Sunday, May 31, 2009

Stopping the Unstoppable

sermon by Torin Eikler
Acts 2:1-12 Ezekiel 37:1-14
Pentecost
May 31, 2009

For the past seven weeks, we have been singing the hymn “How can we be silent” as a part of our worship. Each time we have used different selections from the verses as they have related to the scripture and the theme of each worship. Well … today is all about the Holy Spirit, and we will be singing just the refrain:

None can stop the Spirit, burning deep inside us.
We will shape the future.
We will not be silent.

It’s a fitting hymn to sing on this day, and it expresses a deeply held conviction of the Christian faith – the power of God is unstoppable.

We see that truth all over the place in the scriptures – the holy stories that lie at the heart of our tradition. In Genesis, the Spirit moves over the waters, bringing order to the chaos and life to the barren creation. In Exodus, the Spirit brings about any number of miracles as the Hebrews escape Egypt and wander through the wilderness. Throughout Acts, the Spirit brings visions and inspires apostolic mission. It shakes open the doors of the prison holding Paul and Silas. It picks the apostle Philip out of the water in which he baptized an Ethiopian Eunuch and whisks him across miles and miles to set him down in a new region to spread the gospel. And, of course, it falls upon the eleven disciples and incites them to speak in tongues so that everyone listening could understand.

Even more amazing, though, is the exercise of the Spirit’s power in challenging even the most permanent, absolute aspect of mortal life – death. In Lent and on Easter, we recognize that awesome power when first Lazarus and then Jesus himself come walking out of the tomb, released from the power of death and restored to life. In the vision of Ezekiel though, we have the most entertaining and visceral display of the unstoppable power of the Spirit.

Imagine, if you can, that you are in the place of the prophet. In the midst of your daily life, you feel the touch of some unknown power that whisks you away to a dry valley and sets you down in the middle of piles and piles of bones. You look around as you regain your equilibrium, and you begin to suspect that you are on the site of an ancient cataclysm and the bones are actually all that remains of the human victims.

Then you hear a voice – the voice of God – directing you to preach to the bones (how crazy is that), telling them that they will come back to life. So, you begin to speak (what else are you going to do?) to the bones around you, and you notice that they begin to move, coming back together into complete skeletons. Then, out of nowhere, they grow ligaments and tendons and muscles, taking on the appearance of those anatomical models that sat in the back of your biology class in high school. Finally, skin appears to cover them all, and you find yourself looking not at piles of bones but a valley full of corpses.

Again you hear the voice giving you a new message. Now you have to command the breath of life – the very Spirit of God – to come and fill the bodies with life. Stunned by what you have seen, you do as you are told. As you speak, you feel the wind begin to blow from every direction at once. And, slowly the bodies begin to stir and to stand up all around you until you are surrounded by thousands of the recently dead – living, breathing proof of the power of the Spirit of God.


I don’t know about you, but that would give me the willies! And yet … and yet, that is the power of the Holy Spirit that was poured out on the streets of Jerusalem. That is the power that speaks to each of us, inviting us to join the family of Christ. That is nature of the Spirit that renews us day by day, that leads us to the renewing water of life and prepares a quiet space of abundance for us to rest even when we are surrounded by threatening specters and impossible challenges. We are all blessed to have that powerful, unstoppable Spirit burning deep inside us … blessed and challenged.

I say challenged precisely because the Holy Spirit can be frightening. As much as we would like to, none of us can predict what the Spirit will do. Tongues of fire, earthquakes opening jail cells, and dry bones taking on new life are just some examples. Who knows what will come next. Who knows where we will find ourselves or what we will be called upon to do when the Spirit’s power is unleashed in our lives.

Fortunately … and unfortunately … we are always given a choice in the matter. Not a choice about what will happen, but a choice about whether we will allow it to happen. God, it seems, has chosen to give us all the freedom to join the dance or stand on the sidelines and watch others move to the music of the Spirit.

When we choose to join in … if we choose to join in … our lives can be transformed and renewed just like Ezekiel’s bones. We may find ourselves speaking words that we don’t understand – words that come out of nowhere in whatever language they come. And, the work of the Spirit pushes us out of the comfortable spaces we have made for ourselves.

It calls us to speak the truth of God’s vision to disbelieving, resistant, and powerful people and institutions in order to bring justice for the oppressed and peace for the abused. It calls us to pour out words of comfort to the suffering people all around us. It calls us to offer hope to those who endure frustration and despair in every moment of their days.

And it asks even more of us… because when we open our selves and our lives up to the fire of the Spirit within us, the power of its flames creates its own wind. And as the wind fans the flames and the flames feed the wind, we find ourselves caught up in a fire-storm – a whirlwind that draws and drives us into the world. For as long as we let it, the Spirit leads us to reach out with more than words. We become the doers of the word, instruments in the symphony of the Spirit.

Each of us knows what that has looked like in our lives. Sometimes it is silence and peace as the coals are banked in preparation. Sometimes it is pale and attenuated because we strain to hold back the fire within even as we seek to free it. Sometimes … sometimes, we find ourselves caught up in the full roar of the music as we reach out to feed, cloth, succor, soothe, and welcome others into the bounty of our own lives. We offer the wealth and the hope we have to those who have need. We preach the promise of God’s Realm and life filled with Spirit fire not just with our voices but with our whole beings – with all that we do and all that we are.

In the power of the Spirit, we are changed. We can change the future. And, we can change the present. It’s all up to us. Will we be silent … or … will we free the unstoppable flames?

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Love One Another

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 15:9-17 I John 5:1-6
Easter 6
May 17, 2009

STORY
The story of a Rwandan woman made the news some time ago. Her name is Iphigenia Mukantabana, and her response to the horrors of the ethnic cleansing that took place fourteen years ago in her country is surprising and inspiring.

Like many women in Rwanda, Iphigenia lost much of her family to mob violence against the Tutsi population. Her husband and her five children were clubbed and hacked to death by Hutus inflamed by quasi-government radio broadcasts, and many of the perpetrators were people she had known as friends and neighbors for her whole life.

In the aftermath, the new government made a decisiont to prosecute only the “reing-leaders,” giving others the option of standing before their communities and acknowleging their part in the slaughter. One man in Iphigenia’s community – one of those who killed her family - Jean-Bosco Bizimana chose that path.

After seven years in jail, Bizimana went before the tribal council and the gathered community. He told the story of how he and others gathered Tutsi’s together and beat them to death with machetes, hoes, and wooden clubs. When he was finished, he asked for forgiveness from the families of those he had killed – asked but did not expect.

He was quite surprised when his neighbor Iphigenia approached him later and invited him to dinner. He wasn’t the only one. Iphigenia, herself, was surprised that she was able to offer the invitation. In her account, she acknowledged that it was diffucult to find the way to forgiveness. She did not even speak to Bizimana or his wife for four years after the killlings, but her faith led her to open her heart to her former friends once more.

“I am a Christian,” she said, “and I pray a lot.” What she found in her prayers was a sense of peace – however fleeting – and an urging to move past her anger to find a way to continue living despite the pain of her grief.

Now, she works in a basket-weaving collective with Bisimana’s wife, and the two families share dinners together on a regular basis. In the act of eating together, they have found a way to rebuild their relationship – a way to make peace with the past and build a new future together.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”


I remember, when I was younger, my great aunt had a plaque in her home that said, “God is love.” It hung on the wall in the dining room behind the head of the table, and so I found my gaze returning to it again and again as I sat through dinner conversation that seemed to go on and on and on and was inevitably boring for an eight year old who would rather go and play. And, as I think about it, I realize that those words from I John (which I heard in many other places as well) have been instrumental in shaping my understanding of God.

And yet, those words are can be as confusing as they are insightful. “Love,” after all, has so many meanings in our language and our culture. I love old fashioned sugar cream pie. I love my parents. I love a good book. I love my sons. I love naps. I love them all in different ways.

When I was a child, I was never confused by the word. I used it freely to mean that I really enjoyed ice cream or that I felt a deep and abiding connection to my brothers or that I couldn’t imagine a world without my parents. Yet as I grew older and sex came onto the radar, I learned from experience that “love” is a tricky word and using it too freely can get you into a lot of trouble with girls.

Yes, God is love. But what does that mean? It can be helpful to know that there are different words in Greek for different kinds of love. Eros is passionate, bodily love, including sexual expression. Phileo is sibling love (we used to call it "brotherly love"), the connectedness that comes with belonging. Agape is a love that cares so deeply for the other as to have no concern for the self. We were taught that the latter was an attribute for God, but rarely of humans. Phileo is rooted in God, but is primarily a human emotion. And, eros, which is all over the place in the human psyche, has no place in an image of the divine. Yet, the scriptures are not quite as black and white as that. Read Song of Songs from the Old Testament, for example, and see if you can pull eros and agape apart from each other. Listen to Jesus teachings about our adoption into the family of God or calling us friends, and you’ll find that Phileo is all tied up in there as well.

So, what exactly does it mean to love one another?


STORY
In the year 2000, a movie premiered in theaters across the country and became a bit of a phenomenon. It was the talk of many communities because it challenged the cultural norms that teach us to put ourselves (and our families) first. It gave birth to many small groups of people trying to change the world for the better – a movement that was, sadly, short lived.

Pay It Forward was the story of Trevor McKinney and the project he developed for his sixth grade Social Studies class.

When his teacher gives the class an assignment to develop a plan to change the world and put it into action, Trevor comes up with the idea of paying good deeds forward rather than paying them back. He reasons that if everyone reached out to help three people and asked them to help three more in turn, the ripple effect would grow geometrically and people would not only be better off, they would begin to look at the world – and each other – in a different light. The only caveat was that “it had to be something important. Not just a small favor, but something really big.”

In the course of the movie, Trevor brings a homeless junky into his home in order to give him a chance to feel valued, to regain a sense of self-worth, and to free himself from the addiction that has landed him in a tent down by the tracks. Then, he sets up his mother and his social studies teacher on a date, giving Mr. Simonet (who has been disfigured by a gasoline fire) and his mother (who has been on the receiving end of an abusive relationship) the chance to find hope and love and acceptance again.

At first, these efforts seem to be working, but when the addict goes back to the streets and the relationship between his teacher and his mother fizzles, Trevor begins to lose hope himself. In the end, though, he decides to give it one more shot – to find one last really big favor to do for someone in the hopes of changing the world.

The recipient of that favor turns out to be his friend, Adam who is constantly tormented by bullies. In the climatic scene, Trevor is escaping the same bullies on his bicycle. When Adam calls out to him for help, he stops, turns, and deciding that this will be his third favor he rides back into the bullies’ midst. Standing between Adam and the bullies, he tells his friend to run, and while Adam goes to get help, Trevor tries to resist the bullies, standing up when he is pushed down and talking back. One of the other boys pulls a knife to threaten him, and in the midst of the struggle, Trevor is pushed and falls on the knife. By the time Mr. Simonet arrives with Adam, they find him lying on the ground by himself, dying from the injury.


“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”


It’s hard to say what that commandment really means. Even when we continue on with the text – “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” – it’s still a little muddled. Certainly, with Christ as a model, we know that love must be more than just a feeling we feel. It involves abiding as we heard last week, and it involves action. Not all of us will be in the position to lay down our lives as Jesus or Trevor did. Yet, the actions that love compels us to take can change the lives of the people we touch and … change the world.

STORY
Some time ago (when I was a student, I think), a colleague told me the story of one mother’s struggle to build a healthy, helpful relationship with her step-son. As is often the case when people remarry, the boy’s response to the emotional upheaval was to rebel.

Brett came to live with his father at the age of 12 and by the age of sixteen he had gotten lost in alcohol and smoking (only cigarettes, thankfully). Throughout this time, his step-mother tried to be a loving and supportive presence and worked at finding some way – any way – to bring her step-son out of this stage and onto a healthier path through life. Despite all her effort and all her prayers for strength, she found herself more than ready to send Brett away to a “tough love” boarding school when he wound up in juvenile hall on a suicide watch two years later.

The psychological training at the school was rigorous, and out of the more than 20 people in his class, Brett was one of just five who graduated. At the closing ceremony the graduates stood one by one to thank the people who had helped them along the way, handing a white rosebud to the person who had meant the most to each of them. When Brett rose, he spoke lovingly to his mother and father and finally took responsibility for the heartaches he had caused.

But, he didn’t stop there. Instead, he turned to his step mother and said, "You did so much. You were always there, no matter what. My mom and dad, I was their kid. But you just got stuck with me. All the same you always showed me such love. And I want you to know that I love you for it." When he was finished speaking, he gently placed the rosebud into her hands and gave her a hug.


Make no mistake about it. Love is not just the passionate feeling feel for our girlfriend or boyfriend, our partner, our parent, or our children. Love is not a passive general sense of wellbeing or well-wishing toward others - At least not the love Jesus speaks of. Love is a radical force that wells up within us and inspires us to act.

It leads to amazing acts of forgiveness. It gives birth to moments of heroic sacrifice and inspiring moments growing from perseverance, endurance, and patience. It moves us to lay down our lives in big and small ways from making bag lunches or helping move furniture, to volunteering overseas or fixing bicycles, to baby sitting or changing diapers. It changes our lives – who we are and who we are becoming. And, as it transforms us into the servants, it can change the lives of all those we touch along the way.

We, here, have made the commitment to be disciples of Christ. We have chosen to bind ourselves to the way of hope and promise that Christ taught and that the Spirit continues to bring into the world through us. And, as disciples and friends of our teacher, savior, brother, God; we have this one commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

May it be so with us today and always. AMEN.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Active Abiding

sermon by Carrie Eikler
John 15:1-8, 1 John 4:7-21
Easter 5
May 10th, 2009

There is nothing more enlivening that watching two year olds at play. If Sebastian was hearing me speak, he would correct me: two and a half. It’s even more charming to watch two and a half year olds try to be still.

Sebastian is finishing his second year of Parents’ Place, the nursery school here in our church. It gives me a lovely break from him for two hours, twice a week…just enough to miss him. This week they were working on Mother’s Day projects, something that stilled their little two and a half year old bodies.

On Wednesday he came screeching out of the room in excitement…and you know what Sebastian’s screeching is like. In his little hands were flowers—some pansies—in one of those small waxy cups that you have in your bathroom. The yellow blooms stood tall above the crushed cup that he held a little too firmly in his excitement.

As he was playing, his teacher Ms Ruth, talked about the planting process. She said they planted the seeds a few weeks ago, but only a few really germinated so she just bought some flowers to put in the cups instead. “But you should have seen them planting the seeds,” she laughed. “Once we put the seeds in the dirt, and poured the water on them, they all sat around staring at the cups, just waiting for the flowers to come up.”

If I had known that to get Sebastian to stop and be still for 3 minutes simply involved putting some dirt and a seed in a waxy paper cup, I would have invested my money in Burpee seeds and Dixie Cups a long time ago, and shared this secret with the world.

Could this be an early lesson not only in patience, but in the practice of abiding?

Both of today’s scriptures use this word: abide. In the first scripture from John 15, the word abide comes up ten times in eleven verses, and in our second reading it comes up five times. Now, one of the first things we learn in seminary when we learn to study biblical text is this: if a word is repeated over, and over…and over, it’s probably pretty important.

We don’t use the word “abide” much in our vocabulary. There are other words we would probably use: “wait,” “stay,” maybe “tolerate.” We use variations on the word, such as bide: “I am just biding my time until something better comes along,” All in all the connotation of the word, as we use it, is not necessarily negative, but it’s just…boring. Although it is a verb—an action—it seems rather dull and inactive.

But how the word “abide” is used in these scriptures for today is anything but inactive. Abiding is a necessary action! Abiding in the vine in order to have life…Abiding in love so that we might abide in God and God abide in us.

Abide…not simply twiddling our thumbs waiting, “killing” time. Abide...as if, to make one’s “abode,” one’s home. Abide in love: make your home in love. Abide in God: find your rest in God. Abide in the vine: find your nourishment and safety in the rooted tree of life.

Abide in love so that you may abide in God and God in you.

I’ve been struck by how much true abiding I, and we as a congregation, have witnessed in the last few weeks. We have witnessed the qualities of an abiding Mother God in those who have abided with mothers, with those who have been like mothers, with those who wait in anticipation of becoming mothers.

Our sister Linda abided with her mother as she made her “last big trip” from this life into the next. Linda shared with us that she had crept into her mother’s bed and slept with her for the last three days of her life. She wrote that she slept with her so she could be attentive. Perhaps listening for her breathing, feeling a body in need of sustenance and release all at the same time. Linda spoke of it as “intimate“. I would also speak of it as abiding in love.

Last week Torin and I gathered around Jane Calvert, Joe Moore’s aunt, with Joe and his family and friends. There were probably ten people who laid hands on Jane. We anointed her, and I have never done an anointing that felt so much like I was administering a last ordinance to someone, but it felt like that. Joe spent the past two years sleeping in the chair next to her, changing her clothes, and caring for her—a woman who wasn’t his mother, but who was like a mother to him, like a mother to many people. At times I’m sure it felt like simply waiting, biding time, as he put his life on hold to be a caregiver. But as he spoke of his love for her and the choices he made to care for her, I would say that he took on the holy task of abiding with Jane.

Sue shared with us last week that her son and daughter-in-law, Mike and Rebekah, are waiting with unknown diagnoses for the child Rebecca will birth in a matter of weeks. They are preparing to make a home for this beloved child, abiding in the knowledge that things may be difficult. They aren’t simply waiting to see what will happen. They are abiding in their love for their baby. Their baby is abiding in their love. They are abiding in God, just as the child who is eager to make its home outside of his mother abides in God.

Abiding is not passive or boring. It takes our energy, often all the energy we have. It takes endurance. It takes a commitment to love and sacrifice.

Maybe it is the reason that John exhausts the word. More than likely it is used over, and over, and over in order to press upon us the difficult task of rooting ourselves in the pain, and the love, and conditions of someone else. And maybe it is by doing that difficult work that we come to understand how God roots herself in our pain, our love, and our condition.

And maybe, that’s how we extend God’s love to others, by being vessels who help root Her love in this world. Planting seeds in the dirt held by a crushed, waxy paper cup, and watching for the bloom.

When Shasti O’Leary-Soudant, a woman from Buffalo, NY was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, she found the abiding presence of her husband, Jethro, transform one of the most difficult days of her treatment into one of the happiest days of her life. Shasti and Jethro recorded their memory of the struggle with StoryCorps, a traveling project that records and archives peoples stories. National Public Radio weekly airs some of these stories on their news program. This one was aired on 2006:

Jethro began the segment: “I remember the most scared I was was when you were diagnosed. That was frightening and I remember, you know, bawling due to not knowing what lie ahead for you and us. I didn't cope with it as well as I could have.”

To which Shasti, his wife, replied “I think you coped pretty well considering… I mean, you never let me see any of it. The happiest and the worst day of my life were the same day. It was pretty late [into] the chemo--I think it was probably about five months into it. I was getting really sick.”

“Every time they'd have to take me into the back room cause they couldn't give it to me with all the other patients and the moment that we walked off the elevator, I started feeling nauseous and then we walked into the back room and the moment that the needle punctured the skin and the port, I threw up and you were ready for it. You, like, caught it, and I soiled myself. I peed. I couldn't control any of my bodily functions. I was crying hysterically and you said something that made me laugh and I still can't remember what it was. You were just looking at me. You were looking at me right in the eye and you said something really funny.”

“…it was like you were radiating love just out of your face at me and it was like shining a light on me. I felt like I was looking into the sun. It was the most incredible moment of my life because I had no doubt.// I knew you loved me. I knew that if I died it would never stop cause it was just really--you can't think of being in any worse shape than I was at that exact second except that I was laughing and all of the sudden I just felt like no matter what happened, everything was going to be fine.”

“That’s when you kind of broke,” said Jethro. “You finally submitted. That was probably the lowest point, but then became the highest point simultaneously.”

“I guess I just sort of let it happen from that point on,” she said. “I let you take care of me, but that was a long slog, boy. That was a fight.”

I think about having the strength to abide with someone in this way. I think about having the humility to have someone abide with me in this way, to release all illusion that I can control what happens in my life. I think about having enough love to radiate a shining light when I’m scared out of my wits about the unknown, or being able to laugh hysterically through my tears because no matter what happens—death or life, pain or joy—no matter what happens, someone’s love is rooted in me. My love is rooted in someone else.

And I know I couldn’t ever do that by myself.

“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” AMEN

--(If you want to hear Shasti's story on StoryCorps, click here: http://www.storycorps.org/listen/stories/shasti-oleary-soudant-and-jethro-soudant)