sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 4:35-41 Job 38:1-11
It’s all well and good to sing about joys flowing like a river or giving our fears to the winds. That is what we should be doing, releasing our burdens and our fears to God and receiving the gift of joy in return. But it’s so much harder in real life. Growing up, as I did, in the Midwest, it’s particularly hard to sing that with feeling and authenticity. Tornadoes were a big specter in our childhood lives, and whirlwinds bring feelings of fear and awe rather than the promise of relief. When the wind comes, I tend to run away and hide rather than embrace it. The words of “When the storms of life are raging” come a little closer to my way of thinking.
Yet, storms, too, are a little iffy for me. While I love to watch the play of lightning on the canvas of the sky, I can’t help but head inside and count the seconds between light and sound to see just how close those striking flashes of electricity are … just in case. And, the story of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee took on new life and reality for me when I found myself in a storm-tossed boat in the Galapagos archipelago some years ago.
I was visiting my Mom in Ecuador at the time, and I got to join the group of exchange students she was responsible for their end-of-the-year trip. As a student of biology, I was terribly excited to visit those islands with all their unique wildlife, and the trip was wonderful. But, on one memorable night a storm came up while I was sleeping on the top deck of the smallish boat taking us around. There really wasn’t any rain to speak of, but the winds were something else.
I woke up when the boat started rocking pretty badly to the beat of eight or nine foot high waves, and I remember thinking I was probably safer lying down on the deck than trying to get to the stairs down to the main level. But, I changed my mind when the spray from a few waves coming over the bow-rail splashed across my face. It would have been very comforting at that moment to feel Jesus standing there beside me as I pulled myself along, crawling with my hand on the low wire “railing” at the edge of the tossing deck.
I have found myself feeling the same way at times when my life is in upheaval, and I know from what other have shared with me that I’m not alone. We all feel lost and helpless when we hear news about health problems among our families and friends. It’s hard to release our fears of what people will think of us if we do anything out of the ordinary. We can’t just stop worrying about where the money is going to come from to pay our mortgage or send our children to college. The list goes on and on and tossing all that into the wind could lead to it blowing right back in our faces. In the midst of the storm, it often seems like our fears and our worries are the only solid things left to hold onto. They are the little scrap of a boat that stands between us and the rising waves, and most of us aren’t really ready to “let go and let God.”
That kind of faith grows through practice. Each time you really do cast your fears to the wind, it gets a little easier – especially if things have worked out for you before. But boy that first time is hard. Come to think of it, so are the second and the third. It doesn’t help that we are generally taught self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Our parents (if they have done their job well) tell us that the ultimate mark of maturity and independence is when we can move out of the house, get a job, and pay our own way. Our society underlines that message with its stress on getting ahead and its ridicule for anyone who moves back in with mom and dad (although the current economic circumstances may be changing that). With all that pressure, it seems to take a whole lot of practice to get to the point where it actually gets easier … if it ever does.
It’s easy, you know, to think that the disciples had that kind of faith. In the midst of their storm, they woke Jesus up to help them, and he calmed the storm. And, that’s what we’re talking about isn’t it – turning to God to calm our fears and our uncertainty? But that last verse makes me wonder if they weren’t in the same boat we are. If they are left asking who Jesus really is to still the winds with a word, were they really expecting a miracle when they woke him?
Most of those in the boat that day were experienced sailors. It almost certain that they would have been caught out fishing when a storm came up before, and they probably knew what they needed to do to get through it all. I suspect that they might have been more frustrated that Jesus wasn’t helping out and woke him hoping for another hand at the sails or the bailing buckets rather than expecting some kind of miracle. I’m not sure it had to do with faith at all. Put in another way, the disciples may have woken Jesus more because they were hurt by his indifference to their plight rather than because they wanted him to save them. If there was faith there, it seems like it was just as sleepy as Jesus.
There is another story about a sailor at sea in the midst of a storm. It takes place in the Gulf of Mexico on a lowly shrimp boat with just two sailors and no sleeping messiah on board. And, if you haven’t guessed already, it comes from the movie Forrest Gump.
In that story, Lt. Dan – who has lost both legs from the knees down in a battle in Vietnam – is out trolling for shrimp with his resented rescuer, Forrest Gump. While they are fishing the Gulf, a hurricane blows up and catches them away from the harbor. As the skies darken with threatening clouds and the winds rise, the two work seal up the ship, preparing to ride out the storm, but Lt. Dan refuses to go into the relative safety of the bridge.
When the hurricane begins to hit its stride, he lifts himself up the center mast and lashes himself to the top. As the wind increases and the rain and the waves whip across the boat, he begins shouting and cursing – challenging God and the fury of the storm. And, there he stays throughout the night venting his anger, releasing all his frustration at the way his life has turned out and his fears about his future.
In the morning, Forrest comes out on deck in the light of a glorious sunrise and finds Lt. Dan smiling as he tosses himself over the side for a short swim. In the narration, Forrest speculates that his friend has finally made his peace with God.
Now that’s faith that’s awake and alive. That’s a faith that is not afraid to answer the question of who Jesus is, that has already answered that question by acknowledging the author of the storm. It’s a faith that knows it’s talking to (challenging even) the One who laid the foundations of the earth, stretched stars across the heavens, and put the boundaries of the sea in place, and it’s the kind of faith that give us the courage to cast our burdens to the winds. And, if Forrest is to be believed, it really can free us to receive peace and joy in return.
I feel pretty safe in speculating that all of us would pay enough attention not to be caught on a boat in the middle of a hurricane. And, if we were, I think we would all find ourselves sitting inside with Forrest rather than on the top of the mast with Lt. Dan. Still, we do often find ourselves right at the center of unexpected storms all the time.
Of course, I’m speaking metaphorically here, and the storms that catch us off guard are life experiences that upset our peaceful voyage through the days. The loss of treasured loved ones is a big one. Changes in the work place that leave us jobless or facing a big move to a new place can be turn us on our ears. Difficult relationships with abusive or depressed partners, disagreements with friends or family, even the simple struggles of getting along with parents or children can catch us up and spin us around until we aren’t quite sure who we are or what we really want anymore.
And even though everything is easier when it’s just acting in a movie, and it’s much, much harder to live embrace the vibrant faith that offers all our struggles up for God’s care or screams in the face of the whirlwinds that blow through our lives, we still have to face the question: are we awake and strong in our faith or are we just a little bit sleepy and unsure or ourselves and the power of our messiah?
All our justifications and excuses aside, do we have the faith and the courage to answer the question the disciples ask? Can we stand up and say that the One we follow is the Son of God – One with the power to calm the storms without and within? And if we can – if we do – do we still have the courage no only to turn and recognize that same One in our little boats with us but also to reach out for embrace that promises us release?
As difficult as it can be to make it through the storms of life on our own … as much as we often feel all alone in the midst of the struggle despite our claim that Christ is always with us … it is still difficult to step out of the boat in faith. It’s scary to let go of the fear and worry that we know and reach out, trusting that our Father with his great whirlwind of power will hold us with tender and caring hands. Yet, the promise of our teacher and Lord – the great claim of our faith – is that the God who loved us so much as to become one of us will save us if we but open our hearts and ask. If we can do that, there is hope for peace and joy. The worries and the fears that keep us holding onto the railing with white disappear with the storm, and we find that Jesus was there with us all along, holding us tenderly and calling us to wake up from the nightmare and see the beautiful, joyful sunrise.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Seeds of the Harvest
sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 4:26-32 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
In the Anabaptist tradition we talk a whole lot about discernment and following the call as an essential part of our lives of discipleship. We are generally encouraged (and indeed encourage each other) to constantly be on the alert for the tugging of the Spirit that urges us to take on new roles or focus our energy in new ways. And, of course, it’s always in the service of growing the Realm of God – of nurturing into fullness the seeds of the Kingdom that we find sprouting all around and within us.
I must confess that I, myself, am usually just too tired or distracted to do any real discernment during my day to day living. Sometimes, a reminder to return to that quiet space of listening and contemplation is most welcome and leads me to new understanding, but most of the time, I find it frustrating and burdensome … and maybe just a little annoying to be reminded of my failure to make time or space for the Spirit’s guidance in my life.
I think some of my frustration with the whole process comes from my wish for a kind of bolt of lighting sign. You know something dramatic like a neon sign dropping from the heavens right in front of me telling me what to do. Or maybe the birth of an all-absorbing passion somewhere within me. Or even something as simple as having one outstanding talent that leads me down an obvious path. And, perhaps you have felt the same way.
Well, that hasn’t happened to me yet, and I it may not. And, while it doesn’t hurt to hope, I suppose, it seems much more likely that our lives will be filled with small nudges and little deeds in the service of our God. Most of us will be among the anonymous seeds that, together, yield the harvest that prepares for and supports the work of God across history. According to the parables, that’s the way the Realm of God works.
When we look back at Samuel’s time, we can see the pattern at work in the story of David. He was the least of the sons of Jesse – the youngest, relegated to lowly task of herding the sheep. Yet, it was in that unassuming youth that Samuel saw the potential for the greatest of Israel’s kings. And it was with God’s blessing and through divine power and providence that David was protected in his battle with Goliath and his struggle with Saul, until through any number of more and less trivial moments he grew to become the greatest of the kings of Israel.
Little things are planted here and there and they grow by the power of God. Unassuming moments and actions take place all over the place all the time, and they build on each other until all of the sudden, there is a great harvest ready to be brought in. That’s the way it was in the glory days of Israel when there really was a kingdom, and it’s still that way today – even though only those with eyes to see find God’s realm among us.
A few years ago, I ran across a book called The Sparrow in a friend’s library. Like many of the books I enjoy reading, it was science fiction, but it wasn’t filled with technological miracles or space-faring warriors or even an earth advanced almost beyond recognition. It could have taken place just a few decades from now. But, the biggest difference – the reason it has become one of my favorite novels – is that The Sparrow is actually a parable that explores human nature, the nature of faith, and the intricacies of our relationship with God.
It is the tale of humanity’s first voyage to encounter another civilization on a distant planet, and among the main characters (really the main character) is a Jesuit priest named Emilio Sanchez. An orphan from the slums of Puerto Rico, Emilio was taken in at a catholic school where the priest discovered his gifts for language while he discovered a sense of calling that led him to ordination. Throughout his career on Earth, he was moved from country to country, ministering to the poor – especially orphans like himself. With each move, he grew more and more frustrated and began to question his place in the work of God and his calling as a priest.
When the Vatican decided to fund an expedition in response to radio messages intercepted from space, it was clear that Emilio was an obvious choice as part of a crew. In the course of his work, he had become fluent in more than a dozen languages and had developed a system for identifying the role and meaning of words that allowed him to take languages apart, understand the way they worked, and put them back together in next to no time. It was a skill that would be essential to a mission that would have to communicate in decidedly non-human languages on the fly.
When he hears about his new assignment, Emilio feels like he finally sees the hand of God in the pattern of his life. His frustrations fade away and with a sense of awe and excitement, he embraces his role in the mission. He says goodbye to the two or three friends he has cultivated across the years, and boards the ship for the trip to Rakhat.
Across the arc of the story, Emilio and his companions experience both great beauty and terrible horrors as they learn about civilization on Rakhat. In the end, only Emilio survives to return to Earth when a second delegation arrives years later. Yet, despite all the grief that he has experienced, his faith survives his anger and despair. And, though he struggles to make sense of the results, he never doubts that his many experiences on Earth were part of God’s plan to prepare him for his role in the first mission or that the mission was somehow part of God’s greater plan for all creation.
Most of us, I think, probably won’t ever find ourselves with that feeling that our whole lives have led up to one moment or made us uniquely qualified for one particular role in God’s plan. Still, there will be little moments along the way – moments when we find that our past has prepared us for the task at hand in a special way. At times, we can come to recognize those intersections – to make out how the seeds that have been planted in us are growing – through time spent in contemplation and discernment. At other times, we only find understanding after the fact, perceiving the pattern after the seeds have matured and been harvested. The seed cannot always know what it will become after all, and the time of the harvest is in God’s hand.
Many of you, I know, are gardeners. You know the joy and the challenge of planting seeds and watching them grow. You know about the frustration and inevitability of weeds. No matter what you do, they come back. Dandelions, thistles, crabgrass, or whatever they may be, they just won’t die. And once you’ve rooted them out of one area, they pop up in another.
Enter the mustard plant.
We all know about one or two varieties of mustard. There is the one, sinapis hirta, whose seeds are pretty common in spice racks though most of us probably don’t use it very much – at least in that form. Probably, though, we all have it in another incarnation since it is the key ingredient in the mustard that we put on our hot dogs, hamburgers, and maybe even French fries.
Another variety, brassica juncea, is grown for its leaves and is more commonly known as mustard greens. That one is a favorite in some regions of the United States, especially when mixed with bacon, butter, and garlic. I was introduced to this one when I lived in South Carolina, and I came to love it. But, it’s an aquired taste. So, be prepared for something a bit different if you decide to try it yourself.
Neither of these two mustard plants, though, are the one Jesus speaks of in the second parable we heard today. That one, generally agreed to have been brassica nigra, was known throughout the biblical world as a noxious, if beautiful, weed. Like the weeds that we struggle with, it proved to be nearly impossible to eradicate once it found its way into a field or a garden. For that reason, Jewish law actually prohibited the planting of mustard in a garden, and several Roman writers suggested that it only be planted in a segregated field so that it didn’t get in among the other crops.
I described the plant as a noxious weed, but that may not be exactly the right word. Clearly people did cultivate the plant and probably used the seeds in cooking. So, I guess it wasn’t considered to be harmful, but it was a tightly controlled plant that still managed to get loose and cause trouble. Yet, Jesus used this well-known weed as a parallel for the Kingdom of God.
Usually, we concentrate on the image of that tiny seed growing into a huge shrub and providing shelter as the reason for his choice. And we interpret the parable as meaning that the Realm of God takes root at the slightest indication of faith and grows to create a safe and welcoming space for us to make our spiritual home. But, I have been wondering if that is all that Jesus intended.
Maybe he chose the mustard seed precisely because it was such a prolific weed. No matter what we do – no matter how we try to stamp it out or control it, it spreads. It pops up in all manner of unexpected places and is capable of completely taking over. I suppose we could call it invasive though that’s not a term that we normally associate with the Realm of God because of its negative connotation. Maybe that’s part of the point. Parables, after all, are not intended to be logical and straight-forward. They surprise us with truth that we wouldn’t see otherwise.
Earlier in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus announced that the Realm of God is among us and within us. Now we hear that it is like a seed – but not just any seed. It is a tiny seed that grows according to God’s time and God’s plan, and it cannot be controlled or stamped out. Slowly and surely, despite our best efforts or the efforts of the world around us, it begins to take over any place it gets a foot hold. It matures within us over the course of our lives as our experiences shape us and prepare us for the moment of the harvest. And we in turn become gardeners, planting seeds of the Kingdom.
And, even though spreading seeds of the Kingdom can be frustrating, and we all wish, in some way, that we could just get there – just see the world covered with shining flowers or sweet fruit or nourishing grain – there is comfort in knowing that we are planting seeds – that we are ourselves seeds in God’s garden. Seeds in that garden are different. No matter how small they seem and how much resistance and abuse they receive, they can and do become something special. They grow, and we grow, into something with unexpected promise – something that does provide shelter, sustenance, and surprising beauty.
Whether we find our way into the work of the Spirit through meditation and discernment or we happen upon it through a chain of events in our lives; we can be assured that we are a part of that work. Even as our own faith grows and matures, even if we don’t realize it, we are planting seeds of surprising promise. As we follow the path of discipleship, we join in the Spirit’s work of transforming the world into a beautiful place run wild with peace and justice – into God’s garden.
Let us embrace that vision and our part in it, for God has looked on our hearts and chosen us. Let us go into the world as disciples of Christ; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the destitute, spreading the good news, and welcoming all we meet in love. Let us grow into “weeds” of the Kingdom, humbly spreading seeds of hope and promise in the faith that, in God’s time and through God’s grace, they will grow into a bountiful harvest of peace and justice.
May it be so.
Mark 4:26-32 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
In the Anabaptist tradition we talk a whole lot about discernment and following the call as an essential part of our lives of discipleship. We are generally encouraged (and indeed encourage each other) to constantly be on the alert for the tugging of the Spirit that urges us to take on new roles or focus our energy in new ways. And, of course, it’s always in the service of growing the Realm of God – of nurturing into fullness the seeds of the Kingdom that we find sprouting all around and within us.
I must confess that I, myself, am usually just too tired or distracted to do any real discernment during my day to day living. Sometimes, a reminder to return to that quiet space of listening and contemplation is most welcome and leads me to new understanding, but most of the time, I find it frustrating and burdensome … and maybe just a little annoying to be reminded of my failure to make time or space for the Spirit’s guidance in my life.
I think some of my frustration with the whole process comes from my wish for a kind of bolt of lighting sign. You know something dramatic like a neon sign dropping from the heavens right in front of me telling me what to do. Or maybe the birth of an all-absorbing passion somewhere within me. Or even something as simple as having one outstanding talent that leads me down an obvious path. And, perhaps you have felt the same way.
Well, that hasn’t happened to me yet, and I it may not. And, while it doesn’t hurt to hope, I suppose, it seems much more likely that our lives will be filled with small nudges and little deeds in the service of our God. Most of us will be among the anonymous seeds that, together, yield the harvest that prepares for and supports the work of God across history. According to the parables, that’s the way the Realm of God works.
When we look back at Samuel’s time, we can see the pattern at work in the story of David. He was the least of the sons of Jesse – the youngest, relegated to lowly task of herding the sheep. Yet, it was in that unassuming youth that Samuel saw the potential for the greatest of Israel’s kings. And it was with God’s blessing and through divine power and providence that David was protected in his battle with Goliath and his struggle with Saul, until through any number of more and less trivial moments he grew to become the greatest of the kings of Israel.
Little things are planted here and there and they grow by the power of God. Unassuming moments and actions take place all over the place all the time, and they build on each other until all of the sudden, there is a great harvest ready to be brought in. That’s the way it was in the glory days of Israel when there really was a kingdom, and it’s still that way today – even though only those with eyes to see find God’s realm among us.
A few years ago, I ran across a book called The Sparrow in a friend’s library. Like many of the books I enjoy reading, it was science fiction, but it wasn’t filled with technological miracles or space-faring warriors or even an earth advanced almost beyond recognition. It could have taken place just a few decades from now. But, the biggest difference – the reason it has become one of my favorite novels – is that The Sparrow is actually a parable that explores human nature, the nature of faith, and the intricacies of our relationship with God.
It is the tale of humanity’s first voyage to encounter another civilization on a distant planet, and among the main characters (really the main character) is a Jesuit priest named Emilio Sanchez. An orphan from the slums of Puerto Rico, Emilio was taken in at a catholic school where the priest discovered his gifts for language while he discovered a sense of calling that led him to ordination. Throughout his career on Earth, he was moved from country to country, ministering to the poor – especially orphans like himself. With each move, he grew more and more frustrated and began to question his place in the work of God and his calling as a priest.
When the Vatican decided to fund an expedition in response to radio messages intercepted from space, it was clear that Emilio was an obvious choice as part of a crew. In the course of his work, he had become fluent in more than a dozen languages and had developed a system for identifying the role and meaning of words that allowed him to take languages apart, understand the way they worked, and put them back together in next to no time. It was a skill that would be essential to a mission that would have to communicate in decidedly non-human languages on the fly.
When he hears about his new assignment, Emilio feels like he finally sees the hand of God in the pattern of his life. His frustrations fade away and with a sense of awe and excitement, he embraces his role in the mission. He says goodbye to the two or three friends he has cultivated across the years, and boards the ship for the trip to Rakhat.
Across the arc of the story, Emilio and his companions experience both great beauty and terrible horrors as they learn about civilization on Rakhat. In the end, only Emilio survives to return to Earth when a second delegation arrives years later. Yet, despite all the grief that he has experienced, his faith survives his anger and despair. And, though he struggles to make sense of the results, he never doubts that his many experiences on Earth were part of God’s plan to prepare him for his role in the first mission or that the mission was somehow part of God’s greater plan for all creation.
Most of us, I think, probably won’t ever find ourselves with that feeling that our whole lives have led up to one moment or made us uniquely qualified for one particular role in God’s plan. Still, there will be little moments along the way – moments when we find that our past has prepared us for the task at hand in a special way. At times, we can come to recognize those intersections – to make out how the seeds that have been planted in us are growing – through time spent in contemplation and discernment. At other times, we only find understanding after the fact, perceiving the pattern after the seeds have matured and been harvested. The seed cannot always know what it will become after all, and the time of the harvest is in God’s hand.
Many of you, I know, are gardeners. You know the joy and the challenge of planting seeds and watching them grow. You know about the frustration and inevitability of weeds. No matter what you do, they come back. Dandelions, thistles, crabgrass, or whatever they may be, they just won’t die. And once you’ve rooted them out of one area, they pop up in another.
Enter the mustard plant.
We all know about one or two varieties of mustard. There is the one, sinapis hirta, whose seeds are pretty common in spice racks though most of us probably don’t use it very much – at least in that form. Probably, though, we all have it in another incarnation since it is the key ingredient in the mustard that we put on our hot dogs, hamburgers, and maybe even French fries.
Another variety, brassica juncea, is grown for its leaves and is more commonly known as mustard greens. That one is a favorite in some regions of the United States, especially when mixed with bacon, butter, and garlic. I was introduced to this one when I lived in South Carolina, and I came to love it. But, it’s an aquired taste. So, be prepared for something a bit different if you decide to try it yourself.
Neither of these two mustard plants, though, are the one Jesus speaks of in the second parable we heard today. That one, generally agreed to have been brassica nigra, was known throughout the biblical world as a noxious, if beautiful, weed. Like the weeds that we struggle with, it proved to be nearly impossible to eradicate once it found its way into a field or a garden. For that reason, Jewish law actually prohibited the planting of mustard in a garden, and several Roman writers suggested that it only be planted in a segregated field so that it didn’t get in among the other crops.
I described the plant as a noxious weed, but that may not be exactly the right word. Clearly people did cultivate the plant and probably used the seeds in cooking. So, I guess it wasn’t considered to be harmful, but it was a tightly controlled plant that still managed to get loose and cause trouble. Yet, Jesus used this well-known weed as a parallel for the Kingdom of God.
Usually, we concentrate on the image of that tiny seed growing into a huge shrub and providing shelter as the reason for his choice. And we interpret the parable as meaning that the Realm of God takes root at the slightest indication of faith and grows to create a safe and welcoming space for us to make our spiritual home. But, I have been wondering if that is all that Jesus intended.
Maybe he chose the mustard seed precisely because it was such a prolific weed. No matter what we do – no matter how we try to stamp it out or control it, it spreads. It pops up in all manner of unexpected places and is capable of completely taking over. I suppose we could call it invasive though that’s not a term that we normally associate with the Realm of God because of its negative connotation. Maybe that’s part of the point. Parables, after all, are not intended to be logical and straight-forward. They surprise us with truth that we wouldn’t see otherwise.
Earlier in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus announced that the Realm of God is among us and within us. Now we hear that it is like a seed – but not just any seed. It is a tiny seed that grows according to God’s time and God’s plan, and it cannot be controlled or stamped out. Slowly and surely, despite our best efforts or the efforts of the world around us, it begins to take over any place it gets a foot hold. It matures within us over the course of our lives as our experiences shape us and prepare us for the moment of the harvest. And we in turn become gardeners, planting seeds of the Kingdom.
And, even though spreading seeds of the Kingdom can be frustrating, and we all wish, in some way, that we could just get there – just see the world covered with shining flowers or sweet fruit or nourishing grain – there is comfort in knowing that we are planting seeds – that we are ourselves seeds in God’s garden. Seeds in that garden are different. No matter how small they seem and how much resistance and abuse they receive, they can and do become something special. They grow, and we grow, into something with unexpected promise – something that does provide shelter, sustenance, and surprising beauty.
Whether we find our way into the work of the Spirit through meditation and discernment or we happen upon it through a chain of events in our lives; we can be assured that we are a part of that work. Even as our own faith grows and matures, even if we don’t realize it, we are planting seeds of surprising promise. As we follow the path of discipleship, we join in the Spirit’s work of transforming the world into a beautiful place run wild with peace and justice – into God’s garden.
Let us embrace that vision and our part in it, for God has looked on our hearts and chosen us. Let us go into the world as disciples of Christ; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the destitute, spreading the good news, and welcoming all we meet in love. Let us grow into “weeds” of the Kingdom, humbly spreading seeds of hope and promise in the faith that, in God’s time and through God’s grace, they will grow into a bountiful harvest of peace and justice.
May it be so.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Stopping the Unstoppable
sermon by Torin Eikler
Acts 2:1-12 Ezekiel 37:1-14
Pentecost
May 31, 2009
For the past seven weeks, we have been singing the hymn “How can we be silent” as a part of our worship. Each time we have used different selections from the verses as they have related to the scripture and the theme of each worship. Well … today is all about the Holy Spirit, and we will be singing just the refrain:
None can stop the Spirit, burning deep inside us.
We will shape the future.
We will not be silent.
It’s a fitting hymn to sing on this day, and it expresses a deeply held conviction of the Christian faith – the power of God is unstoppable.
We see that truth all over the place in the scriptures – the holy stories that lie at the heart of our tradition. In Genesis, the Spirit moves over the waters, bringing order to the chaos and life to the barren creation. In Exodus, the Spirit brings about any number of miracles as the Hebrews escape Egypt and wander through the wilderness. Throughout Acts, the Spirit brings visions and inspires apostolic mission. It shakes open the doors of the prison holding Paul and Silas. It picks the apostle Philip out of the water in which he baptized an Ethiopian Eunuch and whisks him across miles and miles to set him down in a new region to spread the gospel. And, of course, it falls upon the eleven disciples and incites them to speak in tongues so that everyone listening could understand.
Even more amazing, though, is the exercise of the Spirit’s power in challenging even the most permanent, absolute aspect of mortal life – death. In Lent and on Easter, we recognize that awesome power when first Lazarus and then Jesus himself come walking out of the tomb, released from the power of death and restored to life. In the vision of Ezekiel though, we have the most entertaining and visceral display of the unstoppable power of the Spirit.
Imagine, if you can, that you are in the place of the prophet. In the midst of your daily life, you feel the touch of some unknown power that whisks you away to a dry valley and sets you down in the middle of piles and piles of bones. You look around as you regain your equilibrium, and you begin to suspect that you are on the site of an ancient cataclysm and the bones are actually all that remains of the human victims.
Then you hear a voice – the voice of God – directing you to preach to the bones (how crazy is that), telling them that they will come back to life. So, you begin to speak (what else are you going to do?) to the bones around you, and you notice that they begin to move, coming back together into complete skeletons. Then, out of nowhere, they grow ligaments and tendons and muscles, taking on the appearance of those anatomical models that sat in the back of your biology class in high school. Finally, skin appears to cover them all, and you find yourself looking not at piles of bones but a valley full of corpses.
Again you hear the voice giving you a new message. Now you have to command the breath of life – the very Spirit of God – to come and fill the bodies with life. Stunned by what you have seen, you do as you are told. As you speak, you feel the wind begin to blow from every direction at once. And, slowly the bodies begin to stir and to stand up all around you until you are surrounded by thousands of the recently dead – living, breathing proof of the power of the Spirit of God.
I don’t know about you, but that would give me the willies! And yet … and yet, that is the power of the Holy Spirit that was poured out on the streets of Jerusalem. That is the power that speaks to each of us, inviting us to join the family of Christ. That is nature of the Spirit that renews us day by day, that leads us to the renewing water of life and prepares a quiet space of abundance for us to rest even when we are surrounded by threatening specters and impossible challenges. We are all blessed to have that powerful, unstoppable Spirit burning deep inside us … blessed and challenged.
I say challenged precisely because the Holy Spirit can be frightening. As much as we would like to, none of us can predict what the Spirit will do. Tongues of fire, earthquakes opening jail cells, and dry bones taking on new life are just some examples. Who knows what will come next. Who knows where we will find ourselves or what we will be called upon to do when the Spirit’s power is unleashed in our lives.
Fortunately … and unfortunately … we are always given a choice in the matter. Not a choice about what will happen, but a choice about whether we will allow it to happen. God, it seems, has chosen to give us all the freedom to join the dance or stand on the sidelines and watch others move to the music of the Spirit.
When we choose to join in … if we choose to join in … our lives can be transformed and renewed just like Ezekiel’s bones. We may find ourselves speaking words that we don’t understand – words that come out of nowhere in whatever language they come. And, the work of the Spirit pushes us out of the comfortable spaces we have made for ourselves.
It calls us to speak the truth of God’s vision to disbelieving, resistant, and powerful people and institutions in order to bring justice for the oppressed and peace for the abused. It calls us to pour out words of comfort to the suffering people all around us. It calls us to offer hope to those who endure frustration and despair in every moment of their days.
And it asks even more of us… because when we open our selves and our lives up to the fire of the Spirit within us, the power of its flames creates its own wind. And as the wind fans the flames and the flames feed the wind, we find ourselves caught up in a fire-storm – a whirlwind that draws and drives us into the world. For as long as we let it, the Spirit leads us to reach out with more than words. We become the doers of the word, instruments in the symphony of the Spirit.
Each of us knows what that has looked like in our lives. Sometimes it is silence and peace as the coals are banked in preparation. Sometimes it is pale and attenuated because we strain to hold back the fire within even as we seek to free it. Sometimes … sometimes, we find ourselves caught up in the full roar of the music as we reach out to feed, cloth, succor, soothe, and welcome others into the bounty of our own lives. We offer the wealth and the hope we have to those who have need. We preach the promise of God’s Realm and life filled with Spirit fire not just with our voices but with our whole beings – with all that we do and all that we are.
In the power of the Spirit, we are changed. We can change the future. And, we can change the present. It’s all up to us. Will we be silent … or … will we free the unstoppable flames?
Acts 2:1-12 Ezekiel 37:1-14
Pentecost
May 31, 2009
For the past seven weeks, we have been singing the hymn “How can we be silent” as a part of our worship. Each time we have used different selections from the verses as they have related to the scripture and the theme of each worship. Well … today is all about the Holy Spirit, and we will be singing just the refrain:
None can stop the Spirit, burning deep inside us.
We will shape the future.
We will not be silent.
It’s a fitting hymn to sing on this day, and it expresses a deeply held conviction of the Christian faith – the power of God is unstoppable.
We see that truth all over the place in the scriptures – the holy stories that lie at the heart of our tradition. In Genesis, the Spirit moves over the waters, bringing order to the chaos and life to the barren creation. In Exodus, the Spirit brings about any number of miracles as the Hebrews escape Egypt and wander through the wilderness. Throughout Acts, the Spirit brings visions and inspires apostolic mission. It shakes open the doors of the prison holding Paul and Silas. It picks the apostle Philip out of the water in which he baptized an Ethiopian Eunuch and whisks him across miles and miles to set him down in a new region to spread the gospel. And, of course, it falls upon the eleven disciples and incites them to speak in tongues so that everyone listening could understand.
Even more amazing, though, is the exercise of the Spirit’s power in challenging even the most permanent, absolute aspect of mortal life – death. In Lent and on Easter, we recognize that awesome power when first Lazarus and then Jesus himself come walking out of the tomb, released from the power of death and restored to life. In the vision of Ezekiel though, we have the most entertaining and visceral display of the unstoppable power of the Spirit.
Imagine, if you can, that you are in the place of the prophet. In the midst of your daily life, you feel the touch of some unknown power that whisks you away to a dry valley and sets you down in the middle of piles and piles of bones. You look around as you regain your equilibrium, and you begin to suspect that you are on the site of an ancient cataclysm and the bones are actually all that remains of the human victims.
Then you hear a voice – the voice of God – directing you to preach to the bones (how crazy is that), telling them that they will come back to life. So, you begin to speak (what else are you going to do?) to the bones around you, and you notice that they begin to move, coming back together into complete skeletons. Then, out of nowhere, they grow ligaments and tendons and muscles, taking on the appearance of those anatomical models that sat in the back of your biology class in high school. Finally, skin appears to cover them all, and you find yourself looking not at piles of bones but a valley full of corpses.
Again you hear the voice giving you a new message. Now you have to command the breath of life – the very Spirit of God – to come and fill the bodies with life. Stunned by what you have seen, you do as you are told. As you speak, you feel the wind begin to blow from every direction at once. And, slowly the bodies begin to stir and to stand up all around you until you are surrounded by thousands of the recently dead – living, breathing proof of the power of the Spirit of God.
I don’t know about you, but that would give me the willies! And yet … and yet, that is the power of the Holy Spirit that was poured out on the streets of Jerusalem. That is the power that speaks to each of us, inviting us to join the family of Christ. That is nature of the Spirit that renews us day by day, that leads us to the renewing water of life and prepares a quiet space of abundance for us to rest even when we are surrounded by threatening specters and impossible challenges. We are all blessed to have that powerful, unstoppable Spirit burning deep inside us … blessed and challenged.
I say challenged precisely because the Holy Spirit can be frightening. As much as we would like to, none of us can predict what the Spirit will do. Tongues of fire, earthquakes opening jail cells, and dry bones taking on new life are just some examples. Who knows what will come next. Who knows where we will find ourselves or what we will be called upon to do when the Spirit’s power is unleashed in our lives.
Fortunately … and unfortunately … we are always given a choice in the matter. Not a choice about what will happen, but a choice about whether we will allow it to happen. God, it seems, has chosen to give us all the freedom to join the dance or stand on the sidelines and watch others move to the music of the Spirit.
When we choose to join in … if we choose to join in … our lives can be transformed and renewed just like Ezekiel’s bones. We may find ourselves speaking words that we don’t understand – words that come out of nowhere in whatever language they come. And, the work of the Spirit pushes us out of the comfortable spaces we have made for ourselves.
It calls us to speak the truth of God’s vision to disbelieving, resistant, and powerful people and institutions in order to bring justice for the oppressed and peace for the abused. It calls us to pour out words of comfort to the suffering people all around us. It calls us to offer hope to those who endure frustration and despair in every moment of their days.
And it asks even more of us… because when we open our selves and our lives up to the fire of the Spirit within us, the power of its flames creates its own wind. And as the wind fans the flames and the flames feed the wind, we find ourselves caught up in a fire-storm – a whirlwind that draws and drives us into the world. For as long as we let it, the Spirit leads us to reach out with more than words. We become the doers of the word, instruments in the symphony of the Spirit.
Each of us knows what that has looked like in our lives. Sometimes it is silence and peace as the coals are banked in preparation. Sometimes it is pale and attenuated because we strain to hold back the fire within even as we seek to free it. Sometimes … sometimes, we find ourselves caught up in the full roar of the music as we reach out to feed, cloth, succor, soothe, and welcome others into the bounty of our own lives. We offer the wealth and the hope we have to those who have need. We preach the promise of God’s Realm and life filled with Spirit fire not just with our voices but with our whole beings – with all that we do and all that we are.
In the power of the Spirit, we are changed. We can change the future. And, we can change the present. It’s all up to us. Will we be silent … or … will we free the unstoppable flames?
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Love One Another
sermon by Torin Eikler
John 15:9-17 I John 5:1-6
Easter 6
May 17, 2009
STORY
The story of a Rwandan woman made the news some time ago. Her name is Iphigenia Mukantabana, and her response to the horrors of the ethnic cleansing that took place fourteen years ago in her country is surprising and inspiring.
Like many women in Rwanda, Iphigenia lost much of her family to mob violence against the Tutsi population. Her husband and her five children were clubbed and hacked to death by Hutus inflamed by quasi-government radio broadcasts, and many of the perpetrators were people she had known as friends and neighbors for her whole life.
In the aftermath, the new government made a decisiont to prosecute only the “reing-leaders,” giving others the option of standing before their communities and acknowleging their part in the slaughter. One man in Iphigenia’s community – one of those who killed her family - Jean-Bosco Bizimana chose that path.
After seven years in jail, Bizimana went before the tribal council and the gathered community. He told the story of how he and others gathered Tutsi’s together and beat them to death with machetes, hoes, and wooden clubs. When he was finished, he asked for forgiveness from the families of those he had killed – asked but did not expect.
He was quite surprised when his neighbor Iphigenia approached him later and invited him to dinner. He wasn’t the only one. Iphigenia, herself, was surprised that she was able to offer the invitation. In her account, she acknowledged that it was diffucult to find the way to forgiveness. She did not even speak to Bizimana or his wife for four years after the killlings, but her faith led her to open her heart to her former friends once more.
“I am a Christian,” she said, “and I pray a lot.” What she found in her prayers was a sense of peace – however fleeting – and an urging to move past her anger to find a way to continue living despite the pain of her grief.
Now, she works in a basket-weaving collective with Bisimana’s wife, and the two families share dinners together on a regular basis. In the act of eating together, they have found a way to rebuild their relationship – a way to make peace with the past and build a new future together.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”
I remember, when I was younger, my great aunt had a plaque in her home that said, “God is love.” It hung on the wall in the dining room behind the head of the table, and so I found my gaze returning to it again and again as I sat through dinner conversation that seemed to go on and on and on and was inevitably boring for an eight year old who would rather go and play. And, as I think about it, I realize that those words from I John (which I heard in many other places as well) have been instrumental in shaping my understanding of God.
And yet, those words are can be as confusing as they are insightful. “Love,” after all, has so many meanings in our language and our culture. I love old fashioned sugar cream pie. I love my parents. I love a good book. I love my sons. I love naps. I love them all in different ways.
When I was a child, I was never confused by the word. I used it freely to mean that I really enjoyed ice cream or that I felt a deep and abiding connection to my brothers or that I couldn’t imagine a world without my parents. Yet as I grew older and sex came onto the radar, I learned from experience that “love” is a tricky word and using it too freely can get you into a lot of trouble with girls.
Yes, God is love. But what does that mean? It can be helpful to know that there are different words in Greek for different kinds of love. Eros is passionate, bodily love, including sexual expression. Phileo is sibling love (we used to call it "brotherly love"), the connectedness that comes with belonging. Agape is a love that cares so deeply for the other as to have no concern for the self. We were taught that the latter was an attribute for God, but rarely of humans. Phileo is rooted in God, but is primarily a human emotion. And, eros, which is all over the place in the human psyche, has no place in an image of the divine. Yet, the scriptures are not quite as black and white as that. Read Song of Songs from the Old Testament, for example, and see if you can pull eros and agape apart from each other. Listen to Jesus teachings about our adoption into the family of God or calling us friends, and you’ll find that Phileo is all tied up in there as well.
So, what exactly does it mean to love one another?
STORY
In the year 2000, a movie premiered in theaters across the country and became a bit of a phenomenon. It was the talk of many communities because it challenged the cultural norms that teach us to put ourselves (and our families) first. It gave birth to many small groups of people trying to change the world for the better – a movement that was, sadly, short lived.
Pay It Forward was the story of Trevor McKinney and the project he developed for his sixth grade Social Studies class.
When his teacher gives the class an assignment to develop a plan to change the world and put it into action, Trevor comes up with the idea of paying good deeds forward rather than paying them back. He reasons that if everyone reached out to help three people and asked them to help three more in turn, the ripple effect would grow geometrically and people would not only be better off, they would begin to look at the world – and each other – in a different light. The only caveat was that “it had to be something important. Not just a small favor, but something really big.”
In the course of the movie, Trevor brings a homeless junky into his home in order to give him a chance to feel valued, to regain a sense of self-worth, and to free himself from the addiction that has landed him in a tent down by the tracks. Then, he sets up his mother and his social studies teacher on a date, giving Mr. Simonet (who has been disfigured by a gasoline fire) and his mother (who has been on the receiving end of an abusive relationship) the chance to find hope and love and acceptance again.
At first, these efforts seem to be working, but when the addict goes back to the streets and the relationship between his teacher and his mother fizzles, Trevor begins to lose hope himself. In the end, though, he decides to give it one more shot – to find one last really big favor to do for someone in the hopes of changing the world.
The recipient of that favor turns out to be his friend, Adam who is constantly tormented by bullies. In the climatic scene, Trevor is escaping the same bullies on his bicycle. When Adam calls out to him for help, he stops, turns, and deciding that this will be his third favor he rides back into the bullies’ midst. Standing between Adam and the bullies, he tells his friend to run, and while Adam goes to get help, Trevor tries to resist the bullies, standing up when he is pushed down and talking back. One of the other boys pulls a knife to threaten him, and in the midst of the struggle, Trevor is pushed and falls on the knife. By the time Mr. Simonet arrives with Adam, they find him lying on the ground by himself, dying from the injury.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”
It’s hard to say what that commandment really means. Even when we continue on with the text – “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” – it’s still a little muddled. Certainly, with Christ as a model, we know that love must be more than just a feeling we feel. It involves abiding as we heard last week, and it involves action. Not all of us will be in the position to lay down our lives as Jesus or Trevor did. Yet, the actions that love compels us to take can change the lives of the people we touch and … change the world.
STORY
Some time ago (when I was a student, I think), a colleague told me the story of one mother’s struggle to build a healthy, helpful relationship with her step-son. As is often the case when people remarry, the boy’s response to the emotional upheaval was to rebel.
Brett came to live with his father at the age of 12 and by the age of sixteen he had gotten lost in alcohol and smoking (only cigarettes, thankfully). Throughout this time, his step-mother tried to be a loving and supportive presence and worked at finding some way – any way – to bring her step-son out of this stage and onto a healthier path through life. Despite all her effort and all her prayers for strength, she found herself more than ready to send Brett away to a “tough love” boarding school when he wound up in juvenile hall on a suicide watch two years later.
The psychological training at the school was rigorous, and out of the more than 20 people in his class, Brett was one of just five who graduated. At the closing ceremony the graduates stood one by one to thank the people who had helped them along the way, handing a white rosebud to the person who had meant the most to each of them. When Brett rose, he spoke lovingly to his mother and father and finally took responsibility for the heartaches he had caused.
But, he didn’t stop there. Instead, he turned to his step mother and said, "You did so much. You were always there, no matter what. My mom and dad, I was their kid. But you just got stuck with me. All the same you always showed me such love. And I want you to know that I love you for it." When he was finished speaking, he gently placed the rosebud into her hands and gave her a hug.
Make no mistake about it. Love is not just the passionate feeling feel for our girlfriend or boyfriend, our partner, our parent, or our children. Love is not a passive general sense of wellbeing or well-wishing toward others - At least not the love Jesus speaks of. Love is a radical force that wells up within us and inspires us to act.
It leads to amazing acts of forgiveness. It gives birth to moments of heroic sacrifice and inspiring moments growing from perseverance, endurance, and patience. It moves us to lay down our lives in big and small ways from making bag lunches or helping move furniture, to volunteering overseas or fixing bicycles, to baby sitting or changing diapers. It changes our lives – who we are and who we are becoming. And, as it transforms us into the servants, it can change the lives of all those we touch along the way.
We, here, have made the commitment to be disciples of Christ. We have chosen to bind ourselves to the way of hope and promise that Christ taught and that the Spirit continues to bring into the world through us. And, as disciples and friends of our teacher, savior, brother, God; we have this one commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
May it be so with us today and always. AMEN.
John 15:9-17 I John 5:1-6
Easter 6
May 17, 2009
STORY
The story of a Rwandan woman made the news some time ago. Her name is Iphigenia Mukantabana, and her response to the horrors of the ethnic cleansing that took place fourteen years ago in her country is surprising and inspiring.
Like many women in Rwanda, Iphigenia lost much of her family to mob violence against the Tutsi population. Her husband and her five children were clubbed and hacked to death by Hutus inflamed by quasi-government radio broadcasts, and many of the perpetrators were people she had known as friends and neighbors for her whole life.
In the aftermath, the new government made a decisiont to prosecute only the “reing-leaders,” giving others the option of standing before their communities and acknowleging their part in the slaughter. One man in Iphigenia’s community – one of those who killed her family - Jean-Bosco Bizimana chose that path.
After seven years in jail, Bizimana went before the tribal council and the gathered community. He told the story of how he and others gathered Tutsi’s together and beat them to death with machetes, hoes, and wooden clubs. When he was finished, he asked for forgiveness from the families of those he had killed – asked but did not expect.
He was quite surprised when his neighbor Iphigenia approached him later and invited him to dinner. He wasn’t the only one. Iphigenia, herself, was surprised that she was able to offer the invitation. In her account, she acknowledged that it was diffucult to find the way to forgiveness. She did not even speak to Bizimana or his wife for four years after the killlings, but her faith led her to open her heart to her former friends once more.
“I am a Christian,” she said, “and I pray a lot.” What she found in her prayers was a sense of peace – however fleeting – and an urging to move past her anger to find a way to continue living despite the pain of her grief.
Now, she works in a basket-weaving collective with Bisimana’s wife, and the two families share dinners together on a regular basis. In the act of eating together, they have found a way to rebuild their relationship – a way to make peace with the past and build a new future together.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”
I remember, when I was younger, my great aunt had a plaque in her home that said, “God is love.” It hung on the wall in the dining room behind the head of the table, and so I found my gaze returning to it again and again as I sat through dinner conversation that seemed to go on and on and on and was inevitably boring for an eight year old who would rather go and play. And, as I think about it, I realize that those words from I John (which I heard in many other places as well) have been instrumental in shaping my understanding of God.
And yet, those words are can be as confusing as they are insightful. “Love,” after all, has so many meanings in our language and our culture. I love old fashioned sugar cream pie. I love my parents. I love a good book. I love my sons. I love naps. I love them all in different ways.
When I was a child, I was never confused by the word. I used it freely to mean that I really enjoyed ice cream or that I felt a deep and abiding connection to my brothers or that I couldn’t imagine a world without my parents. Yet as I grew older and sex came onto the radar, I learned from experience that “love” is a tricky word and using it too freely can get you into a lot of trouble with girls.
Yes, God is love. But what does that mean? It can be helpful to know that there are different words in Greek for different kinds of love. Eros is passionate, bodily love, including sexual expression. Phileo is sibling love (we used to call it "brotherly love"), the connectedness that comes with belonging. Agape is a love that cares so deeply for the other as to have no concern for the self. We were taught that the latter was an attribute for God, but rarely of humans. Phileo is rooted in God, but is primarily a human emotion. And, eros, which is all over the place in the human psyche, has no place in an image of the divine. Yet, the scriptures are not quite as black and white as that. Read Song of Songs from the Old Testament, for example, and see if you can pull eros and agape apart from each other. Listen to Jesus teachings about our adoption into the family of God or calling us friends, and you’ll find that Phileo is all tied up in there as well.
So, what exactly does it mean to love one another?
STORY
In the year 2000, a movie premiered in theaters across the country and became a bit of a phenomenon. It was the talk of many communities because it challenged the cultural norms that teach us to put ourselves (and our families) first. It gave birth to many small groups of people trying to change the world for the better – a movement that was, sadly, short lived.
Pay It Forward was the story of Trevor McKinney and the project he developed for his sixth grade Social Studies class.
When his teacher gives the class an assignment to develop a plan to change the world and put it into action, Trevor comes up with the idea of paying good deeds forward rather than paying them back. He reasons that if everyone reached out to help three people and asked them to help three more in turn, the ripple effect would grow geometrically and people would not only be better off, they would begin to look at the world – and each other – in a different light. The only caveat was that “it had to be something important. Not just a small favor, but something really big.”
In the course of the movie, Trevor brings a homeless junky into his home in order to give him a chance to feel valued, to regain a sense of self-worth, and to free himself from the addiction that has landed him in a tent down by the tracks. Then, he sets up his mother and his social studies teacher on a date, giving Mr. Simonet (who has been disfigured by a gasoline fire) and his mother (who has been on the receiving end of an abusive relationship) the chance to find hope and love and acceptance again.
At first, these efforts seem to be working, but when the addict goes back to the streets and the relationship between his teacher and his mother fizzles, Trevor begins to lose hope himself. In the end, though, he decides to give it one more shot – to find one last really big favor to do for someone in the hopes of changing the world.
The recipient of that favor turns out to be his friend, Adam who is constantly tormented by bullies. In the climatic scene, Trevor is escaping the same bullies on his bicycle. When Adam calls out to him for help, he stops, turns, and deciding that this will be his third favor he rides back into the bullies’ midst. Standing between Adam and the bullies, he tells his friend to run, and while Adam goes to get help, Trevor tries to resist the bullies, standing up when he is pushed down and talking back. One of the other boys pulls a knife to threaten him, and in the midst of the struggle, Trevor is pushed and falls on the knife. By the time Mr. Simonet arrives with Adam, they find him lying on the ground by himself, dying from the injury.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another ….”
It’s hard to say what that commandment really means. Even when we continue on with the text – “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” – it’s still a little muddled. Certainly, with Christ as a model, we know that love must be more than just a feeling we feel. It involves abiding as we heard last week, and it involves action. Not all of us will be in the position to lay down our lives as Jesus or Trevor did. Yet, the actions that love compels us to take can change the lives of the people we touch and … change the world.
STORY
Some time ago (when I was a student, I think), a colleague told me the story of one mother’s struggle to build a healthy, helpful relationship with her step-son. As is often the case when people remarry, the boy’s response to the emotional upheaval was to rebel.
Brett came to live with his father at the age of 12 and by the age of sixteen he had gotten lost in alcohol and smoking (only cigarettes, thankfully). Throughout this time, his step-mother tried to be a loving and supportive presence and worked at finding some way – any way – to bring her step-son out of this stage and onto a healthier path through life. Despite all her effort and all her prayers for strength, she found herself more than ready to send Brett away to a “tough love” boarding school when he wound up in juvenile hall on a suicide watch two years later.
The psychological training at the school was rigorous, and out of the more than 20 people in his class, Brett was one of just five who graduated. At the closing ceremony the graduates stood one by one to thank the people who had helped them along the way, handing a white rosebud to the person who had meant the most to each of them. When Brett rose, he spoke lovingly to his mother and father and finally took responsibility for the heartaches he had caused.
But, he didn’t stop there. Instead, he turned to his step mother and said, "You did so much. You were always there, no matter what. My mom and dad, I was their kid. But you just got stuck with me. All the same you always showed me such love. And I want you to know that I love you for it." When he was finished speaking, he gently placed the rosebud into her hands and gave her a hug.
Make no mistake about it. Love is not just the passionate feeling feel for our girlfriend or boyfriend, our partner, our parent, or our children. Love is not a passive general sense of wellbeing or well-wishing toward others - At least not the love Jesus speaks of. Love is a radical force that wells up within us and inspires us to act.
It leads to amazing acts of forgiveness. It gives birth to moments of heroic sacrifice and inspiring moments growing from perseverance, endurance, and patience. It moves us to lay down our lives in big and small ways from making bag lunches or helping move furniture, to volunteering overseas or fixing bicycles, to baby sitting or changing diapers. It changes our lives – who we are and who we are becoming. And, as it transforms us into the servants, it can change the lives of all those we touch along the way.
We, here, have made the commitment to be disciples of Christ. We have chosen to bind ourselves to the way of hope and promise that Christ taught and that the Spirit continues to bring into the world through us. And, as disciples and friends of our teacher, savior, brother, God; we have this one commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
May it be so with us today and always. AMEN.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Active Abiding
sermon by Carrie Eikler
John 15:1-8, 1 John 4:7-21
Easter 5
May 10th, 2009
There is nothing more enlivening that watching two year olds at play. If Sebastian was hearing me speak, he would correct me: two and a half. It’s even more charming to watch two and a half year olds try to be still.
Sebastian is finishing his second year of Parents’ Place, the nursery school here in our church. It gives me a lovely break from him for two hours, twice a week…just enough to miss him. This week they were working on Mother’s Day projects, something that stilled their little two and a half year old bodies.
On Wednesday he came screeching out of the room in excitement…and you know what Sebastian’s screeching is like. In his little hands were flowers—some pansies—in one of those small waxy cups that you have in your bathroom. The yellow blooms stood tall above the crushed cup that he held a little too firmly in his excitement.
As he was playing, his teacher Ms Ruth, talked about the planting process. She said they planted the seeds a few weeks ago, but only a few really germinated so she just bought some flowers to put in the cups instead. “But you should have seen them planting the seeds,” she laughed. “Once we put the seeds in the dirt, and poured the water on them, they all sat around staring at the cups, just waiting for the flowers to come up.”
If I had known that to get Sebastian to stop and be still for 3 minutes simply involved putting some dirt and a seed in a waxy paper cup, I would have invested my money in Burpee seeds and Dixie Cups a long time ago, and shared this secret with the world.
Could this be an early lesson not only in patience, but in the practice of abiding?
Both of today’s scriptures use this word: abide. In the first scripture from John 15, the word abide comes up ten times in eleven verses, and in our second reading it comes up five times. Now, one of the first things we learn in seminary when we learn to study biblical text is this: if a word is repeated over, and over…and over, it’s probably pretty important.
We don’t use the word “abide” much in our vocabulary. There are other words we would probably use: “wait,” “stay,” maybe “tolerate.” We use variations on the word, such as bide: “I am just biding my time until something better comes along,” All in all the connotation of the word, as we use it, is not necessarily negative, but it’s just…boring. Although it is a verb—an action—it seems rather dull and inactive.
But how the word “abide” is used in these scriptures for today is anything but inactive. Abiding is a necessary action! Abiding in the vine in order to have life…Abiding in love so that we might abide in God and God abide in us.
Abide…not simply twiddling our thumbs waiting, “killing” time. Abide...as if, to make one’s “abode,” one’s home. Abide in love: make your home in love. Abide in God: find your rest in God. Abide in the vine: find your nourishment and safety in the rooted tree of life.
Abide in love so that you may abide in God and God in you.
I’ve been struck by how much true abiding I, and we as a congregation, have witnessed in the last few weeks. We have witnessed the qualities of an abiding Mother God in those who have abided with mothers, with those who have been like mothers, with those who wait in anticipation of becoming mothers.
Our sister Linda abided with her mother as she made her “last big trip” from this life into the next. Linda shared with us that she had crept into her mother’s bed and slept with her for the last three days of her life. She wrote that she slept with her so she could be attentive. Perhaps listening for her breathing, feeling a body in need of sustenance and release all at the same time. Linda spoke of it as “intimate“. I would also speak of it as abiding in love.
Last week Torin and I gathered around Jane Calvert, Joe Moore’s aunt, with Joe and his family and friends. There were probably ten people who laid hands on Jane. We anointed her, and I have never done an anointing that felt so much like I was administering a last ordinance to someone, but it felt like that. Joe spent the past two years sleeping in the chair next to her, changing her clothes, and caring for her—a woman who wasn’t his mother, but who was like a mother to him, like a mother to many people. At times I’m sure it felt like simply waiting, biding time, as he put his life on hold to be a caregiver. But as he spoke of his love for her and the choices he made to care for her, I would say that he took on the holy task of abiding with Jane.
Sue shared with us last week that her son and daughter-in-law, Mike and Rebekah, are waiting with unknown diagnoses for the child Rebecca will birth in a matter of weeks. They are preparing to make a home for this beloved child, abiding in the knowledge that things may be difficult. They aren’t simply waiting to see what will happen. They are abiding in their love for their baby. Their baby is abiding in their love. They are abiding in God, just as the child who is eager to make its home outside of his mother abides in God.
Abiding is not passive or boring. It takes our energy, often all the energy we have. It takes endurance. It takes a commitment to love and sacrifice.
Maybe it is the reason that John exhausts the word. More than likely it is used over, and over, and over in order to press upon us the difficult task of rooting ourselves in the pain, and the love, and conditions of someone else. And maybe it is by doing that difficult work that we come to understand how God roots herself in our pain, our love, and our condition.
And maybe, that’s how we extend God’s love to others, by being vessels who help root Her love in this world. Planting seeds in the dirt held by a crushed, waxy paper cup, and watching for the bloom.
When Shasti O’Leary-Soudant, a woman from Buffalo, NY was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, she found the abiding presence of her husband, Jethro, transform one of the most difficult days of her treatment into one of the happiest days of her life. Shasti and Jethro recorded their memory of the struggle with StoryCorps, a traveling project that records and archives peoples stories. National Public Radio weekly airs some of these stories on their news program. This one was aired on 2006:
Jethro began the segment: “I remember the most scared I was was when you were diagnosed. That was frightening and I remember, you know, bawling due to not knowing what lie ahead for you and us. I didn't cope with it as well as I could have.”
To which Shasti, his wife, replied “I think you coped pretty well considering… I mean, you never let me see any of it. The happiest and the worst day of my life were the same day. It was pretty late [into] the chemo--I think it was probably about five months into it. I was getting really sick.”
“Every time they'd have to take me into the back room cause they couldn't give it to me with all the other patients and the moment that we walked off the elevator, I started feeling nauseous and then we walked into the back room and the moment that the needle punctured the skin and the port, I threw up and you were ready for it. You, like, caught it, and I soiled myself. I peed. I couldn't control any of my bodily functions. I was crying hysterically and you said something that made me laugh and I still can't remember what it was. You were just looking at me. You were looking at me right in the eye and you said something really funny.”
“…it was like you were radiating love just out of your face at me and it was like shining a light on me. I felt like I was looking into the sun. It was the most incredible moment of my life because I had no doubt.// I knew you loved me. I knew that if I died it would never stop cause it was just really--you can't think of being in any worse shape than I was at that exact second except that I was laughing and all of the sudden I just felt like no matter what happened, everything was going to be fine.”
“That’s when you kind of broke,” said Jethro. “You finally submitted. That was probably the lowest point, but then became the highest point simultaneously.”
“I guess I just sort of let it happen from that point on,” she said. “I let you take care of me, but that was a long slog, boy. That was a fight.”
I think about having the strength to abide with someone in this way. I think about having the humility to have someone abide with me in this way, to release all illusion that I can control what happens in my life. I think about having enough love to radiate a shining light when I’m scared out of my wits about the unknown, or being able to laugh hysterically through my tears because no matter what happens—death or life, pain or joy—no matter what happens, someone’s love is rooted in me. My love is rooted in someone else.
And I know I couldn’t ever do that by myself.
“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” AMEN
--(If you want to hear Shasti's story on StoryCorps, click here: http://www.storycorps.org/listen/stories/shasti-oleary-soudant-and-jethro-soudant)
John 15:1-8, 1 John 4:7-21
Easter 5
May 10th, 2009
There is nothing more enlivening that watching two year olds at play. If Sebastian was hearing me speak, he would correct me: two and a half. It’s even more charming to watch two and a half year olds try to be still.
Sebastian is finishing his second year of Parents’ Place, the nursery school here in our church. It gives me a lovely break from him for two hours, twice a week…just enough to miss him. This week they were working on Mother’s Day projects, something that stilled their little two and a half year old bodies.
On Wednesday he came screeching out of the room in excitement…and you know what Sebastian’s screeching is like. In his little hands were flowers—some pansies—in one of those small waxy cups that you have in your bathroom. The yellow blooms stood tall above the crushed cup that he held a little too firmly in his excitement.
As he was playing, his teacher Ms Ruth, talked about the planting process. She said they planted the seeds a few weeks ago, but only a few really germinated so she just bought some flowers to put in the cups instead. “But you should have seen them planting the seeds,” she laughed. “Once we put the seeds in the dirt, and poured the water on them, they all sat around staring at the cups, just waiting for the flowers to come up.”
If I had known that to get Sebastian to stop and be still for 3 minutes simply involved putting some dirt and a seed in a waxy paper cup, I would have invested my money in Burpee seeds and Dixie Cups a long time ago, and shared this secret with the world.
Could this be an early lesson not only in patience, but in the practice of abiding?
Both of today’s scriptures use this word: abide. In the first scripture from John 15, the word abide comes up ten times in eleven verses, and in our second reading it comes up five times. Now, one of the first things we learn in seminary when we learn to study biblical text is this: if a word is repeated over, and over…and over, it’s probably pretty important.
We don’t use the word “abide” much in our vocabulary. There are other words we would probably use: “wait,” “stay,” maybe “tolerate.” We use variations on the word, such as bide: “I am just biding my time until something better comes along,” All in all the connotation of the word, as we use it, is not necessarily negative, but it’s just…boring. Although it is a verb—an action—it seems rather dull and inactive.
But how the word “abide” is used in these scriptures for today is anything but inactive. Abiding is a necessary action! Abiding in the vine in order to have life…Abiding in love so that we might abide in God and God abide in us.
Abide…not simply twiddling our thumbs waiting, “killing” time. Abide...as if, to make one’s “abode,” one’s home. Abide in love: make your home in love. Abide in God: find your rest in God. Abide in the vine: find your nourishment and safety in the rooted tree of life.
Abide in love so that you may abide in God and God in you.
I’ve been struck by how much true abiding I, and we as a congregation, have witnessed in the last few weeks. We have witnessed the qualities of an abiding Mother God in those who have abided with mothers, with those who have been like mothers, with those who wait in anticipation of becoming mothers.
Our sister Linda abided with her mother as she made her “last big trip” from this life into the next. Linda shared with us that she had crept into her mother’s bed and slept with her for the last three days of her life. She wrote that she slept with her so she could be attentive. Perhaps listening for her breathing, feeling a body in need of sustenance and release all at the same time. Linda spoke of it as “intimate“. I would also speak of it as abiding in love.
Last week Torin and I gathered around Jane Calvert, Joe Moore’s aunt, with Joe and his family and friends. There were probably ten people who laid hands on Jane. We anointed her, and I have never done an anointing that felt so much like I was administering a last ordinance to someone, but it felt like that. Joe spent the past two years sleeping in the chair next to her, changing her clothes, and caring for her—a woman who wasn’t his mother, but who was like a mother to him, like a mother to many people. At times I’m sure it felt like simply waiting, biding time, as he put his life on hold to be a caregiver. But as he spoke of his love for her and the choices he made to care for her, I would say that he took on the holy task of abiding with Jane.
Sue shared with us last week that her son and daughter-in-law, Mike and Rebekah, are waiting with unknown diagnoses for the child Rebecca will birth in a matter of weeks. They are preparing to make a home for this beloved child, abiding in the knowledge that things may be difficult. They aren’t simply waiting to see what will happen. They are abiding in their love for their baby. Their baby is abiding in their love. They are abiding in God, just as the child who is eager to make its home outside of his mother abides in God.
Abiding is not passive or boring. It takes our energy, often all the energy we have. It takes endurance. It takes a commitment to love and sacrifice.
Maybe it is the reason that John exhausts the word. More than likely it is used over, and over, and over in order to press upon us the difficult task of rooting ourselves in the pain, and the love, and conditions of someone else. And maybe it is by doing that difficult work that we come to understand how God roots herself in our pain, our love, and our condition.
And maybe, that’s how we extend God’s love to others, by being vessels who help root Her love in this world. Planting seeds in the dirt held by a crushed, waxy paper cup, and watching for the bloom.
When Shasti O’Leary-Soudant, a woman from Buffalo, NY was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, she found the abiding presence of her husband, Jethro, transform one of the most difficult days of her treatment into one of the happiest days of her life. Shasti and Jethro recorded their memory of the struggle with StoryCorps, a traveling project that records and archives peoples stories. National Public Radio weekly airs some of these stories on their news program. This one was aired on 2006:
Jethro began the segment: “I remember the most scared I was was when you were diagnosed. That was frightening and I remember, you know, bawling due to not knowing what lie ahead for you and us. I didn't cope with it as well as I could have.”
To which Shasti, his wife, replied “I think you coped pretty well considering… I mean, you never let me see any of it. The happiest and the worst day of my life were the same day. It was pretty late [into] the chemo--I think it was probably about five months into it. I was getting really sick.”
“Every time they'd have to take me into the back room cause they couldn't give it to me with all the other patients and the moment that we walked off the elevator, I started feeling nauseous and then we walked into the back room and the moment that the needle punctured the skin and the port, I threw up and you were ready for it. You, like, caught it, and I soiled myself. I peed. I couldn't control any of my bodily functions. I was crying hysterically and you said something that made me laugh and I still can't remember what it was. You were just looking at me. You were looking at me right in the eye and you said something really funny.”
“…it was like you were radiating love just out of your face at me and it was like shining a light on me. I felt like I was looking into the sun. It was the most incredible moment of my life because I had no doubt.// I knew you loved me. I knew that if I died it would never stop cause it was just really--you can't think of being in any worse shape than I was at that exact second except that I was laughing and all of the sudden I just felt like no matter what happened, everything was going to be fine.”
“That’s when you kind of broke,” said Jethro. “You finally submitted. That was probably the lowest point, but then became the highest point simultaneously.”
“I guess I just sort of let it happen from that point on,” she said. “I let you take care of me, but that was a long slog, boy. That was a fight.”
I think about having the strength to abide with someone in this way. I think about having the humility to have someone abide with me in this way, to release all illusion that I can control what happens in my life. I think about having enough love to radiate a shining light when I’m scared out of my wits about the unknown, or being able to laugh hysterically through my tears because no matter what happens—death or life, pain or joy—no matter what happens, someone’s love is rooted in me. My love is rooted in someone else.
And I know I couldn’t ever do that by myself.
“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” AMEN
--(If you want to hear Shasti's story on StoryCorps, click here: http://www.storycorps.org/listen/stories/shasti-oleary-soudant-and-jethro-soudant)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
From Wounds to Witness
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Easter 3
1 John 3:1-3, Luke 24:36b-48
In 2001 the French movie “Amelie” crossed the Atlantic and became a hit in the United States. Now, Americans aren’t really ones for foreign films, especially if they have subtitles, but the “Amelie” was an exception. The tagline for the movie was “one person can change your life forever . “ Amelie, an innocent and naive young woman in Paris, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way. In one scene, Amelie has helped someone by has anonymously returning a lost item to the owner.
The narrator says: "Amelie has a strange feeling of absolute harmony. It's a perfect moment. Soft light, a scent in the air, the quiet murmur of the city. She breathes deeply. Life is simple and clear. A surge of love, an urge to help mankind comes over her."
At this point, Amelie spots a blind man at the curb who is about to cross the busy street. She has seen the man a couple of times before in short glimpses. Amelie steps up beside him, grabs his arm, and guides him into the street saying, "Let me help you. Step down. Here we go!” She begins to move him through the cars, along the bustle of the sidewalk, through the smells and sounds that he can clearly detect. But she also becomes his eyes for him, describing what they pass, things he cannot see. Things he has perhaps never seen.”The drum major's widow! She's worn his coat since the day he died. The horse's head has lost an ear! That's the florist laughing. He has crinkly eyes. In the bakery window, lollipops. Smell that! They're giving out melon slices. Sugarplum ice cream! We're passing the park butcher. Ham, 79 francs. Spareribs, 45! Now the cheese shop. Picadors are 12.90. Cabecaus 23.50. A baby's watching a dog...[and the dog is] watching the chickens.”
The man is clearly astonished by this ride he is on, but the way his head is thrown back in a sense of abandon we realize he is enjoying this newfound sense of sight. As they reach the end of the street, Amelie lets go of his arm and says, “Now we're at the kiosk by the metro. I'll leave you here. Bye!"
Amelie trots up the steps and the man is left alone again. He raises he head to the sky, his eyes still in foggy blindness, and light radiates over his body. It’s hard to tell if the light is coming from above him or from within him.
( view scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqT9kA1bcVQ)
It seems like this is the encounter with Jesus that the disciples and other followers experienced in those days following the resurrection. Jesus stepped up to people, surprised them, walked with them in the streets. He spoke with them about grief, loss, delight. And even if they were still “disbelieving in their joy,” as it says the disciples reacted in today’s scripture , he still opens something in them that allows for his light to shine into them…or maybe shine from within them.
It seems like the post-resurrection stories all move along with this tension: they seem him, but they don’t see him. On Easter Mary thought he was a gardener. On the Road to Emmaus they thought he was a uninformed stranger who didn’t know about Jesus dying and being raised from the dead. And in today’s scripture they see him, but think they see a ghost; whether they think it is a ghost of Jesus it doesn’t say, but it took him gobbling down some fish for them to get who it really was, in flesh and bone.
And isn’t that our tension, too? Not seeing and seeing? But often our stories continue on in cycle that we don’t see happening in the gospels in the post-resurrection story. We experience a cycle of not seeing, and then seeing, and then not seeing again. Not believing, and then believing, then not believing, then believing….It seems like in the gospels, we only see the confused part and then the clarity part. A happy ending. Not at all a typical French movie. (By the way, without spoiling it too much for those of you who haven’t seen it, Amelie is not a typical French movies, as endings go)
It is unfortunate for us that we only get a snapshot of the lives of those who saw Jesus’ work, his life and death and resurrection. Even though we know some of them didn’t quite get it, or were fearful, or (God forbid) even doubted, we come away from the gospel stories thinking they were somehow special--better suited to the task of witnessing than we are. They had the real stuff, we only have…bits and pieces of the real stuff. Longings for the real stuff.
But I think if the gospel stories continued on, if we saw each of the disciples--each of the followers of Jesus--throughout their lives until their death, the same way we are witnesses to our own lives, we would likely see such cycles of belief and disbelief, assuredness and questioning.
So for Jesus to say to his disciples “You are witness of these things,” and imply that they are to continue the work of sharing the message to all the nations, to witness to the nations…well its all fine and good because they actually did witness it. They saw it. But what have we seen? What have we witnessed?
We’ve sat through lots of church services, Sunday School classes, TV evangelists. We tried prayer practices and good deeds and getting in touch with ourselves. How many of us have witnessed Jesus in these ways…in these places?
For those who are lucky—perhaps to go so far to say, for those who are blessed—to have witnessed Jesus profoundly in these places, there are many of us who want to know: what’s the secret? It seems so hard in our post-modern world which places such emphasis on personal experience, to say when we have seen Jesus. Today it feels like we must experience what Jesus was all about before we can believe we have witnessed it. Believing is seeing.
Maybe the disciples were a little bit like this. Frightened and anxious, they probably felt a bit frayed around the edges, tattered and torn, rather than being seeds scattered and sown. What had they just witnessed? The crucifixion, the empty tomb. This certainly didn’t make them feel empowered to be bearers of the good news, because they locked themselves away. Secure from the outside world. They’re barring the doors and stocking up on the food, settling down for the hurricane to hit and hopefully pass.
But Jesus came to them again. Jesus stood with them and asked about their fears. He pushed up his sleeves and stuck out his feet, holes and blood and bone. Jesus invited them to himself to touch, feel. And to prove that he didn’t die, but also continued to live, he took something to eat, an essential act to sustain life. And then he opens them to the scripture. And then when they were open—their doors, their eyes, their hearts—they did more than simply see. They witnessed. They experienced. They saw and were compelled by the opening of themselves to share it with others.
It seems like it was witnessing these things that convinced them they could go and be witnesses to others? Not the seeing the dead body or the empty tomb, but witnessing the pronouncement of peace along with seeing the wounds along with some messy eating and some good old fashioned bible study.
Again, all fine and good for them. But what about us? How can we witness if we don’t know if we’ve seen the risen Lord? With all our wounds of the past and the present, for all the wounds we may likely incur or cause in the future, how could we possibly be good witnesses?
For the disciples it was seeing that Jesus’ humanity didn’t stop. He kept pronouncing peace in the midst of his wounds, the wounds that cracked open their protective shell to slowly realize who he was. I think that is what we are witness to. If we are unsure we have seen Christ, we can be sure we have witnessed his wounds.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds this week as suicide bombers in Baghdad killed or injured at least 170 people.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds when a family stares at their burned out house, wondering how this could have happened.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds when immigrants seeking new lives are gunned down in their classroom.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds when sisters and brothers in faith wonder if the church will cast them as outsiders if they revealed the hidden parts of their lives.
We may not know if we have seen Jesus, but there is no doubt that we have witnessed his wounds. And that alone prepares us to be witnesses.
The priest and theologian Henri Nouwen utilizes the image of a “wounded healer” as a powerful approach to witnessing to the world (The Wounded Healer, 1979). We begin with our own wounds in order to see and understand the wounds around us, the wounds of others, the places where Christ’s peace needs to touch you, me, everyone. At one point he brings this to a very personal approach:
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
Seeing the wounds may just be the first step. Then touching. Then Christ calls us to sit and eat with him, wherever that may be. Then Christ calls us to learn with him, however that may be… until we are completely opened: our hearts, our eyes, our minds, and our lives.
Maybe we have a lot in common with the blind man in the movie Amelie. In our wondering if we have seen Jesus, wondering if we can safely cross the busy road of our lives unscathed, let alone make any difference to the people on the other side, we may feel that firm grasp on our arm as we are led through life by the gentle, but firm and directive movement and voice of the spirit. And we begin to witness the grief and laughter, joy and pain of Christ’s testimony. With our heads thrown back in joyful disbelief and willing abandon like the blind man, and like the disciples, the light we never thought we have seen begins to radiate on us.
Or does it radiate from us? Maybe that is how the life of being Christ’s witness in the world is like. The light that shines on us is the light that shines from us. The light we see is the light others see. The Christ we have witnessed is the Christ we share with others.
Peace be with you. Touch the wounds. Eat with others. Open your minds. You are witnesses of these things.
--
In continuing with our testimonies throughout the Easter season, I’ve invited Rejoyce to come before you and testify to the ways in which she has witnessed Christ’s wounds in the world, and how she has chosen to respond as a witness of Christ’s love. When she is finished, I invite you to read the unison response, printed in your bulletin: "We rejoice in your witness to Christ's wounds. Allelulia!"
Easter 3
1 John 3:1-3, Luke 24:36b-48
In 2001 the French movie “Amelie” crossed the Atlantic and became a hit in the United States. Now, Americans aren’t really ones for foreign films, especially if they have subtitles, but the “Amelie” was an exception. The tagline for the movie was “one person can change your life forever . “ Amelie, an innocent and naive young woman in Paris, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way. In one scene, Amelie has helped someone by has anonymously returning a lost item to the owner.
The narrator says: "Amelie has a strange feeling of absolute harmony. It's a perfect moment. Soft light, a scent in the air, the quiet murmur of the city. She breathes deeply. Life is simple and clear. A surge of love, an urge to help mankind comes over her."
At this point, Amelie spots a blind man at the curb who is about to cross the busy street. She has seen the man a couple of times before in short glimpses. Amelie steps up beside him, grabs his arm, and guides him into the street saying, "Let me help you. Step down. Here we go!” She begins to move him through the cars, along the bustle of the sidewalk, through the smells and sounds that he can clearly detect. But she also becomes his eyes for him, describing what they pass, things he cannot see. Things he has perhaps never seen.”The drum major's widow! She's worn his coat since the day he died. The horse's head has lost an ear! That's the florist laughing. He has crinkly eyes. In the bakery window, lollipops. Smell that! They're giving out melon slices. Sugarplum ice cream! We're passing the park butcher. Ham, 79 francs. Spareribs, 45! Now the cheese shop. Picadors are 12.90. Cabecaus 23.50. A baby's watching a dog...[and the dog is] watching the chickens.”
The man is clearly astonished by this ride he is on, but the way his head is thrown back in a sense of abandon we realize he is enjoying this newfound sense of sight. As they reach the end of the street, Amelie lets go of his arm and says, “Now we're at the kiosk by the metro. I'll leave you here. Bye!"
Amelie trots up the steps and the man is left alone again. He raises he head to the sky, his eyes still in foggy blindness, and light radiates over his body. It’s hard to tell if the light is coming from above him or from within him.
( view scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqT9kA1bcVQ)
It seems like this is the encounter with Jesus that the disciples and other followers experienced in those days following the resurrection. Jesus stepped up to people, surprised them, walked with them in the streets. He spoke with them about grief, loss, delight. And even if they were still “disbelieving in their joy,” as it says the disciples reacted in today’s scripture , he still opens something in them that allows for his light to shine into them…or maybe shine from within them.
It seems like the post-resurrection stories all move along with this tension: they seem him, but they don’t see him. On Easter Mary thought he was a gardener. On the Road to Emmaus they thought he was a uninformed stranger who didn’t know about Jesus dying and being raised from the dead. And in today’s scripture they see him, but think they see a ghost; whether they think it is a ghost of Jesus it doesn’t say, but it took him gobbling down some fish for them to get who it really was, in flesh and bone.
And isn’t that our tension, too? Not seeing and seeing? But often our stories continue on in cycle that we don’t see happening in the gospels in the post-resurrection story. We experience a cycle of not seeing, and then seeing, and then not seeing again. Not believing, and then believing, then not believing, then believing….It seems like in the gospels, we only see the confused part and then the clarity part. A happy ending. Not at all a typical French movie. (By the way, without spoiling it too much for those of you who haven’t seen it, Amelie is not a typical French movies, as endings go)
It is unfortunate for us that we only get a snapshot of the lives of those who saw Jesus’ work, his life and death and resurrection. Even though we know some of them didn’t quite get it, or were fearful, or (God forbid) even doubted, we come away from the gospel stories thinking they were somehow special--better suited to the task of witnessing than we are. They had the real stuff, we only have…bits and pieces of the real stuff. Longings for the real stuff.
But I think if the gospel stories continued on, if we saw each of the disciples--each of the followers of Jesus--throughout their lives until their death, the same way we are witnesses to our own lives, we would likely see such cycles of belief and disbelief, assuredness and questioning.
So for Jesus to say to his disciples “You are witness of these things,” and imply that they are to continue the work of sharing the message to all the nations, to witness to the nations…well its all fine and good because they actually did witness it. They saw it. But what have we seen? What have we witnessed?
We’ve sat through lots of church services, Sunday School classes, TV evangelists. We tried prayer practices and good deeds and getting in touch with ourselves. How many of us have witnessed Jesus in these ways…in these places?
For those who are lucky—perhaps to go so far to say, for those who are blessed—to have witnessed Jesus profoundly in these places, there are many of us who want to know: what’s the secret? It seems so hard in our post-modern world which places such emphasis on personal experience, to say when we have seen Jesus. Today it feels like we must experience what Jesus was all about before we can believe we have witnessed it. Believing is seeing.
Maybe the disciples were a little bit like this. Frightened and anxious, they probably felt a bit frayed around the edges, tattered and torn, rather than being seeds scattered and sown. What had they just witnessed? The crucifixion, the empty tomb. This certainly didn’t make them feel empowered to be bearers of the good news, because they locked themselves away. Secure from the outside world. They’re barring the doors and stocking up on the food, settling down for the hurricane to hit and hopefully pass.
But Jesus came to them again. Jesus stood with them and asked about their fears. He pushed up his sleeves and stuck out his feet, holes and blood and bone. Jesus invited them to himself to touch, feel. And to prove that he didn’t die, but also continued to live, he took something to eat, an essential act to sustain life. And then he opens them to the scripture. And then when they were open—their doors, their eyes, their hearts—they did more than simply see. They witnessed. They experienced. They saw and were compelled by the opening of themselves to share it with others.
It seems like it was witnessing these things that convinced them they could go and be witnesses to others? Not the seeing the dead body or the empty tomb, but witnessing the pronouncement of peace along with seeing the wounds along with some messy eating and some good old fashioned bible study.
Again, all fine and good for them. But what about us? How can we witness if we don’t know if we’ve seen the risen Lord? With all our wounds of the past and the present, for all the wounds we may likely incur or cause in the future, how could we possibly be good witnesses?
For the disciples it was seeing that Jesus’ humanity didn’t stop. He kept pronouncing peace in the midst of his wounds, the wounds that cracked open their protective shell to slowly realize who he was. I think that is what we are witness to. If we are unsure we have seen Christ, we can be sure we have witnessed his wounds.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds this week as suicide bombers in Baghdad killed or injured at least 170 people.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds when a family stares at their burned out house, wondering how this could have happened.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds when immigrants seeking new lives are gunned down in their classroom.
We have witnessed Christ’s wounds when sisters and brothers in faith wonder if the church will cast them as outsiders if they revealed the hidden parts of their lives.
We may not know if we have seen Jesus, but there is no doubt that we have witnessed his wounds. And that alone prepares us to be witnesses.
The priest and theologian Henri Nouwen utilizes the image of a “wounded healer” as a powerful approach to witnessing to the world (The Wounded Healer, 1979). We begin with our own wounds in order to see and understand the wounds around us, the wounds of others, the places where Christ’s peace needs to touch you, me, everyone. At one point he brings this to a very personal approach:
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
Seeing the wounds may just be the first step. Then touching. Then Christ calls us to sit and eat with him, wherever that may be. Then Christ calls us to learn with him, however that may be… until we are completely opened: our hearts, our eyes, our minds, and our lives.
Maybe we have a lot in common with the blind man in the movie Amelie. In our wondering if we have seen Jesus, wondering if we can safely cross the busy road of our lives unscathed, let alone make any difference to the people on the other side, we may feel that firm grasp on our arm as we are led through life by the gentle, but firm and directive movement and voice of the spirit. And we begin to witness the grief and laughter, joy and pain of Christ’s testimony. With our heads thrown back in joyful disbelief and willing abandon like the blind man, and like the disciples, the light we never thought we have seen begins to radiate on us.
Or does it radiate from us? Maybe that is how the life of being Christ’s witness in the world is like. The light that shines on us is the light that shines from us. The light we see is the light others see. The Christ we have witnessed is the Christ we share with others.
Peace be with you. Touch the wounds. Eat with others. Open your minds. You are witnesses of these things.
--
In continuing with our testimonies throughout the Easter season, I’ve invited Rejoyce to come before you and testify to the ways in which she has witnessed Christ’s wounds in the world, and how she has chosen to respond as a witness of Christ’s love. When she is finished, I invite you to read the unison response, printed in your bulletin: "We rejoice in your witness to Christ's wounds. Allelulia!"
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Kin-dom of God
sermon by Torin Eikler
Easter 2
Psalm 133 Acts 4:32-35
This is one of my favorite Psalms. It’s short and sweet, and it speaks to a theme that is close to my heart. And, while it has only inspired one hymn directly (which we have juts sung), the idea of unity in the body of believers is at the heart of many of the hymns I enjoy singing. In some sense, it speaks directly to the idea behind the name of the Church of the Brethren – brotherhood … or in a more modern, non-gender-linked expression – community.
The imagery leaves something to be desired – at least for me. I do like to imagine the dew falling on the mountain in the middle of a dry land, baptizing the world with God promise of everlasting life. But, the impression of oil poured on one’s head is a little iffy. Especially if it’s enough oil to soak though my hair, run down over my face (and my beard when I have one), and drip onto whatever I happen to be wearing at the time. It just doesn’t give me the feeling of well-being that the rest of the Psalm speaks about – (in fact it gives me just a touch of the willies).
But I was saved from that this week when I read a colleagues paraphrase – really a whole reinterpretation – of the Psalm. As Jim Taylor rewrites it, it goes like this:
How good it feels to have the human family gathered together
for this sumptuous feast.
Here we rejoice in the rich repast of fruit and tree and vine.
Apples and oranges, grapes and cherries, yield their joyous juices to our lusting mouths.
Drops of surplus pleasure trickle down our chins.
We dab them unselfconsciously with rumpled napkins.
This gathering refreshes like a sweet morning in the mountains,
like a prairie sky polished bright by gentle breezes.
Surely this is what the Lord intended when God created life.
Now those are images that I can really get my teeth into. But, while I welcome the shift from an oily mess into a sticky feast, this version lets an important point go.
For the Psalmist, Mount Hermon was a very significant place. It was about fifty miles north of Jerusalem and the Temple on Mt. Zion, and it became the center of faithful worship for the Northern Kingdom when Israel split in two after the Babylonian exile. By pairing it with Mt. Zion in the final verse of the Psalm, the author of this poetic hymn pulled the whole of Israel into the picture, giving all of the chosen people a part in the blessings of God. In essence, the Psalmist was claiming that no matter how far divided by space, class, or tradition, all those who dwelt in Israel were part of the Kingdom of God – for Israel was that Kingdom at the time. And that larger sense of community – that recognition of kinship among the chosen people, I think, is at the heart of this psalm.
But, as lovely as the image of the chosen people living together in harmony is, it was as much a dream for the Psalmist as it is for us today. The people of Israel, of course, were not a harmonious lot. They had their own haves and have-nots despite the injunctions in the scriptures to take care of one another. They had their own struggles for power with winners and losers. They had their own jealousies, their own divisions, their own griefs, and there own feuds. Even in times when their safety as a people was threatened, they failed to come together as one body. Basically, they were just like everyone else – just like us.
There is one really big difference, though, between us and the Israelites. They were a people linked by history, culture, and faith and defined by living within the borders of the Promised Land. At one level, we too are linked to others by history and culture, and we identify ourselves by political boundaries. We are Westerners. We are Americans. We are West Virginians and Pennsylvanians. But, at a deeper level, those bindings don’t make sense for us because we are followers of Christ. We are a chosen people, but our faith and our savior redefine what that means.
Jesus reached out to people beyond boundaries to minister to all people in need. He crossed the lines of nationalism to care for Samaritans and Roman Officials. He was unfazed by religious prohibitions when he touched the unclean and raised the dead. He bridged the cultural feud between Jews and Samaritans to offer the promise of living water to any who would listen. And he even redefined the basic unit of society – the family – for those who would follow him.
The power of these profound changes is obvious. Christianity quickly moved beyond political borders, birthing new communities of faith in the near east, northern Africa, Greece, Rome, and reaching even to the coasts of France the British Isles. It moved beyond religious boundaries, opening the way for gentiles of all flavors to take part in the blessing and the promise of Christ. And as we see in the record of Acts, it broke free from cultural and relational patterns to create an egalitarian family of believers from masters, slaves, poor, and rich.
The Kingdom of God proclaimed by Christ was not really a kingdom as the world knows them. It was a new way of living in community based on the assurance that all those who followed Christ were adopted into the family of God. The people of that early church were transformed. They left behind their old identities and forged new connections as brothers and sisters together as a part of Christ. It’s an idea, an image, a way of life that I have heard summed up in a neat play on words - the Kingdom of God as the “Kin-dom” of God.
And we are as much a part of that Kin-dom as the early believers were. In coming to Christ, we too are transformed. Our bindings to the divisions of this world are loosed as surely as theirs were. We, too, have become – are becoming – a part of a larger, truer family as brothers and sisters in Christ. And, as much as that family of faith suffers from differences in interpretation and tradition, we are profoundly connected to all believers around the world and to all of God’s children beyond the bounds of the Church.
It’s a wonderful image, inspiring and heart-warming. But, I have to ask myself, “What does that mean?” What does it mean that we are all one big, loving family? Does it change how I live or how I relate to others – non-Christians as well as Christians? I have to ask, because if it doesn’t change anything than it’s probably just as fleeting and unreal as the Psalmist’s dream of unity among the Israelites. When I think about that, I realize that I don’t want this to be just a dream, and I don’t think it has to be.
The early church of Acts found a way to make this really real in their everyday lives. They ate together daily (I suppose they weren’t all at the table every time, though they may have been). They shared the struggles of their lives and the triumphs with each other and offered thanks in worship for the love and blessings of God they experienced in their new community. When some among them had needs, others provided for them and were provided for in their turn. They took pleasure in sharing with one another and with others members of the Kin-dom who lived far away. And, though they suffered, they suffered together, living with a joy and a hope that seems to be lacking from some many of our lives.
How can we bring that joy into our lives? Are there ways that we can return to a deeper sense of kinship with our brothers and sisters? Can we reclaim our identity as a people of hope chosen and blessed by God? I want to believe that we can though I don’t know the way forward.
I think we could start by reaching across the little hedges that we have built around our lives to separate us from one another. When we come together, we share some of the big things that weigh us down and some of the joys we have experienced each week. Yet, we hold back so many things. Sometimes we don’t want to bother others with our struggles. Sometimes we don’t want to belittle the struggles of others with our excitement and our triumphs. Much of the time, I think, we just don’t feel comfortable sharing things because we have been taught that they should be private, that they are somehow taboo. So, we don’t talk about our financial struggles. We don’t talk about our intimate relationships. We don’t talk about the pain we feel when we can’t share all of who we are for fear of finding judgment and indifference instead of acceptance and empathy. We don’t talk about our doubts and our fears because we are supposed to be confident in our faith and self-sufficient.
But, the family of Christ reaches beyond and beneath those things. Our connection is deeper and stronger than those fears or the restraints put on us by cultural expectations. It can and should free us from the limitations that hold us back. It can and should welcome us into a caring community that we can trust to hold all of who are and all of what we experience with compassion. It can and should be a place we can bring all of our fears and failing for comfort and gentle guidance. It can and should be a place we can share our happiness, our hope, and our joy with abandon and find it all shared and returned as a hymn of gratitude to God for all that life can be.
There have been times in my life – and I hope in all of our lives – when we have found that kind of openness, that kind of community … that kind of freedom with kindred spirits. And, in those times, we have tasted the sumptuous feast of life that leaves sweet juices dripping down our chins. In those times, we have proclaimed in some part of ourselves “how good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” In those moments lies the promise that the Kin-dom of God is near and can be a reality among us if we seek it together.
And if none of us knows the way, that’s okay. Our journey together is a journey of faith. We none of us knows the path we will follow when we take the first step … or the hundredth step … or the thousandth step. Yet, we keep walking with hope in the faith that the Spirit of Christ, in whom we are become one, will lead us forward. And it is the Spirit of Christ – Emmanuel, God with us – who will remake us – who longs to remake us – into the family of God. We must only stand open to guidance, ready to trust each other and the power that holds us.
“Sisters and brothers,” I often say. Can we find the way to become just that – to become sisters and brothers in Christ in truth and in love? Can we open ourselves to the Spirit of Christ and to one another so that the dream becomes a reality among us? The Kin-dom of God is near. My prayer is that we will claim it as our own. May it be so.
Easter 2
Psalm 133 Acts 4:32-35
This is one of my favorite Psalms. It’s short and sweet, and it speaks to a theme that is close to my heart. And, while it has only inspired one hymn directly (which we have juts sung), the idea of unity in the body of believers is at the heart of many of the hymns I enjoy singing. In some sense, it speaks directly to the idea behind the name of the Church of the Brethren – brotherhood … or in a more modern, non-gender-linked expression – community.
The imagery leaves something to be desired – at least for me. I do like to imagine the dew falling on the mountain in the middle of a dry land, baptizing the world with God promise of everlasting life. But, the impression of oil poured on one’s head is a little iffy. Especially if it’s enough oil to soak though my hair, run down over my face (and my beard when I have one), and drip onto whatever I happen to be wearing at the time. It just doesn’t give me the feeling of well-being that the rest of the Psalm speaks about – (in fact it gives me just a touch of the willies).
But I was saved from that this week when I read a colleagues paraphrase – really a whole reinterpretation – of the Psalm. As Jim Taylor rewrites it, it goes like this:
How good it feels to have the human family gathered together
for this sumptuous feast.
Here we rejoice in the rich repast of fruit and tree and vine.
Apples and oranges, grapes and cherries, yield their joyous juices to our lusting mouths.
Drops of surplus pleasure trickle down our chins.
We dab them unselfconsciously with rumpled napkins.
This gathering refreshes like a sweet morning in the mountains,
like a prairie sky polished bright by gentle breezes.
Surely this is what the Lord intended when God created life.
Now those are images that I can really get my teeth into. But, while I welcome the shift from an oily mess into a sticky feast, this version lets an important point go.
For the Psalmist, Mount Hermon was a very significant place. It was about fifty miles north of Jerusalem and the Temple on Mt. Zion, and it became the center of faithful worship for the Northern Kingdom when Israel split in two after the Babylonian exile. By pairing it with Mt. Zion in the final verse of the Psalm, the author of this poetic hymn pulled the whole of Israel into the picture, giving all of the chosen people a part in the blessings of God. In essence, the Psalmist was claiming that no matter how far divided by space, class, or tradition, all those who dwelt in Israel were part of the Kingdom of God – for Israel was that Kingdom at the time. And that larger sense of community – that recognition of kinship among the chosen people, I think, is at the heart of this psalm.
But, as lovely as the image of the chosen people living together in harmony is, it was as much a dream for the Psalmist as it is for us today. The people of Israel, of course, were not a harmonious lot. They had their own haves and have-nots despite the injunctions in the scriptures to take care of one another. They had their own struggles for power with winners and losers. They had their own jealousies, their own divisions, their own griefs, and there own feuds. Even in times when their safety as a people was threatened, they failed to come together as one body. Basically, they were just like everyone else – just like us.
There is one really big difference, though, between us and the Israelites. They were a people linked by history, culture, and faith and defined by living within the borders of the Promised Land. At one level, we too are linked to others by history and culture, and we identify ourselves by political boundaries. We are Westerners. We are Americans. We are West Virginians and Pennsylvanians. But, at a deeper level, those bindings don’t make sense for us because we are followers of Christ. We are a chosen people, but our faith and our savior redefine what that means.
Jesus reached out to people beyond boundaries to minister to all people in need. He crossed the lines of nationalism to care for Samaritans and Roman Officials. He was unfazed by religious prohibitions when he touched the unclean and raised the dead. He bridged the cultural feud between Jews and Samaritans to offer the promise of living water to any who would listen. And he even redefined the basic unit of society – the family – for those who would follow him.
The power of these profound changes is obvious. Christianity quickly moved beyond political borders, birthing new communities of faith in the near east, northern Africa, Greece, Rome, and reaching even to the coasts of France the British Isles. It moved beyond religious boundaries, opening the way for gentiles of all flavors to take part in the blessing and the promise of Christ. And as we see in the record of Acts, it broke free from cultural and relational patterns to create an egalitarian family of believers from masters, slaves, poor, and rich.
The Kingdom of God proclaimed by Christ was not really a kingdom as the world knows them. It was a new way of living in community based on the assurance that all those who followed Christ were adopted into the family of God. The people of that early church were transformed. They left behind their old identities and forged new connections as brothers and sisters together as a part of Christ. It’s an idea, an image, a way of life that I have heard summed up in a neat play on words - the Kingdom of God as the “Kin-dom” of God.
And we are as much a part of that Kin-dom as the early believers were. In coming to Christ, we too are transformed. Our bindings to the divisions of this world are loosed as surely as theirs were. We, too, have become – are becoming – a part of a larger, truer family as brothers and sisters in Christ. And, as much as that family of faith suffers from differences in interpretation and tradition, we are profoundly connected to all believers around the world and to all of God’s children beyond the bounds of the Church.
It’s a wonderful image, inspiring and heart-warming. But, I have to ask myself, “What does that mean?” What does it mean that we are all one big, loving family? Does it change how I live or how I relate to others – non-Christians as well as Christians? I have to ask, because if it doesn’t change anything than it’s probably just as fleeting and unreal as the Psalmist’s dream of unity among the Israelites. When I think about that, I realize that I don’t want this to be just a dream, and I don’t think it has to be.
The early church of Acts found a way to make this really real in their everyday lives. They ate together daily (I suppose they weren’t all at the table every time, though they may have been). They shared the struggles of their lives and the triumphs with each other and offered thanks in worship for the love and blessings of God they experienced in their new community. When some among them had needs, others provided for them and were provided for in their turn. They took pleasure in sharing with one another and with others members of the Kin-dom who lived far away. And, though they suffered, they suffered together, living with a joy and a hope that seems to be lacking from some many of our lives.
How can we bring that joy into our lives? Are there ways that we can return to a deeper sense of kinship with our brothers and sisters? Can we reclaim our identity as a people of hope chosen and blessed by God? I want to believe that we can though I don’t know the way forward.
I think we could start by reaching across the little hedges that we have built around our lives to separate us from one another. When we come together, we share some of the big things that weigh us down and some of the joys we have experienced each week. Yet, we hold back so many things. Sometimes we don’t want to bother others with our struggles. Sometimes we don’t want to belittle the struggles of others with our excitement and our triumphs. Much of the time, I think, we just don’t feel comfortable sharing things because we have been taught that they should be private, that they are somehow taboo. So, we don’t talk about our financial struggles. We don’t talk about our intimate relationships. We don’t talk about the pain we feel when we can’t share all of who we are for fear of finding judgment and indifference instead of acceptance and empathy. We don’t talk about our doubts and our fears because we are supposed to be confident in our faith and self-sufficient.
But, the family of Christ reaches beyond and beneath those things. Our connection is deeper and stronger than those fears or the restraints put on us by cultural expectations. It can and should free us from the limitations that hold us back. It can and should welcome us into a caring community that we can trust to hold all of who are and all of what we experience with compassion. It can and should be a place we can bring all of our fears and failing for comfort and gentle guidance. It can and should be a place we can share our happiness, our hope, and our joy with abandon and find it all shared and returned as a hymn of gratitude to God for all that life can be.
There have been times in my life – and I hope in all of our lives – when we have found that kind of openness, that kind of community … that kind of freedom with kindred spirits. And, in those times, we have tasted the sumptuous feast of life that leaves sweet juices dripping down our chins. In those times, we have proclaimed in some part of ourselves “how good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” In those moments lies the promise that the Kin-dom of God is near and can be a reality among us if we seek it together.
And if none of us knows the way, that’s okay. Our journey together is a journey of faith. We none of us knows the path we will follow when we take the first step … or the hundredth step … or the thousandth step. Yet, we keep walking with hope in the faith that the Spirit of Christ, in whom we are become one, will lead us forward. And it is the Spirit of Christ – Emmanuel, God with us – who will remake us – who longs to remake us – into the family of God. We must only stand open to guidance, ready to trust each other and the power that holds us.
“Sisters and brothers,” I often say. Can we find the way to become just that – to become sisters and brothers in Christ in truth and in love? Can we open ourselves to the Spirit of Christ and to one another so that the dream becomes a reality among us? The Kin-dom of God is near. My prayer is that we will claim it as our own. May it be so.
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