Challenging Faith

sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 3:7-18                 Isaiah 12:2-6

We are all familiar with Luke’s introduction of John the Baptist as the prophet come to fulfill Isaiah’s vision and announce the coming of the Messiah. 

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

Prepare the way of the Lord,
     make his paths straight. 
Every valley shall be filled,
     and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
     and the crooked shall be made straight,
           and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

It finally seems like we have a scripture that match the spirit of the day.  What could be more joyful than the coming of salvation for all?

Those would have been the thoughts of some who heard the news of John’s proclamation.  They had waited a long time for the Messiah to come and finally their faith was being vindicated.  Israel would rise again and salvation would come for all.  It must have made them want to sing with prophets: “I will fear disaster no more, for God is my strength!  I shall rejoice and exult with all my heart for the Lord has taken away the judgments against me, and I shall draw water from the wells of salvation with joy!”

It kind of makes me want to sing too … at least until I get to the verses that actually tell us John’s message, and then I feel out of place again as I hear his harsh words of judgment and repentance.  “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  . . . Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  It’s not exactly a message that we find reflected in the holiday movies and cards that flood into our homes at this time of the year, and it doesn’t really get us into the Christmas Spirit.  What we really want to hear is Tiny Tim’s “God bless us everyone” so that we can sail on toward the birth of the salvation with the carefree wind of grace filling our sails, but John has some important things to say about salvation.

 

We tend to think of salvation as a matter for the individual.  Not so much that it’s private, but that salvation comes to each of us as we accept Jesus Christ as our savior.  It’s a matter of faith and of sin, and so it depends on each person recognizing and repenting his or her sin and building a relationship with the Christ who offers grace to forgive us.  That’s what I was taught when I was younger, and I would guess you learned something similar.  It’s certainly the message that is out there in our society.

So what do with do with the John’s call to “bear fruits worthy of repentance?”  He wasn’t holding an emotional altar call as he stood there thigh-high in the waters of the river Jordan.  He wasn’t satisfied with an internal change.  He was calling for a fundamental change of the heart, soul, mind, and … way of life.  True repentance, for John, bore fruit in the lives of the faithful as they patterned their living after the God who sought to “save the lame, gather the outcast, and transform shame into praise.”  And the stakes are high, for every tree that does not bear this kind of fruit will be “cut down and thrown into the fire.”

The stakes are high because the hope that John was proclaiming is more than just an individual salvation.  It embraces all flesh not just by being available to all, but by bringing about a transformation in the world.  With the advent of the Messiah, the Kingdom of God had drawn near, and that is a realm where everyone lives out of such love and compassion that justice and mercy are the norm rather than the exception.

John’s vision challenged the faith of those that gathered to listen to his preaching just as it challenges us.  And when we stop to consider what he is asking of us, our response is the same today as it was for those in the crowd 2,000 years ago: “What then shall we do?”

Elizabeth Myer Boulton suggests that we start with where we are….

“’Tis the season of mobbed malls, credit card debt, to-do lists, dysfunctional relatives and pants that used to fit. How can we slow down? How can we simplify? How can we start “turning around” when we Americans [spent upward of $560 billion on Christmas last year]?[1]

John’s answer is simple: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Yet it’s not so simple. I don’t know about you, but I have more than one coat. I have more than two, actually, and something deep down inside of me doesn’t buy it when, in an impressive gesture of Christian generosity, I drop off a coat or two (one that no longer fits and one that I no longer like) at the Salvation Army.

John’s preaching cuts like an ax to the bone. Jesus is no picnic either. Can you see him, standing among baskets of leftover bread and fish? “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Can you hear him, counseling not only that rich young ruler but you and me? “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”[2]

 

That’s a challenging vision.  It’s challenging because it’s not just about us.  It’s not just about our own personal relationship with God … not just about a clean and right spirit … not just about the forgiveness of sins.  The salvation preached by John … taught by Jesus is about everybody.  It calls us to a way of life that is dedicated to serving the needs of a weary world whether that means feeding or clothing people or marching in the streets to demand justice from the system in power or walking the path of forgiveness with murderers or with that one person who seems to rub us the wrong way….  And it’s hard to do that. 

We struggle to find the time and energy to reach out to others.  At the best of times, our lives are hectic … filled with all the things that we have to do:  things that just have to be done … and really good things that we do because our faith calls us to them.  In the midst of the holiday season, it’s even more of a strain to even think about anything but getting through all of our preparations.

And that’s where the axe really cuts (as Boulton put it) … because the salvation that we are offered is not a once in a while thing.  We are called to be part of it every day … every day.  Every day we should be sharing our food and handing out clothing.  Every day we should be visiting with the lonely and despairing among us.  Every day we should seeking out those who have wronged us, offering forgiveness, and working at reconciliation.  Every day we should be striving toward the Kingdom of love and peace.

It’s exhausting … physically, mentally, and spiritually … even thinking about it.  And it’s even more challenging when we know that all of our best intentions … our best efforts will not be enough to transform the world.

But … you know … that’s not really ours to worry about.  We are not called to change the whole world.  That’s the work of the Holy Spirit.  We are only called to be a part of the transformation … to reach out as often as we can and bring a small part of the promised salvation into one other life.  And as tired as we are … as despairing as we can become, the beauty of the Advent season is that we get another chance to start anew.  We get to lay down the burden for just a moment and celebrate the promise and the hope that empowers and encourages us.  We get to charge up on joy and excitement as we look forward to another year of preparing the way for the One whose coming is changing things.

 

I recently heard Arnold Eisen reflecting on his experience with Abraham Heschel who was a noted Jewish theologian and very involved in the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam movement, and many other justice-related activities.  One of the many memories he shared struck me ….

You know, I remember, … when I met [Abraham Heschel] in Washington, D.C., and saw a tired, bedraggled [man], who had spent his day lobbying against the war in Vietnam, I felt that somehow it wasn't worth his dignity to knock on the doors of those congressmen. He should be in his study thinking great thoughts, writing great books. It was a total contradiction of what I had felt a few months earlier, but it was a sign of Heschel's greatness that he knew he should be in the study and he should be on the streets and life was too short to do all of them all the time, but he would do the best he could. And that taught me something I'll never forget.[3]

 

That’s all that we can do.  That’s all that we are asked to do … the best we can.  
     The best we can to give food to the hungry. 
     The best we can to give shelter and clothing to the cold and homeless. 
     The best we can to welcome the stranger at our door. 
The best we can to live faithful lives filled with the joy of salvation found in the promise of the Christ child and shared with others.

When we do that … when we give our best, our worries often seem to fall away, and we are freed to enter more truly into the salvation we crave … into the Kingdom of peace and joy.

---

[1] http://www.statista.com/topics/991/us-christmas-season/

[2] Elizabeth Myer Boulton in The Christian Century, 12-1-2009

[3] Arnold Eisen in interview with Krista Tippett “On Being,” aired 12-12-12

 

Refined Courage

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Micah 3:1-4, Luke 1:68-79
December 9, 2012 (Advent 2)

You know me.  I stand up here every two weeks and share my insights into the gospel, stories from my life.  It’s not an easy thing.  It’s not necessarily a fun thing.  Frankly, it’s quite a vulnerable thing. But it is a blessed thing, for me in my life, and hopefully for you. 

And if you know me, you know how much I love the PBS icon Julia Child.  Not just because she was a fascinating cook and media personality, but because she was so…real. 

One of the most beloved scenes in her French Chef episodes, is when she attempt s to flip a potato pancake.  As she is holding the pan over the flame (or probably, the electric range), she is sweating over all the heat and exertion she has been putting in the kitchen, and as she’s kind of out of breath and she says “When you flip anything…you just have to have the courage of your convictions” and she flips this loose mass of potatoes and some fall out of the side to which she delightfully responds “Well that didn’t go very well, but you can always pick it up.  [and she plops it back into the pan] And if you are alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?”

Courage.  From the Latin cor, or from the heart. 
Courage. 
What you’ve got when do you the things you don’t think you can do. 
Courage. 
A little known prophet named Malachi speaking about God’s power and judgment. 
Courage. 
A man name Zecheriah, rendered mute by his understandable doubts, proclaiming greatness of an unseen God in the face of immediate occupation. 
Courage.

Maybe what got you out of bed this moring.

One thing I like about these two texts today, is that they are courageous words spoken from minor characters.  Malachi, eh…he was one of the minor prophets.  Not an Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or even an Amos.  In the face of these prophets, Malachi is a short, simple book about “bored priests, unfaithful husbands, and complaining laity.” [i]

And the reading from Luke comes from Zecheriah…who?  we might ask ourselves.  Zechariah.  Husband of Elizabeth.  Father of John the Baptist.  When an angel tells him that Elizabeth will bear a child, he scoffs and snorts riiight. And he is rendered mute, unable to speak, until the child is born.  And after nine months of not speaking, watching the evidence of the truth of this prophecy growing larger and larger, he *bursts* out with this song of praise.

So really, these are *eh* kind of characters and prophets in our tradition.  Easily forgotten.  Nothing too grand.  But what they say, and how we can receive what they say, can pierce us to the heart.  Can burn us like the refiner’s fire.

And really, each day of our life is like this.  Small struggles, perhaps insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but they are huge in our lives.  They each take some small (and big) acts of courage.   Actions that require us to move from our heart.  And I know that it may sound strange, but I’m sure you can attest…
 any act of courage you have undertaken, requires an enormous amount…of vulnerability.

And we don’t like vulnerability.  Vulnerability means opening ourselves up to get hurt.  Vulnerability means fleeing from the heat of our God’s love for fear we will be consumed completely.  Only that’s not what Malachi says.  God’s fire is not about consumption.  Judgment is not about condemnation.  In the heat of God’s fire for us we come out-- not perfected-- but righteous.  We come out more loved than we thought possible.  More worthy than our world would have us believe.

Advent is a time of waiting.  But not really a kick your feet up and lean back sort of waiting
If you have been a woman pregnant and waiting to give birth,
or a man waiting to be a father,
or an angel who has waited with someone who is scared
—and I’m sure those three have covered everyone here—
you know…this type of waiting and expectation is infused with intense vulnerability. 

And it changes you.

The vulnerability of Advent is not something we think about, because vulnerability is not something we like to think about.  Am I right?  I mean, if I actually had to stop and think about my vulnerabilities, I’d probably be incapacitated for hours.

We protect ourselves by hiding where and how we are vulnerable, for fear that others might find that weak spot—that place of pain—and exploit it, and hurt us.  So we act like it’s not there. 

Brené Brown is a shame and vulnerability expert.  That sure does sound appealing, doesn’t it?  Brown gave a speech at a TEDx Conference a few years ago that went viral—meaning, it took off across the internet.  Some of you may have heard of these TED Conferences.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.  They were created, as they put it, to share ideas worth spreading.  Notable Nobel Prize winners, scientists, former presidents have all been speakers.  Brown is a social work professor who researches shame and vulnerability.  Much of her research focuses on how we experience
and process
and use
and avoid
shame and vulnerability
 in our contemporary American context.

So what is vulnerability?  Well Brown says, “When I ask people what is vulnerability the answers were things like
                         my first date after my divorce,
                                           saying I love you first,
                                                 asking for a raise,
sitting with my wife who has Stage III breast cancer and trying to make plans for our children,

To me,” she says “vulnerability is courage. It's about the willingness to show up and be seen in our lives. And… those moments when we show up… are the most powerful meaning-making moments of our lives even if they don't go well. I think they define who we are.”[ii]

The scriptures today all have a thread of vulnerability to the outside world and the strength to move through the fire, the struggle, the occupation, the inability to speak and come out on the other side—not just alive, not just stronger--but completely transformed.

Brown recounts “The most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming out from underneath things I didn't know I could get out from underneath. …[those moments of struggle] those are the moments that made me,”

And what is Jesus’ life encapsulated in, if not vulnerability.  Born with animals, with a price on his head from the King.  Ended:  stripped, on a cross, a crown to mock him.  Think about it--our god was born not into opulence and power, but into vulnerability.  And that’s what makes his gospel seem like foolishness sometimes: loving your enemies, turning the cheek, being the servant, soulforce over brute force.  We think it’s foolishness because it requires us not to be brave, but to be courageous—to be vulnerable.

But that appears to be what we’re invited into this season.  To reconnect with vulnerability.  Whether through the fire we’ve been put through, or the cleansing we are experiencing, or the hard reality that our lives are simply beyond our control—if we open ourselves to that vulnerability, we are opening ourselves to known and transformed by God.  Transformed by the circumstances in our lives.

--

I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to resonate with Malachi’s image of fire, of the judgment from the righteous Lord.  It’s hard for me, even when it is “softened by Zechariah’s words that show us the end result of God’s work—[is that] light [will be given] to those who sit in darkness and [will guide] our feet into the way of peace.”[iii]

So I was happy when I came across a metaphor by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a physician, therapist, and storyteller. So let’s move away from the fiery furnace to the coolness of the ocean floor.  Our Advent theme is, after all, rooted in water imagery.  Imagine each of us an oyster.  Now this image may actually seem completely opposite of what a refining fire does—eliminating the impurities.  But somehow these two connected for me, and helped understand Malachi’s words and Zecheriah’s prophecy and how they invite us into transforming vulnerability.

So an oyster.

 Open up an oyster and you will see that it is “soft, tender, and vulnerable.
      Without the sanctuary of its shell it could not survive. 
           But oysters must open their shells in order to “breathe” water. 
Sometimes while an oyster is breathing, a grain of sand will enter its shell and become a part of its life from then on.

Such grains of sand cause pain, but an oyster does not alter its… nature because of this.
 It does not become hard and leathery in order not to feel.
            It continues to entrust itself to the ocean, to open and breathe in order to live. 
 But it does respond. 
Slowly and patiently, the oyster wraps the grain of sand in thin translucent layers until,
 over time,
it has created something of great value in the place where it was most vulnerable to its pain.  A pearl… might be thought of as an oyster’s response to its suffering. 

Sand is a way of life for an oyster.  If you are soft and tender and must live on the sandy floor of the ocean, making pearls becomes a necessity if you are to live well.”

As Dr. Remen reflects, “Disappointment and loss are a part of every life.  Many times we can put such things behind us and get on with the rest of our lives.  But not everything is amenable to this approach.  Some things are too big or too deep to do this, and we will have to leave important parts of ourselves behind if we treat them in this way.  These are the places where wisdom begins to grow in us.  It begins with suffering that we do not avoid or rationalize or put behind us.  It starts with the realization that our loss, whatever it is, has become a part of us and has altered our lives so profoundly that we cannot go back to the way it was before.

Something in us can transform such suffering into wisdom.  The process of turning pain into wisdom often looks like a sorting process.  First we experience everything.  Then one by one we let things go, the anger, the blame, the sense of injustice, and finally even the pain itself, until all we have left is a deeper sense of the value of life and a greater capacity to live it.”[iv]

Whether through fire, or water, the washer ringer or due to a grain of sand, or simply getting flipped wrong and falling out of the pan, or cancer or divorce or unemployment or Alzheimer’s… our pain is entrusted to God.
 

But it can burn.  It can burn like the hottest fires of hell, like soap in your eyes
and you wonder if there is a force that is putting you into it
           and a grace that can take you out. 

But the courage is there.  Call on it.  And it will refine you.  May it be so.

[Silence in Waiting Worship]

Hymn-How firm a foundation

Benediction – For my benediction, I leave with you the words of another little prophet of sorts: Christopher Robin from Winnie and the Pooh.  Christopher and Pooh are sitting in a tree one night, and the little boy tells the loveable bear, “If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. I'll always be with you.”

 

                                                                                                                    

---

[i] Schuller, Eileen M., “The Book of Malachi.”    The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary vol VII. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996)

[ii] Brené Brown from interview “Brené Brown on Vulnerability” with Krista Tippet.  On Being (www.onbeing.org)

 

[iii]Advent Worship Resources in The Leader (Harrisonburg, VA: MennoMedia)

[iv] Remen, Rachel Naomi.  My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging (New York: Penguin Press, 2000)

A Flood of Mercy

Sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 21:25-36             Jeremiah 33:10-16

This week I received one of those little stories that are often forwarded again and again on email.  Usually I feel put out by messages like that because they take up space and waste my time, but this one came from someone who knows me well and doesn’t often send them my way.  So I opened it up for a glance before deleting it.  Here’s what I found….

 The Best Explanation of Stress…

A young lady confidently walked around the room while leading and explaining stress management to an audience with a raised glass of water.  Everyone knew she was going to ask the ultimate question, 'half empty or half full?'..

She fooled them all .... "How heavy is this glass of water?" she inquired with a smile. Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." She continued, "and that's the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on."

"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden - holding stress longer and better each time practiced.”

We stand at the beginning of the season of Advent:  a season of hope … a season of joy and happiness … a season in which we celebrate liberating love.  But, this is also a season of business and of stress.  There seem to be too many events to get to and too much to get done.  And then there are the presents.  Who do we buy for, and what do we buy?  Can we get a gift that seems to fit a friend perfectly without buying something for everyone else that we know?  Who do we have to get something for even if we know that it’s something they won’t really love?  And … can we afford to get even small things for everyone on that list.

That’s just part of my list.  (You all know that.  You have your own lists.)  But Even that’s enough to stress me out … to twist my advent season into a bit of a nightmare instead of a joy. … And then there’s the added challenge of doing all of this … of putting together a meaningful Advent season for all of us to share, and it doesn’t help when the whole thing starts off with hints of the apocalypse that will come with the end of time….

In the words of Emory Gillespie[1] … When Advent comes, I worry, agonize and [stress out]. Advent is daunting. Advent is my Everest….  The problem is that I’m working with a hairball of Advent scriptural phrases.

Once again I read the account of “distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” Once again I react—both personally and as a pastor thinking of my congregation—to ominous forecasts that speak of people fainting “from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.” People are fainting, heavens are shaking, and there is fear and foreboding in abundance—how am I to shape all of this into something that the congregation will find charming …?

Advent scriptures are unapologetically crude. Their prophetic barking and guttural slings make me feel spat upon. My personal context is to blame for this oversensitivity. I’m feeling fairly normal right now, fairly pulled-together. My family is healthy. My employment at church seems solid—knock on wood. My phone is ringing a modest number of times with modest news. My wardrobe is working. In ordinary times such as this, when my family is afloat on a sea of relative stability, the bellicose and crass war cries of Advent are incomprehensible to me. They come off as misplaced, misanthropic rants, to which I’m tempted to reply, “You can’t mean me. If, by chance, you can and do mean me, your anger is disproportionate to my [transgression]."

 

That is exactly how I feel every year.  Who me?  Again?  Then I start thinking about the past year and worrying if I have actually done anything that might warrant such a response.  I usually come with some small things but nothing that deserves an apocalypse on the scale of roaring seas or a shaking of the heavens.  “I can live with this,” I think to myself.  “It’s meant for other people.”  And I feel okay… for a while.

But this text from Luke doesn’t go away so easily.  It doesn’t let you off the hook just because you are reasonably well-behaved.  The coming of the Son of Man will affect everyone.  We will all see the signs in the heavens.  We will all hear the roaring of the waves.  We will all feel the overwhelming sense of foreboding that leaves some fainting from fear.  We will see and hear and feel it all … unless we have kept our hearts free from the worries of this life. 

 

Where is the hope in that?  Who among us is free from worries?  Those teachings about following the example of the birds of the air and the flowers of the fields are all well and good, but it is hard to live that way.  It would be difficult enough for a person who is all alone, but for those of us with families to care about, it is next to impossible.  It would seem that these words just add one more worry to my list.

But Jesus is speaking in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets here.  He is intending to offer hope.  In the face of a world gone wrong – a world where justice has been perverted and compassion seems to have gone extinct, Jesus was offering a vision that stood at the heart of the Jewish faith … a vision that stands at the heart of our faith – a vision of a future where the world will be remade according to God’s intentions rather than our own.

If the prophets are to be believed (and I choose to believe them), that world will be a place where justice and righteousness hold sway in place of corruption and greed.  Its soul is marked with love and compassion in place of hatred and selfishness.  And instead of suffering and want all people will enjoy abundance and peace.

Jeremiah describes the wonder of that future with powerful images of renewal:  In the wasteland there will be towns filled with people, animals will graze on lush grasses in the desolate places, and those who live in bondage will know freedom.  And what is the source of all this wonderful change … of this outpouring of mercy on the people?  “The days are surely coming,” he says, when the Lord “will cause a righteous branch to spring up . . . and Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.”

There's our hope. 

There's the fulfillment of the promise we have been given. 

Christ will come … the Prince of peace … the one who brings justice to the oppressed … Loves Perfection … Immanuel – God dwelling with us … pouring out enough mercy and grace to cleanse us of our sins and wash away our worries.

 

You remember that glass of stress that I mentioned earlier this morning.  As we head into Advent – into the time of preparation for the coming of our hope, instead of adding more and more to that glass and trying to hold it up even though it may be killing our souls.  Set the glass down and take a break….

Better yet, pour it all out.  Give it all to the God whose grace bring new life.  Empty your heart of all the worries that weigh you down, and make space for mercy to flood into your soul. 
Make space for the Son of Man … the shoot of Jesse’s tree.

Make space for a flood of mercy that comes to us in a little baby whose birth brings us hope.

---

[1] from Living by the Word in the November 28 edition of The Christian Century.

Are You Afraid?

sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 13:1-8    Daniel 12:1-4

“Are you frightened? … Not nearly enough.  I know what hunts you.”  Those are some of the first words spoken by Strider to Frodo Baggins in Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring.  He is speaking of the Ring Wraiths – nine human kings who passed into the eternal shadows of evil all because of their hunger for power.  They have become fearsome beings – immortal and immensely powerful with both swords and magic.  There reappearance on the scene is an announcement of the end of life as all people know it.  They are the sign that apocalyptic times have descended on Frodo and Strider and everyone else in Middle Earth.  They are right to be afraid.

Of course, we on this Earth don’t need to fear the ring wraiths (though I suspect we could find our own version of them without looking too far).  But we, too, are living in apocalyptic times complete with signs like the Super-storm Sandy and the burgeoning war between the Israelis and the Palestinians and prophets predicting the end of life as we know it.  Either the world economy will implode leaving us back in the dark ages … or Iran will finally develop its nuclear missile bringing on a terrible war that will render the cradle of Western civilization dead and sterile for centuries … or we will reach the tipping point on global warming and whole countries will disappear as ice caps melt and oceans rise.  Everywhere you look you hear news reporters, talk show hosts, political activists, and scientists shouting … DOOM!

It would seem that times haven’t changed all that much in the last 2000 years.  All throughout Israel’s history there were prophets of the apocalypse, but things really started gearing up about 200 years before Jesus was born.  The kingdom of Israel had come and gone a couple of times, and the land was passed back and forth between several kingdoms over the course of four or five centuries until the Roman Empire finally took control and provided some kind of stability and tolerance, allowing the Jews to continue their particular religious practices.

After a time, the people began to feel stable enough to think about throwing off the yoke the empire and there were a few rebellions that were brutally put down.  The spirit of the people was not broken, though, and they began to dwell on the prophesies of the Messiah who would lead the chosen people back into a second golden age.

Daniel wrote of this coming change with vivid imagery that described the end of the world as it was and the birth of a new reality, and while his prophesies were full of suffering and destruction, they were meant as a message of hope rather than fear for the people.  All the bad stuff, after all, would be happening to the unjust and unfaithful who were abusing the righteous believers.  In other words, it would be the Romans and their supporters who would suffer while the rest of the Jews would be delivered and raised up to shine like stars come to Earth … as long as they lived Godly lives that got them written into The Book of Life.

The refrain was carried on by others – some of them recorded in the apocryphal books that didn’t make the final cut but are sometimes included in study Bibles.  Eventually, we hear the same message proclaimed by John the Baptist – repent … turn back to God for the Kingdom of God has drawn near and the end of these times is upon us.  And finally, Jesus takes his turn.

“Do you see all these great buildings? …. Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” 

And when will this happen?

“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars ….  [When] nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom.  [When] there [are] earthquakes in various places, and famines” (and flood and storms?).  “These are the beginnings of birth pains.”

Not really a clear answer to say the least.  It would seem that the birth pains have been going on for quite some time.

 

That’s the thing about apocalyptic talk… whether or not it is intended to comfort us, it is so vague that it inevitably evokes fear in us.  We can never really know if we will be the on the good or the bad end of things, and there’s nothing at all that we can to change what’s coming.  We can’t even know when to expect the crisis.  So it leaves us swinging in the anxious wind of anticipation, and that can damage our health and twist our sense of perspective.

As Stephen Fowl puts it in his writing for the most current issue of The Christian Century, “Apocalyptic visions generate fear.  This fear can be a good motive for action, particularly when your home is on fire or when a bus is barreling down on you as you cross the street.  In such a situation fear may save lives …. But, for the most part, the fear induced by apocalyptic scenarios can so truncate and focus our vision on such a narrow field as to render us almost blind.”[1]

Take a moment to look inside yourself.  Find some aspect of your own life where you feel like things are racing out of control toward a crisis that you can’t really anticipate. 

 

Now take a deep breath and step back for a moment. 

 

Try to look at the situation from a broader perspective.

If you can do that (and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it’s sometimes impossible) … if you can do that, you will probably find that your fears have done exactly what Fowl describes.  They have focused you on one part of your life so much that it has become disconnected from the rest.  They have made you feel like you must act just a quickly and decisively as if you were in the path of speeding car.  And they have convinced you that you have only a few options open to you … that you must accept one of those options even if none of them fits the life you most want to live.

That’s not the healthiest way to make navigate life.  We need to move past those fears … to cast them out and make way for more spacious, life-giving way of living.  And fortunately, the scriptures give us many clues to how to do exactly that.  They are most clearly summed up in  first John, chapter 4 where it says that perfect love casts out fear.

Again … Stephen Fowl….

“For Jesus, navigating one’s way through apocalyptic times calls not for split-second judgments made in isolation but for clear vision, faithful insight and holy patience.  Fear is the enemy of all of these practices of faithful living.  Fear narrows our vision so that we fail to see the good in those who disagree with us.  Fear-induced blindness causes us to fail to see the great host of witnesses that surround, support, and sustain us…. Fear … [makes] us forget that only God can save us and leads us to treat others as obstacles that we must overcome.

Jesus' alternative is an invitation to be like those wise people awaiting the bridegroom’s arrival.  We need to cultivate a patient yet ardent desire for God to arrive in fullness in our lives … a desire not driven by a desire for triumph or vindication or by fear of one’s opponents … a desire sustained by our love for God and our eager hope for communion with the One who loves us without reserve.

The more apocalyptic our present seems, the more important it is for Christians courageously to rely on love to cast out fear (1John 4:17).” [2]

 

I read that last week, and I thought, “right … that sounds good in theory.  We can say that we rely on love to cast out fear all we want to, but how, exactly, does that work?”  But then we had our Church Council meeting, and I began to catch a glimpse of what it might look like.

What I saw was a gathering of faithful people facing difficult decisions.  It is clear – and has been clear for some time – that we don’t have the resources to keep doing things the way that we have done in the past.  We don’t have the money, and we don’t have the people.  Like it or not, our lives together in this congregation are going to change.

In the past, the coming crisis has been a cause for fear and anxiety.  We have struggled to trim our budget and adjust the structure that guides our leadership in the hope that the situation will get better with time, and that has served us fairly well … for a while. 

Yet the more that time has passed, the  closer we have come to the brink of change.  The more “apocalyptic” our visions, the less open we have become to the unexpected possibilities that are sometimes offered by the Holy Spirit.  We have focused more and more tightly on how we can cut back our spending without undermining the basic values expressed by our budget, and we have come to answer all … or at least most of the difficult questions about how we will live together with the answer, “we just need more people.”

But last week, something changed.  Nick suggested that we set up a committee to assess our options for the future, and the idea of yet another committee was greeted with … well if not with joyful enthusiasm, at least with without the sense of one more burden added to an already heavy load.  What I felt as we continued to discuss how and when that committee would do its work was a lightening of the congregation’s spirit … maybe even the beginnings of the birth pains of new hope for the future.

 

Living in the shadow of fear closes us off … hems us in … and makes us less than we are.  It leave us isolated and alone.  Living in the light of love – love for one another and love for our God – opens us up … allows our hearts and our dreams to grow bigger … and ties us into life – the true life that flows from God.  It draws us together and sets our feet on the path where God walks with us.

And relying on love to cast out fear is not simply a comfort to us.  The power of love continually transforms us.  It draws us, always, toward being the best people we can be.  That is a wonderful thing … a powerfully good thing for us and for those we love, AND it is also the doorway to the world.  The more we are guided by love, the more our compassion leads us out of our doors and beyond our families and friends to care for the suffering around us, and we reach out with the most valuable gift we have to give - the love and the hope that fills our lives with meaning and promise.

 

---

[1] Christian Century, November 14, 2012, page 20.

[2] ibid.

Dwelling in the Word

[Torin and I have just returned full time to our pastoral duties after the birth of our son, Patrick.  While we were on parental leave, our congregation engaged in a process known as Dwelling in the Word.  For seven weeks we lived with Paul's words in Ephesians 3:7-21 and had seven different speakers, including Torin and myself, come with their thoughts and perspectives.

Unfortunately, I don't have the sermons from all of our speakers, and this Sunday was the concluding sermon in the series.  We hope you take some time to dwell with this text, and see how it may call you to a rooting and grounding in God's love]

Ephesians 3:7-21
Dwelling in the Word

Wow.  I can’t believe that it has been over two months since I last preached!  I don’t know how you feel about it, but it feels good to be here with you, exploring the word, dwelling in the word.  And yes, our seven weeks of dwelling in the word has come to an end.  I don’t know how you feel about that either.  Some of you may like to stay a bit longer and continue exploring what Ephesians 3:7-21 is working out in you.  Some are probably ready to get back to our regular routine.  At least, you’ve had enough of Paul, and need a little Jesus.  Or Moses.  Or even some Psalms for crying out loud. 

It is true that Paul can certainly be pedantic.  Long winded.  Confusing.  Boring.  Why would we want to spend 7 weeks looking at one of his letters?  Probably because he can be…pedantic, long-winded, confusing, and boring.  I mean if you just listen to one sermon on one part of his letters, it’s easy to dismiss him, to tune out, and wait till next Sunday when you get into more interesting, gospel stuff.  Spending 7 weeks with Paul, for some of you, may be like being stuck in the middle of the ocean on a boat with him .  You may want to jump ship, you may be searching for the shoreline when you can get off this boat.  But if you actually have a conversation with him, you just might learn something.  About him.  About yourself.  About God.

So yes, jumping back into the pulpit to face Paul—not just dwelling with him, but trying to make sense of him—seemed a bit exhausting.

And I don’t like being exhausted. Which is not good when you have two young boys and a baby.  So as you can imagine snatching small bits of rest in the day is crucial for me as a mother.  And for my naps I like to have book close by for those times when I wake up from a nap before any of the boys do, and I don’t want to walk around for fear they will wake up and demand something of me. And since I never know how long the quiet and stillness will last, I like having a book that has small segments with powerful thoughts.

A friend gave me the book Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry by Katrina Kenison.  One of the reflections is on nature, where she explored the ideas of Robert Michael Pyle.

Robert Michael Pyle is a nature writer, and a lepidopterist—someone who studies moths and butterflies.  And Pyle has presented in some of his works a rather provocative allegation.  He has observed that many children today—and probably many adults as well—suffer from what he calls “the extinction of experience.” 

Now at first, that sounds a bit counterintuitive because, as a mother, I know that there is an intense drive in contemporary parents to give our children experiences.  We want them to experience music, languages, art, dance, sports and so we rush around trying to get them signed up for this program and that lesson.  Will they ever really learn the piano if they are not in lessons by age 3?  Will they be severely deficient in our pluralistic culture if they aren’t learning Spanish and Mandarin by second grade?  We want them to know all these things, so of course we’re trying to get them experience in them, to have someone teach them, and have our children learn them.

But Pyle, being a naturalist, is not talking about this kind of experience.  He is referring to the extinction of experience with the natural world.  He says that unlike earlier generations, children do not have the kind of direct, frequent contact with the earth and its creatures that result in a passionate, lasting relationship with the natural world. 

Now it doesn’t mean that children are unaware of the natural world.  They know what a leaf is.  They know bugs.  And they certainly know about “the environment.”  In fact, Pyle suggests that our children are well versed in issues of the environment and may have “politically correct” response to whales, global warming, pollution, and rain forests; they  can speak to these major environmental issues—but far less grounded in their own visceral, firsthand experiences of nature just beyond their door.  Pyle of course, says it’s not enough to teach children about nature; we must allow our children to grow up in nature. 

The difference between knowing with our head, and a knowing, that Paul says, surpasses understanding.

 The difference between knowing and experiencing,

 between head thought, and heart revelation.

When Paul speaks to us about knowing the length and breadth and height and depth of Christ’s love;  when he speaks about knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, I think he is on to us.  He’s on to our skeptical minds.  He’s onto our contemporary need to know intellectually. for sure. what the answers about God are.  To know what is true about Christ…

We’ve been watching these wonderful videos in adult Sunday School, a series called Living the Questions where popular theologians, scholars, and clergy take on a variety of topics and then invite us to continue the conversation.  A few weeks ago the topic was on the biblical story, and how, essentially, it is possible to take the Bible seriously without always taking it literally.  It looked at questions about creation, and the nativity story, and our hangups about saying things did or did not happen in a certain way.

And I could tell, especially with the group gathered that day, it was a welcomed conversation.  And someone said in the midst of the conversation, “But how to you know it’s the truth.”  Of course, I wanted to get all sagely and philosophical and ask “Well what do you mean by know.”  and “well what is truth?”

If anything, this is where I know I can get hung up, most certainly.  I’m asking the questions, I’m seeking the answers.  I want to know when this was written and by whom and was it Paul or wasn’t it who wrote Ephesians.  I wonder what is the politically correct thing to think about the gender or lack thereof of God?  What is the right thing to believe about God’s  working in the world?  What is the limit that I can believe if I still want to be seen as intellectual?

If I’m honest, I’m so busy thinking about me when I approach God, there isn’t much height or depth or length or breadth to dive into.  It’s more like I’m…standing in a kiddie pool with not much water.

Sure, we know a lot about God, from what we learn from sermons, or books, or Sunday School, or bible studies.  I can say what so-and-so has said about God, I rehearse arguments about God, I can do theology.  But is that the same as knowing of God? 

Just like many children and adults know about the environment, we too have thought about God…but can you say you have experienced God? [pause] Not only that, but can you say you are filled with the fullness of God?  Daily living out of the divine spark within you?

So as we prepared to dwell with this challenge, I was asking myself “how do we know? how do we know?”

And what I’m left with, after these seven weeks, is a surprising invitation.: Stop trying to know.  Stop trying to find the answers that fit neatly.

Now I’m not saying don’t ask the questions, and it’s not a get out of jail free card with the response, “well, we never will know so let’s just live in the mystery”.  But it does require us to think about how we “know” in a different way.

Hear some of Katrina Kenison’s thoughts on knowledge, as she continues reflecting on our experience with nature.  You could probably switch out some of the words about nature and replace them with God, to more clearly see where I’m going with this.

Our children offer us an opportunity to rediscover the marvels of nature for ourselves.  You don’t need any special knowledge, any equipment, or even much of a plan.  You don’t need to be a naturalist or a teacher.  In fact you don’t need to identify a single bird or flower or constellation.  All you need is a willingness to go, to look, and to drink in the mystery and beauty of the world before your eyes.  I used to wish I had more knowledge to impart, a better foundation in the earth sciences, so that I could explain the world to my children instead of simply experiencing it with them.  Certainly our outings gave rise to more questions than answers.  But as we watched and wondered together, I came to suspect that our shared experience was probably more valuable to my children than any education I could provide.  In time, they will acquire knowledge, too—but first they need the time and space to develop an emotional connection with the land, forging their own relationships with plants and animals, earth and sky.  [The naturalist Rachel Carson reminds us,] “It is not half so important to know as to feel.”

So maybe the same is true with how we approach our lives with God.  And maybe in a way, our faith life can be a bit like Paul.  A bit pedantic..talking through ideas, figuring out who we are, criticizing bad behavior of others, trying to know, defending our position.  But thankfully, Paul surprises us with a blessing.  A blessing that tells us to let it all fall away

To not get hung up on trying to understand with our minds, but to live a life that open to experiencing the love of Christ.  And this love of Christ can and does compel us to plumb the deepest of our fears, and soar to the highest of what makes us joyful.  Christ’s love entices us to broaden our arms to welcome into our lives the unexpected: the unexpected person, or event, or possibility as well as encouraging us to go to lengths we may not have ever known possible.

So to conclude this portion of dwelling in the word, J I’ll just bestow on you the same blessing in a different way. 

What you know is not nearly sufficient to experience the Christ.  In snatches of moments,

Feel Christ’s love working through you. 

Hear Christ’s love as the wind blowing through the trees. 

See Christ’s love in great acts of courage and small acts of devotion.

Engage your whole self in being part of Christ’s love, moving past what you can understand intellectually

and open yourself up to being filled with the fullness of God.