sermon by Torin Eikler
John 15:15-21 Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:8-20
When I was just nine years old, I learned the truth about what “darkness” means. That year, my family went on vacation in Kentucky which may not seem like a very exciting trip, but any trip was fun for my brothers and me at that point. And we got to camp out for nearly a week right near a field that we covered in grasshoppers – really big ones! That was great in and of itself, but the highlight of the trip for me was a visit to Mammoth Caves.
That system is one of the biggest known, easily accessible caves in the country, and it is something to see. There are rooms filled with sparkling stalactites and columns that seem to glow pink in the light of the lamps. There were ceilings filled with sleeping bats and the messy white floors that accompany them. There was a stone waterfall, and there was even a real waterfall when we visited, though I seem to remember that it sometimes disappears during dry spells. (I suspect it’s quite a torrent right now.) Yet, the most memorable part of our journey into the bowels of the earth was the two minutes that we spent in darkness – the two longest minutes of my life.
For those of you who have never had the experience of standing without lamps in a cave, the darkness there is not like the darkness we usually think of. It is absolute. … There is no starlight. There is no soft glow from reflected city lights. There is no light whatsoever, and as you stand there with your eyes wide open and the afterglow fades from your retinas, you do not feel like you have your eyes closed. You feel like you have lost the ability to see and even to remember what seeing was like.
There is no question that those moments in the cave were scary. I’m pretty sure I would have been lost to absolute terror if I wasn’t old enough to know that I wasn’t alone and that the lights would come on soon, old enough to have that knowing be a comfort to me. My younger brothers were not so lucky, but they were safely held in my parents’ arms. So, their crying didn’t start immediately, and it never took on the panicked tone of an abandoned child. And, even with the sure knowledge that the world was not actually gone, the feel of the stone under my feet, and the sounds of rustling and whispered conversations around me, I still felt lost and alone – isolated in the darkness with no sense of where I should or could go for help.
I was forcibly reminded of that childhood brush with terror last year when I heard the news that 33 Chilean miners had survived the Copiopo mine cave-in. The men, it seemed, were in reasonably good health and were gathered together in a survival pod some 2,300 feet underground. The news anchors assured us that the men had food and light and would probably be able to survive until rescuers got to them. But they also said that it would be at least two months until an exit shaft would reach them. The thought of that actually kept me awake that night and images of being trapped in the darkness haunted my dreams.
Over the course of the next sixty-some days, we got regular updates on the situation. Exploratory shafts made it down to the emergency shelter. Food and water were lowered down. A telephone line was put in so that the men could talk with their families. Movie equipment and books were sent in to fight cabin fever. And, as the rescue shaft approached completion, several sessions on media management and public relations sought to help the men prepare for their reentry into society and instant fame.
As a result of those sessions, there has not been a deluge of story-telling or competing interview tours as different miners vied for the spot light. There were a few sensational stories in the news in the first flush of excitement, and a few miners gave rather cursory interviews. By and large, though, the story has been saved for the “official” account that will be published on behalf of the whole group sometime in the next couple of years. But there was one rather extensive and unique conversation that I remember. I haven’t been able to find a record of it. So, I’ll have to share what I remember with apologies to all.
It was one of the older miners who, I think, had lost a son in an earlier accident at the mine. When he was asked about his memory of the cave-in, he responded by telling his story:
‘When I was down there in the dark and everything was shaking all around me, I took shelter under the nearest archway and waited there for the mountain to fall on me. Rocks started to fall around me, and the lights went out. When it stopped and I was still alive, I called out to see if anyone else was there, and nobody answered me. After a while I stopped yelling because I knew I was alone. That was the most afraid that I have ever been until now.
At first, I sat there … I just sat there. I was so scared that I wasn’t even thinking about anything. But then I began to feel around me to see how much space there was, and I started groping my way through the darkness in the direction I thought would take me back out. And as I began to move, I got less scared. I thought, “I must have survived for a reason,” and I had a sense of peace then because I knew I would see my family again. It was the closest I have ever been to God when I was down there in the darkness.’
Darkness has a way of doing that, of opening us up to sense the presence of God with us. We are such visual creatures, so attuned and accustomed to sorting and interacting with our world through what we see, that when we can’t see, we find ourselves lost, confused, afraid. First, we sit. Then we begin, slowly, to reach out with our other senses in the hope of finding something we know … something that comforts us – be it the touch of a loved one, or if we are alone, the hand of God reaching out to enfold our own groping fingers.
There are times, though, when the comforting presence of other people can actually blind us to the darkness around us and we wander about lost without knowing it. Sometimes it seems like most of the suffering in the world comes from those blind wanderings. Millions die of hunger and malnutrition that could be prevented if we woke up to the greed that clouds our vision. More suffer from diseases that could easily be cured if we focused our vision on the right path. Still others live with violence because we are lost in the illusion that our self-interests are not linked to the wellbeing of others. Every once in a while, we wake up to these realities and have the chance to take a new path, one that may lead us out of the darkness.
September 11th, 2001 was one such moment – a time when the whole world stopped and looked up to find that the way we had been doing things wasn’t working. For about a week, there were many voices calling for a change – many people groping for a new path that might lead us to a world with less violence, less hatred, less suffering. But it was not to be. Fear and anger stormed in to shroud our vision once more, and we have had ten years of violent conflict which started as a hunt for one man and has grown into a global war.
Osama bin Laden was killed on May 1st and yet the violence seems to be far from over. The War on Terror will never be over because violent force relies on the power of terror itself to succeed, and we end up in the same situation though we may be on the other side of the equation. As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it his book, Strength to Love, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,” Despite his words of wisdom and hope, despite the infinite possibilities for creative new ideas provided by a global community, it seems that we are still lost in the same darkness he tried to dispel nearly 50 years ago.
There are other kinds of darkness, too. Times when we wander into our very own caves and find that our feet have lost the path back to light and laughter, warmth and friendship. Grief, depression, addiction, or illness … all of them can steal into our lives and drive us deep into those unknowable places where we feel isolated and alone no matter how many people there happen to be around us. They take us to a place that is “The opposite of human vitality,” a place where we feel “ripped from what felt like [our lives.]” And we are “cast into the darkness.”
In those times, the words of Paul spoke to encourage the Athenians seem anything but a comfort. “From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live so that they would search for God and grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us.”
To someone who find themselves feeling lost and alone in darkness, looking for someone or something to hold on to, there is no consolation the assurance that it is all part of some grand plan. There is little sense of relief in words that proclaim that God has put us exactly where we are and intends us to experience the pain we are feeling so that we will turn to seek him, groping through our suffering despair toward the port of our last resort. What little hope we may feel comes only from the hope that when we reach out toward God we will find that “he is not far from … us.” But that little hope and the truth it grows from are greater, truer, and more certain than we may think.
Back in that cave of my childhood, back in the bowels of the earth surrounded by the unknown, the thing that kept me quiet and calm toward the end had nothing to do with reason or courage. I reached out. When I could no longer stand it on my own, I reached out, groping with my hand toward the last place I had seen my father. And I found him there, not far from me. And as he took my hand in his and I sidled up to him, I was no longer alone or afraid. I felt safe and secure.
That’s the promise that God gives us – he will always be there. “[He] will not leave us orphaned, [but] will come to [us].” When we find ourselves lost and searching, whether it be all of us together or any one of us alone, Christ will come to us so that we can know without doubt that our lives are held in the hands of one who cares deeply for us, one who has promised us that he is not just near us, but within us … always … just as we live always within his love.
Comfort … grace … relief ... hope … is there just waiting for us. Whenever we wake up in the deep, lightless darkness and find ourselves groping for any little thing that will bring us back to ourselves,
back to light,
back to warmth we will find God there …
not far from us …
waiting to take our hands
and comfort us
and lead us into life.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Riddle Me This ....
sermon by Torin Eikler
John 10:1-18 Acts 2:42-47 Psalm 23
“Riddle me this: what is it that is always coming, but never arrives?! … Tomorrow. For when it arrives, it is today.” That’s the earliest line that I remember from a television show. It’s the Riddler speaking to his henchmen in an episode of Batman that aired in 1978 when I was five years old, and it began my childhood fascination with riddles.
“What is black and white and red all over?” A newspaper … or a sunburned penguin.
“What belongs to you but is most used by others?” Your name.
“What can run but never walks,
has a mouth but never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
has a head but never weeps?” A river.
And my mother’s favorite: “What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?” …
Any idea? ….
A towel.
Riddles like these challenge the wits of young and old alike, and the harder ones have been fodder for legends and myths throughout history. Remember the riddle of the Sphinx that guarded Thebes:
“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”
Or for those who weren’t forced to study Greek mythology in Jr. High, the riddle of the Sphinx blocking Harry Potter’s path to the Tri-Wizard cup:
First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.
Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?
The first answer is: a human. We crawl as babies, walk upright as adults, and use canes as we grow old. The second, a spider, is made up of three other answers: a spy, the letter “d,” and the sound, “eeerrr.”
It’s fun, isn’t it, teasing out the clues in the text to solve the riddles. At least it’s fun when we aren’t facing the Sphinx ourselves. It feels different when we think about the riddles that affect our lives yet remain a mystery despite our best efforts to unravel them. How is it, for example, that US special forces were able to get into Pakistan, carry out pitched battle near the capital, and then leave with captives in tow all without being detected by the nearby military base? (Or to put it in a more traditional form - riddle me this: when is a secret raid not a secret?) (pause) Or how is it that the United States continues to have 50 million people going hungry while we throw away 31 million tons of perfectly good food each year?
Those riddles can take us deep into feelings of fear and uncertainty, shame and guilt and compassion. If governments (ours included) are willing to actively deceive their people in order accomplish their own purposes, how can we trust anything they say or put our faith in their promises? How can we feel good about ourselves when we waste enough food to feed much of the world - not to mention the exorbitant amounts we eat?
Still, whether they are just for fun or they are truly troubling, riddles fascinate us? There’s just something about the mystery that lives at the core of their mis-directions that intrigues and engages us. It’s almost as if we are being compelled to wrestle with them.
Jesus knew that about people. That’s one reason he taught in parables – in riddles that beg to be explored. And today’s lesson is a perfect example … one that gives us hope in the midst of our struggles with the disturbing enigmas of our time. Riddle me this, he said, when is a gate not a gate? When it is a devoted shepherd.
Shepherds at the time brought the flocks into a common, guarded enclosure for the night on a typical day. But sometimes they had to go far afield to find enough food for their sheep, and they were forced to camp out in the wilderness. It was a common enough situation that shepherds built rock enclosures out in the countryside so that anyone caught out after dark would have a relatively safe place to put their flock for the night.
Those paddocks were nothing fancy. They didn’t even have gates. But they afforded some protection from predators and poachers, and they kept the animals from wandering off as long as the entrance was closed off. So, many shepherds would herd the sheep into the pen and then lie down in the gap, making themselves the gate and providing protection.
In a very real way, this represented a willingness of a good shepherd not only to lead his flock to food and water but even to risk his or her life for the safety of the sheep they tended. In the same way, Jesus said, he was not only the one who guided those who followed him to all that they needed for abundant life, he was the one who would lay down his life to save theirs.
It’s a comforting image – this metaphor of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and it’s not surprising that it’s a favorite among Christians everywhere – even where we no longer have shepherds in our midst. If Christ is our shepherd, than we need not worry about much. We listen to his voice, follow where he leads us, and we have all of our deepest needs met. We find ourselves in tranquil meadows filled with food, and we lay down to rest in safety beside the waters of life. Even when we walk in threatening shadows or stand in the presence of those who would do us harm, we have no cause for fear because there is someone who stands between us and them – who lay himself down in the gap for our protection.
It’s a wonderful way to portray the love of a caring God, and it provides immense comfort in a spiritual sense. It probably provided comfort in a more immediate way to those whose illnesses were healed or who received bread and fish on the mountain or who saw the storm’s rage subside, … but it doesn’t always feel so clear cut to us when we are in danger and there is no body to stand between us and the threat. Perhaps that’s why we continue to embrace violence and save our wealth against some unforeseen need.
So, what do we do – what should we do when we stand in need or when we see someone else lacking basic human needs? How do we bring comfort and a sense of security to those among us who are suffering or grieving or living with threat of violence and death? What are the sheep to do while the shepherd is gone?
The gathering of followers in Jerusalem had one answer in their time and for their situation. Many of them had walked the roads and the countryside with Jesus. Some of them had seen the risen Christ. All of them trusted the power of the Spirit to guide and sustain them through the easy times and in the valleys of the shadow. And they took Jesus’ final commission to Peter literally and metaphorically and continued the work of feeding Christ’s sheep in body and spirit.
They took hold of their own strength and ingenuity and set about meeting the needs of everyone in their community, sharing a common table and gathering daily to worship in the Temple. Each person gave what they had, not out of a legalistic sense of duty but out of a deep desire to care for each other, and in that way, they solved the challenge of Jesus’ physical absence with a riddle of their own: when are sheep no longer sheep? …. When they become the shepherds.
It is true, as Marion Soards says, that “[Acts] presents us with an idealized moment in early Christian history.” Even then it was not a perfect system. There were constantly new needs to be met and resources – both in terms of skills and money – were limited. (Sound a little familiar?) But people shared willingly out of a generous compassion for one another, and their common faith led them “to focus on what they had in common rather than what distinguished them from one another.”
Even though things changed in short order as the community grew and spread and wealthier people began to try and hold something back, the story is clear that the members of that first community accomplished great things. They met the needs of thousands of people and lived together with a level of harmony that brought awe to the whole of Jerusalem.
We are the sheep of the Good Shepherd, and we are called to be more than just sheep. In his last conversation with his followers, Jesus told them that he thought of them as friends - friends that would carry on his work of sharing the good news of the kingdom and of caring for those in need. The early church lived up to that trust admirably in their own way, and we can learn a lot from their example and their experience. We can learn from their faith in the Spirit and from their determination to step up and do some things themselves. It’s not so much the exact model of their life together that can guide us to the place that restores us, body and soul. It’s the way they lived it into reality.
So riddle me this: How do we solve the troubling problems of today? How do we meet the needs of those who desperately need the day to day care of a good and faithful shepherd? …
Or in words that echo down from one of our forbearers: are we our brothers’ keepers?
John 10:1-18 Acts 2:42-47 Psalm 23
“Riddle me this: what is it that is always coming, but never arrives?! … Tomorrow. For when it arrives, it is today.” That’s the earliest line that I remember from a television show. It’s the Riddler speaking to his henchmen in an episode of Batman that aired in 1978 when I was five years old, and it began my childhood fascination with riddles.
“What is black and white and red all over?” A newspaper … or a sunburned penguin.
“What belongs to you but is most used by others?” Your name.
“What can run but never walks,
has a mouth but never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
has a head but never weeps?” A river.
And my mother’s favorite: “What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?” …
Any idea? ….
A towel.
Riddles like these challenge the wits of young and old alike, and the harder ones have been fodder for legends and myths throughout history. Remember the riddle of the Sphinx that guarded Thebes:
“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”
Or for those who weren’t forced to study Greek mythology in Jr. High, the riddle of the Sphinx blocking Harry Potter’s path to the Tri-Wizard cup:
First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.
Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?
The first answer is: a human. We crawl as babies, walk upright as adults, and use canes as we grow old. The second, a spider, is made up of three other answers: a spy, the letter “d,” and the sound, “eeerrr.”
It’s fun, isn’t it, teasing out the clues in the text to solve the riddles. At least it’s fun when we aren’t facing the Sphinx ourselves. It feels different when we think about the riddles that affect our lives yet remain a mystery despite our best efforts to unravel them. How is it, for example, that US special forces were able to get into Pakistan, carry out pitched battle near the capital, and then leave with captives in tow all without being detected by the nearby military base? (Or to put it in a more traditional form - riddle me this: when is a secret raid not a secret?) (pause) Or how is it that the United States continues to have 50 million people going hungry while we throw away 31 million tons of perfectly good food each year?
Those riddles can take us deep into feelings of fear and uncertainty, shame and guilt and compassion. If governments (ours included) are willing to actively deceive their people in order accomplish their own purposes, how can we trust anything they say or put our faith in their promises? How can we feel good about ourselves when we waste enough food to feed much of the world - not to mention the exorbitant amounts we eat?
Still, whether they are just for fun or they are truly troubling, riddles fascinate us? There’s just something about the mystery that lives at the core of their mis-directions that intrigues and engages us. It’s almost as if we are being compelled to wrestle with them.
Jesus knew that about people. That’s one reason he taught in parables – in riddles that beg to be explored. And today’s lesson is a perfect example … one that gives us hope in the midst of our struggles with the disturbing enigmas of our time. Riddle me this, he said, when is a gate not a gate? When it is a devoted shepherd.
Shepherds at the time brought the flocks into a common, guarded enclosure for the night on a typical day. But sometimes they had to go far afield to find enough food for their sheep, and they were forced to camp out in the wilderness. It was a common enough situation that shepherds built rock enclosures out in the countryside so that anyone caught out after dark would have a relatively safe place to put their flock for the night.
Those paddocks were nothing fancy. They didn’t even have gates. But they afforded some protection from predators and poachers, and they kept the animals from wandering off as long as the entrance was closed off. So, many shepherds would herd the sheep into the pen and then lie down in the gap, making themselves the gate and providing protection.
In a very real way, this represented a willingness of a good shepherd not only to lead his flock to food and water but even to risk his or her life for the safety of the sheep they tended. In the same way, Jesus said, he was not only the one who guided those who followed him to all that they needed for abundant life, he was the one who would lay down his life to save theirs.
It’s a comforting image – this metaphor of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and it’s not surprising that it’s a favorite among Christians everywhere – even where we no longer have shepherds in our midst. If Christ is our shepherd, than we need not worry about much. We listen to his voice, follow where he leads us, and we have all of our deepest needs met. We find ourselves in tranquil meadows filled with food, and we lay down to rest in safety beside the waters of life. Even when we walk in threatening shadows or stand in the presence of those who would do us harm, we have no cause for fear because there is someone who stands between us and them – who lay himself down in the gap for our protection.
It’s a wonderful way to portray the love of a caring God, and it provides immense comfort in a spiritual sense. It probably provided comfort in a more immediate way to those whose illnesses were healed or who received bread and fish on the mountain or who saw the storm’s rage subside, … but it doesn’t always feel so clear cut to us when we are in danger and there is no body to stand between us and the threat. Perhaps that’s why we continue to embrace violence and save our wealth against some unforeseen need.
So, what do we do – what should we do when we stand in need or when we see someone else lacking basic human needs? How do we bring comfort and a sense of security to those among us who are suffering or grieving or living with threat of violence and death? What are the sheep to do while the shepherd is gone?
The gathering of followers in Jerusalem had one answer in their time and for their situation. Many of them had walked the roads and the countryside with Jesus. Some of them had seen the risen Christ. All of them trusted the power of the Spirit to guide and sustain them through the easy times and in the valleys of the shadow. And they took Jesus’ final commission to Peter literally and metaphorically and continued the work of feeding Christ’s sheep in body and spirit.
They took hold of their own strength and ingenuity and set about meeting the needs of everyone in their community, sharing a common table and gathering daily to worship in the Temple. Each person gave what they had, not out of a legalistic sense of duty but out of a deep desire to care for each other, and in that way, they solved the challenge of Jesus’ physical absence with a riddle of their own: when are sheep no longer sheep? …. When they become the shepherds.
It is true, as Marion Soards says, that “[Acts] presents us with an idealized moment in early Christian history.” Even then it was not a perfect system. There were constantly new needs to be met and resources – both in terms of skills and money – were limited. (Sound a little familiar?) But people shared willingly out of a generous compassion for one another, and their common faith led them “to focus on what they had in common rather than what distinguished them from one another.”
Even though things changed in short order as the community grew and spread and wealthier people began to try and hold something back, the story is clear that the members of that first community accomplished great things. They met the needs of thousands of people and lived together with a level of harmony that brought awe to the whole of Jerusalem.
We are the sheep of the Good Shepherd, and we are called to be more than just sheep. In his last conversation with his followers, Jesus told them that he thought of them as friends - friends that would carry on his work of sharing the good news of the kingdom and of caring for those in need. The early church lived up to that trust admirably in their own way, and we can learn a lot from their example and their experience. We can learn from their faith in the Spirit and from their determination to step up and do some things themselves. It’s not so much the exact model of their life together that can guide us to the place that restores us, body and soul. It’s the way they lived it into reality.
So riddle me this: How do we solve the troubling problems of today? How do we meet the needs of those who desperately need the day to day care of a good and faithful shepherd? …
Or in words that echo down from one of our forbearers: are we our brothers’ keepers?
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Look Me in the Eyes
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Luke 24:13-35
Easter 3
Who here hasn’t ever wondered about the secret to happiness?
Is it income? Education? Upbringing?
A team of National Geographic researchers recently took on this question.
Where are the happiest people in the world, and how can we be like them?
Basing their research on the three most well respected studies of overall well-being, a group led by Dan Buettner set off to explore what he has called The Blue
Zones,
the places in the world where people live the longest—
and in a follow up study, he went to learn from the people who are considered the happiest.
In his book Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way he highlights four of the world’s happiest areas, Denmark, Singapore, Mexico, and…San Luis Obispo, California.
Now, I have to say…when I hear these four places, it is somewhat shocking to think about them as being overly happy (aside from California, which I guess I would assume is pretty happy).
When I think of Denmark, Singapore, and Mexico I think of, respectively, cold long dark nights, the caning of Michael Fay for vandalism in 1994, and drug cartels and political corruption.
But apparently regardless of weather, corporal punishment, rampant violence and poverty…people still have the ability to be pretty happy. Even be the happiest people on the planet.
The National Geographic team revealed their hypothesis that if we can make permanent changes in six areas of life, we are well on our way to being happier people. Here is a recap of these six areas, taken from a brief report on their findings.
1.Community: Surveys from 146 countries, representing most of the world’s population, show that the top factors promoting happiness are: economic freedom, low unemployment rate, tolerance, and quality of government. That is, the biggest determinant of our personal happiness is where we live.
2. Workplace: Most of us spend more than half our waking hours at work. Having a short commute, a job that engages our talents and a best friend at work are three of the biggest determinants of a happy work-life.
3. Social Life: The happiest Americans report 7-8 hours of social interaction a day–real-face time, not Facebook time. Joining a club that meets just once per month can have an effect on your happiness equivalent to doubling your salary.
4. Financial Life: You don’t have to keep telling people in Brethren and Mennonite congregations that money can’t buy happiness. We know it. Now whether or not we really believe it that’s another story. We need food, shelter, education, mobility and healthcare. But the happiest people, after they attain those things, spend their money on experiences, not material things, and on financial security.
5. Home: Setting up science-backed nudges can subtly lead us to behaviors that favor happiness. Adopting a dog, for example, will dependably lower stress hormones daily. The happiest people only watch a half hour of TV a day, and reducing the number of screens in your home will help you to watch less TV.
And finally
6. [The area of the] Self: People who can articulate their life purpose in one sentence are 20% happier than those who can’t. Taking time to know your values, strengths, talents, passions –and how to share those gifts – can raise your well-being.
These broad categories probably don’t surprise you. We certainly know that if we don’t like our job, if we don’t have a job, if our family relationships are stressed we will be unhappy. But isn’t it interesting how small some of the factors can be. Reduce the number of electronic screens in your house. Adopt a dog. Take time to put your life purpose in one sentence. Join a club.
And in the midst of all of this, as you probably can expect—though it doesn’t have its own category—happiness is part of the food we eat.
So sure, he had suggestions like, you’ll be happier if you eat oatmeal and walnuts for breakfast rather than greasy eggs and bacon. You’ll be happier if incorporate more beans in your diet. A glass of wine--and yes, in moderation-- has heart healthy effects.
But he said something about food that I think is not so familiar to most Americans. It’s not all about what you eat. But it’s about who you eat with. And to take that a bit further, it is also about how you eat when you’re with those people.
Denmark-- that very cold, very dark place-- is considered the happiest country on earth. People interact about seven hours a day. But they don’t get up to schedule seven hours of interaction, this connection is not primarily in meetings, or on Facebook or in Tweets. Rather, it happens around food and the rituals around eating.
Because of the long dark days, many people in Denmark intentionally gather with others, and not just their nuclear family.
A couple times a week—not just Sunday dinner, but two or three times a week—they meet with extended family…neighbors… friends, for a gathering called hougie.
At hougie, they gather around a small table with candlelight, have open-faced sandwiches called smorbrood, a plate of herring, pate, and cheese. There is an interactive nature to this meal as people are gathering, reaching, passing, filling their plates with a little of this and a little of that…
They also have a glass of wine, as you might expect. But the thing about wine at hougie, is that it’s not just a drink. Before they drink they don’t just clink their wine glasses, reflects National Geographic researcher Dan Buettner.
Before they drink, they look each other in the eye through and around the candlelight.
They connect with one another.
They make sure to see one another.
In the long, dark cold days of winter, people have discovered what is necessary to keep them from the abyss of spiritual darkness and coldness.
They look each other in the eye.
Can you look someone in the eye? How about looking someone in the eye in the darkest, coldest times in your life?
I doubt that road leading to and from Emmaus was a highway in the midst of a Blue Zone, even as close as it was to Jerusalem, that spiritually holy city. Happiness would not be the word of the day, and American’s obsession with the “pursuit of it” would certainly be a cultural oddity.
Three days after the crucifixion of Jesus had some people hiding, some people weeping, some people cheering, some people walking…just walking.
It was an especially electric time, you can imagine, with the news that his body had gone missing…some say resurrected.
Probably many, like we heard about Thomas last week, probably many weren’t sure if they could believe the talk, the stories.
But these two, on the road to Emmaus, were telling their own stories.
About the things that happened. About Jesus. And then Jesus sidles up to them, just another traveler on the road--being a bit nosy, really-- asking what they’re talking about.
And they give him the recap—who Jesus was, how he was convicted, how he died, and now,
“moreover” they say, as if it is the icing on the cake,
Moreover, as if all that other stuff wasn’t enough… some women of the group astounded them. Saying they saw angels who said Jesus was alive.
Some from the group went back to see if it was true—if Jesus was dead or alive—but they saw nothing.
Eventually… these two travelers did see him. Recognition. Eyes opened. They were now on the inside of the story. You can imagine the jealously of the others who weren’t so lucky…How did they see him?
Was it that he seemed so interested in their experience?
Was it in the familiar way he told the stories about the prophets and about Moses? Was it the way he lovingly chastised them for being a bit slow on the uptake to believe in what their own texts and stories have told them.
Are these the things that helped them recognize Jesus?
Maybe. Probably.
But apparently, no amount of reminding, or correction, or teaching were enough in and of themselves for recognition
It got their hearts burning, as they said.
But it didn’t get their eyes, or their hearts, seeing.
It was all just an experience that could have been left on the road…
Until they invited him in. Until…they stopped him from passing by.
Until they lit the candles, sat around a small table, broke bread, took wine, looked at each other in the eye and then...they recognize him.
And then…[poof]…he’s gone.
Mennonite pastor Ron Adams speaks to the simplicity of this moment, “A spoken word. A bit of bread. A sip of wine. Our texts insist there is a power here [in these simple things] that draws people to God and reveals the presence of Christ”.
[pause]
A spoken word. A bit of bread. A sip of wine. Looking in the eyes of another.
[pause]
In days like these when we’re lured into false confidence that we are safe because the death of one man—when there are celebrations, parties, couches burning in the streets—we know that we still need more light, more clarity, more of God’s word burning in our hearts.
And maybe we need more breaking of bread together and blessing of wine together. Looking one another in the eye.
And I think we know, deep down, that it’s not just symbolic.
Not just in the taking of communion on Sunday morning or even at Love Feast. Not even with those we see everyday when we wake up, who know us so well.
But with those who are vaguely familiar, but really strangers.
With neighbors who care about our community.
With church family who care about a spiritual journey.
Moreover…it is with the Christ that is hidden in each one of us, ready to be revealed those desperately seeking, but not seeing…as Gunilla Norris implies in her poem called Plenty…
Having shared our bread
We know that we are
No longer hungry. It is enough
That you see me for myself
That I see you for yourself
That we bless what we see
And do not borrow, do not use
One another. This is how we know
We are no longer hungry…
That the world is full of terror, full of beauty
And yet we are not afraid to find solace here.
To be bread for each other. To live.
Open your home, open your heart, sit down, eat together, look one another in the eye.
Granted, we won’t know if we will be any happier or not. I don’t even know how we can quantify that.
But if we try, I bet we will feel a bit more human.
More connected.
More burning knowledge with us and more
...simply more recognition of Christ in the world.
And we will be seen…
And we will see Christ.
Amen.
Luke 24:13-35
Easter 3
Who here hasn’t ever wondered about the secret to happiness?
Is it income? Education? Upbringing?
A team of National Geographic researchers recently took on this question.
Where are the happiest people in the world, and how can we be like them?
Basing their research on the three most well respected studies of overall well-being, a group led by Dan Buettner set off to explore what he has called The Blue
Zones,
the places in the world where people live the longest—
and in a follow up study, he went to learn from the people who are considered the happiest.
In his book Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way he highlights four of the world’s happiest areas, Denmark, Singapore, Mexico, and…San Luis Obispo, California.
Now, I have to say…when I hear these four places, it is somewhat shocking to think about them as being overly happy (aside from California, which I guess I would assume is pretty happy).
When I think of Denmark, Singapore, and Mexico I think of, respectively, cold long dark nights, the caning of Michael Fay for vandalism in 1994, and drug cartels and political corruption.
But apparently regardless of weather, corporal punishment, rampant violence and poverty…people still have the ability to be pretty happy. Even be the happiest people on the planet.
The National Geographic team revealed their hypothesis that if we can make permanent changes in six areas of life, we are well on our way to being happier people. Here is a recap of these six areas, taken from a brief report on their findings.
1.Community: Surveys from 146 countries, representing most of the world’s population, show that the top factors promoting happiness are: economic freedom, low unemployment rate, tolerance, and quality of government. That is, the biggest determinant of our personal happiness is where we live.
2. Workplace: Most of us spend more than half our waking hours at work. Having a short commute, a job that engages our talents and a best friend at work are three of the biggest determinants of a happy work-life.
3. Social Life: The happiest Americans report 7-8 hours of social interaction a day–real-face time, not Facebook time. Joining a club that meets just once per month can have an effect on your happiness equivalent to doubling your salary.
4. Financial Life: You don’t have to keep telling people in Brethren and Mennonite congregations that money can’t buy happiness. We know it. Now whether or not we really believe it that’s another story. We need food, shelter, education, mobility and healthcare. But the happiest people, after they attain those things, spend their money on experiences, not material things, and on financial security.
5. Home: Setting up science-backed nudges can subtly lead us to behaviors that favor happiness. Adopting a dog, for example, will dependably lower stress hormones daily. The happiest people only watch a half hour of TV a day, and reducing the number of screens in your home will help you to watch less TV.
And finally
6. [The area of the] Self: People who can articulate their life purpose in one sentence are 20% happier than those who can’t. Taking time to know your values, strengths, talents, passions –and how to share those gifts – can raise your well-being.
These broad categories probably don’t surprise you. We certainly know that if we don’t like our job, if we don’t have a job, if our family relationships are stressed we will be unhappy. But isn’t it interesting how small some of the factors can be. Reduce the number of electronic screens in your house. Adopt a dog. Take time to put your life purpose in one sentence. Join a club.
And in the midst of all of this, as you probably can expect—though it doesn’t have its own category—happiness is part of the food we eat.
So sure, he had suggestions like, you’ll be happier if you eat oatmeal and walnuts for breakfast rather than greasy eggs and bacon. You’ll be happier if incorporate more beans in your diet. A glass of wine--and yes, in moderation-- has heart healthy effects.
But he said something about food that I think is not so familiar to most Americans. It’s not all about what you eat. But it’s about who you eat with. And to take that a bit further, it is also about how you eat when you’re with those people.
Denmark-- that very cold, very dark place-- is considered the happiest country on earth. People interact about seven hours a day. But they don’t get up to schedule seven hours of interaction, this connection is not primarily in meetings, or on Facebook or in Tweets. Rather, it happens around food and the rituals around eating.
Because of the long dark days, many people in Denmark intentionally gather with others, and not just their nuclear family.
A couple times a week—not just Sunday dinner, but two or three times a week—they meet with extended family…neighbors… friends, for a gathering called hougie.
At hougie, they gather around a small table with candlelight, have open-faced sandwiches called smorbrood, a plate of herring, pate, and cheese. There is an interactive nature to this meal as people are gathering, reaching, passing, filling their plates with a little of this and a little of that…
They also have a glass of wine, as you might expect. But the thing about wine at hougie, is that it’s not just a drink. Before they drink they don’t just clink their wine glasses, reflects National Geographic researcher Dan Buettner.
Before they drink, they look each other in the eye through and around the candlelight.
They connect with one another.
They make sure to see one another.
In the long, dark cold days of winter, people have discovered what is necessary to keep them from the abyss of spiritual darkness and coldness.
They look each other in the eye.
Can you look someone in the eye? How about looking someone in the eye in the darkest, coldest times in your life?
I doubt that road leading to and from Emmaus was a highway in the midst of a Blue Zone, even as close as it was to Jerusalem, that spiritually holy city. Happiness would not be the word of the day, and American’s obsession with the “pursuit of it” would certainly be a cultural oddity.
Three days after the crucifixion of Jesus had some people hiding, some people weeping, some people cheering, some people walking…just walking.
It was an especially electric time, you can imagine, with the news that his body had gone missing…some say resurrected.
Probably many, like we heard about Thomas last week, probably many weren’t sure if they could believe the talk, the stories.
But these two, on the road to Emmaus, were telling their own stories.
About the things that happened. About Jesus. And then Jesus sidles up to them, just another traveler on the road--being a bit nosy, really-- asking what they’re talking about.
And they give him the recap—who Jesus was, how he was convicted, how he died, and now,
“moreover” they say, as if it is the icing on the cake,
Moreover, as if all that other stuff wasn’t enough… some women of the group astounded them. Saying they saw angels who said Jesus was alive.
Some from the group went back to see if it was true—if Jesus was dead or alive—but they saw nothing.
Eventually… these two travelers did see him. Recognition. Eyes opened. They were now on the inside of the story. You can imagine the jealously of the others who weren’t so lucky…How did they see him?
Was it that he seemed so interested in their experience?
Was it in the familiar way he told the stories about the prophets and about Moses? Was it the way he lovingly chastised them for being a bit slow on the uptake to believe in what their own texts and stories have told them.
Are these the things that helped them recognize Jesus?
Maybe. Probably.
But apparently, no amount of reminding, or correction, or teaching were enough in and of themselves for recognition
It got their hearts burning, as they said.
But it didn’t get their eyes, or their hearts, seeing.
It was all just an experience that could have been left on the road…
Until they invited him in. Until…they stopped him from passing by.
Until they lit the candles, sat around a small table, broke bread, took wine, looked at each other in the eye and then...they recognize him.
And then…[poof]…he’s gone.
Mennonite pastor Ron Adams speaks to the simplicity of this moment, “A spoken word. A bit of bread. A sip of wine. Our texts insist there is a power here [in these simple things] that draws people to God and reveals the presence of Christ”.
[pause]
A spoken word. A bit of bread. A sip of wine. Looking in the eyes of another.
[pause]
In days like these when we’re lured into false confidence that we are safe because the death of one man—when there are celebrations, parties, couches burning in the streets—we know that we still need more light, more clarity, more of God’s word burning in our hearts.
And maybe we need more breaking of bread together and blessing of wine together. Looking one another in the eye.
And I think we know, deep down, that it’s not just symbolic.
Not just in the taking of communion on Sunday morning or even at Love Feast. Not even with those we see everyday when we wake up, who know us so well.
But with those who are vaguely familiar, but really strangers.
With neighbors who care about our community.
With church family who care about a spiritual journey.
Moreover…it is with the Christ that is hidden in each one of us, ready to be revealed those desperately seeking, but not seeing…as Gunilla Norris implies in her poem called Plenty…
Having shared our bread
We know that we are
No longer hungry. It is enough
That you see me for myself
That I see you for yourself
That we bless what we see
And do not borrow, do not use
One another. This is how we know
We are no longer hungry…
That the world is full of terror, full of beauty
And yet we are not afraid to find solace here.
To be bread for each other. To live.
Open your home, open your heart, sit down, eat together, look one another in the eye.
Granted, we won’t know if we will be any happier or not. I don’t even know how we can quantify that.
But if we try, I bet we will feel a bit more human.
More connected.
More burning knowledge with us and more
...simply more recognition of Christ in the world.
And we will be seen…
And we will see Christ.
Amen.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Believing is Seeing?
sermon by Torin Eikler
John 20:19-31 Psalm 16
Well it has finally happened – we have reached the end of candy season. Easter brings the end a six month sugar rush that started way back on October 31st – with an appropriate break for Lent of course – and I can’t say how pleased I am that after a half dozen more chocolate eggs and several gummy candies we will honestly be able to tell our boys that there is no more artificially sweetened, tooth decay causing energy bombs in the house. After a few days of sugar withdrawal, our household will finally be back to normal (if there is such a thing).
But “candy season” – or the Holidays as we usually like to call it – is a nice time of year. Lights and decorations and laughter and gifts do make for a festive mood and, we generally have a lot of fun visiting with friends and relatives and just playing together. It is also a wonderful time for teaching children. They tend to be more open to sitting as we read stories or talk about the meaning of Christmas and Easter when their interest is peaked by the cultural obsessions all around them. The only draw back is that those same obsessions get in the way of what we are trying to teach, and it is not easy to brush them aside to get to the truth hidden under all the hype.
How do you get kids to think about the wonder of the incarnation, the amazing love that it took for Jesus to go to the cross, or the miraculous grace that is proven by the resurrection when Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny are sitting in front of the manger and the open grave? It would be hard enough to deal with those slippery concepts on their own, but when you add the concrete, tangible Santa in the Mall it seems like an impossible challenge. Add to that the instant gratification of gifts, stockings, and plastic eggs filled with candy, and it is nigh unto impossible to convince kids that Easter and Christmas are really about an otherworldly, selfless God coming to meet us where we are and not about the fulfillment of very concrete, self-centered pleasure.
But that struggle is nothing new to Christianity, and if you look farther back into the history of Judaism, you find it there as well. It has always been a struggle to convince people of the existence and the power of a God that cannot be seen and whose gifts do not come wrapped in aluminum foil or fancy paper with a bow. It was - and is - much easier for people to believe in a deity whose face was presented to them in stone … easier to understand a god who gave you an oracle or healing or whatever else you wanted (or thought you wanted) as long as you went through the proper steps to gain his or her favor. It seems to be an integral part of human nature to want proof … to trust only what our senses can present to us as true. “Seeing IS believing” after all … Right?
That’s the question that is at the heart of what has become one of our family’s favorite holiday films, “The Polar Express.” In that movie a boy of 8 years old struggles with his belief in Santa Claus. At first he finds his suspicions confirmed as he pretends to sleep and overhears his parents sneaking about the house to fill stockings and put presents under the tree, but after he falls asleep, the boy – you know we never learn his name … maybe that’s so that we can all see ourselves in him. Anyway, the boy wakes up to find a mystical train running through his front yard. He gets on board, and after several adventures he finds himself in the town square of North Pole City as Santa comes out to start his deliveries.
As he stands there, waiting for definitive proof that Santa exists, he finds that he can’t see because of the crowd of elves thronging the plaza. Even more puzzling, he can’t seem to hear the sound of the sleigh bells on the reindeer harnesses. One of those bells falls off and rolls to his feet where he picks it up and, shaking it by his ear, confirms that it makes no sound – at least not that he can hear.
At this point, I should give you all a spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen “The Polar Express,” and you want to experience the ending un-spoiled, put your fingers in your ears for the next minute or so.
(wait)
As the boy stands there (and we stand there with him), he remembers what the conductor on the train told him: “Seems to me you’ve got it backwards…. Believing is seeing.” He closes his eyes and repeats to himself over and over, “I believe. I believe. I believe,” as he continues to shake the bell. Finally, the sound of the bell ringing comes to him, drowning out everything else, and when he opens his eyes in wonder, he sees the reflection of Santa peering over his shoulder. The whole experience, it seems, was just what he needed to find his way to belief even without having seen.
(fingers out of ears gesture)
John, too, knew the value of vicarious experience. Faced with a new generation of people who never had the chance to meet Jesus, hear him teaching, or experience the power of his presence, he wrote a gospel unlike those written by the other evangelists. As Gail O’Day says in her commentary, his purpose was not really about informing people about the life of Jesus, though the facts are important. It was to tell a story … a really good story that drew the readers in so that they stood next to Mary at the entrance to the tomb, gathered in fear with the disciples in the locked room, and demanded, with Thomas, additional proof of the resurrection. He gave them … and us … exactly what we need to believe even without seeing.
And what does he want us to understand – to see through the power of the experience? It is more than just the fact that Jesus died or rose from the tomb. Those realities are just signs. The resurrection stories, as powerful and amazing as they are, are just markers pointing the direction to something even more profound. “The empty tomb [reveals that] Jesus’ victory over death and the ruler of this world [is absolute…. The appearance to Mary points to] Jesus’ continuing presence as the good shepherd, [caring for his sheep as their journey continues.] Jesus’ [first] appearance to the disciples points to the gift of the Spirit and the truth of [the promises he made in the upper room.] [And, when Jesus appears, providing Thomas with all that he asks,] Thomas saw through the physical miracle [and recognizes the deeper truth to which it points:] the full revelation of God in Jesus.”
In Thomas’ declaration, “My Lord and my God,” we hear the most profound affirmation of Jesus’ relationship with God that can be found in any of the gospels. And, brought to that room by John’s narrative, we experience the moment for ourselves. Standing there in front of the risen Christ, gazing at the wounds through Thomas’ eyes and feeling his wonder at the way Jesus offered himself up to meet our need for proof, we are summoned to believe not only in the resurrection but in all that it means: that Jesus is one with God, that all of Jesus promises to us were true, and that the Spirit Advocate has come to live with us.
What a gift that is. What a challenge. A blessing that is full of power, hope, forgiveness … and purpose, for the Spirit summons us … compels us to more than simply reveling in its presence. We understand that already … somewhere deep in our beings. Jesus told the disciples that he was sending them … sending us … as God had sent him – to forgive or retain sin, and he gave us the Spirit to empower that mission. Unfortunately, we have come to understand that through the lens of the Reformation and an understanding of sin as a moral or behavioral misstep that has led to a lot of grief and abuse at the hands of the church.
The way John uses “sin” here is much different. This sin is a blindness of sorts, an inability or unwillingness to see the revelation of God in Jesus. “When Jesus commissions the [community of his followers] to continue [his work, he means that we are to make] God in Jesus known in the world.” That’s the purpose of the Spirit - to guide, direct, and empower the work of making the graceful presence of God at work in the world through Christ, revealing the truth of what it means to be children of God living in God’s world.
What that looks like we can’t know, can’t see except as we watch for it. The call unfolds before us moment by moment. We believe and we watch. And our eyes are open to see the moments when we can become the voice and touch of the Spirit drawing others to the path of Life.
We have received everything we need – will be given everything we need – not only to believe but to fulfill our purpose: a story to guide us, the Spirit breathed out to encourage and empower, and the peace of Christ to make us fearless. This is the true gift of the holidays, sweeter than all the candy and more fulfilling than anything you might find under the tree. Jesus meets us in the midst of our fear and our doubt, offers himself as the path of new life, and passes on the joyous task of sharing the good news with the world.
John 20:19-31 Psalm 16
Well it has finally happened – we have reached the end of candy season. Easter brings the end a six month sugar rush that started way back on October 31st – with an appropriate break for Lent of course – and I can’t say how pleased I am that after a half dozen more chocolate eggs and several gummy candies we will honestly be able to tell our boys that there is no more artificially sweetened, tooth decay causing energy bombs in the house. After a few days of sugar withdrawal, our household will finally be back to normal (if there is such a thing).
But “candy season” – or the Holidays as we usually like to call it – is a nice time of year. Lights and decorations and laughter and gifts do make for a festive mood and, we generally have a lot of fun visiting with friends and relatives and just playing together. It is also a wonderful time for teaching children. They tend to be more open to sitting as we read stories or talk about the meaning of Christmas and Easter when their interest is peaked by the cultural obsessions all around them. The only draw back is that those same obsessions get in the way of what we are trying to teach, and it is not easy to brush them aside to get to the truth hidden under all the hype.
How do you get kids to think about the wonder of the incarnation, the amazing love that it took for Jesus to go to the cross, or the miraculous grace that is proven by the resurrection when Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny are sitting in front of the manger and the open grave? It would be hard enough to deal with those slippery concepts on their own, but when you add the concrete, tangible Santa in the Mall it seems like an impossible challenge. Add to that the instant gratification of gifts, stockings, and plastic eggs filled with candy, and it is nigh unto impossible to convince kids that Easter and Christmas are really about an otherworldly, selfless God coming to meet us where we are and not about the fulfillment of very concrete, self-centered pleasure.
But that struggle is nothing new to Christianity, and if you look farther back into the history of Judaism, you find it there as well. It has always been a struggle to convince people of the existence and the power of a God that cannot be seen and whose gifts do not come wrapped in aluminum foil or fancy paper with a bow. It was - and is - much easier for people to believe in a deity whose face was presented to them in stone … easier to understand a god who gave you an oracle or healing or whatever else you wanted (or thought you wanted) as long as you went through the proper steps to gain his or her favor. It seems to be an integral part of human nature to want proof … to trust only what our senses can present to us as true. “Seeing IS believing” after all … Right?
That’s the question that is at the heart of what has become one of our family’s favorite holiday films, “The Polar Express.” In that movie a boy of 8 years old struggles with his belief in Santa Claus. At first he finds his suspicions confirmed as he pretends to sleep and overhears his parents sneaking about the house to fill stockings and put presents under the tree, but after he falls asleep, the boy – you know we never learn his name … maybe that’s so that we can all see ourselves in him. Anyway, the boy wakes up to find a mystical train running through his front yard. He gets on board, and after several adventures he finds himself in the town square of North Pole City as Santa comes out to start his deliveries.
As he stands there, waiting for definitive proof that Santa exists, he finds that he can’t see because of the crowd of elves thronging the plaza. Even more puzzling, he can’t seem to hear the sound of the sleigh bells on the reindeer harnesses. One of those bells falls off and rolls to his feet where he picks it up and, shaking it by his ear, confirms that it makes no sound – at least not that he can hear.
At this point, I should give you all a spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen “The Polar Express,” and you want to experience the ending un-spoiled, put your fingers in your ears for the next minute or so.
(wait)
As the boy stands there (and we stand there with him), he remembers what the conductor on the train told him: “Seems to me you’ve got it backwards…. Believing is seeing.” He closes his eyes and repeats to himself over and over, “I believe. I believe. I believe,” as he continues to shake the bell. Finally, the sound of the bell ringing comes to him, drowning out everything else, and when he opens his eyes in wonder, he sees the reflection of Santa peering over his shoulder. The whole experience, it seems, was just what he needed to find his way to belief even without having seen.
(fingers out of ears gesture)
John, too, knew the value of vicarious experience. Faced with a new generation of people who never had the chance to meet Jesus, hear him teaching, or experience the power of his presence, he wrote a gospel unlike those written by the other evangelists. As Gail O’Day says in her commentary, his purpose was not really about informing people about the life of Jesus, though the facts are important. It was to tell a story … a really good story that drew the readers in so that they stood next to Mary at the entrance to the tomb, gathered in fear with the disciples in the locked room, and demanded, with Thomas, additional proof of the resurrection. He gave them … and us … exactly what we need to believe even without seeing.
And what does he want us to understand – to see through the power of the experience? It is more than just the fact that Jesus died or rose from the tomb. Those realities are just signs. The resurrection stories, as powerful and amazing as they are, are just markers pointing the direction to something even more profound. “The empty tomb [reveals that] Jesus’ victory over death and the ruler of this world [is absolute…. The appearance to Mary points to] Jesus’ continuing presence as the good shepherd, [caring for his sheep as their journey continues.] Jesus’ [first] appearance to the disciples points to the gift of the Spirit and the truth of [the promises he made in the upper room.] [And, when Jesus appears, providing Thomas with all that he asks,] Thomas saw through the physical miracle [and recognizes the deeper truth to which it points:] the full revelation of God in Jesus.”
In Thomas’ declaration, “My Lord and my God,” we hear the most profound affirmation of Jesus’ relationship with God that can be found in any of the gospels. And, brought to that room by John’s narrative, we experience the moment for ourselves. Standing there in front of the risen Christ, gazing at the wounds through Thomas’ eyes and feeling his wonder at the way Jesus offered himself up to meet our need for proof, we are summoned to believe not only in the resurrection but in all that it means: that Jesus is one with God, that all of Jesus promises to us were true, and that the Spirit Advocate has come to live with us.
What a gift that is. What a challenge. A blessing that is full of power, hope, forgiveness … and purpose, for the Spirit summons us … compels us to more than simply reveling in its presence. We understand that already … somewhere deep in our beings. Jesus told the disciples that he was sending them … sending us … as God had sent him – to forgive or retain sin, and he gave us the Spirit to empower that mission. Unfortunately, we have come to understand that through the lens of the Reformation and an understanding of sin as a moral or behavioral misstep that has led to a lot of grief and abuse at the hands of the church.
The way John uses “sin” here is much different. This sin is a blindness of sorts, an inability or unwillingness to see the revelation of God in Jesus. “When Jesus commissions the [community of his followers] to continue [his work, he means that we are to make] God in Jesus known in the world.” That’s the purpose of the Spirit - to guide, direct, and empower the work of making the graceful presence of God at work in the world through Christ, revealing the truth of what it means to be children of God living in God’s world.
What that looks like we can’t know, can’t see except as we watch for it. The call unfolds before us moment by moment. We believe and we watch. And our eyes are open to see the moments when we can become the voice and touch of the Spirit drawing others to the path of Life.
We have received everything we need – will be given everything we need – not only to believe but to fulfill our purpose: a story to guide us, the Spirit breathed out to encourage and empower, and the peace of Christ to make us fearless. This is the true gift of the holidays, sweeter than all the candy and more fulfilling than anything you might find under the tree. Jesus meets us in the midst of our fear and our doubt, offers himself as the path of new life, and passes on the joyous task of sharing the good news with the world.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Meeting the Risen Lord?
Easter homily
by Carrie Eikler
John 10:1-18
Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. You don’t have to be a classical music buff to know it [pianist plays first eight notes "buh buh buh BUH. buh buh buh BUH!].
Even if you couldn’t put the name of the piece with those first notes, most of us recognize it. While Alistair and I were puttering around the house on Monday,
wishing it wasn’t raining outside so we could be doing things in the garden,
the radio program we were listening to was about to play Beethoven’s 5th..
The announcer gave this prelude:
“Those opening four notes. They're so familiar that they're almost a cliché.
How many times have we heard them and thought, oh, that again?
We've heard it so many times before.” (Peformance Today, NPR)
But he promised that we were about ready to hear a performance like none other by the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Paarvo Jarvi.
[pause]
And I had to wonder, would I really notice the difference?
I mean, I’m familiar with your basic classical music,
I could name Beethoven’s 5th if I heard those first four notes,
but unless they played it on the kazoo… I doubt I would be able to really tell the difference.
Not that I would say it would be a cliché.
But it probably wouldn’t move me terribly.
I might think “Oh, that again, that’s nice” and go on puttering with my rainy day.
[pause]
Mary went to the tomb on that first day of the week.
If it was raining, it didn't keep her away.
Nor did the dark
We don’t know exactly why she went
but in the Easter story told in both Luke and in Mark said the women were going to take spices to the grave.
They were going to do funeral rites.
Perhaps they were eager to finally be close to the body,
to help Jesus, even in death.
To tend to him, to simply do what needed to be done,
maybe it was routine but at least they could do something
…which was more than they could do for Jesus in his hour of need the day before.
Maybe Mary was going to do these things. Maybe she was simply going to weep.
This…this is what you did for the dead.
She probably did it other times before with others who have died,
at least witnessed other women doing it since she was a girl.
It was probably a familiar routine.
Perhaps, a bit… cliché… just the motions one went through.
But she could have also gone for another reason.
... Because his death was anything but cliché.
It’s not that it was uncommon. People were crucified. Capital punishment happened in the public eye.
But she really believed him to be the Messiah, and that sort of death for the Messiah…?
This was someone who had seen her.
Who affirmed her.
Who let her love him and experience love from him that was not just about the body,
but about the spirit.
So I wonder if she went with just a little bit of curiosity.
After all, didn’t he say that he would rise again?
He brought other people to life: the centurion’s daughter, Lazarus.
They were dead, and they lived.
Even if she suspected something might not be routine with Jesus’ death, she still was amazed he wasn’t there. She seems a bit flabbergasted, doesn’t she?
(quickly speaking)
She looked where he should have been
and then looked all around her
and [sigh] wasn’t it just like the men to run and hide leaving her to deal with
the crisis
and what are those angels doing there?
and who is this guy who is asking such ridiculous questions? and why does she have such a strange feeling about him,
(gasp) it’s probably because he stole Jesus!!! and…
…this is no routine sequence of events.
Because then the dead… calls her name. [pause] Mary.
And she has met the Risen Lord.
And 2,000 years later, the church, on this day like no other, asks that question.
Have you met the Risen Lord?
And I have to say, that question, like many other questions Christians often ask each other, starts to sound...
... a bit like Beethoven’s 5th.
A bit, cliché. Something overused. Even to me.
Because I don’t know what we mean by it.
I’ve heard it so many times that I can’t see through the popular worn out answers.
Obviously, we know we’re not talking about the physical, flesh and bone Jesus.
This is where most Christians are happy to throw around metaphors,
even for Christians who don’t think they like metaphors…
What do we mean we’ve seen the Risen Lord?
Our mind quickly tries to answer the question with more obvious questions…
Where have we seen something powerful that we believe God is behind it?
When have we had an experience that made us feel good, and loved, and saved?
But, as much as I love metaphors, I can’t quite then sift my way through the metaphor into the stuff of real life.
So I’m not going to ask you this morning the typical Easter question:
have you seen the risen Lord?
Because I think I would get a lot of blank stares, even from myself.
Something that was so radical, and political, and spiritual sadly, doesn’t reach us anymore.
And I wonder if it is because we are looking for our answers about Jesus in all the familiar places.
It’s easy to say we see God in people who have helped us along the way. And that’s true. I’m sure the Risen Lord is there.
We search for the places in our lives where that positive experience points us to the fact that Jesus rose—
when things go our way,
when circumstances work out for the best,
when the heart of Jesus message of compassion and peace and mercy are lived out.
It’s easy to see the Risen Lord then.
But what about the harder places.
Those places, where Jesus was also very present. in his life. In his life after death.
What about when we see a father weep for his son killed by artillery fire?
A woman suffering from sexual abuse.
What about when the powers that be, begin to consume us, crucifying us with
job loss, increase of food prices, and endless warfare.
I’d have to say the Risen Lord is there but not like we’d expect.
Not making things easy for us or giving us easy answers.
And, yet, in these hard moments, we meet him.
...unsuspecting
...a bit flaggergasted.
...proably still wondering "where is Jesus?!"
even though he is right in front of us.
The French composer Hector Berlioz took a friend to hear Beethoven’s 5th symphony in Paris.
At first a bit skeptical about this crazy new music by Beethoven, Berlioz’s friend had to leave the music hall during the performance.
Berlioz found him pacing madly outside muttering to himself , saying
“Let me get out, I must have some air. It’s amazing. I was so upset, so moved, so disturbed I came out to put on my hat and I couldn’t find my head.”
When we meet the risen Lord, I think it has been, is, will be like this.
We won’t see the empty tomb,
or the dirt under the nails of the man we think is the gardener,
or even hear our names clearly spoken.
I think when we meet the Risen Lord we’ll be so upset,
so moved,
so disturbed
that we won’t be able to find our heads.
When you meet the risen Lord, choose the living over the dead.
the next encounter over the familiar cliche,
Choose the freeing rather than the clinging....
each and every time he calls your name.
by Carrie Eikler
John 10:1-18
Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. You don’t have to be a classical music buff to know it [pianist plays first eight notes "buh buh buh BUH. buh buh buh BUH!].
Even if you couldn’t put the name of the piece with those first notes, most of us recognize it. While Alistair and I were puttering around the house on Monday,
wishing it wasn’t raining outside so we could be doing things in the garden,
the radio program we were listening to was about to play Beethoven’s 5th..
The announcer gave this prelude:
“Those opening four notes. They're so familiar that they're almost a cliché.
How many times have we heard them and thought, oh, that again?
We've heard it so many times before.” (Peformance Today, NPR)
But he promised that we were about ready to hear a performance like none other by the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Paarvo Jarvi.
[pause]
And I had to wonder, would I really notice the difference?
I mean, I’m familiar with your basic classical music,
I could name Beethoven’s 5th if I heard those first four notes,
but unless they played it on the kazoo… I doubt I would be able to really tell the difference.
Not that I would say it would be a cliché.
But it probably wouldn’t move me terribly.
I might think “Oh, that again, that’s nice” and go on puttering with my rainy day.
[pause]
Mary went to the tomb on that first day of the week.
If it was raining, it didn't keep her away.
Nor did the dark
We don’t know exactly why she went
but in the Easter story told in both Luke and in Mark said the women were going to take spices to the grave.
They were going to do funeral rites.
Perhaps they were eager to finally be close to the body,
to help Jesus, even in death.
To tend to him, to simply do what needed to be done,
maybe it was routine but at least they could do something
…which was more than they could do for Jesus in his hour of need the day before.
Maybe Mary was going to do these things. Maybe she was simply going to weep.
This…this is what you did for the dead.
She probably did it other times before with others who have died,
at least witnessed other women doing it since she was a girl.
It was probably a familiar routine.
Perhaps, a bit… cliché… just the motions one went through.
But she could have also gone for another reason.
... Because his death was anything but cliché.
It’s not that it was uncommon. People were crucified. Capital punishment happened in the public eye.
But she really believed him to be the Messiah, and that sort of death for the Messiah…?
This was someone who had seen her.
Who affirmed her.
Who let her love him and experience love from him that was not just about the body,
but about the spirit.
So I wonder if she went with just a little bit of curiosity.
After all, didn’t he say that he would rise again?
He brought other people to life: the centurion’s daughter, Lazarus.
They were dead, and they lived.
Even if she suspected something might not be routine with Jesus’ death, she still was amazed he wasn’t there. She seems a bit flabbergasted, doesn’t she?
(quickly speaking)
She looked where he should have been
and then looked all around her
and [sigh] wasn’t it just like the men to run and hide leaving her to deal with
the crisis
and what are those angels doing there?
and who is this guy who is asking such ridiculous questions? and why does she have such a strange feeling about him,
(gasp) it’s probably because he stole Jesus!!! and…
…this is no routine sequence of events.
Because then the dead… calls her name. [pause] Mary.
And she has met the Risen Lord.
And 2,000 years later, the church, on this day like no other, asks that question.
Have you met the Risen Lord?
And I have to say, that question, like many other questions Christians often ask each other, starts to sound...
... a bit like Beethoven’s 5th.
A bit, cliché. Something overused. Even to me.
Because I don’t know what we mean by it.
I’ve heard it so many times that I can’t see through the popular worn out answers.
Obviously, we know we’re not talking about the physical, flesh and bone Jesus.
This is where most Christians are happy to throw around metaphors,
even for Christians who don’t think they like metaphors…
What do we mean we’ve seen the Risen Lord?
Our mind quickly tries to answer the question with more obvious questions…
Where have we seen something powerful that we believe God is behind it?
When have we had an experience that made us feel good, and loved, and saved?
But, as much as I love metaphors, I can’t quite then sift my way through the metaphor into the stuff of real life.
So I’m not going to ask you this morning the typical Easter question:
have you seen the risen Lord?
Because I think I would get a lot of blank stares, even from myself.
Something that was so radical, and political, and spiritual sadly, doesn’t reach us anymore.
And I wonder if it is because we are looking for our answers about Jesus in all the familiar places.
It’s easy to say we see God in people who have helped us along the way. And that’s true. I’m sure the Risen Lord is there.
We search for the places in our lives where that positive experience points us to the fact that Jesus rose—
when things go our way,
when circumstances work out for the best,
when the heart of Jesus message of compassion and peace and mercy are lived out.
It’s easy to see the Risen Lord then.
But what about the harder places.
Those places, where Jesus was also very present. in his life. In his life after death.
What about when we see a father weep for his son killed by artillery fire?
A woman suffering from sexual abuse.
What about when the powers that be, begin to consume us, crucifying us with
job loss, increase of food prices, and endless warfare.
I’d have to say the Risen Lord is there but not like we’d expect.
Not making things easy for us or giving us easy answers.
And, yet, in these hard moments, we meet him.
...unsuspecting
...a bit flaggergasted.
...proably still wondering "where is Jesus?!"
even though he is right in front of us.
The French composer Hector Berlioz took a friend to hear Beethoven’s 5th symphony in Paris.
At first a bit skeptical about this crazy new music by Beethoven, Berlioz’s friend had to leave the music hall during the performance.
Berlioz found him pacing madly outside muttering to himself , saying
“Let me get out, I must have some air. It’s amazing. I was so upset, so moved, so disturbed I came out to put on my hat and I couldn’t find my head.”
When we meet the risen Lord, I think it has been, is, will be like this.
We won’t see the empty tomb,
or the dirt under the nails of the man we think is the gardener,
or even hear our names clearly spoken.
I think when we meet the Risen Lord we’ll be so upset,
so moved,
so disturbed
that we won’t be able to find our heads.
When you meet the risen Lord, choose the living over the dead.
the next encounter over the familiar cliche,
Choose the freeing rather than the clinging....
each and every time he calls your name.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Questions, Questions, Questions
Three meditations by Torin Eikler
Matthew 21:1-11 Matthew 26:69-75 John 18:33-38
Matthew 21:1-11 “Who is this Man?”
The story we are celebrating today – what we have come to call Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem – was a strange episode by any standards. Today we would find such a scene laughable, but even in ancient Israel I don’t think it would have been the norm. Here was a man riding into town astride both a donkey and a colt with no banner flapping and no guard of honor, and he received a hero’s welcome – the fore-runner perhaps of more recent ticker-tape parades. It was the sort of treatment reserved for war heroes or reluctantly given to the very important people of the occupying empire. And that, of course, is why it upset the Jewish authorities and why we call it the triumphal entry.
But what a scene to witness…. Imagine coming down the street to find a crowd of half-dressed people lining a dusty road on covered with the rest of their clothes with some branches from nearby trees thrown in for good measure. They’re shouting, chanting “Hosanna, [Praise] to the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” And when you look to see what all the fuss is about, to see who it is that deserves such praise as to verge on worship, you discover not a prince or a general but a ragtag bunch of men and women in dirty clothes led by a person who seems no different from anyone else. You wonder out loud, “who is this man?” Someone nearby tells you, “This is the prophet Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee.”
That is an answer to the question. I think it’s likely that some of them would recognize the name and would have heard the stories about him. Maybe they joined in once they realized who that was riding the colt. But most of the people who were up on the gossip of the day and were cheering for Jesus would have gotten the word ahead of time, I think. They were the ones who made up the crowds on the street. It was the rest of the city, the people who were thrown into turmoil by the spectacle of his entrance that were asking the question, and I think they meant it along the lines of, “What is so special about this man? Why is he receiving such adoration?” And the answer they got was not the answer they were looking for. “Yeah, … so he’s Jesus of Nazareth … So what?”
Now there’s a question that transcends time and culture, a question that theologians and apologists have been struggling to answer for century in defense of Christianity, a question that faces each of us if and when someone asks us what we believe. We believe in Jesus the Christ …. So what? Who is this Jesus Christ you worship? Who is this man whose life … and death you celebrate, whose example you ponder, whose teachings you seek to follow?
Maybe you’ve never been in that position. Maybe no one has ever challenged your faith or asked you to defend what you believe. I suppose that’s both a good and a sad thing – good if it’s because so many people have discovered their own truth about Christ … sad because facing those questions is a very effective way to explore our faith and what it means to us.
What would you say if you were in the crowd? What would your answer be if someone you knew asked you the same question? Who is this man to whom we shout hosanna … this rabbi and prophet from Nazareth … this Jesus Christ?
Matthew 26:69-75 “Do you know him?”
I’ve often thought that Peter gets a bit of a bad rap in the gospels. More than once, he is the one who speaks for the disciples, voicing the opinion or viewpoint they all share and sharing the answers that none of the others is willing to put out there, and so he becomes the butt of many of the lessons Jesus teaches them. Sometimes, like when he names Jesus the Messiah, the son of most high God, he gets things spectacularly right. Other times, he is way off base. On this night, we see him living up to our lowest expectations.
Standing there beside the fire he denies Jesus not once but three times. He stands there in the warm darkness … stands by and watches as his rabbi and friend is taken away by his enemies. He leaves Jesus to face brutality and trial cold and alone.
What made him do it? Why didn’t he acknowledge the one he had chosen to follow? He was afraid – afraid of discovery … afraid of what would happen if he too were arrested. Who wouldn’t be … standing in the bastion of power of those who had so easily arrested a man with powers he couldn’t aspire to. If they arrested Jesus what would they do to him, to the man who had cut off one of their ears?
Of course he was afraid, … but I wonder if there wasn’t something else that moved him to that vigil because Peter was a brave and faithful man too. Who else had named the messiah, the son of the most high God? Who else followed the soldiers to the courtyard that night? Who else had picked up a sword to defend Jesus against a whole squad of professional soldiers?
And so I wonder if Peter denied Jesus as much out of hope and faith as out of fear. How many other times had Jesus been in a tight spot only to find some way to confound his would-be accusers and win his freedom? Who, if not the man who had stilled a storm … who had broken even the hold of death … who else had the power to break the hold of any chains that bound him and walk away untouched?
I think, maybe, Peter was waiting so that someone would be there to greet Jesus once he had won his freedom. I think, maybe, he believed that worked his customary “magic” and his ministry would continue – more shining and triumphant than ever. And so he waited in that fearful place in the hope of a dawn that was not to be, buying time by denying Jesus and leaving only when he realized that he had fulfilled a prophesy that he had also denied – that he had done the one thing he thought he never would.
Why is it, then, that we judge him so harshly and with so much pity? I think it’s because we see ourselves in him. We, too, would be the ones to see the divinity in Christ. We, too, would drop everything to follow his lead. We would be the ones with the courage to run along behind the soldiers not knowing what would happen, but hoping that something or someone – maybe us – would change the plot. And, we, too, would stand there watching, waiting, denying, and running.
None of us are martyrs after all, though we may sometimes feel like it. None of us have ever been in Peter’s position. What would we do if it came to that? What would you do if you were faced with the decision to stand with Christ and die or turn away and live?
I don’t think I have it in me to make the stand as much as I wish I could claim that kind of courage and devotion. I think I would choose to live … here and now, and I don’t pretend that I could even do as well as Peter. One time would be enough for me, I think. One question and one denial – “I do not know this man,” and I would be off and running, my sense of guilt and failure growing with each step.
Even though my faith assures me that death is not the end of life, I would turn away.
John 18:33-38 “What is truth?”
“What is truth?” It seems a strange question to be part of a criminal trial. All the rest of the questions Pilote asked were right to the point. “What have you done [to be handed over to me for judgement]?” – the question of a judge trying to understand what’s going on, to figure out if there is really merit for the case being brought. “Are you the king of the Jews?” – anyone claiming that title would be usurping the role of Herod and challenging the authority of the empire. They would be a rabble rouser and could be punished by death. “So you are a king?” – let’s just be sure that we understand the situation before we pass sentence. But “what is truth?” …. That’s a question more fit for philosophical discussion or a church than a court room.
I suppose that Jesus answers were a little less than helpful. He was as evasive and mysterious as ever, which probably got Pilote out of his comfort zone. This was not what he was used to. The man before him was not trying to refute the charges against him. Neither was he some surly criminal or rebel. He was an enigma, a mystery that seemed to make even his accusers uneasy since they had handed him over for sentencing, demanding the death penalty without any evidence but their own dubious claims. Perhaps Pilote’s final question actually got right to the heart of the matter – went straight to the core of what was important … both for the decision he had to make and for the decisions we make every day of our lives.
What is the truth? Plato would have said that truth is an ideal … something we can never know or understand in its fullness, limited as we are by the bodies we inhabit and the world we see around us. That’s an idea that Pilote would have been quite familiar with. But the writer of the gospel of John had a different idea. The good news in this gospel is that Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” or the way to the true life depending on how you read the text.
For the people who cheered at his entrance to Jerusalem, that meant that he was a great prophet, a teacher who had the power to do signs and wonders in the name of God. For Peter and the other followers close to Jesus, that meant that he was the Messiah, the one who had come to bring freedom to the people of Israel. Many people since then have believed that Jesus was God come to earth to reconcile humanity with the Divine. And there are many more ways to understand who Jesus was and is, but none of them holds all the answers because Plato was right. We only see the truth dimly while we are here.
But it is important to ponder the truth that we do see. The truth, or rather, what we believe is the truth about the man Jesus who we call Christ and Lord?” is the central question we face in the life of faith, and the answer shapes how we live as we seek to join our faith and our daily living as seamlessly as possible.
Do you believe that Jesus was a great teacher or that he was the Messiah? Do you believe that he is the Christ, the Son of God who came to bring salvation to all humanity?
What do you believe?
What is truth … for you?
Matthew 21:1-11 Matthew 26:69-75 John 18:33-38
Matthew 21:1-11 “Who is this Man?”
The story we are celebrating today – what we have come to call Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem – was a strange episode by any standards. Today we would find such a scene laughable, but even in ancient Israel I don’t think it would have been the norm. Here was a man riding into town astride both a donkey and a colt with no banner flapping and no guard of honor, and he received a hero’s welcome – the fore-runner perhaps of more recent ticker-tape parades. It was the sort of treatment reserved for war heroes or reluctantly given to the very important people of the occupying empire. And that, of course, is why it upset the Jewish authorities and why we call it the triumphal entry.
But what a scene to witness…. Imagine coming down the street to find a crowd of half-dressed people lining a dusty road on covered with the rest of their clothes with some branches from nearby trees thrown in for good measure. They’re shouting, chanting “Hosanna, [Praise] to the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” And when you look to see what all the fuss is about, to see who it is that deserves such praise as to verge on worship, you discover not a prince or a general but a ragtag bunch of men and women in dirty clothes led by a person who seems no different from anyone else. You wonder out loud, “who is this man?” Someone nearby tells you, “This is the prophet Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee.”
That is an answer to the question. I think it’s likely that some of them would recognize the name and would have heard the stories about him. Maybe they joined in once they realized who that was riding the colt. But most of the people who were up on the gossip of the day and were cheering for Jesus would have gotten the word ahead of time, I think. They were the ones who made up the crowds on the street. It was the rest of the city, the people who were thrown into turmoil by the spectacle of his entrance that were asking the question, and I think they meant it along the lines of, “What is so special about this man? Why is he receiving such adoration?” And the answer they got was not the answer they were looking for. “Yeah, … so he’s Jesus of Nazareth … So what?”
Now there’s a question that transcends time and culture, a question that theologians and apologists have been struggling to answer for century in defense of Christianity, a question that faces each of us if and when someone asks us what we believe. We believe in Jesus the Christ …. So what? Who is this Jesus Christ you worship? Who is this man whose life … and death you celebrate, whose example you ponder, whose teachings you seek to follow?
Maybe you’ve never been in that position. Maybe no one has ever challenged your faith or asked you to defend what you believe. I suppose that’s both a good and a sad thing – good if it’s because so many people have discovered their own truth about Christ … sad because facing those questions is a very effective way to explore our faith and what it means to us.
What would you say if you were in the crowd? What would your answer be if someone you knew asked you the same question? Who is this man to whom we shout hosanna … this rabbi and prophet from Nazareth … this Jesus Christ?
Matthew 26:69-75 “Do you know him?”
I’ve often thought that Peter gets a bit of a bad rap in the gospels. More than once, he is the one who speaks for the disciples, voicing the opinion or viewpoint they all share and sharing the answers that none of the others is willing to put out there, and so he becomes the butt of many of the lessons Jesus teaches them. Sometimes, like when he names Jesus the Messiah, the son of most high God, he gets things spectacularly right. Other times, he is way off base. On this night, we see him living up to our lowest expectations.
Standing there beside the fire he denies Jesus not once but three times. He stands there in the warm darkness … stands by and watches as his rabbi and friend is taken away by his enemies. He leaves Jesus to face brutality and trial cold and alone.
What made him do it? Why didn’t he acknowledge the one he had chosen to follow? He was afraid – afraid of discovery … afraid of what would happen if he too were arrested. Who wouldn’t be … standing in the bastion of power of those who had so easily arrested a man with powers he couldn’t aspire to. If they arrested Jesus what would they do to him, to the man who had cut off one of their ears?
Of course he was afraid, … but I wonder if there wasn’t something else that moved him to that vigil because Peter was a brave and faithful man too. Who else had named the messiah, the son of the most high God? Who else followed the soldiers to the courtyard that night? Who else had picked up a sword to defend Jesus against a whole squad of professional soldiers?
And so I wonder if Peter denied Jesus as much out of hope and faith as out of fear. How many other times had Jesus been in a tight spot only to find some way to confound his would-be accusers and win his freedom? Who, if not the man who had stilled a storm … who had broken even the hold of death … who else had the power to break the hold of any chains that bound him and walk away untouched?
I think, maybe, Peter was waiting so that someone would be there to greet Jesus once he had won his freedom. I think, maybe, he believed that worked his customary “magic” and his ministry would continue – more shining and triumphant than ever. And so he waited in that fearful place in the hope of a dawn that was not to be, buying time by denying Jesus and leaving only when he realized that he had fulfilled a prophesy that he had also denied – that he had done the one thing he thought he never would.
Why is it, then, that we judge him so harshly and with so much pity? I think it’s because we see ourselves in him. We, too, would be the ones to see the divinity in Christ. We, too, would drop everything to follow his lead. We would be the ones with the courage to run along behind the soldiers not knowing what would happen, but hoping that something or someone – maybe us – would change the plot. And, we, too, would stand there watching, waiting, denying, and running.
None of us are martyrs after all, though we may sometimes feel like it. None of us have ever been in Peter’s position. What would we do if it came to that? What would you do if you were faced with the decision to stand with Christ and die or turn away and live?
I don’t think I have it in me to make the stand as much as I wish I could claim that kind of courage and devotion. I think I would choose to live … here and now, and I don’t pretend that I could even do as well as Peter. One time would be enough for me, I think. One question and one denial – “I do not know this man,” and I would be off and running, my sense of guilt and failure growing with each step.
Even though my faith assures me that death is not the end of life, I would turn away.
John 18:33-38 “What is truth?”
“What is truth?” It seems a strange question to be part of a criminal trial. All the rest of the questions Pilote asked were right to the point. “What have you done [to be handed over to me for judgement]?” – the question of a judge trying to understand what’s going on, to figure out if there is really merit for the case being brought. “Are you the king of the Jews?” – anyone claiming that title would be usurping the role of Herod and challenging the authority of the empire. They would be a rabble rouser and could be punished by death. “So you are a king?” – let’s just be sure that we understand the situation before we pass sentence. But “what is truth?” …. That’s a question more fit for philosophical discussion or a church than a court room.
I suppose that Jesus answers were a little less than helpful. He was as evasive and mysterious as ever, which probably got Pilote out of his comfort zone. This was not what he was used to. The man before him was not trying to refute the charges against him. Neither was he some surly criminal or rebel. He was an enigma, a mystery that seemed to make even his accusers uneasy since they had handed him over for sentencing, demanding the death penalty without any evidence but their own dubious claims. Perhaps Pilote’s final question actually got right to the heart of the matter – went straight to the core of what was important … both for the decision he had to make and for the decisions we make every day of our lives.
What is the truth? Plato would have said that truth is an ideal … something we can never know or understand in its fullness, limited as we are by the bodies we inhabit and the world we see around us. That’s an idea that Pilote would have been quite familiar with. But the writer of the gospel of John had a different idea. The good news in this gospel is that Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” or the way to the true life depending on how you read the text.
For the people who cheered at his entrance to Jerusalem, that meant that he was a great prophet, a teacher who had the power to do signs and wonders in the name of God. For Peter and the other followers close to Jesus, that meant that he was the Messiah, the one who had come to bring freedom to the people of Israel. Many people since then have believed that Jesus was God come to earth to reconcile humanity with the Divine. And there are many more ways to understand who Jesus was and is, but none of them holds all the answers because Plato was right. We only see the truth dimly while we are here.
But it is important to ponder the truth that we do see. The truth, or rather, what we believe is the truth about the man Jesus who we call Christ and Lord?” is the central question we face in the life of faith, and the answer shapes how we live as we seek to join our faith and our daily living as seamlessly as possible.
Do you believe that Jesus was a great teacher or that he was the Messiah? Do you believe that he is the Christ, the Son of God who came to bring salvation to all humanity?
What do you believe?
What is truth … for you?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Fashioning New Life
Sermon by Carrie Eikler
John 11:1-45, Ezekiel 37:1-14
Lent 5
[on the worship center, 29 stones are lined up, marking the 29 miners killed in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion]
Gary Quarles kneels on his living room carpet and unrolls the 4-foot-long map that he's studied so many times,
trying to understand why his son died in the Upper Big Branch mine…
On the map he sees where his 33-year-old son Gary Wayne Quarles was working with crewmates Grover Skeens and Joel Price, and their supervisor, Rick Lane.
They are identified on paper as Victims 9-12.
And they're not where they were supposed to be.
They were, Gary Quarles believes, running for their lives, trying to escape after something went wrong near the end of their 10 1/2-hour shift.
Gary Wayne was [Gary, Sr’s] best friend and his only child, conceived when Gary's wife, Patty, was just 15.
"He made us grow up really fast, and he turned us into who we are," she says.
Patty, a homemaker, still keeps an immaculate house. But she's just going through the motions.
She rocks slightly in a recliner, dark hair still wet from a shower she didn't bother getting until midafternoon,
and describes her life now: "You go to bed and you get up and you go back to bed."
Gary nods. He recalls the day a relative told him to pull himself together, to get out and have a little fun.
"There's no fun to be done now," he says, eyes filling with tears.
"It's like the life been sucked right out of me." [i]
This week the valley of dried bones are laid aside the mountains of Montcoal, WV where 29 miners lost their lives in an explosion one year ago.
Since I was reflecting on Ezekiel’s story of dry bones this week,
I experienced a certain chill added to the sadness:
29 white crosses with miner’s helmets balanced a loft, their lights beaming through the darkness.
Straight white crosses. Bone-like.
I wanted to see them fashioning themselves, clacking together, somehow causing a resurrection.
And what’s clear is that, like any tragedy, any death,
it is not just the dead who have been affected.
It is a transformation for those who remain, who loved them, who bore them and raised them.
They have the hard duty of living in the midst of death.
People going through the motions, having the life sucked out of them by grief and absence.
Living in a Martha-like agony
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
These are the painful, raw, words of Martha.
Martha, who did something.
Who ran out to meet Jesus in the dark of night while her sister Mary stayed home. Martha, who earlier, Jesus seems to have chastised for doing too much,
while favoring Mary’s quiet stillness.
Now, she does just the right thing.
She leaves Mary at home, and in Martha’s grief, her anger—
perhaps a bit of the righteous anger we saw when Mary didn’t help her host Jesus, she runs to Jesus, puts him to the test, asks him where he was.
He doesn’t rebuke her this time.
This time, he says ‘I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die will live” and Lazarus lives.
Thank God for Martha. We don’t often hear that, do we?
In the field of dry bones, the LORD asks Ezekiel a question.
A simple one. Perhaps rhetorical.
“Mortal, can this bones live?”
And can’t you almost hear the exasperation in Ezekiel’s voice:
“O Lord God, you know.”
And then it comes. Dem bones scene.
Clickity-clack, it’s almost humorous as we think of the ankle bone connecting to the leg bones.
But it’s not humorous. It’s horrific.
And if we take it on its own, like we often do, without regarding the rest of Ezekiel’s story, we don’t quite get the significance of it all.
We may be tempted to see it as merely a metaphor, a lesson.
It can seem a-- nice prelude to the Easter story which is only two weeks away.
David Garber reflects on this tendency to cut the dry bones story out of the rest of Ezekiel’s story.
He says, “Because we so often do not read the rest of the book leading up to this grand scene, we have a myopic view of the prophet's own desperation and the plight of the community to which this story attempts to give hope. We forget that Ezekiel himself was taken into exile…. that he heard reports of his religious institution being corrupted and that his status had been reduced from a prominent position as a future priest in Jerusalem to that of a temple-less priest in exile.
We forget the death of his wife and God's command for him not to mourn her as an example for the exilic community not to mourn the loss of the Temple (24:16-24).”
“More importantly,” he continues, “we forget the historical trauma that accompanied this exile. We forget that the Babylonians tortured the inhabitants of Jerusalem with siege warfare that lasted almost two years, leading to famine, disease, and despair (2 Kings 25:3).
We forget how they destroyed the city of Jerusalem, razed the temple to the ground, killed many of its inhabitants, and forced the rest to migrate to Babylon. Over and over again, in the texts we refuse to read from the book of Ezekiel, the prophet offers imagery that testifies to the multiple traumas that the community faced under the realities of ancient Near Eastern warfare.”[ii]
The reality of death.
So often we focus on the death, don’t we, and not the realities that cause death.
Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggeman talks about Ezeikiel, and I would say, the Lazarus story too, as texts that do not accept the reality as the final outcome.
The death is what is real. But it is not all there is.
It’s a great message of hope for people of faith.
It’s a wonderful concept for people moving through loss.
But how helpful it is, I wonder, for people in the throes of grief.
If you have ever grieved the death of a loved one, have these sorts of stories been helpful to you? Stories of bodily resurrection?
And as I gazed on a photo of a woman bending down at a loved one’s graveside in Raleigh county,
with the ravaged hills behind her,
I struggle to think how can we tell her—that there ARE stories of hope.
but...
His bones won’t be gathered up.
Jesus won’t be coming to raise his body.
[pause]
But I don’t know if that is what Ezekiel is saying. I don’t even know if that is what the Lazarus story is conveying.
And here is where we have to understand the Bible as stories not just of historical truth, but emotional ones.
Maybe the hope in this story for today doesn’t rest in the gathering up of the that miner’s bones,
but the gathering up of the one who bends over him in grief.
Maybe the hope in this story is in giving the slow steady breath of the spirit to Patty and Gary Quarles, who mourn the death of their son.
And as Garber said about Ezekiel, we forget what led us to this.
We forget the history of coal companies in West Virginia.
We forget about the struggle miners have in demanding establishing safe working conditions.
We forget that the tragedies we deplore are sadly, are connected to the luxuries we believe we cannot live without.
On Tuesday, when the memorials were taking place for the miners,
when politicians were saying these men did not die in vain and that things must change,
I admit, I felt something other than sadness.
I felt exhaustion. I felt cynicism.
I felt a bit of what has been coined “compassion fatigue.”
It was as if, the tragedy of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster held my compassion captive for the day
and then Wednesday came and it was Japan that called for my compassion because there was another earthquake.
And then when I turn on the radio on Thursday it was federal employees like my friend Barbara who may lose their jobs because of the threat of government shutdown.
And on Friday was for the eleven school children in Brazil who were part of mass school shooting.
And Saturday, oh right. Libya. My goodness-Libya.
Some may say we should just stop feeling connected to the world.
Others may say, just turn off your radio.
And I don’t know what to say back. It just feels wrong to me to think that way and yet,
All these valleys and mountains and plains of dry bones
and we don’t even need a dream where the Lord takes us there.
Just go on the internet, turn on the tv, open the paper and have your choice.
And that’ doesn’t even include the places in my own immediate life that pull at my grief,
my loved ones I feel desperately for, fear for…
And then things stop shocking me.
The horror of death becomes a simple song, like Ezekiel and dem bones
Our compassion is dried up.
We see, but we can’t quite feel anymore because what does all that feeling really do, anyway?
How are we to be responsive and help God breathe in the spirit when we know of all the pain and death around us?
And it wasn’t just a solo act by God, was it?
God used Ezekiel. Martha was an integral part of the raising of her brother.
We are called to help give hope and life, breathing in the spirit.
And yet, when we can’t think of how to breathe,
or if we don’t have enough breath to breathe in all the places of pain and death in the world, which really, none of us does,
God works in spite of our fatigue and cynicism.
It’s not too big for life to find its way.
As Paul Bellan-Boyer says, “God’s work does not stop when human beings have done their worst.”[iii]
[pause]
When we are too dry to go on, God’s breath will come.
And I don’t know how.
I can’t dissect it, or lay out the logical and systematic way it will happen.
I can just feel it.
In my bones. In my dried up, clicky-clackity bones.
[following the sermon we enter into silence/Waiting Worship, while the old coal miner's song "Dark as a Dungeon, sung by Kathy Mattea, is played. These are the words...
Oh come all you young fellers so young and so fine
Seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine
It'll form as a habit and seep in your soul
Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal
Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine
Well it's many a man that I've seen in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine
Where it's dark as a dungeon ....
And pray when I'm dead and my ages shall roll
That my body would blacken and turn into coal
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home
and pity the miner digging my bones
Where it's dark as a dungeon...
--
“Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, A Year Later: Family Can’t Move On” Huffington Post
David Garber, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=4/10/2011
Paul Bellan-Boyer
John 11:1-45, Ezekiel 37:1-14
Lent 5
[on the worship center, 29 stones are lined up, marking the 29 miners killed in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion]
Gary Quarles kneels on his living room carpet and unrolls the 4-foot-long map that he's studied so many times,
trying to understand why his son died in the Upper Big Branch mine…
On the map he sees where his 33-year-old son Gary Wayne Quarles was working with crewmates Grover Skeens and Joel Price, and their supervisor, Rick Lane.
They are identified on paper as Victims 9-12.
And they're not where they were supposed to be.
They were, Gary Quarles believes, running for their lives, trying to escape after something went wrong near the end of their 10 1/2-hour shift.
Gary Wayne was [Gary, Sr’s] best friend and his only child, conceived when Gary's wife, Patty, was just 15.
"He made us grow up really fast, and he turned us into who we are," she says.
Patty, a homemaker, still keeps an immaculate house. But she's just going through the motions.
She rocks slightly in a recliner, dark hair still wet from a shower she didn't bother getting until midafternoon,
and describes her life now: "You go to bed and you get up and you go back to bed."
Gary nods. He recalls the day a relative told him to pull himself together, to get out and have a little fun.
"There's no fun to be done now," he says, eyes filling with tears.
"It's like the life been sucked right out of me." [i]
This week the valley of dried bones are laid aside the mountains of Montcoal, WV where 29 miners lost their lives in an explosion one year ago.
Since I was reflecting on Ezekiel’s story of dry bones this week,
I experienced a certain chill added to the sadness:
29 white crosses with miner’s helmets balanced a loft, their lights beaming through the darkness.
Straight white crosses. Bone-like.
I wanted to see them fashioning themselves, clacking together, somehow causing a resurrection.
And what’s clear is that, like any tragedy, any death,
it is not just the dead who have been affected.
It is a transformation for those who remain, who loved them, who bore them and raised them.
They have the hard duty of living in the midst of death.
People going through the motions, having the life sucked out of them by grief and absence.
Living in a Martha-like agony
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
These are the painful, raw, words of Martha.
Martha, who did something.
Who ran out to meet Jesus in the dark of night while her sister Mary stayed home. Martha, who earlier, Jesus seems to have chastised for doing too much,
while favoring Mary’s quiet stillness.
Now, she does just the right thing.
She leaves Mary at home, and in Martha’s grief, her anger—
perhaps a bit of the righteous anger we saw when Mary didn’t help her host Jesus, she runs to Jesus, puts him to the test, asks him where he was.
He doesn’t rebuke her this time.
This time, he says ‘I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die will live” and Lazarus lives.
Thank God for Martha. We don’t often hear that, do we?
In the field of dry bones, the LORD asks Ezekiel a question.
A simple one. Perhaps rhetorical.
“Mortal, can this bones live?”
And can’t you almost hear the exasperation in Ezekiel’s voice:
“O Lord God, you know.”
And then it comes. Dem bones scene.
Clickity-clack, it’s almost humorous as we think of the ankle bone connecting to the leg bones.
But it’s not humorous. It’s horrific.
And if we take it on its own, like we often do, without regarding the rest of Ezekiel’s story, we don’t quite get the significance of it all.
We may be tempted to see it as merely a metaphor, a lesson.
It can seem a-- nice prelude to the Easter story which is only two weeks away.
David Garber reflects on this tendency to cut the dry bones story out of the rest of Ezekiel’s story.
He says, “Because we so often do not read the rest of the book leading up to this grand scene, we have a myopic view of the prophet's own desperation and the plight of the community to which this story attempts to give hope. We forget that Ezekiel himself was taken into exile…. that he heard reports of his religious institution being corrupted and that his status had been reduced from a prominent position as a future priest in Jerusalem to that of a temple-less priest in exile.
We forget the death of his wife and God's command for him not to mourn her as an example for the exilic community not to mourn the loss of the Temple (24:16-24).”
“More importantly,” he continues, “we forget the historical trauma that accompanied this exile. We forget that the Babylonians tortured the inhabitants of Jerusalem with siege warfare that lasted almost two years, leading to famine, disease, and despair (2 Kings 25:3).
We forget how they destroyed the city of Jerusalem, razed the temple to the ground, killed many of its inhabitants, and forced the rest to migrate to Babylon. Over and over again, in the texts we refuse to read from the book of Ezekiel, the prophet offers imagery that testifies to the multiple traumas that the community faced under the realities of ancient Near Eastern warfare.”[ii]
The reality of death.
So often we focus on the death, don’t we, and not the realities that cause death.
Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggeman talks about Ezeikiel, and I would say, the Lazarus story too, as texts that do not accept the reality as the final outcome.
The death is what is real. But it is not all there is.
It’s a great message of hope for people of faith.
It’s a wonderful concept for people moving through loss.
But how helpful it is, I wonder, for people in the throes of grief.
If you have ever grieved the death of a loved one, have these sorts of stories been helpful to you? Stories of bodily resurrection?
And as I gazed on a photo of a woman bending down at a loved one’s graveside in Raleigh county,
with the ravaged hills behind her,
I struggle to think how can we tell her—that there ARE stories of hope.
but...
His bones won’t be gathered up.
Jesus won’t be coming to raise his body.
[pause]
But I don’t know if that is what Ezekiel is saying. I don’t even know if that is what the Lazarus story is conveying.
And here is where we have to understand the Bible as stories not just of historical truth, but emotional ones.
Maybe the hope in this story for today doesn’t rest in the gathering up of the that miner’s bones,
but the gathering up of the one who bends over him in grief.
Maybe the hope in this story is in giving the slow steady breath of the spirit to Patty and Gary Quarles, who mourn the death of their son.
And as Garber said about Ezekiel, we forget what led us to this.
We forget the history of coal companies in West Virginia.
We forget about the struggle miners have in demanding establishing safe working conditions.
We forget that the tragedies we deplore are sadly, are connected to the luxuries we believe we cannot live without.
On Tuesday, when the memorials were taking place for the miners,
when politicians were saying these men did not die in vain and that things must change,
I admit, I felt something other than sadness.
I felt exhaustion. I felt cynicism.
I felt a bit of what has been coined “compassion fatigue.”
It was as if, the tragedy of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster held my compassion captive for the day
and then Wednesday came and it was Japan that called for my compassion because there was another earthquake.
And then when I turn on the radio on Thursday it was federal employees like my friend Barbara who may lose their jobs because of the threat of government shutdown.
And on Friday was for the eleven school children in Brazil who were part of mass school shooting.
And Saturday, oh right. Libya. My goodness-Libya.
Some may say we should just stop feeling connected to the world.
Others may say, just turn off your radio.
And I don’t know what to say back. It just feels wrong to me to think that way and yet,
All these valleys and mountains and plains of dry bones
and we don’t even need a dream where the Lord takes us there.
Just go on the internet, turn on the tv, open the paper and have your choice.
And that’ doesn’t even include the places in my own immediate life that pull at my grief,
my loved ones I feel desperately for, fear for…
And then things stop shocking me.
The horror of death becomes a simple song, like Ezekiel and dem bones
Our compassion is dried up.
We see, but we can’t quite feel anymore because what does all that feeling really do, anyway?
How are we to be responsive and help God breathe in the spirit when we know of all the pain and death around us?
And it wasn’t just a solo act by God, was it?
God used Ezekiel. Martha was an integral part of the raising of her brother.
We are called to help give hope and life, breathing in the spirit.
And yet, when we can’t think of how to breathe,
or if we don’t have enough breath to breathe in all the places of pain and death in the world, which really, none of us does,
God works in spite of our fatigue and cynicism.
It’s not too big for life to find its way.
As Paul Bellan-Boyer says, “God’s work does not stop when human beings have done their worst.”[iii]
[pause]
When we are too dry to go on, God’s breath will come.
And I don’t know how.
I can’t dissect it, or lay out the logical and systematic way it will happen.
I can just feel it.
In my bones. In my dried up, clicky-clackity bones.
[following the sermon we enter into silence/Waiting Worship, while the old coal miner's song "Dark as a Dungeon, sung by Kathy Mattea, is played. These are the words...
Oh come all you young fellers so young and so fine
Seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine
It'll form as a habit and seep in your soul
Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal
Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine
Well it's many a man that I've seen in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine
Where it's dark as a dungeon ....
And pray when I'm dead and my ages shall roll
That my body would blacken and turn into coal
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home
and pity the miner digging my bones
Where it's dark as a dungeon...
--
“Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, A Year Later: Family Can’t Move On” Huffington Post
David Garber, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=4/10/2011
Paul Bellan-Boyer
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