sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37
In Indiana you can get a driving permit at the ripe old age of sixteen. If you do well enough in Driver’s Ed, you don’t even have to take a driving test. You just go down to the DMV with a parent, show them your grade card, get your picture taken, and you’re all set to wreak havoc on the traffic patterns of unsuspecting citizens.
Well, I was one of those lucky students. No nerve wracking trip down the road with a stranger and her clip-board in the passenger’s seat for me. No steering through orange cones. AND, no parallel parking test in the middle of rush hour traffic on Main Street. It was a little anti-climactic, but there’s no doubt that I felt a sense of freedom and pride when I got that first little piece of laminated plastic. I was finally an adult … despite the red flag behind that goofy smile on my face.
Later that year, with hours and hours of local driving and one family trip out west under my belt, my mom and brother and I set out one morning for Cincinatti. It was a 5-6 hour trip south from our house N. Manchester, and we needed to be there by noon to board the river boat for my aunt’s birthday party.
My mother is naturally a morning person. So she started out the drive at 5:00 with my brother and me asleep in the back of the van, but after a couple of hours, she needed a break and a nap herself. So, I was called upon to take up the driving. The sun was up by then, and I settled in for an hour or two on the interstate with soothing music on, the heater running, and the cruise set at 63 miles per hour (on my mother’s insistence, of course – I would never drive over the speed limit myself.)
You might guess what happened next. After about twenty minutes, I nodded off for a few seconds which was more than enough to send us off the road, down the embankment, and into a guard rail. All three of us walked away from the accident without so much as a bruise; though the van lost all four tires, a good portion of the back right fender, and the entire back hatch. Needless to say, we did not make it to the birthday party, but we did have plenty of time to calm our nerves while we waited for my father to come and pick us up.
I learned a few things that morning. The first was that if you don’t hit the brakes, the cruise will keep a car going … very fast … whether you are on the road or not. The second was that my mother’s thoughts about guardian angels may not be quite as silly as I once thought. And the third was exactly how far I can push myself when I am at the wheel.
Only once since that morning have I nodded off while driving (one time to many), and I was fortunate enough to have an alert passenger along with me to wake me before the car was out of control. But, there have been many times when I have “zoned out” on the road – when I have been driving without any real awareness of what I was doing. I come to my senses at a stop light or a turn in my route, and I realize that I can’t remember the last several miles of driving. I don’t know how I made it where I am. I don’t know what I missed seeing or hearing along the way. I only know that I must have covered the miles in my own lane, driving … safely? Strictly speaking, I stayed awake, but I certainly wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been.
Of course, that’s not the best way to get from one place to another … behind the wheel of a speeding car on autopilot, but I suspect that many of you have had the same experience. And, I think that most of us have passed through days or months or years of our lives in the same way. We go through the motions that keep everything running smoothly – more or less, and we arrive at some major event (a birthday or an anniversary or a crisis in our family) and we wonder where the time went. How can it be that Meredith is driving now? When, exactly, did Brent start looking down on me? Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were celebrating Easter? Where did the time go?
It’s part of human nature … letting time sort of slip past while we wait for the big, memorable moments to come. At least I hope it’s not just me. I think it’s not just me, and I’m pretty sure that it’s nothing really new because I think that’s what both of our scriptures are talking about.
“Beware, keep alert,” Jesus warns us. “Keep awake, … for neither the angels in heaven, nor the [Son of Man,] but only the father knows the day or the hour.” In other words, don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Don’t even let yourself zone out. Pay attention because you never know when God is going to show up, and it could go badly for you if you are not prepared.
As Carrie pointed out last week, that’s not exactly comforting. It put us on edge because it makes us think of a vengeful, judging God – a God who would throw the unenlightened or the unfaithful into an eternal fire. That’s not the God we like to think about.
It’s all well and good for Jesus to speak of doom because he is the one person who will never have to worry about whether or not he is a worthy. The rest of us are not so lucky, and it seems more than a little unrealistic to expect that we could stay alert all the time, be prepared all the time, produce fruit all the time. It’s a superhuman task, and I have trouble even understanding what it would look like to live that way.
But, I can connect with the sentiments expressed in the poetry of Isaiah. It’s a bit more human. Sure, it says … sure we have strayed from the path. We have not lived as well as we should have. We haven’t kept all the laws or done all that we could have to be perfect followers, but that’s not entirely our fault. But what do you expect? You used to come down and make the mountains shake. You used to tear open the heavens and speak to us in burning bushes. And we knew that you were here with us. And we knew what you wanted us to do. And we knew that you cared about us because you blessed us with your presence. Then you went away … or at least it feels like you went away because we stopped seeing the big things and hearing the VOICE speaking to us. And we had to start trying to figure things out ourselves. Don’t be angry, we’re doing our best … or at least we are trying.
Two very different voices there in the scriptures. Two very different points of view, but they are both clear about one thing. God’s presence in the world changes things. When God’s face shines on us, we notice, and we feel that strange mix of fear and love that we call awe. We are moved to live more righteous lives – to follow the rules and listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If you’ve ever felt that sense of awe move you, you know how powerful it can be to sense God’s presence around you, and I can only imagine how much more intense the feeling would have been when God walked among us as Jesus.
And here we are … at the beginning of Advent. We’re coming awake again to celebrate the incarnation – to celebrate the fact that God did come and walk among us. And it’s a wonderful and joyous time. But, the truth is that God is always walking among us. God has been among us – walking, working, moving, and shaping our lives and our world all this time. God has not hidden her face from us, we just haven’t been paying attention. We’ve been on autopilot … again, and who knows what beautiful moments we’ve missed along the way.
Just before our wedding, the pastor who married us gave us one last piece of advice. “Do your best to pay attention during the ceremony because if you don’t, you won’t remember anything.” We have gotten much the same advice from many people as we have raised our family. “Cherish this time. Pay attention so that you can enjoy all the wonderful moments because they pass you by so quickly.”
It’s good advice. I tried my best, but I don’t remember very much of what actually happened on my wedding day. I try my best to each stage of my children’s development and to cherish each moment, but I am still caught off guard when Sebastian tries to remind me of something that happened a year ago and I can’t remember it. Just the other day, he came home from school and asked if he could do his homework, and I found myself wondering where the little boy I knew had gone. I just don’t know how to pay attention well enough to notice everything.
So how do we pay attention? That seems to be the big question behind all of this. How do we stay alert and present to our family or to the needs of our neighbors or to the presence and activity of God among us?
Honestly … I don’t know. I am sure the answer is different for each of us, and I have yet to find my own way.
I don’t think that many people have ever found a way. There is nothing definite in the gospels or in any of the other scriptures that I know. Jesus and Paul, the prophets and the Psalm writers, they all call believers to stay alert. They all talk about what can happen when people get a little sleepy. But despite all their insistence on paying attention, they offer no specific guidance on how to do that.
There are lots of other suggestions out there in books written by people who have been struggling toward this goal just as we have. They talk about praying, serving, discerning God’s will, practicing compassion and active love and other practices that have talked about, and all of those things can help … do help. They point us in the right direction at least. But one of the most helpful things … for me … has been J. Phillip Newell’s reminder that “looking to God is not looking away from life but looking more deeply into it. They reveal to us that God is at the heart of creation – is the heartbeat of life…, enfolding the earth and all its people with love.”
Even though that’s not specific (or maybe because it’s not specific), that gives me hope. It tells me that whatever else I do – whatever practices I try, whatever different paths I walk for a time - if I look hard enough, I will find God … not far away, but right here among us.
There may not be one right way for all of us to stay alert or even for any one of us to pay attention. Perhaps we are only meant to try… to turn off the soothing music, turn down the heat, and turn off the cruise and give it our best effort so that we miss as little as possible. That’s my goal, at least, because “Once upon a time, a great big God was born as a little small child, and the world changed. The God is still changing everything – me and you and the world around us – in beautiful ways.
I don’t think we want to miss that. I’m not sure that we can afford to give up those chances to find ourselves awakened to awe at the presence of God: … the God who comes in spectacular ways - rending the heavens, shaking the mountains, lying in a manger, and rising from a tomb … and the God who walks with us every day, touching the world with vulnerability and love.
It comes easily in this season of anticipation – paying attention. We have a feeling of expectation. And the closer we get to Christmas … and the stronger that feeling gets, the more we notice the presence of God … the more aware we are to touch of the divine around us.
Maybe … if we pay attention this time around, we’ll learn how to stay awake – really awake.
Maybe we can carry that feeling … that awareness with us down the long stretches of our lives too.
And then when we look around, we’ll find God … right there among us.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Double Vision
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Matthew 25:31-46, Ephesians 1:15-23
I have to say—the gospel readings for the past three weeks have been pretty… heavy. Bridesmaids who fall asleep late at night and bridesmaids who hoard their oil (the latter ones being commended); servants who are entrusted with their greedy master’s money, some are risky and some play it safe (the latter ones being chastised). And today. Those who see the suffering Christ and those who don’t quite see it yet (these last ones relegated to the position of goats and thrown into the metaphorical fire—at least we hope it’s metaphorical).
Now I don’t know about you, but these aren’t exactly the stories about Jesus and his teachings that I like to throw around, especially not to those new to Christianity, or critics of Christianity, or doubters in Christianity. Jesus sounds kind of harsh, and not very welcoming. And while I commend Torin for the job he did in helping us see these first two scriptures in a new light—to help us take them beyond face value—I have to say I’m still not comforted by them. And if I’m not comforted by the words of my Savior, can I claim to really be a follower?
I sometimes have difficultly seeing that.
To be honest, I have always liked the gospel scripture for today, about the sheep and goats. Not because I like sheep and goats, but because of the basic incarnational theology it presents. The idea that God is in everything, in everyone, in every situation…and our actions towards each thing, each person, each situation we encounter is an interaction, in some way, with the divine. And on the flip side, our lack of attention and engagement is, so it seems, an unconscious separation of ourselves from God.
It speaks to a basic Christian belief—and a cherished Anabaptist one—that faith is not private conviction, but it is also public practice.
Yet, as I have grown a little older, taking on more responsibilities, a family, a job, a small business, a yard and a garden and getting involved in my kids’ school—I have become more uncomfortable when I approach this scripture. It’s one thing to read this with the eyes of an idealistic, socially-conscious 20-year old with relatively few responsibilities, who sees the source of the social ills as caused by other people—older people—but now…You know they used to say “don’t trust anyone over 30…” because apparently something happens. Your priorities shift. Your life isn’t what you thought it might be. While you still might feel passionately about things, your motivation to act is…tempered somewhat.
So there is a part of me that feels like these gospel scriptures are a bit…unfair. I guess it’s because I’m now over 30. It gets us feeling a little bit down on ourselves and then today comes, when churches around the world are celebrating Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday before Advent begins, the Sunday when we proclaim Christ the head of the church, and we, his servant subjects. Christ reigns in glory and the whole world bows before him.
[pause]
Actually, this isn’t quite our cup of tea is it? I wonder how many of you actually knew it was called Christ the King Sunday… and if my little lectionary reflections hadn’t reminded me that today was indeed, Christ the King Sunday, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It feels a little—high church—for us lowly Brethren and Mennonites. Some people refer to this as "Reign of Christ" Sunday. I can swallow that cup of tea a little better.
So, whether it is Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, what is interesting is that lowly is what today’s gospel is all about. One article I read this week compared today’s gospel with the TV reality show Undercover Boss. “CBS describes the nature of the show: Each week, Undercover Boss follows a different executive as they leave the comfort of their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their companies. While working alongside their employees, they see the effects that their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organizations, and get an up-close look at both the good and the bad while discovering the unsung heroes who make their company run.
“It sounds a lot like the gospel text for Christ the King Sunday,” says Christine Chakoian. When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him. Then to everyone’s surprise,” Chakoian remarks, “he will reveal that he has been undercover among them for some time, observing them at work.”
Now, that isn’t the most comforting image either, in fact it is a bit anxiety producing, a bit like Big Brother. She goes on to admit this isn’t a perfect metaphor- it’s not that the primary purpose of God coming among us in Christ, and remaining with us in the Holy Spirit was so our cosmic Boss could see how the company was running--but this passage does asks us, how accurately are we anticipating the “CEO’s” priorities: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
Now if you have been coming to this congregation for even a short length of time, you will know that we are a people who are concerned. We are a socially-conscious people. I don’t need to waste my breath with most of you, convincing you the need to be aware of the suffering of the world in some way, that we are a people called to serve, that we pray with our feet, and that, as St. Teresa of Avila said, Christ has no body on earth now but ours. I know it, and I believe you know it.
But here’s the rub, as I see it. Because I know it leaves me in a quandary, and I imagine it does for some of you too:
Should I put all my money towards relief agencies serving those affected by drought and famine in Somalia, or towards campaigns creating a new food culture in public school lunches? The thirsty or the hungry?
Should I put my time into working for just immigration policies or volunteering at Christian Help to provide business clothing for women who are looking for work, but don’t have the appropriate wardrobe? The stranger or the naked?
Should I spend much of my energy into organizing for policies which grant dignity for those who are mentally ill, or should I put it towards the campaign working to eliminate human trafficking and modern day slavery in the US? The sick or the prisoner?
I think I do a good job of seeing the world’s needs and the disenfranchised. Of seeing Christ dwelling in the least of these. It’s there. It comes in the mail as fliers, it comes from our denominational agencies as glossy brochure and special offering initiatives or special worship focus, it comes when I’m listening to the news while I’m cooking dinner, and in it’s in my head at night when I thank God for my health, my family, my home, my job and realize that these are luxuries that the majority of the world doesn’t have.
And then it seeps in. That uninvited visitor who I want to keep out, but always seem to leave the backdoor of my mind unlocked for: guilt.
When I make a choice, does that mean that I’m neglecting the other one? Am I seeing Christ in the thirsty, but not the prisoner, the naked but not the sick? Am I willingly turning my back to all the other needy people and situations? Am I too attuned to the needs of those far away, and not looking at the needs at my own door step?
Sometimes, though I am self-admittedly a feminist and a pacifist, my mind needs a good slap in the face, like those old black and white movies where a valiant man gives the hysterical woman a slap, not with the intent to hurt her, but to snap her out of whatever it is that is spiraling out of control.
So, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but I think many of us do feel so compelled to do something for our neighbor, but we just don’t know what is needed, or effective, or sustainable. And let’s face it, “loving our neighbor” throws a lot wider net now than it did 2,000 years ago. We see every part of the world, more needs, more prisoners, more hungry, more definition of what justice means. And it seems the more we know, the more likely we feel we might be herded up with goats because we aren’t able to do everything for everybody.
And then we either live in that guilt, or…we just become numb to it. We choose not to see it. Or we choose to see it with our physical eyes, but not to engage it with our inner eye, our spiritual eye. The one that takes what we see physically, and somehow translates it into the language of the spirit.
And I think that’s a bit of what Paul can teach us in his letter to the Ephesians this week. When we wonder what is ours to do, either for the environment of West Virginia, or the children of sexual abuse, or refugees in Afghanistan, or our neighbor who is suffering with cancer…if we can take Paul’s words to heart we won’t say “I can’t do anything” and we won’t say, “I can do it all”.
Instead, let’s stop, take a deep breath and say, or rather pray Paul’s words:
[deep breath]
I pray that God…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.
[pause]
Stanley Hauerwas said that “We can only act within a world we can see. Vision is the necessary prerequisite for ethics.” We’re called to see the interconnectedness of the world. That because Christ suffered on the cross he is deeply a part of the world’s suffering and when we see we are compelled to respond…it’s a question of ethics. It’s seeing Christ in the world.
But it also calls us to double vision. It’s also about seeing with the inner eye the wisdom of Christ. We might call it discerning. We might ask the very important, but simple question, what is mine to do?
And I’ m pretty sure the answer won’t be everything. And it probably won’t be nothing. It might be as simple an answer as to say a prayer. And if it takes you beyond that, then that’s when Paul’s prayer, not guilt, becomes your motivator.
It has been said many places that your calling is where the world’s greatest need and your greatest joy meet. A double axis. A double vision. With a global society and technology the world’s needs are laid before us daily. But our greatest joy? Our divine abilities? Our passion? I sure wish someone could tweet me what those are, or get instant updates on my Facebook status.
Because that’s a lot harder. And it is frustrating. And as you discern and grow in wisdom remember that Christ is with you as well. “It humbles me to know that Christ cared so much that he left the comfort of his corner office to hang around his staff” says Christine Chakoian. “I am strengthened because he rolled up his sleeves in the muck of the factory and field, the hospital and kitchen, the halls of power and the temple of worship. I am reassured that he has compassion nofr those of us who, out of exhaustion or discouragement, are tempted to cut corners or even walk away.”
There is wisdom, and revelation. There is seeing with your heart enlightened. And when we see with that double vision, maybe then we can live in the hope. The hope where the Divine One joins you.
Matthew 25:31-46, Ephesians 1:15-23
I have to say—the gospel readings for the past three weeks have been pretty… heavy. Bridesmaids who fall asleep late at night and bridesmaids who hoard their oil (the latter ones being commended); servants who are entrusted with their greedy master’s money, some are risky and some play it safe (the latter ones being chastised). And today. Those who see the suffering Christ and those who don’t quite see it yet (these last ones relegated to the position of goats and thrown into the metaphorical fire—at least we hope it’s metaphorical).
Now I don’t know about you, but these aren’t exactly the stories about Jesus and his teachings that I like to throw around, especially not to those new to Christianity, or critics of Christianity, or doubters in Christianity. Jesus sounds kind of harsh, and not very welcoming. And while I commend Torin for the job he did in helping us see these first two scriptures in a new light—to help us take them beyond face value—I have to say I’m still not comforted by them. And if I’m not comforted by the words of my Savior, can I claim to really be a follower?
I sometimes have difficultly seeing that.
To be honest, I have always liked the gospel scripture for today, about the sheep and goats. Not because I like sheep and goats, but because of the basic incarnational theology it presents. The idea that God is in everything, in everyone, in every situation…and our actions towards each thing, each person, each situation we encounter is an interaction, in some way, with the divine. And on the flip side, our lack of attention and engagement is, so it seems, an unconscious separation of ourselves from God.
It speaks to a basic Christian belief—and a cherished Anabaptist one—that faith is not private conviction, but it is also public practice.
Yet, as I have grown a little older, taking on more responsibilities, a family, a job, a small business, a yard and a garden and getting involved in my kids’ school—I have become more uncomfortable when I approach this scripture. It’s one thing to read this with the eyes of an idealistic, socially-conscious 20-year old with relatively few responsibilities, who sees the source of the social ills as caused by other people—older people—but now…You know they used to say “don’t trust anyone over 30…” because apparently something happens. Your priorities shift. Your life isn’t what you thought it might be. While you still might feel passionately about things, your motivation to act is…tempered somewhat.
So there is a part of me that feels like these gospel scriptures are a bit…unfair. I guess it’s because I’m now over 30. It gets us feeling a little bit down on ourselves and then today comes, when churches around the world are celebrating Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday before Advent begins, the Sunday when we proclaim Christ the head of the church, and we, his servant subjects. Christ reigns in glory and the whole world bows before him.
[pause]
Actually, this isn’t quite our cup of tea is it? I wonder how many of you actually knew it was called Christ the King Sunday… and if my little lectionary reflections hadn’t reminded me that today was indeed, Christ the King Sunday, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It feels a little—high church—for us lowly Brethren and Mennonites. Some people refer to this as "Reign of Christ" Sunday. I can swallow that cup of tea a little better.
So, whether it is Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, what is interesting is that lowly is what today’s gospel is all about. One article I read this week compared today’s gospel with the TV reality show Undercover Boss. “CBS describes the nature of the show: Each week, Undercover Boss follows a different executive as they leave the comfort of their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their companies. While working alongside their employees, they see the effects that their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organizations, and get an up-close look at both the good and the bad while discovering the unsung heroes who make their company run.
“It sounds a lot like the gospel text for Christ the King Sunday,” says Christine Chakoian. When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him. Then to everyone’s surprise,” Chakoian remarks, “he will reveal that he has been undercover among them for some time, observing them at work.”
Now, that isn’t the most comforting image either, in fact it is a bit anxiety producing, a bit like Big Brother. She goes on to admit this isn’t a perfect metaphor- it’s not that the primary purpose of God coming among us in Christ, and remaining with us in the Holy Spirit was so our cosmic Boss could see how the company was running--but this passage does asks us, how accurately are we anticipating the “CEO’s” priorities: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
Now if you have been coming to this congregation for even a short length of time, you will know that we are a people who are concerned. We are a socially-conscious people. I don’t need to waste my breath with most of you, convincing you the need to be aware of the suffering of the world in some way, that we are a people called to serve, that we pray with our feet, and that, as St. Teresa of Avila said, Christ has no body on earth now but ours. I know it, and I believe you know it.
But here’s the rub, as I see it. Because I know it leaves me in a quandary, and I imagine it does for some of you too:
Should I put all my money towards relief agencies serving those affected by drought and famine in Somalia, or towards campaigns creating a new food culture in public school lunches? The thirsty or the hungry?
Should I put my time into working for just immigration policies or volunteering at Christian Help to provide business clothing for women who are looking for work, but don’t have the appropriate wardrobe? The stranger or the naked?
Should I spend much of my energy into organizing for policies which grant dignity for those who are mentally ill, or should I put it towards the campaign working to eliminate human trafficking and modern day slavery in the US? The sick or the prisoner?
I think I do a good job of seeing the world’s needs and the disenfranchised. Of seeing Christ dwelling in the least of these. It’s there. It comes in the mail as fliers, it comes from our denominational agencies as glossy brochure and special offering initiatives or special worship focus, it comes when I’m listening to the news while I’m cooking dinner, and in it’s in my head at night when I thank God for my health, my family, my home, my job and realize that these are luxuries that the majority of the world doesn’t have.
And then it seeps in. That uninvited visitor who I want to keep out, but always seem to leave the backdoor of my mind unlocked for: guilt.
When I make a choice, does that mean that I’m neglecting the other one? Am I seeing Christ in the thirsty, but not the prisoner, the naked but not the sick? Am I willingly turning my back to all the other needy people and situations? Am I too attuned to the needs of those far away, and not looking at the needs at my own door step?
Sometimes, though I am self-admittedly a feminist and a pacifist, my mind needs a good slap in the face, like those old black and white movies where a valiant man gives the hysterical woman a slap, not with the intent to hurt her, but to snap her out of whatever it is that is spiraling out of control.
So, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but I think many of us do feel so compelled to do something for our neighbor, but we just don’t know what is needed, or effective, or sustainable. And let’s face it, “loving our neighbor” throws a lot wider net now than it did 2,000 years ago. We see every part of the world, more needs, more prisoners, more hungry, more definition of what justice means. And it seems the more we know, the more likely we feel we might be herded up with goats because we aren’t able to do everything for everybody.
And then we either live in that guilt, or…we just become numb to it. We choose not to see it. Or we choose to see it with our physical eyes, but not to engage it with our inner eye, our spiritual eye. The one that takes what we see physically, and somehow translates it into the language of the spirit.
And I think that’s a bit of what Paul can teach us in his letter to the Ephesians this week. When we wonder what is ours to do, either for the environment of West Virginia, or the children of sexual abuse, or refugees in Afghanistan, or our neighbor who is suffering with cancer…if we can take Paul’s words to heart we won’t say “I can’t do anything” and we won’t say, “I can do it all”.
Instead, let’s stop, take a deep breath and say, or rather pray Paul’s words:
[deep breath]
I pray that God…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.
[pause]
Stanley Hauerwas said that “We can only act within a world we can see. Vision is the necessary prerequisite for ethics.” We’re called to see the interconnectedness of the world. That because Christ suffered on the cross he is deeply a part of the world’s suffering and when we see we are compelled to respond…it’s a question of ethics. It’s seeing Christ in the world.
But it also calls us to double vision. It’s also about seeing with the inner eye the wisdom of Christ. We might call it discerning. We might ask the very important, but simple question, what is mine to do?
And I’ m pretty sure the answer won’t be everything. And it probably won’t be nothing. It might be as simple an answer as to say a prayer. And if it takes you beyond that, then that’s when Paul’s prayer, not guilt, becomes your motivator.
It has been said many places that your calling is where the world’s greatest need and your greatest joy meet. A double axis. A double vision. With a global society and technology the world’s needs are laid before us daily. But our greatest joy? Our divine abilities? Our passion? I sure wish someone could tweet me what those are, or get instant updates on my Facebook status.
Because that’s a lot harder. And it is frustrating. And as you discern and grow in wisdom remember that Christ is with you as well. “It humbles me to know that Christ cared so much that he left the comfort of his corner office to hang around his staff” says Christine Chakoian. “I am strengthened because he rolled up his sleeves in the muck of the factory and field, the hospital and kitchen, the halls of power and the temple of worship. I am reassured that he has compassion nofr those of us who, out of exhaustion or discouragement, are tempted to cut corners or even walk away.”
There is wisdom, and revelation. There is seeing with your heart enlightened. And when we see with that double vision, maybe then we can live in the hope. The hope where the Divine One joins you.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Risky Business
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 25:14-30 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
Do you believe that God has a plan for your life? Not just some big, vague hope but a specific, detailed plan?
That’s a big and complicated question. It brings up all sorts of theological questions. And it raises a host of doubts, fears, and insecurities in many of us. If God does have a plan for each of us and we all live according to that plan, then what do we make of free will? Are we just pawns in some universal game of chess? If God has no plan at all, does that mean that God is powerless? Or doesn’t care? Are we just playing our own little games with each other?
But, putting all that aside for another time, I’ll ask again … Do you believe that God has a plan for you?
Whether your answer is yes or no … or you have no idea, you are not alone. According to a recent Baylor Religion Survey, 41% of American’s strongly believe that God does have a plan for them. About 30% believe that there is no plan. And about 30% are somewhere in the middle, leaning one way or the other but not strongly.
One interesting thing about those figures is that a large portion of the people who said that they do believe (and especially those who believe strongly) also believe that part of that plan is granting them, personally, blessings of wealth and prosperity. And despite the current recession and the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, that number is growing, especially among those who are at the lowest income level.
That kind of magical thinking seems foreign and naïve to me, but the studies show that 2 out of every 10 of us believe that we will become millionaires in the next decade with the percentage growing the further down the economic ladder you move. And part of the reason for that may be the growing number and popularity of preachers who teach a "prosperity gospel" that promises wealth in return for sacrificial giving to support their ministries.
Those teachings are often justified by quoting the words of the parable we heard today with its promise that "to all those who have, more will be given, and they well have an abundance…" as well as older texts from Deuteronomy. Among other promises, those scriptures say that "God will … bless you and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, you grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock…. You shall be the most blessed of [people]."
But proof-texting – taking small pieces of scripture out of context and using them to support our own ideas - can be a risky business … especially when the scripture is a parable.
This story that we call the parable of the talents is not at all straight-forward. There are two major interpretations out there, and I have found the summary offered by Christina Berry helpful in my thinking:
Some [read] this parable in an upside-down kind of way, a parable not of the kingdom, but of how things really are ... with the master as an example of greed and acquisitiveness and the first and second slaves being opportunistic traders in mortgage-backed securities and derivatives– Wall Street executives, before the fall. They understand the third slave to be the faithful one, the one who refused empire, who refused to lend money at interest or to go for the quick buck.
But when the outer darkness descends and the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin, it’s hard to take that third slave as a new folk hero of the economy, some kind of first century 99-percenter, a participant in the “Occupy Jerusalem” movement. It’s hard to see anything heroic in the one who has nothing, who is not productive, who lives in fear of losing.
Others read this as unequivocal kingdom language. Jesus is … using oblique language to describe something hard to understand. It is something he wants the listener to understand on a gut level, not something you can write a book report about, not something you can make a chart or spread sheet about. Jesus is talking about trust and faithfulness, about using what we are given to bring about the kingdom.
Either way, the parable is not really about money. And it’s NOT about getting a good return on an investment. As Robert Farrar Capon tells us, “It [is] about a judgment rendered on faith-in-action, [but] not on the results of that faith.... It emphatically does not say that God is a bookkeeper looking for productive results…. The only bookkeeper in the parable is the servant who decided he had to fear a nonexistent audit and therefore hid his one talent in the ground….”
The judgment – the knashing of teach in the outer darkness - has nothing to do with which slave got a return on his investment and which didn’t. It has everything to do with who was willing to make use of the gift he was entrusted with and who wasn’t. All the Master asked of the slaves was that they do something … anything with his wealth so that it didn’t just sit idle while he was gone.
It is a risky business, this telling of stories. If we take this story literally, when it is not at all about what really happened, God ends up being characterized as a greedy old man, like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” capitalizing on the grief and the needs and the misery of the common folk or Mr. Potter in the Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.
A story like that can play into our deepest fears, and heighten our anxiety about money. It’s frightening enough to make us all bury a small fortune, to sock away fifteen years of income, in case something terrible is going to happen. It’s scary enough to make us focus on money and productivity above all things, working and saving to keep our anxiety at bay.
But if we read it differently – more like a parable should be read, then it asks even more of us. It asks us to risk more than money. It asks us to give up our fears about security and our self-made dreams about the future. It asks us to step out in faith on the path laid out for us by God – the Way to abundant life, trusting … trusting that God will be there to take care of us.
Imagine, for a moment, that some billionaire (Warren Buffet perhaps) gave you a gift of millions of dollars to care for while he was away. What would you do with that money? Give it away? Spend it on yourself? Spend it on others? Invest it? Save it?
Maybe you’d follow Warren Buffett’s advice: “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy,” and you’d risk it all in the high yield investment markets. Maybe you would simply do the best you could, trusting that the gift was meant for you, and that the one who gave it trusts you to use it to the best of your ability. Maybe you’d put the money into charitable organizations so that it would earn a different kind of interest. Maybe, at various times or places in your life, you’d do all three.
Now imagine that same scenario with something much more intangible – something much more precious: an overpowering grace and love, say, or an everlasting covenant, or a spring of living water, or the bread of life. Maybe you would feel lost or out-of your depth enough to risk your confident self-image, to risk admitting that you just don’t know what to do with such an amazing gift, to risk letting the Holy Spirit move into your place of not-knowing, and lead you into uncharted territory.
Maybe you would become greedy to multiply it by sharing it – just like the magic penny of our childhood songs. You would have an insatiable appetite for evangelism, for mission, for telling the good news, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless visiting the sick, welcoming children.
Maybe you’d risk everything you have, everything you are, for the sake of sharing the hope and promise you have found.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I do believe that God has a plan for each of us. I believe that we are each servants of a master who has shares with each of us the smallest portion of her unlimited supply of grace and love – a tiny portion that is still more than we could ever imagine – hoping that we will do something … anything with it.
Jesus showed us what that can look like. From the vantage point of our world, that can look like failure that will bring down the wrath of the Master. But in the Realm of God things work differently. God’s grace sets us free from that kind of tyranny so that we don’t have to act out of fear, hiding what we have. And we don’t have to save what God gives us because there is an infinite supply.
It’s a risky business … this discipleship, this sharing the good news of God’s grace, this throwing love around like it was only money. It’s risky … in the eyes of the world, but it’s the most secure investment that any of us who live in the Kingdom will ever make. And the abundant life that was already there … waiting for us to give birth to it – promises more riches and joy than we could ever come up with on our own.
I’d say it’s worth the risk.
Matthew 25:14-30 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
Do you believe that God has a plan for your life? Not just some big, vague hope but a specific, detailed plan?
That’s a big and complicated question. It brings up all sorts of theological questions. And it raises a host of doubts, fears, and insecurities in many of us. If God does have a plan for each of us and we all live according to that plan, then what do we make of free will? Are we just pawns in some universal game of chess? If God has no plan at all, does that mean that God is powerless? Or doesn’t care? Are we just playing our own little games with each other?
But, putting all that aside for another time, I’ll ask again … Do you believe that God has a plan for you?
Whether your answer is yes or no … or you have no idea, you are not alone. According to a recent Baylor Religion Survey, 41% of American’s strongly believe that God does have a plan for them. About 30% believe that there is no plan. And about 30% are somewhere in the middle, leaning one way or the other but not strongly.
One interesting thing about those figures is that a large portion of the people who said that they do believe (and especially those who believe strongly) also believe that part of that plan is granting them, personally, blessings of wealth and prosperity. And despite the current recession and the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, that number is growing, especially among those who are at the lowest income level.
That kind of magical thinking seems foreign and naïve to me, but the studies show that 2 out of every 10 of us believe that we will become millionaires in the next decade with the percentage growing the further down the economic ladder you move. And part of the reason for that may be the growing number and popularity of preachers who teach a "prosperity gospel" that promises wealth in return for sacrificial giving to support their ministries.
Those teachings are often justified by quoting the words of the parable we heard today with its promise that "to all those who have, more will be given, and they well have an abundance…" as well as older texts from Deuteronomy. Among other promises, those scriptures say that "God will … bless you and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, you grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock…. You shall be the most blessed of [people]."
But proof-texting – taking small pieces of scripture out of context and using them to support our own ideas - can be a risky business … especially when the scripture is a parable.
This story that we call the parable of the talents is not at all straight-forward. There are two major interpretations out there, and I have found the summary offered by Christina Berry helpful in my thinking:
Some [read] this parable in an upside-down kind of way, a parable not of the kingdom, but of how things really are ... with the master as an example of greed and acquisitiveness and the first and second slaves being opportunistic traders in mortgage-backed securities and derivatives– Wall Street executives, before the fall. They understand the third slave to be the faithful one, the one who refused empire, who refused to lend money at interest or to go for the quick buck.
But when the outer darkness descends and the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin, it’s hard to take that third slave as a new folk hero of the economy, some kind of first century 99-percenter, a participant in the “Occupy Jerusalem” movement. It’s hard to see anything heroic in the one who has nothing, who is not productive, who lives in fear of losing.
Others read this as unequivocal kingdom language. Jesus is … using oblique language to describe something hard to understand. It is something he wants the listener to understand on a gut level, not something you can write a book report about, not something you can make a chart or spread sheet about. Jesus is talking about trust and faithfulness, about using what we are given to bring about the kingdom.
Either way, the parable is not really about money. And it’s NOT about getting a good return on an investment. As Robert Farrar Capon tells us, “It [is] about a judgment rendered on faith-in-action, [but] not on the results of that faith.... It emphatically does not say that God is a bookkeeper looking for productive results…. The only bookkeeper in the parable is the servant who decided he had to fear a nonexistent audit and therefore hid his one talent in the ground….”
The judgment – the knashing of teach in the outer darkness - has nothing to do with which slave got a return on his investment and which didn’t. It has everything to do with who was willing to make use of the gift he was entrusted with and who wasn’t. All the Master asked of the slaves was that they do something … anything with his wealth so that it didn’t just sit idle while he was gone.
It is a risky business, this telling of stories. If we take this story literally, when it is not at all about what really happened, God ends up being characterized as a greedy old man, like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” capitalizing on the grief and the needs and the misery of the common folk or Mr. Potter in the Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.
A story like that can play into our deepest fears, and heighten our anxiety about money. It’s frightening enough to make us all bury a small fortune, to sock away fifteen years of income, in case something terrible is going to happen. It’s scary enough to make us focus on money and productivity above all things, working and saving to keep our anxiety at bay.
But if we read it differently – more like a parable should be read, then it asks even more of us. It asks us to risk more than money. It asks us to give up our fears about security and our self-made dreams about the future. It asks us to step out in faith on the path laid out for us by God – the Way to abundant life, trusting … trusting that God will be there to take care of us.
Imagine, for a moment, that some billionaire (Warren Buffet perhaps) gave you a gift of millions of dollars to care for while he was away. What would you do with that money? Give it away? Spend it on yourself? Spend it on others? Invest it? Save it?
Maybe you’d follow Warren Buffett’s advice: “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy,” and you’d risk it all in the high yield investment markets. Maybe you would simply do the best you could, trusting that the gift was meant for you, and that the one who gave it trusts you to use it to the best of your ability. Maybe you’d put the money into charitable organizations so that it would earn a different kind of interest. Maybe, at various times or places in your life, you’d do all three.
Now imagine that same scenario with something much more intangible – something much more precious: an overpowering grace and love, say, or an everlasting covenant, or a spring of living water, or the bread of life. Maybe you would feel lost or out-of your depth enough to risk your confident self-image, to risk admitting that you just don’t know what to do with such an amazing gift, to risk letting the Holy Spirit move into your place of not-knowing, and lead you into uncharted territory.
Maybe you would become greedy to multiply it by sharing it – just like the magic penny of our childhood songs. You would have an insatiable appetite for evangelism, for mission, for telling the good news, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless visiting the sick, welcoming children.
Maybe you’d risk everything you have, everything you are, for the sake of sharing the hope and promise you have found.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I do believe that God has a plan for each of us. I believe that we are each servants of a master who has shares with each of us the smallest portion of her unlimited supply of grace and love – a tiny portion that is still more than we could ever imagine – hoping that we will do something … anything with it.
Jesus showed us what that can look like. From the vantage point of our world, that can look like failure that will bring down the wrath of the Master. But in the Realm of God things work differently. God’s grace sets us free from that kind of tyranny so that we don’t have to act out of fear, hiding what we have. And we don’t have to save what God gives us because there is an infinite supply.
It’s a risky business … this discipleship, this sharing the good news of God’s grace, this throwing love around like it was only money. It’s risky … in the eyes of the world, but it’s the most secure investment that any of us who live in the Kingdom will ever make. And the abundant life that was already there … waiting for us to give birth to it – promises more riches and joy than we could ever come up with on our own.
I’d say it’s worth the risk.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Be Prepared ....
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 25:1-13 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
We don’t watch television very much in our house. Well … that’s not, strictly speaking, true. We do watch a good bit of television, but it’s not traditional television – not cable or broadcast, I mean. We have been members of Netflix for a while, and so we “stream” television shows. That means that we can watch a much larger variety of shows … and that we are always at least a year behind the curve … no water cooler chatter for us … no water cooler at work either when it comes to that. Another benefit to streaming is that we don’t have to sit through all the commercials which is a pleasant change from the television I grew up with … and a life-saver when it comes to keeping our boys from pestering us for every new thing that they see!
But one side effect that I didn’t expect when we started up with Netflix is that when I do see commercials on someone else’s TV or some other internet service they get right into my head and take up residence there. It’s like I have lost my calluses or dropped some internal shield that used to help those ads slide right on past. Or maybe I’m just more aware of how the ads I do see affect me. Whichever one it is, I now have State Farm agents popping up with everything from sandwiches to hot tubs and a little baby in a walker zooming down four-lane highways in my head … in the left lane nonetheless … on the way to become a picture on a far-away, net-linked printer. And beyond replaying the silly hooks and the blatant consumerism, I have also noticed an increasing sense of impending doom after I watch commercial TV.
Personally, I blame Nationwide car insurance – you know, the accident forgiveness people. A few years back, they began a series of commercials that started with rainy nights and spinning cars filled with children in car seats and fairly minor car damage. “Are you prepared?” a deep, confidence-inspiring voice asked as they showed a mother holding her uninjured child and a talking with someone on the cell phone with a police car and a tow truck in the background. Are you prepared? If you have an accident, who will you call to get your car towed and repaired?
Since then, other companies have started to use the same theme, showing grieving families at funerals or people standing outside their homes and hugging each other as they stare at the tree that crashed through the roof. The scheme, of course, is to show you worst case scenarios that get your adrenaline going and to put them up against the comforting image of safe families gathered together in relief as they call whatever company will deal with the crisis for them. We, of course, want to have just such support to fall back on if such a disaster comes our way. And while I don’t think it’s really fair to use that kind of emotional manipulation to frighten people into buying some kind of insurance, I didn’t really feel like it had gotten completely out of hand until I received an automated phone call at the church that was trying to scare me into buying flood insurance … for a building that sits at least 400 feet above the river on top of a hill.
To be fair, the advertisers are not really at the heart of my stress. It started long before any of these commercials popped up. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have lived with it most of my life – the result of having parents who taught me to look to the future and save money for whatever might be coming up. That was excellent advice (and I hope to instill those thoughts in my children as well), but it planted a seed of worry in the back of my mind that thrives on the what-if scenarios that are all around us.
What if there is a double-dip recession or even a depression? What if Greece or Italy actually default on their loans and the Eurozone collapses? What if a 1,000-year earthquake hits near Morgantown? What if fuel costs, rising population, and global warming make food so expensive that we can’t afford to eat? What if those people who predicted the end of the world in May had been right? (Their back-up date was October 21st by the way. Guess we dodged another one there.) It’s getting quite apocalyptic out there with all these predictions of doom, and the message we’re getting from everyone is be prepared because you never know when something really big is coming down the pipe.
Both Paul’s letter and Matthew’s parable fit right in with that warning. All around the time of Jesus people were predicting a big change on the wind. The Roman Empire had been around for awhile, and there were signs that it was weakening. It was no longer growing as it had in the early years, and the borders were threatened in many places by people who wanted their land back with interest. Others inside the empire were dreaming of self-rule and a bigger share of the wealth that they saw all around them. Among the Jews, in particular, the prophesies of the Messiah were being studied, and the sense that he would arrive soon was growing.
The early church, of course, believed that the Messiah had already come – the first time. Looking back, they understood this story of the ten bridesmaids in a different light. Instead of a parable about the coming of the Messiah who would overthrow the Romans, it became a prophesy about Jesus’ return. The sense of immediacy was still there though because everyone believed that return could happen any time. And so Matthew tacked on a last little bit of encouragement and warning that may even have come from Paul’s letters: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” In other words, “prepare yourselves for the end is near.”
Down through the ages, people have responded to that warning in different ways. The early church took on a communal lifestyle where everyone contributed to the meeting the needs of all. When more money was needed, people sold their property or other goods to buy food and clothing. In the lead up to May 21st of this year, believers quit their jobs, got rid of many of their “treasures,” and took to the streets to warn us all that the Day of Judgment was coming. In the early days of the Anabaptists, there was even a group who took over the city of Munster by force. They instituted a communal sectarian government, renamed the city the “New Jerusalem,” installed one of their own as a new king in line of David, and prepared to take the rest of the world by storm – a grand conquest that lasted all of three years.
Obviously, I don’t think that was the way to go. I don’t think any of us can rush the second coming through anything we do, and I, for one, don’t think Jesus would be very pleased to return and find that his followers had taken over by force of arms. I also don’t think that dropping everything in order to stand on the street proclaiming “the end is near” is what Matthew or Paul meant when they said “keep awake.” And while I am drawn to the idea of living together in a supportive community where we work together to meet one another’s needs, I’m not sure that it worked for them or would work for us. As good an idea as it sounds, it doesn’t seem to be sustainable.
I wonder if that’s part of our struggle with “be prepared” scriptures like these. We respond to them as if there was something that we need to do – and do quickly – to get our house in order. It’s almost like those days before family or friends come to visit … when we are rushing around cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets, vacuuming, and dusting so that everything is neat and tidy and no one sees the truth about how we usually live.
I think these texts are talking about a different kind of preparedness. They seem to be about being ready all the time. And it’s more like changing our habits and our approach to life than it is about last minute cleaning. As Paul puts it, we need to live thoughtfully and act with care so that our lives reflect who we are as followers of Christ because we don’t know – can’t know – when the “Big Day” is coming or even what any day will bring. We need to keep our wicks trimmed and our lamps supplied with oil all the time so that we are ready.
In our ministry classes at seminary, one thing that they told us over and over again was that we needed to care for ourselves if we wanted care for others. And they were talking about every part of our lives – our physical health, our mental health, and our spiritual health. I heard it so much that I started to develop a bored little voice in my head that would say the words along with the professors: “if you don’t make time to take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of anyone else,” and it became a bit of a joke among the students.
But, they were right, of course. If I got depressed, I couldn’t take care of my children or work at the church – at least not very well. And if I’m sick, every visit, especially in a hospital or nursing home – comes with a real risk that I will pass on whatever bug has me under the weather.
Thankfully, I don’t often get really sick and I haven’t yet suffered from serious mental illness. So, those issues are not as much of a problem as they might be. But, I do find myself struggling with my spiritual life from time to time, and that makes it just as hard to be a good pastor. One of my problems is that when my faith feels vibrant and alive, I want to go out and do things – visit with people, teach Sunday School, be part of interfaith work in town, serve food to people at Circle of Friends. I don’t want to stay in and spend time in prayer or reading the Bible because it doesn’t feel like I need to.
And then my oil runs out. I am suddenly exhausted, and all those things that seemed so exciting and fulfilling start to feel a bit more challenging. At those times, I find it hard to take time for prayer or meditation or scripture study because I don’t feel like I have the space in my schedule or the energy it would take with everything else that needs to be done.
I have learned enough, over the past few years, to know that those are times when I need to set aside my to-do list and take a bit of a retreat in order to recharge my batteries. And I am beginning to really learn that I need to do a better job of taking time out when I am feeling energized as well. I suppose I am starting to recognize the ways that I am like the unprepared bridesmaids and beginning to understand how I could become more the other ones – the ones who are ready.
I think that’s what it’s all about really. It’s about thinking and living in the long-term. Last minute, “emergency measures” don’t seem to work all that well whether we’re talking about financial systems, natural disasters, or spiritual life. Sometimes they have to happen, but it’s better if we can be insured – if we can make a habit of making the time and space to refresh ourselves and keep our lamps filled.
However you do that – whether it be through prayer or walking in the woods, reading or taking naps, talking with friends or writing or taking hot baths – whatever works for you … put it on your schedule and do it. Do it to take care of yourself. Do it so that you can care for others. Do it so that your light can shine every day, whatever that day may bring.
Matthew 25:1-13 I Thessalonians 5:1-11
We don’t watch television very much in our house. Well … that’s not, strictly speaking, true. We do watch a good bit of television, but it’s not traditional television – not cable or broadcast, I mean. We have been members of Netflix for a while, and so we “stream” television shows. That means that we can watch a much larger variety of shows … and that we are always at least a year behind the curve … no water cooler chatter for us … no water cooler at work either when it comes to that. Another benefit to streaming is that we don’t have to sit through all the commercials which is a pleasant change from the television I grew up with … and a life-saver when it comes to keeping our boys from pestering us for every new thing that they see!
But one side effect that I didn’t expect when we started up with Netflix is that when I do see commercials on someone else’s TV or some other internet service they get right into my head and take up residence there. It’s like I have lost my calluses or dropped some internal shield that used to help those ads slide right on past. Or maybe I’m just more aware of how the ads I do see affect me. Whichever one it is, I now have State Farm agents popping up with everything from sandwiches to hot tubs and a little baby in a walker zooming down four-lane highways in my head … in the left lane nonetheless … on the way to become a picture on a far-away, net-linked printer. And beyond replaying the silly hooks and the blatant consumerism, I have also noticed an increasing sense of impending doom after I watch commercial TV.
Personally, I blame Nationwide car insurance – you know, the accident forgiveness people. A few years back, they began a series of commercials that started with rainy nights and spinning cars filled with children in car seats and fairly minor car damage. “Are you prepared?” a deep, confidence-inspiring voice asked as they showed a mother holding her uninjured child and a talking with someone on the cell phone with a police car and a tow truck in the background. Are you prepared? If you have an accident, who will you call to get your car towed and repaired?
Since then, other companies have started to use the same theme, showing grieving families at funerals or people standing outside their homes and hugging each other as they stare at the tree that crashed through the roof. The scheme, of course, is to show you worst case scenarios that get your adrenaline going and to put them up against the comforting image of safe families gathered together in relief as they call whatever company will deal with the crisis for them. We, of course, want to have just such support to fall back on if such a disaster comes our way. And while I don’t think it’s really fair to use that kind of emotional manipulation to frighten people into buying some kind of insurance, I didn’t really feel like it had gotten completely out of hand until I received an automated phone call at the church that was trying to scare me into buying flood insurance … for a building that sits at least 400 feet above the river on top of a hill.
To be fair, the advertisers are not really at the heart of my stress. It started long before any of these commercials popped up. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have lived with it most of my life – the result of having parents who taught me to look to the future and save money for whatever might be coming up. That was excellent advice (and I hope to instill those thoughts in my children as well), but it planted a seed of worry in the back of my mind that thrives on the what-if scenarios that are all around us.
What if there is a double-dip recession or even a depression? What if Greece or Italy actually default on their loans and the Eurozone collapses? What if a 1,000-year earthquake hits near Morgantown? What if fuel costs, rising population, and global warming make food so expensive that we can’t afford to eat? What if those people who predicted the end of the world in May had been right? (Their back-up date was October 21st by the way. Guess we dodged another one there.) It’s getting quite apocalyptic out there with all these predictions of doom, and the message we’re getting from everyone is be prepared because you never know when something really big is coming down the pipe.
Both Paul’s letter and Matthew’s parable fit right in with that warning. All around the time of Jesus people were predicting a big change on the wind. The Roman Empire had been around for awhile, and there were signs that it was weakening. It was no longer growing as it had in the early years, and the borders were threatened in many places by people who wanted their land back with interest. Others inside the empire were dreaming of self-rule and a bigger share of the wealth that they saw all around them. Among the Jews, in particular, the prophesies of the Messiah were being studied, and the sense that he would arrive soon was growing.
The early church, of course, believed that the Messiah had already come – the first time. Looking back, they understood this story of the ten bridesmaids in a different light. Instead of a parable about the coming of the Messiah who would overthrow the Romans, it became a prophesy about Jesus’ return. The sense of immediacy was still there though because everyone believed that return could happen any time. And so Matthew tacked on a last little bit of encouragement and warning that may even have come from Paul’s letters: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” In other words, “prepare yourselves for the end is near.”
Down through the ages, people have responded to that warning in different ways. The early church took on a communal lifestyle where everyone contributed to the meeting the needs of all. When more money was needed, people sold their property or other goods to buy food and clothing. In the lead up to May 21st of this year, believers quit their jobs, got rid of many of their “treasures,” and took to the streets to warn us all that the Day of Judgment was coming. In the early days of the Anabaptists, there was even a group who took over the city of Munster by force. They instituted a communal sectarian government, renamed the city the “New Jerusalem,” installed one of their own as a new king in line of David, and prepared to take the rest of the world by storm – a grand conquest that lasted all of three years.
Obviously, I don’t think that was the way to go. I don’t think any of us can rush the second coming through anything we do, and I, for one, don’t think Jesus would be very pleased to return and find that his followers had taken over by force of arms. I also don’t think that dropping everything in order to stand on the street proclaiming “the end is near” is what Matthew or Paul meant when they said “keep awake.” And while I am drawn to the idea of living together in a supportive community where we work together to meet one another’s needs, I’m not sure that it worked for them or would work for us. As good an idea as it sounds, it doesn’t seem to be sustainable.
I wonder if that’s part of our struggle with “be prepared” scriptures like these. We respond to them as if there was something that we need to do – and do quickly – to get our house in order. It’s almost like those days before family or friends come to visit … when we are rushing around cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets, vacuuming, and dusting so that everything is neat and tidy and no one sees the truth about how we usually live.
I think these texts are talking about a different kind of preparedness. They seem to be about being ready all the time. And it’s more like changing our habits and our approach to life than it is about last minute cleaning. As Paul puts it, we need to live thoughtfully and act with care so that our lives reflect who we are as followers of Christ because we don’t know – can’t know – when the “Big Day” is coming or even what any day will bring. We need to keep our wicks trimmed and our lamps supplied with oil all the time so that we are ready.
In our ministry classes at seminary, one thing that they told us over and over again was that we needed to care for ourselves if we wanted care for others. And they were talking about every part of our lives – our physical health, our mental health, and our spiritual health. I heard it so much that I started to develop a bored little voice in my head that would say the words along with the professors: “if you don’t make time to take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of anyone else,” and it became a bit of a joke among the students.
But, they were right, of course. If I got depressed, I couldn’t take care of my children or work at the church – at least not very well. And if I’m sick, every visit, especially in a hospital or nursing home – comes with a real risk that I will pass on whatever bug has me under the weather.
Thankfully, I don’t often get really sick and I haven’t yet suffered from serious mental illness. So, those issues are not as much of a problem as they might be. But, I do find myself struggling with my spiritual life from time to time, and that makes it just as hard to be a good pastor. One of my problems is that when my faith feels vibrant and alive, I want to go out and do things – visit with people, teach Sunday School, be part of interfaith work in town, serve food to people at Circle of Friends. I don’t want to stay in and spend time in prayer or reading the Bible because it doesn’t feel like I need to.
And then my oil runs out. I am suddenly exhausted, and all those things that seemed so exciting and fulfilling start to feel a bit more challenging. At those times, I find it hard to take time for prayer or meditation or scripture study because I don’t feel like I have the space in my schedule or the energy it would take with everything else that needs to be done.
I have learned enough, over the past few years, to know that those are times when I need to set aside my to-do list and take a bit of a retreat in order to recharge my batteries. And I am beginning to really learn that I need to do a better job of taking time out when I am feeling energized as well. I suppose I am starting to recognize the ways that I am like the unprepared bridesmaids and beginning to understand how I could become more the other ones – the ones who are ready.
I think that’s what it’s all about really. It’s about thinking and living in the long-term. Last minute, “emergency measures” don’t seem to work all that well whether we’re talking about financial systems, natural disasters, or spiritual life. Sometimes they have to happen, but it’s better if we can be insured – if we can make a habit of making the time and space to refresh ourselves and keep our lamps filled.
However you do that – whether it be through prayer or walking in the woods, reading or taking naps, talking with friends or writing or taking hot baths – whatever works for you … put it on your schedule and do it. Do it to take care of yourself. Do it so that you can care for others. Do it so that your light can shine every day, whatever that day may bring.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
A Different Kind of Love
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 22:34-46 Deuteronomy 34:1-12
As I have been reading commentaries and listserves about “the greatest commandment” these past few weeks, I have found myself caught up in several different conversations about some pretty fascinating stuff … well … fascinating to those of us who are professional exegetes. We get into the scriptures and dig around in there and look for all the little contradictions or images or translation issues and make a really big deal about how they change “the whole interpretation of a text” because that’s what it means to be a professional exegete. We’re people who are paid to nit-pick about the details of scripture.
This time around, my colleagues and I have been talking about questions like: “Isn’t it interesting that the Pharisees asking for the one greatest commandment in the law and Jesus gives two commandments as an answer?” and “Why would the lawyer ask for the greatest commandment when everyone would have known the answer? What was the catch?” and “What was so hard about Jesus’ question? If David was speaking by the Spirit, wouldn’t the Pharisees have viewed his words as a prophesy and assume that they would be words spoken to a Messiah who was still a son of David sometime in the future?” … and the perpetual discussion of the three types of love: eros, philia, agape or intimate love, brotherly love, and unconditional or self-less love.
If you think those are long and confusing questions, you should “listen” on the conversations! They are a bit tedious at times, and since none of us really have the answers, things tend to degenerate after a while. But it is easy – for me – to get lost in the discussions and forget the more basic questions that can make these verses difficult to understand. Thankfully, I was brought back to earth by a question from our bible study. I think it was Rich Fleisher who said, “How can we love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all of our mind and still have room for anything else?”
Now there’s a question worth pondering.
A couple of years ago, Carrie told me a story. It was soon after Alistair was born, and we were struggling to figure out how to juggle the needs of two children. Personally, I think that’s the hardest transition to make. You go from having two adults to one child to having, quite often, two children and only one parent. (shake head in disbelief)
Anyway, Carrie had been talking with other mothers and passed on this modern folktale:
There was a young mother who was finding it hard to manage life with her new baby. She didn’t seem to be able to figure out what her child needed when he was crying, and she knew that she was supposed to be able to … perhaps through some kind of intuition. She was up all night, and with all the chores that needed to be done around the house, she didn’t get much sleep during the day. She was a wreck.
Then, one day, when she was walking her son past a local park, she saw a woman there with five children playing and a young baby in her arms. “How do you do it?!” she burst out, close to tears. “How do manage six kids?! I takes all my time with just one.”
The woman looked at the young mother and replied, “It doesn’t take any more time to raise six children than one.”
Love isn’t quite the same thing as time, though. Time comes in a fixed amount – here today and gone tomorrow. And it often feels like we don’t have enough time to get everything that we want or need to get done.
Love doesn’t march on. It doesn’t run out. It would make sense that if did. Then it would fit into our world of limited resources. But, that’s not the way of love. There always seems to be more of it. If you’re a parent … or a child, you know that instinctively. Do you love one parent more than another? One child? If a new person comes into your life, do they slowly take over space in your heart from somebody else? … Maybe the Grinch standing at the top of Mt. Strumpet would be a better image to describe the nature of love. Somehow, our hearts seem to grow and grow and grow to make space for more and more.
That makes it a little easier to answer Rich’s question. We can love God – at least with all our heart – and still have space to love others. But our heart is not all that God asks for, and when you add in those other two, it still feels a little intimidating. And here’s where those twisting conversations I can come in handy.
One of the good bits from this week’s trip through the listserve discussion is this. The word for “love” that Matthew uses in this text does not fit into that three tier system I mentioned above. It’s certainly not erotic love. But it’s not brotherly love or even completely self-less love as you might think (though agape comes the closest). In fact, there’s really not a Greek word that fits the situation. The Greek translators of two millennia ago just had to do their best with what they had.
“Love” in these verse isn’t even really a feeling in the way that we think of feelings, which may be what gave those translators so much trouble. This love is about commitment and dedication. In the Hebrew that Jesus was quoting, the word used is hesed which is translated in other places as “steadfast love,” and usually refers to God’s love for the chosen people. So, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” means to commit yourself to God in the same way God is committed to creation. And, “love your neighbor as yourself” means committing to yourself to your neighbors’ wellbeing (and to your own, by the way) in the same way that God is committed to the wellbeing of all humanity.
Now some of you, I’m sure, are thinking, “that doesn’t make it sound any easier. Now it’s not just love. It’s dedicating my whole self to God and then trying to find something left to others … not to mention myself.” (raise hand) You are not alone in that. Our spiritual history is filled with people who tried to balance these two commandments … tried and failed. King David, the disciples, Paul (at least in his early years), Jacob, Adam and Eve … from the very beginning, it seems, we have been struggling to find space in our hearts and our lives for God, ourselves, and our neighbors, and we tend to come down on one side of the equation or the other … usually ourselves.
And then there is Moses. For more than forty years he served God and the people with his whole heart, mind, and soul with only one or two lapses. He endured a lot of frustration and fear in the process, I imagine. He stood up to the greatest power of the time to demand the release of the slaves, after all. And, he led those same people through a barren land and took care of them despite their whining and complaining. He even stood face to face with God and argued for them when they had abandoned both God and him to worship gold.
I think, he must have found a good deal of joy in journey as well. How else would he have been able to keep it up for so long. He watched as the Hebrews grew up as a people of faith. He watched as his own family grew up on the journey. And, in the end, he got to see the promised land before he passed his work on.
Now, even the people who wrote his epitaph centuries later said that there has never been anyone else like Moses. The other great prophets and leaders don’t quite live up to his accomplishments. Some have signs and wonders nearly as impressive on their resumes. Some were granted visions of great power. Some worked tirelessly for the people. But none of them were able to put the whole package together. And that makes it hard to imagine that we normal folks would be able to come anywhere close.
On the surface of it, I think that’s right. But here’s another gem mentioned in passing in one of my conversations: “you cannot love God wholly without also loving your neighbor as yourself and vice versa.” What my colleague meant by that is that God’s deepest desire – God’s strongest commitment is to care for the well-being of all creation and especially humanity. If you dedicate yourself to God, you dedicate yourself to that over-riding purpose. And that means that you will be dedicated to your neighbors and yourself as well. On the flip side, if you commit your life to caring for your neighbors, you will be committed to following God’s will.
The hard part is making that commitment with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind because there really isn’t room for anything else. But, the is joy and fulfillment that comes from that decision reaches into every part of our lives.
Some of you, I’m sure, have heard me talk about getting baptized a year after I was married. It was a long time coming, and I was finally able to let go of my own need for control just long enough to go through with it at 29 years old. (I’m pretty sure that I’ve taken a firm grasp on that need for control again, but it’s not so bad as it used to be…. Two steps forward for one step back.)
When I went through the vows that I would be taking with pastor Alice, I realized that I needed to think about a few things … well just one thing actually. I was about to commit my life to God, but I had already made that same promise to my wife. I could not then – and I still can’t now – guarantee that living out that commitment would not take me away from her at some point. That’s not to say that it would break apart our marriage or threaten my love for her, but my vow to be there for her in every circumstance of our lives might have to be stretched if we were both truly called to different places for a time. Such things do happen when we strive to follow God’s will.
Ten years later, following God has led me to meaningful work and deepened my commitment to care for others. (I honestly don’t know if I would have made it this far as a parent if it weren’t for that extra something that keeps me from total breakdown in the midst of all the whining and everything else.) My life is richer and more joyful than I would have imagined.
I still wonder about that possibility, though. I still wonder if the day will come when one of us will be called across the country or across the globe. But, I also still remember the thought that the final bit of my worry. It was when I said that the God I believed in would only choose to separate us if there were no other way. The God I believe in would prefer to have loving couples stay together. It is better for them, and together – supporting each other – they can do more good than they could on their own. I still remember those words, and I still believe them.
It is not an easy thing to love God or to love others. But it does get easier when we stop trying to see them as two different things. Then, the struggle that we face is not in finding a balance. It is in making the decision to love … to love with a commitment care for the well-being of all humanity – to those closest to us and to those we only cross paths with for a moment. It is consecrating our lives to the service of God and neighbor each day, knowing that we will probably fall short, and then getting up the next day to try again.
It’s not easy, and it is all-consuming. But that is the path of discipleship, and if we follow … day after day after day, our lives are filled with a joy and a peace that come only to those who love.
Matthew 22:34-46 Deuteronomy 34:1-12
As I have been reading commentaries and listserves about “the greatest commandment” these past few weeks, I have found myself caught up in several different conversations about some pretty fascinating stuff … well … fascinating to those of us who are professional exegetes. We get into the scriptures and dig around in there and look for all the little contradictions or images or translation issues and make a really big deal about how they change “the whole interpretation of a text” because that’s what it means to be a professional exegete. We’re people who are paid to nit-pick about the details of scripture.
This time around, my colleagues and I have been talking about questions like: “Isn’t it interesting that the Pharisees asking for the one greatest commandment in the law and Jesus gives two commandments as an answer?” and “Why would the lawyer ask for the greatest commandment when everyone would have known the answer? What was the catch?” and “What was so hard about Jesus’ question? If David was speaking by the Spirit, wouldn’t the Pharisees have viewed his words as a prophesy and assume that they would be words spoken to a Messiah who was still a son of David sometime in the future?” … and the perpetual discussion of the three types of love: eros, philia, agape or intimate love, brotherly love, and unconditional or self-less love.
If you think those are long and confusing questions, you should “listen” on the conversations! They are a bit tedious at times, and since none of us really have the answers, things tend to degenerate after a while. But it is easy – for me – to get lost in the discussions and forget the more basic questions that can make these verses difficult to understand. Thankfully, I was brought back to earth by a question from our bible study. I think it was Rich Fleisher who said, “How can we love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all of our mind and still have room for anything else?”
Now there’s a question worth pondering.
A couple of years ago, Carrie told me a story. It was soon after Alistair was born, and we were struggling to figure out how to juggle the needs of two children. Personally, I think that’s the hardest transition to make. You go from having two adults to one child to having, quite often, two children and only one parent. (shake head in disbelief)
Anyway, Carrie had been talking with other mothers and passed on this modern folktale:
There was a young mother who was finding it hard to manage life with her new baby. She didn’t seem to be able to figure out what her child needed when he was crying, and she knew that she was supposed to be able to … perhaps through some kind of intuition. She was up all night, and with all the chores that needed to be done around the house, she didn’t get much sleep during the day. She was a wreck.
Then, one day, when she was walking her son past a local park, she saw a woman there with five children playing and a young baby in her arms. “How do you do it?!” she burst out, close to tears. “How do manage six kids?! I takes all my time with just one.”
The woman looked at the young mother and replied, “It doesn’t take any more time to raise six children than one.”
Love isn’t quite the same thing as time, though. Time comes in a fixed amount – here today and gone tomorrow. And it often feels like we don’t have enough time to get everything that we want or need to get done.
Love doesn’t march on. It doesn’t run out. It would make sense that if did. Then it would fit into our world of limited resources. But, that’s not the way of love. There always seems to be more of it. If you’re a parent … or a child, you know that instinctively. Do you love one parent more than another? One child? If a new person comes into your life, do they slowly take over space in your heart from somebody else? … Maybe the Grinch standing at the top of Mt. Strumpet would be a better image to describe the nature of love. Somehow, our hearts seem to grow and grow and grow to make space for more and more.
That makes it a little easier to answer Rich’s question. We can love God – at least with all our heart – and still have space to love others. But our heart is not all that God asks for, and when you add in those other two, it still feels a little intimidating. And here’s where those twisting conversations I can come in handy.
One of the good bits from this week’s trip through the listserve discussion is this. The word for “love” that Matthew uses in this text does not fit into that three tier system I mentioned above. It’s certainly not erotic love. But it’s not brotherly love or even completely self-less love as you might think (though agape comes the closest). In fact, there’s really not a Greek word that fits the situation. The Greek translators of two millennia ago just had to do their best with what they had.
“Love” in these verse isn’t even really a feeling in the way that we think of feelings, which may be what gave those translators so much trouble. This love is about commitment and dedication. In the Hebrew that Jesus was quoting, the word used is hesed which is translated in other places as “steadfast love,” and usually refers to God’s love for the chosen people. So, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” means to commit yourself to God in the same way God is committed to creation. And, “love your neighbor as yourself” means committing to yourself to your neighbors’ wellbeing (and to your own, by the way) in the same way that God is committed to the wellbeing of all humanity.
Now some of you, I’m sure, are thinking, “that doesn’t make it sound any easier. Now it’s not just love. It’s dedicating my whole self to God and then trying to find something left to others … not to mention myself.” (raise hand) You are not alone in that. Our spiritual history is filled with people who tried to balance these two commandments … tried and failed. King David, the disciples, Paul (at least in his early years), Jacob, Adam and Eve … from the very beginning, it seems, we have been struggling to find space in our hearts and our lives for God, ourselves, and our neighbors, and we tend to come down on one side of the equation or the other … usually ourselves.
And then there is Moses. For more than forty years he served God and the people with his whole heart, mind, and soul with only one or two lapses. He endured a lot of frustration and fear in the process, I imagine. He stood up to the greatest power of the time to demand the release of the slaves, after all. And, he led those same people through a barren land and took care of them despite their whining and complaining. He even stood face to face with God and argued for them when they had abandoned both God and him to worship gold.
I think, he must have found a good deal of joy in journey as well. How else would he have been able to keep it up for so long. He watched as the Hebrews grew up as a people of faith. He watched as his own family grew up on the journey. And, in the end, he got to see the promised land before he passed his work on.
Now, even the people who wrote his epitaph centuries later said that there has never been anyone else like Moses. The other great prophets and leaders don’t quite live up to his accomplishments. Some have signs and wonders nearly as impressive on their resumes. Some were granted visions of great power. Some worked tirelessly for the people. But none of them were able to put the whole package together. And that makes it hard to imagine that we normal folks would be able to come anywhere close.
On the surface of it, I think that’s right. But here’s another gem mentioned in passing in one of my conversations: “you cannot love God wholly without also loving your neighbor as yourself and vice versa.” What my colleague meant by that is that God’s deepest desire – God’s strongest commitment is to care for the well-being of all creation and especially humanity. If you dedicate yourself to God, you dedicate yourself to that over-riding purpose. And that means that you will be dedicated to your neighbors and yourself as well. On the flip side, if you commit your life to caring for your neighbors, you will be committed to following God’s will.
The hard part is making that commitment with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind because there really isn’t room for anything else. But, the is joy and fulfillment that comes from that decision reaches into every part of our lives.
Some of you, I’m sure, have heard me talk about getting baptized a year after I was married. It was a long time coming, and I was finally able to let go of my own need for control just long enough to go through with it at 29 years old. (I’m pretty sure that I’ve taken a firm grasp on that need for control again, but it’s not so bad as it used to be…. Two steps forward for one step back.)
When I went through the vows that I would be taking with pastor Alice, I realized that I needed to think about a few things … well just one thing actually. I was about to commit my life to God, but I had already made that same promise to my wife. I could not then – and I still can’t now – guarantee that living out that commitment would not take me away from her at some point. That’s not to say that it would break apart our marriage or threaten my love for her, but my vow to be there for her in every circumstance of our lives might have to be stretched if we were both truly called to different places for a time. Such things do happen when we strive to follow God’s will.
Ten years later, following God has led me to meaningful work and deepened my commitment to care for others. (I honestly don’t know if I would have made it this far as a parent if it weren’t for that extra something that keeps me from total breakdown in the midst of all the whining and everything else.) My life is richer and more joyful than I would have imagined.
I still wonder about that possibility, though. I still wonder if the day will come when one of us will be called across the country or across the globe. But, I also still remember the thought that the final bit of my worry. It was when I said that the God I believed in would only choose to separate us if there were no other way. The God I believe in would prefer to have loving couples stay together. It is better for them, and together – supporting each other – they can do more good than they could on their own. I still remember those words, and I still believe them.
It is not an easy thing to love God or to love others. But it does get easier when we stop trying to see them as two different things. Then, the struggle that we face is not in finding a balance. It is in making the decision to love … to love with a commitment care for the well-being of all humanity – to those closest to us and to those we only cross paths with for a moment. It is consecrating our lives to the service of God and neighbor each day, knowing that we will probably fall short, and then getting up the next day to try again.
It’s not easy, and it is all-consuming. But that is the path of discipleship, and if we follow … day after day after day, our lives are filled with a joy and a peace that come only to those who love.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Treasures in the Dark
sermon by Carrie Eikler
October 16
Psalm 139, Isaiah 45:1-9
When Sebastian was only about two months old, I went to our family physician for a routine physical. My whole body was weary: recovering from nine months of pregnancy, a first labor and delivery, lack of sleep. If you’ve ever gone through something like that you know that in that situation, you are acutely aware of your body, and somehow, completely numb to it at the same time. Everything feels rundown, pained, tired…but not at all your own
The physical was going normal until the doctor gently put his hands to my throat. And I noticed it. That thing you don’t want to see your doctors do. The furrowed brow. My stomach made itself known to me again. It flipped and tightened. He said, (and this is me reconstructing the conversation as best as I can, 5 years later) he said, “Ah. Yeah. I want you to get your thyroid checked out. It feels swollen.” Now the furrowed brow was mine. “So I want to get you in for an ultrasound. Now it could be hypo-thyroidism. And of course there is a chance that it could be cancer but thyroid cancer is very treatable…”
And by the time he said cancer, I was gone. Check. Me. Out of here. I thought, should I start writing my bucket list now, or talk to Torin about funeral arrangements? As I tried to shake these thoughts out of my head, my doctor said “Are you OK?”
Am I ok? Am I OK. You tell me I might have cancer, all be it apparently the best type of cancer to get if you’re gonna get it, and you ask me if I’m ok? No, thank you very much, I’m not ok.
Well, as reassuringly as he could be, he gently put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I don’t think it’s the worst. But we just want to rule it out.” I couldn’t tell if the lump in my throat had grown painful from the recently contrived cancer imposed on it, or from trying to hold back the tears and swallow the fear.
A week later, I found out it wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t even hyper- or hypo-thyroidism. I have multinodule goiters on my thyroid that enflame from time to time.
Strangely, I’m glad I had that experience. And I’m glad I had it because of what came to me in my moment of fear. I didn’t want the ultrasound . I didn’t want to know if it was the worst or if it was nothing because I was terrified that it was the worst.
But then somehow my rational self that seemed to be put on hold enlivened, or maybe it was the wisdom of my mother who has faced and beat cancer…something told me: it is what it is, and the truth will set you free.
If it was cancer, it was cancer whether or not I called it cancer. Somehow, in that moment, that realization was more powerful to me than whatever outcome was ahead of me. And somehow that knowledge--whether it was my rational mind or my mother’s wisdom-- whatever it was…it was of God.
So I get these things checked out annually, a routine process of “ruling out the worst.” Or perhaps, as I’ve tried to think of it, confirming the best-- that being, confirming it is nothing I need to worry about. But once a year as I lay in that darkened room, and they squeeze that goop on my throat—just to make sure it’s nothing—and I still lose a little bit of confidence.
That experience of discovering these goiters was a rather “dark moment,” you might say. We use a lot of that language in Judeo-Christian tradition, don’t we? Dark-light. Lightness permeating the dark. Dispelling the dark. Dark is bad. So you can imagine my surprise when I approached today’s scripture with that general understanding and see something counter to that idea. Isaiah says something that’s challenges our thoughts. And the Israelites were probably pretty surprised by it too.
To begin with God is proclaiming that he has anointed Cyrus--in fact the Hebrew word that is used is the word for “Messiah.” Wait, Jesus is Messiah right? Well here, God is saying Cyrus is chosen, anointed.
Cyrus. He isn’t really one of those guys that come to our minds when we think about characters in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was a conqueror of Babylon, and he sent back the exiles to their homeland. Hooray! Shout the Israelites.
Oh, and he was a pagan—not one of the chosen people. “Ohhh, “groan the Israelites . That is…unexpected.
Cyrus did not know YHWH, though somehow he was part of YHWH’s larger plan for the Israelite people. Now that’s a whole other sermon, and really that’s not what surprised me.
What surprised me was this: “I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places so you may now that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.”
I find that to be a powerful and beautiful image: treasures of darkness, riches hidden in secret places…in this way you will know it is God, the one who calls you by name. Not, “treasures when the light comes to you,” or “riches in the brightness shining of the glorious day.” It echoes the Psalmists amazement of God being part and within the darkness around him, talking about God working intricately in the minute and unknown and newly forming parts of life. The dark places.
I have to say, this verse sat with me in such a profound way these last few weeks, that much of the time, I had to just let it work its own meaning out for me, knitting itself together in my heart, making itself known to me in the dark. It was something that the writer Sarah Ban Breathnach says “is experienced, not understood.” I struggled to think about how to speak on this thing that I profoundly felt. And then I came across this sermon, written by Charles Spurgeon, a popular English pastor from the mid-19th century.
Now I’m not one to find a lot of relevant joy in the sermons of dead 19th century British men. But something he preached to his congregation struck me. He preached these words on the eve of a solar eclipse in 1848. He said,
“All are expecting to-morrow to witness one of the greatest sights in the universe—the annular eclipse of the sun. It is possible that many of us shall have gone the way of all flesh before such a sight shall again be seen in this country and we are therefore looking for it with some degree of expectation….I shall note this morning, in addressing you, that since the Lord creates darkness and well as light; first of all eclipses of every kind are part of God’s way of governing the world; in the second place, we shall notice that since God creates the darkness as well as the light, we may conclude beyond all doubt that he has a design in the eclipse—in the darkness as well as the light; and then, thirdly, we shall notice that as all things that God has created, whether they be light or whether they be dark, have a sermon for us—no doubt there are some sermons to be found in this.”
How do we see God in the dark moments of our lives--the eclipses of every kind in our life? That’s the spiritual question this scripture has planted in me. As we have been exploring Appreciative Inquiry in Sunday School, and as I have been doing my own work with cultivating gratitude, it has become apparent to me that gratitude is seeking the divine in all things. Not always seeing the divine, but seeking the divine. In all things. The darkness and the light. The messiah within the pagan. All are part of me, says God. That’s how you know I am God.
But this does not mean that we have to fall into theologies that tell us God brings us bad things and there is an ultimate plan in it all. Or to put our arms around a friend who is hurting and say “There, there. I’m sure God has a reason for all of this.”
As your pastor, I will never do that to you, even if you want to hear it…because we sometimes do want to hear that God has a reason for bringing darkness into our lives because at least, God is remembering us. At least, we are part of God’s plan.
But God has promised us more than being part of some scheme. Some “plan.” God has promised to know us intimately, and before you stop me and say “ah! You said two weeks ago that we couldn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus,” because I know I may be sounding contradictory, I’m not talking about us knowing Jesus in a way we know a friend. I’m talking about God knowing us when we can’t even see God, or trust God, or know God. God naming us, claiming us, wrapping us in divine love even in the darkness.
The Israelites were forced to shift their thinking. God was claiming that God used an outsider, a pagan as a divine instrument. That had to be pretty hard to swallow. Why couldn’t God use one of us? At least, use someone we can appreciate and be grateful for? Not this…outsider.
What if we shifted our minds? What if we didn’t see darkness and light as different struggles. Or that we have to move through difficult times in order to be in the good times. What if we recognize that God is in the total eclipse? The passing of the moon and the brightening of the sun. That God is to be found in the lump in the throat, not just present when the diagnoses is good.
[pause]
Somehow, the dark has something for us. A treasure. A moment of touching God. Something richer than we could never seen when we are blinded by the brightness of the sun. It can be a dark experience that comes at you unbidden, or the dark part of your soul that you have wrestled with for a lifetime. In that darkness there is a treasure. In that secret pain you don’t want anyone to know about, there is something rich.
And as the psalmist recognizes, is in the dark places where life, and new life, grows--getting ready to be born. The dark is a fertile place, a womb of new life created, knitted, fashioned, and we can’t escape it, or the God who is in it.
Charles Spurgeon must have preached what was about an hour sermon, by the length of the text. And he concluded with this image, as he spiritually prepared his congregation to face the physical eclipse with a spiritual openness.
“—And let the Christian recollect another sermon. Let him take his child out, and when he takes him outside the door, and he sees the sun begin to grow dark and all things fade away, and a strange colour coming over the landscape, the child will begin to cry and say “Father the sun is going out, he is dying; we shall never have any light again.” And as gradually as the moon creeps over the sun’s broad surface and there remains only a solitary streak of light, the tears run down the child’s eyes as he says, We shall have to live in darkness;” and he would begin to weep for sorrow of heart. You would touch your child on the head, and say, “No, my little child, the sun has not gone out; it is only the moon passing across its face; it will shine bright enough presently.” And your child would soon believe you; and as he saw the light returning, he would feel thankful, and would believe what you had said, that the sun was always the same. Now, you will be like a child to-morrow. When you get into trouble you will be saying, “God has changed.” Then let God’s Word speak to you as unto children, and let it say, “No, God has not changed; with him is no variableness, neither shadow of a turning.”
There are treasures for you in your darkness. Riches hidden in secret and unwanted places. When you find them, you will know God.
October 16
Psalm 139, Isaiah 45:1-9
When Sebastian was only about two months old, I went to our family physician for a routine physical. My whole body was weary: recovering from nine months of pregnancy, a first labor and delivery, lack of sleep. If you’ve ever gone through something like that you know that in that situation, you are acutely aware of your body, and somehow, completely numb to it at the same time. Everything feels rundown, pained, tired…but not at all your own
The physical was going normal until the doctor gently put his hands to my throat. And I noticed it. That thing you don’t want to see your doctors do. The furrowed brow. My stomach made itself known to me again. It flipped and tightened. He said, (and this is me reconstructing the conversation as best as I can, 5 years later) he said, “Ah. Yeah. I want you to get your thyroid checked out. It feels swollen.” Now the furrowed brow was mine. “So I want to get you in for an ultrasound. Now it could be hypo-thyroidism. And of course there is a chance that it could be cancer but thyroid cancer is very treatable…”
And by the time he said cancer, I was gone. Check. Me. Out of here. I thought, should I start writing my bucket list now, or talk to Torin about funeral arrangements? As I tried to shake these thoughts out of my head, my doctor said “Are you OK?”
Am I ok? Am I OK. You tell me I might have cancer, all be it apparently the best type of cancer to get if you’re gonna get it, and you ask me if I’m ok? No, thank you very much, I’m not ok.
Well, as reassuringly as he could be, he gently put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I don’t think it’s the worst. But we just want to rule it out.” I couldn’t tell if the lump in my throat had grown painful from the recently contrived cancer imposed on it, or from trying to hold back the tears and swallow the fear.
A week later, I found out it wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t even hyper- or hypo-thyroidism. I have multinodule goiters on my thyroid that enflame from time to time.
Strangely, I’m glad I had that experience. And I’m glad I had it because of what came to me in my moment of fear. I didn’t want the ultrasound . I didn’t want to know if it was the worst or if it was nothing because I was terrified that it was the worst.
But then somehow my rational self that seemed to be put on hold enlivened, or maybe it was the wisdom of my mother who has faced and beat cancer…something told me: it is what it is, and the truth will set you free.
If it was cancer, it was cancer whether or not I called it cancer. Somehow, in that moment, that realization was more powerful to me than whatever outcome was ahead of me. And somehow that knowledge--whether it was my rational mind or my mother’s wisdom-- whatever it was…it was of God.
So I get these things checked out annually, a routine process of “ruling out the worst.” Or perhaps, as I’ve tried to think of it, confirming the best-- that being, confirming it is nothing I need to worry about. But once a year as I lay in that darkened room, and they squeeze that goop on my throat—just to make sure it’s nothing—and I still lose a little bit of confidence.
That experience of discovering these goiters was a rather “dark moment,” you might say. We use a lot of that language in Judeo-Christian tradition, don’t we? Dark-light. Lightness permeating the dark. Dispelling the dark. Dark is bad. So you can imagine my surprise when I approached today’s scripture with that general understanding and see something counter to that idea. Isaiah says something that’s challenges our thoughts. And the Israelites were probably pretty surprised by it too.
To begin with God is proclaiming that he has anointed Cyrus--in fact the Hebrew word that is used is the word for “Messiah.” Wait, Jesus is Messiah right? Well here, God is saying Cyrus is chosen, anointed.
Cyrus. He isn’t really one of those guys that come to our minds when we think about characters in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was a conqueror of Babylon, and he sent back the exiles to their homeland. Hooray! Shout the Israelites.
Oh, and he was a pagan—not one of the chosen people. “Ohhh, “groan the Israelites . That is…unexpected.
Cyrus did not know YHWH, though somehow he was part of YHWH’s larger plan for the Israelite people. Now that’s a whole other sermon, and really that’s not what surprised me.
What surprised me was this: “I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places so you may now that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.”
I find that to be a powerful and beautiful image: treasures of darkness, riches hidden in secret places…in this way you will know it is God, the one who calls you by name. Not, “treasures when the light comes to you,” or “riches in the brightness shining of the glorious day.” It echoes the Psalmists amazement of God being part and within the darkness around him, talking about God working intricately in the minute and unknown and newly forming parts of life. The dark places.
I have to say, this verse sat with me in such a profound way these last few weeks, that much of the time, I had to just let it work its own meaning out for me, knitting itself together in my heart, making itself known to me in the dark. It was something that the writer Sarah Ban Breathnach says “is experienced, not understood.” I struggled to think about how to speak on this thing that I profoundly felt. And then I came across this sermon, written by Charles Spurgeon, a popular English pastor from the mid-19th century.
Now I’m not one to find a lot of relevant joy in the sermons of dead 19th century British men. But something he preached to his congregation struck me. He preached these words on the eve of a solar eclipse in 1848. He said,
“All are expecting to-morrow to witness one of the greatest sights in the universe—the annular eclipse of the sun. It is possible that many of us shall have gone the way of all flesh before such a sight shall again be seen in this country and we are therefore looking for it with some degree of expectation….I shall note this morning, in addressing you, that since the Lord creates darkness and well as light; first of all eclipses of every kind are part of God’s way of governing the world; in the second place, we shall notice that since God creates the darkness as well as the light, we may conclude beyond all doubt that he has a design in the eclipse—in the darkness as well as the light; and then, thirdly, we shall notice that as all things that God has created, whether they be light or whether they be dark, have a sermon for us—no doubt there are some sermons to be found in this.”
How do we see God in the dark moments of our lives--the eclipses of every kind in our life? That’s the spiritual question this scripture has planted in me. As we have been exploring Appreciative Inquiry in Sunday School, and as I have been doing my own work with cultivating gratitude, it has become apparent to me that gratitude is seeking the divine in all things. Not always seeing the divine, but seeking the divine. In all things. The darkness and the light. The messiah within the pagan. All are part of me, says God. That’s how you know I am God.
But this does not mean that we have to fall into theologies that tell us God brings us bad things and there is an ultimate plan in it all. Or to put our arms around a friend who is hurting and say “There, there. I’m sure God has a reason for all of this.”
As your pastor, I will never do that to you, even if you want to hear it…because we sometimes do want to hear that God has a reason for bringing darkness into our lives because at least, God is remembering us. At least, we are part of God’s plan.
But God has promised us more than being part of some scheme. Some “plan.” God has promised to know us intimately, and before you stop me and say “ah! You said two weeks ago that we couldn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus,” because I know I may be sounding contradictory, I’m not talking about us knowing Jesus in a way we know a friend. I’m talking about God knowing us when we can’t even see God, or trust God, or know God. God naming us, claiming us, wrapping us in divine love even in the darkness.
The Israelites were forced to shift their thinking. God was claiming that God used an outsider, a pagan as a divine instrument. That had to be pretty hard to swallow. Why couldn’t God use one of us? At least, use someone we can appreciate and be grateful for? Not this…outsider.
What if we shifted our minds? What if we didn’t see darkness and light as different struggles. Or that we have to move through difficult times in order to be in the good times. What if we recognize that God is in the total eclipse? The passing of the moon and the brightening of the sun. That God is to be found in the lump in the throat, not just present when the diagnoses is good.
[pause]
Somehow, the dark has something for us. A treasure. A moment of touching God. Something richer than we could never seen when we are blinded by the brightness of the sun. It can be a dark experience that comes at you unbidden, or the dark part of your soul that you have wrestled with for a lifetime. In that darkness there is a treasure. In that secret pain you don’t want anyone to know about, there is something rich.
And as the psalmist recognizes, is in the dark places where life, and new life, grows--getting ready to be born. The dark is a fertile place, a womb of new life created, knitted, fashioned, and we can’t escape it, or the God who is in it.
Charles Spurgeon must have preached what was about an hour sermon, by the length of the text. And he concluded with this image, as he spiritually prepared his congregation to face the physical eclipse with a spiritual openness.
“—And let the Christian recollect another sermon. Let him take his child out, and when he takes him outside the door, and he sees the sun begin to grow dark and all things fade away, and a strange colour coming over the landscape, the child will begin to cry and say “Father the sun is going out, he is dying; we shall never have any light again.” And as gradually as the moon creeps over the sun’s broad surface and there remains only a solitary streak of light, the tears run down the child’s eyes as he says, We shall have to live in darkness;” and he would begin to weep for sorrow of heart. You would touch your child on the head, and say, “No, my little child, the sun has not gone out; it is only the moon passing across its face; it will shine bright enough presently.” And your child would soon believe you; and as he saw the light returning, he would feel thankful, and would believe what you had said, that the sun was always the same. Now, you will be like a child to-morrow. When you get into trouble you will be saying, “God has changed.” Then let God’s Word speak to you as unto children, and let it say, “No, God has not changed; with him is no variableness, neither shadow of a turning.”
There are treasures for you in your darkness. Riches hidden in secret and unwanted places. When you find them, you will know God.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
A Matter of Life and Death
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 22:1-14 Isaiah 25:1-9
Death is a part of life … right? All the organisms on this earth – be they plants or animals (that’s us) or fungi live for a time. Then their bodies wear out, and they simply stop … like a battery that has run down. (That’s how I’ve tried to explain it to my 5-year old at least). It’s normal. It’s expected. It’s the natural order of things … or so I learned in all my biology classes from 3rd grade up through the end of college.
Then, I went to seminary, and I was introduced to Eastern Orthodox theology just enough to threaten that assumption. I’m not going to get into the particulars of the argument – mostly because I didn’t ever really understand it myself. But, the gist of it is that when the scriptures say, “the wages of sin is death,” they mean it literally. In other words, death is absolutely not a natural part of creation, and if things had gone as planned, everyone and everything that had ever been alive would still be alive.
It’s a fantastic idea, and I mean that in both senses - a wonderful thought and a fantasy. I can deal with the idea that all of us and even all living things can exist together in a spirit realm where space and resources are not a concern. But, how on earth could we all fit if we never died? For me, death will always be a part of life. But … that doesn’t mean that death has to limit life.
When screen writer, Will Reiser, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 25, he was devastasted and, as you might guess, he went into a profound depression. His life was over, and it had only just begun. So many of the things that he had dreamed of doing were still undone, and there was only about a 50/50 chance that he would make it through treatment to do them.
He went ahead with the treatment anyway – what else was there to do. And as he and his friend, Seth, talked about what he was going through, they found themselves retreating to the morbid humor that comes into life at its most absurd. Then, one day Seth made a joke about turning the whole experience into a movie – a comedy. Could it be done, they wondered. Could a young man’s struggle with cancer be treated with humor without demeaning the experience? The two of them took up the challenge though they were still unsure if Will would live to finish the project, and their movie “50/50” was recently released in theaters.
In a conversation on NPR, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – the actor who plays the lead in the film, spoke about the Will Reiser that he learned to know during filming. Throughout his many conversations with Will and Seth (Reiser survived by the way), he heard stories of the time before and the time after. Before his diagnosis, Gordon-Levitt said, Will seemed to a little shallow. He was kind of a whiny, wimpy guy who avoided problems and kind of ran away from difficult situations. But that’s not how I see him now. He is strong and confident, and he’s not at all afraid of the curves life throws him. It’s like before he was sick, he was living in fear of something – maybe of death, and now he’s not afraid anymore. He’s faced death and all those painful and embarrassing things he went through, and now he’s free to live without worrying about them.
There are other stories like that out there. Some of us know people who have lived through cancer and have seen those kinds of transformation ourselves. Sometimes it isn’t cancer that brings people to the point of overcoming the power of death, and sometimes people suffer through horrible things without ever finding the kind of new life that Reiser found. But, one truth that remains is that most of us who haven’t lived through a life and death experience still live with the weight of death sitting on our shoulders.
We get up each morning and get ready for the day, and as soon as we go out the door we start to limit ourselves out of a sense of fear. We go where we need to go and do what we need to do, but we are always on the lookout for threatening people or dangerous environments. We shy away from unfamiliar situations because they might not be safe, and who knows what we miss out on? Who knows what our lives would be like – what fascinating people we might meet, what good we could do in the world, or what new joys we might find – if we were free to live without the threat of pain or sorrow overshadowing our lives?
And yet, that’s the invitation we have received from God through Christ. We have been promised that death has no power over us – that “[God] will swallow up death forever, [and] wipe the tears from all faces.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that death won’t come to our bodies, but it does mean that death and suffering and pain and mourning no longer have the power to interrupt or limit the joy of our living if we don’t give them that power ourselves.
Another fantastic thought… because I know – we all know that it’s not as simple as just deciding to refuse death and suffering their due. At least it doesn’t feel that way … ever. But that is the promise that God has made. The banquet that Christ invites us to enjoy is the feast of freedom and joy laid out for us even in the shadow of our enemies … if we find the way to truly accept.
The parable Martin read us from the gospel of Matthew is full of people who declined the invitation (some even killing the messengers) to the banquet and people who accepted … and one who accepted but was thrown out of the feast for wearing the wrong clothes. Most of us understand instinctively that all that is an allegory – that the story and the people in the story represent something other than themselves. Many scholars connect it with the story of the chosen people who heard prophets call them to live according to God’s plan and still refused the invitation. So, the apostles were sent to others who accepted. But some of them came to God in name only, and they were ultimately thrown out of the party because their lives showed that they had not really accepted the invitation.
Books of sermons have been written on that poor soul who showed up to the party in the wrong clothes. They typically go something like:
Woe to those who have rejected the salvation of Christ for they will be destroyed. But it will be worse for those who pledge themselves to Jesus with their words but not in their hearts. On the day of judgment, they will be cast out into eternal suffering. Guard against that sin and keep your hearts pure, and you will be counted among the faithful who have truly accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and you will have a place at the King’s banquet in heaven.
Imagine an active member of some congregation – a grandmother – has just heard that sermon. The judgment she hears so loud and clear brings tears to her eyes. She has a son who was baptized as a youth and is now a self-proclaimed atheist. Her granddaughter has yet to be baptized. The wonderful woman who lives next to her and has been a good friend as they age together is Jewish. And her doctor – who may be the best listener she has ever known – is a practicing Hindu. She may on the list of heavenly guests, but all of these people – so many people she loves – are going to hell. How can she be happy in heaven without them?
As the service works towards its close she drifts in and out, thinking about her friends and, especially her granddaughter. She wonders if she could save them. She reaches back to remember when she accepted the invitation, and she can’t remember what moved her all those years ago. She does remember, though, the many recommitment services she has attended where she pledged to imitate Christ, and she wonders to herself as she stands for the closing hymn: “What would Jesus do if it was his friend, his doctor, his grandchild (or maybe his mother)?”
What would Jesus do?
I don’t know, and neither does that grandmother. But she remembers the way that Christ suffered and died for those he loved. And she decides in that moment that she would gladly give up her own life – be it this life or the next – so that her granddaughter would find a place in heaven. And, she thinks, for her son as well. And for her neighbor or even her doctor if it came to that.
I think that earnest grandmother has understood this parable better than many of us do most of the time. I don’t think that it’s all about the final judgment day and who has accepted claimed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There very well may that kind of a judgment day coming, but I have trouble picturing a merciful God and the loving Christ who died to save all people throwing people into enteral grief and darkness because they have don’t have the right clothing or because they have not said the right words. I believe that, ultimately, all humanity and all creation will be reconciled with God. But, there is still a salvation that can be ours now and here, not just in the great by and by.
I think that’s what Isaiah speaks so eloquently about. That’s the banquet we have been invited to. And that’s the invitation that both Will Reiser and our faithful sister have accepted. They have found joy and hope in the midst of the shadow of death. They have discovered, as the Apostle Paul puts it, that death no longer has any sting for those who put on Christ. Death has no power to weigh down our spirits or to limit our lives if have already chosen to serve God … to follow the path laid out for us by Christ … the path that leads to the banquet table of the Son.
Much has been made this week of the death of Steve Jobs who touched the lives of people all over the world in both profound and shallow ways. Toward the end of his life, as he struggled with pancreatic cancer, he spoke to a group of students at their graduation and he said:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
That’s a profound statement. It puts a practical twist on the “live each day as if it’s your last” platitude that we hear so often. Yet it is still not very far from something you might find in a self-help book.
Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth – a leader of the Civil Right Movement – also passed away this week with much less notice. He was remembered for inspiring the marchers in Birmingham even after receiving several severe beatings and being imprisoned. In one letter to those who accused him of being a rabble-rousing outsider he wrote:
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns: and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom far beyond my own hometown.
Another profound thought – one that is inspiring in the power of its commitment – a power that sustained and strengthened Rev. Shuttlesworth through the pain, suffering, and fear of his experiences in Birmingham.
If we put those two thoughts together, we might come up with our own way to sum up what Paul was trying to say in his letters. We might say each morning, “Today I am a follower of Christ. Whatever I am asked to do, I will do with joy. Wherever I am asked to go, I will go without fear. For I belong to Christ and death has no power over me.”
And I think we’d be amazed at what our lives would look like if said that … and really meant it.
Matthew 22:1-14 Isaiah 25:1-9
Death is a part of life … right? All the organisms on this earth – be they plants or animals (that’s us) or fungi live for a time. Then their bodies wear out, and they simply stop … like a battery that has run down. (That’s how I’ve tried to explain it to my 5-year old at least). It’s normal. It’s expected. It’s the natural order of things … or so I learned in all my biology classes from 3rd grade up through the end of college.
Then, I went to seminary, and I was introduced to Eastern Orthodox theology just enough to threaten that assumption. I’m not going to get into the particulars of the argument – mostly because I didn’t ever really understand it myself. But, the gist of it is that when the scriptures say, “the wages of sin is death,” they mean it literally. In other words, death is absolutely not a natural part of creation, and if things had gone as planned, everyone and everything that had ever been alive would still be alive.
It’s a fantastic idea, and I mean that in both senses - a wonderful thought and a fantasy. I can deal with the idea that all of us and even all living things can exist together in a spirit realm where space and resources are not a concern. But, how on earth could we all fit if we never died? For me, death will always be a part of life. But … that doesn’t mean that death has to limit life.
When screen writer, Will Reiser, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 25, he was devastasted and, as you might guess, he went into a profound depression. His life was over, and it had only just begun. So many of the things that he had dreamed of doing were still undone, and there was only about a 50/50 chance that he would make it through treatment to do them.
He went ahead with the treatment anyway – what else was there to do. And as he and his friend, Seth, talked about what he was going through, they found themselves retreating to the morbid humor that comes into life at its most absurd. Then, one day Seth made a joke about turning the whole experience into a movie – a comedy. Could it be done, they wondered. Could a young man’s struggle with cancer be treated with humor without demeaning the experience? The two of them took up the challenge though they were still unsure if Will would live to finish the project, and their movie “50/50” was recently released in theaters.
In a conversation on NPR, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – the actor who plays the lead in the film, spoke about the Will Reiser that he learned to know during filming. Throughout his many conversations with Will and Seth (Reiser survived by the way), he heard stories of the time before and the time after. Before his diagnosis, Gordon-Levitt said, Will seemed to a little shallow. He was kind of a whiny, wimpy guy who avoided problems and kind of ran away from difficult situations. But that’s not how I see him now. He is strong and confident, and he’s not at all afraid of the curves life throws him. It’s like before he was sick, he was living in fear of something – maybe of death, and now he’s not afraid anymore. He’s faced death and all those painful and embarrassing things he went through, and now he’s free to live without worrying about them.
There are other stories like that out there. Some of us know people who have lived through cancer and have seen those kinds of transformation ourselves. Sometimes it isn’t cancer that brings people to the point of overcoming the power of death, and sometimes people suffer through horrible things without ever finding the kind of new life that Reiser found. But, one truth that remains is that most of us who haven’t lived through a life and death experience still live with the weight of death sitting on our shoulders.
We get up each morning and get ready for the day, and as soon as we go out the door we start to limit ourselves out of a sense of fear. We go where we need to go and do what we need to do, but we are always on the lookout for threatening people or dangerous environments. We shy away from unfamiliar situations because they might not be safe, and who knows what we miss out on? Who knows what our lives would be like – what fascinating people we might meet, what good we could do in the world, or what new joys we might find – if we were free to live without the threat of pain or sorrow overshadowing our lives?
And yet, that’s the invitation we have received from God through Christ. We have been promised that death has no power over us – that “[God] will swallow up death forever, [and] wipe the tears from all faces.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that death won’t come to our bodies, but it does mean that death and suffering and pain and mourning no longer have the power to interrupt or limit the joy of our living if we don’t give them that power ourselves.
Another fantastic thought… because I know – we all know that it’s not as simple as just deciding to refuse death and suffering their due. At least it doesn’t feel that way … ever. But that is the promise that God has made. The banquet that Christ invites us to enjoy is the feast of freedom and joy laid out for us even in the shadow of our enemies … if we find the way to truly accept.
The parable Martin read us from the gospel of Matthew is full of people who declined the invitation (some even killing the messengers) to the banquet and people who accepted … and one who accepted but was thrown out of the feast for wearing the wrong clothes. Most of us understand instinctively that all that is an allegory – that the story and the people in the story represent something other than themselves. Many scholars connect it with the story of the chosen people who heard prophets call them to live according to God’s plan and still refused the invitation. So, the apostles were sent to others who accepted. But some of them came to God in name only, and they were ultimately thrown out of the party because their lives showed that they had not really accepted the invitation.
Books of sermons have been written on that poor soul who showed up to the party in the wrong clothes. They typically go something like:
Woe to those who have rejected the salvation of Christ for they will be destroyed. But it will be worse for those who pledge themselves to Jesus with their words but not in their hearts. On the day of judgment, they will be cast out into eternal suffering. Guard against that sin and keep your hearts pure, and you will be counted among the faithful who have truly accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and you will have a place at the King’s banquet in heaven.
Imagine an active member of some congregation – a grandmother – has just heard that sermon. The judgment she hears so loud and clear brings tears to her eyes. She has a son who was baptized as a youth and is now a self-proclaimed atheist. Her granddaughter has yet to be baptized. The wonderful woman who lives next to her and has been a good friend as they age together is Jewish. And her doctor – who may be the best listener she has ever known – is a practicing Hindu. She may on the list of heavenly guests, but all of these people – so many people she loves – are going to hell. How can she be happy in heaven without them?
As the service works towards its close she drifts in and out, thinking about her friends and, especially her granddaughter. She wonders if she could save them. She reaches back to remember when she accepted the invitation, and she can’t remember what moved her all those years ago. She does remember, though, the many recommitment services she has attended where she pledged to imitate Christ, and she wonders to herself as she stands for the closing hymn: “What would Jesus do if it was his friend, his doctor, his grandchild (or maybe his mother)?”
What would Jesus do?
I don’t know, and neither does that grandmother. But she remembers the way that Christ suffered and died for those he loved. And she decides in that moment that she would gladly give up her own life – be it this life or the next – so that her granddaughter would find a place in heaven. And, she thinks, for her son as well. And for her neighbor or even her doctor if it came to that.
I think that earnest grandmother has understood this parable better than many of us do most of the time. I don’t think that it’s all about the final judgment day and who has accepted claimed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There very well may that kind of a judgment day coming, but I have trouble picturing a merciful God and the loving Christ who died to save all people throwing people into enteral grief and darkness because they have don’t have the right clothing or because they have not said the right words. I believe that, ultimately, all humanity and all creation will be reconciled with God. But, there is still a salvation that can be ours now and here, not just in the great by and by.
I think that’s what Isaiah speaks so eloquently about. That’s the banquet we have been invited to. And that’s the invitation that both Will Reiser and our faithful sister have accepted. They have found joy and hope in the midst of the shadow of death. They have discovered, as the Apostle Paul puts it, that death no longer has any sting for those who put on Christ. Death has no power to weigh down our spirits or to limit our lives if have already chosen to serve God … to follow the path laid out for us by Christ … the path that leads to the banquet table of the Son.
Much has been made this week of the death of Steve Jobs who touched the lives of people all over the world in both profound and shallow ways. Toward the end of his life, as he struggled with pancreatic cancer, he spoke to a group of students at their graduation and he said:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
That’s a profound statement. It puts a practical twist on the “live each day as if it’s your last” platitude that we hear so often. Yet it is still not very far from something you might find in a self-help book.
Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth – a leader of the Civil Right Movement – also passed away this week with much less notice. He was remembered for inspiring the marchers in Birmingham even after receiving several severe beatings and being imprisoned. In one letter to those who accused him of being a rabble-rousing outsider he wrote:
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns: and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom far beyond my own hometown.
Another profound thought – one that is inspiring in the power of its commitment – a power that sustained and strengthened Rev. Shuttlesworth through the pain, suffering, and fear of his experiences in Birmingham.
If we put those two thoughts together, we might come up with our own way to sum up what Paul was trying to say in his letters. We might say each morning, “Today I am a follower of Christ. Whatever I am asked to do, I will do with joy. Wherever I am asked to go, I will go without fear. For I belong to Christ and death has no power over me.”
And I think we’d be amazed at what our lives would look like if said that … and really meant it.
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