Sunday, October 24, 2010

Have Mercy

sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 18:9-14

Parables are tricky things. They can be hard to understand because they have deal with a whole knot of concepts all together, and they also speak to us in different ways at different times in our lives. That’s nothing new to most of us. We’ve probably all gotten lost in one before – gotten all tied up in that knot as we’ve tried to tease out the meaning. Sometimes, I just want to say, “Lord, have mercy.” But, I think that’s part of the reason that Jesus used them. They keep us coming back again and again as we pick at them and as they pick at us.

And they do pick at us, don’t they. They catch us out in ways that we could not have guessed before hearing them. We find ourselves led down an easy path and then we realize that there is no way back – that the nice, predictable story we’re hearing is really about us and we can’t get out of it without looking at ourselves and rewriting the main character. As one of my colleagues is fond of saying, “parables should come with a surgeon general’s note: warning…you are about to enter a trap.”

They are not for the faint of spirit, but they are wonderfully revealing mirrors once the fog has been cleared away.

So, let’s do a little wiping. There are some cultural details in the background of this parable that it might be helpful to understand. The presence of these two different men at prayer in the Temple would not have been all that uncommon. Twice a day the priests offered a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the chosen people. When they had finished the messy part, they threw handfuls of incense on the altar fire, and the prayers of those gathered in the Temple were carried to the ears of God on the rising plumes of smoke. On this particular day, there happened to be a Pharisee and a tax collector among the hundreds gathered for the ceremony.

Also, the fact that both the men were standing off away from the crowd had as much to do with socio-cultural concerns as it did with any spiritual attitude on their own parts. Pharisees tried to follow as many of the laws in the Torah as they could, and there was a real risk that these devout men would become unclean if they touched anyone in the crowd. Tax collectors, on the other hand, were servants of the empire who were considered to be turncoat collaborators. Nobody welcomed their presence. The crowd would have opened space around them no matter where they stood. I would stand at the back too if that was going to happen to me.

One last thing … the first and last verses we heard today were not really part of the parable. They are interpretive notes about its meaning. They can be helpful … but they can also limit the power of the parable and what it has to say to us. Listen again to the parable as it would have been told….

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went home justified rather than the other.


Is this a story about how we should pray? Should we pray standing with arms outstretched and eyes and voice raised to the heavens? Should we pray hunched over with eyes downcast, beating our chests? If we happened to look around during prayer one Sunday morning and saw someone praying either way, we would certainly be surprised. But most people prayed in just the same way the Pharisee did unless they were caught up in deep grief. Then, they assumed the position of the tax collector.

I don’t think this really about how we stand or sit or use our hands, and there is an old poem by Sam Walter Foss that shows us rather humorously how unimportant all that really is ….

"The proper way for man to pray,"
said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
"And the only proper attitude
is down upon his knees."

"No, I should say the way to pray,"
said Reverend Dr Wise,
"Is standing straight with outstretched arms,
and rapt & upturned eyes."

"Oh no, no, no!" said Elder Slow,
"such posture is too proud;
A man should pray with eyes fast closed,
and head contritely bowed."

"It seems to me his hands should be
austerely clasped in front,
With both thumbs pointing to the ground,"
said Reverend Dr Blunt.

"Las' year I fell in Hodgkin's well
head first," said Cyrus Brown.
"With both my heels a-stickin' up,
my head a-pointin' down;

"An' I made a prayer right then an' there,
best prayer I ever said.
The best darn prayer I ever prayed,
a-standin' on my head!"

I guess we should all pray in the upside down position…. But let’s go a little deeper because the parable does seem to have something to say about how we approach God when we pray. Even when we are not underwater, the attitude we have does matter.


I have heard teaching and preaching that tell me this story is all about the difference between pride and humility. Jesus was, just as Luke tells us, warning about the dangers of self-importance and self-righteousness and extolling the virtues of humility – of recognizing that we are all sinners who have fallen short. I think that’s a good point.

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s bad to have confidence in ourselves. We know that we are not perfect, but we also know that we are not entirely bad either. Our lives are a messy hodge-podge of sin and virtue, purity and corruption, innocence and guilt. To take the position that we have no good thing to celebrate is just as proud as claiming righteousness.

Still I find myself rankled by the Pharisee’s prayer. It’s less about himself and more about what he is not. It’s a prayer of comparison: “Thank you that I am not like other people,” and it feels judgmental and pretentious to me. There is no sense that he values those “other people” at all. To him they are worthless, having made unacceptable choices. And there is no sense of compassion or mercy because he could never put himself in their shoes. He wouldn’t even try.

The other prayer, though, the short, simple one by the tax collector is just as selfish. It’s all about him … but with one big difference. He is looking squarely at himself, not comparing himself to others. I get no sense of judgment from him, and there is certainly no pretension in his words. I don’t know if he would have compassion for others. His job certainly lent itself to indifference. But I get the sense that he could empathize with the struggles of others. It may be the conflict between doing his job and concern for others that led him to the Temple. Asking for mercy from God he may also have been longing for forgiveness from those he taxed as well.

Maybe… maybe not, but is it any wonder that the one who seemed to think he needed nothing from any of “those people” got nothing and the one who judged himself unworthy received mercy? That’s the nature of grace after all … isn’t it? It comes – just as Jesus did – to the lost ones. It takes more joy in the sinner who turns to God than in the ninety-nine devout, righteous people. But that leaves me wondering ….

Most of Jesus parables are explicitly or implicitly about the Kingdom of God, and the question of how we pray seems less germane – less relevant to that Kingdom. The question of justice and mercy though is a common theme. So what about that tax collector? What about the grace he received?


Imagine that you are in the Temple in Jerusalem and you see this story playing out in front of you. You know both the men involved. One is a nice, religious layman who lives down the street from you. He looks after his family well, keeps the 613 rules and gives over and above the required amount to satisfy his social and religious obligations. The other is the man who collects your taxes. Like everyone else, you despise him, but you are intrigued to see him beating his chest like a mother who has lost a child and asking God for mercy. You wonder what’s going on, but you are about to dismiss the sight as just another example of strange behavior from a man that everyone despises when you overhear Jesus telling his followers that the taxman is justified by God rather than the religious layman. It makes you think, and you leave the Temple pondering what, exactly, Jesus meant.

A week later, you are in the Temple again and the same two people are there. During the week, your neighbor continued his excellent behavior. He also paid for medical treatment of another neighbor’s sick son and arranged for a bag of wheat to be delivered to an elderly widow a couple of streets over.

You happened to know that the tax collector had added to his wealth during the week, making sure that the elderly widow handed over some of the wheat sent to her by the religious layman. And you noticed that he had a new chariot with a local prostitute inside waiting outside the Temple.

Now you’re curious. You leave off your own praying to watch the scene unfold, and … the same thing happens. The layman prays up front in the proper fashion. The taxman beats his chest and asks God for mercy.

You wonder, “What would Jesus make of that?”

Another week goes by, and you have paid special attention to the two men. You head back to the temple guessing they’ll both be there again. During the week, the Pharisee had taken his wife to visit her elderly mother and made sure there was enough firewood and food for the mother's comfort. He also hired two extra workers on his farm not because he needed them but because they needed some extra money in order to buy bread for their families.

The taxman gave back the wheat he had taken from the elderly widow and put some of his own money into an account on her behalf, BUT he still took advantage of the rest of the community, AND he arrived at the Temple in his chariot with a local prostitute again.

Once again Pharisee prayed his prayer and the taxman beat his chest and asked God for mercy.


What are you thinking? Are you questioning the tax collector’s sincerity? What if the saga continued – week after week, the Pharisee continued to live an exemplary life while the tax collector only does a few good things here and there? Do you think the tax collector’s prayer for mercy would continue to be answered? Would he continue to be justified – continue to be forgiven – continue to receive grace?

What do you think Jesus would say?


For myself, I think I would wonder. I think I would start to dismiss the prayers of the tax collector as a sham … a PR stunt, maybe, designed to make us all feel a little warmth toward him so that he could more easily rip us off. If he really meant those prayers, if he really received mercy like Jesus said, he would change his ways. He would start taking care of other people for real instead of just every once in awhile. He would stop seeing prostitutes and start living more like the Pharisee.

I would judge him unworthy of mercy, undeserving of grace. And what would Jesus say then?


What would that man who wielded the power of compassion, who taught about infinite forgiveness, who gave his life for the sake of unconditional love tell his followers about me?


Lord, have mercy.
And then have mercy.
And then have mercy again….

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Pray always and don't lose heart

Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Luke 18:1-8
October 17, 2010

I don’t know much about stem cells.

There are probably a good number of you in here that know more than I do about stem cells.

After all, I am a practical theologian, not a scientist.
So when the flyers came in the mail when I was pregnant with Sebastian saying that once he was born, we could preserve the blood from his umbilical cord

--preserve the stem cells--I knew there had to be some catch.

Another way for us to drop thousands of dollars on the baby industry.

“Fearing” us into buying something that may, someday, be needed.

They said it could help him in the future if he developed a condition that stem cells could somehow treat.

*Really, I don’t know how it works. They just said it.

Torin and I thought, we’d take our chances and pray our child would forgive us if that unfortunate event ever did occur, and we had not stored his umbilical cord blood for a mere $100 a month fee.

And when the company providing this service followed up the flyers with a phone call, I was ready to give them a polite no thank you please don’t call again.
But I got more information from them as they talked.

They told me that if the child had an immediate relative with a disease that stem cells could possibly be used in treating,

that there was a charitable arm of the company that would store the cells at no cost for that relative.

No $100 a month handling fee. No charges. They would just do it.

*My mom had been recently diagnosed with leukemia.

Stem cells have been known to be effective in treating leukemia.

If things got really bad with her disease, Sebastian’s umbilical cord stem cells could be a potential option in his grandmother’s treatment.

So somewhere, in some freezer, there is a vile of blood that may, be used to help treat her disease.

Like a gift from grandson to grandmother.

Like a vile of prayers. Frozen. Ready to be thawed if… need be.

Hoping it will never need to be.

*Unlike most salespeople, I’m glad they kept knocking.

This is another thing I know about stem cells.

We all have them all over our body.

Most of us hear the loaded term “embryonic stem cells” when
the politicians start debating over the use of these cells in research, but really they’re everywhere in our body. And stem cells do two things: the regenerate and they differentiate,

meaning, they make more of themselves, and they become lots of different things.

*And these stem cells do amazing things.

Scientists have even taken a heart from the cadaver of a rat, wash out the dead cells, inject it with stem cells, and after great lengths, it started beating.
They brought a heart back to life.

*I know it can sound a bit like Frankenstein, just in time for the Halloween season, right?

But when Jesus talks about this widow as an example of always praying and never losing heart,

I know he is not talking about a real one, a real heart.

I know another translation for “never lose heart” is also “never give up” “keep being persistent.”

Pray always. Don’t lose heart.

*I don’t know why I can’t get stem cells out of my mind as I think about this scripture.

I even asked Torin, “Do you see any relationship between the widow and the judge and heart stem cells?”

*You can image the look he gave me.

*Because really, what we’re talking about here is prayer.
About constantly going to God in prayer,

banging on the door, demanding justice,
coming with viles of prayer ready to thaw and lay them on the door step.

Willing them to live. To beat. To cure and heal.

It’s no surprise that how we understand prayer reflects a lot about how we understand God.

Theologian Marjorie Suchocki reflects on some major ways we think of God by how we think of prayer.

I wonder if any of these sound familiar to you?

Sometimes we imagine God as the great genie in Aladdin’s bottle,
with prayer being the magic rubbing that draws the genie forth to do our bidding.

Or at times we approach God as our divine secretary,
ready to give God our memo for the day, which are our requests and prayers.

In seeing God as genie and God as secretary, we believe that God has the power to do the requests,
but the control rests in the one doing the asking.
We have the control.

Then there is God as the divine egoist.
This is when we think about prayer in terms of “God likes to be asked”
God could do all we want, if we stroke God’s ego enough.

Or similarly, we treat God like a king holding audience, who might grant a petitioner a boon.
This king knows what the petitioner wants, but is just waiting to act until properly asked.

Of course, these are extremes—caricatures.

But who among us has not wondered how prayer works? If it works? How God works with prayers? We often see ourselves in the scripture as the widow banging on God’s door demanding justice,
or healing, or fortunate blessings.

But God is not being likened to this judge in the scripture

but rather reflected on as the opposite of the judge.

If this man who neglects his duty as judge,
to care for widows and orphans, to listen and deal wisely…

if even this man answers, even after a long while, then don’t you think God will answer your prayers, and more quickly?

Well, don’t you?

I think we want to say “yes.”

I think we might move a notch up the honesty scale if we sigh “I hope so.”

And we will join the majority of the faithful if we collapse in the doorway
with our knuckles bruised from knocking so much, crying out “I just don’t know.”

*I like what George Hermanson shares about this scripture in a sermon of his:
He says “I can't answer for Jesus, but it has been true in my own limited experience of prayer that justice does not come quickly.
It has also been true that I am not very good at always praying and never giving up.
And it is also true that occasionally the process of praying has changed me,
changed what I have been praying for as I have seen how my prayers
were as self-centred as the unjust judge…”
He says, “The moral of the story is NOT about the judge finally responding.
The moral is about the widow's persistence for justice during the long period of the judge not responding and giving no indication that he ever would.”
(http://www.holytextures.com/2010/10/luke-18-1-8-year-c-pentecost-october-16-october-22-proper-24-ordinary-time-29-sermon.html)

*I started this week off by witnessing the death of our brother, Doug Porter.
Doug had a heart attack, and after his family had all arrived, they took him off the ventilator sustaining his life.
He went quickly, surrounded by love.

His heart was tired. It needed to rest.

His wife Lou and his family prayed that Doug would gain strength and remain with them.

It sounds like something we would all pray, doesn’t it?

But the prayer didn’t stop there.

They also prayed that if it Doug couldn’t stay in this life,
they asked God to strengthen them and their hearts to continue on without him.

*And I guess here is that strange connection for me, how prayers like this, hearken me back to stem cells.

Prayers regenerate and differentiate,
they make more of themselves
and they become many different things.

Similarly, Hermanson reflects on two aspects of prayer
• First, “Prayer is a relationship with God, and with a community of prayer,
which sustains us through the dark times of justice not being granted.”

Prayer regenerates, it makes more of itself
by holding our lives in the movement of God,
a movement that beckons us to meet God in prayer.

• And secondly he says, “Prayer is a relationship with God, and with a community of prayer,
which guides and corrects the content of our prayers to closer alignment with God's desire for justice, with love for our neighbours, and with love for our enemies”

Prayer differentiates, it becomes many different things
by weaving us into the tapestry of this world.

*In this way prayer doesn’t deny the desires of our hearts
but rather opens us up to the larger sweep of God’s justice.

Urging us to keep praying, allowing it to change us,
And our relationship to the injustice and pain of the world.

*But I have to say, what clenched this seemingly bizarre connection with prayer and stem cells

was when I walked through this week of mine,

witnessing death, illness, buckwheat batter, meals for the homeless…

and then I heard an interview with Dr. Doris Taylor, a pioneer in the study of stem cells and regeneration

who also works with the connection of spirituality and the healing of the body.

And as I listened, I had to wonder,

“am I hearing her talk about her work with stem cells,
or am I hearing her whisper to me something about prayer?”

Here are her words,
“… the most profound moment for me was…the first time I saw heart cells beating in a dish, just in a dish. [And I realized] we're able to put together these tools that nature's created

and they [know], in ways we'll never understand… how to become greater than the sum of the parts.

“We still haven't created a cell.” Taylor confesses.

“ I've said for 20 years that if we really wanted to understand a cell, we should just take a big white wall, draw a circle on it, and everyone who walks by should write down what they know.

And at some point maybe we'd get to the point that we understand even what a cell is.

We don't really know how it works.

“And the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful part is we don't have to.

*“We could spend the next 20, 30, 40 years trying to understand how this works,
or we can watch it work and understand it well enough…[and] maybe actually change somebody's life.

And that's what we really want to do.”

*Here is where Dr. Taylor laughs: “…[t]here's actually this great road sign from New Zealand, I believe, that somebody sent me from the Internet.
And it's a road sign, and you're coming into a town and it says: "Drive carefully.

We have two cemeteries and no hospital."

"And that's really how we have to approach this field. Drive carefully..
And yet we've got to keep driving because it matters. It matters.” (www.onbeing.org)

Keep driving…keep praying…never lose heart. Because it matters. It matters.

Monday, October 11, 2010

What do you Believe?

sermon by Torin Eikler
2 Timothy 2:8-15 Luke 17:11-19

For five years in the early 1950s the CBS Radio Network broadcast a regular show called “This I Believe?” on which women and men wrote short essays about their own personal motivation in life and then read them on the air. Some of you might even remember the voice of Edward R Murrow coming over the airwaves to introduce the program which, in his words, sought to “present the personal philosophies of thoughtful men and women in all walks of life.” It was his hope to counteract, in some small way, the growing sense of panic and paranoia that characterized the McCarthy Era by “[pointing] to the common meeting grounds of beliefs, which is the essence of brotherhood and the floor of our civilization.”

In 2005, Jay Allison and Dan Gediman revived the program which is broadcast periodically by National Public Radio. “As in the 1950s,” says Allison, “this is a time when belief is dividing the nation and the world. We are not listening well, not understanding each other -- we are simply disagreeing, or … worse.”

Since I first heard the show five years ago, I have listened to this new version of “This I Believe” somewhat less than religiously. I have been impressed by the way in which the show seeks to encourage people to develop understanding and respect for beliefs different from their own rather than simply to persuade them to agree on the same beliefs. It has been a refreshing voice as our society has become more and more caught up in a hardening of viewpoints that pushes us to take up residence in one camp or another, hurling epithets at all the others even as we are still setting up our tent.

But even more than that, what I have found absolutely fascinating is how many different things people identify among the core values that guide their lives. I may be somewhat influenced by my chosen profession, but when I hear the question, “what do you believe,” my thoughts always go straight to religion. Apparently, that is not the case for other people, though, because I have heard essays on topics ranging from playing baseball to finding God in the space between religions to living with autism to the Beatles. Each time I listen to a new one, I find myself amazed by the endless variety as well as moved by the passion and conviction in the voices of the readers as they lay out their own personal credos for all to see … in 500 words or less.

I don’t if I could do that. It’s hard to boil it all down, and I have a natural reluctance to do so since I have been taught since I was young that summaries like that always leave out important pieces. But I have been wondering lately if it might actually be a good idea.

As I was preparing to present on human sexuality at the district Bible study, I started thinking about how our opinions in so many areas of theology and the way that it should guide our lives seem to pull us apart. We find ourselves encamped and building up defenses almost before we realize it. Do we support or oppose same sex relationships? Do we support or oppose the leadership of women in the denomination? Do we support or oppose infant baptism or the military or … fill in the blank?

As Christians we have been struggling with questions like this for centuries, and it has led to division and the creation of hundreds of new denominations that often have quite a bit of animosity for one another. That seems to be somewhat at odds with the scriptures injunction to live together in unity. So it might be good for us to figure out exactly what is at the core of our faith. Perhaps we would find that all of us can come together around a few central beliefs. I don’t really think that would do away with denominations, but it could help us let go of the hostility and distrust that keep us at each other’s spiritual throats.

But where to begin…. What do we believe? What do you believe? Would it sound something like this?
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.
Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.
And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

I have to admit that I didn’t write that. It’s the Nicene Creed as amended by the Third Council of Toledo in 589 (and by the way, the word catholic there at the end refers to the universal church not the one led by the Pope), and it was the official statement of faith for the church for centuries. Yet, even that wasn’t something that everyone could agree on. Even in the 6th century, people were wrangling over words to the point that the phrase, “who proceeds from the Father and the Son,” – just one word in Latin – lead to the separation of the Western church (eventually the big C Catholics) from the Eastern Orthodox Church.


Of course there were other factors at play as well, but there always are. And I have to wonder if including filioque – “and the Son” – instead of leaving it in the original form of “who proceeds from the Father” was all that important. It has significant repercussions for the theology of the Trinity, but does it really make a difference to your faith?

So what is? What do you believe?


The other day, I had a conversation with another pastor about what makes a Christian a Christian. We went back and forth a bit, but it came down to the question of whether Christians need to believe something in particular, if they need to live a certain way, or if they only need to claim Christ as Lord and Savior. Both of us, being of Anabaptist stock, felt that simply claiming Christ was not enough. “Christian,” at its simplest, means “follower of Christ,” and although scripture tells us that we are saved by faith alone, it also tells us that faith without works is dead.

The question of a “litmus test” belief, though, was never quite settled. Is it crucial to believe that Jesus Christ was God incarnate? I don’t really know. That’s a statement that was certainly under discussion among early believers, and there are still Christians today who struggle to accept such a claim.

At one point, my colleague pointed out that Jesus never claims to be God – that he simply says that he came from the Father and is going back to the Father. And that’s true. There is no direct indication that Jesus was divine though Christians have taken the beginning of John and its discussion of the Word made flesh to mean that. John was written a century after the death of Christ, and some scholars propose that the opening was included to make a point in the midst of an ongoing disagreement about the divinity of Christ among believers. It seems that the wrangling started a good deal earlier even than the Council of Toledo.

So, what did the earliest believers – the followers of way – agree on? I don’t think we’ll ever really be sure about that. The words that Paul wrote to Timothy should be a clue….

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
If we endure, we will also reign with him;
If we deny him, he will also deny us;
If we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.

Like I said, those words should be a clue. But this is Paul we’re talking about, and his writing is … shall we say … difficult to understand at best.

It helps if we remember that Paul was writing to people that he had already taught. So, phrases like “If we have died with him, we will also live with him” were probably catch phrases that evoked a whole set of teachings with just a few words. Paul was also elaborating on what early Christian leaders had said to the Jews. So, we need to keep in mind what people like Peter had been preaching.

The first sermon given by Peter seems to stress just three things:
Jesus of Nazareth was sent by God,
he died and was raised from the dead,
and he was the promise Messiah spoken of in prophecy.
A bit later in Acts, Peter goes on to say that there is salvation in no one else.

Paul took pains to stay close to those words by Peter, even as he explained the promise of new life through Christ as reconciliation with God. Within that context – and with a little extra information from Paul’s other writings – we could, perhaps, interpret these words as an explanation of the nature of salvation and how it works. A quick (and therefore incomplete) summary might sound like this:
once we have given up the sinful way we used to live and committed ourselves to following Christ’s teachings no matter what may come our way, then even if we fall short in our efforts, Christ will welcome us into everlasting life with honor when this life comes to an end.


If we put all of that together, the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah – the Christ – who had died and been raised from the dead and who came to bring salvation to the people, and that everyone who made the commitment to follow his teachings would receive the promise of eternal life. That seems to have been the core of the good news early on, and it seems pretty good to me, though I would have trouble stopping there (I did say earlier that I have trouble leaving things out if I think they are important).

I can say that I believe that … and I believe that Jesus was God … and I believe that all of creation will be reconciled to God according to God’s deepest desire … and … and …

and I believe that it may be time for us to stop wrangling so much about what we all believe, run back, and thank God for the wholeness and healing we have already received….

What do you believe?

Sunday, October 3, 2010

“Rekindle the Gift of God”

sermon by Carrie Eikler
2 Timothy 1:1-14
October 3, 2010
World Communion Sunday

Sunday nights in the Eikler household is movie night. We use it as a chance to unwind. Strange, I know, that one would need to “unwind” from a day of Sabbath, but Sundays take on a whole different meaning when you’re a pastor. Weekends are never the same. So to “unwind” we often lay a quilt on the floor, pop popcorn, slice apples and cheese, and watch a movie with the kids. Then after putting them to bed, Torin and I watch another movie…more geared towards our interests.

I mean, there are only so many times you can watch the kids show “Cars” before you go absolutely mad.

On movie night a couple of weeks ago, Torin and I curled up to watch “Date Night” with Steve Carell and Tina Fey. The plot starts out pretty standard for Claire and Phil Foster: married couple, two kids, middle class jobs, middle class house, middle class lives. Lots of love. Lots of laughter. Lots of activities…lots of boredom. Phil and Claire begin to wonder if they are simply more than just really good roommates to each other.

But even in spite of exhaustion, they kept their regular date nights together, as unglamorous as a suburban New Jersey steakhouse might be. It sort of resembled there lives together really: Solid. Predictable. Comfortable. But one night they throw all caution to the wind and go into the city for Date Night and what results is a comedic romp of mistaken identity, political scandal, car chases, and of course since this is a Hollywood film, a happy and tidy ending.

It makes many of us married folks a bit anxious to watch movies like this. Is this what we need to spice up our relationship? To rekindle that flame? I think I’d prefer the boring, but stable suburban steakhouse. Wouldn’t I?

But to be honest, you don’t have to be married to know what it is like for things to feel dull. Most of us have had friendships go stale, or jobs that become just boring, or houses that feel more like huge dustbins than homes. I even found a certain type of movie I used to love start to lose my attention.

And lest we forget that we are more than flesh and bone, and workers, and partners, and parents, and friends…we are reminded in this strangely pertinent letter that we heard today that yes, our spirits, can (and often) lack a bit of luster. Spiritual boredom.

I spent far too much time this week trying to think about how to explain what spiritual boredom feels like, but after a while I realized: I doubt I need to tell you what it feels like is. (////) I think we have all experienced it

Don’t you get a feeling in this letter that maybe Paul was sensing a bit of something like this in Timothy? And he’s likely not simply singling out Timothy. These pastoral letters weren’t meant to be personal correspondence: there was a broader audience. They were meant to be read and shared with the entire community. Paul is not Timothy’s personal leadership coach, Paul is talking to everyone here. “Rekindle the gift of God that is within you.” (//) We can only imagine, things had started to loose a bit of spark in these people’s lives.

Isn’t it nice when our private struggles, turn out to be more common than we think? That there are lots more-tons, millions!-of people who share in some part of that struggle. How many people, who have been married for more than a few years, cannot watch Date Night and find something in that dull marriage that makes them smile and say “Mmhmm, that’s right.”?

Can you not relate to what perhaps Paul is seeing? (///) And I don’t Paul chastising here. I hear him naming a reality for all who have chosen to walk the path of Christ…. because in walking we can get tired. Even the things we love so much--our spouses, children, friends, vocations--can get boring.

I love the part in this letter when Paul brings in Timothy’s grandmother and mother, Lois and Eunice. We don’t know these woman. They aren’t part of any story that we know of. But they stand at the front of Paul’s emphatic reminder of Timothy’s spiritual vibrancy.

It isn’t exactly like Paul to venerate woman, as you can see if we continue on reading in 2 Timothy. So whether this is a contrast Paul is setting up for a later comparison, or if it is some sort of motivational strategy, we’re not sure. But he recognizes the power of these women on this community.

If it is true that Timothy and those around him are feeling a little less than spiritually energized, then maybe recalling these women is meant to give them a bit of a jolt: Like Paul is saying, “It’s there! This faith, this sincere, powerful faith isn’t just in your head because of what you learned, not even in your soul because of what you experienced—it’s in your blood!” The potential for spiritual vibrancy is like the pilot light on the stove, reminding us that it just needs a little gas to turn on the flame.

:) “Just turn it on.” Isn’t that what we’re always told to do? If there is a problem, just try to fix it. Is your marriage a bit dull? Spice it up with an urban romp of death-defying car chases and gun fights…at least, go out to a nice restaurant. Don’t like your job? Quit, and get a new one…as least when the economy starts looking up again. Is your spiritual life a bit bland? Just rekindle it by purchasing this book, going on this retreat, finding another church…as least when it works for you and your schedule.

We all know that it takes more than flowers and chocolate to rekindle love in a marriage. More than a new office or job title to get a resurgence of purpose in the workplace. More than empty gestures prescribed in spirituality books and entertaining worships to help us rekindle the gift of God within us. Maybe this tendency is known too well to Paul, for he tells Timothy’s community that we are called by God’s grace, not solely by the things we do or the way we feel inside. A spiritual love affair is not patched up with spiritual chocolate, or a spiritual date.

But really, don’t we know those external things are important…at least appreciated? If married love is never expressed with a kiss or caress partners can feel isolated in the unspoken comfort of committed love. Don’t we show that we are people of God by the way we live our lives, those works that are called of us, the proclamation by James that faith without works is dead?

At times it seems like a chicken or the egg question: “To start the path to spiritual rekindling should I first focus on internal faith, or external works? Faith or works? Faith or works?”

Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any quick fixes to this. Lots of possibilities, but no definitive word that can work for everyone. But maybe searching for quick fix is more a problem than a solution. We do want a check list to proceed through, a systematic approach to this rekindling. And in the process of reconciling what seems to be two polar opposites, we get stymied in the either/or approach and we’re left more paralyzed than we are passionate.

But I am trying to see them not as polar opposites, pulling in two different directions, but as two tensions pushing against each other: engagement rather that resistance. Perhaps it is this bumping up against each other, rubbing together, challenging, and living, and working together that makes a spark. Maybe this is part of that rekindling—the creative friction when we engage our faith and our works, our inner and outer.

This creative friction, like flint against steel, strikes and rubs against each other. And if you’ve every tried to catch something on fire by striking flint against steel you know it often doesn’t happen on the first go. There’s a lot of striking, bumping up together. And in the process, before the spark is kindled—or rekindled—the two elements share a connection, maybe even share a bit of themselves.

Steel breaking off flint. Flint leaving a dusty smudge on steel.

Paul knows that Timothy’s faith is strong. It’s in his blood, it’s not something he can lose. Perhaps Paul knows it’s more than Timothy trying to get that spark going by returning to first passionate faith—more than just turning on what has been there before. Maybe it is for him, and maybe for all of us, about finding what we need to rub up against, to engage, to cause creative friction in our souls.

For me communion does this. Coming from a tradition that rarely viewed communion as transformative outside of Love Feast, I take issue with this perspective. Humanity, as the lover of God, needs that regular physical reminder. In communion, my life bumps up against God’s story. In communion I feel God in sometimes subtle, in sometimes powerful ways rubbing up against us in this most dramatic act of devotion and sacrifice for humankind.

And in this act, God is not only rekindled in us, but I believe we are rekindled in God. A breaking off of one another, a smudging of humanity and God. And in this moment of creative friction, we mingle. God and us. God and you.
(///)
And maybe there’s a spark. And maybe there’s not. But there is a rekindling gift in the moment of meeting and the crashing together of humanity and God. Persistently—over time-- engaging one another. Both are transformed. Neither is the same.

And in breaking, and in smudging, a spark will come. Amen.

Come, meet God in these moments of communion.