part of my job in hospice, I was visiting a nearby nursing facility when I ran into a member of this church, who was also there for a visit. It took me a moment to figure out who he was and where I knew him from, but I was thrilled to remember his name and to be able to greet him. It took him a moment, but he also remembered who I was, and where he knew me from, and we were able to exchange greetings and good wishes and say “See you in church this Sunday!”

Let me tell you a story about a meeting that didn’t go quite that well. About a year ago, the kids and I were sitting in the Keller Auditorium downtown, waiting for a show to begin, when a woman came in and sat down behind us. She looked so familiar to me.

I just knew I knew her—I just knew I’d spent time with her somewhere, I knew that I knew her name, and yet—I couldn’t figure it out. I turned around and said, “Hi, do I know you? Have we met before?” “No,” she said. But she had a tiny little smile at the edge of her mouth, which I thought was curious.

I was so sure I knew this woman that I just kept racking my brain trying to figure it out. After a few more moments, I turned around again and said, “You look so familiar. Did you give a workshop or something that I could have gone to?”

“No,” she said, “I don’t think so.”

And then the show started, and it was wonderful, and we enjoyed it, and the kids and I went home, but I was still puzzled.

It was months later when the truth dawned on me. I did know her, and I remembered how. I had last seen her in the operating room.

She was my doctor. In fact, she was the gynecologist (can you say that word in church?) who had performed a little surgery on me the year before. She knew me— or certain parts of me— very well indeed— but it wasn’t the kind of acquaintance she— or I— would have cared to acknowledge right there in the middle of a crowd in the Keller Auditorium.

When it comes to recognizing people, knowing who they are, in unexpected places--context is everything. Would I have known my doctor that day if I’d seen her in the place where we last met, the hospital? Absolutely. Would I have known her that day if we’d been dressed as we were then?-- if she’d been wearing a white coat and I’d been wearing a paper apron? I think maybe I would have. But there in the Keller, dressed in our civilian clothes, waiting for a show, my doctor looked familiar but I didn’t recognize her.

Without the context—the place, the clothes, the purpose—those signs and symbols and actions that defined our relationship--I didn’t know who my doctor was, how she fit into my life, what purpose she’d served, or what she had done for me.

This morning we read together Luke’s account of Jesus encountering two disciples on the Emmaus road. It’s a story about a remarkable appearance in an unexpected place, of identity concealed and revealed, of recognition—recognition that comes not from time or place, nor even through companionship and conversation--but through signs, and symbols, and actions.

In this passage, the time is “that very day” that Jesus’ body has been found missing from the tomb and the women have told the disciples their story of angels and resurrection. The place is the road to Emmaus, some 7 miles from Jerusalem. And the people are two of Jesus’ disciples, stunned and confused and heartsick, walking that dusty road. They are talking about the events of the past days in Jerusalem—Jesus’ betrayal and trial, his crucifixion and his body’s mysterious disappearance—when they are joined by a third person, a stranger, who walks with them, listens to their painful story, shares Scripture with them, and ultimately joins them for dinner.

It is only at dinner, as the stranger takes bread from the table, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them, that, as Luke tells it, “their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus.”

These two disciples had spent all day on the road with Jesus, and yet they only recognized him when he provided for them that familiar context of table fellowship and performed for them those familiar signs, symbols, and actions he had shared with them before, as he fed the multitudes and as he presided at the Last Supper. Jesus took the bread, he blessed it, he broke it, and he gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him.

Take, bless, break, and give—it’s a sacred rhythm that reveals Jesus to the disciples as the Son of God, the present Savior, the Christ resurrected from the dead, the King of Heaven living among them. Take, bless, break, and give. It’s the same sacred rhythm that we as a church family hear in the words of institution on days like today, when we gather at the Lord’s Table for Holy Communion as a fellowship of believers—a sacrament that shows us who Christ is, binds us to him and to one another, and seals us in God’s covenant of salvation and grace.

Take, bless, break, and give. It’s how the disciples recognize the risen Jesus on the Emmaus road. It’s how we recognize and participate in Christ in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
But as we look at our scripture reading for today, and as we ponder our lives as Christians in the world, perhaps the sacred rhythm of these four simple verbs has even more to say.

I hope you’ll allow me a little latitude here for imagination; as an ancient rabbi says in a book of Jewish wisdom about the Torah, “Turn it, turn it, for you will find everything is in it.” I don’t know if you can find everything in this story of Christ’s appearance in Emmaus, but there’s certainly lots there.

Here’s one thing that I think is there, and I’ll quote this because I think the author puts it much better than I could. Writer Craig Kocher says:

“One possible interpretation of the Emmaus road story is to reflect on the four actions of the meal: Jesus taking, blessing, breaking, and giving, as the whole story of God’s saving work in Jesus. In Christ, God takes us as his friends. In Christ, God blesses us with the first fruits of creation and the gift of his very life. God is then broken on the cross for our salvation, and we are broken with him in his death, so that through Christ’s resurrection we may be given away for the work of his kingdom.”

Take, bless, break, and give—it’s not bad as a summary of salvation history, is it?

Here’s something else I think is there. Look at the Emmaus road passage and note the movement of the story as a whole. Jesus comes alongside the disciples when they are traveling, dusty and tired and grieving. He doesn’t start right in with trumpets and heavenly lights and a margarita party for “The Big Reveal.” He doesn’t jump right in with proclamations or Advice from on high in the voice of Charlton Heston (who I’ve been thinking about today).

Instead, he comes to them quietly and gently. He takes—or receives—what they have to offer—their companionship, their words, their story of pain, and loss, and confusion.

Once he has heard and honored their story, Jesus transforms it for them. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and be glorified?” he says. I love this because I think this is one of the central challenges and responsibilities of ministry in general—taking the stories and experiences of our own lives and showing how they reveal the sacred story of God’s work among us.

Jesus takes the disciples’ words of pain and he shows them how their experience reveals the work of God. Jesus transforms their story from one which proclaims sadness into one which proclaims joy. He blesses their story, and by doing so blesses them.

Jesus takes what the disciples have to offer, and he blesses it with transformation. Then, Luke tells us, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning the Christ.” Jesus breaks open the mysteries of prophetic scripture and reveals how his death and resurrection fit into God’s plan and God’s provision as witnessed to by generations of the faithful.

And then Jesus gives: he gives the disciples bread at table, and he gives them the ability to recognize him, to know his resurrection and presence with them personally and incontrovertibly.

Take, bless, break, and give. It’s a sacred rhythm proclaimed at the Lord’s table, a sacred rhythm revealed in salvation history, and a sacred rhythm that runs throughout today’s Gospel passage from Luke.

And I believe that this same sacred rhythm of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving, following Jesus’ example in this passage-- is a good way— even if it’s a shorthand way— of thinking about the life of faith and how our ministries to others can reveal and make known the presence of the risen Christ.

Like Jesus, as we minister to another person on our own roads of life, our first task is not to proclaim, to preach, to judge, or to warn. Our first task is to come alongside, like Jesus did with the disciples on the Emmaus road, to walk together, to take or to receive what that person has to offer us—their pain, or their joy, their silence or their story—to be with them, to stay with them, to share time and presence.

Following Jesus’ example, our ministry also needs to bless others or be a blessing to others—whether that means helping someone reframe their experience by thinking about how it reflects and reveals God’s sacred story—or whether that means offering them the simple blessings of time and attention, or of warmth and safety, or of presence and love.

In our ministries we are also called to break open the scriptures, as Jesus did—to study them, to interpret them, to discuss them with others—to explore the history of God’s work in the world and his devotion to his people, to bring our scriptural understanding to bear on our life and work--to let God’s word live in us, guide us, and bear fruit in our hearts, minds, and actions.

And we are also called upon to give—both concretely and spiritually. Following Jesus’ example, our ministries must give of our substance and of our selves—we must offer to others, as Jesus offers to us, both the bread which nourishes the body—food, clothing, shelter, safety, protection-- and the bread which nourishes the soul—love, understanding, compassion, meaning, and purpose for our lives.

Take, bless, break, and give. These four small and powerful verbs form a sacred rhythm of sign, symbol and action that opens the eyes of the disciples and allows them to recognize Jesus as the Christ, the Savior. This same sacred rhythm reveals Jesus’ power and presence to us at the Lord’s table, proclaims God’s salvation history, and runs throughout today’s Gospel passage from Luke.

As we gather around the Lord’s Table today, may we recognize and experience the presence of Christ in the shared words and actions, signs and symbols, of our sacrament of Holy Communion.

And as we go from this place and take up our own journeys on our own Emmaus road, may we follow the example of the risen Christ as we encounter and minister to dusty and footsore fellow travelers in our church, in our communities, and in our homes. May our eyes, and theirs, be opened. And may we recognize Christ in our midst—and in one another-- as we take, bless, break, and give, of our substance and of ourselves, in the name of the living Christ.

Amen.

Star Search

2008-01-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

This sermon was preached on January 6, 2008 at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. The gospel reading was Matthew 2: 1-12 . As a preacher's note: I did take a "shortcut" as I wrote this sermon, borrowing several paragraphs from my sermon for Dec. 30 (preached at a different church). I again used the image of "traveling" from Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Mermaid Chair--changing the emphasis and focus to fit in with the Epiphany theme.

How far would you go to follow a star?

A colleague of mine here in Portland who works as a bereavement counselor travels thousands of miles each year following her favorite star—musician Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band. “I’m taking an extra day off this weekend,” she’ll tell the folks in her office, “So I can go see Bruce in Minneapolis”—or Atlanta, or Buffalo. No, she doesn’t know him personally—she just loves his music and follows him and his band around the country, when she can, to be refreshed, renewed, and energized—to save her sanity in the difficult and emotional profession she works in every day--and, I think, she follows Bruce just for the fun of being on the journey and seeing him play in different places.

Today’s gospel passage from Matthew is about following a star—but a different kind of star than Bruce Springsteen. Our gospel today is about what we would call The Christmas Star—the Star in the East—the Star of Bethlehem—the astronomical phenomenon that, according to Matthew, blazed out on the night of Jesus’ birth and showed forth to the world that something amazing was going on in Bethlehem.

Our passage for today opens after Jesus’ birth, with wise men, Magi from the east, travelling to Judea. The wise men--astrologers, philosophers, scientists, kings—opinions on exactly who they were varies--are following a star. They are searching for the One they believe has been born under the star, whom they call “king of the Jews.” Their search brings them through Jerusalem, where they encounter the fearful and desperate ruler Herod, and it culminates in finding the Christ child, worshipping Him, and returning to their homeland forever changed.

Early Christians reading and hearing this story from Matthew’s gospel would have received two important messages. First, they would have recognized from Matthew’s quoting of Hebrew Scripture—“ from you, Bethlehem, shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel”— Matthew’s firm belief that Jesus, the baby of Bethlehem, is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior long awaited by the Jewish people.

But early Christians would also have seen in this passage a second message—that the salvation Jesus offers is not just for the Jews, but for a much wider audience—as they heard Matthew describe these star-searching visitors who are obviously pagans, non-Jews, foreigners, wise men from the East, bowing down to worship the baby Jesus as Lord.

Matthew proves to those early Christians, and to us, that Jesus is the promised Messiah—and he also shows us that Jesus’ message, and his kingship, and his offered salvation are for all people--no matter who they are or where they come from--who seek to know and honor him.

So how far did the wise men go to follow their star? Most scholars who have studied this topic seem to think that the Magi most likely started out in Persia—modern-day Iran—which would put their journey to Bethlehem at between 1000 and 1200 miles.

Such a distance wasn’t crossed in a day, or even the “12 days of Christmas” we allow between Christmas and Epiphany. The wise men’s journey might have taken any time between three and twelve months—traveling, of course, by camel. And their journey no doubt included more than just the time of travel--there were probably many weeks of preparation. All in all, the Magi could scarcely have reached Jerusalem till a year—or perhaps quite a bit longer--had elapsed from the time of the star’s initial rising.

So how far would you go to follow a star? Would you go as far as Minneapolis, or Atlanta, or Buffalo? Would you go for 12 days, or for 12 months, or for 12 hundred miles? Would you go to the ends of the earth, or the end of your life? Do you need to?

In yesterday’s paper, advice columnist Ask Amy printed a letter from a woman who called herself “Confused After 25 Years.” This woman said,

“Dear Amy,
When I first got married all I wanted out of life was love and a little security. Now it’s 25 years later and I’m finding myself wanting more. I want to travel the world, move to a large city and make a lot of money doing what I love. I don’t want to have to be home by 5:30 to make dinner for my spouse. I have big goals and ambitions, while my spouse loves staying home every night and is looking forward to retiring and staying in our small town. I love my spouse but I feel my life is being stifled if I stay where I am.”

Now that letter is pretty vague on the details—but the pain and yearning that are going on in this woman’s heart and soul are pretty clear. She’s got a vision and she wants to follow it—she’s desperate to get moving, to start her journey to somewhere else, pretty much anywhere else—and yet--it seems to me that what this woman who calls herself “confused” is yearning for is more than skyscrapers and frequent-flyer miles.

What I hear in that letter is a woman whose life as she is living it no longer has meaning for her—that she’s desperate to find that meaning again, and that she’s willing to leave her home, her husband, and everything familiar--to set out on an uncertain journey—in order to find not the life she seeks, but the MEANING that she seeks.

It’s a yearning that we can all relate to. We all want to have that sense that our life is meaningful, that what we do is important, that we have a place in history and the universe, that we are known and loved and valued.

What kind of star would you follow in your journey for meaning?

And what would you expect to find once you reached your destination?

Today’s gospel reading makes it clear that the wise men, like “Confused” and like us, were more than star-followers. They were star-searchers—or maybe star-seekers—but what they were seeking was more than an astronomical anomaly.

Matthew tells us that the wise men were overwhelmed with joy -–the Greek literally says “and they rejoiced with a joy, a great one, indeed an exceedingly great one"; he tells us that these pagan foreigners knelt down and paid homage to the infant Jesus; that they opened lavish gifts that they poured out at his feet.

Clearly the wise men were doing more than trying to solve an problem or answer a question of science. They were more than curiosity-seekers or rubber-neckers or paparazzi or groupies.

Their hearts were involved, and their souls; they were sincerely looking for the truth; they were genuinely seeking for a divine one—The Divine One—the Light of the world, revealed by a rising star. Like us, the wise men were seeking meaning—they were seeking God and his certain presence in their world—and they found that meaning, and God’s presence, in Jesus Christ, the Holy Child of Bethlehem.

The lesson of today’s gospel passage is not about following a star, any star. The lesson of today’s gospel passage is not about leaving home, or ambition, or skyscrapers, or frequent flyer miles. The lesson of today’s gospel passage is not about how long we travel or how far we go.

The lesson of today’s gospel passage is that our best and most exciting destination; our truest source of meaning and purpose; our searched-for star and our eternal home—all of these are found in the person and the presence of Jesus Christ, Savior, Light of the World; and that our greatest inspiration, our greatest commission, and our greatest fulfillment are only truly found when we kneel before the Son of God, and worship him, and pour out our treasures, and our burdens, at his feet.

How far would you go to follow a star? How far would you go to find the meaning, and purpose, and joy that will transform your life ? How far must you go to find Jesus? Maybe a long way. And then again, maybe not far at all.

I want to leave you with an image that came to my mind as I was reading this passage from Matthew in preparation for today’s sermon.

Lately, because my office has moved over to Mall 205, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the car—maybe too much time! So in an effort to feel like I’m doing more than driving, I’ve been listening to audiobooks on CD during my commute to the office and back.

One of my recent audiobooks was The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, a wonderful book set on an island in South Carolina, full of the images and atmosphere of that region. One of the characters is an African-American woman, an expert on the island’s culture and traditions, who says during a tour of the island:

“There’s an old Gullah practice. . . Before our people can become church members, they go to a sacred place in the woods three times a day for a week and meditate on the state of their souls. We call it ‘traveling,’ because we’re traveling inside.”

Traveling.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Gullah, it’s a unique African-American culture found on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, where descendants of slaves from different tribes and countries in West Africa still speak a Creole language—called “Gullah”—that mixes English with African dialects, and their Christianity blends with spiritual traditions from Africa.

I find it evocative and powerful to think about the Gullah people—people who were slaves, isolated on islands, unable to really go anywhere—maybe you could describe them as people in exile—naming their time of spiritual discernment, their spiritual quest, ‘Traveling.’

So maybe that’s how we should think of our star search, our yearning for meaning, our journey to Christ--a time for “traveling inside.”

We may not be able to leave behind our ordinary lives and look for Jesus in Minneapolis, or Buffalo, or Atlanta; those 5:30 dinners with family may keep us from skyscrapers and frequent flyer miles and glamorous careers. We may not be able to go 12 hundred miles, or 12 months, or even 12 days.

But the good news of the Gospel—the good news of salvation we celebrate and share at this communion table and at our kitchen tables—is that we need not go far in our star-search-- to know the King the wise men sought and found. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior and Lord, is here already, among us, within us.

No matter who we are, no matter where we are, no matter what we have done, we can always find Jesus by “travelin inside”—and we can always find meaning, know salvation, and experience true joy by opening our hearts, and acknowledging him Lord--laying our gifts, and our burdens, at his feet.

Amen.

What Makes A Family?

2008-01-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on
Louise Allen's novel
"Virgin Slave, Barbarian King"

This is a bit of a departure for me, as usually my writings on this blog extrapolate spiritual truths (or some vague approximation thereof) from analysis of a sacred text (i.e., the Bible). However, my blog rubric does promise “sermons and other writings”—so here is the exception that proves the rule, my observations and comments (nothing so formal as a review) on Louise Allen’s recent book for Harlequin Historicals, Virgin Slave, Barbarian King.

In general, though it's off my well-beaten historical romance track (I generally prefer 18th and 19th century-set historicals), I enjoyed this novel. Set in 410 AD with the sack of Rome as its backdrop, the book tells the story of Julia (a Roman senator’s daughter), who is abducted by Wulfric (a Visigoth leader). As Julia lives in the midst of Visigoth society, she comes to appreciate Visigoth ideals, falls in love with Wulfric, and embraces a future with him. As Wulfric assimilates Julia into his household and his life, he in turn undertakes a journey of self-discovery, falls in love with Julia, and embraces a different vision of the future than he has heretofore imagined for himself.

Despite the dreadful title that conjures up salacious images of bondage and submission, the book contains relatively little sex, instead focusing on the themes of honor and freedom, the growing emotional and physical interdependence of Julia and Wulfric, and their mutual journey of sacrifice and commitment. (I find it particularly curious that, by the novel’s end, Julia is neither Slave nor Virgin, and Wulfric is neither Barbarian nor King! Perhaps it should be called "Virgin Slave, Barbarian King, Not Really" ?)

Many folks in the blogosphere have analyzed and reviewed this novel, and made, as my English professor Richard Johnson would have put it, “shrewd and felicitous points.” So instead of reiterating what has already been said, I will confine my comments to a theme in the novel, not yet dealt with elsewhere, which I found particularly intriguing: author Allen’s exploration of what it means to be a family.

The notion of family, as Allen presents it in the novel, is a central value of Visigoth life and serves as the primary organizing principle of their community. The author makes this theme plain early on: at the novel’s beginning, when Wulfric saves Julia from being raped by her fellow Romans, he is shocked that she does not know the name of the slave who has accompanied her into danger: “But she was one of your family . . .your responsibility” (pp. 11, 12). Julia is puzzled by this: “She was one of the household. . .a slave,” she replies, attributing their different views to difficulties of language, “the niceties” of Latin (p. 12).

Author Allen makes it clear from this interchange that the Visigoth idea of family is different from the Roman concept, and goes on throughout the novel to explore this difference in a variety of scenes and verbal exchanges. This conversation between Una and Julia makes the question of family explicit:

“’Have you seen a slave being mistreated while you have been among us?’ (Una asks Julia).
‘I have seen no slaves. . . ‘ (Julia replies).
‘That is because you cannot tell the difference by looking. Slaves belong to families, are part of families. . .’ Now (Julia) began to understand. Once you were in a barbarian household, however you got there, everyone had a responsibility towards you, just as you had duties to them” (p. 102).

Later on, after Julia and Wulfric’s first sexual encounter, Julia realizes that “. . . It was days since she had thought of escape, but it was not apathetic resignation or fear that was keeping her here. It was, she realized, a sense of belonging” (p. 135)—something Julia has not experienced in her Roman home, but is finding instead in the Visigoth camp.

For the Visigoths, the concept of family is inclusive, not exclusive—a family includes all members of the household, men and women, slaves and children, whether related by blood or not, who “belong.” “This is a people, a nation. . .and now you are part of it,” Wulfric tells Julia (p. 28), to which Berig adds: “. . . you will be quite at home here” (p. 29).

Being “family” requires interdependence, responsibility and accountability between all members of the household or “kin group.” This mutual obligation is expressed in communal living, distribution of responsibilities among family members, and in vigorous mutual defense. Allen’s description of Julia’s Roman family life, and her comparison of this to Julia’s experience as a member of a Visigoth household, makes this vision of family an unmistakable feature of the novel.

“Involved In Something Momentous”: A Sense of Purpose

Julia’s rapid integration into the Visigoth community illuminates another feature of Visigoth family life as Allen imagines it: the notion that, in an interdependent environment where each person’s work is necessary and each person’s contribution valued, each member of the family is strengthened and inspired by a sense of meaning and purpose.

As Julia begins her first night as a captive in Wulfric’s tent, she readies herself for sleep by removing her tunic and sandals, washing her feet, and preparing the bed, activities which Allen describes as “unfamiliar work” (p. 44) to her as a Roman senator’s daughter. At Julia’s Roman home, we are told, a slave would prepare all this for her, unpin her hair, assist her with face cream, and leave out flowers: “It would all be perfect. Cool, tasteful, perfect” (p. 45).

As part of her duties, Julia must learn “. . .how to wash clothes, how to turn up a tunic and how to deal with a rabbit for the pot” (p. 88). She is also called upon to stitch up Wulfric’s arm when he is wounded in a fight, to pack up Wulfric’s tent when the community takes to the road, and to drive the heavily loaded wagon. And as Julia develops more expertise in these tasks, she comes to see that she is no longer “ . . .clumsy and helpless and ashamed of her pampered, heedless existence” (p. 88), no longer “. . . a gaming piece on the board where family and civic status were decided” (p. 103).

Instead, Julia begins to see herself as useful, resourceful, and an integral part not only of Wulfric’s household but of the Visigoth people as well. She begins to think of herself not as a powerless pawn, but as a person of value, and purpose, and self-determined life.

“I have come to enjoy the way we live now,” Julia tells Wulfric. “I am a slave and yet this seems like freedom. I like the people in my life now, I feel well and fit, I am involved in something momentous” (p. 146). By finding a sense of meaning and purpose, Julia has come to see herself as an important part of the Visigoth family.

Not “Lonely All the Time”: Community and Consistency

In Virgin Slave, Barbarian King, members of the Visigoth community live in a mobile camp, constantly on the move in search of land and in service to their king. Their “homes” consist of tents, wagons, and fireplaces, humans and animals crowded close together, with little or no privacy in which to isolate oneself or hide from others.

On her first evening in the camp, Julia makes note of this: “Outside she could hear the murmur of conversation, could make out Wulfric’s voice amidst a number of other men. . .Further away a baby cried and was hushed, dogs barked, someone came past on a horse, its feet slow and tired sounding” (p. 45). Later, after she and Wulfric have had an argument, Julia wonders: “Wulfric’s voice raised in a roar would not have been stopped by canvas walls. How much had their neighbours heard?” (p. 72).

Julia notes how children and women are part of the community’s activity, helping one another in daily activities and chores, and mentions several times her surprise that Wulfric would interact so naturally and playfully with children of the camp when she cannot “imagine any of the senators of her acquaintance stopping to talk to a grubby child” (p. 29).

Julia contrasts the sound, energy, and mutual involvement of the Visigoth community with memories of her Roman home, where “From outside there would be nothing to hear. Slaves padded silently, all too aware that to be heard was to arouse the wrath of the mistress of the house. . . The house was as tranquil, and as lonely, as the grave (p. 45).” Julia “had felt lonely all the time at home. Here (at the Visigoth camp), she had never felt that sense of distance, the chill of her parents’ house” (p. 102-103).

There is more to this contrast between Visigoth community and Roman isolation, and it relates to another of the novel’s themes, that of personal and political honor.

In the Visigoth camp, little can be hidden from others, and honor is seen as truthfulness and consistency whether in public or in private. Julia tells Wulfric: “For you and your people, I do not think there is that separation—you are the same at your own hearth and in the king’s Council, making love or making war” (p. 145-146). Julia also describes the Roman sense of honor as she understands it: “’It does not matter what a man is behind closed doors—he can beat his wife, fornicate with his slaves, create elaborate schemes to make himself rich at the expense of his neighbours—so long as his public face is correct. . .’ (p. 145).

The ability to be “behind closed doors,” to have a public and a private face within the political sphere and even within the family unit itself, is impossible in the Visigoth camp; the “inconsistency” (as the Visigoths see it) that characterizes the Roman sense of honor rises out of the silence, the privacy, and the isolation of the mansions and corridors of life in Rome.

Julia's growing consciousness of the importance of involvement in community life, authenticity, and accountability to one another give her, and us, insight into Allen's vision of Visigoth family life--a family life that, in one experience after another, dispels Julia's Roman expectations and prejudices and draws her into the Visigoth circle.

A ‘Bristling Wall of Iron’: Vigorous Mutual Defense

Allen’s portrayal of vigorous mutual defense as a defining feature of Visigoth family life is particularly striking. Julia’s Roman family is wealthy, privileged, and secure—and yet, as the novel begins, Julia is on the street and vulnerable to attack during the sack of Rome because her mother, instead of keeping her inside and sheltered, has sent her out of the safety of their home “on this insane errand . . .” (p.8)

Julia muses, “I just did as I was told while she stayed behind the high walls, directing the family treasures to be buried beneath the paving slabs in the peristyle. Mother always knows what her priorities are” (p. 11). Obviously the “family treasures” to be secured and kept safe in this time of danger do not include Julia.

Furthermore, Julia’s family is unconcerned about any trauma or pain she might have experienced as a result of her time with the Visigoths, instead expressing dismay that her loss of virginity has diminished her value as a commodity—a commodity to be used by her family to improve their status and position in society (pp. 274-277).

It is also worth noting that even as Julia’s parents fret about her diminished value, Julia’s father makes it plain that she is far from the most valuable commodity possessed by the family: “Between my banker’s secure vaults and your mother’s skill in hiding the household silver, we lost nothing,” he says (p. 276). Clearly the importance of losing Julia herself for many months pales in comparison!

On the other hand, vigorous defense of family members is seen as an expectation of Visigoth community life, and is not an activity confined to men or warriors. When the Visigoth family caravans are attacked, Allen describes the women as active participants in the defense of their men and their wagons, hauling their children to safety, forming a defensive line, and “lifting the long boar spears and turning to confront the cavalry with a bristling wall of iron” (p. 264).

Wulfric defends Julia at their first meeting by killing her would-be rapists, protecting her more immediately and definitively than her Roman family has; Berig protects and defends Wulfric in various challenges and dangerous situations; and Julia herself takes up a knife in Wulfric’s defense after his confrontation with Rathar (p. 87).

Julia, nominally a slave, is included, protected, and valued in Wulfric’s family, the Visigoth community, in a way she has never been included, protected, and valued in her own Roman family or community.

At the novel’s end, Julia can choose between staying a part of her family of origin and making her permanent home in Rome, or rejoining Wulfric and her new-found Visigoth family. For Julia, the choice is easy.

In Rome, she has known “. . . the things that made life survivable—a proper bathhouse, a proper latrine with running water, civilized food, and someone else to cook it, clean clothes” (p. 29), but she has also known loneliness, felt useless, and been valued and protected only as a pawn or a commodity.

In the Visigoth community, Julia has found “ . . . The beautiful handicrafts, the skills that produced them kept alive despite the dangers and difficulties of a nomadic life. The sophisticated interweaving of family and alliance, kingship and loyalty, the laughing children and the dignified women, having their say, fighting alongside their men” (p. 271).

Here with the Visigoths she has been embraced as a family member and welcomed as a part of a community. Here she has learned meaningful skills and found a purpose for life and work. Here she has been valued and defended, as she has valued and defended others.

So it is no surprise that the book’s end finds Julia moving “into the night, out of Rome, and into a new world” (p 292)--returning with Wulfric, who loves and has sacrificed for her, to the Visigoth community where she has found family, and home, and a sense of belonging.

NOTES: In thinking and writing about this novel I have employed a "hermeneutic of generosity" and found in its exploration of slavery/freedom, involvement/isolation, civilization/barbarianism, honor/betrayal, and purpose/uselessness (among others) much food for thought. It was well written, well researched, and thematically rich.

As much as I enjoyed this novel, however, I acknowledge its limitations. For one thing, the novel's format renders it far too short for its historical era and subject matter, and would have benefited from some additional character history and exposition to fully flesh out Julia's and Wulfric's backstory and make them real characters in my mind. I was disappointed by the ubiquitous bathtub scene, and by Wulfric's convenient "bedroom lie" to Julia (the only time he ever lies to her in the novel, and at such a crucial moment of trust). I was also disappointed in the many, many run-on sentences (perhaps the book should be called "Virgin Slave, Barbarian King, Comma Splice"?) and felt it could have used a good final editing.

The title itself, of course, is the ultimate offense, although I must admit that it has really caught my husband's imagination in a way few romance titles have!

Travelin'

2007-12-30T18:26:00.000-08:00

This sermon was preached on December 30, 2007, for morning worship at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the day was Matthew 2: 13-23.

This morning’s passage from the gospel of Matthew may seem a bit out of place to us on this Sunday after Christmas. In every sacred and secular way possible, and for months—ever since Halloween!-- we’ve been focused on Christmas. For weeks now, we’ve been giddy with singing and prayer and gift-giving and festive dinners and parties. Just a few nights ago, we gathered together singing joyful carols, lighting candles in the expectant dark, proclaiming the miraculous birth of Jesus, the Light of the World. We’ve been celebrating the Good News that Christ’s birth and presence has changed our hearts, and transformed the world, forever.

So here we are this morning, just a few days out from this most joyful of days, and the news Matthew’s gospel brings to us in verses 13-23 of Chapter 2 is anything but good. We read that King Herod, tipped off to Jesus’ existence by a group of loose-lipped wise men from the east, declares that all infants in Bethlehem are to be killed; and Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus escape in the dark of night, fleeing to Egypt and remaining in exile there until it’s safe to return home.

I’m sure I’m not the only one to read this passage this morning and think, “Whoa! Where did Christmas go?”

It’s an important question. And if you think about it, you may come to the conclusion—as I have-- that’s it’s a question we could, and should, be asking ourselves not only today, but every day, of every year, for the rest of our lives? “Whoa! Where did Christmas go?”

Our gospel writer, Matthew, knows where Christmas is going, at least in his gospel narrative. Christmas is going full speed into the calling of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus in Chapter 3—and our scripture for today, his account of the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight Into Egypt, is an important transition point in his telling of Jesus’ story.

Matthew the writer is very much interested in leading us to recognize Jesus, the baby of Bethlehem, as the Messiah long awaited by the Jewish people. In today’s passage, Matthew takes us back to Hebrew scripture three times, finding in Jesus’ exile in Egypt, Herod’s massacre of the children, and the Holy Family’s eventual settlement in Nazareth, fulfillment of scriptural prophecy—as Matthew sees it, proving objectively that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior—and setting the context for Jesus the Messiah’s saving ministry, atoning death, and triumphant resurrection, described and developed in the gospel chapters to come.

Matthew recounts the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt to tell us about who Jesus is. What’s so interesting to me, on this Sunday after Christmas, is how in the process he sees right into the heart of everyone else in his narrative. And what’s in their hearts, so soon after the birth of the Savior, is fear.

King Herod is afraid that this newborn baby, this child the wise men tell him is to be “the King of the Jews,” is a direct threat to him—to his political power, his control over the people and the land—thus his order to murder Bethlehem’s babies. He deals with his fear by taking direct and violent action to destroy its source.

Joseph, warned by the angel, is also afraid—afraid that this little family for which he has taken responsibility will be discovered and killed. Joseph deals with his fear by leaving home and enduring exile in a foreign land--obeying the angel, he flees with Mary and Jesus into Egypt, and then, after it seems safe enough, hiding them in the relative anonymity and obscurity of a backwater town called Nazareth.

Herod is afraid, Joseph is afraid—who else is afraid?

This is one of those times where we can open a Bible and use it as a mirror to see ourselves. The answer, of course, is—it’s us.

“Whoa! What happened to Christmas?”

On this Sunday after Christmas, those of us who read this story, study the scriptures, call ourselves followers of Jesus—we are afraid. We are afraid because this story shows us what we have always suspected; that Christmas has come, and Christmas has gone, and--perhaps--nothing has really changed in our lives or in the world.

As we stand on Christmas Eve with candles lighting up the dark, singing of heavenly peace, we are so much wanting, and counting on, Jesus’ birth to give us a happy ending. We are so much counting on the Christmas gifts and festivities to make everything all right--or at least a little bit better—to heal and fill the hurting places inside of us and put a soft golden glow of happiness on our families, on our work, on our lives.

But even on Christmas, or on the days and weeks afterwards, we have to face the fact that the world keeps turning. People we love get sick and die. Political figures are assassinated. There are tidal waves and earthquakes and storms and famines around the world. We fight with our children. The new toy lies abandoned on the living room floor. We drink and eat too much. Old hurts rise up in our throats to choke us with grief and pain. We have to do the dishes and clean the litter box.

Christmas has come and gone, the world keeps turning, nothing has really changed, and we are afraid—that Christ’s coming is meaningless—that we’re inadequate—or that, despite everything we’ve said and done, Jesus is forever just out of our reach.

The English poet W.H. Auden wrote about this post-Christmas fear and depression in the final poem of his Christmas oratorio called “For the Time Being.” I’ll read you some of that poem so you can see—hear—what I mean.

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers . . .
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory . . .
For the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. . .

How well Auden sums up those feelings we have: “Whoa, whatever happened to Christmas!”

He calls this post-Christmas period “The Time Being”—which I have always thought has a hint of that exile time, that flight into Egypt, to it—and “The Time Being” for Auden is a metaphor describing Our time, our culture, and our human condition: this time we’re living in, Ordinary time; the time between birth and death; between Christ’s coming and his eventual return in glory; between inspiration and completion; between vision and revelation.

The Time Being is now—this time, any time-- when we’re all trying to live “in the light of Christmas” and realize, as we keep stumbling over our feet, that the world is still pretty dark in these moments before dawn.

Auden says,

To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

Our gospel writer, Matthew, describes the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt to tell us about who Jesus is—the long-awaited Savior. As we read Matthew’s account, we come to understand who we are—people living in The Time Being, struggling to make sense of Christ’s birth, and Christmas, in a world where tragedy and tedium continue undeterred.

But in the midst of the bleakness and difficulty and tragedy Matthew recounts in our passage for today, there is also a gleam—or maybe it’s a blaze—of something like hope, and courage, and redemption.

For the story of the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt reminds us that God’s work in the world is not an easy, sparkly fairy tale that ends with a simple happily ever after.

It reminds us instead that salvation, like anything truly worth having, is costly; that God’s triumphant sending of Jesus Christ into the world to redeem it, and to assure us eternal life, carried the price of pain, and sorrow, and crucifixion. It reminds us that this world, our world of tragedy and tedium, has always been and continues to be the world in which God is present, God chooses to be involved, and God works, hand in hand with us, to transform and redeem.

It reminds us that deep joy and deep sorrow are intimately entwined in life, and that God’s presence and purpose can be seen, and felt, and known, in both. It reminds us that no matter how difficult things are, how long or how far the exile, or how deep the suffering, neither Jesus’ story, nor ours, ends here; that there is always more to the story, that our future lies in God’s hand, and that God’s promised future—whether in this life or the next-- is beautiful and filled with grace.

So how do we make sense of this post-Christmas world—The Time Being that we find ourselves in—with its tedium, and its trivialities, and its tragedies? How can we find and keep that Christmas joy and confidence, and fan that little flame of the Light of the World until it’s strong enough to see by?

I want to leave you with a connection that struck me as I was reading Matthew’s passage with its theme of exile and return.

Lately, because my office has moved over to Mall 205, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the car (and I guess that, depending upon your affinity for your automobile, you could see that car time either as exile or as paradise). So I’ve been listening to audiobooks on CD during my drives, and I’ve been amazed by how many books I’ve been able to read this way in a very short time.

One of my recent audiobooks was The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, a wonderful book set on an island in South Carolina, full of the images and atmosphere of that region. One of the characters is an African-American woman, an expert on the island’s culture and traditions, who says during a tour of the island:

“There’s an old Gullah practice. . . Before our people can become church members, they go to a sacred place in the woods three times a day for a week and meditate on the state of their souls. We call it ‘traveling,’ because we’re traveling inside.”

Traveling.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Gullah, it’s a unique African-American culture found on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, where descendants of slaves from different tribes and countries in West Africa still speak a Creole language—called “Gullah”—that mixes English with African dialects, and their Christianity blends with spiritual traditions from Africa.

I find it evocative and powerful to think about the Gullah people—people who were slaves, isolated on islands, unable to really go anywhere—maybe you could describe them as people in exile—naming their time of spiritual discernment, their spiritual quest, ‘Traveling.’

So maybe that’s how we should think of the flight Into Egypt as Matthew describes it—not as a time of exile, or hiding, or fear—but a time of “traveling.” And maybe that’s what this time of post-Christmas darkness can be for us, a time of “traveling.”

Perhaps our Time Being, our ordinary time, our time of tedium and tragedy, the time that seems so flat and uninspiring after the the sights and the sounds, the vision and the inspiration of Christmas—can be redeemed and transformed if we embrace its ordinariness and its brokenness; if we claim it for Christ and for ourselves; if we use it as a time to “travel inside” and discover the gifts hidden in its difficult and rocky terrain.

As we go traveling with the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt of Matthew’s gospel—and traveling in the real world of our own post-Christmas Time Being—may we be transformed by our times of exile and estrangement and despair.

May we know and believe, in our hearts and in our souls, that since the incarnation we celebrate at Christmastime, even the tedium of our daily chores and the pain of our daily sorrows is blessed by the presence of Christ, who walks with us when we rejoice, and when we mourn.

May you experience this truth of Christmas, after Christmas, and every ordinary day; and may each day, no matter what it holds, find you ‘traveling inside.’

Amen.

Watching and Waiting

2007-12-04T19:08:00.000-08:00

This sermon was preached at the evening Vesper service at the Holliday Park Plaza retirement center on December 2, 2007. The text was Matthew 24: 36-44.

I feel very privileged to be among you today on the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the liturgical Christian year and the beginning of that most festive of seasons, the preparation for Christmas.

I must tell you, though, that my husband got me a little bit apprehensive yesterday. He’d been watching the Weather Channel, you see, and saw meteorologists reporting then that a big winter storm was on its way and that 75 mile per hour winds would be raging and howling just about the time you and I were gathering here for worship. “I don’t know,” he said, “It sounds kind of scary to me—being on the top floor of Holliday Park Plaza in a big windstorm.” And yet, despite the predictions of gloom and doom—from the weathermen and from my husband!--here we are, and we seem to be safe and ok, and we’re getting on with worship.

It’s hard to know what to do with predictions of gloom and doom when we see them on television or hear them from loved ones. Regular readers of the Bible, though, are familiar with these kinds of themes—writings and prophecies about disaster, the end of the world, and God’s judgement are common enough in the Bible that scholars and theologians have a word to classify them—eschatalogical—having to do with the eschaton, the Greek word for the end of the world.

We would certainly classify the passage from Matthew’s gospel that we read a moment ago as one of these eschatological passages. Matthew tells us that Jesus is in Jerusalem, having made his triumphant entry into the city to the cheers of welcoming crowds. As chapter 24 begins, we see Jesus leaving the temple declaring to his disciples that “Not one stone” of the temple “will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Afterwards, on the Mount of Olives, the disciples come to Jesus and want to know more. “When will this be,” they ask him, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And, as Matthew records it, it is in response to this question that Jesus unleashes a storm of prophecy, encompassing parables, stories, and warnings, about the end of the world, God’s judgement, and his own part in the completion of history—an eschatological discourse of which our passage for today is but a very small part.

“About that day and hour no one knows,” Jesus tells the disciples. “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. . .if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

We read passages like this during Advent because in this time of year, when we celebrate the coming into our world of Jesus Christ, Emanuel, God with us, Our Savior in that historical moment over 2,000 years ago—we also look forward in expectation of Christ’s return—what we call the “second coming”—a moment, sometime in the future, when Christ will come to gather the faithful, to judge the unfaithful, to unite past, present and future into a triumphant completion of God’s history and God’s purpose.

And so Jesus, and Matthew’s gospel, warn and encourage and implore us--keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

Maybe some of you saw this cartoon in the your Sunday paper a few weeks ago, in the Parade magazine. It’s just one panel, very simple. In the cartoon a gentleman in a biblical-type getup—shabby tunic, sandals, long beard—is on the street holding a sign that proclaims “The End of the World is Near.” Passing by on the street is a man, sharply dressed up in a business suit and holding a briefcase, obviously hurrying from one meeting to another. And the business man is looking at the sign “The end of the world is near” and he says, “This is no time for irrational optimism, pal! We’ve got real problems!”

I thought of this cartoon when I read today’s gospel passage. Are we like that businessman, hurrying by, immersed in our own problems, unwilling to even stop and think for a moment about what the End of the World might really mean? For us, is the Second Coming just some kind of inconvenient myth or fairy tale?

Or—are we so worn down by the unremitting life of tasks and responsibilities, appointments and worries and cares that keep our lives busy and take our whole attention that we think the end of the world might be good news because we could at least then get a little rest? What does it really take to get our attention and make us stop for a moment, stop doing things, and actually think about what it is that we are doing?

Our gospel passage for today, like the bearded man in sandals holding the End of the World sign, invites us to stop for a moment in our heedless rush, to pay attention, to get ready for something that’s not on our “to do” list. Our gospel passage for today invites us to pause in the middle of what for many of us is an overcommitted frenzy of Christmas shopping and parties and TV specials and activities—to pause, to ponder, and to prepare our hearts for the miracle of Christ’s certain presence with us in the past, in the present, and in the future.

Keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

What does it mean to be awake, and ready, for the coming of Christ? Jesus gives us example after example in Matthew 24 and 25, including the example in our passage for today about the householder who needs to be alert and awake to prevent his house from being broken into.

Preparation is something we know about. We prepare for a new baby by getting the diapers ready. We prepare for an earthquake by practicing getting under our desks at school or at work. We prepare for retirement by saving money.

I remember that in the 80’s when I was in graduate school in Boston, we prepared for Hurricane Gloria’s arrival by taping up all of our dorm windows--and then laying in a big stock of beer. We weren’t only prepared to outlast that hurricane, we were prepared to enjoy it. We gathered in a room and waited for the hurricane—and it never came. It went out to sea instead of heading in towards Boston.

So what was all that preparation for? Was it meaningful or important at all? What good is it to be awake, and to be ready, if what you’re waiting for never comes—at least during your lifetime?

For me, the key to understanding our passage for today lies just a little further along in Matthew’s gospel. In chapter 26, as Jesus sits praying through the night in the garden of Gethsemane, waiting for his arrest, he tells the disciples: “I am deeply grieved, even to death. Remain here, and stay awake with me.”

And as Jesus waits and suffers throughout that long night, his disciples fail him and fail him again by falling asleep when he needs them most. “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” he says to them. You can hear the disappointment and the pain and the betrayal of those words.

Jesus’ words of prophecy “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” in Matthew 24 are poignantly echoed by his heartfelt cry, “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” in Matthew 26. And the Greek word used in the original text is the same one in both places. In my translation, the NRSV, it’s written as “stay awake”—and in other translations such as the NIV, it’s written as “keep watch.”

So. What if we think of staying awake not as being prepared for something to happen, or as waiting in expectation or readiness—but as keeping watch, as Jesus wanted the disciples to do in the garden--keeping vigil in patience and love, companionship and simple presence--while nothing in particular—certainly nothing dramatic--is happening?

What if we think of being ready not as an activity like getting diapers, or buying beer, or having an emergency kit in the car trunk, or anxiously awaiting an event? What if being ready is simpler than that? What if being ready is simply keeping vigil or keeping watch--being present and patient, being attentive, listening, being, companioning—loving—in the time we find ourselves—in this "time between?”

It’s the difference between being vigilant—which is future centered, always focused on an upcoming event; and keeping vigil, which is present-centered, always focused on what is happening now.

When was the last time you kept watch or kept vigil through the night in this sense of the word? Were you standing on the deck of a frigate at midnight in the Pacific? Were you hovering over a sleeping infant with her first cold? Were you breathing through birth contractions, one after another after another? Were you stranded by a snowstorm in the airport at Minneapolis/St Paul? Or were you holding the hand of a loved one as they died, patiently waiting and companioning and loving them as their breaths came further and further apart and they drifted from this life to the next?

What happens to us when we keep vigil—when we stop doing and simply be? It seems like time stops, doesn’t it?

All of our senses are heightened as the world around us quiets and we can hear the rustling of the trees, feel the hardness of the chair or the warmth of a hand, see the stars or notice those first hints of morning light drift over the horizon. Our priorities shift and for a moment what becomes important is a loved one’s breath; or murmured words of comfort; a cold cloth on the forehead; a warm blanket; a favorite song or poem.

We know the grace of doing “nothing” but being—and the holiness and beauty of “being” overwhelms us, more than enough and overflowing.

Theologians might say that the difference between “waiting” and “keeping watch” is the difference between chronos and kairos. The difference between time measured out in minutes, tracked and known by clocks and activities and chores--chronos; and time as God knows it, time experienced as timelessness or fullness, sacred and still and meaningful—kairos.

“Keep awake,” Jesus tells us, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

But the wakefulness and readiness Jesus wants from us isn’t found in doing, or preparing, or even in waiting. The wakefulness and readiness Jesus wants from us is found in keeping watch—companioning and comforting one another; taking time to stop doing and embrace being; experiencing God’s grace and holiness and timeless presence in the time we have, the patience and the fullness and the completeness of this “time between.”

This Advent, my prayer for you is that you will know this stillness and beauty, this holiness and patience—that you will experience God’s sacred kairos--as you keep awake and keep watch in joyful expectation for the gift of Christmas and for the mystery of Christ’s second coming.

Amen.

The Worthy Slave and More

2007-10-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached on October 7, 2007, for morning worship at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. It deals with the text of Luke 17: 5-10.

This text from Luke appears in the lectionary for today—and oh, my, is it a hard one. You could probably tell that from the fact that I didn’t have a title to give to Edith and so it appears today in your bulletin as “untitled sermon.” (which I kind of like, actually, it’s so multi-purpose!)

This text from Luke is so hard that after I told Pastor Greg I was going to take up the challenge of preaching on it, he asked me, “are you sure? You don’t have to!” It’s one of those texts that the New Testament scholars tend to skim over in their otherwise painstaking analysis, usually saying something like, “here is another in a string of Jesus sayings, seemingly unconnected to one another, in which the meaning isn’t clear.” In Greek, its original language, the grammar and imagery are a bit garbled, which makes things especially hard for us. In the words of one of the commentators I consulted, “This parable of the worthless servant is probably no one’s favorite.”

So that’s our challenge for today. I’m thinking that by the end of this sermon this passage still won’t be one of your favorites, but maybe—just maybe—we can try to move it up the list just a little bit.

One thing that makes this passage so hard for me is Jesus’ use of the imagery of master and slave. We all know that slavery was a fact of life in the ancient world. It was a fact of life in our own country until about 140 years ago, and it’s still happening today in many parts of the world. We rightly associate slavery with injustice, with cruelty, with inequality, with suffering. And we also rightly associate the good news of Jesus with breaking the bonds of slavery—with justice, kindness, equality, and wholeness.

So hearing Jesus speak of the master and slave relationship so casually, and more than that—speak of it in this parable as a model for the life of faith and a disciple’s relationship with God—honestly, it makes my teeth hurt. I don’t like it one bit.

But let’s all take a shot of novocaine and look at this parable. What is Jesus really saying? Here’s what I think.

Jesus wants the disciples to think about the life of faith, and so he uses as an example the relationship of a master to his slave—a relationship that all of the disciples, people of their time as they were, would have known about, seen all around them, and perhaps experienced themselves. This example would have resonated with the disciples’ life experiences in a real, personal kind of way.

Jesus asks them if, as masters, they would ordinarily welcome a slave in from work in the fields with an invitation to dinner? Of course not, he says. You as the master would remind the slave—your unpaid servant-- that his work for the day is not yet done. The slave needs to prepare the master’s food, serve him dinner, and clean up afterwards—before taking time to rest from his labors and take care of his own needs.

More than that, Jesus says, you as the master wouldn’t feel a need to thank the slave for his efforts—after all, serving you—and serving you first--is just part of his duty to you as a master. It’s expected. It’s ordinary. Absolutely not worthy of praise.

So, Jesus is saying to the disciples, the life of faith is like this. You, as the servant people of God, serve God, and your work will never be done. And God, as the master, doesn’t owe you a thing for all that work—certainly not wages, and not even dinner and a good night’s sleep.

Yikes! What a message. No wonder this parable is nobody’s favorite. And even though it’s true—because when IS our work for God ever done? And what DOES God owe us for a life of virtue and service—nothing, because God is God---even though it’s true, after thinking about this one for a while I know we, like Thomas Jefferson, would like to get out our scissors and cut this out of our Bibles so we never have to read it again!

As I was turning this parable over and over in my mind, trying to find something about it that seemed uplifting or even hopeful, I was privileged to attend the Chamberlin lecture over at Lewis and Clark College this past Monday night. The speaker was Rev. Peter Gomes, who’s the Chaplain at Harvard University. In a speech that spoke of responsibility for care of the environment as a spiritual task, he referred over and over again to the story of creation—how in the Biblical creation narrative God creates the world and puts the human being within it to be a steward of it.

And Rev. Gomes reminded me of something I hadn’t heard articulated in a long time: that “Stewardship” doesn’t mean “raising money for the church” or “taking care of your possessions” or even “contributing something to a greater cause.” Stewardship really means “taking care of something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Taking care of something that doesn’t belong to you? This would seem to go against every tenet of human nature as we understand it. One of the founding principles of our capitalist and entrepreneurial economy is that it is ownership that produces pride, and care, and concern—thus our tax breaks to encourage home ownership.

Who of us takes care of a hotel room? We just put the wet towels on the floor and leave the tracked in beach sand and the spilled Coca-Cola on the carpet. Who of us expects the rental house next door to be a neighborhood showplace? If it doesn’t belong to me, we think, why take care of it? It’s not my responsibility.

So as I thought about stewardship, and our role in the world--in God’s created garden, I began to see in my mind’s eye the slave in the parable setting a different kind of example for us, showing us a different way of being—showing us how we can care for, not trash, the things that don’t belong to us—whether that’s our hotel room, our rental car, or the whole of the world itself.

The slave in the parable is entrusted with the care of the estate and the house that don’t belong to him—the slave takes care of the fields, and the garden, and the kitchen, that are not his. This care for a place that doesn’t belong to him is his job, his duty, his responsibility, and his service. The slave is a steward, a caretaker, an essential part of the master’s plan for the maintenance and health of the estate. Perhaps this parable ought to be called the parable of the “worthy” slave, not the “worthless” one.

Perhaps we, then, are charged with that same responsibility toward our world and the people in it. Perhaps if we saw ourselves not as owners of the world and masters of our own fate, but as God’s servants, charged with the stewardship of God’s estate—both the physical world and our spiritual inheritance—we would be better able to live as God would have us live and do as God would have us do.

Perhaps if we saw ourselves not as owners with competing land-claims or faith-claims, but as co-stewards with everyone else in our community, our church, and the world, we would be more inclined to work together as a people and as a faith community for the health and healing of God’s garden.

Perhaps, if we saw ourselves as stewards of God’s good creation, of God’s love and faithfulness, of God’s many gifts to us and to the world—perhaps then we would know in a visceral way, in our hearts, that God indeed does not owe us thanks for our service. Perhaps, if we saw ourselves as stewards, we would see that no matter how much we give to God, we will always, profoundly, owe a debt to God—for God’s gifts to us of life, of love, of community, and of the world around us--for God's gift of His son, Jesus Christ.

So this passage tells us something about stewardship and how to rightly live out our relationship to God and to the world—a fitting message on this World Communion Sunday when we join with Christians all over the world—all over God’s garden—to celebrate our unity and our community in Christ.

So, now that we have an image of stewardship of the garden before us—what about that other thing that bothers us in this passage, that depressing image of unending, unappreciated servitude represented by the ever-working, never-thanked slave.

When Jesus tells the disciples that, despite a long day spent in the fields, the slave’s work isn’t over until the master’s dinner is prepared and the dishes are done, I believe that this is indeed a truthful vision of what the life of faith is and can be—and that it’s not a bad thing after all.

Because, after all, the life of faith is not a life of leisure, of kicking back, putting up your feet, gorging on dinner, and taking a long nap—and there’s no such thing as retirement in the life of faith, either! The work of faith, and faithful work, is never done. And, more importantly, we wouldn’t want it to be—because that would be for us a particularly dull, uninspiring, and meaningless way of life.

The amazing thing about the life of faith is that—like your garden, or your housework, or even your Netflix list—there’s always more to do, and one more thing to do after that—and, more than that, there’s always something that you can do.

I remember seeing a video of a woman who had lived her whole life paralyzed, confined to a hospital bed in a nursing facility, dependent on the visits and the care of others. In the video, she is resting all curled up in almost a fetal position, wearing oxygen and hooked up to a pain pump, her voice halting and soft. It is obvious that her body is starting to fail and that she is near death. A chaplain asks her, “What do you do during the day?” and this woman says, “I pray. I pray for other people and their needs. I figure that’s the purpose of my life, to be someone that prays for others. And knowing I’m helping other people makes my life worth living.”

Truly, the life of faith is never done, and should never be done. There is always something we can do here in God’s garden.

So. I want to leave you with a final thought. Just before Jesus tells his parable of the worthy slave, he speaks to the disciples about faith. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Now ordinarily I would interpret this as being about how none of the disciples, indeed none of us, has enough faith in God, and that we all need to have more faith. Of course that’s what it means, that’s obvious.

But today I feel led to tell you that I believe this little saying about the mustard seed opens up to us another aspect of the nature of faith. Not only does it help us understand what faith is, but it helps us understand what this whole 17th chapter of Luke is really about.

I believe that Jesus is telling us that one important, essential element of faith is—imagination. When we have imagination, we can picture a world where things are different. When we have imagination, we step out of normal rules and normal expectations, and can envision a different reality—perhaps even God’s reality. When we have imagination we can see visions and dream dreams and get a glimpse of the future God wants for us and for the world.

So important is imagination, in fact, that we include it in one of the vows that ministerial candidates and church officers take at their ordination. We ask: “Will you seek to serve the people, with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?”

Look with me at the images we see throughout the 17th chapter of Luke. In the passage just before our text for today, Jesus asks the disciples to envision a world where we can be forgiving, no matter how many times we are sinned against.

In the passage just after our text for today, probably what Pastor Greg will preach about next week, Jesus shows the disciples ten lepers, cured of their disease, and praises the faithful imagination of the one of those ten who figures out who and what Jesus is and turns back to thank him.

Now Jesus asks the disciples to imagine a Mulberry tree in the sea—surely an impossibility—to imagine it, as a metaphor for the power of faith and as a vision of what faith can accomplish in the world.

And in what we’re now calling the parable of the worthy slave, Jesus tells the disciples “Who among you would say to your slave ‘Come take your place at the table?’” What a task of faith it is to imagine that a slave could be invited to the table—and yet that is the very thing Jesus seems to ask the disciples to do. To imagine a different, more just, more compassionate reality.

Imagine a world where slaves are invited to the table with the master.

It’s not really so hard to do. In fact, we do it--we participate in this vision and make it real--each time we approach this table for communion. We are the slaves—worthy and unworthy alike--invited to table with the master, to partake of a holy meal that lifts our spirits, broadens our vision, sparks our sacred imagination, and brings us into communion with Jesus Christ.

As we approach this table today, let us remember that the life of faith is about stewardship of God’s garden. About believing that living faithfully with Christ is a never-ending, life-long, life-giving task. And about stretching ourselves in imagination to envision, with the help of the Holy Spirit, God’s new reality present among us—now, and unfolding forever into the future.

Amen.

Table Manners

2007-09-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached on September 2, 2007, for morning worship at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. It is focused on the gospel reading of Luke 14: 1, 7-14.

In my translation of the Bible (the New Revised Standard Version) this section of Luke chapter 14 we just read is sub-titled “Humility and Hospitality.” That would be a pretty good sermon title, I think, and it’s an excellent summary of our text for today, in which we see Jesus invited to eat the Sabbath meal at a Pharisee’s house.

I don’t know if Jesus was the kind of guest the Pharisee expected to share a meal with that day. The text says that “they were watching him closely,” and he certainly gave them something to see and to talk about.

In his usual outspoken way, Jesus comments with stinging disapproval on the behavior he sees there around the table at the meal—guests jostling for the seat with the most honor—telling them, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” That’s our lesson on humility.

Jesus also takes on the Pharisee’s guest list, telling him that he’s invited all the wrong people—that instead of brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors, he ought to have invited “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” There’s our lesson on hospitality.

This is one of those passages that is deceptively simple to us, as we read it with our 21st century, American eyes. We’re from a culture where, at least in theory, food is plentiful and casually eaten, equality of persons is a cherished ideal, and societal status is conferred by wealth and individual achievement.

It’s hard for us to imagine the context of Biblical times, when meals such as the one Jesus attended at the Pharisee’s home were important community events, and who was invited and where they sat—or reclined, as the custom was then—was not only strictly ritualized but communicated a powerful message about social status, importance in the community, and value to society.

One Biblical scholar sums up the importance of presence and place at the table this way:

“Among the ‘rules’ for common meals of this kind in first century Palestine we often find correct order of seating. There is a place for the most important and the least important and everyone in between. . . in the ancient world, society was strongly hierarchical. There was a place on the ladder. For many it was a matter of survival to make sure they either stayed where they were or climbed higher. Position was not just a matter of individual achievement. It was a community value, in some sense given by the group. Your value was inseparable from what others thought about you. Most to be feared was to lose your place, to be embarrassed, to be publicly humiliated by having to take a lower place. Losing face could not be shrugged off as easily as for many of us who have grown up in a strongly individualistic culture. Losing face was almost like losing one’s life.”

I’m sure none of us have been to a dinner party where so very much was at stake. As I thought about this I came up with very few examples of times and places in our culture today where invitation and seating might be a matter of strict planning and protocol, and might convey some social meaning—State dinners at the White House—anyone here ever been to one of those? Or perhaps a little closer to home, Thanksgiving dinner, where Grampa always carves the bird at the head of the table and you know you’ve made it to adulthood when you’ve graduated from the kids table in the hallway to a seat at the main table with the grownups.

In Biblical times, when protocols of invitation and hierarchies of seating conferred so much meaning about who you were and how much you were valued by society, Jesus’ words about humility and hospitality at the dinner table would have stung the ears of his listeners with their power and counter-cultural impact. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind? Give up your seat of honor and go sit at the lowest place? In this parable about humility and hospitality, Jesus is proposing to the people at the Pharisee’s table a complete , and probably frightening, re-ordering of the world as they knew it—a prophetic proclamation of the value and place of each person in God’s eyes and at God’s table.

We don’t live in 1st century Palestine, so we aren’t going to experience this passage from Luke’s gospel with quite the same shock and surprise as those who heard Jesus at the table, or even those who heard it read or proclaimed in the days of the Early church.

But in some ways our understanding of this passage can be enriched by this very same distance of time and place.

Because no matter who we are and where or when we live, the dinner table, and the ritual of sharing food with family and friends around that table, still communicates meaning, still reveals who we are in a deep and even spiritual way, still tells us so much about ourselves and others. No matter who we are and where or when we live, we all have stories to share and meanings to add about “the table” and the messages of love and comfort, conflict and loss, that we have received there.

Time at the table points up differences between families and cultures. I grew up in a Southern home, where hospitality and caring was communicated through table excess: my mother always made twice as much food as we could eat, piled it high in the serving bowls, took pride in offering family and guests second and third helpings, and felt secure and comforted when the refrigerator was full to overflowing with leftovers and creative space management was required to fit in the last saran-wrap covered bowl.

Imagine my surprise when I went to dinner at my in-laws’ home and discovered a whole different sense of provision, comfort, and love. My mother-in-law hated eating leftovers, and so she prided herself on making just enough food to go around, and maybe even a little less--her care and love for her family was expressed in what dietitians would call portion control. In addition, she felt comforted and secure by the economy of not wasting food—an important contribution to the economic well-being and survival of the family.

A friend of mine in high school told me that her parents experienced a different kind of table culture shock when they got married. Her dad was from the East Coast, and for him dinner meant meat and potatoes and gravy over everything. Her mom was from California, and for her dinner meant salad and vegetables and fruits.

At the table we reveal who we are. And for those of you who might be on the dating scene, may I suggest—pizza? On our first date Mark and I went to a pizza place and it was very instructive. No olives for me. No onions for him. Sausage, yes. Anchovies, no. Thin crust or thick crust? Medium or extra large? By the time we had settled on the kind of pizza to order, we knew a lot about each other!

If some of you watch the TVLand or Nickelodeon TV channels, you’ve probably seen a public service campaign urging people to gather around “The Family Table.” It’s a campaign aimed at giving kids the family support they need to succeed in school, resist the pull of gangs and drugs, and make them feel secure in the world. The campaign recognizes that simple fact that we all know from our own experience—that at the table with others we nurture relationships, communicate values, comfort and support one another, and transmit family stories from one generation to another.

At its best, the dinner table is for us a place of equality and self-discovery, a place where love is expressed in word and in deed, a place where we share who we are and what we have with others in mutual vulnerability, a place where we experience what it means to truly be a community.

And, of course, our worship lives as Christians—and the architecture of our churches--are organized around a table—the communion table (Presbyterians never call it an altar). Holy communion, one of our most meaningful times as a church family, is experienced as a shared and sacred meal around a table.

So in a sense, our 21st century perspective can add to and enrich our understanding of Jesus’ call to humility and hospitality in our Luke passage for today.

Jesus says: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, brothers, relatives, rich neighbors. . .invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” In other words—“change who you invite to the table.”

Have you ever heard people talk about historical figures they’d like to invite to an imaginary dinner party? I read a blog on the internet recently where people were making up lists of the perfect dinner guests. One person put together this list: Marie Curie, Jane Austen, Helen Keller, and Marie Antoinette. Wouldn’t that be a fabulous conversation! Another person chose Amelia Earhart, Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Benjamin Franklin, and Annie Oakley. But one person contributing to the blog had a different idea. She said:

“I don’t want famous historical people. Not even the D list. I’d want the estranged sister of the second footman. You know, ordinary people from history—the bitter, gossipy people, the ones who had to pick up after the tantrums. You know, what did Joan of Arc’s childhood playmates think? What’s it like to work in a castle a pair of Princes just disappeared from? How many times did you catch someone sneaking out of the palace at midnight?”

I think this is the kind of thing Jesus is talking about in the gospel passage today. Don’t invite all those people you already know. Don’t invite all those people who can do something for you later. Don’t invite the rich. Don’t invite the famous.

Instead, invite the ordinary—invite the ones you don’t know, the ones that society and history say don’t matter—because they do matter in the eyes of God, and they should matter to you. Invite the ones you can share with and be generous to. And be attentive to their stories at the table—their experience of lameness, of blindness, of poverty and disability—because you will learn so much about the world, about the life and ministry of Jesus, about your own call to your own ministry –ministry at the table, at church, and in the whole of your life.

Jesus says, “When you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” In other words, “Change where you sit.”

My colleague Larry tells a story from his days of prison ministry that beautifully illustrates this point. Larry was having a conversation with a prisoner about his life and his experience of being incarcerated. The prisoner was telling Larry all about his arrest and trial, including his trip to court in Portland in the back of a police paddywagon. “You know,” the prisoner said, “I’ve been down I-84 hundreds of times since I was a little kid, but I-84 sure looks different from the back of a prison van.”

Change where you sit, Jesus says. As he does so many times in the gospels, he is inviting us to move to a different place and experience a different perspective. Give up your seat on the first row and see what the show looks and sounds like from the second balcony; try Thanksgiving dinner at the kids’ table; eat for a month as if all you had was food stamps. Change your perspective and you will learn so much about the world, about the life and ministry of Jesus, about your own call to your own ministry –ministry at the table, at church, and in the whole of your life.

Change who you invite, and change where you sit. And prepare to be changed, as we are changed any time we encounter Jesus, at the table or elsewhere.

And know that just as we are humble and hospitable at our own tables and in our own church community, Jesus welcomes us--the imperfect and the undeserving-- to feast eternally with him in the Kingdom of God through the humility of his sacrifice on the cross and the hospitality of his saving grace.

Medieval theologian and saint Bruno of Segni puts it this way:

“We are all invited to the wedding feast—all of us who have received faith in Christ and the seal of baptism. This table set before us is that of which it is said: You have prepared a table before me in the sight of those who trouble me. Here is the showbread, here the fatted calf, here the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Here is the living bread come down from heaven, here placed before us is the chalice of the New Covenant, here are the gospels and the letters of the apostles, here the books of Moses and the prophets.

"It is as though a dish containing every delight was brought and set before us. What more then can we desire? What reason is there for choosing the first seats? There is plenty for all no matter where we sit. There is nothing we shall lack."

The dinner table—and the life of faith-- where Jesus is host and we are guest is, at its best, a place of equality and self-discovery, a place where love is expressed in word and in deed, a place where we share who we are and what we have with others in mutual vulnerability, a place where we experience what it means to truly be a community—a place where we are offered eternal life—a place where we truly sit at table in the kingdom of God.

Amen.

Do You Love Me?

2007-06-17T20:10:00.000-07:00

This sermon was preached June 17, 2007 for morning worship at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. The sermon focuses on John 21:15-19, although I Corinthians 13 and Song of Solomon 8:6-7 were read during the service as well.

Our gospel reading this morning comes from the 21st chapter of John’s gospel—and describes a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to seven of his disciples. Earlier, in chapter 20, the gospel writer has told us about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. John has told us of Jesus’ meeting with Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; his appearance to the disciples in a locked room; and his display of wounds, proof of his post-resurrection body, to the disciple we know as Doubting Thomas.

Now, in chapter 21, the risen Jesus encounters a group of disciples along the shore of Lake Tiberius and, when they fail at first to recognize him, he sends them off on a fishing expedition. When the disciples return from this expedition with nets bulging with fish, an enormous catch, they recognize that their companion has been Jesus. The disciples sit down for a meal with him, and the questioning begins:

“Simon, Son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Simon, Son of John, do you love me?”
and again, “Simon, Son of John, do you love me?”

Three times Jesus asks it, three times Simon Peter says yes, and three times Jesus answers: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”

So what is this story about? Well, it’s about a lot of things. One commentator I consulted said categorically, “This story is about the rehabilitation of Simon Peter,” noting that as Peter denied Jesus three times at the crucifixion, here he affirms Jesus three times and is given Jesus’ commission three times. Another commentator saw this passage as conferring the ministry and leadership of the church upon Peter, and a third saw it as a foreshadowing of Peter’s own death on a Roman cross some thirty years later, and thus a warning about the cost of discipleship. A fourth speculated that Jesus command to “feed” and “tend my sheep” sets forth a metaphorical blueprint for pastoral ministry: because “pastor” means “shepherd,” the sheep and lambs are members of congregations, children as well as adults, who need pastors to sustain them with the gospel, embrace them with attention and spiritual devotion, and nourish them with the elements of Bread and Cup.

And I agree that all of those things are indeed there in John 21 to inspire us. And each interpretation would be worthy of a sermon of its own.

But this morning I’m going to talk to you about what speaks to me in this passage. I think this passage is all about Love—what love is, how God loves us, and how we are blessed to love one another.

Now no sermon is complete without a requisite embarrassing self-disclosure from the preacher, and so here is mine for today: I am in love with love. More specifically, I love Romance Novels. You know, those paperbacks shelved in the “romance” section that feature embracing couples on the covers? Usually both man and woman have long hair that is blowing artistically in the wind as they cling to one another on top of a cliff, or in the jungle, or in front of a waterfall, or even in the snow. Romance novels are books that feature a love story as the central narrative—usually love between two people who couldn’t be more wrong for each other—and these books always, always conclude with a happy ending. The Happily Ever After is required, and the HEA usually features marriage and a baby on the way.

I’ve loved these books since I was a teenager, and now I am a devoted fan and have a large collection. I know it seems like a weird combination for a minister! I don’t dare reveal my profession to the bookstore cashier.

I know I’m not the only one who loves these books. They account for a large part of paperback book sales and are one of the most profitable categories in the publishing industry. But why on earth admit this to you now—and what on earth does this have to do with John 21?

As I’ve thought about my enjoyment of these little books, I have come to see that romance novels, like so much other human art and expression—and indeed, like so much of our spiritual writing and faith life--and like our Bible passage for today, come to that—these novels deal with eternal and essential questions like “What is love? Do you love me? Do you know me? Am I worthy? Am I lovable? And how can I best reveal and express my love?”

Love is one of the most central of our human dramas, and I would assert, one with many spiritual and faith dimensions as well—although, of course, romance novels chronicle romantic love and not divine or faith-focused love.

In the context of romantic love, romance novels follow the opening of hearts, the recognition and embrace of the Other, and the unfolding and joyful realization that redemption, change of life, and a joyful future are possible, and can be claimed by the hero and heroine.

We think about love a little differently in faith terms. Perhaps we would say that love claims center stage in our spiritual drama as well. In faith terms, we experience the opening of our hearts as we recognize God—the joy of reconciliation as we claim God’s promise of forgiveness—the unfolding and joyful realization of God’s great love for us in his gift of Jesus Christ, Christ’s incarnational birth, his atoning death, and his resurrection—and the loving promise of a joyful future, eternally with him.

OK, so I’ve made the comparison, and now I’m going to follow that comparison right to the limit.

Here are some classic romance plots and how I think they relate to the life of faith:

The powerful, handsome, wealthy Duke falls in love with the mousy, intellectual, poverty-stricken, unsuitable governess—and sometimes she’s even in disguise—a woman no one else notices or thinks attractive. He sees her, though; he looks past the surface, sees through her disguise, thinks she is beautiful, and falls in love with the woman she really is.

I think this plot speaks to our overwhelming need to be seen for who we really are and loved anyway—even if we believe that “real, revealed self” is unworthy, or inadequate, or unlovable.

Many of you know that I work in hospice care. Every day I hear about our patients and their families--people who are struggling with the changes and challenges that have come to them as a result of illness. Perhaps they have scars from surgery, or a missing limb, or an ostomy bag. Perhaps they’re incontinent, or unable to get out of bed. Perhaps they’ve had a stroke, or their hair is gone, or they’ve gotten thinner, or heavier, from chemotherapy or medication. And I know that part of their struggle is: am I ugly? Am I a whole person any more? Am I worthy? Am I—lovable?

And every day I see families, and devoted spouses, caring for their loved ones, telling them with words and showing them with their caregiving that—no matter what you look like, you are beautiful to me; no matter how unworthy you feel, you are worth the world to me; no matter if you feel unlovable, I love you and I want to be with you and I want to care for you.

Isn’t all of this something we believe to be true about our relationship with God? In the same way that the handsome hero sees the plain heroine for who she is and finds her lovable; in the same way that the caregiver sees the patient’s body for what it is and finds him lovable; In the same way that Jesus, knowing the inadequacy and unworthiness of the disciples, seeks them out by the sea of Tiberius, provides them an enormous catch, and sits at table to eat with them--God sees us for who we really are, in OUR unworthiness and inadequacy—God loves us anyway, wants to be with us, and wants to take care of us. That’s what love is.

Another classic romance plot: the wild, frightening, tortured hero with dark secrets meets a young sweet innocent woman who, against all reason, trusts him and believes in him. He saves her from disaster, and in turn he is changed and saved by her love.

Doesn’t this speak to us of our abiding hope that that that no matter what our dark secrets, sins or deficiencies, we can be loved enough to be forgiven, redeemed and saved?

Isn’t this the message Jesus brings to Peter in our passage for today: That no matter your past sins, inadequacies—no matter how many times you denied me at the foot of the cross--you are loved and trusted and redeemed? And isn’t this the message of love, redemption and salvation Jesus Christ brings to us in the crucifixion and resurrection—that no matter who we have been or what we have done, we are loved enough to be forgiven, loved, and saved? That’s how God loves us.

And another plot:

In a marriage of convenience, the hero and heroine are forced to marry, usually at least one of them reluctantly and grudgingly. Along the course of the novel they encounter adventures, disasters, trials, and situations that require them to help, care, and support one another. Strangely enough they fall in love by the end of the book. Maybe because they’ve learned how to do loving things, and in the doing of love they’ve learned to embrace one another in love.

Acts of kindness, mercy, and care that enact love may not always be extraordinary or dramatic. Some of you may remember that musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” Do you remember the song Tevye and Golde, the couple who’ve been married for 25 years, sing together? When Tevye asks her, “Do You Love Me?,” for the first time ever, Golde is amazed.

“Do I love you?” she sings to him testily,
“For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house
Given you children, milked the cow
For twenty-five years I've lived with him
Fought him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that's not love, what is?
Yes, I love you.”

Acts of care and devotion and support, year after year after year without fail—even without words--that’s love. That’s how we can best love one another.

It’s a truth expounded in romance novels, it’s a truth sung about in “Fiddler on the Roof,” and it’s a truth Jesus makes plain to Peter when he says, “Feed my lambs.”

Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” and Peter says yes. But that’s not the end of the conversation. For Jesus, love is more than an emotion to be experienced and acknowledged; if you love me, he tells Peter emphatically, “Tend my sheep. Feed my lambs.” Love is not only a feeling. Love is a doing. Love isn’t something that happens to you. Love is something you do for others. It’s an active pursuit, a work of faith. And it’s revealed in your acts of service, your acts of kindness, your acts of mercy, your care for those around you who are in need. We act lovingly because God loves us; and in turn, our loving acts draw us closer to one another and to Him.

Do you love me? It’s a question that reverberates in this Gospel passage—in art and writing and in human expression of every kind, including my favorite, romance novels—in all of our lives, and in our Christian faith and experience, as we move from infant to child to adult to elder, with all the blessings and frailties and challenges of every stage.

We all want that assurance that we are loved despite our flaws and that we are forgiven and saved. We all need the assurance that we can best find, know, and express love by the act of loving itself. Thanks to the witness of Scripture, thanks to Jesus Christ and his resurrection, thanks to the care we give and are given by others, we know what love is, how God loves us, and how we are blessed to love one another—for certain and for all time.

Amen.

The Ministry of the Towel

2006-03-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

This sermon is focused on John 13:1-14, Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. I preached a first version of this sermon at Calvin Presbyterian Church on 3/19/06 at the contemporary worship service, and was asked to preach it again for the regular worship services on 3/26/06. I changed it a little bit and added some text to fit in with the day's theme, "Jesus as Servant."

I feel privileged to be among you this morning as we continue our Lenten journey together, considering and celebrating the person and the identity of Jesus and all the different yet intimately interrelated roles he plays in the scriptures and in our own lives. So far in this series we’ve talked about Jesus as Teacher, Healer, and Shepherd. This morning we’re going to talk about Jesus as Servant, and his call to us to embrace the spiritual discipline of Service.

The theme of servanthood and service is not an unusual one in the New Testament. Our gospel reading this morning, in which Jesus assumes the role of a servant to wash the feet of his disciples and then tells them that they should follow his example, is just one of many scriptures which calls Jesus’ followers—us included--to take up lives of service to others.

In Mark 9, Jesus says, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” In Matthew 20 we read that “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

I have a soft spot in my heart for the work of serving others. As some of you know, I work as a volunteer recruiter at a local hospice. Each day, every day, my job is to find people who might enjoy serving and helping others, to encourage them to consider volunteer service at our agency, and then to keep them connected with the meaning and the mission of what our work is really all about. My job is all about encouraging people to take up service—and truly, I have worked in the field of what you might call “community service” or “social service” since my days in seminary.

I worked at a soup kitchen and shelter for homeless women in Boston. I helped do refugee resettlement here in Portland. I worked with college students who were doing community service in agencies all over the city. And I’ve worked with volunteers in hospice for the past 7 years.

I believe that Jesus the servant calls us to service as a way of life, and as a way of ministry—and I know that you do, too. Calvin Presbyterian Church is filled with people who volunteer here at the church and out in the community and who support all kinds of compassionate community organizations and ministries with their donations, their gifts of time, and their prayers.

Yesterday, in fact, our Calvin adult mission team left for the Gulf coast to work with people in Alabama who are trying to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. And every year we send our youth out on a mission trip to serve people in another part of the country or the world, building in them a sense of the importance of service as they grow into maturity as Christians and citizens.

We know all about Christ’s call to service, and volunteering, and serving others—it’s something we all do, and it’s something we all know we’re supposed to do from the moment we take our baptismal vows and our first hesitant steps as Christians.

This morning, as we continue our journey through Lent, I’d like to talk about embracing service not just as a given of the Christian life—but about embracing service intentionally and mindfully as a spiritual discipline.

Richard Foster, in his book “Celebration of Discipline,” talks about various kinds of spiritual disciplines practiced by Christians through the ages, and how they can be meaningful practices for our spiritual lives in our own time.

Foster classifies the various spiritual disciplines into three groups--the “inward disciplines”, which would include meditation and prayer; the corporate disciplines, which include worship and celebration—and “outward disciplines” such as simplicity and solitude. And as you might imagine, Foster classifies service as an “outward discipline.”

Foster begins his chapter on the discipline of service with a wonderful quote from mystic Bernard of Clairvaux: “Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet, what you need is not a scepter but a hoe.”

Foster continues by describing the disciples gathered around Jesus at the Last Supper from the passage we read from John’s gospel just a few minutes ago. No one of the disciples wanted to do the dirty, menial task of washing everyone’s feet. No one of them wanted to be considered the least among them. Then, Foster says, “Jesus took a towel and a basin and redefined greatness. The spiritual authority of which Jesus speaks is an authority not found in a person or a title but in a towel.”

Foster says, “As the cross is the sign of submission, the towel is the sign of service.”

I really like that image—my mind immediately jumped to the thought of being, in addition to people of the cross, people of the towel! And perhaps even, if we adapt Jesus’ famous words a little bit, we might think of him saying, “take up your towel and follow me.”

In my work as a volunteer recruiter and coordinator I hear a lot about the reasons why some people undertake volunteer service. Some will say, “I’m interested in medicine or nursing and want to get experience for my future career.” Some will say, “I lost my dad last year and I want to help deal with my grief by helping others.” Some will say, “I’m interested in death and dying issues.” Still others will say things like, “My therapist told me to start volunteering somewhere because it’ll be good for me.”

Now all of these are certainly legitimate reasons to embark on volunteer service. But you might notice that all of the reasons I listed above have more to do with serving the self than with serving others.

Service is a true spiritual discipline when it is more concerned with the other person than with ourselves. Service to others is a true spiritual discipline when it comes out of a relationship with God and God’s urging deep inside. The person who practices the discipline of service is not interested in reaping rewards or recognition; and is not particularly interested in results which will reflect well on him or herself. True service delights in the service of others for the sake of the service itself.

Service to others is a true spiritual discipline when it does not choose whom to serve based on future advantages, or earnings, or to convey some sort of image to the outside world—or to exert control over others. True service is not affected by moods or whims—the person who practices the discipline of service doesn’t serve just when they feel like it—and they don’t just serve for a while and then go home and forget it.

True service is a mindfulness, a lifestyle, that springs from your deepest convictions and unpretentiously goes about caring for the needs of others, rejecting the temptation of self-glorification and embracing the care and the knitting together of the fabric of community.

You know, when I first went to seminary I didn’t have a lot of experience with diverse ways of worship. I was raised in a Presbyterian church that valued and enshrined the traditional ways of doing things, including, for the Lord’s Supper, the traditional grape juice in little cups passed on trays down the pew—as we do it here most often. In seminary I began to meet people of different traditions and go to worship with them in their different churches.

On one occasion, after worshipping in an Episcopal church where I had to go up front for Eucharist and sip from a common cup, I remarked to a fellow student how different that seemed to me—and he replied by describing how, for him, that movement from the pew, and walking down the aisle, and receiving communion there at the front was an essential part of his spirituality of worship. “What moves the body moves the mind,” he told me.

Service is a spiritual discipline because it requires movement. It requires us to draw close to others who are different from us. It requires us to move our feet and our hands—sometimes, to do simple and menial things.

Whenever we sit on the floor to wash someone’s feet, stretch up to hammer a nail, bend to clean a toilet, kneel to talk to a child, get on a plane to travel to the Gulf Coast or the Philippines—or do any kind of service—we change our perspective, we look at the world from a different direction. By moving our bodies in service, we move our minds, and hearts, and souls to a new and greater understanding of God and God’s love for us.

Do any of you remember that quote--is it from Shakespeare?--that goes, “pretend a virtue if thou hast it not”? The discipline of service works just the same way. By doing service, we make ourselves into servants. Like any habit, our service to others sets us into rhythms of work and action, thought and feeling and spiritual commitment, that become so deeply ingrained into our beings that it beats with our heart and breathes with our respiration—that our spirituality and our connection to God becomes part of us, body and soul.

I believe that the discipline of service brings us to a truly embodied spirituality.

The great Catholic writer and social activist Dorothy Day puts it this way: “It is a psychological truth that the physical acts of reverence and devotion make one feel devout. The courteous gesture increases one's respect for others. To act lovingly is to begin to feel loving, and certainly to act joyfully brings joy to others which in turn makes one feel joyful. I believe we are called to the duty of delight.”

Perhaps this sounds like an overwhelming task, this spiritual discipline of service. It need not be. Richard Foster, in his book, gives some wonderfully concrete examples of ways each and every one of us can embody this discipline in a daily or hourly basis. He calls us to “Embrace the service of small things, for in the realm of the spirit we soon discover that the real issues are found in the tiny insignificant corners of life.”

What does he mean by “small things” in the “insignificant corners of life”?

Well, one thing he talks about is the service of listening.

You know, this is one of the most important things we teach our hospice volunteers—to listen—and it’s hard sometimes to convince folks who just want to be helpful and do something that listening is doing something.

Foster puts it this way:

“We need so desperately the help that can come through listening to one another. We do not need to be trained psychoanalysts to be trained listeners. The most important requirements are compassion and patience.

“We do not have to have the correct answers to listen well. In fact, often the correct answers are a hindrance to listening for we become more anxious to give an answer than to hear. An impatient half-listener is an affront to the person sharing.

“To listen to others quiets and disciplines the mind to listen to God. It creates an inward working upon the heart that transforms the affections, even the priorities, of the life. When we have grown dull in listening to God we would do well to listen to others in silence and see if we do not hear God.”

And among the other small things Foster mentions are these: courtesy towards one another, hospitality,allowing oneself to be served (and how difficult that sometimes is), and bearing each other’s burdens.

As I was writing this sermon, and thinking about that image of being the People of the Towel, there was another book that leaped to my mind. It’s a little book by Douglas Adams called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—and for those of you who don’t know it, it’s a science fiction adventure story—and social commentary--with a lunatic, British, Monty Pythonesque flavor.

This book leapt to my mind because one of the most important elements in the story happens to be a towel. In fact, so central and memorable is the towel that sometimes when the author would hold autograph sessions his fans would bring towels to him for his signature instead of paper.

Adams explains that the towel is the one, crucial, indispensable necessity that the intergalactic traveler must bring along on any journey.

Adams says, “A towel, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth; you can lie on it on brilliant marble-sanded beaches ; you can sleep under it beneath the stars; use it to sail a mini raft down the river; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes; you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

“Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

The towel of service is the one, crucial, indispensable necessity that the Christian traveler must bring along on his or her journey through life.

If we are the people of the towel, and we always know where our towel is—then think of all the ways we can serve others: we can wash their feet; we can wrap them in warmth; we can provide a comfortable place to sleep; we can help them on a journey; we can protect them; we can signal in emergencies; we can clothe the naked, swaddle a baby; comfort the sick. I’m sure you can come up with many more uses, small and large, for our towels, our hearts, and our willing hands.

In conclusion, I hope you will remember during this season of Lent that service to others can be, and should be, one of your spiritual disciplines. The spiritual discipline of service need not be grand and dramatic, but is often focused on small acts of love and humility.

The spiritual discipline of service is mindful and intentional; it is truly focused on the other, not the self; it is given freely, for its own sake, without expectation of result or return or even gratitude; and it moves our minds and hearts and souls and bodies more closely into the love and presence of God.

Here’s a practical suggestion to get us on our way, moving down the path of the discipline of service: Start each day by praying, “Lord Jesus, I would so appreciate it if You would bring me someone today whom I can serve.” Then be alert for God’s answer to your prayer—and above all, know where your towel is.

As we move together through Lent, I hope you will choose to be part of the ministry of the towel.

Amen.

Who Says?

2006-01-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

This sermon was preached for the regular morning worship services on 1/29/06. It is based on the story of Jesus preaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, Mark 1: 21-28.

Once upon a time, in a small rural town not far from here, there was a 12 year old girl. This little girl was just beginning to grow into adolescence, and she was very self-conscious about her changing body and the fact that she wasn’t as thin as all of the other girls. This little girl took ballet classes, and participated in the annual springtime ballet recital. One evening, as the little girl and her ballet classmates were lined up in tutus and tights, preparing for their entrance onto the stage to perform for their parents, one of her classmates—pretty and thin, but more than a little bit mean-- leaned over and, with great authority, said to this little girl, “You know, if you don’t get thinner thighs you’ll never get a husband.”

Once upon a time in a country not far from here, there was a famous and respected religious broadcaster. This broadcaster used some of his time on television in front of millions of believers for the purposes of Christian prayer, evangelism, and charity. But he also used the authority of his TV show as a platform to call for the assassination of one world leader; to claim that God caused another world leader’s massive stroke as punishment for agreeing to give up land; and to claim that a governor’s fall from a motorcycle, for which he received 15 stitches, was caused by Satan.

What these stories have in common is that they’re about the twin and intertwining themes of authority and truth. The mean classmate and the religious broadcaster are both people who spoke with great authority. What is clear, in each story, is that not all who speak with authority are actually speaking the truth.

We all live under and respond to many different types of authority, most of them an ordinary part of human life. As children, we live under the authority of our parents until we come of age. As Americans, we live under the authority of our government, our laws, our elected leaders, and our courts. As workers, we agree to abide by the rules of our corporation or workplace. As members of neighborhood associations and health clubs, borrowers from the library and the video store, students in classes—in so many of the settings and services we participate in, even the church, we are bound by the authorities of order and organization, of deadlines and due dates.

Another kind of authority we experience in our daily life these days is the barrage of experts dispensing advice in books, in magazines, in newspapers, on radio, on television, and on the internet. How many times each hour of the local news do we hear local anchors defer to unnamed authorities with the words, “Experts say. . .” “Scientists say. . .” “Researchers say. . .” (I challenge you to count them up one night and report back to me.)

Each hour of CNN or MSNBC brings a parade of so-called authorities--pundits, talking heads, consultants, and think tankers --spinning some kind of opinion or point of view. And some of the local cable access shows—well, I’m not going to go there. Suffice it to say that it gets harder and harder to know which authority speaks with authority—or which authority speaks the truth.

Should we take an aspirin every day—or not? Should we put the baby to sleep on its back or on its front? Did we really land on the moon or was it all a big hoax?

And in our churches and religious communities, we face similar dilemmas—Should we ordain gays and lesbians? Should we be for the death penalty or against it? Should we support the war, or work against it?

For the most part, all these voices and sources of authority—whether civic or commercial, personal or media--have power over us because we give them that power, consciously or unconsciously.

We give them that power—and they retain it--as long as we perceive they wield that authority truthfully, justly, and authentically. The Declaration of Independence expresses this well when it says, “governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.” The framers were wise to link our consent to authority with the justice of authority. Without truth, without justice, the power of any authority is empty and weak—and, many would argue, need not be obeyed.

In our gospel reading for today, the twin themes of authority and truth come into clear focus.

Mark, in his typical no-nonsense writing style, tells us that, when Jesus and the disciples are visiting Capernaum, the Sabbath comes, and Jesus goes to the synagogue and begins to teach. Mark says, “The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority.”

Moreover, the truth of this authority wielded by Jesus is confirmed by a most unlikely source—a man possessed by an evil spirit—who cries out “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” Jesus tells the evil spirit, “Come out of him!” and the man is healed.

The crowd in the synagogue instinctively knows that Jesus speaks with authority—but the man possessed by an evil spirit is the first person in Mark’s gospel to recognize and name the truth which powers Jesus’ authority—the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. (Not even the disciples have realized it yet—and it takes them another quite a few more chapters to figure it out!) In this passage, there is no question or conflict about authority and truth: Jesus Christ, Mark tells us, possesses and embodies them both.

Authority and truth—twin and intertwining themes, twin and intertwining realities, twin and intertwining dilemmas. We know and recognize Jesus, in the Bible and in our own lives, as the greatest example of one who speaks with ultimate authority and ultimate truth.

But we also know from the thousand choices and voices and decisions of our daily experience that not all who speak with authority speak the truth—and how on earth are we expected to tell the difference?

How do we know when someone—a mean classmate or a famous broadcaster—or a preacher or pastor, even-- is speaking with authority? How do we know who’s speaking the truth —particularly religious or Christian truth? If it was hard to do in Jesus’ time—how much harder it must be to do in our plugged in, 24 hour news, information overload world. Who can we trust?

It’s not an easy question—and there’s certainly no easy answer. It’s a question that could probably consume us for weeks and months. One possible solution might be that classic Presbyterian principle, “Jesus Christ alone is Lord of the conscience”—giving each one of you individually the freedom and the responsibility to come up with your own answer. And of course, really, that’s exactly what each of you must do, in your own heart of hearts.

However--I’d like to offer a few suggestions or principles that can maybe help you—and all of us—out—and maybe could be a good starting place for the discussion.

First of all, authority is relational.

What I mean by this is that true authority is built on the pillars of knowledge, trust, community, and history. We acknowledge authority to be legitimate when we know it well; when it has proven trustworthy; when it is acknowledged and recognized not just by one person, but by a whole community; and when it has demonstrated these things time after time, year after year. True authority is not a one-way street; it requires interaction and relationship, trustworthiness over time, the verification of community.

We know the authority of Jesus because we have a personal relationship with him. Because of that personal relationship we know him and over the course of that relationship we have come to trust him. Our relationship with him is confirmed and strengthened by our participation in the community of faith.

We can find these pillars of knowledge, trust, community and history actively working in our life together as a church, as we grant authority to various individuals and groups to lead us and act for us. We choose our pastors and other leaders—those in authority-- by means of processes, nominating committees and corporate elections that –although they might seem cumbersome--utilize our knowledge, trust, community, and history.

When we confer authority in this way—and when we recognize these features in those would claim authority--I believe we’ve taken a big step in knowing whether authority is legitimate or not.

The second principle I would like to present to you is that true, legitimate authority—religious or secular—is never to be found hand in hand with violence or hate.

Author Charles Kimball, in his book “When Religion Becomes Evil,” presents five characteristics that should ring alarm bells in all of us if they are ever presented as truth by someone in authority. These five characteristics are primarily religious, but I think they’re applicable to secular, political, and even personal settings as well. They’re a clear and compelling witness that the claim of authority is false and in fact dangerous.

The five characteristics identified by Kimball are:
1. fanatical claims of absolute truth
2. blind obedience to totalitarian, charismatic, or authoritarian leaders.
3. actively trying to usher in the end times
4. justifying religious ends by any means
5. any and all forms of dehumanization

I’m sure there are some other things you might want to add to this list—but it’s a pretty good starting place for recognizing dangerous and corrupt authority. Any preacher or leader who advocates any of these things—no matter how good looking or well spoken they are—you need to get out of there and fast, and take as many people with you as you can!

The third principle I’d like to share with you is this -- authority can sometimes be found in unlikely places.

Let’s return to our gospel reading for a moment. The man possessed by an evil spirit is not only the first one in Mark’s gospel to proclaim Jesus’ identity. He is also the only one in our whole gospel reading for today who recognizes that Jesus’ identity is the source of Jesus’ authority. There were other people in the synagogue that day. But, as Mark tells us, they were so caught up in amazement and wonder at the possessed man’s healing that they miss the truth of what he really said—and who Jesus really is.

The people say, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him.” They’re so mesmerized by authority that they completely miss the truth—the good news that the possessed man announced for all to hear--that Jesus is “the Holy One of God!”

Earlier in this sermon I said that “Not everyone who speaks with authority speaks the truth.” This gospel reading also proves the opposite: “Not everyone who speaks the truth speaks with authority.”

Who in the ancient world would have less authority than a man possessed of an evil spirit? And yet this man without authority proclaims the truth of Jesus’ identity and power for all to hear.

We can learn from this gospel reading to be more attentive in our own lives to people without authority—children, the poor, the homeless, the sick, the refugee, the ordinary and non-famous person--maybe even the person next to you in the church pew!—who may indeed be proclaiming the truth for all to hear, and who may be calling us forth to greater roles of leadership and service.

Not all who speak with authority speak the truth. Not all who speak the truth speak with authority.

As you ponder authority and truth for yourself, may you know the love, and comfort, and presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ--who speaks, and IS, both truth and authority.

Amen.

The Great Divorce

2006-01-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

This sermon was preached on January 22, 2006, at the evening contemporary service. The focus here is on CS Lewis's book "The Great Divorce."

It’s no accident that CS Lewis wrote so many of his theological works in the form of imaginative and fantastical fiction. He was, after all, a professor of English literature whose academic specialty was Medieval and Renaissance English. By creating magical stories like the Narnia books, unforgettable characters like Screwtape the tempter, and lyrical parables like his book called “The Great Divorce,” Lewis was able to transcend the dry and scholarly language of theology and make his thoughts on Christianity, eternity, heaven and hell accessible, real, and compelling for his readers.

So far in this sermon series you’ve talked already about the imaginative world of Narnia, long beloved as a children’s adventure story, and the theology that lies at its center and makes the whole story a parable about sin, grace, atonement, and resurrection. Last week we talked about Lewis’s short book “The Screwtape letters,” a book narrated by the demonic villain, and the startling and enlightening perspectives on Christianity we can glean from this suprising point of view.

This evening we’re going to focus on Lewis’s book, “The Great Divorce,” published in 1945, another narrative born out of Lewis’s amazing imagination that offers us his views of a complicated theological topic—the subject of Heaven and Hell. Now writing a parable about heaven and hell has a long tradition in literature—from Dante’s Divine Comedy (divided, if you’ll remember, into three parts—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso)—to Milton’s Paradise Lost—continuing, if you like, to the present day and Mitch Albom’s recent bestseller “The Five People You Meet In Heaven.”

“The Great Divorce” takes its name in response and opposition to one such book -- the strange prophetic book by William Blake, published around 1790, called “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. In the preface to “The Great Divorce,” Lewis explains, he is setting out to explore the great divide between Heaven and Hell, not their similarities.

Lewis rejects moral relativism by saying that Heaven and Hell, or good and evil, can never be reconciled, as Blake and other philosophers have attempted to do; instead, he tells us, life and God require us to choose between good and evil, Heaven and Hell, and that choosing one means abandoning the other.

Lewis says, “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot develop into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, with backward mutters of dissevering power—or else not. It is still either-or. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven; if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”

The plot of “The Great Divorce” basically follows an ordinary man—perhaps Lewis himself, as the book is written in the first person—as he finds himself in a grey, rainy, and deserted city; as he jostles other would-be passengers to board a bus; and the bus starts off, then leaves the ground, and flies through a grey abyss until it arrives at a new country, beautiful and green and mountainous, and perpetually on the verge of sunrise.

It is, in fact, heaven—or, as one of the other characters tells him, The valley of the Shadow of Life—and in Lewis’s imagination, heaven is an interesting and confusing place. As Lewis imagines it, everything in heaven—the grass, the rocks, the trees, the flowers, the rain, the fruit—is “much solider than the things in our country.” Everything is hard, like diamonds, and heavy—Lewis can’t pluck a daisy or pick up a leaf, and the grass is sharp and hard.

Even more bizarre, Lewis and all of the others from the bus who have just arrived are strangely insubstantial—like Phantoms, or ghosts. He can see the grass through his feet—and walking is difficult because the hard grass hurts his transparent feet.

Into this strange but beautiful environment come some solid people—they are substantial, timeless, glowing with light and clothed in robes. They are a sort of ambassador from further out and further up in the celestial mountains, come to persuade the ghosts to come with them—to the Higher Reaches of Heaven. On the journey the ghosts will, little by little, become less and less transparent and more and more real—as they prepare for Morning to break, as one day it must.

Much of the action of the Great Divorce happens in conversation—as Lewis converses with other Ghosts, as he converses with the Bright People, and as he witnesses other Ghosts talking to other Bright People. One by one, the characters and the conversations reveal souls that are troubled, that are angry, that are willfully ignorant, that are so attached to the things of Earth that they have no time or attention to pay to the Heaven that lies open before them, beckoning.

One of the ghosts a theologian who, having come from Hell and standing on the brink of heaven, can’t bring himself to say that he believes in a “literal Heaven and Hell”—only that he believes in it in “a spiritual sense”. When the Bright Person who is talking with him says in astonishment, “Is it possible you don’t know where you’ve been?” and tells him, “You have seen Hell; you ar ein sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?”, the theologian ghost says, “I’m not sure that I’ve got the exact point you are trying to make.”

Another lost soul Lewis observes speaking to a Bright Person is an artist ghost who wants to paint heaven and who is absolutely downcast when told that painting for its own sake doesn’t happen in heaven.

The Bright Person tells the artist, “Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about him.” Ultimately the artist is unconvinced.

This theme of attachment to the things of the world, and setting those things up as idols to be worshipped for their own sake, is a constant theme in “The Great Divorce.” Again and again we see the lost transparent souls give up their hope of heaven and instead cling to their resentments, their failed relationships, their grief, their self-pity, their self-involvement, and their avarice. One by one we see them turn away from the bright mountains and head back to the bus to be taken back down to the grey city which is hell.

And, once or twice, we get a chance to see a transparent ghost—even those burdened down with things like murder and lust—break their attachment to the things of this world and make the choice to continue towards heaven—and we get a chance to see their miraculous transformation as they become bright and holy creatures.

As I was reading the Great Divorce, I was struck by several of Lewis’s theological convictions that seem to be themes not only of this book but of much of his writing.

The first of these convictions is, as I pointed out at the beginning of this sermon, that moral relativism is dangerous and can lead us astray. Lewis is convinced of the absolutes of good and evil, and of heaven and hell—and he is convinced that life is a series of choices, that we are always being asked to choose between right and wrong, that we are always being asked to choose which Master we will serve and to live out that commitment in concrete ways.

The second of these convictions is Lewis’s conception of heaven itself as a pilgrimage or journey. The characters in Lewis’s books always seem to have to work hard at getting to Heaven after they have died. Instead of entering directly into glory, they must spend some time being tested; they must choose to head for the High Reaches and go through pain and turmoil on the way to recognizing and claiming joy. They must all go continually further up and further in, and on the way they discover that the further up and further in they go, the bigger everything gets—like an onion, except that as you go in and in each layer is larger than the last.

The third of Lewis’s convictions that runs throughout his writings is his concept of heaven itself. I don’t think very much about heaven—and I don’t find a lot of the movies and books written about heaven to be completely helpful But CS Lewis is different—his concept of heaven seems to me to be compelling and somehow right.

For Lewis, heaven is reality—and this earth is merely the shadowland, the dull reflection of the infinite love and joy of that heavenly reality. Lewis says, “Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”

At the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, in the book called “The Last Battle,” all of the characters must leave Narnia behind and go into a new land—and despite their sorrow at leaving, they soon discover that the new land is just like Narnia—except that everything is more colorful and more clear and, as one of the characters says, “More like the real thing. . .as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.”

As you explore CS Lewis and his writings for yourself, my hope for each of you would be that, in your own journey through his imaginative and thought provoking books, your own heart and mind and soul will be inspired and challenged and comforted by his vision of heaven—and that you might discover, yourself, the reality of heaven promised to us through Jesus Christ.

Amen.

The Screwtape Letters

2006-01-28T12:55:00.000-08:00

I preached this sermon on January 15, 2006, at our evening contemporary service. It was part of a series on CS Lewis. This was my attempt to give the congregation a taste of "The Screwtape Letters," one of Lewis' classic books. Since "Screwtape" is told from the perspective of a "tempter" engaged in a struggle for the soul of a human "patient," I wrote my own "Screwtape letter" and used long quotes from the book.

My dear Verminette,

Congratulations on your recent graduation from the Tempters Training College. In a short few weeks you will be taking on your first real assignment and beginning the momentous task of guiding a real human patient away from the Enemy and into the embrace of Our Father Below. I am sure that this experience will more than confirm your early promise and that you will be well on your way to continuing our family’s proud tradition of achievement for the Kingdom of Noise. I certainly need not tell you of the consequences you will suffer if you should fail.

As you begin to guide your patient in pursuit of the Miserific Vision, I am sending you this little book entitled The Screwtape Letters, purportedly authored by one of the Enemy’s most famous advocates, CS Lewis.

As you will see when you begin to read it, however, the book consists of letters sent by Screwtape--one of our finest Tempters and now a very highly placed assistant to Our Father Below--to his nephew Wormwood, then a beginning Tempter like yourself.

No one knows how these letters came to be in Lewis’s possession—he says in the foreward to the book that he has “no intention of explaining how this correspondence fell into his hands,” and probably we shall never know.

However, these letters do offer some of Screwtape’s most profound and practical suggestions for securing the effective damnation of a patient. Had the unfortunate Wormwood taken them more to heart—but then, I have no wish to frighten you, any more than is necessary to focus your mind.

As an aside, I must tell you that I find it difficult to imagine how any of the hairless bipeds manages to make any sense of this book. How strange it must be for them to read Screwtape’s sly, ironic, and scathing social and theological commentary, as he speaks of their God as The Enemy, and of our Master as The Father Below. And how disconcerting for them to gain a glimpse of the methods—ordinary and simple as they are—by which we gradually lead them from the Enemy’s music and light into the Noise and Darkness of Hell.

My dear Verminette, if you are wise enough to read this book you will discover Screwtape’s masterful elaboration of what differentiates Our Father Below from our Enemy.

To quote Screwtape, “To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.

"We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full ad flows over. Our aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself; the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”

Imagine, Verminette—our Enemy actually loves the hairless bipeds and seeks to unite with them instead of consume them! What a horrifying thought.

Verminette, the Screwtape Letters will give you many examples of techniques and strategies you can put to practical use on your own patient. You will see in the letters that the state of the patient’s soul fluctuates as he experiences conversion to Christianity, doubt, dangerous friendships, war and love. Screwtape examines each of these experiences and the opportunities each provides for Wormwood’s patient to turn to our Enemy or to slip to our Father Below.

In particular, Screwtape recommends that Wormwood promote in his patient gluttony, sexual immorality, the distraction of immediate sensory experiences, skepticism, fear, boredom, living in the future, and the corrupting of spirituality.

Some of these strategies may be familiar to you, Verminette. But you may not be familiar with some of the others. Living in the future, for example. You should pay particular attention to Screwtape’s analysis of this technique and why it can be so effective in tempting patients to Our Father Below.

Screwtape says, “The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

"Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear.

"Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present: fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.”

Another unusual strategy Screwtape advocates is the corruption of the patient’s well-meaning spirituality. In one of the earlier letters Screwtape advises Wormwood that “One of our great allies at present is the Church itself.”

“Do not misunderstand me,” he goes on to say. “I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate.

"When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.

"When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous.

"At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of Christians in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real—though of course an unconscious—- difficulty to him.”

Screwtape tells Wormwood, “Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.”

Verminette, this letter is already too long and I have just begun to describe the valuable lessons you will find in “The Screwtape Letters.” I do hope that I have been able to give you a taste of the book and whetted your appetite for reading it in full. Please do attend to its lessons, particularly the fate of Wormwood. Should you also let a soul slip through your fingers, you will know his fate in a distinctly personal way.

Your affectionate auntie,

Nightshade

Getting Started

2005-08-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

This is my first attempt to post a message on my blog.