Meditations by Torin Eikler
“Surprising Hope”
Isaiah 11:1-9
Ever since these words were spoken they have brought hope to those who heard them. And why not? Isaiah describes the perfect king. One who will come into power and make everything the way it should be. All injustice will be ended. The wicked – powerful and weak alike – will be punished. The righteous – both meek and bold – will be rewarded. And every person will have exactly what they need … no indecent wealth … no grinding poverty. No one will fall through the cracks.
It was good news to the people of Israel. From the golden age of David and Solomon, the country had fallen onto hard times. Conflict and infighting among the leaders had split the country into a northern and southern kingdom that had been to war more than once, calling into question the identity of the chosen people. The wealthy elite were not much concerned with injustices or the suffering of the rest of people, seeking instead to increase their own wealth and power in any way they could. On top of all that, the Assyrian Empire was at their doorstep.
And in the midst of all the turmoil, the fear, and the distress, Isaiah prophesied a surprisingly bright future. Despite all the evidence to the contrary – and there was very little chance that either kingdom could stand against the Assyrians … despite the sense of doom, God’s promise still held true. There would be a new king in Jerusalem – a king of David’s line, and not only would that king bring justice and wisdom to the throne, he would bring peace to the whole world. Surprising words that brought hope to a troubled people threatened with destruction.
Are things really so different for us today? There are still a very few people whose wealth and power are increasing while most of us are working very hard just to keep our heads above water. There are still many, many people who are suffering injustice and struggling to find a place to live or food to east.
And into our turmoil, our fear, and our distress, Jesus comes, bringing hope of a bright future. Despite what our eyes, our pocketbooks, and our newspapers tell us, God’s promise comes to us again. When true justice is done. When someone reaches out to help another in need or to encourage someone lost in despair. When people work together to build a better life for all of us instead of tearing things down to raise themselves up. In those moments, we can see the coming of the day when wickedness and injustice will cease to be, when the wolves of suffering and vipers of fear will no longer threaten us, when everyone will have what she or he needs and no one will hurt or destroy anywhere on the earth that God has made holy.
Each year, at Christmas, we look for perfect king that was born in Bethlehem, lived with us for a time, and died for our sakes. But Jesus comes to us – to the world – every day, speaking over and over Isaiah’s promise … a surprising future is coming. A future that comes tomorrow. A future that comes the next day … and the next … and the next. A future that comes, little by little, whenever the Christ enters our hearts and leads us, step by step, into hope.
“Surprising Peace”
Isaiah 52:7-9
Peace…. Peace …. What is peace?
Is it the lack of war … or of violence? Is it the quiet that falls deep in the woods or in the living room with the children are finally asleep? Is it the sense of freedom and calm that comes from accepting the world as it is?
It seems to me that peace is all of those things … and more.
The Hebrew word for peace is “shalom.” It was the word used to greet people and to bid them farewell. It still is in some places because it expresses a wish for the well-being of someone…. Shalom is much more … much deeper than a simple lack of violence. It is wholeness. It points to a world where all of society is in harmony … where every person is healthy, safe, and fulfilled.
As Bible scholar Cornelius Plantinga describes it, it is:
The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight…. [It] means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.
It’s a wonderful and inspiring vision. It’s a peace that’s almost beyond understanding and seems entirely beyond our reach. And yet God chose to make it ours … not by reaching out an all-powerful hand and changing the world, but by coming among us in the weakest and most helpless form we can imagine. A baby … with tiny, beautiful feet to carry the good news of peace to all who will listen.
“Surprising Joy”
Luke 1:26-35 Matthew 1:18-24
There is a simple joy in watching children play. As they discover their own bodies and the world around them … as they delight in the new and explore the smallest details, they take us with them. They take us back to our own childhood, and as we see things through their eyes, hear things through their ears, and learn through their experiences, we rediscover wonder and awe.
That sense of wonder and joy is multiplied many times over when we watch a child being born. If you haven’t had the experience yourself, just ask someone who has and watch as their face changes. The cares and worries of their lives melt away and are replaced by smiles that reach all the way down to their toes and transform their entire being. Each birth is different, of course, and sometimes memories are colored by worries or sorrows that came later, but the moment of watching new life born into the world has a power that cannot be denied.
I imagine that the experience was multiplied even beyond our experiences for Mary and Joseph. For nine months … nine long months … from the moment when the angel came to them and announced the coming of Jesus, they would have been filled with tension and anxiety. It’s not an easy time … even for people who have a lot of support, and to be young and pregnant before marrying would have added the pressure of society’s disapproval to the mix.
Then they were forced to travel far from the comforts of home just when it was time for the baby to come. And to top it all off, they couldn’t even find a comfortable room to stay in. A stable… a stable and a pile of hay surrounded by the noise and the smells of animals was the only space left.
I imagine that when the birth started, they were more than a little scared. No clean cloths. No hot water. No midwife to offer support and wisdom. No way to know what was normal or that everything was okay. No family to hold their hands or give them support as they struggled through it all for the first time.
And then Jesus arrived. On the tide of one final push, he found his way into Joseph’s arms, and Joseph watched him … heard his first cries … looked into his eyes as they opened for the first time. And I imagine that he was lost in the moment … at least until Mary’s anxious voice brought him back, asking if everything was alright, begging without words to see the baby. And Joseph carried Jesus to her and set him in her arms, and they both reveled in the wonder of the moment. Their first child … their son … later their Messiah … right now their son – a tiny new life with wrinkled fingers and toes. And as they cleaned him up and wrapped him cloths to keep him warm … JOY.
God offers us … invites us … to enter into that joy. Look inside yourself. Set aside your own fears and worries. Set aside your own feelings of frustration and your need to make everything just right for tomorrow morning. Look into your mind, into your heart and watch the baby Jesus being born. Cradle him in your arms and wonder, again, at the miracle of Immanuel – of God come to be with us. Wonder and joy.
“Surprising Love”
Luke 2:8-20
And God so loved the world that he sent an only son….
They expected a King who would come and change the world. Wrapped in majesty and power, he would overthrow the Roman Empire and free the chosen people. He would rule with wisdom and understanding and justice and mercy would govern the lives of a people who lived in peace. But that’s not what happened.
The shepherds sitting on the hill that night got to see it. They were no different from any of the others. They expected a Mighty Messiah to come … if any came at all. It would be someone who would make their lives better, but they would probably never get to see him since they were on the edge of what society found acceptable. They certainly wouldn’t get to see him up close.
And then the world changed.
As they sat around their little fire, watching their sheep and talking as the stars followed their familiar patterns across the sky, that sky seemed to split open. Something … an angel maybe … stood before them and told them of the birth of the Messiah. Told them. Not some powerful or holy person. Not a prophet or a priest or a leader of the people. But simple, poor, everyday shepherds.
It was so amazing that they left their sheep behind to go and see if it was true. And they found the baby just as the angel said they would. And they left the manger to share the news. The Messiah had come.
Not a king resplendent in find clothing with an army and heralds to announce his coming. Only a baby lying in a stable with dirty clothes to wrap him, with livestock as a court, and with shepherd to announce his coming.
Only a baby came. Only God born in a stable … only love become flesh …
and the world would never, could never be the same.
Hallelujah! “Glory to God in the highest heaven!”
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Reality Check”
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Luke 1:26-38, 46b-55
Advent 4
December 18, 2011
Last month I referenced a CBS reality show called Undercover Boss. Now I’m not a huge fan of reality shows, but there is one yet to air that has captured my attention, and you should be curious about it too. “Buck Wild,” which will air in a few months, was filmed here in West Virginia. An MTV press release says the program will “follow the colorful antics of a group of friends just out of high school in rural West Virginia.” And while West Virginia welcomed the production to come to the state and film it, they weren’t so accommodating when it came to giving the production a break on the taxes they had to pay to the state.
Apparently, WV can award up to $10 million in tax credits annually to film and TV productions that apply on a first come first serve basis. But there is a list of criteria that crews have to adhere to such as, they have to spend a minimum of $25,000 in the state, it can’t be a game show, and other things.
But apparently Buck Wild didn’t meet the criteria. Specifics haven’t been given why the tax credits weren’t awarded, but there are three criteria that automatically disqualify it: pornography, sexual situations involving minors, and the portrayal of West Virginia in a derogatory manner. Which if I was a bettin’ woman as they say, that last one—about portraying WV in a derogatory manner—was probably high up on the list.
Former Marshall University football player Ashley McNeely was one of the people the show followed. And he isn’t convinced of how good this show will make WV look. He said “They showed me as the most hickish, redneck they could. How they edited the show made me the dumbest…person there was. All these reality shows are about drama, getting drunk and partying. I don’t see how in any way shape or form [this] could have a good spin on West Virginia.”
The “reality” in “reality TV” is a funny adjective if you ask me. The “reality” they create is, as McNeely said, what is edited out and what is kept in. Just ask the Italian American communities in New Jersey how they feel about the reality show “Jersey Shore” and how it really portrays the lives of Italian Americans. Fighting Italians and redneck West Virginians aren’t reality. They’re stereotypes.
The truth can’t be captured in highly edited 30-minutes. The reality of West Virginia’s story is complex. It’s a story of great natural beauty and great devastation. It’s a story of highly educated persons as well as one of the top most illiterate states. It’s a story of rich resources and grinding poverty. In such a “reality” the truth behind the edited reality show is much more complex.
Mary would probably agree. The reality behind who she was as a woman, a mother, a wife can’t be captured in the six short snapshots we have of her in scripture. Did you know she’s only mentioned six times?: in the birth and infancy story, of course; then at the temple for Jesus’ circumcision; again at the temple in Jerusalem when Jesus runs away from their Passover plans to sit with the rabbis, much to her chagrin; the ultimate party planner at the wedding of Cana; a mother worried about her son being ostracized by a crowd; and then, a place no mother or father pray they will never see, at the feet of her dying child, when Jesus turns her over into the care of John, the disciple Jesus loved.
She’s seen six times. In only less than half of these she speaks. And in today’s scripture is the most she speaks at one time, and probably has had the greatest affect in defining who she is as a woman than any other act or words than scripture gives us. The truth of her feelings about the severe inconvenience a pre-marital pregnancy brings can’t be captured in the poetic and beautiful words of her song of praise, known as Mary’s Magnificat. The reality behind the reality poem was probably much more complex.
There are lots of holes in the Mary reality show. Which makes those of us who grew up Anabaptist or Protestant a bit curious about how other traditions such as Catholics could have created such a theology around Mary. (Here’s your brief Church History moment). Well, we know there are many early writings about Jesus that did not get into the Bible as we have it today. Humans, people, men (to be specific) chose which writings should go into the Bible and which should be left out. Which were valid and which weren’t. To be fair, I do believe that the movement of the Holy Spirit was among them to guide them, but I can’t dismiss that a lot of other “realities” were part of it as well. Wouldn’t that be an interesting reality show? “The Council of Treat: What makes the Cut, and what gets left out”
Among those that were left out we now call the “Infancy Gospels” which give more information about Jesus’ childhood than the final book of scripture contains. Some of the information about Mary that we see other traditions revering probably came from these infancy gospels, as well as other lesser known sources, and these were not chosen to go into the canon, or the finished work. Traditions about Mary spring up after the creation of our canon as well, so…
For a variety of reasons, there's not much information about Mary in our Bible, and Protestants have tended not to trust non-canonical texts and church traditions that sought to fill in the gaps. Needless to say, we have not had much of Mary in our church life, except, of course, at Advent…when we marvel at what sort of woman would willingly accept this tremendous, terrible, honor. (OK church history moment over.)
Elizabeth Soto Albrecht is an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church in Colombia and also the moderator-elect of Mennonite Church USA. Elizabeth grew up Catholic in her home country of Colombia. In the most recent edition of The Mennonite she reflected on how Mary has been, and continues to be, important in her spiritual journey. She observes that there is little room for appreciating Mary in the Mennonite church today (and to be fair, we should say the Church of the Brethren).
“We have thrown out the basin with the bathwater,” she says. “We have kept Jesus, but not the womb that bore him, the woman who created with God.”
I like to imagine Mary talking to an interviewer about the Mary Reality Show. Would she say “They portrayed me as the meekest, most mild mannered mother that ever was. Don’t they know I could have been executed for being pregnant and not married? Didn’t they see me hyperventilating on my way to Elizabeth’s, or weeping to Joseph? Hives! Look at these hives! ”
We have the impression of Mary as a demure receptacle of the holy. When she says “let it be with me as according to your word” we picture a submissive vessel, willing to be impregnated by the divine. But let’s not forget, the power of the Magnificat: the powers that be falling, the economic realities turned its head, beauty replacing devastation, a culture of peace replacing a culture of exploitation—this doesn’t sound meek. This sounds like anarchy to any power loving Roman that read it and this. …this will be the one who bears the Messiah? Not so demure, perhaps, after all.
When Ashley McNeely reflected on the negative impression Buck Wild painted him in, he said “Even after it all, I’m still glad I did it.” No doubt a nice check helped him feel ok about it. But I’d like to think—I hope—that Mary would say the same thing. No matter how the story shaped her into a holy mother, or a despised icon, even though she saw her son die, even if she felt rejected by him (which I’m sure all mother’s do)…I hope she would say the same thing: I’m still glad I did it.
So you might be wondering why all this talk about Mary. Shouldn’t we be talking about Jesus, after all, Christmas is about his birth?
Well, how about for one week, as we approach the birth with tired feet, aching limbs, groaning breaths, and exhausted bodies…how about for one week we don’t throw out the basin with the bathwater.
Because here’s this week’s reality check…it’s not just Mary birthing Jesus.
You are the basin. You hold the Christ waiting to be born.
“Every day Christians are invited to live into Mary’s paradox of being the small place where the maker of all places can dwell,” says Henry J. Langknect. “ As members of the church of Jesus Christ, we have opened our lives up so that we can be the dwelling place for Jesus.”
So let’s hold onto that basin, if only for a week, and :
Every time you are hit with fear, make it a home for Christ.
Every time you overcome your fear, fill that home with a song.
Every time you create with God, by sewing acts of love, you open the door of your home to Christ.
Every time you stop and say “I am your servant,” you embrace Christ at the door
Every time you make someone jump for joy or hold them in their hives and fear, deck your home out for Christ.
Every time you labor, and groan under the pain of bringing to birth something new—something tremendous and terrible--welcome Christ into the messy reality of your life.
Because messy reality is what Jesus was born into, God knows.
And so does his mother.
Luke 1:26-38, 46b-55
Advent 4
December 18, 2011
Last month I referenced a CBS reality show called Undercover Boss. Now I’m not a huge fan of reality shows, but there is one yet to air that has captured my attention, and you should be curious about it too. “Buck Wild,” which will air in a few months, was filmed here in West Virginia. An MTV press release says the program will “follow the colorful antics of a group of friends just out of high school in rural West Virginia.” And while West Virginia welcomed the production to come to the state and film it, they weren’t so accommodating when it came to giving the production a break on the taxes they had to pay to the state.
Apparently, WV can award up to $10 million in tax credits annually to film and TV productions that apply on a first come first serve basis. But there is a list of criteria that crews have to adhere to such as, they have to spend a minimum of $25,000 in the state, it can’t be a game show, and other things.
But apparently Buck Wild didn’t meet the criteria. Specifics haven’t been given why the tax credits weren’t awarded, but there are three criteria that automatically disqualify it: pornography, sexual situations involving minors, and the portrayal of West Virginia in a derogatory manner. Which if I was a bettin’ woman as they say, that last one—about portraying WV in a derogatory manner—was probably high up on the list.
Former Marshall University football player Ashley McNeely was one of the people the show followed. And he isn’t convinced of how good this show will make WV look. He said “They showed me as the most hickish, redneck they could. How they edited the show made me the dumbest…person there was. All these reality shows are about drama, getting drunk and partying. I don’t see how in any way shape or form [this] could have a good spin on West Virginia.”
The “reality” in “reality TV” is a funny adjective if you ask me. The “reality” they create is, as McNeely said, what is edited out and what is kept in. Just ask the Italian American communities in New Jersey how they feel about the reality show “Jersey Shore” and how it really portrays the lives of Italian Americans. Fighting Italians and redneck West Virginians aren’t reality. They’re stereotypes.
The truth can’t be captured in highly edited 30-minutes. The reality of West Virginia’s story is complex. It’s a story of great natural beauty and great devastation. It’s a story of highly educated persons as well as one of the top most illiterate states. It’s a story of rich resources and grinding poverty. In such a “reality” the truth behind the edited reality show is much more complex.
Mary would probably agree. The reality behind who she was as a woman, a mother, a wife can’t be captured in the six short snapshots we have of her in scripture. Did you know she’s only mentioned six times?: in the birth and infancy story, of course; then at the temple for Jesus’ circumcision; again at the temple in Jerusalem when Jesus runs away from their Passover plans to sit with the rabbis, much to her chagrin; the ultimate party planner at the wedding of Cana; a mother worried about her son being ostracized by a crowd; and then, a place no mother or father pray they will never see, at the feet of her dying child, when Jesus turns her over into the care of John, the disciple Jesus loved.
She’s seen six times. In only less than half of these she speaks. And in today’s scripture is the most she speaks at one time, and probably has had the greatest affect in defining who she is as a woman than any other act or words than scripture gives us. The truth of her feelings about the severe inconvenience a pre-marital pregnancy brings can’t be captured in the poetic and beautiful words of her song of praise, known as Mary’s Magnificat. The reality behind the reality poem was probably much more complex.
There are lots of holes in the Mary reality show. Which makes those of us who grew up Anabaptist or Protestant a bit curious about how other traditions such as Catholics could have created such a theology around Mary. (Here’s your brief Church History moment). Well, we know there are many early writings about Jesus that did not get into the Bible as we have it today. Humans, people, men (to be specific) chose which writings should go into the Bible and which should be left out. Which were valid and which weren’t. To be fair, I do believe that the movement of the Holy Spirit was among them to guide them, but I can’t dismiss that a lot of other “realities” were part of it as well. Wouldn’t that be an interesting reality show? “The Council of Treat: What makes the Cut, and what gets left out”
Among those that were left out we now call the “Infancy Gospels” which give more information about Jesus’ childhood than the final book of scripture contains. Some of the information about Mary that we see other traditions revering probably came from these infancy gospels, as well as other lesser known sources, and these were not chosen to go into the canon, or the finished work. Traditions about Mary spring up after the creation of our canon as well, so…
For a variety of reasons, there's not much information about Mary in our Bible, and Protestants have tended not to trust non-canonical texts and church traditions that sought to fill in the gaps. Needless to say, we have not had much of Mary in our church life, except, of course, at Advent…when we marvel at what sort of woman would willingly accept this tremendous, terrible, honor. (OK church history moment over.)
Elizabeth Soto Albrecht is an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church in Colombia and also the moderator-elect of Mennonite Church USA. Elizabeth grew up Catholic in her home country of Colombia. In the most recent edition of The Mennonite she reflected on how Mary has been, and continues to be, important in her spiritual journey. She observes that there is little room for appreciating Mary in the Mennonite church today (and to be fair, we should say the Church of the Brethren).
“We have thrown out the basin with the bathwater,” she says. “We have kept Jesus, but not the womb that bore him, the woman who created with God.”
I like to imagine Mary talking to an interviewer about the Mary Reality Show. Would she say “They portrayed me as the meekest, most mild mannered mother that ever was. Don’t they know I could have been executed for being pregnant and not married? Didn’t they see me hyperventilating on my way to Elizabeth’s, or weeping to Joseph? Hives! Look at these hives! ”
We have the impression of Mary as a demure receptacle of the holy. When she says “let it be with me as according to your word” we picture a submissive vessel, willing to be impregnated by the divine. But let’s not forget, the power of the Magnificat: the powers that be falling, the economic realities turned its head, beauty replacing devastation, a culture of peace replacing a culture of exploitation—this doesn’t sound meek. This sounds like anarchy to any power loving Roman that read it and this. …this will be the one who bears the Messiah? Not so demure, perhaps, after all.
When Ashley McNeely reflected on the negative impression Buck Wild painted him in, he said “Even after it all, I’m still glad I did it.” No doubt a nice check helped him feel ok about it. But I’d like to think—I hope—that Mary would say the same thing. No matter how the story shaped her into a holy mother, or a despised icon, even though she saw her son die, even if she felt rejected by him (which I’m sure all mother’s do)…I hope she would say the same thing: I’m still glad I did it.
So you might be wondering why all this talk about Mary. Shouldn’t we be talking about Jesus, after all, Christmas is about his birth?
Well, how about for one week, as we approach the birth with tired feet, aching limbs, groaning breaths, and exhausted bodies…how about for one week we don’t throw out the basin with the bathwater.
Because here’s this week’s reality check…it’s not just Mary birthing Jesus.
You are the basin. You hold the Christ waiting to be born.
“Every day Christians are invited to live into Mary’s paradox of being the small place where the maker of all places can dwell,” says Henry J. Langknect. “ As members of the church of Jesus Christ, we have opened our lives up so that we can be the dwelling place for Jesus.”
So let’s hold onto that basin, if only for a week, and :
Every time you are hit with fear, make it a home for Christ.
Every time you overcome your fear, fill that home with a song.
Every time you create with God, by sewing acts of love, you open the door of your home to Christ.
Every time you stop and say “I am your servant,” you embrace Christ at the door
Every time you make someone jump for joy or hold them in their hives and fear, deck your home out for Christ.
Every time you labor, and groan under the pain of bringing to birth something new—something tremendous and terrible--welcome Christ into the messy reality of your life.
Because messy reality is what Jesus was born into, God knows.
And so does his mother.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Rejoice
sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 John 1:6-9, 19-28
When I first heard that Carrie and I were expecting a child (the first time around), I couldn’t keep the smile off of my face. I was giddy with excitement … so giddy that I skipped part of the way down the street to the Co-op where we worked to meet Carrie and rejoice together. (A few moments later, I got myself under control. People were watching after all.)
That feeling of joy continued for weeks – weeks in which I would find myself smiling foolishly or walking with an extra bounce in my step or humming one of the many lullabies that my mother had sung to me as a child. But as time wore on and the enormity of the change and the responsibility that was headed my way took on more and more immediacy, I was overtaken by a growing sense of worry, and I began sleeping poorly and eating more than I needed and bighting my nails … more than usual.
About six months into the pregnancy, my sense of anxiety had gotten so intense that I began to break out in hives. It started with a couple of little, itchy bumps along my waistline, and I made sure to check our cat for fleas. But there were none to be found. And over the course of a couple of weeks, I was getting them all over my legs, my belly, and my face. On one memorable day, Carrie called me from work, and after I had spoken the first words of greeting, she asked if I the hives had come back. Apparently, my lips were swollen enough to distort my voice.
(pause)
It still happens to me sometimes. Not the hives (thankfully), but getting so caught up in the worry and the responsibility that I lose touch with the joy of having young children … miss out on the surprise of new experiences and the wonder of living. So, I try to remind myself to slow down from time to time – to … slow … down … and revel in my children.
And it’s the same, for me, with the holiday season. I start out with a sense of joy and anticipation as I get together with family over Thanksgiving. Then we move into Advent, and I’m bouncing around, humming carols as we get out decorations and imagine what Christmas day will look like. And the closer we get, the more I begin to worry about the details: how will we manage the scheduling, what are we going to do for the Christmas Eve worship (and this year there’s Christmas Day to think about too), is it even possible to keep our boys from obsessing about gifts….
On top of that, we hear Isaiah and Mark and John the Baptist calling us to repentance and reminding us that the rough places must be made smooth, the valleys lifted up, and the mountains made low before the glory of the Lord is revealed. There is still so much inequity and injustice that we – that I – should be working to change, and I feel guilty as I pass people with worn clothing and weathered faces on my way to and from buying gifts or getting treats to fill stockings.
I need the reminder to slow down and pay attention to the coming of Christ as much as anyone else.
Slow down, we seem to say every year. Advent and Christmas are not about the hype and the parties. They are really not even about the time spent with family. They are about the amazing truth that God came among us – a reminder that the holy, the sacred, the sublime are not found in some far away place but in the mundane stables of our lives.
This week, I read a story by Kathleen Hirsch. She talked about this same struggle to slow down and simplify in order to make the Christmas season more “spirit-centered….”
“A few years ago,” she said, “I decided that our family Christmas season would be simple, insofar as that was possible with a toddler....” I reduced my to-do list by half and … turned off the television. There would be no Arthur or video versions of Winnie-the-Pooh this Advent.
Every morning…, we opened a door on the calendar and then, over our Cheerios, talked about whatever came up: the wise men on their trek, the guidance of stars, a mother on a donkey. After I picked up my son from a morning at day care, we’d share a quiet lunch and spend afternoons reading Christmas picture books, baking gingerbread men inside and making snowmen outdoors. Nothing was rushed….
Each afternoon was more peaceful than the one before. Surprisingly, the work of the season seemed to take care of itself…. On the Sunday before Christmas we put up the tree and added new paper chains. After dinner we would set up the crèche and arrange the stable animals in their places of honor, ready for the arrival of the baby Jesus.
I was potting the last of the jam when my son disappeared from the kitchen. I heard rummaging in the living room, then the metallic tinkle of ornaments on the lower boughs. Minutes later he was standing beside me, a solemn three-year-old holding a stuffed red heart that he’d taken from the tree.
“Mommy,” he announced. “Pretend that I am Gabriel.”
“Kneel down, Mommy,” he instructed me.
I obliged. Gabriel and I were face to face, inches apart, in front of the stove.
“Mary,” he addressed me. “You shall have a son. And this,” he extended the plush red heart toward my face. “This is your holy.”
“You must carry your holy with you always, Mommy – even around your neck – so that Jesus will know that he is holy too.”
Then, perhaps overcome by the force of his own inspiration, my Gabriel turned and fled back to the crèche to distribute more of the “holy” to the creatures assembled there.
Slowly I got to my feet. For a moment my son had seen heaven and had offered me a glimpse…. Without the holy, life – even simplified, even with terrific gingerbread and jam – is dust….
I looked at the heart again. My world doesn’t involve a lot of angel sightings, but as I reflected on what had just transpired, I realized that my world didn’t leave much room for wonder either. My son was far better attuned to the ways in which the sacred speaks. I comes to us on the wing; it grazed the heart. Only after long contemplation does it coalesce inot something that we can put words to.
We are a dedicated and caring people in this congregation, and we struggle with ourselves and with the world all the time. We work to make straight a way for the Lord’s coming. But whether we are focused on filling the pits of injustice in the world or smoothing out our own internal, spiritual disorder, or just trying to find a way through the wilderness of holiday preparations … we can easily get so absorbed in what we are doing that we miss out on the wonder of God’s presence. There is always something more to do, some new spiritual practice to try, and even when we are just trying to slow down and simplify things, we are often blinded to rejoicing by our sense of responsibility or guilt or worry.
(pause)
The good news is... it doesn’t have to be that way. We are not the Messiah. We are not even the Voice calling in the wilderness. The mountains and valleys of the wilderness have already been made straight and level. The glory of the Lord has already come… is coming … is here … in the power and presence of a baby who brings salvation to the world.
There is still good work that needs to be done. There are still hungry people to feed; despairing friends who need hope; lonely, homeless, suffering neighbors who would benefit from our care. There is still our own struggle to make a manger of our souls. And in the midst of it all – what we most need … what we most need to “do” … is to find peace - that special kind of peace that opens our eyes and hearts to the holy around us, within us, … within everyone.
After a few weeks of suffering those hives, I had a helpful conversation with a couple of friends – fathers that I respected. Both of them laughed a little when I shared my predicament, but then they began to talk. And as is the way with advice, it poured out with stories to illustrate. I can’t remember it all, but the gist of it was … it’s important to remember, they said, that what children really need the most is love and adults who are there for them whenever they need it. You can’t do everything, … and you don’t need to. Most of it just happens. So relax. Trust yourself and trust God. Just go with the flow, and try to connect with the wonder and the joy your children find in the world. Even if that’s all you can do, you’ll give them exactly what they need most, … and you’ll give yourself a gift too.
It was good advice – good enough to relieve my tension and send those annoying, itchy bumps packing. And so I offer it to you today. During this season of excitement and expectation relax. Don’t try to make yourself relax. Don’t schedule it into your life among shopping and cooking and everything else. Just relax. Trust yourself. Trust the God who brings good news to the oppressed and binds up the brokenhearted.
You are invited to witness the coming of God into the world – a gift of wonder and glory … of hope and promise. Rejoice.
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 John 1:6-9, 19-28
When I first heard that Carrie and I were expecting a child (the first time around), I couldn’t keep the smile off of my face. I was giddy with excitement … so giddy that I skipped part of the way down the street to the Co-op where we worked to meet Carrie and rejoice together. (A few moments later, I got myself under control. People were watching after all.)
That feeling of joy continued for weeks – weeks in which I would find myself smiling foolishly or walking with an extra bounce in my step or humming one of the many lullabies that my mother had sung to me as a child. But as time wore on and the enormity of the change and the responsibility that was headed my way took on more and more immediacy, I was overtaken by a growing sense of worry, and I began sleeping poorly and eating more than I needed and bighting my nails … more than usual.
About six months into the pregnancy, my sense of anxiety had gotten so intense that I began to break out in hives. It started with a couple of little, itchy bumps along my waistline, and I made sure to check our cat for fleas. But there were none to be found. And over the course of a couple of weeks, I was getting them all over my legs, my belly, and my face. On one memorable day, Carrie called me from work, and after I had spoken the first words of greeting, she asked if I the hives had come back. Apparently, my lips were swollen enough to distort my voice.
(pause)
It still happens to me sometimes. Not the hives (thankfully), but getting so caught up in the worry and the responsibility that I lose touch with the joy of having young children … miss out on the surprise of new experiences and the wonder of living. So, I try to remind myself to slow down from time to time – to … slow … down … and revel in my children.
And it’s the same, for me, with the holiday season. I start out with a sense of joy and anticipation as I get together with family over Thanksgiving. Then we move into Advent, and I’m bouncing around, humming carols as we get out decorations and imagine what Christmas day will look like. And the closer we get, the more I begin to worry about the details: how will we manage the scheduling, what are we going to do for the Christmas Eve worship (and this year there’s Christmas Day to think about too), is it even possible to keep our boys from obsessing about gifts….
On top of that, we hear Isaiah and Mark and John the Baptist calling us to repentance and reminding us that the rough places must be made smooth, the valleys lifted up, and the mountains made low before the glory of the Lord is revealed. There is still so much inequity and injustice that we – that I – should be working to change, and I feel guilty as I pass people with worn clothing and weathered faces on my way to and from buying gifts or getting treats to fill stockings.
I need the reminder to slow down and pay attention to the coming of Christ as much as anyone else.
Slow down, we seem to say every year. Advent and Christmas are not about the hype and the parties. They are really not even about the time spent with family. They are about the amazing truth that God came among us – a reminder that the holy, the sacred, the sublime are not found in some far away place but in the mundane stables of our lives.
This week, I read a story by Kathleen Hirsch. She talked about this same struggle to slow down and simplify in order to make the Christmas season more “spirit-centered….”
“A few years ago,” she said, “I decided that our family Christmas season would be simple, insofar as that was possible with a toddler....” I reduced my to-do list by half and … turned off the television. There would be no Arthur or video versions of Winnie-the-Pooh this Advent.
Every morning…, we opened a door on the calendar and then, over our Cheerios, talked about whatever came up: the wise men on their trek, the guidance of stars, a mother on a donkey. After I picked up my son from a morning at day care, we’d share a quiet lunch and spend afternoons reading Christmas picture books, baking gingerbread men inside and making snowmen outdoors. Nothing was rushed….
Each afternoon was more peaceful than the one before. Surprisingly, the work of the season seemed to take care of itself…. On the Sunday before Christmas we put up the tree and added new paper chains. After dinner we would set up the crèche and arrange the stable animals in their places of honor, ready for the arrival of the baby Jesus.
I was potting the last of the jam when my son disappeared from the kitchen. I heard rummaging in the living room, then the metallic tinkle of ornaments on the lower boughs. Minutes later he was standing beside me, a solemn three-year-old holding a stuffed red heart that he’d taken from the tree.
“Mommy,” he announced. “Pretend that I am Gabriel.”
“Kneel down, Mommy,” he instructed me.
I obliged. Gabriel and I were face to face, inches apart, in front of the stove.
“Mary,” he addressed me. “You shall have a son. And this,” he extended the plush red heart toward my face. “This is your holy.”
“You must carry your holy with you always, Mommy – even around your neck – so that Jesus will know that he is holy too.”
Then, perhaps overcome by the force of his own inspiration, my Gabriel turned and fled back to the crèche to distribute more of the “holy” to the creatures assembled there.
Slowly I got to my feet. For a moment my son had seen heaven and had offered me a glimpse…. Without the holy, life – even simplified, even with terrific gingerbread and jam – is dust….
I looked at the heart again. My world doesn’t involve a lot of angel sightings, but as I reflected on what had just transpired, I realized that my world didn’t leave much room for wonder either. My son was far better attuned to the ways in which the sacred speaks. I comes to us on the wing; it grazed the heart. Only after long contemplation does it coalesce inot something that we can put words to.
We are a dedicated and caring people in this congregation, and we struggle with ourselves and with the world all the time. We work to make straight a way for the Lord’s coming. But whether we are focused on filling the pits of injustice in the world or smoothing out our own internal, spiritual disorder, or just trying to find a way through the wilderness of holiday preparations … we can easily get so absorbed in what we are doing that we miss out on the wonder of God’s presence. There is always something more to do, some new spiritual practice to try, and even when we are just trying to slow down and simplify things, we are often blinded to rejoicing by our sense of responsibility or guilt or worry.
(pause)
The good news is... it doesn’t have to be that way. We are not the Messiah. We are not even the Voice calling in the wilderness. The mountains and valleys of the wilderness have already been made straight and level. The glory of the Lord has already come… is coming … is here … in the power and presence of a baby who brings salvation to the world.
There is still good work that needs to be done. There are still hungry people to feed; despairing friends who need hope; lonely, homeless, suffering neighbors who would benefit from our care. There is still our own struggle to make a manger of our souls. And in the midst of it all – what we most need … what we most need to “do” … is to find peace - that special kind of peace that opens our eyes and hearts to the holy around us, within us, … within everyone.
After a few weeks of suffering those hives, I had a helpful conversation with a couple of friends – fathers that I respected. Both of them laughed a little when I shared my predicament, but then they began to talk. And as is the way with advice, it poured out with stories to illustrate. I can’t remember it all, but the gist of it was … it’s important to remember, they said, that what children really need the most is love and adults who are there for them whenever they need it. You can’t do everything, … and you don’t need to. Most of it just happens. So relax. Trust yourself and trust God. Just go with the flow, and try to connect with the wonder and the joy your children find in the world. Even if that’s all you can do, you’ll give them exactly what they need most, … and you’ll give yourself a gift too.
It was good advice – good enough to relieve my tension and send those annoying, itchy bumps packing. And so I offer it to you today. During this season of excitement and expectation relax. Don’t try to make yourself relax. Don’t schedule it into your life among shopping and cooking and everything else. Just relax. Trust yourself. Trust the God who brings good news to the oppressed and binds up the brokenhearted.
You are invited to witness the coming of God into the world – a gift of wonder and glory … of hope and promise. Rejoice.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
An Unexpected Time
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Advent 2
Isaiah 64:1-9, 2 Peter 3:8-15
I want you to think about time. Mainly, I want you to think about the word time. Now, think of a song that you know that has time in the title, or in the lyrics. What are some? Just call them out…[As Time Goes By, Time in a Bottle, etc. etc…]
When I thought of this, the first song that came to mind didn’t have time in the title, but is in the lyrics. It’s a Simon and Garfunkel song called Hazy Shade of Winter: “Time, time, time, look what’s become of me/ as I look around for my possibility/ I was so hard to please...” I asked Torin and he immediately said the line, “a simple prop to occupy my time” from the song This One Goes Out to the One I Love by REM. And then of course, since we were talking about REM, our mind went to the classic of our generation, “It’s the end of the world as we know it” which we realize didn’t have the word “ time” in it, but was certainly about time…then end of time.
Aside from love, it seems like time is the focus of many songs. It doesn’t need to have the word “time” in it, but there is something about time in most songs. That experience of getting through a specific time, waiting for some time when we will get what we want, often love. Not wanting to waste time, generally…with the one we love. Remembering a different time. Wishing for another time. Waiting for time to pass...
It might not be expressed explicitly, but the topic of time seems implicit when we sing, or speak about our lives. Unfortunately, it often seems like time is a faceless adversary, doesn’t it? Our invisible nemesis, something we have to contend with, to manage, to patiently deal with, to make the most out of it, to kill it yet somehow, not waste it. To get somewhere in the nick of it. As the sculptor and poet Henry Van Dyke explains: Time is/ Too slow for those who Wait/Too swift for those who Fear/ Too long for those who grieve/ Too short for those who Rejoice.”
Time is kind of like air, if you think about it. It surrounds us and yet we can’t see it. We can only see the movement of its passing: through greying hair, growing children, falling leaves, birthing, and dying.
That time was passing was a problem for Christians who were receiving this letter of Peter, our scripture for today. It wasn’t simply bemoaning how joints were aching, or how there was too few hours in a day, or how quickly it all passes. You see, many early Christians were just a bit peeved that, essentially, they were still here…on earth. Too much time had passed because they were believing, as the scripture we read last week Mark 13 vv. 24-37, implied “…this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” And you will remember, these things they were talking about: the sun darkening, the stars falling, the Son of Man coming in clouds with glory and power. The end of the world as they knew it.
All of this was supposed to happen. Christ was supposed to have returned by now. That generation Mark spoke of had probably been dead for a decade or two and these early Christians were starting to lose hope. Think…May 22, 2011. The day after Harold Camping said Christ would return. Think…the people who dissolved their 401(Ks), quit their jobs, withdrew from their families, prepared to be raptured. That kind of May 22nd disappointment…expect ongoing, day in and day out. Each sunset, another day Christ didn’t return.
The person writing this letter in the name of Peter—likely not the Simon Peter the disciple of Christ, as originally thought—is writing a letter of encouragement. We can assume these people were convicted of their righteousness in the face of judgment, because they seem to want it so badly—which honestly, is why I feel I would not be so eager of this to come, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for these folks. It’s the end of the world as they know it and they feel fine. At least…if it ever comes.
And the author of the letter says,don’t fear, it will happen. Maybe not in our time, but in God’s time. God works in a different time than we experience-- so when it doesn’t happen according to our clock and understanding, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Rest assured.
Which, if I’m honest, initially seems like a huge cop out to me. Like Harold Camping backpedaling and saying his calculations were wrong and that it will be another time, later in October. But unlike Harold Camping, the author of 2 Peter doesn’t give a solid date or time, or even predictions for what will pass before it comes. And in fact, he kind of takes away the focus on time, of the end of it all. He says it will happen when it will happen. What is important now is that you live as if it will happen any moment…
As most of you know, for close to a year now I have been running a small business: Mountain Baby Diapers, a cloth diaper service. Most people don’t understand why I would want to not only wash my own children’s diapers, but other people’s, and that’s a conversation for another time [not over a meal, where it always seems to come up]. But one thing I love about it is that it easily fits into my schedule, and is fairly flexible.
I pick up diapers from my clients homes on Wednesdays. Most Wednesdays I have the alarm on our cell phone set for 5:15 so I can be out the door by 5:30, cup of coffee in my hand, car filled with clean diapers, BBC on the radio. I see those early mornings as “my time.” I’m in a comfy little bubble as I drive around town, as far out as unpaved roads off Snake Hill Road on lanes that evoke prayer from me every time I take our little Focus wagon on them. I remember the morning by what news report is on at each client’s house. It’s a joyful, meaningful time for me, as the sun starts to rise on the new day and I’m home in time for our 7:30 breakfast of eggs and toast, kiss Sebastian off to the school bus and begin my day of washing, drying, parenting, and pastoring.
And while I’m usually up and out by 5:30, my clients know there is a 12 hour window when I might come: 5am-5pm. I did this so if—as they say—“life happens”, and I’m not there when I normally try to be-- a kids is sick, weather is bad--I can make it up later in the day. It gives me flexibility.
Which is what happened this Wednesday. On Tuesday night I was looking for the cord for our cell phone because it was low on batteries. I like to use the cell phone because it has a less jarring alarm that our digital alarm clock, but because we couldn’t find the cord to charge it—did we leave it at my parent’s? Did we leave it at the Olive Garden in Columbus?—I decided to set the alarm on our digital clock, which I don’t think I’ve ever done. AND I decided to go to bed listening to classical music, setting the clock to the sleep mode, so the radio would turn off after an hour.
We’ll I’m convinced the more I finagle with things, the less likely it is that it’s all going to work, so as you can guess, the next morning I wake up at it’s 6:30. An hour later than I hope. This is not how it is supposed to happen. Bounding out of bed I told Torin the alarm didn’t go off (as if it was the alarm’s fault), push on the coffeemaker, throw on my clothes, pour the coffee before it’s done, making a mess, worrying if I will get home in time for Sebastian to get to the bus and as I pull onto Willowdale Road the other unexpected complication—traffic. Traffic just started. There was no way my routine was going to happen like normal.
So I made the decision to alter my route. I would do some of the pickups before 7:30, go home and finish after breakfast. That way I could see Sebastian off to school, because as I realized in that moment, what seemed to be most distressing to me was that I might miss kissing him goodbye, and that I wouldn’t see him until he returned in the afternoon.
And as often happens, eating started grounding me back into clearer perspective. With the first bite of toast I was still fuming in my head: this all happened because my organized plan was disrupted. Someone lost the cord to the cell phone which meant I had to trust something else to wake me up, something other than what has always worked for me. When it comes down to it, when I’m in control, it all goes fine.
And after the first forkful of eggs I was working it out with Torin that what was really irking me was now my schedule was disrupted. I’d have to go out to Snake Hill Road—out in the boonies—when I wanted to spend the morning reading and studying in preparation for this sermon—and now my whole plan was all out of whack.
And during the first sip of coffee, Torin says “Well, I’m glad you give yourself a window of time so you don’t have to stress about when you pick up the diapers.” --I don’t know if he intended it or not, but I heard the irony in his comment. And the hard truth.
Because by the time I had finished my breakfast, and I was hugging Sebastian at the door, I realized I wasn’t freaking out about my schedule being messed up, or that I’d have to make a ten mile drive. I was angry that my attempt to control time had been thwarted.
I had been thinking that if everything went according to my plan, if I had been in charge of that phone cord, if I didn’t have to rely on an alarm clock to get me up, if things just happened the way I wanted and , let’s face it, knew best, things would be fine.
But isn’t that one of the ultimate illusions. Not that we have control over time—the first Christian communities, as we see today, were becoming painfully aware of that fact. But really, that we have control at all of anything in life. In her book Learning to Let Go Melanie Beattie reassures us that when we trade in a life that we try to control “we receive in return something better—a life that is manageable.”
Manageable, and yet more. In Greek there are at least two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners. Chronos is where the word chonology comes from which gives the illusion of an ordered progression of time. Chronos is ticking of the clock, counting of shopping days until Christmas, wondering why Christ hasn’t come yet because time has passed on the calendar…at least, by the living and dying of a generation. Chronos makes us angry at our bodies when they don’t heal as fast as we think they should. Chronos makes us anxious about our self worth when our hopes and dreams haven’t been accomplished by the age we thought they would.
And then there is the other word for time: kairos. Kairos is the time when you are lost in the beauty of a piece of music or the reverie of poetry. Kairos is the moment you hold someone in their pain and when you’ve laughed so hard for so long your side hurts. Kairos comes in moments of meditation of watching sleeping children, of falling in love. Kairos means “opportune moment” and is used when referring to a different type of time, a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. …a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. A time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled with Spirit
Kairos… gives the soul a space to deepen when the body slowly heals. [pause]
When our minds were set on certain lists of accomplishments that we thought we could control,
Kairos presents us space to explore new possibilities . [pause]
Kairos replaces counting down till Christmas with the patient waiting of Advent. [pause]
And we can’t control it.
No alarm clock will alert us to it, even when we end up finding the cord for the cell phone in our purses…like I did.
And in the midst of today’s scripture of end time hopes that we can’t quite seem to connect with, the author of Peter is calling us out of chronos and into Kairos. Out of the world’s time and into God’s time. Where living is not about what is to come on the clock and what we can control, but what is at work in our hearts and what we leave to the movement of Spirit.
--
And that’s probably what a lot of the songs about time have to say, too. While we want to control time, the painful reality is that we can’t. And if the author of 2 Peter was a country singer, he’d probably couldn’t say it better than Emmylou Harris who sings: “When we’re gone, long gone…the only thing that will have mattered, is the love that we shared, and the way that we cared. When we’re gone. Long gone.”
An
Advent 2
Isaiah 64:1-9, 2 Peter 3:8-15
I want you to think about time. Mainly, I want you to think about the word time. Now, think of a song that you know that has time in the title, or in the lyrics. What are some? Just call them out…[As Time Goes By, Time in a Bottle, etc. etc…]
When I thought of this, the first song that came to mind didn’t have time in the title, but is in the lyrics. It’s a Simon and Garfunkel song called Hazy Shade of Winter: “Time, time, time, look what’s become of me/ as I look around for my possibility/ I was so hard to please...” I asked Torin and he immediately said the line, “a simple prop to occupy my time” from the song This One Goes Out to the One I Love by REM. And then of course, since we were talking about REM, our mind went to the classic of our generation, “It’s the end of the world as we know it” which we realize didn’t have the word “ time” in it, but was certainly about time…then end of time.
Aside from love, it seems like time is the focus of many songs. It doesn’t need to have the word “time” in it, but there is something about time in most songs. That experience of getting through a specific time, waiting for some time when we will get what we want, often love. Not wanting to waste time, generally…with the one we love. Remembering a different time. Wishing for another time. Waiting for time to pass...
It might not be expressed explicitly, but the topic of time seems implicit when we sing, or speak about our lives. Unfortunately, it often seems like time is a faceless adversary, doesn’t it? Our invisible nemesis, something we have to contend with, to manage, to patiently deal with, to make the most out of it, to kill it yet somehow, not waste it. To get somewhere in the nick of it. As the sculptor and poet Henry Van Dyke explains: Time is/ Too slow for those who Wait/Too swift for those who Fear/ Too long for those who grieve/ Too short for those who Rejoice.”
Time is kind of like air, if you think about it. It surrounds us and yet we can’t see it. We can only see the movement of its passing: through greying hair, growing children, falling leaves, birthing, and dying.
That time was passing was a problem for Christians who were receiving this letter of Peter, our scripture for today. It wasn’t simply bemoaning how joints were aching, or how there was too few hours in a day, or how quickly it all passes. You see, many early Christians were just a bit peeved that, essentially, they were still here…on earth. Too much time had passed because they were believing, as the scripture we read last week Mark 13 vv. 24-37, implied “…this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” And you will remember, these things they were talking about: the sun darkening, the stars falling, the Son of Man coming in clouds with glory and power. The end of the world as they knew it.
All of this was supposed to happen. Christ was supposed to have returned by now. That generation Mark spoke of had probably been dead for a decade or two and these early Christians were starting to lose hope. Think…May 22, 2011. The day after Harold Camping said Christ would return. Think…the people who dissolved their 401(Ks), quit their jobs, withdrew from their families, prepared to be raptured. That kind of May 22nd disappointment…expect ongoing, day in and day out. Each sunset, another day Christ didn’t return.
The person writing this letter in the name of Peter—likely not the Simon Peter the disciple of Christ, as originally thought—is writing a letter of encouragement. We can assume these people were convicted of their righteousness in the face of judgment, because they seem to want it so badly—which honestly, is why I feel I would not be so eager of this to come, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for these folks. It’s the end of the world as they know it and they feel fine. At least…if it ever comes.
And the author of the letter says,don’t fear, it will happen. Maybe not in our time, but in God’s time. God works in a different time than we experience-- so when it doesn’t happen according to our clock and understanding, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Rest assured.
Which, if I’m honest, initially seems like a huge cop out to me. Like Harold Camping backpedaling and saying his calculations were wrong and that it will be another time, later in October. But unlike Harold Camping, the author of 2 Peter doesn’t give a solid date or time, or even predictions for what will pass before it comes. And in fact, he kind of takes away the focus on time, of the end of it all. He says it will happen when it will happen. What is important now is that you live as if it will happen any moment…
As most of you know, for close to a year now I have been running a small business: Mountain Baby Diapers, a cloth diaper service. Most people don’t understand why I would want to not only wash my own children’s diapers, but other people’s, and that’s a conversation for another time [not over a meal, where it always seems to come up]. But one thing I love about it is that it easily fits into my schedule, and is fairly flexible.
I pick up diapers from my clients homes on Wednesdays. Most Wednesdays I have the alarm on our cell phone set for 5:15 so I can be out the door by 5:30, cup of coffee in my hand, car filled with clean diapers, BBC on the radio. I see those early mornings as “my time.” I’m in a comfy little bubble as I drive around town, as far out as unpaved roads off Snake Hill Road on lanes that evoke prayer from me every time I take our little Focus wagon on them. I remember the morning by what news report is on at each client’s house. It’s a joyful, meaningful time for me, as the sun starts to rise on the new day and I’m home in time for our 7:30 breakfast of eggs and toast, kiss Sebastian off to the school bus and begin my day of washing, drying, parenting, and pastoring.
And while I’m usually up and out by 5:30, my clients know there is a 12 hour window when I might come: 5am-5pm. I did this so if—as they say—“life happens”, and I’m not there when I normally try to be-- a kids is sick, weather is bad--I can make it up later in the day. It gives me flexibility.
Which is what happened this Wednesday. On Tuesday night I was looking for the cord for our cell phone because it was low on batteries. I like to use the cell phone because it has a less jarring alarm that our digital alarm clock, but because we couldn’t find the cord to charge it—did we leave it at my parent’s? Did we leave it at the Olive Garden in Columbus?—I decided to set the alarm on our digital clock, which I don’t think I’ve ever done. AND I decided to go to bed listening to classical music, setting the clock to the sleep mode, so the radio would turn off after an hour.
We’ll I’m convinced the more I finagle with things, the less likely it is that it’s all going to work, so as you can guess, the next morning I wake up at it’s 6:30. An hour later than I hope. This is not how it is supposed to happen. Bounding out of bed I told Torin the alarm didn’t go off (as if it was the alarm’s fault), push on the coffeemaker, throw on my clothes, pour the coffee before it’s done, making a mess, worrying if I will get home in time for Sebastian to get to the bus and as I pull onto Willowdale Road the other unexpected complication—traffic. Traffic just started. There was no way my routine was going to happen like normal.
So I made the decision to alter my route. I would do some of the pickups before 7:30, go home and finish after breakfast. That way I could see Sebastian off to school, because as I realized in that moment, what seemed to be most distressing to me was that I might miss kissing him goodbye, and that I wouldn’t see him until he returned in the afternoon.
And as often happens, eating started grounding me back into clearer perspective. With the first bite of toast I was still fuming in my head: this all happened because my organized plan was disrupted. Someone lost the cord to the cell phone which meant I had to trust something else to wake me up, something other than what has always worked for me. When it comes down to it, when I’m in control, it all goes fine.
And after the first forkful of eggs I was working it out with Torin that what was really irking me was now my schedule was disrupted. I’d have to go out to Snake Hill Road—out in the boonies—when I wanted to spend the morning reading and studying in preparation for this sermon—and now my whole plan was all out of whack.
And during the first sip of coffee, Torin says “Well, I’m glad you give yourself a window of time so you don’t have to stress about when you pick up the diapers.” --I don’t know if he intended it or not, but I heard the irony in his comment. And the hard truth.
Because by the time I had finished my breakfast, and I was hugging Sebastian at the door, I realized I wasn’t freaking out about my schedule being messed up, or that I’d have to make a ten mile drive. I was angry that my attempt to control time had been thwarted.
I had been thinking that if everything went according to my plan, if I had been in charge of that phone cord, if I didn’t have to rely on an alarm clock to get me up, if things just happened the way I wanted and , let’s face it, knew best, things would be fine.
But isn’t that one of the ultimate illusions. Not that we have control over time—the first Christian communities, as we see today, were becoming painfully aware of that fact. But really, that we have control at all of anything in life. In her book Learning to Let Go Melanie Beattie reassures us that when we trade in a life that we try to control “we receive in return something better—a life that is manageable.”
Manageable, and yet more. In Greek there are at least two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners. Chronos is where the word chonology comes from which gives the illusion of an ordered progression of time. Chronos is ticking of the clock, counting of shopping days until Christmas, wondering why Christ hasn’t come yet because time has passed on the calendar…at least, by the living and dying of a generation. Chronos makes us angry at our bodies when they don’t heal as fast as we think they should. Chronos makes us anxious about our self worth when our hopes and dreams haven’t been accomplished by the age we thought they would.
And then there is the other word for time: kairos. Kairos is the time when you are lost in the beauty of a piece of music or the reverie of poetry. Kairos is the moment you hold someone in their pain and when you’ve laughed so hard for so long your side hurts. Kairos comes in moments of meditation of watching sleeping children, of falling in love. Kairos means “opportune moment” and is used when referring to a different type of time, a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. …a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. A time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled with Spirit
Kairos… gives the soul a space to deepen when the body slowly heals. [pause]
When our minds were set on certain lists of accomplishments that we thought we could control,
Kairos presents us space to explore new possibilities . [pause]
Kairos replaces counting down till Christmas with the patient waiting of Advent. [pause]
And we can’t control it.
No alarm clock will alert us to it, even when we end up finding the cord for the cell phone in our purses…like I did.
And in the midst of today’s scripture of end time hopes that we can’t quite seem to connect with, the author of Peter is calling us out of chronos and into Kairos. Out of the world’s time and into God’s time. Where living is not about what is to come on the clock and what we can control, but what is at work in our hearts and what we leave to the movement of Spirit.
--
And that’s probably what a lot of the songs about time have to say, too. While we want to control time, the painful reality is that we can’t. And if the author of 2 Peter was a country singer, he’d probably couldn’t say it better than Emmylou Harris who sings: “When we’re gone, long gone…the only thing that will have mattered, is the love that we shared, and the way that we cared. When we’re gone. Long gone.”
An
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Finding God Among Us
sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37
In Indiana you can get a driving permit at the ripe old age of sixteen. If you do well enough in Driver’s Ed, you don’t even have to take a driving test. You just go down to the DMV with a parent, show them your grade card, get your picture taken, and you’re all set to wreak havoc on the traffic patterns of unsuspecting citizens.
Well, I was one of those lucky students. No nerve wracking trip down the road with a stranger and her clip-board in the passenger’s seat for me. No steering through orange cones. AND, no parallel parking test in the middle of rush hour traffic on Main Street. It was a little anti-climactic, but there’s no doubt that I felt a sense of freedom and pride when I got that first little piece of laminated plastic. I was finally an adult … despite the red flag behind that goofy smile on my face.
Later that year, with hours and hours of local driving and one family trip out west under my belt, my mom and brother and I set out one morning for Cincinatti. It was a 5-6 hour trip south from our house N. Manchester, and we needed to be there by noon to board the river boat for my aunt’s birthday party.
My mother is naturally a morning person. So she started out the drive at 5:00 with my brother and me asleep in the back of the van, but after a couple of hours, she needed a break and a nap herself. So, I was called upon to take up the driving. The sun was up by then, and I settled in for an hour or two on the interstate with soothing music on, the heater running, and the cruise set at 63 miles per hour (on my mother’s insistence, of course – I would never drive over the speed limit myself.)
You might guess what happened next. After about twenty minutes, I nodded off for a few seconds which was more than enough to send us off the road, down the embankment, and into a guard rail. All three of us walked away from the accident without so much as a bruise; though the van lost all four tires, a good portion of the back right fender, and the entire back hatch. Needless to say, we did not make it to the birthday party, but we did have plenty of time to calm our nerves while we waited for my father to come and pick us up.
I learned a few things that morning. The first was that if you don’t hit the brakes, the cruise will keep a car going … very fast … whether you are on the road or not. The second was that my mother’s thoughts about guardian angels may not be quite as silly as I once thought. And the third was exactly how far I can push myself when I am at the wheel.
Only once since that morning have I nodded off while driving (one time to many), and I was fortunate enough to have an alert passenger along with me to wake me before the car was out of control. But, there have been many times when I have “zoned out” on the road – when I have been driving without any real awareness of what I was doing. I come to my senses at a stop light or a turn in my route, and I realize that I can’t remember the last several miles of driving. I don’t know how I made it where I am. I don’t know what I missed seeing or hearing along the way. I only know that I must have covered the miles in my own lane, driving … safely? Strictly speaking, I stayed awake, but I certainly wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been.
Of course, that’s not the best way to get from one place to another … behind the wheel of a speeding car on autopilot, but I suspect that many of you have had the same experience. And, I think that most of us have passed through days or months or years of our lives in the same way. We go through the motions that keep everything running smoothly – more or less, and we arrive at some major event (a birthday or an anniversary or a crisis in our family) and we wonder where the time went. How can it be that Meredith is driving now? When, exactly, did Brent start looking down on me? Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were celebrating Easter? Where did the time go?
It’s part of human nature … letting time sort of slip past while we wait for the big, memorable moments to come. At least I hope it’s not just me. I think it’s not just me, and I’m pretty sure that it’s nothing really new because I think that’s what both of our scriptures are talking about.
“Beware, keep alert,” Jesus warns us. “Keep awake, … for neither the angels in heaven, nor the [Son of Man,] but only the father knows the day or the hour.” In other words, don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Don’t even let yourself zone out. Pay attention because you never know when God is going to show up, and it could go badly for you if you are not prepared.
As Carrie pointed out last week, that’s not exactly comforting. It put us on edge because it makes us think of a vengeful, judging God – a God who would throw the unenlightened or the unfaithful into an eternal fire. That’s not the God we like to think about.
It’s all well and good for Jesus to speak of doom because he is the one person who will never have to worry about whether or not he is a worthy. The rest of us are not so lucky, and it seems more than a little unrealistic to expect that we could stay alert all the time, be prepared all the time, produce fruit all the time. It’s a superhuman task, and I have trouble even understanding what it would look like to live that way.
But, I can connect with the sentiments expressed in the poetry of Isaiah. It’s a bit more human. Sure, it says … sure we have strayed from the path. We have not lived as well as we should have. We haven’t kept all the laws or done all that we could have to be perfect followers, but that’s not entirely our fault. But what do you expect? You used to come down and make the mountains shake. You used to tear open the heavens and speak to us in burning bushes. And we knew that you were here with us. And we knew what you wanted us to do. And we knew that you cared about us because you blessed us with your presence. Then you went away … or at least it feels like you went away because we stopped seeing the big things and hearing the VOICE speaking to us. And we had to start trying to figure things out ourselves. Don’t be angry, we’re doing our best … or at least we are trying.
Two very different voices there in the scriptures. Two very different points of view, but they are both clear about one thing. God’s presence in the world changes things. When God’s face shines on us, we notice, and we feel that strange mix of fear and love that we call awe. We are moved to live more righteous lives – to follow the rules and listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If you’ve ever felt that sense of awe move you, you know how powerful it can be to sense God’s presence around you, and I can only imagine how much more intense the feeling would have been when God walked among us as Jesus.
And here we are … at the beginning of Advent. We’re coming awake again to celebrate the incarnation – to celebrate the fact that God did come and walk among us. And it’s a wonderful and joyous time. But, the truth is that God is always walking among us. God has been among us – walking, working, moving, and shaping our lives and our world all this time. God has not hidden her face from us, we just haven’t been paying attention. We’ve been on autopilot … again, and who knows what beautiful moments we’ve missed along the way.
Just before our wedding, the pastor who married us gave us one last piece of advice. “Do your best to pay attention during the ceremony because if you don’t, you won’t remember anything.” We have gotten much the same advice from many people as we have raised our family. “Cherish this time. Pay attention so that you can enjoy all the wonderful moments because they pass you by so quickly.”
It’s good advice. I tried my best, but I don’t remember very much of what actually happened on my wedding day. I try my best to each stage of my children’s development and to cherish each moment, but I am still caught off guard when Sebastian tries to remind me of something that happened a year ago and I can’t remember it. Just the other day, he came home from school and asked if he could do his homework, and I found myself wondering where the little boy I knew had gone. I just don’t know how to pay attention well enough to notice everything.
So how do we pay attention? That seems to be the big question behind all of this. How do we stay alert and present to our family or to the needs of our neighbors or to the presence and activity of God among us?
Honestly … I don’t know. I am sure the answer is different for each of us, and I have yet to find my own way.
I don’t think that many people have ever found a way. There is nothing definite in the gospels or in any of the other scriptures that I know. Jesus and Paul, the prophets and the Psalm writers, they all call believers to stay alert. They all talk about what can happen when people get a little sleepy. But despite all their insistence on paying attention, they offer no specific guidance on how to do that.
There are lots of other suggestions out there in books written by people who have been struggling toward this goal just as we have. They talk about praying, serving, discerning God’s will, practicing compassion and active love and other practices that have talked about, and all of those things can help … do help. They point us in the right direction at least. But one of the most helpful things … for me … has been J. Phillip Newell’s reminder that “looking to God is not looking away from life but looking more deeply into it. They reveal to us that God is at the heart of creation – is the heartbeat of life…, enfolding the earth and all its people with love.”
Even though that’s not specific (or maybe because it’s not specific), that gives me hope. It tells me that whatever else I do – whatever practices I try, whatever different paths I walk for a time - if I look hard enough, I will find God … not far away, but right here among us.
There may not be one right way for all of us to stay alert or even for any one of us to pay attention. Perhaps we are only meant to try… to turn off the soothing music, turn down the heat, and turn off the cruise and give it our best effort so that we miss as little as possible. That’s my goal, at least, because “Once upon a time, a great big God was born as a little small child, and the world changed. The God is still changing everything – me and you and the world around us – in beautiful ways.
I don’t think we want to miss that. I’m not sure that we can afford to give up those chances to find ourselves awakened to awe at the presence of God: … the God who comes in spectacular ways - rending the heavens, shaking the mountains, lying in a manger, and rising from a tomb … and the God who walks with us every day, touching the world with vulnerability and love.
It comes easily in this season of anticipation – paying attention. We have a feeling of expectation. And the closer we get to Christmas … and the stronger that feeling gets, the more we notice the presence of God … the more aware we are to touch of the divine around us.
Maybe … if we pay attention this time around, we’ll learn how to stay awake – really awake.
Maybe we can carry that feeling … that awareness with us down the long stretches of our lives too.
And then when we look around, we’ll find God … right there among us.
Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37
In Indiana you can get a driving permit at the ripe old age of sixteen. If you do well enough in Driver’s Ed, you don’t even have to take a driving test. You just go down to the DMV with a parent, show them your grade card, get your picture taken, and you’re all set to wreak havoc on the traffic patterns of unsuspecting citizens.
Well, I was one of those lucky students. No nerve wracking trip down the road with a stranger and her clip-board in the passenger’s seat for me. No steering through orange cones. AND, no parallel parking test in the middle of rush hour traffic on Main Street. It was a little anti-climactic, but there’s no doubt that I felt a sense of freedom and pride when I got that first little piece of laminated plastic. I was finally an adult … despite the red flag behind that goofy smile on my face.
Later that year, with hours and hours of local driving and one family trip out west under my belt, my mom and brother and I set out one morning for Cincinatti. It was a 5-6 hour trip south from our house N. Manchester, and we needed to be there by noon to board the river boat for my aunt’s birthday party.
My mother is naturally a morning person. So she started out the drive at 5:00 with my brother and me asleep in the back of the van, but after a couple of hours, she needed a break and a nap herself. So, I was called upon to take up the driving. The sun was up by then, and I settled in for an hour or two on the interstate with soothing music on, the heater running, and the cruise set at 63 miles per hour (on my mother’s insistence, of course – I would never drive over the speed limit myself.)
You might guess what happened next. After about twenty minutes, I nodded off for a few seconds which was more than enough to send us off the road, down the embankment, and into a guard rail. All three of us walked away from the accident without so much as a bruise; though the van lost all four tires, a good portion of the back right fender, and the entire back hatch. Needless to say, we did not make it to the birthday party, but we did have plenty of time to calm our nerves while we waited for my father to come and pick us up.
I learned a few things that morning. The first was that if you don’t hit the brakes, the cruise will keep a car going … very fast … whether you are on the road or not. The second was that my mother’s thoughts about guardian angels may not be quite as silly as I once thought. And the third was exactly how far I can push myself when I am at the wheel.
Only once since that morning have I nodded off while driving (one time to many), and I was fortunate enough to have an alert passenger along with me to wake me before the car was out of control. But, there have been many times when I have “zoned out” on the road – when I have been driving without any real awareness of what I was doing. I come to my senses at a stop light or a turn in my route, and I realize that I can’t remember the last several miles of driving. I don’t know how I made it where I am. I don’t know what I missed seeing or hearing along the way. I only know that I must have covered the miles in my own lane, driving … safely? Strictly speaking, I stayed awake, but I certainly wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been.
Of course, that’s not the best way to get from one place to another … behind the wheel of a speeding car on autopilot, but I suspect that many of you have had the same experience. And, I think that most of us have passed through days or months or years of our lives in the same way. We go through the motions that keep everything running smoothly – more or less, and we arrive at some major event (a birthday or an anniversary or a crisis in our family) and we wonder where the time went. How can it be that Meredith is driving now? When, exactly, did Brent start looking down on me? Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were celebrating Easter? Where did the time go?
It’s part of human nature … letting time sort of slip past while we wait for the big, memorable moments to come. At least I hope it’s not just me. I think it’s not just me, and I’m pretty sure that it’s nothing really new because I think that’s what both of our scriptures are talking about.
“Beware, keep alert,” Jesus warns us. “Keep awake, … for neither the angels in heaven, nor the [Son of Man,] but only the father knows the day or the hour.” In other words, don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Don’t even let yourself zone out. Pay attention because you never know when God is going to show up, and it could go badly for you if you are not prepared.
As Carrie pointed out last week, that’s not exactly comforting. It put us on edge because it makes us think of a vengeful, judging God – a God who would throw the unenlightened or the unfaithful into an eternal fire. That’s not the God we like to think about.
It’s all well and good for Jesus to speak of doom because he is the one person who will never have to worry about whether or not he is a worthy. The rest of us are not so lucky, and it seems more than a little unrealistic to expect that we could stay alert all the time, be prepared all the time, produce fruit all the time. It’s a superhuman task, and I have trouble even understanding what it would look like to live that way.
But, I can connect with the sentiments expressed in the poetry of Isaiah. It’s a bit more human. Sure, it says … sure we have strayed from the path. We have not lived as well as we should have. We haven’t kept all the laws or done all that we could have to be perfect followers, but that’s not entirely our fault. But what do you expect? You used to come down and make the mountains shake. You used to tear open the heavens and speak to us in burning bushes. And we knew that you were here with us. And we knew what you wanted us to do. And we knew that you cared about us because you blessed us with your presence. Then you went away … or at least it feels like you went away because we stopped seeing the big things and hearing the VOICE speaking to us. And we had to start trying to figure things out ourselves. Don’t be angry, we’re doing our best … or at least we are trying.
Two very different voices there in the scriptures. Two very different points of view, but they are both clear about one thing. God’s presence in the world changes things. When God’s face shines on us, we notice, and we feel that strange mix of fear and love that we call awe. We are moved to live more righteous lives – to follow the rules and listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If you’ve ever felt that sense of awe move you, you know how powerful it can be to sense God’s presence around you, and I can only imagine how much more intense the feeling would have been when God walked among us as Jesus.
And here we are … at the beginning of Advent. We’re coming awake again to celebrate the incarnation – to celebrate the fact that God did come and walk among us. And it’s a wonderful and joyous time. But, the truth is that God is always walking among us. God has been among us – walking, working, moving, and shaping our lives and our world all this time. God has not hidden her face from us, we just haven’t been paying attention. We’ve been on autopilot … again, and who knows what beautiful moments we’ve missed along the way.
Just before our wedding, the pastor who married us gave us one last piece of advice. “Do your best to pay attention during the ceremony because if you don’t, you won’t remember anything.” We have gotten much the same advice from many people as we have raised our family. “Cherish this time. Pay attention so that you can enjoy all the wonderful moments because they pass you by so quickly.”
It’s good advice. I tried my best, but I don’t remember very much of what actually happened on my wedding day. I try my best to each stage of my children’s development and to cherish each moment, but I am still caught off guard when Sebastian tries to remind me of something that happened a year ago and I can’t remember it. Just the other day, he came home from school and asked if he could do his homework, and I found myself wondering where the little boy I knew had gone. I just don’t know how to pay attention well enough to notice everything.
So how do we pay attention? That seems to be the big question behind all of this. How do we stay alert and present to our family or to the needs of our neighbors or to the presence and activity of God among us?
Honestly … I don’t know. I am sure the answer is different for each of us, and I have yet to find my own way.
I don’t think that many people have ever found a way. There is nothing definite in the gospels or in any of the other scriptures that I know. Jesus and Paul, the prophets and the Psalm writers, they all call believers to stay alert. They all talk about what can happen when people get a little sleepy. But despite all their insistence on paying attention, they offer no specific guidance on how to do that.
There are lots of other suggestions out there in books written by people who have been struggling toward this goal just as we have. They talk about praying, serving, discerning God’s will, practicing compassion and active love and other practices that have talked about, and all of those things can help … do help. They point us in the right direction at least. But one of the most helpful things … for me … has been J. Phillip Newell’s reminder that “looking to God is not looking away from life but looking more deeply into it. They reveal to us that God is at the heart of creation – is the heartbeat of life…, enfolding the earth and all its people with love.”
Even though that’s not specific (or maybe because it’s not specific), that gives me hope. It tells me that whatever else I do – whatever practices I try, whatever different paths I walk for a time - if I look hard enough, I will find God … not far away, but right here among us.
There may not be one right way for all of us to stay alert or even for any one of us to pay attention. Perhaps we are only meant to try… to turn off the soothing music, turn down the heat, and turn off the cruise and give it our best effort so that we miss as little as possible. That’s my goal, at least, because “Once upon a time, a great big God was born as a little small child, and the world changed. The God is still changing everything – me and you and the world around us – in beautiful ways.
I don’t think we want to miss that. I’m not sure that we can afford to give up those chances to find ourselves awakened to awe at the presence of God: … the God who comes in spectacular ways - rending the heavens, shaking the mountains, lying in a manger, and rising from a tomb … and the God who walks with us every day, touching the world with vulnerability and love.
It comes easily in this season of anticipation – paying attention. We have a feeling of expectation. And the closer we get to Christmas … and the stronger that feeling gets, the more we notice the presence of God … the more aware we are to touch of the divine around us.
Maybe … if we pay attention this time around, we’ll learn how to stay awake – really awake.
Maybe we can carry that feeling … that awareness with us down the long stretches of our lives too.
And then when we look around, we’ll find God … right there among us.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Double Vision
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Matthew 25:31-46, Ephesians 1:15-23
I have to say—the gospel readings for the past three weeks have been pretty… heavy. Bridesmaids who fall asleep late at night and bridesmaids who hoard their oil (the latter ones being commended); servants who are entrusted with their greedy master’s money, some are risky and some play it safe (the latter ones being chastised). And today. Those who see the suffering Christ and those who don’t quite see it yet (these last ones relegated to the position of goats and thrown into the metaphorical fire—at least we hope it’s metaphorical).
Now I don’t know about you, but these aren’t exactly the stories about Jesus and his teachings that I like to throw around, especially not to those new to Christianity, or critics of Christianity, or doubters in Christianity. Jesus sounds kind of harsh, and not very welcoming. And while I commend Torin for the job he did in helping us see these first two scriptures in a new light—to help us take them beyond face value—I have to say I’m still not comforted by them. And if I’m not comforted by the words of my Savior, can I claim to really be a follower?
I sometimes have difficultly seeing that.
To be honest, I have always liked the gospel scripture for today, about the sheep and goats. Not because I like sheep and goats, but because of the basic incarnational theology it presents. The idea that God is in everything, in everyone, in every situation…and our actions towards each thing, each person, each situation we encounter is an interaction, in some way, with the divine. And on the flip side, our lack of attention and engagement is, so it seems, an unconscious separation of ourselves from God.
It speaks to a basic Christian belief—and a cherished Anabaptist one—that faith is not private conviction, but it is also public practice.
Yet, as I have grown a little older, taking on more responsibilities, a family, a job, a small business, a yard and a garden and getting involved in my kids’ school—I have become more uncomfortable when I approach this scripture. It’s one thing to read this with the eyes of an idealistic, socially-conscious 20-year old with relatively few responsibilities, who sees the source of the social ills as caused by other people—older people—but now…You know they used to say “don’t trust anyone over 30…” because apparently something happens. Your priorities shift. Your life isn’t what you thought it might be. While you still might feel passionately about things, your motivation to act is…tempered somewhat.
So there is a part of me that feels like these gospel scriptures are a bit…unfair. I guess it’s because I’m now over 30. It gets us feeling a little bit down on ourselves and then today comes, when churches around the world are celebrating Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday before Advent begins, the Sunday when we proclaim Christ the head of the church, and we, his servant subjects. Christ reigns in glory and the whole world bows before him.
[pause]
Actually, this isn’t quite our cup of tea is it? I wonder how many of you actually knew it was called Christ the King Sunday… and if my little lectionary reflections hadn’t reminded me that today was indeed, Christ the King Sunday, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It feels a little—high church—for us lowly Brethren and Mennonites. Some people refer to this as "Reign of Christ" Sunday. I can swallow that cup of tea a little better.
So, whether it is Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, what is interesting is that lowly is what today’s gospel is all about. One article I read this week compared today’s gospel with the TV reality show Undercover Boss. “CBS describes the nature of the show: Each week, Undercover Boss follows a different executive as they leave the comfort of their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their companies. While working alongside their employees, they see the effects that their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organizations, and get an up-close look at both the good and the bad while discovering the unsung heroes who make their company run.
“It sounds a lot like the gospel text for Christ the King Sunday,” says Christine Chakoian. When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him. Then to everyone’s surprise,” Chakoian remarks, “he will reveal that he has been undercover among them for some time, observing them at work.”
Now, that isn’t the most comforting image either, in fact it is a bit anxiety producing, a bit like Big Brother. She goes on to admit this isn’t a perfect metaphor- it’s not that the primary purpose of God coming among us in Christ, and remaining with us in the Holy Spirit was so our cosmic Boss could see how the company was running--but this passage does asks us, how accurately are we anticipating the “CEO’s” priorities: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
Now if you have been coming to this congregation for even a short length of time, you will know that we are a people who are concerned. We are a socially-conscious people. I don’t need to waste my breath with most of you, convincing you the need to be aware of the suffering of the world in some way, that we are a people called to serve, that we pray with our feet, and that, as St. Teresa of Avila said, Christ has no body on earth now but ours. I know it, and I believe you know it.
But here’s the rub, as I see it. Because I know it leaves me in a quandary, and I imagine it does for some of you too:
Should I put all my money towards relief agencies serving those affected by drought and famine in Somalia, or towards campaigns creating a new food culture in public school lunches? The thirsty or the hungry?
Should I put my time into working for just immigration policies or volunteering at Christian Help to provide business clothing for women who are looking for work, but don’t have the appropriate wardrobe? The stranger or the naked?
Should I spend much of my energy into organizing for policies which grant dignity for those who are mentally ill, or should I put it towards the campaign working to eliminate human trafficking and modern day slavery in the US? The sick or the prisoner?
I think I do a good job of seeing the world’s needs and the disenfranchised. Of seeing Christ dwelling in the least of these. It’s there. It comes in the mail as fliers, it comes from our denominational agencies as glossy brochure and special offering initiatives or special worship focus, it comes when I’m listening to the news while I’m cooking dinner, and in it’s in my head at night when I thank God for my health, my family, my home, my job and realize that these are luxuries that the majority of the world doesn’t have.
And then it seeps in. That uninvited visitor who I want to keep out, but always seem to leave the backdoor of my mind unlocked for: guilt.
When I make a choice, does that mean that I’m neglecting the other one? Am I seeing Christ in the thirsty, but not the prisoner, the naked but not the sick? Am I willingly turning my back to all the other needy people and situations? Am I too attuned to the needs of those far away, and not looking at the needs at my own door step?
Sometimes, though I am self-admittedly a feminist and a pacifist, my mind needs a good slap in the face, like those old black and white movies where a valiant man gives the hysterical woman a slap, not with the intent to hurt her, but to snap her out of whatever it is that is spiraling out of control.
So, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but I think many of us do feel so compelled to do something for our neighbor, but we just don’t know what is needed, or effective, or sustainable. And let’s face it, “loving our neighbor” throws a lot wider net now than it did 2,000 years ago. We see every part of the world, more needs, more prisoners, more hungry, more definition of what justice means. And it seems the more we know, the more likely we feel we might be herded up with goats because we aren’t able to do everything for everybody.
And then we either live in that guilt, or…we just become numb to it. We choose not to see it. Or we choose to see it with our physical eyes, but not to engage it with our inner eye, our spiritual eye. The one that takes what we see physically, and somehow translates it into the language of the spirit.
And I think that’s a bit of what Paul can teach us in his letter to the Ephesians this week. When we wonder what is ours to do, either for the environment of West Virginia, or the children of sexual abuse, or refugees in Afghanistan, or our neighbor who is suffering with cancer…if we can take Paul’s words to heart we won’t say “I can’t do anything” and we won’t say, “I can do it all”.
Instead, let’s stop, take a deep breath and say, or rather pray Paul’s words:
[deep breath]
I pray that God…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.
[pause]
Stanley Hauerwas said that “We can only act within a world we can see. Vision is the necessary prerequisite for ethics.” We’re called to see the interconnectedness of the world. That because Christ suffered on the cross he is deeply a part of the world’s suffering and when we see we are compelled to respond…it’s a question of ethics. It’s seeing Christ in the world.
But it also calls us to double vision. It’s also about seeing with the inner eye the wisdom of Christ. We might call it discerning. We might ask the very important, but simple question, what is mine to do?
And I’ m pretty sure the answer won’t be everything. And it probably won’t be nothing. It might be as simple an answer as to say a prayer. And if it takes you beyond that, then that’s when Paul’s prayer, not guilt, becomes your motivator.
It has been said many places that your calling is where the world’s greatest need and your greatest joy meet. A double axis. A double vision. With a global society and technology the world’s needs are laid before us daily. But our greatest joy? Our divine abilities? Our passion? I sure wish someone could tweet me what those are, or get instant updates on my Facebook status.
Because that’s a lot harder. And it is frustrating. And as you discern and grow in wisdom remember that Christ is with you as well. “It humbles me to know that Christ cared so much that he left the comfort of his corner office to hang around his staff” says Christine Chakoian. “I am strengthened because he rolled up his sleeves in the muck of the factory and field, the hospital and kitchen, the halls of power and the temple of worship. I am reassured that he has compassion nofr those of us who, out of exhaustion or discouragement, are tempted to cut corners or even walk away.”
There is wisdom, and revelation. There is seeing with your heart enlightened. And when we see with that double vision, maybe then we can live in the hope. The hope where the Divine One joins you.
Matthew 25:31-46, Ephesians 1:15-23
I have to say—the gospel readings for the past three weeks have been pretty… heavy. Bridesmaids who fall asleep late at night and bridesmaids who hoard their oil (the latter ones being commended); servants who are entrusted with their greedy master’s money, some are risky and some play it safe (the latter ones being chastised). And today. Those who see the suffering Christ and those who don’t quite see it yet (these last ones relegated to the position of goats and thrown into the metaphorical fire—at least we hope it’s metaphorical).
Now I don’t know about you, but these aren’t exactly the stories about Jesus and his teachings that I like to throw around, especially not to those new to Christianity, or critics of Christianity, or doubters in Christianity. Jesus sounds kind of harsh, and not very welcoming. And while I commend Torin for the job he did in helping us see these first two scriptures in a new light—to help us take them beyond face value—I have to say I’m still not comforted by them. And if I’m not comforted by the words of my Savior, can I claim to really be a follower?
I sometimes have difficultly seeing that.
To be honest, I have always liked the gospel scripture for today, about the sheep and goats. Not because I like sheep and goats, but because of the basic incarnational theology it presents. The idea that God is in everything, in everyone, in every situation…and our actions towards each thing, each person, each situation we encounter is an interaction, in some way, with the divine. And on the flip side, our lack of attention and engagement is, so it seems, an unconscious separation of ourselves from God.
It speaks to a basic Christian belief—and a cherished Anabaptist one—that faith is not private conviction, but it is also public practice.
Yet, as I have grown a little older, taking on more responsibilities, a family, a job, a small business, a yard and a garden and getting involved in my kids’ school—I have become more uncomfortable when I approach this scripture. It’s one thing to read this with the eyes of an idealistic, socially-conscious 20-year old with relatively few responsibilities, who sees the source of the social ills as caused by other people—older people—but now…You know they used to say “don’t trust anyone over 30…” because apparently something happens. Your priorities shift. Your life isn’t what you thought it might be. While you still might feel passionately about things, your motivation to act is…tempered somewhat.
So there is a part of me that feels like these gospel scriptures are a bit…unfair. I guess it’s because I’m now over 30. It gets us feeling a little bit down on ourselves and then today comes, when churches around the world are celebrating Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday before Advent begins, the Sunday when we proclaim Christ the head of the church, and we, his servant subjects. Christ reigns in glory and the whole world bows before him.
[pause]
Actually, this isn’t quite our cup of tea is it? I wonder how many of you actually knew it was called Christ the King Sunday… and if my little lectionary reflections hadn’t reminded me that today was indeed, Christ the King Sunday, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It feels a little—high church—for us lowly Brethren and Mennonites. Some people refer to this as "Reign of Christ" Sunday. I can swallow that cup of tea a little better.
So, whether it is Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, what is interesting is that lowly is what today’s gospel is all about. One article I read this week compared today’s gospel with the TV reality show Undercover Boss. “CBS describes the nature of the show: Each week, Undercover Boss follows a different executive as they leave the comfort of their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their companies. While working alongside their employees, they see the effects that their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organizations, and get an up-close look at both the good and the bad while discovering the unsung heroes who make their company run.
“It sounds a lot like the gospel text for Christ the King Sunday,” says Christine Chakoian. When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him. Then to everyone’s surprise,” Chakoian remarks, “he will reveal that he has been undercover among them for some time, observing them at work.”
Now, that isn’t the most comforting image either, in fact it is a bit anxiety producing, a bit like Big Brother. She goes on to admit this isn’t a perfect metaphor- it’s not that the primary purpose of God coming among us in Christ, and remaining with us in the Holy Spirit was so our cosmic Boss could see how the company was running--but this passage does asks us, how accurately are we anticipating the “CEO’s” priorities: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
Now if you have been coming to this congregation for even a short length of time, you will know that we are a people who are concerned. We are a socially-conscious people. I don’t need to waste my breath with most of you, convincing you the need to be aware of the suffering of the world in some way, that we are a people called to serve, that we pray with our feet, and that, as St. Teresa of Avila said, Christ has no body on earth now but ours. I know it, and I believe you know it.
But here’s the rub, as I see it. Because I know it leaves me in a quandary, and I imagine it does for some of you too:
Should I put all my money towards relief agencies serving those affected by drought and famine in Somalia, or towards campaigns creating a new food culture in public school lunches? The thirsty or the hungry?
Should I put my time into working for just immigration policies or volunteering at Christian Help to provide business clothing for women who are looking for work, but don’t have the appropriate wardrobe? The stranger or the naked?
Should I spend much of my energy into organizing for policies which grant dignity for those who are mentally ill, or should I put it towards the campaign working to eliminate human trafficking and modern day slavery in the US? The sick or the prisoner?
I think I do a good job of seeing the world’s needs and the disenfranchised. Of seeing Christ dwelling in the least of these. It’s there. It comes in the mail as fliers, it comes from our denominational agencies as glossy brochure and special offering initiatives or special worship focus, it comes when I’m listening to the news while I’m cooking dinner, and in it’s in my head at night when I thank God for my health, my family, my home, my job and realize that these are luxuries that the majority of the world doesn’t have.
And then it seeps in. That uninvited visitor who I want to keep out, but always seem to leave the backdoor of my mind unlocked for: guilt.
When I make a choice, does that mean that I’m neglecting the other one? Am I seeing Christ in the thirsty, but not the prisoner, the naked but not the sick? Am I willingly turning my back to all the other needy people and situations? Am I too attuned to the needs of those far away, and not looking at the needs at my own door step?
Sometimes, though I am self-admittedly a feminist and a pacifist, my mind needs a good slap in the face, like those old black and white movies where a valiant man gives the hysterical woman a slap, not with the intent to hurt her, but to snap her out of whatever it is that is spiraling out of control.
So, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but I think many of us do feel so compelled to do something for our neighbor, but we just don’t know what is needed, or effective, or sustainable. And let’s face it, “loving our neighbor” throws a lot wider net now than it did 2,000 years ago. We see every part of the world, more needs, more prisoners, more hungry, more definition of what justice means. And it seems the more we know, the more likely we feel we might be herded up with goats because we aren’t able to do everything for everybody.
And then we either live in that guilt, or…we just become numb to it. We choose not to see it. Or we choose to see it with our physical eyes, but not to engage it with our inner eye, our spiritual eye. The one that takes what we see physically, and somehow translates it into the language of the spirit.
And I think that’s a bit of what Paul can teach us in his letter to the Ephesians this week. When we wonder what is ours to do, either for the environment of West Virginia, or the children of sexual abuse, or refugees in Afghanistan, or our neighbor who is suffering with cancer…if we can take Paul’s words to heart we won’t say “I can’t do anything” and we won’t say, “I can do it all”.
Instead, let’s stop, take a deep breath and say, or rather pray Paul’s words:
[deep breath]
I pray that God…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.
[pause]
Stanley Hauerwas said that “We can only act within a world we can see. Vision is the necessary prerequisite for ethics.” We’re called to see the interconnectedness of the world. That because Christ suffered on the cross he is deeply a part of the world’s suffering and when we see we are compelled to respond…it’s a question of ethics. It’s seeing Christ in the world.
But it also calls us to double vision. It’s also about seeing with the inner eye the wisdom of Christ. We might call it discerning. We might ask the very important, but simple question, what is mine to do?
And I’ m pretty sure the answer won’t be everything. And it probably won’t be nothing. It might be as simple an answer as to say a prayer. And if it takes you beyond that, then that’s when Paul’s prayer, not guilt, becomes your motivator.
It has been said many places that your calling is where the world’s greatest need and your greatest joy meet. A double axis. A double vision. With a global society and technology the world’s needs are laid before us daily. But our greatest joy? Our divine abilities? Our passion? I sure wish someone could tweet me what those are, or get instant updates on my Facebook status.
Because that’s a lot harder. And it is frustrating. And as you discern and grow in wisdom remember that Christ is with you as well. “It humbles me to know that Christ cared so much that he left the comfort of his corner office to hang around his staff” says Christine Chakoian. “I am strengthened because he rolled up his sleeves in the muck of the factory and field, the hospital and kitchen, the halls of power and the temple of worship. I am reassured that he has compassion nofr those of us who, out of exhaustion or discouragement, are tempted to cut corners or even walk away.”
There is wisdom, and revelation. There is seeing with your heart enlightened. And when we see with that double vision, maybe then we can live in the hope. The hope where the Divine One joins you.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Risky Business
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 25:14-30 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
Do you believe that God has a plan for your life? Not just some big, vague hope but a specific, detailed plan?
That’s a big and complicated question. It brings up all sorts of theological questions. And it raises a host of doubts, fears, and insecurities in many of us. If God does have a plan for each of us and we all live according to that plan, then what do we make of free will? Are we just pawns in some universal game of chess? If God has no plan at all, does that mean that God is powerless? Or doesn’t care? Are we just playing our own little games with each other?
But, putting all that aside for another time, I’ll ask again … Do you believe that God has a plan for you?
Whether your answer is yes or no … or you have no idea, you are not alone. According to a recent Baylor Religion Survey, 41% of American’s strongly believe that God does have a plan for them. About 30% believe that there is no plan. And about 30% are somewhere in the middle, leaning one way or the other but not strongly.
One interesting thing about those figures is that a large portion of the people who said that they do believe (and especially those who believe strongly) also believe that part of that plan is granting them, personally, blessings of wealth and prosperity. And despite the current recession and the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, that number is growing, especially among those who are at the lowest income level.
That kind of magical thinking seems foreign and naïve to me, but the studies show that 2 out of every 10 of us believe that we will become millionaires in the next decade with the percentage growing the further down the economic ladder you move. And part of the reason for that may be the growing number and popularity of preachers who teach a "prosperity gospel" that promises wealth in return for sacrificial giving to support their ministries.
Those teachings are often justified by quoting the words of the parable we heard today with its promise that "to all those who have, more will be given, and they well have an abundance…" as well as older texts from Deuteronomy. Among other promises, those scriptures say that "God will … bless you and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, you grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock…. You shall be the most blessed of [people]."
But proof-texting – taking small pieces of scripture out of context and using them to support our own ideas - can be a risky business … especially when the scripture is a parable.
This story that we call the parable of the talents is not at all straight-forward. There are two major interpretations out there, and I have found the summary offered by Christina Berry helpful in my thinking:
Some [read] this parable in an upside-down kind of way, a parable not of the kingdom, but of how things really are ... with the master as an example of greed and acquisitiveness and the first and second slaves being opportunistic traders in mortgage-backed securities and derivatives– Wall Street executives, before the fall. They understand the third slave to be the faithful one, the one who refused empire, who refused to lend money at interest or to go for the quick buck.
But when the outer darkness descends and the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin, it’s hard to take that third slave as a new folk hero of the economy, some kind of first century 99-percenter, a participant in the “Occupy Jerusalem” movement. It’s hard to see anything heroic in the one who has nothing, who is not productive, who lives in fear of losing.
Others read this as unequivocal kingdom language. Jesus is … using oblique language to describe something hard to understand. It is something he wants the listener to understand on a gut level, not something you can write a book report about, not something you can make a chart or spread sheet about. Jesus is talking about trust and faithfulness, about using what we are given to bring about the kingdom.
Either way, the parable is not really about money. And it’s NOT about getting a good return on an investment. As Robert Farrar Capon tells us, “It [is] about a judgment rendered on faith-in-action, [but] not on the results of that faith.... It emphatically does not say that God is a bookkeeper looking for productive results…. The only bookkeeper in the parable is the servant who decided he had to fear a nonexistent audit and therefore hid his one talent in the ground….”
The judgment – the knashing of teach in the outer darkness - has nothing to do with which slave got a return on his investment and which didn’t. It has everything to do with who was willing to make use of the gift he was entrusted with and who wasn’t. All the Master asked of the slaves was that they do something … anything with his wealth so that it didn’t just sit idle while he was gone.
It is a risky business, this telling of stories. If we take this story literally, when it is not at all about what really happened, God ends up being characterized as a greedy old man, like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” capitalizing on the grief and the needs and the misery of the common folk or Mr. Potter in the Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.
A story like that can play into our deepest fears, and heighten our anxiety about money. It’s frightening enough to make us all bury a small fortune, to sock away fifteen years of income, in case something terrible is going to happen. It’s scary enough to make us focus on money and productivity above all things, working and saving to keep our anxiety at bay.
But if we read it differently – more like a parable should be read, then it asks even more of us. It asks us to risk more than money. It asks us to give up our fears about security and our self-made dreams about the future. It asks us to step out in faith on the path laid out for us by God – the Way to abundant life, trusting … trusting that God will be there to take care of us.
Imagine, for a moment, that some billionaire (Warren Buffet perhaps) gave you a gift of millions of dollars to care for while he was away. What would you do with that money? Give it away? Spend it on yourself? Spend it on others? Invest it? Save it?
Maybe you’d follow Warren Buffett’s advice: “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy,” and you’d risk it all in the high yield investment markets. Maybe you would simply do the best you could, trusting that the gift was meant for you, and that the one who gave it trusts you to use it to the best of your ability. Maybe you’d put the money into charitable organizations so that it would earn a different kind of interest. Maybe, at various times or places in your life, you’d do all three.
Now imagine that same scenario with something much more intangible – something much more precious: an overpowering grace and love, say, or an everlasting covenant, or a spring of living water, or the bread of life. Maybe you would feel lost or out-of your depth enough to risk your confident self-image, to risk admitting that you just don’t know what to do with such an amazing gift, to risk letting the Holy Spirit move into your place of not-knowing, and lead you into uncharted territory.
Maybe you would become greedy to multiply it by sharing it – just like the magic penny of our childhood songs. You would have an insatiable appetite for evangelism, for mission, for telling the good news, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless visiting the sick, welcoming children.
Maybe you’d risk everything you have, everything you are, for the sake of sharing the hope and promise you have found.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I do believe that God has a plan for each of us. I believe that we are each servants of a master who has shares with each of us the smallest portion of her unlimited supply of grace and love – a tiny portion that is still more than we could ever imagine – hoping that we will do something … anything with it.
Jesus showed us what that can look like. From the vantage point of our world, that can look like failure that will bring down the wrath of the Master. But in the Realm of God things work differently. God’s grace sets us free from that kind of tyranny so that we don’t have to act out of fear, hiding what we have. And we don’t have to save what God gives us because there is an infinite supply.
It’s a risky business … this discipleship, this sharing the good news of God’s grace, this throwing love around like it was only money. It’s risky … in the eyes of the world, but it’s the most secure investment that any of us who live in the Kingdom will ever make. And the abundant life that was already there … waiting for us to give birth to it – promises more riches and joy than we could ever come up with on our own.
I’d say it’s worth the risk.
Matthew 25:14-30 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
Do you believe that God has a plan for your life? Not just some big, vague hope but a specific, detailed plan?
That’s a big and complicated question. It brings up all sorts of theological questions. And it raises a host of doubts, fears, and insecurities in many of us. If God does have a plan for each of us and we all live according to that plan, then what do we make of free will? Are we just pawns in some universal game of chess? If God has no plan at all, does that mean that God is powerless? Or doesn’t care? Are we just playing our own little games with each other?
But, putting all that aside for another time, I’ll ask again … Do you believe that God has a plan for you?
Whether your answer is yes or no … or you have no idea, you are not alone. According to a recent Baylor Religion Survey, 41% of American’s strongly believe that God does have a plan for them. About 30% believe that there is no plan. And about 30% are somewhere in the middle, leaning one way or the other but not strongly.
One interesting thing about those figures is that a large portion of the people who said that they do believe (and especially those who believe strongly) also believe that part of that plan is granting them, personally, blessings of wealth and prosperity. And despite the current recession and the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, that number is growing, especially among those who are at the lowest income level.
That kind of magical thinking seems foreign and naïve to me, but the studies show that 2 out of every 10 of us believe that we will become millionaires in the next decade with the percentage growing the further down the economic ladder you move. And part of the reason for that may be the growing number and popularity of preachers who teach a "prosperity gospel" that promises wealth in return for sacrificial giving to support their ministries.
Those teachings are often justified by quoting the words of the parable we heard today with its promise that "to all those who have, more will be given, and they well have an abundance…" as well as older texts from Deuteronomy. Among other promises, those scriptures say that "God will … bless you and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, you grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock…. You shall be the most blessed of [people]."
But proof-texting – taking small pieces of scripture out of context and using them to support our own ideas - can be a risky business … especially when the scripture is a parable.
This story that we call the parable of the talents is not at all straight-forward. There are two major interpretations out there, and I have found the summary offered by Christina Berry helpful in my thinking:
Some [read] this parable in an upside-down kind of way, a parable not of the kingdom, but of how things really are ... with the master as an example of greed and acquisitiveness and the first and second slaves being opportunistic traders in mortgage-backed securities and derivatives– Wall Street executives, before the fall. They understand the third slave to be the faithful one, the one who refused empire, who refused to lend money at interest or to go for the quick buck.
But when the outer darkness descends and the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin, it’s hard to take that third slave as a new folk hero of the economy, some kind of first century 99-percenter, a participant in the “Occupy Jerusalem” movement. It’s hard to see anything heroic in the one who has nothing, who is not productive, who lives in fear of losing.
Others read this as unequivocal kingdom language. Jesus is … using oblique language to describe something hard to understand. It is something he wants the listener to understand on a gut level, not something you can write a book report about, not something you can make a chart or spread sheet about. Jesus is talking about trust and faithfulness, about using what we are given to bring about the kingdom.
Either way, the parable is not really about money. And it’s NOT about getting a good return on an investment. As Robert Farrar Capon tells us, “It [is] about a judgment rendered on faith-in-action, [but] not on the results of that faith.... It emphatically does not say that God is a bookkeeper looking for productive results…. The only bookkeeper in the parable is the servant who decided he had to fear a nonexistent audit and therefore hid his one talent in the ground….”
The judgment – the knashing of teach in the outer darkness - has nothing to do with which slave got a return on his investment and which didn’t. It has everything to do with who was willing to make use of the gift he was entrusted with and who wasn’t. All the Master asked of the slaves was that they do something … anything with his wealth so that it didn’t just sit idle while he was gone.
It is a risky business, this telling of stories. If we take this story literally, when it is not at all about what really happened, God ends up being characterized as a greedy old man, like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” capitalizing on the grief and the needs and the misery of the common folk or Mr. Potter in the Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.
A story like that can play into our deepest fears, and heighten our anxiety about money. It’s frightening enough to make us all bury a small fortune, to sock away fifteen years of income, in case something terrible is going to happen. It’s scary enough to make us focus on money and productivity above all things, working and saving to keep our anxiety at bay.
But if we read it differently – more like a parable should be read, then it asks even more of us. It asks us to risk more than money. It asks us to give up our fears about security and our self-made dreams about the future. It asks us to step out in faith on the path laid out for us by God – the Way to abundant life, trusting … trusting that God will be there to take care of us.
Imagine, for a moment, that some billionaire (Warren Buffet perhaps) gave you a gift of millions of dollars to care for while he was away. What would you do with that money? Give it away? Spend it on yourself? Spend it on others? Invest it? Save it?
Maybe you’d follow Warren Buffett’s advice: “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy,” and you’d risk it all in the high yield investment markets. Maybe you would simply do the best you could, trusting that the gift was meant for you, and that the one who gave it trusts you to use it to the best of your ability. Maybe you’d put the money into charitable organizations so that it would earn a different kind of interest. Maybe, at various times or places in your life, you’d do all three.
Now imagine that same scenario with something much more intangible – something much more precious: an overpowering grace and love, say, or an everlasting covenant, or a spring of living water, or the bread of life. Maybe you would feel lost or out-of your depth enough to risk your confident self-image, to risk admitting that you just don’t know what to do with such an amazing gift, to risk letting the Holy Spirit move into your place of not-knowing, and lead you into uncharted territory.
Maybe you would become greedy to multiply it by sharing it – just like the magic penny of our childhood songs. You would have an insatiable appetite for evangelism, for mission, for telling the good news, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless visiting the sick, welcoming children.
Maybe you’d risk everything you have, everything you are, for the sake of sharing the hope and promise you have found.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I do believe that God has a plan for each of us. I believe that we are each servants of a master who has shares with each of us the smallest portion of her unlimited supply of grace and love – a tiny portion that is still more than we could ever imagine – hoping that we will do something … anything with it.
Jesus showed us what that can look like. From the vantage point of our world, that can look like failure that will bring down the wrath of the Master. But in the Realm of God things work differently. God’s grace sets us free from that kind of tyranny so that we don’t have to act out of fear, hiding what we have. And we don’t have to save what God gives us because there is an infinite supply.
It’s a risky business … this discipleship, this sharing the good news of God’s grace, this throwing love around like it was only money. It’s risky … in the eyes of the world, but it’s the most secure investment that any of us who live in the Kingdom will ever make. And the abundant life that was already there … waiting for us to give birth to it – promises more riches and joy than we could ever come up with on our own.
I’d say it’s worth the risk.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Be Prepared ....
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 25:1-13 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
We don’t watch television very much in our house. Well … that’s not, strictly speaking, true. We do watch a good bit of television, but it’s not traditional television – not cable or broadcast, I mean. We have been members of Netflix for a while, and so we “stream” television shows. That means that we can watch a much larger variety of shows … and that we are always at least a year behind the curve … no water cooler chatter for us … no water cooler at work either when it comes to that. Another benefit to streaming is that we don’t have to sit through all the commercials which is a pleasant change from the television I grew up with … and a life-saver when it comes to keeping our boys from pestering us for every new thing that they see!
But one side effect that I didn’t expect when we started up with Netflix is that when I do see commercials on someone else’s TV or some other internet service they get right into my head and take up residence there. It’s like I have lost my calluses or dropped some internal shield that used to help those ads slide right on past. Or maybe I’m just more aware of how the ads I do see affect me. Whichever one it is, I now have State Farm agents popping up with everything from sandwiches to hot tubs and a little baby in a walker zooming down four-lane highways in my head … in the left lane nonetheless … on the way to become a picture on a far-away, net-linked printer. And beyond replaying the silly hooks and the blatant consumerism, I have also noticed an increasing sense of impending doom after I watch commercial TV.
Personally, I blame Nationwide car insurance – you know, the accident forgiveness people. A few years back, they began a series of commercials that started with rainy nights and spinning cars filled with children in car seats and fairly minor car damage. “Are you prepared?” a deep, confidence-inspiring voice asked as they showed a mother holding her uninjured child and a talking with someone on the cell phone with a police car and a tow truck in the background. Are you prepared? If you have an accident, who will you call to get your car towed and repaired?
Since then, other companies have started to use the same theme, showing grieving families at funerals or people standing outside their homes and hugging each other as they stare at the tree that crashed through the roof. The scheme, of course, is to show you worst case scenarios that get your adrenaline going and to put them up against the comforting image of safe families gathered together in relief as they call whatever company will deal with the crisis for them. We, of course, want to have just such support to fall back on if such a disaster comes our way. And while I don’t think it’s really fair to use that kind of emotional manipulation to frighten people into buying some kind of insurance, I didn’t really feel like it had gotten completely out of hand until I received an automated phone call at the church that was trying to scare me into buying flood insurance … for a building that sits at least 400 feet above the river on top of a hill.
To be fair, the advertisers are not really at the heart of my stress. It started long before any of these commercials popped up. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have lived with it most of my life – the result of having parents who taught me to look to the future and save money for whatever might be coming up. That was excellent advice (and I hope to instill those thoughts in my children as well), but it planted a seed of worry in the back of my mind that thrives on the what-if scenarios that are all around us.
What if there is a double-dip recession or even a depression? What if Greece or Italy actually default on their loans and the Eurozone collapses? What if a 1,000-year earthquake hits near Morgantown? What if fuel costs, rising population, and global warming make food so expensive that we can’t afford to eat? What if those people who predicted the end of the world in May had been right? (Their back-up date was October 21st by the way. Guess we dodged another one there.) It’s getting quite apocalyptic out there with all these predictions of doom, and the message we’re getting from everyone is be prepared because you never know when something really big is coming down the pipe.
Both Paul’s letter and Matthew’s parable fit right in with that warning. All around the time of Jesus people were predicting a big change on the wind. The Roman Empire had been around for awhile, and there were signs that it was weakening. It was no longer growing as it had in the early years, and the borders were threatened in many places by people who wanted their land back with interest. Others inside the empire were dreaming of self-rule and a bigger share of the wealth that they saw all around them. Among the Jews, in particular, the prophesies of the Messiah were being studied, and the sense that he would arrive soon was growing.
The early church, of course, believed that the Messiah had already come – the first time. Looking back, they understood this story of the ten bridesmaids in a different light. Instead of a parable about the coming of the Messiah who would overthrow the Romans, it became a prophesy about Jesus’ return. The sense of immediacy was still there though because everyone believed that return could happen any time. And so Matthew tacked on a last little bit of encouragement and warning that may even have come from Paul’s letters: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” In other words, “prepare yourselves for the end is near.”
Down through the ages, people have responded to that warning in different ways. The early church took on a communal lifestyle where everyone contributed to the meeting the needs of all. When more money was needed, people sold their property or other goods to buy food and clothing. In the lead up to May 21st of this year, believers quit their jobs, got rid of many of their “treasures,” and took to the streets to warn us all that the Day of Judgment was coming. In the early days of the Anabaptists, there was even a group who took over the city of Munster by force. They instituted a communal sectarian government, renamed the city the “New Jerusalem,” installed one of their own as a new king in line of David, and prepared to take the rest of the world by storm – a grand conquest that lasted all of three years.
Obviously, I don’t think that was the way to go. I don’t think any of us can rush the second coming through anything we do, and I, for one, don’t think Jesus would be very pleased to return and find that his followers had taken over by force of arms. I also don’t think that dropping everything in order to stand on the street proclaiming “the end is near” is what Matthew or Paul meant when they said “keep awake.” And while I am drawn to the idea of living together in a supportive community where we work together to meet one another’s needs, I’m not sure that it worked for them or would work for us. As good an idea as it sounds, it doesn’t seem to be sustainable.
I wonder if that’s part of our struggle with “be prepared” scriptures like these. We respond to them as if there was something that we need to do – and do quickly – to get our house in order. It’s almost like those days before family or friends come to visit … when we are rushing around cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets, vacuuming, and dusting so that everything is neat and tidy and no one sees the truth about how we usually live.
I think these texts are talking about a different kind of preparedness. They seem to be about being ready all the time. And it’s more like changing our habits and our approach to life than it is about last minute cleaning. As Paul puts it, we need to live thoughtfully and act with care so that our lives reflect who we are as followers of Christ because we don’t know – can’t know – when the “Big Day” is coming or even what any day will bring. We need to keep our wicks trimmed and our lamps supplied with oil all the time so that we are ready.
In our ministry classes at seminary, one thing that they told us over and over again was that we needed to care for ourselves if we wanted care for others. And they were talking about every part of our lives – our physical health, our mental health, and our spiritual health. I heard it so much that I started to develop a bored little voice in my head that would say the words along with the professors: “if you don’t make time to take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of anyone else,” and it became a bit of a joke among the students.
But, they were right, of course. If I got depressed, I couldn’t take care of my children or work at the church – at least not very well. And if I’m sick, every visit, especially in a hospital or nursing home – comes with a real risk that I will pass on whatever bug has me under the weather.
Thankfully, I don’t often get really sick and I haven’t yet suffered from serious mental illness. So, those issues are not as much of a problem as they might be. But, I do find myself struggling with my spiritual life from time to time, and that makes it just as hard to be a good pastor. One of my problems is that when my faith feels vibrant and alive, I want to go out and do things – visit with people, teach Sunday School, be part of interfaith work in town, serve food to people at Circle of Friends. I don’t want to stay in and spend time in prayer or reading the Bible because it doesn’t feel like I need to.
And then my oil runs out. I am suddenly exhausted, and all those things that seemed so exciting and fulfilling start to feel a bit more challenging. At those times, I find it hard to take time for prayer or meditation or scripture study because I don’t feel like I have the space in my schedule or the energy it would take with everything else that needs to be done.
I have learned enough, over the past few years, to know that those are times when I need to set aside my to-do list and take a bit of a retreat in order to recharge my batteries. And I am beginning to really learn that I need to do a better job of taking time out when I am feeling energized as well. I suppose I am starting to recognize the ways that I am like the unprepared bridesmaids and beginning to understand how I could become more the other ones – the ones who are ready.
I think that’s what it’s all about really. It’s about thinking and living in the long-term. Last minute, “emergency measures” don’t seem to work all that well whether we’re talking about financial systems, natural disasters, or spiritual life. Sometimes they have to happen, but it’s better if we can be insured – if we can make a habit of making the time and space to refresh ourselves and keep our lamps filled.
However you do that – whether it be through prayer or walking in the woods, reading or taking naps, talking with friends or writing or taking hot baths – whatever works for you … put it on your schedule and do it. Do it to take care of yourself. Do it so that you can care for others. Do it so that your light can shine every day, whatever that day may bring.
Matthew 25:1-13 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
We don’t watch television very much in our house. Well … that’s not, strictly speaking, true. We do watch a good bit of television, but it’s not traditional television – not cable or broadcast, I mean. We have been members of Netflix for a while, and so we “stream” television shows. That means that we can watch a much larger variety of shows … and that we are always at least a year behind the curve … no water cooler chatter for us … no water cooler at work either when it comes to that. Another benefit to streaming is that we don’t have to sit through all the commercials which is a pleasant change from the television I grew up with … and a life-saver when it comes to keeping our boys from pestering us for every new thing that they see!
But one side effect that I didn’t expect when we started up with Netflix is that when I do see commercials on someone else’s TV or some other internet service they get right into my head and take up residence there. It’s like I have lost my calluses or dropped some internal shield that used to help those ads slide right on past. Or maybe I’m just more aware of how the ads I do see affect me. Whichever one it is, I now have State Farm agents popping up with everything from sandwiches to hot tubs and a little baby in a walker zooming down four-lane highways in my head … in the left lane nonetheless … on the way to become a picture on a far-away, net-linked printer. And beyond replaying the silly hooks and the blatant consumerism, I have also noticed an increasing sense of impending doom after I watch commercial TV.
Personally, I blame Nationwide car insurance – you know, the accident forgiveness people. A few years back, they began a series of commercials that started with rainy nights and spinning cars filled with children in car seats and fairly minor car damage. “Are you prepared?” a deep, confidence-inspiring voice asked as they showed a mother holding her uninjured child and a talking with someone on the cell phone with a police car and a tow truck in the background. Are you prepared? If you have an accident, who will you call to get your car towed and repaired?
Since then, other companies have started to use the same theme, showing grieving families at funerals or people standing outside their homes and hugging each other as they stare at the tree that crashed through the roof. The scheme, of course, is to show you worst case scenarios that get your adrenaline going and to put them up against the comforting image of safe families gathered together in relief as they call whatever company will deal with the crisis for them. We, of course, want to have just such support to fall back on if such a disaster comes our way. And while I don’t think it’s really fair to use that kind of emotional manipulation to frighten people into buying some kind of insurance, I didn’t really feel like it had gotten completely out of hand until I received an automated phone call at the church that was trying to scare me into buying flood insurance … for a building that sits at least 400 feet above the river on top of a hill.
To be fair, the advertisers are not really at the heart of my stress. It started long before any of these commercials popped up. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have lived with it most of my life – the result of having parents who taught me to look to the future and save money for whatever might be coming up. That was excellent advice (and I hope to instill those thoughts in my children as well), but it planted a seed of worry in the back of my mind that thrives on the what-if scenarios that are all around us.
What if there is a double-dip recession or even a depression? What if Greece or Italy actually default on their loans and the Eurozone collapses? What if a 1,000-year earthquake hits near Morgantown? What if fuel costs, rising population, and global warming make food so expensive that we can’t afford to eat? What if those people who predicted the end of the world in May had been right? (Their back-up date was October 21st by the way. Guess we dodged another one there.) It’s getting quite apocalyptic out there with all these predictions of doom, and the message we’re getting from everyone is be prepared because you never know when something really big is coming down the pipe.
Both Paul’s letter and Matthew’s parable fit right in with that warning. All around the time of Jesus people were predicting a big change on the wind. The Roman Empire had been around for awhile, and there were signs that it was weakening. It was no longer growing as it had in the early years, and the borders were threatened in many places by people who wanted their land back with interest. Others inside the empire were dreaming of self-rule and a bigger share of the wealth that they saw all around them. Among the Jews, in particular, the prophesies of the Messiah were being studied, and the sense that he would arrive soon was growing.
The early church, of course, believed that the Messiah had already come – the first time. Looking back, they understood this story of the ten bridesmaids in a different light. Instead of a parable about the coming of the Messiah who would overthrow the Romans, it became a prophesy about Jesus’ return. The sense of immediacy was still there though because everyone believed that return could happen any time. And so Matthew tacked on a last little bit of encouragement and warning that may even have come from Paul’s letters: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” In other words, “prepare yourselves for the end is near.”
Down through the ages, people have responded to that warning in different ways. The early church took on a communal lifestyle where everyone contributed to the meeting the needs of all. When more money was needed, people sold their property or other goods to buy food and clothing. In the lead up to May 21st of this year, believers quit their jobs, got rid of many of their “treasures,” and took to the streets to warn us all that the Day of Judgment was coming. In the early days of the Anabaptists, there was even a group who took over the city of Munster by force. They instituted a communal sectarian government, renamed the city the “New Jerusalem,” installed one of their own as a new king in line of David, and prepared to take the rest of the world by storm – a grand conquest that lasted all of three years.
Obviously, I don’t think that was the way to go. I don’t think any of us can rush the second coming through anything we do, and I, for one, don’t think Jesus would be very pleased to return and find that his followers had taken over by force of arms. I also don’t think that dropping everything in order to stand on the street proclaiming “the end is near” is what Matthew or Paul meant when they said “keep awake.” And while I am drawn to the idea of living together in a supportive community where we work together to meet one another’s needs, I’m not sure that it worked for them or would work for us. As good an idea as it sounds, it doesn’t seem to be sustainable.
I wonder if that’s part of our struggle with “be prepared” scriptures like these. We respond to them as if there was something that we need to do – and do quickly – to get our house in order. It’s almost like those days before family or friends come to visit … when we are rushing around cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets, vacuuming, and dusting so that everything is neat and tidy and no one sees the truth about how we usually live.
I think these texts are talking about a different kind of preparedness. They seem to be about being ready all the time. And it’s more like changing our habits and our approach to life than it is about last minute cleaning. As Paul puts it, we need to live thoughtfully and act with care so that our lives reflect who we are as followers of Christ because we don’t know – can’t know – when the “Big Day” is coming or even what any day will bring. We need to keep our wicks trimmed and our lamps supplied with oil all the time so that we are ready.
In our ministry classes at seminary, one thing that they told us over and over again was that we needed to care for ourselves if we wanted care for others. And they were talking about every part of our lives – our physical health, our mental health, and our spiritual health. I heard it so much that I started to develop a bored little voice in my head that would say the words along with the professors: “if you don’t make time to take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of anyone else,” and it became a bit of a joke among the students.
But, they were right, of course. If I got depressed, I couldn’t take care of my children or work at the church – at least not very well. And if I’m sick, every visit, especially in a hospital or nursing home – comes with a real risk that I will pass on whatever bug has me under the weather.
Thankfully, I don’t often get really sick and I haven’t yet suffered from serious mental illness. So, those issues are not as much of a problem as they might be. But, I do find myself struggling with my spiritual life from time to time, and that makes it just as hard to be a good pastor. One of my problems is that when my faith feels vibrant and alive, I want to go out and do things – visit with people, teach Sunday School, be part of interfaith work in town, serve food to people at Circle of Friends. I don’t want to stay in and spend time in prayer or reading the Bible because it doesn’t feel like I need to.
And then my oil runs out. I am suddenly exhausted, and all those things that seemed so exciting and fulfilling start to feel a bit more challenging. At those times, I find it hard to take time for prayer or meditation or scripture study because I don’t feel like I have the space in my schedule or the energy it would take with everything else that needs to be done.
I have learned enough, over the past few years, to know that those are times when I need to set aside my to-do list and take a bit of a retreat in order to recharge my batteries. And I am beginning to really learn that I need to do a better job of taking time out when I am feeling energized as well. I suppose I am starting to recognize the ways that I am like the unprepared bridesmaids and beginning to understand how I could become more the other ones – the ones who are ready.
I think that’s what it’s all about really. It’s about thinking and living in the long-term. Last minute, “emergency measures” don’t seem to work all that well whether we’re talking about financial systems, natural disasters, or spiritual life. Sometimes they have to happen, but it’s better if we can be insured – if we can make a habit of making the time and space to refresh ourselves and keep our lamps filled.
However you do that – whether it be through prayer or walking in the woods, reading or taking naps, talking with friends or writing or taking hot baths – whatever works for you … put it on your schedule and do it. Do it to take care of yourself. Do it so that you can care for others. Do it so that your light can shine every day, whatever that day may bring.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
A Different Kind of Love
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 22:34-46 Deuteronomy 34:1-12
As I have been reading commentaries and listserves about “the greatest commandment” these past few weeks, I have found myself caught up in several different conversations about some pretty fascinating stuff … well … fascinating to those of us who are professional exegetes. We get into the scriptures and dig around in there and look for all the little contradictions or images or translation issues and make a really big deal about how they change “the whole interpretation of a text” because that’s what it means to be a professional exegete. We’re people who are paid to nit-pick about the details of scripture.
This time around, my colleagues and I have been talking about questions like: “Isn’t it interesting that the Pharisees asking for the one greatest commandment in the law and Jesus gives two commandments as an answer?” and “Why would the lawyer ask for the greatest commandment when everyone would have known the answer? What was the catch?” and “What was so hard about Jesus’ question? If David was speaking by the Spirit, wouldn’t the Pharisees have viewed his words as a prophesy and assume that they would be words spoken to a Messiah who was still a son of David sometime in the future?” … and the perpetual discussion of the three types of love: eros, philia, agape or intimate love, brotherly love, and unconditional or self-less love.
If you think those are long and confusing questions, you should “listen” on the conversations! They are a bit tedious at times, and since none of us really have the answers, things tend to degenerate after a while. But it is easy – for me – to get lost in the discussions and forget the more basic questions that can make these verses difficult to understand. Thankfully, I was brought back to earth by a question from our bible study. I think it was Rich Fleisher who said, “How can we love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all of our mind and still have room for anything else?”
Now there’s a question worth pondering.
A couple of years ago, Carrie told me a story. It was soon after Alistair was born, and we were struggling to figure out how to juggle the needs of two children. Personally, I think that’s the hardest transition to make. You go from having two adults to one child to having, quite often, two children and only one parent. (shake head in disbelief)
Anyway, Carrie had been talking with other mothers and passed on this modern folktale:
There was a young mother who was finding it hard to manage life with her new baby. She didn’t seem to be able to figure out what her child needed when he was crying, and she knew that she was supposed to be able to … perhaps through some kind of intuition. She was up all night, and with all the chores that needed to be done around the house, she didn’t get much sleep during the day. She was a wreck.
Then, one day, when she was walking her son past a local park, she saw a woman there with five children playing and a young baby in her arms. “How do you do it?!” she burst out, close to tears. “How do manage six kids?! I takes all my time with just one.”
The woman looked at the young mother and replied, “It doesn’t take any more time to raise six children than one.”
Love isn’t quite the same thing as time, though. Time comes in a fixed amount – here today and gone tomorrow. And it often feels like we don’t have enough time to get everything that we want or need to get done.
Love doesn’t march on. It doesn’t run out. It would make sense that if did. Then it would fit into our world of limited resources. But, that’s not the way of love. There always seems to be more of it. If you’re a parent … or a child, you know that instinctively. Do you love one parent more than another? One child? If a new person comes into your life, do they slowly take over space in your heart from somebody else? … Maybe the Grinch standing at the top of Mt. Strumpet would be a better image to describe the nature of love. Somehow, our hearts seem to grow and grow and grow to make space for more and more.
That makes it a little easier to answer Rich’s question. We can love God – at least with all our heart – and still have space to love others. But our heart is not all that God asks for, and when you add in those other two, it still feels a little intimidating. And here’s where those twisting conversations I can come in handy.
One of the good bits from this week’s trip through the listserve discussion is this. The word for “love” that Matthew uses in this text does not fit into that three tier system I mentioned above. It’s certainly not erotic love. But it’s not brotherly love or even completely self-less love as you might think (though agape comes the closest). In fact, there’s really not a Greek word that fits the situation. The Greek translators of two millennia ago just had to do their best with what they had.
“Love” in these verse isn’t even really a feeling in the way that we think of feelings, which may be what gave those translators so much trouble. This love is about commitment and dedication. In the Hebrew that Jesus was quoting, the word used is hesed which is translated in other places as “steadfast love,” and usually refers to God’s love for the chosen people. So, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” means to commit yourself to God in the same way God is committed to creation. And, “love your neighbor as yourself” means committing to yourself to your neighbors’ wellbeing (and to your own, by the way) in the same way that God is committed to the wellbeing of all humanity.
Now some of you, I’m sure, are thinking, “that doesn’t make it sound any easier. Now it’s not just love. It’s dedicating my whole self to God and then trying to find something left to others … not to mention myself.” (raise hand) You are not alone in that. Our spiritual history is filled with people who tried to balance these two commandments … tried and failed. King David, the disciples, Paul (at least in his early years), Jacob, Adam and Eve … from the very beginning, it seems, we have been struggling to find space in our hearts and our lives for God, ourselves, and our neighbors, and we tend to come down on one side of the equation or the other … usually ourselves.
And then there is Moses. For more than forty years he served God and the people with his whole heart, mind, and soul with only one or two lapses. He endured a lot of frustration and fear in the process, I imagine. He stood up to the greatest power of the time to demand the release of the slaves, after all. And, he led those same people through a barren land and took care of them despite their whining and complaining. He even stood face to face with God and argued for them when they had abandoned both God and him to worship gold.
I think, he must have found a good deal of joy in journey as well. How else would he have been able to keep it up for so long. He watched as the Hebrews grew up as a people of faith. He watched as his own family grew up on the journey. And, in the end, he got to see the promised land before he passed his work on.
Now, even the people who wrote his epitaph centuries later said that there has never been anyone else like Moses. The other great prophets and leaders don’t quite live up to his accomplishments. Some have signs and wonders nearly as impressive on their resumes. Some were granted visions of great power. Some worked tirelessly for the people. But none of them were able to put the whole package together. And that makes it hard to imagine that we normal folks would be able to come anywhere close.
On the surface of it, I think that’s right. But here’s another gem mentioned in passing in one of my conversations: “you cannot love God wholly without also loving your neighbor as yourself and vice versa.” What my colleague meant by that is that God’s deepest desire – God’s strongest commitment is to care for the well-being of all creation and especially humanity. If you dedicate yourself to God, you dedicate yourself to that over-riding purpose. And that means that you will be dedicated to your neighbors and yourself as well. On the flip side, if you commit your life to caring for your neighbors, you will be committed to following God’s will.
The hard part is making that commitment with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind because there really isn’t room for anything else. But, the is joy and fulfillment that comes from that decision reaches into every part of our lives.
Some of you, I’m sure, have heard me talk about getting baptized a year after I was married. It was a long time coming, and I was finally able to let go of my own need for control just long enough to go through with it at 29 years old. (I’m pretty sure that I’ve taken a firm grasp on that need for control again, but it’s not so bad as it used to be…. Two steps forward for one step back.)
When I went through the vows that I would be taking with pastor Alice, I realized that I needed to think about a few things … well just one thing actually. I was about to commit my life to God, but I had already made that same promise to my wife. I could not then – and I still can’t now – guarantee that living out that commitment would not take me away from her at some point. That’s not to say that it would break apart our marriage or threaten my love for her, but my vow to be there for her in every circumstance of our lives might have to be stretched if we were both truly called to different places for a time. Such things do happen when we strive to follow God’s will.
Ten years later, following God has led me to meaningful work and deepened my commitment to care for others. (I honestly don’t know if I would have made it this far as a parent if it weren’t for that extra something that keeps me from total breakdown in the midst of all the whining and everything else.) My life is richer and more joyful than I would have imagined.
I still wonder about that possibility, though. I still wonder if the day will come when one of us will be called across the country or across the globe. But, I also still remember the thought that the final bit of my worry. It was when I said that the God I believed in would only choose to separate us if there were no other way. The God I believe in would prefer to have loving couples stay together. It is better for them, and together – supporting each other – they can do more good than they could on their own. I still remember those words, and I still believe them.
It is not an easy thing to love God or to love others. But it does get easier when we stop trying to see them as two different things. Then, the struggle that we face is not in finding a balance. It is in making the decision to love … to love with a commitment care for the well-being of all humanity – to those closest to us and to those we only cross paths with for a moment. It is consecrating our lives to the service of God and neighbor each day, knowing that we will probably fall short, and then getting up the next day to try again.
It’s not easy, and it is all-consuming. But that is the path of discipleship, and if we follow … day after day after day, our lives are filled with a joy and a peace that come only to those who love.
Matthew 22:34-46 Deuteronomy 34:1-12
As I have been reading commentaries and listserves about “the greatest commandment” these past few weeks, I have found myself caught up in several different conversations about some pretty fascinating stuff … well … fascinating to those of us who are professional exegetes. We get into the scriptures and dig around in there and look for all the little contradictions or images or translation issues and make a really big deal about how they change “the whole interpretation of a text” because that’s what it means to be a professional exegete. We’re people who are paid to nit-pick about the details of scripture.
This time around, my colleagues and I have been talking about questions like: “Isn’t it interesting that the Pharisees asking for the one greatest commandment in the law and Jesus gives two commandments as an answer?” and “Why would the lawyer ask for the greatest commandment when everyone would have known the answer? What was the catch?” and “What was so hard about Jesus’ question? If David was speaking by the Spirit, wouldn’t the Pharisees have viewed his words as a prophesy and assume that they would be words spoken to a Messiah who was still a son of David sometime in the future?” … and the perpetual discussion of the three types of love: eros, philia, agape or intimate love, brotherly love, and unconditional or self-less love.
If you think those are long and confusing questions, you should “listen” on the conversations! They are a bit tedious at times, and since none of us really have the answers, things tend to degenerate after a while. But it is easy – for me – to get lost in the discussions and forget the more basic questions that can make these verses difficult to understand. Thankfully, I was brought back to earth by a question from our bible study. I think it was Rich Fleisher who said, “How can we love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all of our mind and still have room for anything else?”
Now there’s a question worth pondering.
A couple of years ago, Carrie told me a story. It was soon after Alistair was born, and we were struggling to figure out how to juggle the needs of two children. Personally, I think that’s the hardest transition to make. You go from having two adults to one child to having, quite often, two children and only one parent. (shake head in disbelief)
Anyway, Carrie had been talking with other mothers and passed on this modern folktale:
There was a young mother who was finding it hard to manage life with her new baby. She didn’t seem to be able to figure out what her child needed when he was crying, and she knew that she was supposed to be able to … perhaps through some kind of intuition. She was up all night, and with all the chores that needed to be done around the house, she didn’t get much sleep during the day. She was a wreck.
Then, one day, when she was walking her son past a local park, she saw a woman there with five children playing and a young baby in her arms. “How do you do it?!” she burst out, close to tears. “How do manage six kids?! I takes all my time with just one.”
The woman looked at the young mother and replied, “It doesn’t take any more time to raise six children than one.”
Love isn’t quite the same thing as time, though. Time comes in a fixed amount – here today and gone tomorrow. And it often feels like we don’t have enough time to get everything that we want or need to get done.
Love doesn’t march on. It doesn’t run out. It would make sense that if did. Then it would fit into our world of limited resources. But, that’s not the way of love. There always seems to be more of it. If you’re a parent … or a child, you know that instinctively. Do you love one parent more than another? One child? If a new person comes into your life, do they slowly take over space in your heart from somebody else? … Maybe the Grinch standing at the top of Mt. Strumpet would be a better image to describe the nature of love. Somehow, our hearts seem to grow and grow and grow to make space for more and more.
That makes it a little easier to answer Rich’s question. We can love God – at least with all our heart – and still have space to love others. But our heart is not all that God asks for, and when you add in those other two, it still feels a little intimidating. And here’s where those twisting conversations I can come in handy.
One of the good bits from this week’s trip through the listserve discussion is this. The word for “love” that Matthew uses in this text does not fit into that three tier system I mentioned above. It’s certainly not erotic love. But it’s not brotherly love or even completely self-less love as you might think (though agape comes the closest). In fact, there’s really not a Greek word that fits the situation. The Greek translators of two millennia ago just had to do their best with what they had.
“Love” in these verse isn’t even really a feeling in the way that we think of feelings, which may be what gave those translators so much trouble. This love is about commitment and dedication. In the Hebrew that Jesus was quoting, the word used is hesed which is translated in other places as “steadfast love,” and usually refers to God’s love for the chosen people. So, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” means to commit yourself to God in the same way God is committed to creation. And, “love your neighbor as yourself” means committing to yourself to your neighbors’ wellbeing (and to your own, by the way) in the same way that God is committed to the wellbeing of all humanity.
Now some of you, I’m sure, are thinking, “that doesn’t make it sound any easier. Now it’s not just love. It’s dedicating my whole self to God and then trying to find something left to others … not to mention myself.” (raise hand) You are not alone in that. Our spiritual history is filled with people who tried to balance these two commandments … tried and failed. King David, the disciples, Paul (at least in his early years), Jacob, Adam and Eve … from the very beginning, it seems, we have been struggling to find space in our hearts and our lives for God, ourselves, and our neighbors, and we tend to come down on one side of the equation or the other … usually ourselves.
And then there is Moses. For more than forty years he served God and the people with his whole heart, mind, and soul with only one or two lapses. He endured a lot of frustration and fear in the process, I imagine. He stood up to the greatest power of the time to demand the release of the slaves, after all. And, he led those same people through a barren land and took care of them despite their whining and complaining. He even stood face to face with God and argued for them when they had abandoned both God and him to worship gold.
I think, he must have found a good deal of joy in journey as well. How else would he have been able to keep it up for so long. He watched as the Hebrews grew up as a people of faith. He watched as his own family grew up on the journey. And, in the end, he got to see the promised land before he passed his work on.
Now, even the people who wrote his epitaph centuries later said that there has never been anyone else like Moses. The other great prophets and leaders don’t quite live up to his accomplishments. Some have signs and wonders nearly as impressive on their resumes. Some were granted visions of great power. Some worked tirelessly for the people. But none of them were able to put the whole package together. And that makes it hard to imagine that we normal folks would be able to come anywhere close.
On the surface of it, I think that’s right. But here’s another gem mentioned in passing in one of my conversations: “you cannot love God wholly without also loving your neighbor as yourself and vice versa.” What my colleague meant by that is that God’s deepest desire – God’s strongest commitment is to care for the well-being of all creation and especially humanity. If you dedicate yourself to God, you dedicate yourself to that over-riding purpose. And that means that you will be dedicated to your neighbors and yourself as well. On the flip side, if you commit your life to caring for your neighbors, you will be committed to following God’s will.
The hard part is making that commitment with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind because there really isn’t room for anything else. But, the is joy and fulfillment that comes from that decision reaches into every part of our lives.
Some of you, I’m sure, have heard me talk about getting baptized a year after I was married. It was a long time coming, and I was finally able to let go of my own need for control just long enough to go through with it at 29 years old. (I’m pretty sure that I’ve taken a firm grasp on that need for control again, but it’s not so bad as it used to be…. Two steps forward for one step back.)
When I went through the vows that I would be taking with pastor Alice, I realized that I needed to think about a few things … well just one thing actually. I was about to commit my life to God, but I had already made that same promise to my wife. I could not then – and I still can’t now – guarantee that living out that commitment would not take me away from her at some point. That’s not to say that it would break apart our marriage or threaten my love for her, but my vow to be there for her in every circumstance of our lives might have to be stretched if we were both truly called to different places for a time. Such things do happen when we strive to follow God’s will.
Ten years later, following God has led me to meaningful work and deepened my commitment to care for others. (I honestly don’t know if I would have made it this far as a parent if it weren’t for that extra something that keeps me from total breakdown in the midst of all the whining and everything else.) My life is richer and more joyful than I would have imagined.
I still wonder about that possibility, though. I still wonder if the day will come when one of us will be called across the country or across the globe. But, I also still remember the thought that the final bit of my worry. It was when I said that the God I believed in would only choose to separate us if there were no other way. The God I believe in would prefer to have loving couples stay together. It is better for them, and together – supporting each other – they can do more good than they could on their own. I still remember those words, and I still believe them.
It is not an easy thing to love God or to love others. But it does get easier when we stop trying to see them as two different things. Then, the struggle that we face is not in finding a balance. It is in making the decision to love … to love with a commitment care for the well-being of all humanity – to those closest to us and to those we only cross paths with for a moment. It is consecrating our lives to the service of God and neighbor each day, knowing that we will probably fall short, and then getting up the next day to try again.
It’s not easy, and it is all-consuming. But that is the path of discipleship, and if we follow … day after day after day, our lives are filled with a joy and a peace that come only to those who love.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Treasures in the Dark
sermon by Carrie Eikler
October 16
Psalm 139, Isaiah 45:1-9
When Sebastian was only about two months old, I went to our family physician for a routine physical. My whole body was weary: recovering from nine months of pregnancy, a first labor and delivery, lack of sleep. If you’ve ever gone through something like that you know that in that situation, you are acutely aware of your body, and somehow, completely numb to it at the same time. Everything feels rundown, pained, tired…but not at all your own
The physical was going normal until the doctor gently put his hands to my throat. And I noticed it. That thing you don’t want to see your doctors do. The furrowed brow. My stomach made itself known to me again. It flipped and tightened. He said, (and this is me reconstructing the conversation as best as I can, 5 years later) he said, “Ah. Yeah. I want you to get your thyroid checked out. It feels swollen.” Now the furrowed brow was mine. “So I want to get you in for an ultrasound. Now it could be hypo-thyroidism. And of course there is a chance that it could be cancer but thyroid cancer is very treatable…”
And by the time he said cancer, I was gone. Check. Me. Out of here. I thought, should I start writing my bucket list now, or talk to Torin about funeral arrangements? As I tried to shake these thoughts out of my head, my doctor said “Are you OK?”
Am I ok? Am I OK. You tell me I might have cancer, all be it apparently the best type of cancer to get if you’re gonna get it, and you ask me if I’m ok? No, thank you very much, I’m not ok.
Well, as reassuringly as he could be, he gently put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I don’t think it’s the worst. But we just want to rule it out.” I couldn’t tell if the lump in my throat had grown painful from the recently contrived cancer imposed on it, or from trying to hold back the tears and swallow the fear.
A week later, I found out it wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t even hyper- or hypo-thyroidism. I have multinodule goiters on my thyroid that enflame from time to time.
Strangely, I’m glad I had that experience. And I’m glad I had it because of what came to me in my moment of fear. I didn’t want the ultrasound . I didn’t want to know if it was the worst or if it was nothing because I was terrified that it was the worst.
But then somehow my rational self that seemed to be put on hold enlivened, or maybe it was the wisdom of my mother who has faced and beat cancer…something told me: it is what it is, and the truth will set you free.
If it was cancer, it was cancer whether or not I called it cancer. Somehow, in that moment, that realization was more powerful to me than whatever outcome was ahead of me. And somehow that knowledge--whether it was my rational mind or my mother’s wisdom-- whatever it was…it was of God.
So I get these things checked out annually, a routine process of “ruling out the worst.” Or perhaps, as I’ve tried to think of it, confirming the best-- that being, confirming it is nothing I need to worry about. But once a year as I lay in that darkened room, and they squeeze that goop on my throat—just to make sure it’s nothing—and I still lose a little bit of confidence.
That experience of discovering these goiters was a rather “dark moment,” you might say. We use a lot of that language in Judeo-Christian tradition, don’t we? Dark-light. Lightness permeating the dark. Dispelling the dark. Dark is bad. So you can imagine my surprise when I approached today’s scripture with that general understanding and see something counter to that idea. Isaiah says something that’s challenges our thoughts. And the Israelites were probably pretty surprised by it too.
To begin with God is proclaiming that he has anointed Cyrus--in fact the Hebrew word that is used is the word for “Messiah.” Wait, Jesus is Messiah right? Well here, God is saying Cyrus is chosen, anointed.
Cyrus. He isn’t really one of those guys that come to our minds when we think about characters in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was a conqueror of Babylon, and he sent back the exiles to their homeland. Hooray! Shout the Israelites.
Oh, and he was a pagan—not one of the chosen people. “Ohhh, “groan the Israelites . That is…unexpected.
Cyrus did not know YHWH, though somehow he was part of YHWH’s larger plan for the Israelite people. Now that’s a whole other sermon, and really that’s not what surprised me.
What surprised me was this: “I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places so you may now that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.”
I find that to be a powerful and beautiful image: treasures of darkness, riches hidden in secret places…in this way you will know it is God, the one who calls you by name. Not, “treasures when the light comes to you,” or “riches in the brightness shining of the glorious day.” It echoes the Psalmists amazement of God being part and within the darkness around him, talking about God working intricately in the minute and unknown and newly forming parts of life. The dark places.
I have to say, this verse sat with me in such a profound way these last few weeks, that much of the time, I had to just let it work its own meaning out for me, knitting itself together in my heart, making itself known to me in the dark. It was something that the writer Sarah Ban Breathnach says “is experienced, not understood.” I struggled to think about how to speak on this thing that I profoundly felt. And then I came across this sermon, written by Charles Spurgeon, a popular English pastor from the mid-19th century.
Now I’m not one to find a lot of relevant joy in the sermons of dead 19th century British men. But something he preached to his congregation struck me. He preached these words on the eve of a solar eclipse in 1848. He said,
“All are expecting to-morrow to witness one of the greatest sights in the universe—the annular eclipse of the sun. It is possible that many of us shall have gone the way of all flesh before such a sight shall again be seen in this country and we are therefore looking for it with some degree of expectation….I shall note this morning, in addressing you, that since the Lord creates darkness and well as light; first of all eclipses of every kind are part of God’s way of governing the world; in the second place, we shall notice that since God creates the darkness as well as the light, we may conclude beyond all doubt that he has a design in the eclipse—in the darkness as well as the light; and then, thirdly, we shall notice that as all things that God has created, whether they be light or whether they be dark, have a sermon for us—no doubt there are some sermons to be found in this.”
How do we see God in the dark moments of our lives--the eclipses of every kind in our life? That’s the spiritual question this scripture has planted in me. As we have been exploring Appreciative Inquiry in Sunday School, and as I have been doing my own work with cultivating gratitude, it has become apparent to me that gratitude is seeking the divine in all things. Not always seeing the divine, but seeking the divine. In all things. The darkness and the light. The messiah within the pagan. All are part of me, says God. That’s how you know I am God.
But this does not mean that we have to fall into theologies that tell us God brings us bad things and there is an ultimate plan in it all. Or to put our arms around a friend who is hurting and say “There, there. I’m sure God has a reason for all of this.”
As your pastor, I will never do that to you, even if you want to hear it…because we sometimes do want to hear that God has a reason for bringing darkness into our lives because at least, God is remembering us. At least, we are part of God’s plan.
But God has promised us more than being part of some scheme. Some “plan.” God has promised to know us intimately, and before you stop me and say “ah! You said two weeks ago that we couldn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus,” because I know I may be sounding contradictory, I’m not talking about us knowing Jesus in a way we know a friend. I’m talking about God knowing us when we can’t even see God, or trust God, or know God. God naming us, claiming us, wrapping us in divine love even in the darkness.
The Israelites were forced to shift their thinking. God was claiming that God used an outsider, a pagan as a divine instrument. That had to be pretty hard to swallow. Why couldn’t God use one of us? At least, use someone we can appreciate and be grateful for? Not this…outsider.
What if we shifted our minds? What if we didn’t see darkness and light as different struggles. Or that we have to move through difficult times in order to be in the good times. What if we recognize that God is in the total eclipse? The passing of the moon and the brightening of the sun. That God is to be found in the lump in the throat, not just present when the diagnoses is good.
[pause]
Somehow, the dark has something for us. A treasure. A moment of touching God. Something richer than we could never seen when we are blinded by the brightness of the sun. It can be a dark experience that comes at you unbidden, or the dark part of your soul that you have wrestled with for a lifetime. In that darkness there is a treasure. In that secret pain you don’t want anyone to know about, there is something rich.
And as the psalmist recognizes, is in the dark places where life, and new life, grows--getting ready to be born. The dark is a fertile place, a womb of new life created, knitted, fashioned, and we can’t escape it, or the God who is in it.
Charles Spurgeon must have preached what was about an hour sermon, by the length of the text. And he concluded with this image, as he spiritually prepared his congregation to face the physical eclipse with a spiritual openness.
“—And let the Christian recollect another sermon. Let him take his child out, and when he takes him outside the door, and he sees the sun begin to grow dark and all things fade away, and a strange colour coming over the landscape, the child will begin to cry and say “Father the sun is going out, he is dying; we shall never have any light again.” And as gradually as the moon creeps over the sun’s broad surface and there remains only a solitary streak of light, the tears run down the child’s eyes as he says, We shall have to live in darkness;” and he would begin to weep for sorrow of heart. You would touch your child on the head, and say, “No, my little child, the sun has not gone out; it is only the moon passing across its face; it will shine bright enough presently.” And your child would soon believe you; and as he saw the light returning, he would feel thankful, and would believe what you had said, that the sun was always the same. Now, you will be like a child to-morrow. When you get into trouble you will be saying, “God has changed.” Then let God’s Word speak to you as unto children, and let it say, “No, God has not changed; with him is no variableness, neither shadow of a turning.”
There are treasures for you in your darkness. Riches hidden in secret and unwanted places. When you find them, you will know God.
October 16
Psalm 139, Isaiah 45:1-9
When Sebastian was only about two months old, I went to our family physician for a routine physical. My whole body was weary: recovering from nine months of pregnancy, a first labor and delivery, lack of sleep. If you’ve ever gone through something like that you know that in that situation, you are acutely aware of your body, and somehow, completely numb to it at the same time. Everything feels rundown, pained, tired…but not at all your own
The physical was going normal until the doctor gently put his hands to my throat. And I noticed it. That thing you don’t want to see your doctors do. The furrowed brow. My stomach made itself known to me again. It flipped and tightened. He said, (and this is me reconstructing the conversation as best as I can, 5 years later) he said, “Ah. Yeah. I want you to get your thyroid checked out. It feels swollen.” Now the furrowed brow was mine. “So I want to get you in for an ultrasound. Now it could be hypo-thyroidism. And of course there is a chance that it could be cancer but thyroid cancer is very treatable…”
And by the time he said cancer, I was gone. Check. Me. Out of here. I thought, should I start writing my bucket list now, or talk to Torin about funeral arrangements? As I tried to shake these thoughts out of my head, my doctor said “Are you OK?”
Am I ok? Am I OK. You tell me I might have cancer, all be it apparently the best type of cancer to get if you’re gonna get it, and you ask me if I’m ok? No, thank you very much, I’m not ok.
Well, as reassuringly as he could be, he gently put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I don’t think it’s the worst. But we just want to rule it out.” I couldn’t tell if the lump in my throat had grown painful from the recently contrived cancer imposed on it, or from trying to hold back the tears and swallow the fear.
A week later, I found out it wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t even hyper- or hypo-thyroidism. I have multinodule goiters on my thyroid that enflame from time to time.
Strangely, I’m glad I had that experience. And I’m glad I had it because of what came to me in my moment of fear. I didn’t want the ultrasound . I didn’t want to know if it was the worst or if it was nothing because I was terrified that it was the worst.
But then somehow my rational self that seemed to be put on hold enlivened, or maybe it was the wisdom of my mother who has faced and beat cancer…something told me: it is what it is, and the truth will set you free.
If it was cancer, it was cancer whether or not I called it cancer. Somehow, in that moment, that realization was more powerful to me than whatever outcome was ahead of me. And somehow that knowledge--whether it was my rational mind or my mother’s wisdom-- whatever it was…it was of God.
So I get these things checked out annually, a routine process of “ruling out the worst.” Or perhaps, as I’ve tried to think of it, confirming the best-- that being, confirming it is nothing I need to worry about. But once a year as I lay in that darkened room, and they squeeze that goop on my throat—just to make sure it’s nothing—and I still lose a little bit of confidence.
That experience of discovering these goiters was a rather “dark moment,” you might say. We use a lot of that language in Judeo-Christian tradition, don’t we? Dark-light. Lightness permeating the dark. Dispelling the dark. Dark is bad. So you can imagine my surprise when I approached today’s scripture with that general understanding and see something counter to that idea. Isaiah says something that’s challenges our thoughts. And the Israelites were probably pretty surprised by it too.
To begin with God is proclaiming that he has anointed Cyrus--in fact the Hebrew word that is used is the word for “Messiah.” Wait, Jesus is Messiah right? Well here, God is saying Cyrus is chosen, anointed.
Cyrus. He isn’t really one of those guys that come to our minds when we think about characters in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was a conqueror of Babylon, and he sent back the exiles to their homeland. Hooray! Shout the Israelites.
Oh, and he was a pagan—not one of the chosen people. “Ohhh, “groan the Israelites . That is…unexpected.
Cyrus did not know YHWH, though somehow he was part of YHWH’s larger plan for the Israelite people. Now that’s a whole other sermon, and really that’s not what surprised me.
What surprised me was this: “I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places so you may now that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.”
I find that to be a powerful and beautiful image: treasures of darkness, riches hidden in secret places…in this way you will know it is God, the one who calls you by name. Not, “treasures when the light comes to you,” or “riches in the brightness shining of the glorious day.” It echoes the Psalmists amazement of God being part and within the darkness around him, talking about God working intricately in the minute and unknown and newly forming parts of life. The dark places.
I have to say, this verse sat with me in such a profound way these last few weeks, that much of the time, I had to just let it work its own meaning out for me, knitting itself together in my heart, making itself known to me in the dark. It was something that the writer Sarah Ban Breathnach says “is experienced, not understood.” I struggled to think about how to speak on this thing that I profoundly felt. And then I came across this sermon, written by Charles Spurgeon, a popular English pastor from the mid-19th century.
Now I’m not one to find a lot of relevant joy in the sermons of dead 19th century British men. But something he preached to his congregation struck me. He preached these words on the eve of a solar eclipse in 1848. He said,
“All are expecting to-morrow to witness one of the greatest sights in the universe—the annular eclipse of the sun. It is possible that many of us shall have gone the way of all flesh before such a sight shall again be seen in this country and we are therefore looking for it with some degree of expectation….I shall note this morning, in addressing you, that since the Lord creates darkness and well as light; first of all eclipses of every kind are part of God’s way of governing the world; in the second place, we shall notice that since God creates the darkness as well as the light, we may conclude beyond all doubt that he has a design in the eclipse—in the darkness as well as the light; and then, thirdly, we shall notice that as all things that God has created, whether they be light or whether they be dark, have a sermon for us—no doubt there are some sermons to be found in this.”
How do we see God in the dark moments of our lives--the eclipses of every kind in our life? That’s the spiritual question this scripture has planted in me. As we have been exploring Appreciative Inquiry in Sunday School, and as I have been doing my own work with cultivating gratitude, it has become apparent to me that gratitude is seeking the divine in all things. Not always seeing the divine, but seeking the divine. In all things. The darkness and the light. The messiah within the pagan. All are part of me, says God. That’s how you know I am God.
But this does not mean that we have to fall into theologies that tell us God brings us bad things and there is an ultimate plan in it all. Or to put our arms around a friend who is hurting and say “There, there. I’m sure God has a reason for all of this.”
As your pastor, I will never do that to you, even if you want to hear it…because we sometimes do want to hear that God has a reason for bringing darkness into our lives because at least, God is remembering us. At least, we are part of God’s plan.
But God has promised us more than being part of some scheme. Some “plan.” God has promised to know us intimately, and before you stop me and say “ah! You said two weeks ago that we couldn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus,” because I know I may be sounding contradictory, I’m not talking about us knowing Jesus in a way we know a friend. I’m talking about God knowing us when we can’t even see God, or trust God, or know God. God naming us, claiming us, wrapping us in divine love even in the darkness.
The Israelites were forced to shift their thinking. God was claiming that God used an outsider, a pagan as a divine instrument. That had to be pretty hard to swallow. Why couldn’t God use one of us? At least, use someone we can appreciate and be grateful for? Not this…outsider.
What if we shifted our minds? What if we didn’t see darkness and light as different struggles. Or that we have to move through difficult times in order to be in the good times. What if we recognize that God is in the total eclipse? The passing of the moon and the brightening of the sun. That God is to be found in the lump in the throat, not just present when the diagnoses is good.
[pause]
Somehow, the dark has something for us. A treasure. A moment of touching God. Something richer than we could never seen when we are blinded by the brightness of the sun. It can be a dark experience that comes at you unbidden, or the dark part of your soul that you have wrestled with for a lifetime. In that darkness there is a treasure. In that secret pain you don’t want anyone to know about, there is something rich.
And as the psalmist recognizes, is in the dark places where life, and new life, grows--getting ready to be born. The dark is a fertile place, a womb of new life created, knitted, fashioned, and we can’t escape it, or the God who is in it.
Charles Spurgeon must have preached what was about an hour sermon, by the length of the text. And he concluded with this image, as he spiritually prepared his congregation to face the physical eclipse with a spiritual openness.
“—And let the Christian recollect another sermon. Let him take his child out, and when he takes him outside the door, and he sees the sun begin to grow dark and all things fade away, and a strange colour coming over the landscape, the child will begin to cry and say “Father the sun is going out, he is dying; we shall never have any light again.” And as gradually as the moon creeps over the sun’s broad surface and there remains only a solitary streak of light, the tears run down the child’s eyes as he says, We shall have to live in darkness;” and he would begin to weep for sorrow of heart. You would touch your child on the head, and say, “No, my little child, the sun has not gone out; it is only the moon passing across its face; it will shine bright enough presently.” And your child would soon believe you; and as he saw the light returning, he would feel thankful, and would believe what you had said, that the sun was always the same. Now, you will be like a child to-morrow. When you get into trouble you will be saying, “God has changed.” Then let God’s Word speak to you as unto children, and let it say, “No, God has not changed; with him is no variableness, neither shadow of a turning.”
There are treasures for you in your darkness. Riches hidden in secret and unwanted places. When you find them, you will know God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)