Meditation for Advent 4: The Real Joy of Christmas

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 1:18-25        Isaiah 7:10-16

I only became aware of Nelson Mandela when I was in High School.  It was the year he was released from prison, and it was the year that I went to a seminar in New York and Washington that focused on racism.  We learned about many different aspects of racism there, but what caught my attention most was the story of this man who had been locked up for more years than I had been alive because of his opposition to Aparthied (another new concept for me).

The more I learned the more unsettled and upset at the injustices I became.  In New York, I gladly joined in writing passionate letters to our government and the rulers of South Africa demanding that Aparthied be ended.  When we traveled to DC, I eagerly joined the other youth from Indiana as we visited our representatives and senators to urge them to join in the boycott of the unjust system that kept millions of people living so close to slavery.  It was the first time I felt anything like righteous anger. 

               
I cheered along with everyone else when Aparthied was finally overturned.  I followed the process of the reconciliation hearings, amazed at the strength of heart and the power of forgiveness they showed.  Over the years, I paid less and less attention, but Mandela remained one of my heroes.  He stood right up there with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi, proving the real possibility for changing the world without resorting to violence.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered two weeks ago that this special man had started out life as a freedom fighter.

It may seem shocking that I never knew that particular piece of the story, but it somehow never worked its way into my head.  Perhaps the leaders who first taught me about Mandela failed to mention it.  Perhaps they did, and I simply let it flow past in my youthful zeal.  I certainly never bothered to ask why Mandela was in prison in the first place.  And so the story that grew in my head over the years was more of a myth than a reality in some important ways.

 

The story of Christmas has suffered the same fate … at least it has seemed that way to me this year.  As we receive cards in the mail, sing the old familiar caroling hymns, and set up our nativity scenes complete with angels and wise men standing around the newborn’s resting place, I have been struck again and again at how … whitewashed it all is.

I’m not talking about the western coloring of the parents and the baby (though that is, literally, a whitewashing of the truth).  I’m thinking of the way we envision such an idyllic scene surrounding the birth of the Christ child.  We do still put the baby in a manger, but our pictures and statues show a serene and smiling mother and father standing or kneeling beside him.  Our hymns teach us that the baby silently endured the noises of the stable.  Somehow, the star is there and the wise men are gathered with their magnificent gifts, kneeling on a pristine floor, and we have the sense that everything was clean and bright and smelled of incense.

The reality, I’m sure, was quite different.  The animals were undoubtedly less well behaved.  The straw that was on the floor … even hay in the manger would have been scratchy and uncomfortable.  The wise men and the star wouldn’t have come for another two or three years – after the family had run to Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous rampage.

I imagine that the shepherd who came to witness the advent of the Messiah would have been smelly and dirty, and they would have right at home in the stable.  They would have found a messy place filled with chaos in the aftermath of an unexpected birth.  There would have been an exhausted mother, a tired and worried father, and perhaps a few other pilgrims who had found themselves without a place to stay in the mass migration for the census.  In the middle of all that, I can see … and hear … an unhappy baby crying in disorientation and discomfort instead of a quiet, beatific child with wise eyes looking out on the world he would save.

 
I could go on and talk about all the discrepancies in our story of Christmas.  I could explore any number of contradictions between prophesy and the gospels or between the gospels themselves or any number of other things … (which probably means that I have spent too much time thinking about this)….

I could go on, but I won’t … because I have also discovered, this year more than any other, is that dwelling on the realities of the Jesus’ birth – the actual, tangible experiences that must have been part of that night in the stable – pondering those truths has actually brought me closer to awe and joy.

 

As a young man, I don’t know if I would have been as taken with Mandela if I had known about his violent past.  In my naïve idealism, I probably wouldn’t have been so eager to join in the letter writing campaigns.  I might even have dismissed him as an imperfect leader who was only pretending to be high-minded.

As an older man, I find that myself encouraged by the knowledge.  Here was a man who believed so strongly in his hope of saving his country that he was willing to lay down his weapons in in order to fight division.  He was willing to risk his life for the possibility of reconciliation and the future joy of a people united by love and forgiveness.  Somehow, the full reality of his life makes his stand even more powerful … even more inspiring….  Maybe it’s because the reality brings Mandela closer to my level – makes him more “human,” and I can relate to who he became … who I might become.

I find that I feel the same way about that night in Bethlehem.  Somehow it helps me to know that despite all the noise and discomfort, despite the uncertainty and pain that comes with birth, despite the exhaustion and the looming threat of Herod; Jesus still came. It helps me feel closer to the Christ Child to know that he was a real baby who experienced all of the same things we have experienced, and not just a Christmas Card icon.  It invites me deeper into the mystery of God come to live among us – God come as a baby who would grow and love and suffer just as we do – God come to save us.

 

In just a couple of days, we will celebrate this marvelous birth, and I have no doubt that the shiny myths of Christmas will be alive and well in our homes and in our hearts.  For today … and for tomorrow … and maybe for the days to come, let us hold onto the rough and scratchy reality.  Let us hold onto the dirty, smelly, noisy truth of the God who, for the joy of living as one of us, was born into human flesh.  Let us embrace the joy of welcoming the Christ who, for the joy set before him, became our Messiah and the savior of all.

Advent 3 Meditation

by Carrie Eikler
December 15, 2013
Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46-55, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11

The journalist, Kate Braestrup, had an experience none of us ever hope to face.  Her husband died, leaving her a young widow with four small children.  Her husband, Drew, was a police officer and was killed in a car accident.  No one but his wife knew that Drew had a secret ambition.  A bit avant garde for your commonplace police officer (he had long hair, an earring.  He was a Unitarian Universalist) Drew had dreams of going to seminary and becoming a pastor.  He dreamed of being a chaplain in law enforcement.  A chaplain who accompanies police officers to homes where bad news is delivered.  News that ultimately was delivered about him.  To his wife.  And four children.

A year after Drew’s passing, his wife, Kate, decided to follow in his “footstep dreams.”  She went to seminary and became a pastor.  Now she is one of the first chaplains to the Warden Service of the state of Maine.  Kate joins search-and-rescue workers in the cold snowy Maine wilderness. She is the chaplain to the game wardens, to the injured, and to those who wait and grieve for news of their loved ones who may or may not return to them.

She writes about this experience in her memoir “Here if You Need Me.”  Snow mobile accidents, ice fishing tragedies, foul play, missing persons.  Kate is there to be a witness to the sacred.  Someone sent into the wilderness, not in soft robes, or as a prophet as spoken of in Matthew’s gospel, but in the Game Service standard issue bottle green sweater, cargo pants, and stocking cap.

The memoir begins by Kate recounting a story of a little girl, Alison, who went missing from a family picnic.  Alison chased after her dog into the woods.  The dog came back to the picnic site.  Alison didn’t.  The search-and-rescue team was called out, in varying degrees of hopefulness for a live return.  And Kate was called to be with the desperate family.  The family quickly tells Kate that they are atheists.  But they hold her hand to the point of pain for a long time, anyway.  Kate sits with them for hours , holding their hand…in mutual pain.

“Little kids who get lost in the woods do something really smart” [Kate tells Marian, the missing girl’s mother] “When the realize they’re lost, they find a snug place—like under a bush—curl up, and go to sleep.  Adults tend to keep moving; they keep trying to find their own way out.  They think they have to solve the problem themselves.  Little kids conk out and wait for the grown-ups to solve it.  If Alison is under a bush asleep, she probably can’t hear us hollering.”

“And this is how the Maine Warden Service found her…” says Kate.  “At about three o-clock in the morning, a few miles almost due west of the PLS [meaning, Place Last Seen], Warden Ron Dunham’s K-9 [dog named] Grace, found a little girl in an Elmo sweatshirt curled up under some brush.

“Warden Dunham and Alison come walking out of the woods hand in hand, past the Salvation Army food wagon, and into the parking lot, with K-9 Grace trotting proudly ahead.” [And Kate says] … my whole, lovely job at that moment was to bear witness to rejoicing and to join in the gladness of the coming day.”

“Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.  The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.  You also must be patient.  Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

This is what the reading from James says.  Patience.
Can you imagine if Kate simply told this family to be patient?  How do you think they would hear that?

How would you hear that?

But she didn’t tell them to be patient.  Rather, she joined them in their waiting.  She held their hands.  She embodied patience,. She talked with them.  Listened to them.  Let them tell the same story over and over: how Alison went bounding into the woods, how the dog came back, how they called out for her.  And Kate’s job was to be presence, a witness to the sacred.

[pause]

Shortly after we moved here, now over seven years ago, Torin and I had the late night craving for Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Rather, he wanted the chicken, I wanted the fake, neon orange macaroni and cheese.  It was 9:30 at night and we really didn’t know the Morgantown roads well, and that, my friends is a recipe for disaster.  Wasn’t there a KFC down on that one road?  What is it?  Patteson?  OK, I’ll go get it, says he.

A half hour passes.

Then an hour.

Panic has ratcheted up sky high.

Of course, he didn’t take the cell phone.

I was picturing a car accident.

I called the hospital.

I called the other hospital.

Two hours.

I call Lois Harder, the interim pastor here, feeling embarrassed that as the new pastor I was exhibiting some sort of fear or vulnerability, losing her mind, picturing what it would look like to be a young widow with a small child.  She was kind and calm.  We talked.  She told me she could come wait with me.  No, no, I’ll call you back when I find out something.

Why did I want that macaroni?????!!!

I call my mother-in-law, Bev. She says the cool, soothing things that I hope I would if in the similar situation with a panicking person.  She says she is picturing Torin, wherever he is, surrounded with light that is protecting him. 

While we were talking, two and a half hours after Torin left at the PLS (that is, Place Last Seen), the car pulls up. I quickly get off the phone with Bev, run down the steps to the driveway, and, like a scene from a movie, simultaneously kiss Torin… and hit him.  Where were you?  I’ve been worried sick!  How hard is it to find Kentucky Fried Chicken?!?!

He looked at me desperately and says “I had to go to a town called…Sabraton?” [pause]

I don’t know if that was the best tasting or worst tasting macaroni and cheese of my life.

But later, as I was talking to Bev about it, she reflected on my panic.  She said it was clear that nothing she could say would help take away the anxiety. So she just had to be patient for me.  She had to hold my panic, because it was clear that words weren’t going to calm me down.

She didn’t tell me to be patient.  She helped me picture God surrounding Torin.

Lois didn’t tell me to wait it out.  She told me she would come wait with me.

When faced with the crises, decisions, and possibilities in our lives, it can seem like there are two choices, both perhaps looking a bit like patience.  Run around like adults do in the wilderness, trying to figure it out ourselves, solve the problem, and try to take control.  The perception of patience comes in the logical steps we think we are taking.

Or we can be like children.  Curl up cozy under a bush, wait it out, become oblivious to the reality, and let someone else take charge.  The perception of patience comes in the giving up, the passing out, the “wake me up when it is all over.”

But that isn’t the sense of patience I get from Mary and Elizabeth, or Jesus, or John, or James, or Isaiah.

What I notice about the scriptural calls to patience this day—all the talk the glorious day in the future—is that it is not a platitude given to an individual.  It’s an invitation given in the midst of relationships: Elizabeth and Mary, a community of early Christians, John being drawn into a community of people who have been healed-lepers, lame, deaf. 

Platitudes of patience is not what this is about.

It’s about being the bearers of God’s love for those who find it impossible to wait by themselves.  A place none of us should ever be.

The community born of love is one where, as Chaplain Kate says, we bear witness to one another.  In rejoicing, and in pain. 

So we don’t say “just wait it out” to someone in pain.  We say “let me wait with you.”

We don’t say “it’s God’s plan.”  We say “God is here in my love for you.”

We don’t say “well it’s all for the best.”  We say “I know it hurts.  And I will be here with you.”

We don’t say “just be patient.”  We say, as James said “I will hold you, so your heart can be strengthened.”

May you be doing the heart-work of strengthening this season work of waiting with others, of being present when patience might otherwise be lost in the wilderness. 

[silence]

 

Good friends, rejoice!  For Christ is coming to bear witness to the Sacred in our midst

Good friends, rejoice! For until that time, we are empowered-and called-to bear witness to the Christ is waits with us, strengthens us, and loves us.

Please join in the sending hymn “Good Christian friends rejoice #210

 

Meditation for Advent 2: Bridges to Peace

Advent 2
sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 11:1-10             Matthew 3:1-12          Romans 15:4-13

When I was in seminary, my summer internship was in Clinical Pastoral Education at Beacon Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.  CPE is chaplaincy training and it involves some of the most rigorous self-reflection and analysis that I know of.  It is a grueling process in which you examine pastoral conversations with patients over and over while your teachers and peers pick them apart looking for any hidden issues that you may be bringing into your ministry.  Some people joke that after that experience, you need therapy as a bit of a break, and I understand exactly what they mean. 

 

Part of the deconstruction process involves sharing your background, your faith journey, and the image that you have of yourself as a ministering person.  My group of seven students did this in circle discussions throughout the ten weeks we were together.  Toward the end of the process, a student on his way to becoming a catholic priest who I’ll call John shared his story. 

John was from Vietnam.  As a child, he and his siblings lived with his mother in a small village that had grown up in the forest.  It was a community of single women who had come to live there with their families during the war.  After the fighting ended, a few of the husbands who had survived trickled into the village, but it remained predominately women and children.

Since they had picked the location for safety, it was buried in the thickest part of the trees twenty rugged miles from the nearest settlement, and a deep and fast-flowing river cut across the path.  The only way to contact anyone else was to make the difficult hike and cross the river on a slender bridge made of three ropes tied so they hung in a “V” with one rope for the feet and one for each hand.

For whatever reasons of his own, John told us relatively little of his childhood, and what he did share seemed to center around that bridge.  He described how moss and mold grew on the constantly damp ropes, making them slippery and hard to hold on to.  He talked about how the bridge swayed in even the slightest breeze.  He helped us understand how hard it was to cross the ropes with the added burden of supplies for the village.  And he shared his memory of one time when he saw another child fall into the river and get washed away.

You might think that John saw the bridge as a dangerous and scary thing (I thought so as I listened to him talk.)  But that wasn’t his perspective at all.  He respected the bridge … liked it even.  It was small and dangerous, but it crucial.

You see … on one side of the bridge was his home.  It was a peaceful place where everyone got along pretty well.  The children played happily together despite the dangers of the jungle where they lived.  The adults worked together to make life run smoothly. Everyone had seen enough suffering to value life in all forms, and nobody was concerned with getting ahead or accumulating more than they needed (at least in his memory).  They were one big mostly-happy family.

On the other side of the bridge was the rest of the world.  The war-torn remnants of a people trying to survive and piece their society and culture back together.  He knew it as a strange place – a place of danger and uncertainty.  But it was also the place of extra food and other necessary supplies.  His village … his family could not survive without it, and the bridge held the two worlds together.

There are two worlds described in today’s scriptures as well.  The first is the world that John the Baptist lives in.  We’ve heard a lot about this world in our church lives.  It was dominated by the Roman Empire with soldiers stationed everywhere.  The Jews had been allowed to keep their religion and their traditions as long as their leaders didn’t step too far out of line, but the people were kept subdued by Roman laws and taxes that sapped their vitality.  Most of them weren’t very happy with the situation, and there several uprisings had been put down by the Romans over the past hundred or so years.  Apocalyptic thinking was fairly widespread and the belief that the Messiah would come soon to set the people free was equally common.

Part of the problem, it seems, was with the Jewish leadership itself.  They were widely seen as cooperating with the Romans.  That was undoubtedly received by some Jews better than by others.  But if John the Baptist and his popularity are any indication, quite a lot of people had very strong feelings that their leaders were … let’s just say … a good deal less than the holy and righteous men they claimed to be.

It was not a peaceful or idyllic world.  People were downtrodden and hungry.  Many were put to death in horrible ways … sometimes for what would seem to us to be minor transgressions.  There was the constant threat of a crackdown by the Empire to teach some upstart a lesson.  And nobody really knew who to turn to or who they could trust.  It doesn’t sound all that different from the world we live in today, does it?

 

The other world is the one envisioned by Isaiah.  This one was idyllic.  In some ways it was a return to the way that Genesis pictures the newly-minted creation.  Back then, lions and wolves and leopards lived peacefully alongside lambs and goats and calves and everyone (people included) had been given “every green plant for food.”

It was a peaceful world where people from all over the earth came and lived together in peace, and justice reigned.  The poor were fed.  The weak were protected, and the wicked were “taken care of.”  A beautiful vision, and not so different from how we think of the kingdom to come today, but there was one central thing missing … the right king. 

 

In ancient Israel, the king was anointed as the representative of Yahweh and hence regarded as a sacred person.  Most ancient Near Eastern cultures shared a similar concept of monarchy as a divinely appointed institution. As such the king upheld the social order.  The care of the poor and weak and the building of temples served to prove their divine appointment.  As God's anointed, Israel's kings not only enjoyed a unique intimacy with Yahweh, they embodied Yahweh's blessing and inheritance. …[1]

The line of kings had been broken when the last king of the royal line was led off to captivity and the kingdom came to an end.  But there remained the hope that from the "burned-out stump" of the royal house God would still raise up Isaiah’s ideal king … a messiah … a perfect king sprung from the line of Jesse – a king who finally fulfilled the potential of his ancestor David, ruling with wisdom, insight, and compassion and recreating the world as God desired it to be. [2]

 

Two worlds … the one that was and the one that could be … kept apart by the eternal flow of power and greed.  It must have seemed to most people – back then just as it does today – it must have seemed like there was no real hope of bringing the two together.

John the Baptist saw things differently.  He knew Jesus … was Jesus’ cousin, and as he stood there with the river’s water flowing around his own legs, he preached about the fulfillment of Isaiah’s promise.  In coming of that man he saw the coming of the Messiah, but he knew that Jesus would not be the king that people were expecting – not a king at all in the way that we think of kings.

In the end, Jesus did not even come as John the Baptist expected.  There was no axe and no threshing fork.  There was no fire to burn away the dead weight of humanity’s long journey away from the Garden’s peaceable kingdom.  Instead there was only a man born in a stable who grew into a prophet and a teacher.  There was only a leader who understood that you cannot create a peaceful world through violence … a Messiah who bridged the gap between what was and what could be by building a community of people who tried to bring the two worlds together by the example of their living.

 

When John spoke of his calling to ministry (I’m talking about the John I studied with back in Indianapolis and I probably should have chosen a different name to use for him).  When that John talked about his work, he described himself as the bridge of his childhood.  His saw his service with the sick and dying he visited each day as the thin strand offering them a way to find peace.  He hoped that building relationships with them would bring a new and hopeful future together with the hopelessness and suffering in which they were trapped.

 

I wonder …

---

[1] David Shearman as posted on “Midrash” listserve on December 1,2013.

[2]  Brian Donst at http://food4fifty.blogspot.ca/ on December 5, 2013.

Meditation: Advent 1

by Carrie Eikler
Romans 13:11-14, Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44

I love how the scriptures on this first Sunday of Advent can surprise us.
No lovely angel visitation. No mention of a baby.
We are, of course, shaped already by the tinsel and merriment of the season
and yet these scriptures,
[like a hairy dirty John the Baptist,
who crashes your dinner party by noshing on his locusts]
these scriptures shock us by speaking of
judgment
fury
floods
dare I say it…
rapture?

In a word, these scriptures tell us: prepare.

At its essence, Advent is preparation for meeting the
incarnate God.
The God not way up there
but the God that is among us:
walking, crying, needing.
It’s not just about recounting a story long ago
but welcoming Christ in: again, and again.

The scripture from Romans alludes to this, gives us a taste of what this means
What is it that we need to strip away from our hearts in order to
love more? Give more? Receive more from our God?
The artist Jan Richardson reflects:

“Advent beckons us beyond the certainties that may not serve us—those sureties we have relied on that may have no substance to them after all. Advent is a season to look at what we have fashioned our lives around—beliefs, habits, convictions, prejudices—and to see whether these leave any room for the Christ who is so fond of slipping into our lives in guises we may not readily recognize.”

You know, these scriptures don’t sound so Christmas-y, do they?
They sound a lot more like the introspection and confession-seeking
practices of Lent, don’t they?
Historically, Advent has—and still is, if we allow it to be--
a penitential season.
The church would save the Christmas celebration for…Christmas!
12 days of Christmas celebration, in fact, ending with Epiphany.
Where Lent is a time of preparation for the celebration for Easter,
Advent is a time of preparation for the celebration of Christmas.

Now, I have had my fair share of penitential Advent sermons. Lots of “no, no, noes” and “don’t do this, don’t do that.” Making you feel bad for indulging in that shopping, that rushing. Getting lost in “the trappings” of the season.  Those sermons about “the reason for the season” and all that.

So yes,
I really want to give you the message today to:

be still.
wait.
don’t run around with the shopping.
stop.
just be.
prepare your heart.
quiet your heart.
sssshhhh.
[whisper] quiet…

[pause]

But these scriptures today are anything but quiet!

I mean, the lection from Matthew’s, and the similar scriptures in Mark and Luke
are called “a little apocalypse”.
Think about that…Advent starting with an apocalypse. Even a little one!

No, these are not quiet scriptures
These are pointing to an event that would not be quiet.
A birth. A life of rabble rousing. A horrific death. An unthinkable resurrection

Even now, if we think we are four weeks before the birth of Jesus, Mary would be,
what…36 weeks pregnant?
That time when pregnant women are done with waiting.
Mary is probably groaning on her feet
shouting for Joseph to get her some ice cream
and furiously making plans for the confounded trip to Bethlehem
for this ridiculous census!

How do we hold these together?  The call to be still and wait,
while we are faced with scriptures that are anything but?

Again, Jan Richardson:
“Perhaps the preparation and expectation to which Advent calls us are not to be found solely in the spaces we set aside during this season. Although it’s important to keep working at finding those contemplative openings in these days, I suspect that Advent is what happens in the midst of all this. We find the heart of the season, the invitation of these weeks, amid the life that is unfolding around us, with its wildness and wonders and upheavals and insecurities.”

Finding God amid the life that is unfolding around us.
The wild, wonderful, chaotic, insecure life.
A birth-experience type of life.

Each year this gospel scripture challenges us to remember that Christ calls us to
keep awake
stay alert
be ready.

You may not find a quiet heart this season.
You may not find it easy to still yourself
or to have patience.
If not, you’re in good company.

But while you are doing whatever it is you are doing…

open your eyes.
Look with Advent eyes
Look to where the Spirit moves
in the midst
 your harried, everyday life.

In preparation, therefore,
let us pray.  And after the prayer,
I invite you into moments of silence…
silence you may not get much these days.

Let us pray:
Growing God,
getting ready to be born
to Mary.  to us.
We want to be still,
but we know it will be hard.
We will likely fail spectacularly.
So help us.
Help us to be still…

And when we are not still,
attune our eyes so in our movement
we see you around us…

But in these moments, we quiet ourselves
so you can work on our spirits, our eyes.
Come to us in this silence, waiting God.

[silence]

May our eyes see you,
our hearts feel you
our spirits meet your Spirit
as we move from this place, Growing God.

A Worthy Man ... Learns to be Better

reflective monologue in two parts by Torin Eikler

A Worthy Man
Ruth 2:1-13

I have seen many things in my long life, and I have tried many of the pleasures and luxuries that are out there for a wealthy and upright man to sample.  I mean … Bethlehem is not one of those huge cities filled with exotic people and strange sights.  Still I have wonderful memories from the years that I have lived here, … but all of them pale next to the day when I met Ruth….

I’m getting ahead of myself, I suppose.  (That tends to happen to me more and more lately,) I should introduce myself.  I’m Boaz.  You may have heard of me if you’ve been around here for a while, but I’m not as “famous” as I once was.  Back then, I had a farm outside of the city … a big farm that earned me wealth, respect, and power, and I tried to use my position and my money in a way that was worthy of a Jew of my standing.  You might say that I was a pillar of the community.

At the time, I had a respectable household with a good number of servants, and I hired others to help me in the fields during the busier seasons, especially at harvest time.  During those two months, there was just so much to do that we all had to be out there working from dawn to dusk just to get the grain onto the threshing floor where we could keep working for a couple of hours with lamps.  Hard to believe how much we got done in such a short time ….

One year, when I was going out to the barley fields at the beginning of the harvest – just to make sure, you know, that the new workers knew what they were doing and were following my instructions – I got out there and I noticed a new woman among the gleaners.

 

I don’t know how things work where you live, but in Bethlehem there are always gleaners.  They’re mostly widows and orphans from town although there are some foreigners every once in a while. They stay around the edges of the fields, of course, in the standing grain that we leave around the edges (just like Moses told us to).  Sometimes they come into the fields to pick up some of the grain that we have dropped or forgotten.  It’s not that any trouble, though, and they know better than to get in the way of the harvesters or try to steal grain from the middle of the fields.  We even set up a shelter so that they can rest out of the sun when they get tired.

Anyway, there was a stranger among the gleaners when I got to the field that day, and she caught my eye.  After greeting everyone and making sure things were going well, I went to the foreman and asked who she was.  He must have noticed her, too, because he knew right off that she was a Moabite woman who had come back to the area with her mother-in-law after both of their husbands had died.

I had heard about her in town, of course.  Everyone knows everyone else around here, and strangers stick out.  When they all found out that she was a Moabite, that opened a whole other can of worms because we have a history with Moabites around here. 

When our ancestors were still in the wilderness, they tried to attack us, and when that didn’t work, their women led many of our men to worship their false idols.  Even after we settled here in the Promised Land, they kept on harassing us.  Plus I’ve heard that they had “questionable” beginnings (let’s just say their family tree looks more like a bush) and everyone knows they’re generally pretty crude (though the ones that I have met have been nice enough)…. 

Normally, I didn’t pay much attention to the gleaners, and I certainly wouldn’t have associated with a Moabite like her.  (You know how it is, I’m sure.  You may not have Moabites around here, but there’s always someone like that around, am I right?)  So, like I said, I wouldn’t usually pay any more attention to her, but was pretty good looking, and I remembered hearing that she was taking very good care of my cousin Naomi, and the harvest was looking good enough that I was feeling generous.  So, I made an exception.  I went over and told her that she was welcome to stay here in my fields.  I showed her where the water was, and I assured her that my workers would not bother her.  Then, I offered a blessing to her and Naomi, and why not?  It didn’t cost me anything, and it sounded good.

                 
I’ll always remember what she said back to me: “May I continue to find favor in your sight, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, even though I am not even one of your handmaids.”  I know it doesn’t sound like much, but you remember words that change your life, and those words did….


Learns to be BetterRuth 2:14-23       Leviticus 23:9-11, 21-23        

So how did Ruth’s words change my life?  It’s an excellent question.  Like I said, they weren’t really all that different from what I would have expected.  Nothing fancy or unusual.  Just what any gleaner might say to such a noteworthy man who took special notice of her.

No, it wasn’t what she said.  It was how she said it… or the way her face looked … or maybe the set of her shoulders or how she fell down on the ground at my feet.  I don’t know what it was, but her words kicked around in my head and I had the nagging feeling that I hadn’t quite gotten the message.

 

So, I invited her to eat lunch with us.  It was a little bit risky – socially speaking, and some of my workers raised their eyebrows.  Others whispered together, and I could imagine the speculations they were making.  But, her mother-in-law was a cousin of mine.  So, I figured I could pass it off as gratitude for the care Ruth had given her.  Besides, I needed to figure out what I had missed earlier.

 

As we ate, I thought about what she had said earlier, and it came to me that she had been just a little bit sardonic.  She had been mocking me despite the generosity that I had shown her which should have made me angry.  But as I watched her and listened to her conversations with the harvesters, she didn’t seem to be an ungrateful or mean-spirited woman.  “So,” I wondered, “why did she take that tone with me?”

After I spent the whole meal stewing on the question, the answer hit me.  Yes, I had offered for her to continue gleaning in my field … told her to get water when she was thirsty … and ordered my workers not to bother her, and that was all well and good.  I’m sure that she really was grateful – especially that I had said those words in front of the others, but none of that went beyond the requirements written in the Law of Moses. 

I had been all “magnanimous” when I offered her to take what was hers by right.  I had offered her protection that should already have been hers either as a widow or as a foreigner in the land.  I had stood there proud of myself and expected gratitude and praise for my words and actions even though I hadn’t really given her anything … even though my generosity had been empty and my words hollow … even though I had failed to embrace the spirit of compassion and hospitality that the law implied entirely.

 

I have to admit that I felt angry and ashamed.  To have a foreigner … a woman who had not been raised as a Jew … a Moabite even… to have her teach me about my own faith and our traditions took me down a peg, and I had to come to terms with my own inflated view of myself.  Boaz the great, generous, righteous man had some things to learn about real greatness, true generosity, and how to follow the heart of our covenant with God.

As I was struggling with this new understanding of my place in the world, I noticed that Ruth was getting up to go back to gleaning.  I was still a bit upset – with myself and with her for bursting my bubble and showing me my shortcomings.  But, I also felt like I wanted to talk with her more … to get to know this intriguing woman a little better.  So after she left our group, I told my workers to let her glean wherever she wanted to – even in the part of the field we hadn’t cut yet, and to leave some extra grain from our harvest on the ground so that she could gather that as well.  I hoped that would be enough to bring her back to my fields the next day.

It worked.  Ruth came back each day for the rest of the harvest season, and that meant that I got to see her and chat with her a little bit almost every day for about seven weeks.  It doesn’t seem like that long a time, but it was enough for me to know that I was interested in this woman… very interested.

 

If you haven’t guessed yet, I married her in the end.  Some people thought it was just because I was a close relative, and it was my responsibility to take care of her and Naomi.  But I didn’t have to do that.  In fact, I had to convince one of my other cousins who was a closer relative to let me have the privilege.  Even then, I wouldn’t have had to marry her.

But why wouldn’t I have married her.  She was beautiful.  She was witty.  She knew more of the world than I did … had experienced so much more grief and hardship in her life, and she still had the kindness and compassion to open my eyes gently when she could have thrown it in my face.

So, of course I married her, Moabite though she was.  I married her and I have never regretted it.  She still lets me know about my failings (more often than I might like to admit).  That hasn’t changed, but I see more easily now, and thanks to her, I have learned so much about how God really wants us to live. 

 

I think that we all need someone like that in our lives.  Someone who loves us enough to shine a gentle light on our failings.  Someone who can show us the way to change.  Someone to redeem us, to make us whole, and to help us become the best people we can be.  Someone who shows us the face … and the heart of God.

I thank God every day for all the blessings he has granted to me, but especially Ruth.  She may have come to our faith from outside, but she understands it better than I do sometimes.  Thanks to her, I have become a better Jew … and a better person.

 

Maybe… one day … I can do the same thing … shine the same light … for someone else.

The Faith of Job

sermon by Torin Eikler

Job 19:23-27a             Psalm 17:1-9

“Job is the most useless book in the Bible!” …

I was surprised to hear that sentence from my father about a month ago.  We were talking about the series on forgiveness that we have just finished up, and he suggested that we should have a Sunday on forgiving God.  He went on to recognize that there aren’t really any scriptures that talk about forgiving God.  “There’s just Job,” he said, “and I don’t like what it has to say … just, basically, that we have to accept whatever God sends our way and live with it.”

I think that is a common misunderstanding in our culture.  Thanks to the saying, “the patience of Job,” we have a sense that the book of Job is all about enduring the suffering that comes our way.  We may feel that it is unjust.  We may feel that it flies in the face of what the rest of the scriptures teach us about God’s compassion and care.  But we have come to believe (we may even have been taught) that this story shows us that we must just endure the unendurable without complaint.

That is most certainly not what Job is about, and a little background might be helpful in understanding what its message to us really is….

 

The book begins almost as if it was a folktale:

“There once was a man in the land of Uz….  That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.  There was born to him sever sons and three daughters.  He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.  His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn, and … when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them …; for Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.”

The scene is set.  Job was a pious man who kept the law scrupulously, taking care even to offer sacrifices on behalf of his family.  He was also a very, very rich man.  He had everything that he could possibly desire, yet he had resisted the corruption and decadence that often come with wealth and power.

From there, things get a little strange….  Satan challenges God to accept a little bet.  Take away everything from that upright man, and he won’t be so confident.  Instead of blessing and praising you, he will curse in your face.  God accepts and places Job and everything he has in Satan’s power to do with as he will – the one exception being that he cannot take his life.

And so the suffering begins.  Job’s flocks are plundered or killed.  His servants are killed.  His children perish in a freak wind storm that pushed the house down on their heads.  Then, Satan sends painful sores to cover the poor man, and his wife leaves him in disgust.  And despite all of this, Job remains steadfast in praising God.

Okay … that’s the first two chapters of Job, and if that’s all you read, then you have the image of the pious, enduring Job that gave birth to the saying.  But there are forty more chapters to go.  So, it seems like this picture must have been painted order to set the stage for something else, and as the story continues a very different Job comes out – Job the rebel.

This man rails against the unfairness of his experience.  When three of his friends come along and preach to him that suffering comes from wickedness and blessing from righteousness and, then, encourage him to repent his sinfulness so that he may return to God’s good graces, he debunks their false piety and flawed theology.  He even goes so far as to accuse God of injustice.  Even as he sits among the ashes of his life, he is, in spirit, rattling the cell bars of his fate.

 

For centuries, Jewish and Christian interpreters alike often seemed embarrassed by this transformed character with his anger and unrestrained blasphemy.  More recently, many people have been drawn to Job’s anger as a voice of moral outrage against a God who could condone his fate, let alone the atrocities of the 20^th century.[1]  But this story isn’t as straightforward as that either. 

At the very end of the book, God comes to Job in a great whirlwind and speaks words that are neither a comfort nor an apology.  Instead they are a simple statement that God is beyond the reach of humanity and shall not be judged by such a limited being, and while they might feel like a rebuke, Job responds by withdrawing his words against God and replacing them with praise and a reaffirmation of his faith.

 

It’s a strange book, I’ll admit.  Even knowing that Biblical scholars and theologians have come to the conclusion that Job was probably included to correct a misunderstanding of wisdom theology by making it clear that suffering is not punishment for sin, it is still hard to make sense of the story itself.  And I don’t blame anyone for wanting to throw it out altogether.  But I love it, and I am grateful that it has made its way into the Bible.

I love it because in all its complexity, it touches on many of the issues that are so important to our faith lives and our understanding.  It speaks to the reasons why we should try to live virtuous lives, the meaning of suffering, the nature of God, the place of justice in the world, and the relationship of order and chaos in God’s creation.[2]  But even beyond all those things, I treasure it because it gives me permission to have a faith like Job’s.

Everywhere else in the Bible – at least as far as I have found … everywhere else the scriptures give me the feeling that I should be praising God … that I should be thanking God … that I should be blessing the goodness and wisdom of the One who created me, redeemed my imperfection, and sustains my physical and spiritual life.  Even in the book of Psalms, where fully a third of the hymns are laments like the one we heard earlier, almost all the texts end with a return to praise.  Psalm 88 alone holds to lament until the end, and it certainly does not curse God.  It, like the others, only proclaims the feeling that God has abandoned us in the hour of our need.

Only Job … dear, pious, angry, blasphemous Job throws curses at God while his fists and his oozing wounds scream his anger at the injustice he suffers.

And it’s not just that he gets away with it – which he does.  No lightning bolt from the clouds.  No angel of death.  No poisonous snake or tormenting thirst comes to usher him into death and damnation.  In the end, after he heaps all of his anger and his suffering on God’s head in such a vicious fashion he gets exactly what he wanted and more.  God comes down to meet him face to face … well … face to whirlwind at least, and he gets it all back: new flocks, a new wife, seven more sons and three more daughters….

He gets away with it, yes, but what I find fascinating … what touches my heart is that in the midst of all his ranting and his rage, he still holds onto his faith.  He still has the space within himself to say “I know that my Redeemer lives…,” and to wish so fervently that his praise will be remembered.  If nothing else remains of his good and righteous life or his horrible suffering, he wants his words of praise and thanksgiving to be etched with iron into a rock to live forever.

 

On my bad days … or my bad weeks … when nothing seems to be going right … when my life seems to be falling apart despite everything that I try to accomplish and all my good intentions, that is the part of Job’s story that gives me hope.

It gives me hope because someone else has been there before.  I knew that of course.  All of us have been there before.  But here is someone whose story has been written down.  Here is someone whose experience has been made holy by having it inscribed in the scriptures.  And that makes my own experience holy … at least a little.

It gives me hope because it tells me that I am allowed to curse the injustice of my life.  I don’t have to sit there and take it, patiently claiming that I deserve it or that it must be for my own good.  I can scream at God.  I can let it all come out, and that doesn’t mean that I have a weak faith or that I can’t feel grateful at the same time.  It doesn’t mean that I am turning away from my Redeemer.  It doesn’t mean that I will be punished or that I am going to hell.

It gives me hope because it shows me that it’s okay.  It’s okay to feel abandoned.  It’s okay to feel persecuted.  It’s okay to demand that God come and answer for the injustices and the suffering of my life and yours.  And, … it is okay to let all that pour out instead of holding it inside.

 

God loves us all.  God cares about us all.  God moves through our lives and lives within our very souls.  And whatever we feel … whatever we need to say or shout or scream at God, it’s okay because she understands.

God will still care for us. 

God will still welcome us into her saving, soothing embrace. 
Even when we writhe in her arms and beat on her chest in our anger and our pain
            and our frustration, God will still love us.

---

[1] Newsom, Carol A. “The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume IV (Abingdon Press, Nashville) 1996.  319.

[2] ibid.