Sermon by Torin Eikler
I Timothy 6:6-19 Luke 16:19-31
Some time ago, Carrie introduced you all to something called Therapeutic Moralistic Deism, and since you all remember every word of every sermon we preach, I probably don’t need to tell you what that means. But, I’ll give you a short summary anyway … just to refresh your memory.
Therapeutic Moralistic Deism is the name of a new and very popular theology that has settled in and taken root in most of the denominations in this country. It recognizes five basic tenets:
1. that a creator God exists who watches over human life,
2. that said God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other,
3. that the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself,
4. that God does not really need to be involved in our lives except when needed
to resolve a problem, and
5. that good people go to heaven when they die.
As I said, this theology has crept into most Christian churches and is especially popular among younger members though many of us have embraced it to some extent. If you are wondering whether that’s true for you or not, ask yourself what it is about those five tenets (if anything) that makes you feel uncomfortable. For myself, I would have to admit that I have no problem accepting three of them. I do believe that God watches over us, wants us to be good people, and welcomes good people into heaven when they die – all of which is in keeping with Christ’s teaching and long-standing Christian theology. What I have trouble with are #s 3 and 4 on the list.
I do not believe that the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Nor am I comfortable with the image of a God who is just hanging around waiting to help us out when we ask … say for another couple hundred dollars to get that what’s-it we’ve been saving for. That’s close to the opposite of what I have been taught as an Anabaptist. I believe that God is intimately and compassionately involved in shaping this world, and that our highest calling is to be hands, feet, and hearts in service God and our neighbors in Christ’s name.
And yet, that watered-down anthropocentric God who exists primarily to bless believers is at the center of more and more congregations around the world. That’s the God at the center of churches that teach a “gospel of prosperity” rooted in a misinterpretation of the promise in Deuteronomy that reads, “if you heed [the commandments] of God by diligently observing them … the Lord will [bless you, protect you, and increase your wealth] – one that has even exchanged the need for obedience with the blanket forgiveness of grace. And that movement is growing more and more powerful precisely because it feeds people’s hunger for more wealth, more power, more comfort, more, more, more. It speaks to those who love money, and it is putting the stamp of approval on their wealth because rich people, by their very rich-ness, are shown to be those who God has blessed.
But the Bible, and especially the New Testament, says something very different about money and wealth. The passage that Nick just read sums it up pretty well, “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to rich some have wandered away from [God].” “You cannot serve God and [money],” and it should be clear that we are called to serve God.
You all know that it is dangerous when wealth becomes one of our idols – dangerous both to our spiritual health and to the well-being of others who suffer as a result. If you still need any proof of that, look at the results of the mad dash for money that was at the root of the world’s current economic meltdown. Thousands more are living in poverty, and there is little willingness to put resources toward alleviating their suffering. Others, some of those who were right there in the hunt, have spiraled down into depression and suicide because of the hollowness they felt when the god they wrapped their lives and their sense of worth around disappeared like a soap bubble on the breeze.
That’s old hat, and we have all internalize that caution completely, I’m sure…. But, the author of this letter adds something new, that I had never noticed before. He gives a positive to go along with the negative – we are to strive for contentment – to be satisfied with things the way they are. I don’t think that means that we are to sit back and watch life unfold around us without participating or working for change. I think it means that we should find a way to be comfortable, at peace, and – even happy – with what we have instead of searching … constantly searching … for something else or something more. As Sheryl Crow put it in one of her songs, “It's not having what you want. It's wanting what you've got.” that’s the key.
For some reason, every time I’ve turned my mind to contentment this week, a pesky image keeps popping up. (Perhaps it’s time to get a pop-up blocker for my brain). I keep seeing Scrooge McDuck standing there before me. For those of you who grew up before or after the late 80s, Scrooge McDuck was a character on a cartoon called, “Duck Tales,” and was supposed to be, I think, Donald Duck’s brother. He was the richest person in the world, and as long as nobody was trying to steal his money (which was one of the running themes of the show) he was pretty happy.
Why not, he was a gazzilionaire with a mansion, fun toys, three pesky and idealistic nephews, and a vault filled with gold coins. At least once each day, he would go to his vault and dive into the pile of money. He would swim around in it somehow, diving down and surfacing to spew coins from his mouth like water, arching out and back in like a playful dolphin with a smile on his face.
He was, I would say, content with his lot. And that has left a troubling realization in my mind. I am nowhere close to the richest person in the world, but I am quite well off by global standards. In a time when 1 in 7 people in this country are living in poverty, I’m probably quite well off by US standards as well. Is it enough for me just to be content?
The story we heard from Luke holds an answer to that question. In it, the rich man (who is sometimes called Dives) is not unlike Scrooge McDuck. We see him all turned out in royal garb and sitting down to a feast every day. I can picture him leaning back on his couch with food spread out before him, his friends and relatives gathered around, and an army of servants helping them swim through the wealth laid out before them. I imagine they, too, were quite content. Outside the door, though, sat Lazarus – pesky, disease-ridden Lazarus, the one flaw in an otherwise idyllic life.
Dives had several options to address the situation, of course. He could have invited Lazarus into his household, treating his sores, feeding him, giving him meaningful work – adopting him in a way. He could have had someone else, a servant perhaps or a hired thug, physically remove the poor man from his doorway and also from his own awareness (Out of sight, out of mind). He could have done any number of things that fell somewhere between those two. But instead, he chose to simply ignore him – treating him as if he simply did not exist.
Of course, you know what happened. Lazarus was taken by the angels. Dives went to Hades, and his plea for mercy from Abraham was rebuffed. “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.” The message is pretty clear. Just sitting back, content with our wealth and privilege is not enough. Apathy in the face of the world’s suffering may well land us someplace that we'd rather not be.
So what’s a rich person to do?
Are we to sell it all and give it to the poor like the rich young ruler of Carrie’s sermon last week? That’s one solution, and I suppose that it would certainly ease the dilemma of being rich. It’s also quite extreme, and I’m not completely convinced that Jesus was really concerned with the man’s money. I think he was pointing out that it is very hard to be rich if you truly are following God’s commandments. Though there may be something to be said for giving everything to the poor, I’m not sure that adding one more to their number is really a solution.
Money, after all, is not, after all, a bad thing in and of itself. It can be a very useful tool for redistributing resources, and it removes the need for carrying a bushel of corn or a chicken around in your back pocket so that you can trade it to the cobbler for a new pair of shoes.
Consider the story posted by Melissa Bane Sevier this week on the contemplative viewfinder web site. Melissa’s church held a fundraising event called wine into water to benefit a clean water initiative in Mexico. It was held at a local winery and guests were treated to an evening of wine, food, and entertainment. Melissa writes:
[It was the most fun church event I’ve ever attended…. We shared stories and food, caught up with old friends, and greeted strangers. We watched the sun go down over a glorious late summer [evening], and by the glow of Tiki torches we listened to banjo and fiddle and heard about our friends [in Mexico] who cannot afford clean drinking water….
As people drove away into the clear night, I realized once again that contentment is not just a state of mind. It is also the ability to share the things that make us content. I thought of people who are my neighbors here, sharing a happy evening together and sharing their time and money with people they will likely never meet. Sitting around an outdoor table, talking and laughing, eating and drinking. And I thought of my neighbors in Mexico, who are doing the same thing, sharing the time and money they have so their friends and children and neighbors can have healthy, contented lives….”
Maybe it is enough to be content … if that contentment is more than a facile, self-centered satisfaction that lets us rest easy with all that we have while others suffer around us. The author of I Timothy seems to agree with Melissa on that. The contentment he is encouraging is a deeper kind of peace … a peace that comes from being happy with only as much as we really need – food, clothing, shelter … a peace that both grows from and takes joy in sharing with those we love and those we are called to love.
The author of I Timothy says, “[And as] for those who [are] rich … they are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share....” That’s not always an easy thing to do, especially for those of us who have been shaped by the teaching that we need to take care of ourselves. It takes a faith that trusts God to provide for our needs – often in ways that we may never have imagined. It also takes practice –
practice at relearning how we understand what is enough,
practice at laying aside our drive to have more,
practice seeing the needs of others and sharing what we can.
In my experience, it’s a daily struggle. But, I have also found that each time I remind myself that I don’t need to work at getting that new what’s-it, a little more of my money is freed up to meet real needs.
Each time that pause to appreciate all that I already have or get rid of things that I don’t really need a little more of my time and energy can be spent on people.
Each time that I am able to share my abundance with someone else, a little more of my heart is opened up to love and compassion.
Each time that I choose to serve the God of life, I experience a growing sense of peace and contentment – a sense that this is what life – the life that really is life – is meant to be.
What are we to do? ... Be the hands, feet, and heart of God here in this world so that all the world may enter fully into "the life that really is life."
Benediction:
Sisters and Brothers, go from this place as beloved children of God. Be rich in good works. Be Generous and always ready to share. Dive into God's love and be content swimming through the waters that bring true life.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Choices, Choices
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Daniel 6, Matthew 19:16-30
At the bottom of an interstate off-ramp in suburban Boston, Karin Round finds herself constantly faced with situations demanding she make a choice. Karen is an office manager at her family’s hardware store but her home is located at this busy spot where travelers come and go, and she is frequently tested. Here is Karin’s story: “One afternoon a couple of summers ago, just as the sky was darkening, a woman I didn’t know stood sagging on our threshold, holding the screen door open. I saw the silhouette of her head through the window.
"No, she answered me, she was not all right. She didn’t feel well at all.
"So, I wondered what was I supposed to do now?
"This moment of decision had happened to me before says Karin For almost 19 years, we’ve lived here at the foot of a highway exit ramp. Our address is blandly suburban, but the highway often leads exhausted cars onto our curb. Lately cell phones have diminished the flow, but we’ve met many people in distress. More diverse than our own community, these travelers have all asked for little things, such as the phone, a glass of water, or simply directions. All have been strangers to me.
"Ours is a cynical, suspicious time,” Karin reflects. ”The news is full of stories about victims who unwittingly endanger themselves. I’ve no doubt that they are true stories, but the lesson rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes to do the right thing, you must take a risk. Must we fear all of those whom we don’t know?... Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?
"Our location forces me to make difficult choices. This is not some classroom debate for me. The highway makes it impossible to ignore the world and our relationship to it. When someone approaches us for help, I have to decide: Do I help them or not?” (“Opening the Doors of Mercy” by Karin Round. This I believe as heard on the Bob Edwards Show, Sept 10, 2010 http://thisibelieve.org/essay/14284/)
Now, more than the specifics about this story—it really is more a Good Samaritan story—but more than that, I am struck at the way some of her thoughts ring in my ears for today: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices."
Today we are given two familiar stories about choices: Daniel and the lion’s den, and the rich young ruler. In the first one, about Daniel, we know the outcome. We see his decision and its ramifications. We are told how God protected Daniel because he chose to be faithful. For Daniel, that choice meant continuing to pray to YHWH, rather than to the King. It meant not being afraid to risk even his life, choosing open windows towards Jerusalem, even if it meant closing him into a den of lions.
In the second one, the one about the rich young ruler, the choice is less clear. In fact, we don’t know at all what the rich young ruler finally did decide. We infer that he probably chose to stick with all his possessions since he walked away in a funk because he liked his stuff too much. or so we think. But who knows? How many of us have ever changed our mind, even regarding the things very dear to us, our possessions, our stuff? We are left wondering in this story about the decision this young man will ultimately make.
With Daniel we see a hero who is unafraid in the face of death. He is our ideal, what we think we should or could be if we had that much faith. We are left wondering, would I risk the lions or abandon my God?
With the rich young ruler we don’t necessarily see a villain, but we see a spiritual weakling. He’d be the last guy we’d want to pick to be on our team if we playing for a spot in heaven.
As much as we see in Daniel an ideal, we see in this young man a picture of reality. A reflection of a weaker self.
Some people would take these two and put them before you and say choose: which one are you going to be? A Daniel or a rich young ruler? Go ahead, pick. And the choice is easy, when taken at face value isn’t it? The stories are pretty heavily stacked towards the right answer. Of course, we want to be Daniel.
But tested against our world, the choices don’t seem to be so clear cut, do they? If anything, the rich young ruler seems more like us than Daniel, not because he may be making the wrong choice (and we so often make bad choices) -but at least he appeared to struggle with it. And that’s what we understand—the struggle. He realizes what Christ hopes for us is complex. He expressed emotion—he went away grieving over the choice before him.
Daniel, on the other hand seems to be a brave, but flat character. We see nothing of his struggle, just a confident opening of the windows as he prays. We don’t see him weighing the options, the pros and cons, the testing of God’s voice, the choices the choices. He just acts.
Torin and I have had to make some hard choices in the last couple of weeks. And really they are choices that involve you as well. As you know, the Church of the Brethren has commissioned all congregations to take part in a study on human sexuality, which we are doing during Sunday School. It is a bible study, asking questions of one another to speak from our experience on issues of conflict, sexuality, exclusion and inclusion. The Standing Committee of the denomination hopes to guage the “temperature” of the masses.
Our congregation is within a district that has taken its own stand on human sexuality, and homosexuality to be specific, and because of this our standing committee members fear that most congregations won’t do the study. So they have added another element to this process to ensure that another perspective is heard. This will be a district wide forum on Oct 2 presenting two perspectives. As they state it, one person will be presenting “Traditional Sexuality: One man and one woman united in marriage for life.” And the other perspective “Welcoming, accepting, and blessing homosexual covenant unions.”
And who do you think they asked to present that “other perspective”? Torin was asked, and after prayerful consideration Torin accepted. With his permission I am sharing this with you and join him in expressing our confidence, and yet fear over this decision. Let me first start with saying that what Torin presents may not be your perspective, and that is ok. He is speaking from his own understanding, not on behalf of our congregation, or in your name. Something we hold dear as Anabaptists is that just because the pastor says it or believes it, doesn’t mean it is authority over you or your life. And yet, we feel we need to be honest with you about this decision in this way. If this is hard for you then please, come talk to us because your prayers and support for Torin, no matter your position, is important to us.
So you can imagine, this was a hard choice. It is hard because it might likely further label our congregation in negative terms in our district. But even more fearful for us is that it might leave some of you feeling alienated because of the way we understand scripture. It is hard because it puts Torin and my ordination under a new light of scrutiny, especially now in the year when our ordination is up for review. It is hard because Torin will probably feel like he is standing before the den of lions, because he accepted the invitation to open the window and reveal how he sees God’s intention and love for humanity. No doubt about it, this was a hard choice.
And think about it. When it comes to hard choices, don’t we like to clutch our possessions? And when I say possessions I mean those things we have that make us feel safe. Not only your car or home or IRA. It’s more than the things we can see, but things we emotionally hold close. I clutch my ordination which, in a worldly way, validates what I do. I clutch a desire for peace and harmony because I feel safe when there is no conflict. Maybe you clutch things like this too. Clutch the way of life you’ve always known: respect…reputation…standard of living…a general desire that people should like you. These possessions, while noble—they’ve got a hold on us, sometimes preventing us from making a choice that is risky, but faithful.
Again, the thoughts of that off-ramp angel: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices." And as Karin Round continued her reflection on her choices, she said "I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me, too. I’d rather risk my physical safety than my peace of mind. I’d rather live my life acting out of mercy than save it by living in fear and hostility."
You might not be facing big choices like right now, but I bet sometime you have. And I’m certain that sometime you will. In those moments, when a risky choice needs to be made, the windows are poised to fling open to God, and you wonder what emotions might overtake you: grief over your possessions? fear, joy, relief? How do you stand when those choices come to you?
We played a game during children’s Sunday School last week as we talked about the choices Adam and Eve made in the Garden of Eden. The children stood in a circle with a long piece of rope encircling them all behind their backs. The rope was a symbol of God’s love, and they were all standing in God’s love. There was something in the middle of the circle that represented God, or what I was thinking, the heart of God. They stood a few steps away from the middle and we began naming choices, and with each choice they decided whether that decision would bring them closer to God, or move them farther from God: I helped someone who was hurting, I hit someone, I yelled at my mom, I gave my grandma a hug, choices like that.
So it was this back and forth dance, but what stayed the same? we asked. They were always in Gods love. No matter what choice they made, how far from God they took themselves, God’s love never let them go, even if other children were in different places.
And yet it is not simply a forward and back movement either when it comes to our relationship with God. We move around and around, seeing a different vantage point, getting glimpses of God’s heart in risky ways, comforting ways, ways we haven’t seen before—always encircled by God’s love, beckoning us to the center, but gracing us with the gift of movement, of choice.
I’d love to sit down with Daniel and the “rich young ruler” for a cup of tea together (you know me...everything goes better with a cup of tea). I’d love to hear them tell each other their story. I can hear Daniel clarifying his decision: “Opening the windows to God wasn’t as easy as it looked.” I can see the rich young ruler lamenting into his tea cup: “No one believed I could give up what possessed me.” For me, as I pour my tea with milk and sugar I might say, “I’m confident that I’ll always stand in God’s love. What terrifies me, is that I’ll be standing alone.”
And in the silences between stories you can enter your story into the conversation, your struggle. What would you say?
Here is what Karin Round said: “So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice.
I opened the door.” Amen, sister.
Daniel 6, Matthew 19:16-30
At the bottom of an interstate off-ramp in suburban Boston, Karin Round finds herself constantly faced with situations demanding she make a choice. Karen is an office manager at her family’s hardware store but her home is located at this busy spot where travelers come and go, and she is frequently tested. Here is Karin’s story: “One afternoon a couple of summers ago, just as the sky was darkening, a woman I didn’t know stood sagging on our threshold, holding the screen door open. I saw the silhouette of her head through the window.
"No, she answered me, she was not all right. She didn’t feel well at all.
"So, I wondered what was I supposed to do now?
"This moment of decision had happened to me before says Karin For almost 19 years, we’ve lived here at the foot of a highway exit ramp. Our address is blandly suburban, but the highway often leads exhausted cars onto our curb. Lately cell phones have diminished the flow, but we’ve met many people in distress. More diverse than our own community, these travelers have all asked for little things, such as the phone, a glass of water, or simply directions. All have been strangers to me.
"Ours is a cynical, suspicious time,” Karin reflects. ”The news is full of stories about victims who unwittingly endanger themselves. I’ve no doubt that they are true stories, but the lesson rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes to do the right thing, you must take a risk. Must we fear all of those whom we don’t know?... Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?
"Our location forces me to make difficult choices. This is not some classroom debate for me. The highway makes it impossible to ignore the world and our relationship to it. When someone approaches us for help, I have to decide: Do I help them or not?” (“Opening the Doors of Mercy” by Karin Round. This I believe as heard on the Bob Edwards Show, Sept 10, 2010 http://thisibelieve.org/essay/14284/)
Now, more than the specifics about this story—it really is more a Good Samaritan story—but more than that, I am struck at the way some of her thoughts ring in my ears for today: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices."
Today we are given two familiar stories about choices: Daniel and the lion’s den, and the rich young ruler. In the first one, about Daniel, we know the outcome. We see his decision and its ramifications. We are told how God protected Daniel because he chose to be faithful. For Daniel, that choice meant continuing to pray to YHWH, rather than to the King. It meant not being afraid to risk even his life, choosing open windows towards Jerusalem, even if it meant closing him into a den of lions.
In the second one, the one about the rich young ruler, the choice is less clear. In fact, we don’t know at all what the rich young ruler finally did decide. We infer that he probably chose to stick with all his possessions since he walked away in a funk because he liked his stuff too much. or so we think. But who knows? How many of us have ever changed our mind, even regarding the things very dear to us, our possessions, our stuff? We are left wondering in this story about the decision this young man will ultimately make.
With Daniel we see a hero who is unafraid in the face of death. He is our ideal, what we think we should or could be if we had that much faith. We are left wondering, would I risk the lions or abandon my God?
With the rich young ruler we don’t necessarily see a villain, but we see a spiritual weakling. He’d be the last guy we’d want to pick to be on our team if we playing for a spot in heaven.
As much as we see in Daniel an ideal, we see in this young man a picture of reality. A reflection of a weaker self.
Some people would take these two and put them before you and say choose: which one are you going to be? A Daniel or a rich young ruler? Go ahead, pick. And the choice is easy, when taken at face value isn’t it? The stories are pretty heavily stacked towards the right answer. Of course, we want to be Daniel.
But tested against our world, the choices don’t seem to be so clear cut, do they? If anything, the rich young ruler seems more like us than Daniel, not because he may be making the wrong choice (and we so often make bad choices) -but at least he appeared to struggle with it. And that’s what we understand—the struggle. He realizes what Christ hopes for us is complex. He expressed emotion—he went away grieving over the choice before him.
Daniel, on the other hand seems to be a brave, but flat character. We see nothing of his struggle, just a confident opening of the windows as he prays. We don’t see him weighing the options, the pros and cons, the testing of God’s voice, the choices the choices. He just acts.
Torin and I have had to make some hard choices in the last couple of weeks. And really they are choices that involve you as well. As you know, the Church of the Brethren has commissioned all congregations to take part in a study on human sexuality, which we are doing during Sunday School. It is a bible study, asking questions of one another to speak from our experience on issues of conflict, sexuality, exclusion and inclusion. The Standing Committee of the denomination hopes to guage the “temperature” of the masses.
Our congregation is within a district that has taken its own stand on human sexuality, and homosexuality to be specific, and because of this our standing committee members fear that most congregations won’t do the study. So they have added another element to this process to ensure that another perspective is heard. This will be a district wide forum on Oct 2 presenting two perspectives. As they state it, one person will be presenting “Traditional Sexuality: One man and one woman united in marriage for life.” And the other perspective “Welcoming, accepting, and blessing homosexual covenant unions.”
And who do you think they asked to present that “other perspective”? Torin was asked, and after prayerful consideration Torin accepted. With his permission I am sharing this with you and join him in expressing our confidence, and yet fear over this decision. Let me first start with saying that what Torin presents may not be your perspective, and that is ok. He is speaking from his own understanding, not on behalf of our congregation, or in your name. Something we hold dear as Anabaptists is that just because the pastor says it or believes it, doesn’t mean it is authority over you or your life. And yet, we feel we need to be honest with you about this decision in this way. If this is hard for you then please, come talk to us because your prayers and support for Torin, no matter your position, is important to us.
So you can imagine, this was a hard choice. It is hard because it might likely further label our congregation in negative terms in our district. But even more fearful for us is that it might leave some of you feeling alienated because of the way we understand scripture. It is hard because it puts Torin and my ordination under a new light of scrutiny, especially now in the year when our ordination is up for review. It is hard because Torin will probably feel like he is standing before the den of lions, because he accepted the invitation to open the window and reveal how he sees God’s intention and love for humanity. No doubt about it, this was a hard choice.
And think about it. When it comes to hard choices, don’t we like to clutch our possessions? And when I say possessions I mean those things we have that make us feel safe. Not only your car or home or IRA. It’s more than the things we can see, but things we emotionally hold close. I clutch my ordination which, in a worldly way, validates what I do. I clutch a desire for peace and harmony because I feel safe when there is no conflict. Maybe you clutch things like this too. Clutch the way of life you’ve always known: respect…reputation…standard of living…a general desire that people should like you. These possessions, while noble—they’ve got a hold on us, sometimes preventing us from making a choice that is risky, but faithful.
Again, the thoughts of that off-ramp angel: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices." And as Karin Round continued her reflection on her choices, she said "I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me, too. I’d rather risk my physical safety than my peace of mind. I’d rather live my life acting out of mercy than save it by living in fear and hostility."
You might not be facing big choices like right now, but I bet sometime you have. And I’m certain that sometime you will. In those moments, when a risky choice needs to be made, the windows are poised to fling open to God, and you wonder what emotions might overtake you: grief over your possessions? fear, joy, relief? How do you stand when those choices come to you?
We played a game during children’s Sunday School last week as we talked about the choices Adam and Eve made in the Garden of Eden. The children stood in a circle with a long piece of rope encircling them all behind their backs. The rope was a symbol of God’s love, and they were all standing in God’s love. There was something in the middle of the circle that represented God, or what I was thinking, the heart of God. They stood a few steps away from the middle and we began naming choices, and with each choice they decided whether that decision would bring them closer to God, or move them farther from God: I helped someone who was hurting, I hit someone, I yelled at my mom, I gave my grandma a hug, choices like that.
So it was this back and forth dance, but what stayed the same? we asked. They were always in Gods love. No matter what choice they made, how far from God they took themselves, God’s love never let them go, even if other children were in different places.
And yet it is not simply a forward and back movement either when it comes to our relationship with God. We move around and around, seeing a different vantage point, getting glimpses of God’s heart in risky ways, comforting ways, ways we haven’t seen before—always encircled by God’s love, beckoning us to the center, but gracing us with the gift of movement, of choice.
I’d love to sit down with Daniel and the “rich young ruler” for a cup of tea together (you know me...everything goes better with a cup of tea). I’d love to hear them tell each other their story. I can hear Daniel clarifying his decision: “Opening the windows to God wasn’t as easy as it looked.” I can see the rich young ruler lamenting into his tea cup: “No one believed I could give up what possessed me.” For me, as I pour my tea with milk and sugar I might say, “I’m confident that I’ll always stand in God’s love. What terrifies me, is that I’ll be standing alone.”
And in the silences between stories you can enter your story into the conversation, your struggle. What would you say?
Here is what Karin Round said: “So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice.
I opened the door.” Amen, sister.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Golden Calf
sermon by Torin Eikler
Exodus 32:7-14 Luke 15:1-10
Carrie and I graduated from seminary not too long after American Idol had hit its stride. First Kelly Clarkson, then Rueben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino, and finally Carrie Underwood had been voted into stardom, however short-lived, by the popular vote. And as we prepared for our senior banquet, the powers-that-be (that being Carrie and a couple of other students) decided to spoof the show by using the theme of the “Golden Idol” for our dinner.
There were several well-written skits by students and professors that helped us remember our time together with laughter and well-intentioned ribbing. And, of course, there was a competition which, I am sorry to say, I did not win. But my part – the most important part, I might add – was to be the voice of the sponsor: the golden calf.
We’ve all seen the wondrous power of the great I AM: the many plagues on the harsh task masters of our past, the part of the sea and the destruction of our pursuers, sweet water from the rocks of the desert, and manna from the heavens themselves. What mortal would not stand in awe of such mighty works and the one who performed them? Who would not overflow with praise and thanksgiving for a response to our communal prayers?
Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to hear the problems of our daily lives? Wouldn’t it feel good to lay your offerings at the feet of one who is sure to hear each one of your prayers? Shouldn’t we find someone else with whom to share all the little things – someone without such big things to worry about? Shouldn’t the great I AM have a Sabbath too?
Why not pray to the Golden Calf? Join the herd, you know you should. (picture the prudential bull galloping up full of strength and inspiring confidence.)
I have to admit that I really enjoyed the effect I had on people, especially when I put on my cow hat with the flashing red eyes. It was a lot of fun, and, of course, it was all in jest. But after dinner, I was reminded about how serious a subject we were playing around with. One of my professors told me about his previous experience in advertising and why he quit. “Our tendency to find or create our own little gods really is very dangerous,” he said. “I finally had to stop when I realized that my work was drawing people away from God. Just when they most needed to seek him out, I was putting idols in front of them instead.”
Okay … he’s a little bit of a downer sometimes, but he so darn earnest that you just can’t be upset with him. And his comment got me thinking…. We all know that idolatry is bad. It’s the very first of the Ten Commandments, and I’m sure we’ve all heard sermons on it more times than we can count. So, why do we seem so intent to latch onto things or people in place of God?
I hope you hold onto that question and take it with you because my professor was right … this is dangerous territory. If your own life experiences aren’t enough to make that clear, the scriptures are almost as full of stories about people who suffer for their idol dalliances as they are stories of people whose faith is steadfast. Usually we less about the people themselves and more about God’s response – which is never good – but we can learn from their mistakes.
In today’s scripture, for example, it is very easy to distance ourselves from the Hebrews in the story by writing them off as bad people. After all that God had done for them: freeing them from Pharaoh with the riches of Egypt weighing down their wagons, opening a path through the waters, showering them with food, and bringing forth fresh water to slake their thirsts; after all of that they turned around and made the golden calf, worshiping at its feet with burnt offerings and singing hymns of praise. How much worse could you get. If this were a melodrama, we would be “boo-ing” them!
That dismissal is so easy partly because we don’t hear the whole story in one piece. We just get bits and pieces from time to time and so we don’t carry the people with us. We don’t feel the joy and pain and fear of their struggle. But it doesn’t take much for us to find ourselves in their experience if we just slow down a little bit and fill in the gaps as we remember what they have been through.
Yes, the Hebrews had been liberated from four hundred years of crushing slavery, but they had also been forced to leave their homes. They had taken a wealth of gold, jewels, and other treasures, but what good were they to a people wandering in the harsh scrub-land of the wilderness? They were just one more thing slowing them down and adding to the trials of the journey.
On top of that, they were chased by the most powerful army in the world. They nearly starved despite the livestock they brought with them (it takes a LOT of food to feed hundreds of thousands of people). More than once, they had come close to death for lack of water in the wilderness. And they had been forced into pitched battle with a king who sought to make them slaves again. Each time, they were saved by the power of the One God working through the hand of Moses. Finally they settled down for a break from their travels at the foot of Mount Sinai where Moses shared the terms of the covenant (to which they agreed) and consecrated them as the chosen people of God.
Then, he disappeared up the mountain.
In Egypt they had known back-breaking work and terrible treatment, but it had been familiar. There had always been enough food and water, and they had known what to expect from life. In the wilderness, they had known nothing but uncertainty. They had become a travel-stained, wearied people beset by hunger, thirst, violence, and illness, and they had no place to call home. They had only the hope of God’s promise to protect them and lead them to the Promised Land, and the embodiment of that hope was Moses.
Is it any wonder that as day after day went by with no word from their leader their faith began to waiver? All alone at the foot of a shaking mountain swathed in a cloud of smoke and lightning with the pall of anxiety and fear growing gripping them more and more tightly, is it surprising that they looked back at the stable, steady, predictable years in Egypt with some sense of regret? Maybe … just maybe, they could create something like that for themselves. Maybe they could take control of their own lives for the very first time instead of obeying orders or following a prophet to God-only-knows where. Maybe what they needed was a more predictable, more tangible god to pray to – a god like those that governed life in Egypt.
Can you feel it, the weight of that fear … the rising sense of worry and anxiety about what the future will hold? Have you ever felt it in your own life … when the plot of your story left you standing in the shadow of an unknowable power hidden from your sight? Have you ever felt a sense of urgency that led you to make your own way down a path you control?
Perhaps it’s a little bit harder than we thought to condemn the Hebrews, but there is still no denying that it is dangerous to place our trust in our own control rather than trusting God.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the film, “What Dreams May Come,” but I hope that if you are not, this sermon may encourage you to watch it. It is one of my all-time favorites both because of the brilliant and whimsically colorful world in which it takes place and because of the deep theological questions it asks … but doesn’t really answer.
Most of the movie takes place in an afterlife where each person’s “world” is controlled by his or her own imagination. But the main line of the story returns again and again to a woman who has lost her children in a car accident. She blames herself, and the weight of her grief and self-condemnation quickly turn her into a depressed, panic-attack ridden shadow of her former self. She gets through her days as an art museum curator through the support and encouragement of her husband. But just as life is beginning to take on joy and color again, her husband is killed trying to help others injured in a major pile-up on the way to her office.
Once again depression and self-loathing take over her life, and she drifts deeper and deeper into the shadows of the valley of death. As despair and anxiety overwhelm her, she comes to the point where she chooses to end her own life (the only thing she feels she can control) in order to end the pain.
As you might guess, she ends up in the afterlife as well. But where her children and her husband were freed by death to make of their new life whatever they most desired, she was trapped in the world as she had experienced it – condemned to an eternal hell by the power of her own imagination and her need for control.
Upon learning of his wife’s fate, the husband sets out on a quest to save her – something that has never been accomplished before. He travels to the land of lost souls, crosses the horribly gruesome landscape, and enters her world. Against all odds, he manages to wake out of her dark dream of suffering and draw her back into the light of love.
And so we have a Hollywood-style happy ending. But, real life is rarely Hollywood, and though our scripture today ends on a happy note – God repenting his wrath thanks to the heroic efforts of Moses on behalf of the people – the story goes on. When he came down from the mountain, Moses called on those who remained faithful to become the priests of the One God at the price of killing their brothers, friends, and neighbors. Three thousand were slaughtered that day, and the people came down with a plague brought on when they were made to drink the ashes of the golden calf. And that was just the beginning of Israel’s story of prideful idolatry and the suffering it caused.
Are we really any different? Do our lives speak of a more faithful commitment to the covenant? None of us have a golden idol secreted away in our homes (at least I hope not), and most of us do our very best not to worship money or power or whatever other idol we can think of. Yet we all feel fear and anxiety, don’t we? We all feel like there is something missing – a gap that needs to be filled in our lives or in our souls. What do you do when those specters rise up within you? Do you wait for God or do you take matters into your own hands? Do you seek out a deeper relationship with the Spirit or do you fill the void with the next new toy or cause or distraction?
I wonder if we are aware of how often we turn to idols because we feel the need to do something ourselves rather than trusting in the promise of grace and mercy that is our true hope. I wonder what that does to us. I wonder where that takes us. What lies at the end of our story?
Will we choose the path of faith that follows in the footsteps of self-less service, or will we trust in our own wisdom and the idols we create for ourselves. Will we live into the covenant promise of peace and joy that reigns over life in the Kingdom, or will we join the herd, building step by painful step our own private hell – our own corporate hell on earth?
Exodus 32:7-14 Luke 15:1-10
Carrie and I graduated from seminary not too long after American Idol had hit its stride. First Kelly Clarkson, then Rueben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino, and finally Carrie Underwood had been voted into stardom, however short-lived, by the popular vote. And as we prepared for our senior banquet, the powers-that-be (that being Carrie and a couple of other students) decided to spoof the show by using the theme of the “Golden Idol” for our dinner.
There were several well-written skits by students and professors that helped us remember our time together with laughter and well-intentioned ribbing. And, of course, there was a competition which, I am sorry to say, I did not win. But my part – the most important part, I might add – was to be the voice of the sponsor: the golden calf.
We’ve all seen the wondrous power of the great I AM: the many plagues on the harsh task masters of our past, the part of the sea and the destruction of our pursuers, sweet water from the rocks of the desert, and manna from the heavens themselves. What mortal would not stand in awe of such mighty works and the one who performed them? Who would not overflow with praise and thanksgiving for a response to our communal prayers?
Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to hear the problems of our daily lives? Wouldn’t it feel good to lay your offerings at the feet of one who is sure to hear each one of your prayers? Shouldn’t we find someone else with whom to share all the little things – someone without such big things to worry about? Shouldn’t the great I AM have a Sabbath too?
Why not pray to the Golden Calf? Join the herd, you know you should. (picture the prudential bull galloping up full of strength and inspiring confidence.)
I have to admit that I really enjoyed the effect I had on people, especially when I put on my cow hat with the flashing red eyes. It was a lot of fun, and, of course, it was all in jest. But after dinner, I was reminded about how serious a subject we were playing around with. One of my professors told me about his previous experience in advertising and why he quit. “Our tendency to find or create our own little gods really is very dangerous,” he said. “I finally had to stop when I realized that my work was drawing people away from God. Just when they most needed to seek him out, I was putting idols in front of them instead.”
Okay … he’s a little bit of a downer sometimes, but he so darn earnest that you just can’t be upset with him. And his comment got me thinking…. We all know that idolatry is bad. It’s the very first of the Ten Commandments, and I’m sure we’ve all heard sermons on it more times than we can count. So, why do we seem so intent to latch onto things or people in place of God?
I hope you hold onto that question and take it with you because my professor was right … this is dangerous territory. If your own life experiences aren’t enough to make that clear, the scriptures are almost as full of stories about people who suffer for their idol dalliances as they are stories of people whose faith is steadfast. Usually we less about the people themselves and more about God’s response – which is never good – but we can learn from their mistakes.
In today’s scripture, for example, it is very easy to distance ourselves from the Hebrews in the story by writing them off as bad people. After all that God had done for them: freeing them from Pharaoh with the riches of Egypt weighing down their wagons, opening a path through the waters, showering them with food, and bringing forth fresh water to slake their thirsts; after all of that they turned around and made the golden calf, worshiping at its feet with burnt offerings and singing hymns of praise. How much worse could you get. If this were a melodrama, we would be “boo-ing” them!
That dismissal is so easy partly because we don’t hear the whole story in one piece. We just get bits and pieces from time to time and so we don’t carry the people with us. We don’t feel the joy and pain and fear of their struggle. But it doesn’t take much for us to find ourselves in their experience if we just slow down a little bit and fill in the gaps as we remember what they have been through.
Yes, the Hebrews had been liberated from four hundred years of crushing slavery, but they had also been forced to leave their homes. They had taken a wealth of gold, jewels, and other treasures, but what good were they to a people wandering in the harsh scrub-land of the wilderness? They were just one more thing slowing them down and adding to the trials of the journey.
On top of that, they were chased by the most powerful army in the world. They nearly starved despite the livestock they brought with them (it takes a LOT of food to feed hundreds of thousands of people). More than once, they had come close to death for lack of water in the wilderness. And they had been forced into pitched battle with a king who sought to make them slaves again. Each time, they were saved by the power of the One God working through the hand of Moses. Finally they settled down for a break from their travels at the foot of Mount Sinai where Moses shared the terms of the covenant (to which they agreed) and consecrated them as the chosen people of God.
Then, he disappeared up the mountain.
In Egypt they had known back-breaking work and terrible treatment, but it had been familiar. There had always been enough food and water, and they had known what to expect from life. In the wilderness, they had known nothing but uncertainty. They had become a travel-stained, wearied people beset by hunger, thirst, violence, and illness, and they had no place to call home. They had only the hope of God’s promise to protect them and lead them to the Promised Land, and the embodiment of that hope was Moses.
Is it any wonder that as day after day went by with no word from their leader their faith began to waiver? All alone at the foot of a shaking mountain swathed in a cloud of smoke and lightning with the pall of anxiety and fear growing gripping them more and more tightly, is it surprising that they looked back at the stable, steady, predictable years in Egypt with some sense of regret? Maybe … just maybe, they could create something like that for themselves. Maybe they could take control of their own lives for the very first time instead of obeying orders or following a prophet to God-only-knows where. Maybe what they needed was a more predictable, more tangible god to pray to – a god like those that governed life in Egypt.
Can you feel it, the weight of that fear … the rising sense of worry and anxiety about what the future will hold? Have you ever felt it in your own life … when the plot of your story left you standing in the shadow of an unknowable power hidden from your sight? Have you ever felt a sense of urgency that led you to make your own way down a path you control?
Perhaps it’s a little bit harder than we thought to condemn the Hebrews, but there is still no denying that it is dangerous to place our trust in our own control rather than trusting God.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the film, “What Dreams May Come,” but I hope that if you are not, this sermon may encourage you to watch it. It is one of my all-time favorites both because of the brilliant and whimsically colorful world in which it takes place and because of the deep theological questions it asks … but doesn’t really answer.
Most of the movie takes place in an afterlife where each person’s “world” is controlled by his or her own imagination. But the main line of the story returns again and again to a woman who has lost her children in a car accident. She blames herself, and the weight of her grief and self-condemnation quickly turn her into a depressed, panic-attack ridden shadow of her former self. She gets through her days as an art museum curator through the support and encouragement of her husband. But just as life is beginning to take on joy and color again, her husband is killed trying to help others injured in a major pile-up on the way to her office.
Once again depression and self-loathing take over her life, and she drifts deeper and deeper into the shadows of the valley of death. As despair and anxiety overwhelm her, she comes to the point where she chooses to end her own life (the only thing she feels she can control) in order to end the pain.
As you might guess, she ends up in the afterlife as well. But where her children and her husband were freed by death to make of their new life whatever they most desired, she was trapped in the world as she had experienced it – condemned to an eternal hell by the power of her own imagination and her need for control.
Upon learning of his wife’s fate, the husband sets out on a quest to save her – something that has never been accomplished before. He travels to the land of lost souls, crosses the horribly gruesome landscape, and enters her world. Against all odds, he manages to wake out of her dark dream of suffering and draw her back into the light of love.
And so we have a Hollywood-style happy ending. But, real life is rarely Hollywood, and though our scripture today ends on a happy note – God repenting his wrath thanks to the heroic efforts of Moses on behalf of the people – the story goes on. When he came down from the mountain, Moses called on those who remained faithful to become the priests of the One God at the price of killing their brothers, friends, and neighbors. Three thousand were slaughtered that day, and the people came down with a plague brought on when they were made to drink the ashes of the golden calf. And that was just the beginning of Israel’s story of prideful idolatry and the suffering it caused.
Are we really any different? Do our lives speak of a more faithful commitment to the covenant? None of us have a golden idol secreted away in our homes (at least I hope not), and most of us do our very best not to worship money or power or whatever other idol we can think of. Yet we all feel fear and anxiety, don’t we? We all feel like there is something missing – a gap that needs to be filled in our lives or in our souls. What do you do when those specters rise up within you? Do you wait for God or do you take matters into your own hands? Do you seek out a deeper relationship with the Spirit or do you fill the void with the next new toy or cause or distraction?
I wonder if we are aware of how often we turn to idols because we feel the need to do something ourselves rather than trusting in the promise of grace and mercy that is our true hope. I wonder what that does to us. I wonder where that takes us. What lies at the end of our story?
Will we choose the path of faith that follows in the footsteps of self-less service, or will we trust in our own wisdom and the idols we create for ourselves. Will we live into the covenant promise of peace and joy that reigns over life in the Kingdom, or will we join the herd, building step by painful step our own private hell – our own corporate hell on earth?
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Jeremiah's Blessing
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Jeremiah 1:4-10
It has been a little over a month since I have seen most of you. What with denominational gatherings and meetings, vacation, and the death of two of our grandparents, we have been flying, literally around as far as St. Louis and Minneapolis, driving to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and taking a first bus ride to Suncrest Primary for all day pre-school.
As much as I want to say it, I’m convinced it’s folly to say “when things settle down…” Things never really settle down, do they? There are periods of calm in the storm of life, but we always know there’s more on the horizon. And unfortunately, if you are anything like me, those periods of calm are treated somehow, if not subconsciously, simply as times to recuperate and prepare for the next storm to hit: secretly plotting our defenses, worrying about what could in fact come our way: Who will die next? What if this job isn’t here in a year? What if I am simply too burned out to continue with what I’ve been called to do?
Sometimes, it seems like the busy times are better than what we might call the “calm” times. What really destroys us is not dealing with the crises of life, but worrying about the possibility of them, like watching for the hurricane making its way up the coast. Will it really reach you where you are?
And let’s remember there are those among us who constantly live in turmoil: constant fear of lack of income or resources; fear of persecution for what they believe or who they love; chronic health conditions, and a lifetime of warfare. Where do they find calm in the midst of storms?
And yet, out of crisis comes calling. Doesn’t it always seem to work like that? Prophets never seem to be called during a down time. Living in exile, social calamity, anarchy…these are the sure grains of yeast for the rising up of a prophet! It seems like people never call on us, or need us, or want something from us when we have been properly rested and rejuvenated—it never seems to come when we have everything in order and now ready to proceed with an orderly amount of call.
Jeremiah exhibits our resistance to call in the time of calamity. Kingdoms were falling…and who does God pluck out of the rabble? A youth. We don’t know exactly how old Jeremiah is, but he calls himself a boy. I can’t do it! I’m too young, the problems too big. But before he can get more persuasive arguments out, God wipes them away with what I can only hear as a divine “tisk, tisk.” “Don’t say I am only a boy! Don’t say I’m not trained, I don’t have enough time, I get too flustered, I’m too scared.”
Like the seed that formed Jeremiah in his mother’s womb, the seed of God’s words were planted in him. And they are planted in us too, somewhere deep within us. But we can understand Jeremiah’s reluctance. It seems like God would want someone with more confidence, who can speak really loudly, not with reticence. Someone on fire for God. But I’m more reluctant when it comes to hearing a call. How about you?
“A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling” muses Martin B. Copenhaver. “A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling because he or she is likely to be the one who knows what is required to be a faithful prophet.” Most of us won’t be given authority over nations and kingdoms, like Jeremiah. But we are called, in our own ways, to pull down empires and plant new ones. The empires that control us, that guide our daily decision making, that keep us trapped in old patterns of acting and thinking and living.
And while it may seem simple and small, we know that the very least it takes courage to face ourselves. We may feel only like little girls and little boys as we face our own lives.
I love September because it brings the promise of cooler weather. Not that these first few days are any indication of that, but I know that by the end of the month, it will be cool. Leaves will begin to change, abundance will be redefined not by the massive amounts of tomatoes on the vines, but by the tomatoes in the jar keeping cool in my basement. Fall is a wonderful time to reacquaint ourselves.
This September I feel a different convergence of season in my life. We are currently in the midst of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, when Muslims fast, pray, abstain, give extra, and work at reacquainting themselves with Allah, God. This month also brings the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, of asking forgiveness and setting straight one’s path. It’s kind of like the attention we might give at Lent as we explore the state of our souls.
For Christians this September doesn’t bring us any holiday calling us to repentance, confession, or forgiveness. Yet the call is there nevertheless. It comes as we remember September 11. It comes as we observe International Day of Peace on September 21. It comes as we embark on a study on human sexuality. It comes as we kiss the heads of our young children as we send them off to school. What comes? Life comes. Everyday life, whether calm or crisis, mundane or magical, every waking morning is the call of God-waking us with an urging to claim the call to everyday acts of love and compassion, even when we are reluctant, or ill-chosen, or don’t have the time.
Responding to the call to ministry was a reluctant one for me. I was rarely told that as a woman ministry was a viable option for me. I didn’t feel compelled to memorize scriptures in order to convince people I was well read in the Bible, which I wasn’t. I didn’t want to tell people how to live their lives, like I saw so many pastors doing.
What I did feel, however, was a call to accompany others through life, everyday life, the life that comes. That to me is ministry and that is why I love being part of an Anabaptist tradition because we believe that is all our call. We are all called to be priests, ministers, walking with others through crises and calm.
And the beauty about this call is for most of us, it doesn’t require us to relocate, or to change jobs, it doesn’t even require special equipment. It is a call to be a minister, maybe even a prophet, by giving daily blessings to others: through our words, our actions and decisions, our prayers. What if we attuned ourselves to listen, not just to those big calls in our lives—those infrequent, monumental changes that thrust us into something entirely new—but what if we gave equal weight to a simpler call: being in our everyday lives in a new way. Interacting with others in a new way. Living on earth, in a new way. Praying with God…in a new way.
If we gave weight to this call, we could take who we are, where we are as an answer to God’s calling—you are here, now walk with others, bearers of blessing.
And yet it takes courage and we can still be reluctant, I’m sure. It is uncomfortable to think about reacquainting our lives with God, rather than simply towards ourselves. And contrary to what we might think I’m not convinced that feeling uncomfortable is bad. I’m pretty sure that when we are uncomfortable in what God might be calling us to, it is only the beginning of God’s blessing. Like the labor pains of birthing the call that God plants within us, out of pain and resistance, comes new life: for ourselves, for God, and for others. And all are called to claim it.
Brian McLaren, theologian an author of the popular book A Generous Orthodoxy, likes to think of the church as a dojo. Any of you familiar with martial arts, or at least familiar with the original Karate Kid move (classic!), you know that a dojo is a place where people learn martial arts. It literally means “a place where one learns the way.” That’s what he thinks churches should be, but not only learning the way by listening to the pastor ramble on. Dojos are places where students learn by putting into practice. We practice here, what we learn here in order to be out there what we have formed in here.
So we are here to practice. We are now going to practice being bears of blessing, here in our “Jesus dojo.” Or maybe our, “Jeremiah dojo.” Many of the young children in our congregation are facing new experiences and new challenges with the new school year and we are going to practice our being bearers of blessing as we bestow them with our love and support. Some of you, grown children are also experience new experiences and challenges: starting school yourself, or a new job, or new family situations. Maybe you would like a spoken blessing as well. If that sounds like what you are experience, I’ll invite you to share that with us if you like, after we bless the children.
Jeremiah 1:4-10
It has been a little over a month since I have seen most of you. What with denominational gatherings and meetings, vacation, and the death of two of our grandparents, we have been flying, literally around as far as St. Louis and Minneapolis, driving to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and taking a first bus ride to Suncrest Primary for all day pre-school.
As much as I want to say it, I’m convinced it’s folly to say “when things settle down…” Things never really settle down, do they? There are periods of calm in the storm of life, but we always know there’s more on the horizon. And unfortunately, if you are anything like me, those periods of calm are treated somehow, if not subconsciously, simply as times to recuperate and prepare for the next storm to hit: secretly plotting our defenses, worrying about what could in fact come our way: Who will die next? What if this job isn’t here in a year? What if I am simply too burned out to continue with what I’ve been called to do?
Sometimes, it seems like the busy times are better than what we might call the “calm” times. What really destroys us is not dealing with the crises of life, but worrying about the possibility of them, like watching for the hurricane making its way up the coast. Will it really reach you where you are?
And let’s remember there are those among us who constantly live in turmoil: constant fear of lack of income or resources; fear of persecution for what they believe or who they love; chronic health conditions, and a lifetime of warfare. Where do they find calm in the midst of storms?
And yet, out of crisis comes calling. Doesn’t it always seem to work like that? Prophets never seem to be called during a down time. Living in exile, social calamity, anarchy…these are the sure grains of yeast for the rising up of a prophet! It seems like people never call on us, or need us, or want something from us when we have been properly rested and rejuvenated—it never seems to come when we have everything in order and now ready to proceed with an orderly amount of call.
Jeremiah exhibits our resistance to call in the time of calamity. Kingdoms were falling…and who does God pluck out of the rabble? A youth. We don’t know exactly how old Jeremiah is, but he calls himself a boy. I can’t do it! I’m too young, the problems too big. But before he can get more persuasive arguments out, God wipes them away with what I can only hear as a divine “tisk, tisk.” “Don’t say I am only a boy! Don’t say I’m not trained, I don’t have enough time, I get too flustered, I’m too scared.”
Like the seed that formed Jeremiah in his mother’s womb, the seed of God’s words were planted in him. And they are planted in us too, somewhere deep within us. But we can understand Jeremiah’s reluctance. It seems like God would want someone with more confidence, who can speak really loudly, not with reticence. Someone on fire for God. But I’m more reluctant when it comes to hearing a call. How about you?
“A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling” muses Martin B. Copenhaver. “A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling because he or she is likely to be the one who knows what is required to be a faithful prophet.” Most of us won’t be given authority over nations and kingdoms, like Jeremiah. But we are called, in our own ways, to pull down empires and plant new ones. The empires that control us, that guide our daily decision making, that keep us trapped in old patterns of acting and thinking and living.
And while it may seem simple and small, we know that the very least it takes courage to face ourselves. We may feel only like little girls and little boys as we face our own lives.
I love September because it brings the promise of cooler weather. Not that these first few days are any indication of that, but I know that by the end of the month, it will be cool. Leaves will begin to change, abundance will be redefined not by the massive amounts of tomatoes on the vines, but by the tomatoes in the jar keeping cool in my basement. Fall is a wonderful time to reacquaint ourselves.
This September I feel a different convergence of season in my life. We are currently in the midst of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, when Muslims fast, pray, abstain, give extra, and work at reacquainting themselves with Allah, God. This month also brings the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, of asking forgiveness and setting straight one’s path. It’s kind of like the attention we might give at Lent as we explore the state of our souls.
For Christians this September doesn’t bring us any holiday calling us to repentance, confession, or forgiveness. Yet the call is there nevertheless. It comes as we remember September 11. It comes as we observe International Day of Peace on September 21. It comes as we embark on a study on human sexuality. It comes as we kiss the heads of our young children as we send them off to school. What comes? Life comes. Everyday life, whether calm or crisis, mundane or magical, every waking morning is the call of God-waking us with an urging to claim the call to everyday acts of love and compassion, even when we are reluctant, or ill-chosen, or don’t have the time.
Responding to the call to ministry was a reluctant one for me. I was rarely told that as a woman ministry was a viable option for me. I didn’t feel compelled to memorize scriptures in order to convince people I was well read in the Bible, which I wasn’t. I didn’t want to tell people how to live their lives, like I saw so many pastors doing.
What I did feel, however, was a call to accompany others through life, everyday life, the life that comes. That to me is ministry and that is why I love being part of an Anabaptist tradition because we believe that is all our call. We are all called to be priests, ministers, walking with others through crises and calm.
And the beauty about this call is for most of us, it doesn’t require us to relocate, or to change jobs, it doesn’t even require special equipment. It is a call to be a minister, maybe even a prophet, by giving daily blessings to others: through our words, our actions and decisions, our prayers. What if we attuned ourselves to listen, not just to those big calls in our lives—those infrequent, monumental changes that thrust us into something entirely new—but what if we gave equal weight to a simpler call: being in our everyday lives in a new way. Interacting with others in a new way. Living on earth, in a new way. Praying with God…in a new way.
If we gave weight to this call, we could take who we are, where we are as an answer to God’s calling—you are here, now walk with others, bearers of blessing.
And yet it takes courage and we can still be reluctant, I’m sure. It is uncomfortable to think about reacquainting our lives with God, rather than simply towards ourselves. And contrary to what we might think I’m not convinced that feeling uncomfortable is bad. I’m pretty sure that when we are uncomfortable in what God might be calling us to, it is only the beginning of God’s blessing. Like the labor pains of birthing the call that God plants within us, out of pain and resistance, comes new life: for ourselves, for God, and for others. And all are called to claim it.
Brian McLaren, theologian an author of the popular book A Generous Orthodoxy, likes to think of the church as a dojo. Any of you familiar with martial arts, or at least familiar with the original Karate Kid move (classic!), you know that a dojo is a place where people learn martial arts. It literally means “a place where one learns the way.” That’s what he thinks churches should be, but not only learning the way by listening to the pastor ramble on. Dojos are places where students learn by putting into practice. We practice here, what we learn here in order to be out there what we have formed in here.
So we are here to practice. We are now going to practice being bears of blessing, here in our “Jesus dojo.” Or maybe our, “Jeremiah dojo.” Many of the young children in our congregation are facing new experiences and new challenges with the new school year and we are going to practice our being bearers of blessing as we bestow them with our love and support. Some of you, grown children are also experience new experiences and challenges: starting school yourself, or a new job, or new family situations. Maybe you would like a spoken blessing as well. If that sounds like what you are experience, I’ll invite you to share that with us if you like, after we bless the children.
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