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.

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[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.”

 

                                                                                                                    

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[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.

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