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.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
What are We to Do?”
Sermon by Torin Eikler
I Timothy 6:6-19 Luke 16:19-31
Some time ago, Carrie introduced you all to something called Therapeutic Moralistic Deism, and since you all remember every word of every sermon we preach, I probably don’t need to tell you what that means. But, I’ll give you a short summary anyway … just to refresh your memory.
Therapeutic Moralistic Deism is the name of a new and very popular theology that has settled in and taken root in most of the denominations in this country. It recognizes five basic tenets:
1. that a creator God exists who watches over human life,
2. that said God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other,
3. that the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself,
4. that God does not really need to be involved in our lives except when needed
to resolve a problem, and
5. that good people go to heaven when they die.
As I said, this theology has crept into most Christian churches and is especially popular among younger members though many of us have embraced it to some extent. If you are wondering whether that’s true for you or not, ask yourself what it is about those five tenets (if anything) that makes you feel uncomfortable. For myself, I would have to admit that I have no problem accepting three of them. I do believe that God watches over us, wants us to be good people, and welcomes good people into heaven when they die – all of which is in keeping with Christ’s teaching and long-standing Christian theology. What I have trouble with are #s 3 and 4 on the list.
I do not believe that the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Nor am I comfortable with the image of a God who is just hanging around waiting to help us out when we ask … say for another couple hundred dollars to get that what’s-it we’ve been saving for. That’s close to the opposite of what I have been taught as an Anabaptist. I believe that God is intimately and compassionately involved in shaping this world, and that our highest calling is to be hands, feet, and hearts in service God and our neighbors in Christ’s name.
And yet, that watered-down anthropocentric God who exists primarily to bless believers is at the center of more and more congregations around the world. That’s the God at the center of churches that teach a “gospel of prosperity” rooted in a misinterpretation of the promise in Deuteronomy that reads, “if you heed [the commandments] of God by diligently observing them … the Lord will [bless you, protect you, and increase your wealth] – one that has even exchanged the need for obedience with the blanket forgiveness of grace. And that movement is growing more and more powerful precisely because it feeds people’s hunger for more wealth, more power, more comfort, more, more, more. It speaks to those who love money, and it is putting the stamp of approval on their wealth because rich people, by their very rich-ness, are shown to be those who God has blessed.
But the Bible, and especially the New Testament, says something very different about money and wealth. The passage that Nick just read sums it up pretty well, “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to rich some have wandered away from [God].” “You cannot serve God and [money],” and it should be clear that we are called to serve God.
You all know that it is dangerous when wealth becomes one of our idols – dangerous both to our spiritual health and to the well-being of others who suffer as a result. If you still need any proof of that, look at the results of the mad dash for money that was at the root of the world’s current economic meltdown. Thousands more are living in poverty, and there is little willingness to put resources toward alleviating their suffering. Others, some of those who were right there in the hunt, have spiraled down into depression and suicide because of the hollowness they felt when the god they wrapped their lives and their sense of worth around disappeared like a soap bubble on the breeze.
That’s old hat, and we have all internalize that caution completely, I’m sure…. But, the author of this letter adds something new, that I had never noticed before. He gives a positive to go along with the negative – we are to strive for contentment – to be satisfied with things the way they are. I don’t think that means that we are to sit back and watch life unfold around us without participating or working for change. I think it means that we should find a way to be comfortable, at peace, and – even happy – with what we have instead of searching … constantly searching … for something else or something more. As Sheryl Crow put it in one of her songs, “It's not having what you want. It's wanting what you've got.” that’s the key.
For some reason, every time I’ve turned my mind to contentment this week, a pesky image keeps popping up. (Perhaps it’s time to get a pop-up blocker for my brain). I keep seeing Scrooge McDuck standing there before me. For those of you who grew up before or after the late 80s, Scrooge McDuck was a character on a cartoon called, “Duck Tales,” and was supposed to be, I think, Donald Duck’s brother. He was the richest person in the world, and as long as nobody was trying to steal his money (which was one of the running themes of the show) he was pretty happy.
Why not, he was a gazzilionaire with a mansion, fun toys, three pesky and idealistic nephews, and a vault filled with gold coins. At least once each day, he would go to his vault and dive into the pile of money. He would swim around in it somehow, diving down and surfacing to spew coins from his mouth like water, arching out and back in like a playful dolphin with a smile on his face.
He was, I would say, content with his lot. And that has left a troubling realization in my mind. I am nowhere close to the richest person in the world, but I am quite well off by global standards. In a time when 1 in 7 people in this country are living in poverty, I’m probably quite well off by US standards as well. Is it enough for me just to be content?
The story we heard from Luke holds an answer to that question. In it, the rich man (who is sometimes called Dives) is not unlike Scrooge McDuck. We see him all turned out in royal garb and sitting down to a feast every day. I can picture him leaning back on his couch with food spread out before him, his friends and relatives gathered around, and an army of servants helping them swim through the wealth laid out before them. I imagine they, too, were quite content. Outside the door, though, sat Lazarus – pesky, disease-ridden Lazarus, the one flaw in an otherwise idyllic life.
Dives had several options to address the situation, of course. He could have invited Lazarus into his household, treating his sores, feeding him, giving him meaningful work – adopting him in a way. He could have had someone else, a servant perhaps or a hired thug, physically remove the poor man from his doorway and also from his own awareness (Out of sight, out of mind). He could have done any number of things that fell somewhere between those two. But instead, he chose to simply ignore him – treating him as if he simply did not exist.
Of course, you know what happened. Lazarus was taken by the angels. Dives went to Hades, and his plea for mercy from Abraham was rebuffed. “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.” The message is pretty clear. Just sitting back, content with our wealth and privilege is not enough. Apathy in the face of the world’s suffering may well land us someplace that we'd rather not be.
So what’s a rich person to do?
Are we to sell it all and give it to the poor like the rich young ruler of Carrie’s sermon last week? That’s one solution, and I suppose that it would certainly ease the dilemma of being rich. It’s also quite extreme, and I’m not completely convinced that Jesus was really concerned with the man’s money. I think he was pointing out that it is very hard to be rich if you truly are following God’s commandments. Though there may be something to be said for giving everything to the poor, I’m not sure that adding one more to their number is really a solution.
Money, after all, is not, after all, a bad thing in and of itself. It can be a very useful tool for redistributing resources, and it removes the need for carrying a bushel of corn or a chicken around in your back pocket so that you can trade it to the cobbler for a new pair of shoes.
Consider the story posted by Melissa Bane Sevier this week on the contemplative viewfinder web site. Melissa’s church held a fundraising event called wine into water to benefit a clean water initiative in Mexico. It was held at a local winery and guests were treated to an evening of wine, food, and entertainment. Melissa writes:
[It was the most fun church event I’ve ever attended…. We shared stories and food, caught up with old friends, and greeted strangers. We watched the sun go down over a glorious late summer [evening], and by the glow of Tiki torches we listened to banjo and fiddle and heard about our friends [in Mexico] who cannot afford clean drinking water….
As people drove away into the clear night, I realized once again that contentment is not just a state of mind. It is also the ability to share the things that make us content. I thought of people who are my neighbors here, sharing a happy evening together and sharing their time and money with people they will likely never meet. Sitting around an outdoor table, talking and laughing, eating and drinking. And I thought of my neighbors in Mexico, who are doing the same thing, sharing the time and money they have so their friends and children and neighbors can have healthy, contented lives….”
Maybe it is enough to be content … if that contentment is more than a facile, self-centered satisfaction that lets us rest easy with all that we have while others suffer around us. The author of I Timothy seems to agree with Melissa on that. The contentment he is encouraging is a deeper kind of peace … a peace that comes from being happy with only as much as we really need – food, clothing, shelter … a peace that both grows from and takes joy in sharing with those we love and those we are called to love.
The author of I Timothy says, “[And as] for those who [are] rich … they are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share....” That’s not always an easy thing to do, especially for those of us who have been shaped by the teaching that we need to take care of ourselves. It takes a faith that trusts God to provide for our needs – often in ways that we may never have imagined. It also takes practice –
practice at relearning how we understand what is enough,
practice at laying aside our drive to have more,
practice seeing the needs of others and sharing what we can.
In my experience, it’s a daily struggle. But, I have also found that each time I remind myself that I don’t need to work at getting that new what’s-it, a little more of my money is freed up to meet real needs.
Each time that pause to appreciate all that I already have or get rid of things that I don’t really need a little more of my time and energy can be spent on people.
Each time that I am able to share my abundance with someone else, a little more of my heart is opened up to love and compassion.
Each time that I choose to serve the God of life, I experience a growing sense of peace and contentment – a sense that this is what life – the life that really is life – is meant to be.
What are we to do? ... Be the hands, feet, and heart of God here in this world so that all the world may enter fully into "the life that really is life."
Benediction:
Sisters and Brothers, go from this place as beloved children of God. Be rich in good works. Be Generous and always ready to share. Dive into God's love and be content swimming through the waters that bring true life.
I Timothy 6:6-19 Luke 16:19-31
Some time ago, Carrie introduced you all to something called Therapeutic Moralistic Deism, and since you all remember every word of every sermon we preach, I probably don’t need to tell you what that means. But, I’ll give you a short summary anyway … just to refresh your memory.
Therapeutic Moralistic Deism is the name of a new and very popular theology that has settled in and taken root in most of the denominations in this country. It recognizes five basic tenets:
1. that a creator God exists who watches over human life,
2. that said God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other,
3. that the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself,
4. that God does not really need to be involved in our lives except when needed
to resolve a problem, and
5. that good people go to heaven when they die.
As I said, this theology has crept into most Christian churches and is especially popular among younger members though many of us have embraced it to some extent. If you are wondering whether that’s true for you or not, ask yourself what it is about those five tenets (if anything) that makes you feel uncomfortable. For myself, I would have to admit that I have no problem accepting three of them. I do believe that God watches over us, wants us to be good people, and welcomes good people into heaven when they die – all of which is in keeping with Christ’s teaching and long-standing Christian theology. What I have trouble with are #s 3 and 4 on the list.
I do not believe that the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Nor am I comfortable with the image of a God who is just hanging around waiting to help us out when we ask … say for another couple hundred dollars to get that what’s-it we’ve been saving for. That’s close to the opposite of what I have been taught as an Anabaptist. I believe that God is intimately and compassionately involved in shaping this world, and that our highest calling is to be hands, feet, and hearts in service God and our neighbors in Christ’s name.
And yet, that watered-down anthropocentric God who exists primarily to bless believers is at the center of more and more congregations around the world. That’s the God at the center of churches that teach a “gospel of prosperity” rooted in a misinterpretation of the promise in Deuteronomy that reads, “if you heed [the commandments] of God by diligently observing them … the Lord will [bless you, protect you, and increase your wealth] – one that has even exchanged the need for obedience with the blanket forgiveness of grace. And that movement is growing more and more powerful precisely because it feeds people’s hunger for more wealth, more power, more comfort, more, more, more. It speaks to those who love money, and it is putting the stamp of approval on their wealth because rich people, by their very rich-ness, are shown to be those who God has blessed.
But the Bible, and especially the New Testament, says something very different about money and wealth. The passage that Nick just read sums it up pretty well, “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to rich some have wandered away from [God].” “You cannot serve God and [money],” and it should be clear that we are called to serve God.
You all know that it is dangerous when wealth becomes one of our idols – dangerous both to our spiritual health and to the well-being of others who suffer as a result. If you still need any proof of that, look at the results of the mad dash for money that was at the root of the world’s current economic meltdown. Thousands more are living in poverty, and there is little willingness to put resources toward alleviating their suffering. Others, some of those who were right there in the hunt, have spiraled down into depression and suicide because of the hollowness they felt when the god they wrapped their lives and their sense of worth around disappeared like a soap bubble on the breeze.
That’s old hat, and we have all internalize that caution completely, I’m sure…. But, the author of this letter adds something new, that I had never noticed before. He gives a positive to go along with the negative – we are to strive for contentment – to be satisfied with things the way they are. I don’t think that means that we are to sit back and watch life unfold around us without participating or working for change. I think it means that we should find a way to be comfortable, at peace, and – even happy – with what we have instead of searching … constantly searching … for something else or something more. As Sheryl Crow put it in one of her songs, “It's not having what you want. It's wanting what you've got.” that’s the key.
For some reason, every time I’ve turned my mind to contentment this week, a pesky image keeps popping up. (Perhaps it’s time to get a pop-up blocker for my brain). I keep seeing Scrooge McDuck standing there before me. For those of you who grew up before or after the late 80s, Scrooge McDuck was a character on a cartoon called, “Duck Tales,” and was supposed to be, I think, Donald Duck’s brother. He was the richest person in the world, and as long as nobody was trying to steal his money (which was one of the running themes of the show) he was pretty happy.
Why not, he was a gazzilionaire with a mansion, fun toys, three pesky and idealistic nephews, and a vault filled with gold coins. At least once each day, he would go to his vault and dive into the pile of money. He would swim around in it somehow, diving down and surfacing to spew coins from his mouth like water, arching out and back in like a playful dolphin with a smile on his face.
He was, I would say, content with his lot. And that has left a troubling realization in my mind. I am nowhere close to the richest person in the world, but I am quite well off by global standards. In a time when 1 in 7 people in this country are living in poverty, I’m probably quite well off by US standards as well. Is it enough for me just to be content?
The story we heard from Luke holds an answer to that question. In it, the rich man (who is sometimes called Dives) is not unlike Scrooge McDuck. We see him all turned out in royal garb and sitting down to a feast every day. I can picture him leaning back on his couch with food spread out before him, his friends and relatives gathered around, and an army of servants helping them swim through the wealth laid out before them. I imagine they, too, were quite content. Outside the door, though, sat Lazarus – pesky, disease-ridden Lazarus, the one flaw in an otherwise idyllic life.
Dives had several options to address the situation, of course. He could have invited Lazarus into his household, treating his sores, feeding him, giving him meaningful work – adopting him in a way. He could have had someone else, a servant perhaps or a hired thug, physically remove the poor man from his doorway and also from his own awareness (Out of sight, out of mind). He could have done any number of things that fell somewhere between those two. But instead, he chose to simply ignore him – treating him as if he simply did not exist.
Of course, you know what happened. Lazarus was taken by the angels. Dives went to Hades, and his plea for mercy from Abraham was rebuffed. “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.” The message is pretty clear. Just sitting back, content with our wealth and privilege is not enough. Apathy in the face of the world’s suffering may well land us someplace that we'd rather not be.
So what’s a rich person to do?
Are we to sell it all and give it to the poor like the rich young ruler of Carrie’s sermon last week? That’s one solution, and I suppose that it would certainly ease the dilemma of being rich. It’s also quite extreme, and I’m not completely convinced that Jesus was really concerned with the man’s money. I think he was pointing out that it is very hard to be rich if you truly are following God’s commandments. Though there may be something to be said for giving everything to the poor, I’m not sure that adding one more to their number is really a solution.
Money, after all, is not, after all, a bad thing in and of itself. It can be a very useful tool for redistributing resources, and it removes the need for carrying a bushel of corn or a chicken around in your back pocket so that you can trade it to the cobbler for a new pair of shoes.
Consider the story posted by Melissa Bane Sevier this week on the contemplative viewfinder web site. Melissa’s church held a fundraising event called wine into water to benefit a clean water initiative in Mexico. It was held at a local winery and guests were treated to an evening of wine, food, and entertainment. Melissa writes:
[It was the most fun church event I’ve ever attended…. We shared stories and food, caught up with old friends, and greeted strangers. We watched the sun go down over a glorious late summer [evening], and by the glow of Tiki torches we listened to banjo and fiddle and heard about our friends [in Mexico] who cannot afford clean drinking water….
As people drove away into the clear night, I realized once again that contentment is not just a state of mind. It is also the ability to share the things that make us content. I thought of people who are my neighbors here, sharing a happy evening together and sharing their time and money with people they will likely never meet. Sitting around an outdoor table, talking and laughing, eating and drinking. And I thought of my neighbors in Mexico, who are doing the same thing, sharing the time and money they have so their friends and children and neighbors can have healthy, contented lives….”
Maybe it is enough to be content … if that contentment is more than a facile, self-centered satisfaction that lets us rest easy with all that we have while others suffer around us. The author of I Timothy seems to agree with Melissa on that. The contentment he is encouraging is a deeper kind of peace … a peace that comes from being happy with only as much as we really need – food, clothing, shelter … a peace that both grows from and takes joy in sharing with those we love and those we are called to love.
The author of I Timothy says, “[And as] for those who [are] rich … they are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share....” That’s not always an easy thing to do, especially for those of us who have been shaped by the teaching that we need to take care of ourselves. It takes a faith that trusts God to provide for our needs – often in ways that we may never have imagined. It also takes practice –
practice at relearning how we understand what is enough,
practice at laying aside our drive to have more,
practice seeing the needs of others and sharing what we can.
In my experience, it’s a daily struggle. But, I have also found that each time I remind myself that I don’t need to work at getting that new what’s-it, a little more of my money is freed up to meet real needs.
Each time that pause to appreciate all that I already have or get rid of things that I don’t really need a little more of my time and energy can be spent on people.
Each time that I am able to share my abundance with someone else, a little more of my heart is opened up to love and compassion.
Each time that I choose to serve the God of life, I experience a growing sense of peace and contentment – a sense that this is what life – the life that really is life – is meant to be.
What are we to do? ... Be the hands, feet, and heart of God here in this world so that all the world may enter fully into "the life that really is life."
Benediction:
Sisters and Brothers, go from this place as beloved children of God. Be rich in good works. Be Generous and always ready to share. Dive into God's love and be content swimming through the waters that bring true life.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Choices, Choices
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Daniel 6, Matthew 19:16-30
At the bottom of an interstate off-ramp in suburban Boston, Karin Round finds herself constantly faced with situations demanding she make a choice. Karen is an office manager at her family’s hardware store but her home is located at this busy spot where travelers come and go, and she is frequently tested. Here is Karin’s story: “One afternoon a couple of summers ago, just as the sky was darkening, a woman I didn’t know stood sagging on our threshold, holding the screen door open. I saw the silhouette of her head through the window.
"No, she answered me, she was not all right. She didn’t feel well at all.
"So, I wondered what was I supposed to do now?
"This moment of decision had happened to me before says Karin For almost 19 years, we’ve lived here at the foot of a highway exit ramp. Our address is blandly suburban, but the highway often leads exhausted cars onto our curb. Lately cell phones have diminished the flow, but we’ve met many people in distress. More diverse than our own community, these travelers have all asked for little things, such as the phone, a glass of water, or simply directions. All have been strangers to me.
"Ours is a cynical, suspicious time,” Karin reflects. ”The news is full of stories about victims who unwittingly endanger themselves. I’ve no doubt that they are true stories, but the lesson rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes to do the right thing, you must take a risk. Must we fear all of those whom we don’t know?... Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?
"Our location forces me to make difficult choices. This is not some classroom debate for me. The highway makes it impossible to ignore the world and our relationship to it. When someone approaches us for help, I have to decide: Do I help them or not?” (“Opening the Doors of Mercy” by Karin Round. This I believe as heard on the Bob Edwards Show, Sept 10, 2010 http://thisibelieve.org/essay/14284/)
Now, more than the specifics about this story—it really is more a Good Samaritan story—but more than that, I am struck at the way some of her thoughts ring in my ears for today: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices."
Today we are given two familiar stories about choices: Daniel and the lion’s den, and the rich young ruler. In the first one, about Daniel, we know the outcome. We see his decision and its ramifications. We are told how God protected Daniel because he chose to be faithful. For Daniel, that choice meant continuing to pray to YHWH, rather than to the King. It meant not being afraid to risk even his life, choosing open windows towards Jerusalem, even if it meant closing him into a den of lions.
In the second one, the one about the rich young ruler, the choice is less clear. In fact, we don’t know at all what the rich young ruler finally did decide. We infer that he probably chose to stick with all his possessions since he walked away in a funk because he liked his stuff too much. or so we think. But who knows? How many of us have ever changed our mind, even regarding the things very dear to us, our possessions, our stuff? We are left wondering in this story about the decision this young man will ultimately make.
With Daniel we see a hero who is unafraid in the face of death. He is our ideal, what we think we should or could be if we had that much faith. We are left wondering, would I risk the lions or abandon my God?
With the rich young ruler we don’t necessarily see a villain, but we see a spiritual weakling. He’d be the last guy we’d want to pick to be on our team if we playing for a spot in heaven.
As much as we see in Daniel an ideal, we see in this young man a picture of reality. A reflection of a weaker self.
Some people would take these two and put them before you and say choose: which one are you going to be? A Daniel or a rich young ruler? Go ahead, pick. And the choice is easy, when taken at face value isn’t it? The stories are pretty heavily stacked towards the right answer. Of course, we want to be Daniel.
But tested against our world, the choices don’t seem to be so clear cut, do they? If anything, the rich young ruler seems more like us than Daniel, not because he may be making the wrong choice (and we so often make bad choices) -but at least he appeared to struggle with it. And that’s what we understand—the struggle. He realizes what Christ hopes for us is complex. He expressed emotion—he went away grieving over the choice before him.
Daniel, on the other hand seems to be a brave, but flat character. We see nothing of his struggle, just a confident opening of the windows as he prays. We don’t see him weighing the options, the pros and cons, the testing of God’s voice, the choices the choices. He just acts.
Torin and I have had to make some hard choices in the last couple of weeks. And really they are choices that involve you as well. As you know, the Church of the Brethren has commissioned all congregations to take part in a study on human sexuality, which we are doing during Sunday School. It is a bible study, asking questions of one another to speak from our experience on issues of conflict, sexuality, exclusion and inclusion. The Standing Committee of the denomination hopes to guage the “temperature” of the masses.
Our congregation is within a district that has taken its own stand on human sexuality, and homosexuality to be specific, and because of this our standing committee members fear that most congregations won’t do the study. So they have added another element to this process to ensure that another perspective is heard. This will be a district wide forum on Oct 2 presenting two perspectives. As they state it, one person will be presenting “Traditional Sexuality: One man and one woman united in marriage for life.” And the other perspective “Welcoming, accepting, and blessing homosexual covenant unions.”
And who do you think they asked to present that “other perspective”? Torin was asked, and after prayerful consideration Torin accepted. With his permission I am sharing this with you and join him in expressing our confidence, and yet fear over this decision. Let me first start with saying that what Torin presents may not be your perspective, and that is ok. He is speaking from his own understanding, not on behalf of our congregation, or in your name. Something we hold dear as Anabaptists is that just because the pastor says it or believes it, doesn’t mean it is authority over you or your life. And yet, we feel we need to be honest with you about this decision in this way. If this is hard for you then please, come talk to us because your prayers and support for Torin, no matter your position, is important to us.
So you can imagine, this was a hard choice. It is hard because it might likely further label our congregation in negative terms in our district. But even more fearful for us is that it might leave some of you feeling alienated because of the way we understand scripture. It is hard because it puts Torin and my ordination under a new light of scrutiny, especially now in the year when our ordination is up for review. It is hard because Torin will probably feel like he is standing before the den of lions, because he accepted the invitation to open the window and reveal how he sees God’s intention and love for humanity. No doubt about it, this was a hard choice.
And think about it. When it comes to hard choices, don’t we like to clutch our possessions? And when I say possessions I mean those things we have that make us feel safe. Not only your car or home or IRA. It’s more than the things we can see, but things we emotionally hold close. I clutch my ordination which, in a worldly way, validates what I do. I clutch a desire for peace and harmony because I feel safe when there is no conflict. Maybe you clutch things like this too. Clutch the way of life you’ve always known: respect…reputation…standard of living…a general desire that people should like you. These possessions, while noble—they’ve got a hold on us, sometimes preventing us from making a choice that is risky, but faithful.
Again, the thoughts of that off-ramp angel: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices." And as Karin Round continued her reflection on her choices, she said "I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me, too. I’d rather risk my physical safety than my peace of mind. I’d rather live my life acting out of mercy than save it by living in fear and hostility."
You might not be facing big choices like right now, but I bet sometime you have. And I’m certain that sometime you will. In those moments, when a risky choice needs to be made, the windows are poised to fling open to God, and you wonder what emotions might overtake you: grief over your possessions? fear, joy, relief? How do you stand when those choices come to you?
We played a game during children’s Sunday School last week as we talked about the choices Adam and Eve made in the Garden of Eden. The children stood in a circle with a long piece of rope encircling them all behind their backs. The rope was a symbol of God’s love, and they were all standing in God’s love. There was something in the middle of the circle that represented God, or what I was thinking, the heart of God. They stood a few steps away from the middle and we began naming choices, and with each choice they decided whether that decision would bring them closer to God, or move them farther from God: I helped someone who was hurting, I hit someone, I yelled at my mom, I gave my grandma a hug, choices like that.
So it was this back and forth dance, but what stayed the same? we asked. They were always in Gods love. No matter what choice they made, how far from God they took themselves, God’s love never let them go, even if other children were in different places.
And yet it is not simply a forward and back movement either when it comes to our relationship with God. We move around and around, seeing a different vantage point, getting glimpses of God’s heart in risky ways, comforting ways, ways we haven’t seen before—always encircled by God’s love, beckoning us to the center, but gracing us with the gift of movement, of choice.
I’d love to sit down with Daniel and the “rich young ruler” for a cup of tea together (you know me...everything goes better with a cup of tea). I’d love to hear them tell each other their story. I can hear Daniel clarifying his decision: “Opening the windows to God wasn’t as easy as it looked.” I can see the rich young ruler lamenting into his tea cup: “No one believed I could give up what possessed me.” For me, as I pour my tea with milk and sugar I might say, “I’m confident that I’ll always stand in God’s love. What terrifies me, is that I’ll be standing alone.”
And in the silences between stories you can enter your story into the conversation, your struggle. What would you say?
Here is what Karin Round said: “So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice.
I opened the door.” Amen, sister.
Daniel 6, Matthew 19:16-30
At the bottom of an interstate off-ramp in suburban Boston, Karin Round finds herself constantly faced with situations demanding she make a choice. Karen is an office manager at her family’s hardware store but her home is located at this busy spot where travelers come and go, and she is frequently tested. Here is Karin’s story: “One afternoon a couple of summers ago, just as the sky was darkening, a woman I didn’t know stood sagging on our threshold, holding the screen door open. I saw the silhouette of her head through the window.
"No, she answered me, she was not all right. She didn’t feel well at all.
"So, I wondered what was I supposed to do now?
"This moment of decision had happened to me before says Karin For almost 19 years, we’ve lived here at the foot of a highway exit ramp. Our address is blandly suburban, but the highway often leads exhausted cars onto our curb. Lately cell phones have diminished the flow, but we’ve met many people in distress. More diverse than our own community, these travelers have all asked for little things, such as the phone, a glass of water, or simply directions. All have been strangers to me.
"Ours is a cynical, suspicious time,” Karin reflects. ”The news is full of stories about victims who unwittingly endanger themselves. I’ve no doubt that they are true stories, but the lesson rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes to do the right thing, you must take a risk. Must we fear all of those whom we don’t know?... Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?
"Our location forces me to make difficult choices. This is not some classroom debate for me. The highway makes it impossible to ignore the world and our relationship to it. When someone approaches us for help, I have to decide: Do I help them or not?” (“Opening the Doors of Mercy” by Karin Round. This I believe as heard on the Bob Edwards Show, Sept 10, 2010 http://thisibelieve.org/essay/14284/)
Now, more than the specifics about this story—it really is more a Good Samaritan story—but more than that, I am struck at the way some of her thoughts ring in my ears for today: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices."
Today we are given two familiar stories about choices: Daniel and the lion’s den, and the rich young ruler. In the first one, about Daniel, we know the outcome. We see his decision and its ramifications. We are told how God protected Daniel because he chose to be faithful. For Daniel, that choice meant continuing to pray to YHWH, rather than to the King. It meant not being afraid to risk even his life, choosing open windows towards Jerusalem, even if it meant closing him into a den of lions.
In the second one, the one about the rich young ruler, the choice is less clear. In fact, we don’t know at all what the rich young ruler finally did decide. We infer that he probably chose to stick with all his possessions since he walked away in a funk because he liked his stuff too much. or so we think. But who knows? How many of us have ever changed our mind, even regarding the things very dear to us, our possessions, our stuff? We are left wondering in this story about the decision this young man will ultimately make.
With Daniel we see a hero who is unafraid in the face of death. He is our ideal, what we think we should or could be if we had that much faith. We are left wondering, would I risk the lions or abandon my God?
With the rich young ruler we don’t necessarily see a villain, but we see a spiritual weakling. He’d be the last guy we’d want to pick to be on our team if we playing for a spot in heaven.
As much as we see in Daniel an ideal, we see in this young man a picture of reality. A reflection of a weaker self.
Some people would take these two and put them before you and say choose: which one are you going to be? A Daniel or a rich young ruler? Go ahead, pick. And the choice is easy, when taken at face value isn’t it? The stories are pretty heavily stacked towards the right answer. Of course, we want to be Daniel.
But tested against our world, the choices don’t seem to be so clear cut, do they? If anything, the rich young ruler seems more like us than Daniel, not because he may be making the wrong choice (and we so often make bad choices) -but at least he appeared to struggle with it. And that’s what we understand—the struggle. He realizes what Christ hopes for us is complex. He expressed emotion—he went away grieving over the choice before him.
Daniel, on the other hand seems to be a brave, but flat character. We see nothing of his struggle, just a confident opening of the windows as he prays. We don’t see him weighing the options, the pros and cons, the testing of God’s voice, the choices the choices. He just acts.
Torin and I have had to make some hard choices in the last couple of weeks. And really they are choices that involve you as well. As you know, the Church of the Brethren has commissioned all congregations to take part in a study on human sexuality, which we are doing during Sunday School. It is a bible study, asking questions of one another to speak from our experience on issues of conflict, sexuality, exclusion and inclusion. The Standing Committee of the denomination hopes to guage the “temperature” of the masses.
Our congregation is within a district that has taken its own stand on human sexuality, and homosexuality to be specific, and because of this our standing committee members fear that most congregations won’t do the study. So they have added another element to this process to ensure that another perspective is heard. This will be a district wide forum on Oct 2 presenting two perspectives. As they state it, one person will be presenting “Traditional Sexuality: One man and one woman united in marriage for life.” And the other perspective “Welcoming, accepting, and blessing homosexual covenant unions.”
And who do you think they asked to present that “other perspective”? Torin was asked, and after prayerful consideration Torin accepted. With his permission I am sharing this with you and join him in expressing our confidence, and yet fear over this decision. Let me first start with saying that what Torin presents may not be your perspective, and that is ok. He is speaking from his own understanding, not on behalf of our congregation, or in your name. Something we hold dear as Anabaptists is that just because the pastor says it or believes it, doesn’t mean it is authority over you or your life. And yet, we feel we need to be honest with you about this decision in this way. If this is hard for you then please, come talk to us because your prayers and support for Torin, no matter your position, is important to us.
So you can imagine, this was a hard choice. It is hard because it might likely further label our congregation in negative terms in our district. But even more fearful for us is that it might leave some of you feeling alienated because of the way we understand scripture. It is hard because it puts Torin and my ordination under a new light of scrutiny, especially now in the year when our ordination is up for review. It is hard because Torin will probably feel like he is standing before the den of lions, because he accepted the invitation to open the window and reveal how he sees God’s intention and love for humanity. No doubt about it, this was a hard choice.
And think about it. When it comes to hard choices, don’t we like to clutch our possessions? And when I say possessions I mean those things we have that make us feel safe. Not only your car or home or IRA. It’s more than the things we can see, but things we emotionally hold close. I clutch my ordination which, in a worldly way, validates what I do. I clutch a desire for peace and harmony because I feel safe when there is no conflict. Maybe you clutch things like this too. Clutch the way of life you’ve always known: respect…reputation…standard of living…a general desire that people should like you. These possessions, while noble—they’ve got a hold on us, sometimes preventing us from making a choice that is risky, but faithful.
Again, the thoughts of that off-ramp angel: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices." And as Karin Round continued her reflection on her choices, she said "I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me, too. I’d rather risk my physical safety than my peace of mind. I’d rather live my life acting out of mercy than save it by living in fear and hostility."
You might not be facing big choices like right now, but I bet sometime you have. And I’m certain that sometime you will. In those moments, when a risky choice needs to be made, the windows are poised to fling open to God, and you wonder what emotions might overtake you: grief over your possessions? fear, joy, relief? How do you stand when those choices come to you?
We played a game during children’s Sunday School last week as we talked about the choices Adam and Eve made in the Garden of Eden. The children stood in a circle with a long piece of rope encircling them all behind their backs. The rope was a symbol of God’s love, and they were all standing in God’s love. There was something in the middle of the circle that represented God, or what I was thinking, the heart of God. They stood a few steps away from the middle and we began naming choices, and with each choice they decided whether that decision would bring them closer to God, or move them farther from God: I helped someone who was hurting, I hit someone, I yelled at my mom, I gave my grandma a hug, choices like that.
So it was this back and forth dance, but what stayed the same? we asked. They were always in Gods love. No matter what choice they made, how far from God they took themselves, God’s love never let them go, even if other children were in different places.
And yet it is not simply a forward and back movement either when it comes to our relationship with God. We move around and around, seeing a different vantage point, getting glimpses of God’s heart in risky ways, comforting ways, ways we haven’t seen before—always encircled by God’s love, beckoning us to the center, but gracing us with the gift of movement, of choice.
I’d love to sit down with Daniel and the “rich young ruler” for a cup of tea together (you know me...everything goes better with a cup of tea). I’d love to hear them tell each other their story. I can hear Daniel clarifying his decision: “Opening the windows to God wasn’t as easy as it looked.” I can see the rich young ruler lamenting into his tea cup: “No one believed I could give up what possessed me.” For me, as I pour my tea with milk and sugar I might say, “I’m confident that I’ll always stand in God’s love. What terrifies me, is that I’ll be standing alone.”
And in the silences between stories you can enter your story into the conversation, your struggle. What would you say?
Here is what Karin Round said: “So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice.
I opened the door.” Amen, sister.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Golden Calf
sermon by Torin Eikler
Exodus 32:7-14 Luke 15:1-10
Carrie and I graduated from seminary not too long after American Idol had hit its stride. First Kelly Clarkson, then Rueben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino, and finally Carrie Underwood had been voted into stardom, however short-lived, by the popular vote. And as we prepared for our senior banquet, the powers-that-be (that being Carrie and a couple of other students) decided to spoof the show by using the theme of the “Golden Idol” for our dinner.
There were several well-written skits by students and professors that helped us remember our time together with laughter and well-intentioned ribbing. And, of course, there was a competition which, I am sorry to say, I did not win. But my part – the most important part, I might add – was to be the voice of the sponsor: the golden calf.
We’ve all seen the wondrous power of the great I AM: the many plagues on the harsh task masters of our past, the part of the sea and the destruction of our pursuers, sweet water from the rocks of the desert, and manna from the heavens themselves. What mortal would not stand in awe of such mighty works and the one who performed them? Who would not overflow with praise and thanksgiving for a response to our communal prayers?
Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to hear the problems of our daily lives? Wouldn’t it feel good to lay your offerings at the feet of one who is sure to hear each one of your prayers? Shouldn’t we find someone else with whom to share all the little things – someone without such big things to worry about? Shouldn’t the great I AM have a Sabbath too?
Why not pray to the Golden Calf? Join the herd, you know you should. (picture the prudential bull galloping up full of strength and inspiring confidence.)
I have to admit that I really enjoyed the effect I had on people, especially when I put on my cow hat with the flashing red eyes. It was a lot of fun, and, of course, it was all in jest. But after dinner, I was reminded about how serious a subject we were playing around with. One of my professors told me about his previous experience in advertising and why he quit. “Our tendency to find or create our own little gods really is very dangerous,” he said. “I finally had to stop when I realized that my work was drawing people away from God. Just when they most needed to seek him out, I was putting idols in front of them instead.”
Okay … he’s a little bit of a downer sometimes, but he so darn earnest that you just can’t be upset with him. And his comment got me thinking…. We all know that idolatry is bad. It’s the very first of the Ten Commandments, and I’m sure we’ve all heard sermons on it more times than we can count. So, why do we seem so intent to latch onto things or people in place of God?
I hope you hold onto that question and take it with you because my professor was right … this is dangerous territory. If your own life experiences aren’t enough to make that clear, the scriptures are almost as full of stories about people who suffer for their idol dalliances as they are stories of people whose faith is steadfast. Usually we less about the people themselves and more about God’s response – which is never good – but we can learn from their mistakes.
In today’s scripture, for example, it is very easy to distance ourselves from the Hebrews in the story by writing them off as bad people. After all that God had done for them: freeing them from Pharaoh with the riches of Egypt weighing down their wagons, opening a path through the waters, showering them with food, and bringing forth fresh water to slake their thirsts; after all of that they turned around and made the golden calf, worshiping at its feet with burnt offerings and singing hymns of praise. How much worse could you get. If this were a melodrama, we would be “boo-ing” them!
That dismissal is so easy partly because we don’t hear the whole story in one piece. We just get bits and pieces from time to time and so we don’t carry the people with us. We don’t feel the joy and pain and fear of their struggle. But it doesn’t take much for us to find ourselves in their experience if we just slow down a little bit and fill in the gaps as we remember what they have been through.
Yes, the Hebrews had been liberated from four hundred years of crushing slavery, but they had also been forced to leave their homes. They had taken a wealth of gold, jewels, and other treasures, but what good were they to a people wandering in the harsh scrub-land of the wilderness? They were just one more thing slowing them down and adding to the trials of the journey.
On top of that, they were chased by the most powerful army in the world. They nearly starved despite the livestock they brought with them (it takes a LOT of food to feed hundreds of thousands of people). More than once, they had come close to death for lack of water in the wilderness. And they had been forced into pitched battle with a king who sought to make them slaves again. Each time, they were saved by the power of the One God working through the hand of Moses. Finally they settled down for a break from their travels at the foot of Mount Sinai where Moses shared the terms of the covenant (to which they agreed) and consecrated them as the chosen people of God.
Then, he disappeared up the mountain.
In Egypt they had known back-breaking work and terrible treatment, but it had been familiar. There had always been enough food and water, and they had known what to expect from life. In the wilderness, they had known nothing but uncertainty. They had become a travel-stained, wearied people beset by hunger, thirst, violence, and illness, and they had no place to call home. They had only the hope of God’s promise to protect them and lead them to the Promised Land, and the embodiment of that hope was Moses.
Is it any wonder that as day after day went by with no word from their leader their faith began to waiver? All alone at the foot of a shaking mountain swathed in a cloud of smoke and lightning with the pall of anxiety and fear growing gripping them more and more tightly, is it surprising that they looked back at the stable, steady, predictable years in Egypt with some sense of regret? Maybe … just maybe, they could create something like that for themselves. Maybe they could take control of their own lives for the very first time instead of obeying orders or following a prophet to God-only-knows where. Maybe what they needed was a more predictable, more tangible god to pray to – a god like those that governed life in Egypt.
Can you feel it, the weight of that fear … the rising sense of worry and anxiety about what the future will hold? Have you ever felt it in your own life … when the plot of your story left you standing in the shadow of an unknowable power hidden from your sight? Have you ever felt a sense of urgency that led you to make your own way down a path you control?
Perhaps it’s a little bit harder than we thought to condemn the Hebrews, but there is still no denying that it is dangerous to place our trust in our own control rather than trusting God.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the film, “What Dreams May Come,” but I hope that if you are not, this sermon may encourage you to watch it. It is one of my all-time favorites both because of the brilliant and whimsically colorful world in which it takes place and because of the deep theological questions it asks … but doesn’t really answer.
Most of the movie takes place in an afterlife where each person’s “world” is controlled by his or her own imagination. But the main line of the story returns again and again to a woman who has lost her children in a car accident. She blames herself, and the weight of her grief and self-condemnation quickly turn her into a depressed, panic-attack ridden shadow of her former self. She gets through her days as an art museum curator through the support and encouragement of her husband. But just as life is beginning to take on joy and color again, her husband is killed trying to help others injured in a major pile-up on the way to her office.
Once again depression and self-loathing take over her life, and she drifts deeper and deeper into the shadows of the valley of death. As despair and anxiety overwhelm her, she comes to the point where she chooses to end her own life (the only thing she feels she can control) in order to end the pain.
As you might guess, she ends up in the afterlife as well. But where her children and her husband were freed by death to make of their new life whatever they most desired, she was trapped in the world as she had experienced it – condemned to an eternal hell by the power of her own imagination and her need for control.
Upon learning of his wife’s fate, the husband sets out on a quest to save her – something that has never been accomplished before. He travels to the land of lost souls, crosses the horribly gruesome landscape, and enters her world. Against all odds, he manages to wake out of her dark dream of suffering and draw her back into the light of love.
And so we have a Hollywood-style happy ending. But, real life is rarely Hollywood, and though our scripture today ends on a happy note – God repenting his wrath thanks to the heroic efforts of Moses on behalf of the people – the story goes on. When he came down from the mountain, Moses called on those who remained faithful to become the priests of the One God at the price of killing their brothers, friends, and neighbors. Three thousand were slaughtered that day, and the people came down with a plague brought on when they were made to drink the ashes of the golden calf. And that was just the beginning of Israel’s story of prideful idolatry and the suffering it caused.
Are we really any different? Do our lives speak of a more faithful commitment to the covenant? None of us have a golden idol secreted away in our homes (at least I hope not), and most of us do our very best not to worship money or power or whatever other idol we can think of. Yet we all feel fear and anxiety, don’t we? We all feel like there is something missing – a gap that needs to be filled in our lives or in our souls. What do you do when those specters rise up within you? Do you wait for God or do you take matters into your own hands? Do you seek out a deeper relationship with the Spirit or do you fill the void with the next new toy or cause or distraction?
I wonder if we are aware of how often we turn to idols because we feel the need to do something ourselves rather than trusting in the promise of grace and mercy that is our true hope. I wonder what that does to us. I wonder where that takes us. What lies at the end of our story?
Will we choose the path of faith that follows in the footsteps of self-less service, or will we trust in our own wisdom and the idols we create for ourselves. Will we live into the covenant promise of peace and joy that reigns over life in the Kingdom, or will we join the herd, building step by painful step our own private hell – our own corporate hell on earth?
Exodus 32:7-14 Luke 15:1-10
Carrie and I graduated from seminary not too long after American Idol had hit its stride. First Kelly Clarkson, then Rueben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino, and finally Carrie Underwood had been voted into stardom, however short-lived, by the popular vote. And as we prepared for our senior banquet, the powers-that-be (that being Carrie and a couple of other students) decided to spoof the show by using the theme of the “Golden Idol” for our dinner.
There were several well-written skits by students and professors that helped us remember our time together with laughter and well-intentioned ribbing. And, of course, there was a competition which, I am sorry to say, I did not win. But my part – the most important part, I might add – was to be the voice of the sponsor: the golden calf.
We’ve all seen the wondrous power of the great I AM: the many plagues on the harsh task masters of our past, the part of the sea and the destruction of our pursuers, sweet water from the rocks of the desert, and manna from the heavens themselves. What mortal would not stand in awe of such mighty works and the one who performed them? Who would not overflow with praise and thanksgiving for a response to our communal prayers?
Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to hear the problems of our daily lives? Wouldn’t it feel good to lay your offerings at the feet of one who is sure to hear each one of your prayers? Shouldn’t we find someone else with whom to share all the little things – someone without such big things to worry about? Shouldn’t the great I AM have a Sabbath too?
Why not pray to the Golden Calf? Join the herd, you know you should. (picture the prudential bull galloping up full of strength and inspiring confidence.)
I have to admit that I really enjoyed the effect I had on people, especially when I put on my cow hat with the flashing red eyes. It was a lot of fun, and, of course, it was all in jest. But after dinner, I was reminded about how serious a subject we were playing around with. One of my professors told me about his previous experience in advertising and why he quit. “Our tendency to find or create our own little gods really is very dangerous,” he said. “I finally had to stop when I realized that my work was drawing people away from God. Just when they most needed to seek him out, I was putting idols in front of them instead.”
Okay … he’s a little bit of a downer sometimes, but he so darn earnest that you just can’t be upset with him. And his comment got me thinking…. We all know that idolatry is bad. It’s the very first of the Ten Commandments, and I’m sure we’ve all heard sermons on it more times than we can count. So, why do we seem so intent to latch onto things or people in place of God?
I hope you hold onto that question and take it with you because my professor was right … this is dangerous territory. If your own life experiences aren’t enough to make that clear, the scriptures are almost as full of stories about people who suffer for their idol dalliances as they are stories of people whose faith is steadfast. Usually we less about the people themselves and more about God’s response – which is never good – but we can learn from their mistakes.
In today’s scripture, for example, it is very easy to distance ourselves from the Hebrews in the story by writing them off as bad people. After all that God had done for them: freeing them from Pharaoh with the riches of Egypt weighing down their wagons, opening a path through the waters, showering them with food, and bringing forth fresh water to slake their thirsts; after all of that they turned around and made the golden calf, worshiping at its feet with burnt offerings and singing hymns of praise. How much worse could you get. If this were a melodrama, we would be “boo-ing” them!
That dismissal is so easy partly because we don’t hear the whole story in one piece. We just get bits and pieces from time to time and so we don’t carry the people with us. We don’t feel the joy and pain and fear of their struggle. But it doesn’t take much for us to find ourselves in their experience if we just slow down a little bit and fill in the gaps as we remember what they have been through.
Yes, the Hebrews had been liberated from four hundred years of crushing slavery, but they had also been forced to leave their homes. They had taken a wealth of gold, jewels, and other treasures, but what good were they to a people wandering in the harsh scrub-land of the wilderness? They were just one more thing slowing them down and adding to the trials of the journey.
On top of that, they were chased by the most powerful army in the world. They nearly starved despite the livestock they brought with them (it takes a LOT of food to feed hundreds of thousands of people). More than once, they had come close to death for lack of water in the wilderness. And they had been forced into pitched battle with a king who sought to make them slaves again. Each time, they were saved by the power of the One God working through the hand of Moses. Finally they settled down for a break from their travels at the foot of Mount Sinai where Moses shared the terms of the covenant (to which they agreed) and consecrated them as the chosen people of God.
Then, he disappeared up the mountain.
In Egypt they had known back-breaking work and terrible treatment, but it had been familiar. There had always been enough food and water, and they had known what to expect from life. In the wilderness, they had known nothing but uncertainty. They had become a travel-stained, wearied people beset by hunger, thirst, violence, and illness, and they had no place to call home. They had only the hope of God’s promise to protect them and lead them to the Promised Land, and the embodiment of that hope was Moses.
Is it any wonder that as day after day went by with no word from their leader their faith began to waiver? All alone at the foot of a shaking mountain swathed in a cloud of smoke and lightning with the pall of anxiety and fear growing gripping them more and more tightly, is it surprising that they looked back at the stable, steady, predictable years in Egypt with some sense of regret? Maybe … just maybe, they could create something like that for themselves. Maybe they could take control of their own lives for the very first time instead of obeying orders or following a prophet to God-only-knows where. Maybe what they needed was a more predictable, more tangible god to pray to – a god like those that governed life in Egypt.
Can you feel it, the weight of that fear … the rising sense of worry and anxiety about what the future will hold? Have you ever felt it in your own life … when the plot of your story left you standing in the shadow of an unknowable power hidden from your sight? Have you ever felt a sense of urgency that led you to make your own way down a path you control?
Perhaps it’s a little bit harder than we thought to condemn the Hebrews, but there is still no denying that it is dangerous to place our trust in our own control rather than trusting God.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the film, “What Dreams May Come,” but I hope that if you are not, this sermon may encourage you to watch it. It is one of my all-time favorites both because of the brilliant and whimsically colorful world in which it takes place and because of the deep theological questions it asks … but doesn’t really answer.
Most of the movie takes place in an afterlife where each person’s “world” is controlled by his or her own imagination. But the main line of the story returns again and again to a woman who has lost her children in a car accident. She blames herself, and the weight of her grief and self-condemnation quickly turn her into a depressed, panic-attack ridden shadow of her former self. She gets through her days as an art museum curator through the support and encouragement of her husband. But just as life is beginning to take on joy and color again, her husband is killed trying to help others injured in a major pile-up on the way to her office.
Once again depression and self-loathing take over her life, and she drifts deeper and deeper into the shadows of the valley of death. As despair and anxiety overwhelm her, she comes to the point where she chooses to end her own life (the only thing she feels she can control) in order to end the pain.
As you might guess, she ends up in the afterlife as well. But where her children and her husband were freed by death to make of their new life whatever they most desired, she was trapped in the world as she had experienced it – condemned to an eternal hell by the power of her own imagination and her need for control.
Upon learning of his wife’s fate, the husband sets out on a quest to save her – something that has never been accomplished before. He travels to the land of lost souls, crosses the horribly gruesome landscape, and enters her world. Against all odds, he manages to wake out of her dark dream of suffering and draw her back into the light of love.
And so we have a Hollywood-style happy ending. But, real life is rarely Hollywood, and though our scripture today ends on a happy note – God repenting his wrath thanks to the heroic efforts of Moses on behalf of the people – the story goes on. When he came down from the mountain, Moses called on those who remained faithful to become the priests of the One God at the price of killing their brothers, friends, and neighbors. Three thousand were slaughtered that day, and the people came down with a plague brought on when they were made to drink the ashes of the golden calf. And that was just the beginning of Israel’s story of prideful idolatry and the suffering it caused.
Are we really any different? Do our lives speak of a more faithful commitment to the covenant? None of us have a golden idol secreted away in our homes (at least I hope not), and most of us do our very best not to worship money or power or whatever other idol we can think of. Yet we all feel fear and anxiety, don’t we? We all feel like there is something missing – a gap that needs to be filled in our lives or in our souls. What do you do when those specters rise up within you? Do you wait for God or do you take matters into your own hands? Do you seek out a deeper relationship with the Spirit or do you fill the void with the next new toy or cause or distraction?
I wonder if we are aware of how often we turn to idols because we feel the need to do something ourselves rather than trusting in the promise of grace and mercy that is our true hope. I wonder what that does to us. I wonder where that takes us. What lies at the end of our story?
Will we choose the path of faith that follows in the footsteps of self-less service, or will we trust in our own wisdom and the idols we create for ourselves. Will we live into the covenant promise of peace and joy that reigns over life in the Kingdom, or will we join the herd, building step by painful step our own private hell – our own corporate hell on earth?
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Jeremiah's Blessing
sermon by Carrie Eikler
Jeremiah 1:4-10
It has been a little over a month since I have seen most of you. What with denominational gatherings and meetings, vacation, and the death of two of our grandparents, we have been flying, literally around as far as St. Louis and Minneapolis, driving to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and taking a first bus ride to Suncrest Primary for all day pre-school.
As much as I want to say it, I’m convinced it’s folly to say “when things settle down…” Things never really settle down, do they? There are periods of calm in the storm of life, but we always know there’s more on the horizon. And unfortunately, if you are anything like me, those periods of calm are treated somehow, if not subconsciously, simply as times to recuperate and prepare for the next storm to hit: secretly plotting our defenses, worrying about what could in fact come our way: Who will die next? What if this job isn’t here in a year? What if I am simply too burned out to continue with what I’ve been called to do?
Sometimes, it seems like the busy times are better than what we might call the “calm” times. What really destroys us is not dealing with the crises of life, but worrying about the possibility of them, like watching for the hurricane making its way up the coast. Will it really reach you where you are?
And let’s remember there are those among us who constantly live in turmoil: constant fear of lack of income or resources; fear of persecution for what they believe or who they love; chronic health conditions, and a lifetime of warfare. Where do they find calm in the midst of storms?
And yet, out of crisis comes calling. Doesn’t it always seem to work like that? Prophets never seem to be called during a down time. Living in exile, social calamity, anarchy…these are the sure grains of yeast for the rising up of a prophet! It seems like people never call on us, or need us, or want something from us when we have been properly rested and rejuvenated—it never seems to come when we have everything in order and now ready to proceed with an orderly amount of call.
Jeremiah exhibits our resistance to call in the time of calamity. Kingdoms were falling…and who does God pluck out of the rabble? A youth. We don’t know exactly how old Jeremiah is, but he calls himself a boy. I can’t do it! I’m too young, the problems too big. But before he can get more persuasive arguments out, God wipes them away with what I can only hear as a divine “tisk, tisk.” “Don’t say I am only a boy! Don’t say I’m not trained, I don’t have enough time, I get too flustered, I’m too scared.”
Like the seed that formed Jeremiah in his mother’s womb, the seed of God’s words were planted in him. And they are planted in us too, somewhere deep within us. But we can understand Jeremiah’s reluctance. It seems like God would want someone with more confidence, who can speak really loudly, not with reticence. Someone on fire for God. But I’m more reluctant when it comes to hearing a call. How about you?
“A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling” muses Martin B. Copenhaver. “A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling because he or she is likely to be the one who knows what is required to be a faithful prophet.” Most of us won’t be given authority over nations and kingdoms, like Jeremiah. But we are called, in our own ways, to pull down empires and plant new ones. The empires that control us, that guide our daily decision making, that keep us trapped in old patterns of acting and thinking and living.
And while it may seem simple and small, we know that the very least it takes courage to face ourselves. We may feel only like little girls and little boys as we face our own lives.
I love September because it brings the promise of cooler weather. Not that these first few days are any indication of that, but I know that by the end of the month, it will be cool. Leaves will begin to change, abundance will be redefined not by the massive amounts of tomatoes on the vines, but by the tomatoes in the jar keeping cool in my basement. Fall is a wonderful time to reacquaint ourselves.
This September I feel a different convergence of season in my life. We are currently in the midst of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, when Muslims fast, pray, abstain, give extra, and work at reacquainting themselves with Allah, God. This month also brings the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, of asking forgiveness and setting straight one’s path. It’s kind of like the attention we might give at Lent as we explore the state of our souls.
For Christians this September doesn’t bring us any holiday calling us to repentance, confession, or forgiveness. Yet the call is there nevertheless. It comes as we remember September 11. It comes as we observe International Day of Peace on September 21. It comes as we embark on a study on human sexuality. It comes as we kiss the heads of our young children as we send them off to school. What comes? Life comes. Everyday life, whether calm or crisis, mundane or magical, every waking morning is the call of God-waking us with an urging to claim the call to everyday acts of love and compassion, even when we are reluctant, or ill-chosen, or don’t have the time.
Responding to the call to ministry was a reluctant one for me. I was rarely told that as a woman ministry was a viable option for me. I didn’t feel compelled to memorize scriptures in order to convince people I was well read in the Bible, which I wasn’t. I didn’t want to tell people how to live their lives, like I saw so many pastors doing.
What I did feel, however, was a call to accompany others through life, everyday life, the life that comes. That to me is ministry and that is why I love being part of an Anabaptist tradition because we believe that is all our call. We are all called to be priests, ministers, walking with others through crises and calm.
And the beauty about this call is for most of us, it doesn’t require us to relocate, or to change jobs, it doesn’t even require special equipment. It is a call to be a minister, maybe even a prophet, by giving daily blessings to others: through our words, our actions and decisions, our prayers. What if we attuned ourselves to listen, not just to those big calls in our lives—those infrequent, monumental changes that thrust us into something entirely new—but what if we gave equal weight to a simpler call: being in our everyday lives in a new way. Interacting with others in a new way. Living on earth, in a new way. Praying with God…in a new way.
If we gave weight to this call, we could take who we are, where we are as an answer to God’s calling—you are here, now walk with others, bearers of blessing.
And yet it takes courage and we can still be reluctant, I’m sure. It is uncomfortable to think about reacquainting our lives with God, rather than simply towards ourselves. And contrary to what we might think I’m not convinced that feeling uncomfortable is bad. I’m pretty sure that when we are uncomfortable in what God might be calling us to, it is only the beginning of God’s blessing. Like the labor pains of birthing the call that God plants within us, out of pain and resistance, comes new life: for ourselves, for God, and for others. And all are called to claim it.
Brian McLaren, theologian an author of the popular book A Generous Orthodoxy, likes to think of the church as a dojo. Any of you familiar with martial arts, or at least familiar with the original Karate Kid move (classic!), you know that a dojo is a place where people learn martial arts. It literally means “a place where one learns the way.” That’s what he thinks churches should be, but not only learning the way by listening to the pastor ramble on. Dojos are places where students learn by putting into practice. We practice here, what we learn here in order to be out there what we have formed in here.
So we are here to practice. We are now going to practice being bears of blessing, here in our “Jesus dojo.” Or maybe our, “Jeremiah dojo.” Many of the young children in our congregation are facing new experiences and new challenges with the new school year and we are going to practice our being bearers of blessing as we bestow them with our love and support. Some of you, grown children are also experience new experiences and challenges: starting school yourself, or a new job, or new family situations. Maybe you would like a spoken blessing as well. If that sounds like what you are experience, I’ll invite you to share that with us if you like, after we bless the children.
Jeremiah 1:4-10
It has been a little over a month since I have seen most of you. What with denominational gatherings and meetings, vacation, and the death of two of our grandparents, we have been flying, literally around as far as St. Louis and Minneapolis, driving to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and taking a first bus ride to Suncrest Primary for all day pre-school.
As much as I want to say it, I’m convinced it’s folly to say “when things settle down…” Things never really settle down, do they? There are periods of calm in the storm of life, but we always know there’s more on the horizon. And unfortunately, if you are anything like me, those periods of calm are treated somehow, if not subconsciously, simply as times to recuperate and prepare for the next storm to hit: secretly plotting our defenses, worrying about what could in fact come our way: Who will die next? What if this job isn’t here in a year? What if I am simply too burned out to continue with what I’ve been called to do?
Sometimes, it seems like the busy times are better than what we might call the “calm” times. What really destroys us is not dealing with the crises of life, but worrying about the possibility of them, like watching for the hurricane making its way up the coast. Will it really reach you where you are?
And let’s remember there are those among us who constantly live in turmoil: constant fear of lack of income or resources; fear of persecution for what they believe or who they love; chronic health conditions, and a lifetime of warfare. Where do they find calm in the midst of storms?
And yet, out of crisis comes calling. Doesn’t it always seem to work like that? Prophets never seem to be called during a down time. Living in exile, social calamity, anarchy…these are the sure grains of yeast for the rising up of a prophet! It seems like people never call on us, or need us, or want something from us when we have been properly rested and rejuvenated—it never seems to come when we have everything in order and now ready to proceed with an orderly amount of call.
Jeremiah exhibits our resistance to call in the time of calamity. Kingdoms were falling…and who does God pluck out of the rabble? A youth. We don’t know exactly how old Jeremiah is, but he calls himself a boy. I can’t do it! I’m too young, the problems too big. But before he can get more persuasive arguments out, God wipes them away with what I can only hear as a divine “tisk, tisk.” “Don’t say I am only a boy! Don’t say I’m not trained, I don’t have enough time, I get too flustered, I’m too scared.”
Like the seed that formed Jeremiah in his mother’s womb, the seed of God’s words were planted in him. And they are planted in us too, somewhere deep within us. But we can understand Jeremiah’s reluctance. It seems like God would want someone with more confidence, who can speak really loudly, not with reticence. Someone on fire for God. But I’m more reluctant when it comes to hearing a call. How about you?
“A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling” muses Martin B. Copenhaver. “A reluctant prophet may be the only one worth calling because he or she is likely to be the one who knows what is required to be a faithful prophet.” Most of us won’t be given authority over nations and kingdoms, like Jeremiah. But we are called, in our own ways, to pull down empires and plant new ones. The empires that control us, that guide our daily decision making, that keep us trapped in old patterns of acting and thinking and living.
And while it may seem simple and small, we know that the very least it takes courage to face ourselves. We may feel only like little girls and little boys as we face our own lives.
I love September because it brings the promise of cooler weather. Not that these first few days are any indication of that, but I know that by the end of the month, it will be cool. Leaves will begin to change, abundance will be redefined not by the massive amounts of tomatoes on the vines, but by the tomatoes in the jar keeping cool in my basement. Fall is a wonderful time to reacquaint ourselves.
This September I feel a different convergence of season in my life. We are currently in the midst of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, when Muslims fast, pray, abstain, give extra, and work at reacquainting themselves with Allah, God. This month also brings the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, of asking forgiveness and setting straight one’s path. It’s kind of like the attention we might give at Lent as we explore the state of our souls.
For Christians this September doesn’t bring us any holiday calling us to repentance, confession, or forgiveness. Yet the call is there nevertheless. It comes as we remember September 11. It comes as we observe International Day of Peace on September 21. It comes as we embark on a study on human sexuality. It comes as we kiss the heads of our young children as we send them off to school. What comes? Life comes. Everyday life, whether calm or crisis, mundane or magical, every waking morning is the call of God-waking us with an urging to claim the call to everyday acts of love and compassion, even when we are reluctant, or ill-chosen, or don’t have the time.
Responding to the call to ministry was a reluctant one for me. I was rarely told that as a woman ministry was a viable option for me. I didn’t feel compelled to memorize scriptures in order to convince people I was well read in the Bible, which I wasn’t. I didn’t want to tell people how to live their lives, like I saw so many pastors doing.
What I did feel, however, was a call to accompany others through life, everyday life, the life that comes. That to me is ministry and that is why I love being part of an Anabaptist tradition because we believe that is all our call. We are all called to be priests, ministers, walking with others through crises and calm.
And the beauty about this call is for most of us, it doesn’t require us to relocate, or to change jobs, it doesn’t even require special equipment. It is a call to be a minister, maybe even a prophet, by giving daily blessings to others: through our words, our actions and decisions, our prayers. What if we attuned ourselves to listen, not just to those big calls in our lives—those infrequent, monumental changes that thrust us into something entirely new—but what if we gave equal weight to a simpler call: being in our everyday lives in a new way. Interacting with others in a new way. Living on earth, in a new way. Praying with God…in a new way.
If we gave weight to this call, we could take who we are, where we are as an answer to God’s calling—you are here, now walk with others, bearers of blessing.
And yet it takes courage and we can still be reluctant, I’m sure. It is uncomfortable to think about reacquainting our lives with God, rather than simply towards ourselves. And contrary to what we might think I’m not convinced that feeling uncomfortable is bad. I’m pretty sure that when we are uncomfortable in what God might be calling us to, it is only the beginning of God’s blessing. Like the labor pains of birthing the call that God plants within us, out of pain and resistance, comes new life: for ourselves, for God, and for others. And all are called to claim it.
Brian McLaren, theologian an author of the popular book A Generous Orthodoxy, likes to think of the church as a dojo. Any of you familiar with martial arts, or at least familiar with the original Karate Kid move (classic!), you know that a dojo is a place where people learn martial arts. It literally means “a place where one learns the way.” That’s what he thinks churches should be, but not only learning the way by listening to the pastor ramble on. Dojos are places where students learn by putting into practice. We practice here, what we learn here in order to be out there what we have formed in here.
So we are here to practice. We are now going to practice being bears of blessing, here in our “Jesus dojo.” Or maybe our, “Jeremiah dojo.” Many of the young children in our congregation are facing new experiences and new challenges with the new school year and we are going to practice our being bearers of blessing as we bestow them with our love and support. Some of you, grown children are also experience new experiences and challenges: starting school yourself, or a new job, or new family situations. Maybe you would like a spoken blessing as well. If that sounds like what you are experience, I’ll invite you to share that with us if you like, after we bless the children.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Courage to Speak
Melodrama by Torin Eikler
Esther
Narrator: After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. Then the king passed and edict:
King Ahasuerus: “Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king. And let all the beautiful young virgins be brought to the royal harem and be put under the custody of Hegai, who is in charge of the women. And let the girl who pleases the king become queen instead of Vashti.
Narrator: Now, there was a Jew in the royal city whose name was Mordecai son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish. Mordecai had raised Esther, for when her father and mother died, he adopted her as his own daughter. Esther was beautiful. So when the king’s edict was proclaimed, Esther was taken into the king’s palace and put in custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women.
Esther was admired by all who saw her, and when she was taken to King Ahasuerus, the king loved Esther more than all the others, and he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen. Then the king gave a great banquet, and granted a holiday to the provinces, and gave many gifts.
In those days, while Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate, two of the king’s servants, Bigthan and Teresh, conspired to assassinate the king. But the Mordecai overheard their plan, and he told it to Queen Esther, and Esther told the king in the name of Mordecai. When the affair was investigated and found to be so, both the men were hanged on the gallows. It was recorded in the book of records in the presence of the king.
A little while later, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman son of Hammedatha to be his closest advisor and gave him the king’s ring. And all the king’s servants bowed down when Haman went by, for that was what the king had commanded. But Mordecai did not bow down. When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down to him, Haman was infuriated. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all the Jews throughout the whole kingdom.
When Mordecai learned all that had been done, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry. Then Esther sent a messenger to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. The messenger did as Esther wished, and Mordecai told him …
Mordecai: Tell Esther that Haman is trying to destroy all the Jews and to wipe them off the face of the earth just because I refused to bow down to anyone other than the Lord our God. The queen must go before the king and beg for her people to be spared, for she, too, is a Jew.
Narrator: The messenger told all of this to Esther, and Esther sent him back with a reply.
Esther: Everyone knows that if any man or woman goes before the king without being called, they are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden scepter to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called by the king for thirty days.
Mordecai: Esther, Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, deliverance will come from someone else, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.
Esther: Go, gather all the Jews to be found in the city, and hold a fast on my behalf. Don’t eat or drink for three days and three nights. I and my maids will also fast as you do, and after that I will go to the king, though it is against the law. If I perish, I perish.”
Narrator: Esther then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.
On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the court opposite the king’s throne. As soon as the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, he held out the golden scepter that was in his hand, and Esther went and touched the top of the scepter.
King Ahasuerus: What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? Whatever you want, even half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.
Esther: If it pleases the king, let the king and Haman come today to a banquet that I have prepared for the king.
King Ahasuerus: Bring Haman quickly, so that we may do as Esther desires.
Narrator: So the king and Haman came to the banquet that Esther had prepared, and the king said to Esther….
King Ahasuerus: What is your request? Whatever you want, even half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.
Esther: This is my request … If I have won the king’s favor, and if it pleases the king to grant fulfill my request, let the king and Haman come tomorrow to the banquet that I will prepare for them, and then I will do as the king has said.
Narrator: Haman went out that day happy and in good spirits, but when he saw Modercai in the king’s gate, he got angry. He went home and sent for his friends and his wife.
Haman: (To the congregation) Look at me. How great a man am I?! I have been made the advisor of the king. I am filthy rich with thousands and thousands of talents in the bank. And I have many strong, smart, and obedient children to make me proud. Even Queen Esther let no one but myself come with the king to the banquet that she prepared. Tomorrow also I am invited by her, together with the king. Yet all this does me no good so long as I see the Jew Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate.
Narrator: Then his wife and all his friends said to him, “Let a gallows fifty cubits high be made, and in the morning tell the king to have Mordecai hanged on it; then go with the king to the banquet in good spirits.” This advice pleased Haman, and he had the gallows made.
On that night King Ahasuerus could not sleep, and he gave orders to bring the book of records. They were read to the king, and he remembered how Mordecai had told him about the two men who had conspired to assassinate him.
King Ahasuerus: What reward has been given to Mordecai to honor his service?
Narrator: The servant who attended him said …
Attendant: Nothing has been done for him.
King Ahasuerus: Who is in the court?
Attendant: Haman is there, standing in the court.
King Ahasuerus: Let him come in.
Narrator: So Haman came in.
King Ahasuerus: What shall be done for the man whom the king wishes to honor?
Haman: (to him/herself) Whom would the king wish to honor more than me?
(to the king) Let the king’s own royal robes be brought and one of the king’s horses with a royal crown on its head. Let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king’s most noble officials. Let him put the robes on the man whom the king wishes to honor, and lead that man on horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming before him: ‘This is how the king shows his gratitude.’
King Ahasuerus: Quickly, take the robes and the horse, and do exactly as you have said to Mordecai.
Narrator: So Haman took the robes and the horse, dressed Mordecai, and led him on horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming,
Haman: This is how the king shows his gratitude.
Narrator: Then Esther returned to the king’s gate, but Haman hurried to his house, with his head covered in shame and anger. When Haman told his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him, they said to him, “If Mordecai is of the Jewish people, you will not prevail against him, but will surely fall before him.”
While they were still talking with him, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman off to the banquet that Esther had prepared. So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther on the second day, and the king again said to Esther,
King Ahasuerus: What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? Whatever you want, even half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.
Esther: If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life and the lives of my people be spared—that is my request. For we have been condemned to be wiped out. If we had been sold merely as slaves, I would have held my peace, but no one can make up for this with mere money.”
King Ahasuerus: Who has done this horrible thing?
Esther: There he is – it is Haman!
Narrator: The king rose from the feast in anger and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther. When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman was grasping the feet of the queen, and the king said
King Ahasuerus: Will he even assault the queen in my own house?!
Narrator: Then one of the servants in attendance on the king, said,
Servant: Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.
King Ahasuerus: Take him there and dispose of him.
Narrator: So Haman went to the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai, and the king took the ring he had given to Haman and gave it instead to Mordecai and set him in the place that had been Haman’s. And Esther spoke again to the king ….
Esther: If it pleases the king and if it seems right, let an order be written to stop the destruction of the Jews across the kingdom. For how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?
King Ahasuerus: (to Mordecai) See, I have put you in the place that was Haman’s because he plotted to destroy the Jews. You may write as you please in the king’s name and seal the order with the king’s ring.
Narrator: In every province and in every city, the king’s command came, and there was gladness and joy among the Jews and they proclaimed a festival and a holiday.
Sermon by Torin Eikler
Esther Matthew 15:21-28
Purim is an interesting religious festival, and if you ever get an invitation to join in the celebrations, I strongly suggest you accept. In the United States, it is something like a New Year’s party crossed with a costume ball. There is lots of noise and children especially play dress up as characters from the story.
In Israel, it’s a good deal more rowdy – more like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. People take sweet breads and other treats to neighbors and friends. There are parades and street parties with blasting music. The entire story of Esther (which is about twice as long as we heard today) is read two times – once at sundown and once at sunup – and committed celebrators stay up until the second reading is completed. Each time Mordecai or Esther are mentioned there is a cheer. Each time Haman speaks, everyone starts making noise; yelling, blowing horns or whistles, swinging rattles, and beating on drums in an effort to drown out the words of the “enemy of the Jews.” And, … there is even a scriptural injunction to imbibe a good deal of alcohol. Tradition says one should be so drunk by morning that one can no longer tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman. (If you do attend a celebration, you might want to hold off on that part.)
I was introduced to the festival of Purim while Carrie and I were in seminary. A few of the Jewish students on Earlham College’s campus worked for us at the Co-op, and they invited us to join them one year. Being a school sponsored group celebrating on campus with under-aged students, there was no alcohol, and being late twenty/early thirty-somethings, Carrie and I did not stay for the morning reading. But we did have a lot of fun, and I remember wondering why Christians (at least in the traditions I have experienced) don’t tend to let loose during religious celebrations in the same way.
Some people do have quite a lot of fun at Christmas or at Easter, and there are festivals on Saint’s days in some other countries, but in the Western world, there is no Christian holiday that we all mark with such a celebration. Even our communion celebrations are muted with just small sip of wine received in a muted atmosphere and not even that in many churches. Most often, it seems, we are sober-faced as well as sober. Where is the joy? Where is the grateful abandon of a community rejoicing in salvation and the richness of life renewed? Largely, it seems, forgotten or locked away for fear of impropriety.
Maybe things would be different if we had been brought back from the brink of annihilation. Maybe if Constantine had order that all Christians – man, woman, and child – be put to the sword before making Christianity the state religion. Maybe then we would dress up and dance in the streets to mark the day that we were saved from oblivion.
But it didn’t happen that way. Rome embraced Christianity – at least to some extent – and we eventually became the power behind the throne of many countries. And, eventually, along with the imperial power and all its trappings, Christianity has adopted an imperial attitude toward those outside its control, ignoring them, conquering them, and even seeking to wipe them out when “necessary” – that is when we felt they threatened our domination or showed too little respect for our power and our station. Sound like anyone we know?
In the August 16th issue of Newsweek, Lisa Miller wrote about the current discussion concerning a mosque scheduled to be built a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Centers. Imbedded in the article were three telling photographs of protesters holding signs that read:
“Stop scapegoating all Muslims for 9/11,”
“Don’t glorify the murders of 3,000… No 9/11 Victory Mosque,”
and, simply, “Islam kills.”
These pictures are meant to characterize the two different approaches taken by the women interviewed in the article. Both women lost sons in the attack on the Trade Centers. One, Sally Regenhard, has responded to the proposed mosque with anger and disbelief. She feels that the idea of the Muslim religious center is not only insensitive but a downright provocation that stabs at the heart of all Americans, especially those who lost loved ones in the attack. Though she does not advocate violence or any kind of persecution against Muslims, her voice has become one of those quoted by others who do, and she feels that they have a right to the anger they are expressing if not the way they propose to express it.
The other, Adele Welty, has responded controversy over the mosque by becoming a voice for tolerance and moderation. In her articles and interviews, she has repeated sought to remind Americans that those who are building the mosque are not responsible for the 9/11 attack, and that many of them lost loved ones too. The language of fear and anger that is being used, she says, goads us into curtailing the freedoms of others and leads to violence that we only live to regret. And, if the recent verbal attacks and the attempts at physical assault on those who are at the heart of the building project are any indication, she may well be right.
In one way, it is not surprising that Americans – who are largely Christian – are responding to the mosque in this way. We have all been deeply wounded whether we were directly affected by the September 11th attacks or not, and as Kathleen Parker pointed out in the Dominion Post’s Op-Ed section on Thursday, it was not wise or considerate of the Muslim community in Manhattan to go ahead with their symbolically charged building project without considering the emotional affect on their neighbors. People who are hurt or badly scared often react with anger and violence when their wounds are poked – even years after the events that scarred them. Jesus, himself, responded to the Canaanite woman with a disdain that had been harbored by his culture for hundreds of years – a disdain that would have cost the life of her son if she had not refused to be silenced.
We enjoyed the drama played out before us this morning, and it is fun to boo the villain and cheer the hero. But, the story of Esther is anything but funny – genocide just barely prevented and a vengeful death. I wonder if part of your laughter, like mine, was a bit … uncomfortable … a bit nervous because something about the characters (the ones we don’t like) hit a little too close to home. Did you find Esther’s courage? Did you find the king’s anger? Haman’s pride? Mordecai’s sense of relish at the defeat of his enemy?
It seems to be in our nature – whether we like it or not – to seek vengeance against those we feel have wronged us or at least to stand aside when they are threatened so as to protect our own. Sometimes, when we do so out of pride or envy, we are more like Haman. Sadly Christian history is full of those stories; many of us continue to write them today. I’d like to think that most of us, here, are not those people. We are probably more like the Sally Regenhards. Acting out of our own pain and vulnerability, we act with rashness and speak with sharp tongues, but we don’t really mean the harm we cause. Or, perhaps we are like Mordecai, standing aside as we watch others get “their just desserts.”
But I think we could do better. I believe we are called to do better. I believe that we could become like Adele Welty, speaking the voice of calm and compassion and tolerance into situations ruled by violent, thoughtless passion, speaking out in defense of those who are persecuted. We might even find it within ourselves to follow the path of Esther and risk our own position, our own comfort, … our own safety in order to prevent the suffering of others.
That’s the path Christ followed in the end. It’s the path he leads us down. And we could follow it if only we could find the courage …. If only we could find the courage.
Esther
Narrator: After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. Then the king passed and edict:
King Ahasuerus: “Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king. And let all the beautiful young virgins be brought to the royal harem and be put under the custody of Hegai, who is in charge of the women. And let the girl who pleases the king become queen instead of Vashti.
Narrator: Now, there was a Jew in the royal city whose name was Mordecai son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish. Mordecai had raised Esther, for when her father and mother died, he adopted her as his own daughter. Esther was beautiful. So when the king’s edict was proclaimed, Esther was taken into the king’s palace and put in custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women.
Esther was admired by all who saw her, and when she was taken to King Ahasuerus, the king loved Esther more than all the others, and he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen. Then the king gave a great banquet, and granted a holiday to the provinces, and gave many gifts.
In those days, while Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate, two of the king’s servants, Bigthan and Teresh, conspired to assassinate the king. But the Mordecai overheard their plan, and he told it to Queen Esther, and Esther told the king in the name of Mordecai. When the affair was investigated and found to be so, both the men were hanged on the gallows. It was recorded in the book of records in the presence of the king.
A little while later, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman son of Hammedatha to be his closest advisor and gave him the king’s ring. And all the king’s servants bowed down when Haman went by, for that was what the king had commanded. But Mordecai did not bow down. When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down to him, Haman was infuriated. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all the Jews throughout the whole kingdom.
When Mordecai learned all that had been done, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry. Then Esther sent a messenger to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. The messenger did as Esther wished, and Mordecai told him …
Mordecai: Tell Esther that Haman is trying to destroy all the Jews and to wipe them off the face of the earth just because I refused to bow down to anyone other than the Lord our God. The queen must go before the king and beg for her people to be spared, for she, too, is a Jew.
Narrator: The messenger told all of this to Esther, and Esther sent him back with a reply.
Esther: Everyone knows that if any man or woman goes before the king without being called, they are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden scepter to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called by the king for thirty days.
Mordecai: Esther, Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, deliverance will come from someone else, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.
Esther: Go, gather all the Jews to be found in the city, and hold a fast on my behalf. Don’t eat or drink for three days and three nights. I and my maids will also fast as you do, and after that I will go to the king, though it is against the law. If I perish, I perish.”
Narrator: Esther then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.
On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the court opposite the king’s throne. As soon as the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, he held out the golden scepter that was in his hand, and Esther went and touched the top of the scepter.
King Ahasuerus: What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? Whatever you want, even half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.
Esther: If it pleases the king, let the king and Haman come today to a banquet that I have prepared for the king.
King Ahasuerus: Bring Haman quickly, so that we may do as Esther desires.
Narrator: So the king and Haman came to the banquet that Esther had prepared, and the king said to Esther….
King Ahasuerus: What is your request? Whatever you want, even half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.
Esther: This is my request … If I have won the king’s favor, and if it pleases the king to grant fulfill my request, let the king and Haman come tomorrow to the banquet that I will prepare for them, and then I will do as the king has said.
Narrator: Haman went out that day happy and in good spirits, but when he saw Modercai in the king’s gate, he got angry. He went home and sent for his friends and his wife.
Haman: (To the congregation) Look at me. How great a man am I?! I have been made the advisor of the king. I am filthy rich with thousands and thousands of talents in the bank. And I have many strong, smart, and obedient children to make me proud. Even Queen Esther let no one but myself come with the king to the banquet that she prepared. Tomorrow also I am invited by her, together with the king. Yet all this does me no good so long as I see the Jew Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate.
Narrator: Then his wife and all his friends said to him, “Let a gallows fifty cubits high be made, and in the morning tell the king to have Mordecai hanged on it; then go with the king to the banquet in good spirits.” This advice pleased Haman, and he had the gallows made.
On that night King Ahasuerus could not sleep, and he gave orders to bring the book of records. They were read to the king, and he remembered how Mordecai had told him about the two men who had conspired to assassinate him.
King Ahasuerus: What reward has been given to Mordecai to honor his service?
Narrator: The servant who attended him said …
Attendant: Nothing has been done for him.
King Ahasuerus: Who is in the court?
Attendant: Haman is there, standing in the court.
King Ahasuerus: Let him come in.
Narrator: So Haman came in.
King Ahasuerus: What shall be done for the man whom the king wishes to honor?
Haman: (to him/herself) Whom would the king wish to honor more than me?
(to the king) Let the king’s own royal robes be brought and one of the king’s horses with a royal crown on its head. Let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king’s most noble officials. Let him put the robes on the man whom the king wishes to honor, and lead that man on horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming before him: ‘This is how the king shows his gratitude.’
King Ahasuerus: Quickly, take the robes and the horse, and do exactly as you have said to Mordecai.
Narrator: So Haman took the robes and the horse, dressed Mordecai, and led him on horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming,
Haman: This is how the king shows his gratitude.
Narrator: Then Esther returned to the king’s gate, but Haman hurried to his house, with his head covered in shame and anger. When Haman told his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him, they said to him, “If Mordecai is of the Jewish people, you will not prevail against him, but will surely fall before him.”
While they were still talking with him, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman off to the banquet that Esther had prepared. So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther on the second day, and the king again said to Esther,
King Ahasuerus: What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? Whatever you want, even half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.
Esther: If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life and the lives of my people be spared—that is my request. For we have been condemned to be wiped out. If we had been sold merely as slaves, I would have held my peace, but no one can make up for this with mere money.”
King Ahasuerus: Who has done this horrible thing?
Esther: There he is – it is Haman!
Narrator: The king rose from the feast in anger and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther. When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman was grasping the feet of the queen, and the king said
King Ahasuerus: Will he even assault the queen in my own house?!
Narrator: Then one of the servants in attendance on the king, said,
Servant: Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.
King Ahasuerus: Take him there and dispose of him.
Narrator: So Haman went to the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai, and the king took the ring he had given to Haman and gave it instead to Mordecai and set him in the place that had been Haman’s. And Esther spoke again to the king ….
Esther: If it pleases the king and if it seems right, let an order be written to stop the destruction of the Jews across the kingdom. For how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?
King Ahasuerus: (to Mordecai) See, I have put you in the place that was Haman’s because he plotted to destroy the Jews. You may write as you please in the king’s name and seal the order with the king’s ring.
Narrator: In every province and in every city, the king’s command came, and there was gladness and joy among the Jews and they proclaimed a festival and a holiday.
Sermon by Torin Eikler
Esther Matthew 15:21-28
Purim is an interesting religious festival, and if you ever get an invitation to join in the celebrations, I strongly suggest you accept. In the United States, it is something like a New Year’s party crossed with a costume ball. There is lots of noise and children especially play dress up as characters from the story.
In Israel, it’s a good deal more rowdy – more like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. People take sweet breads and other treats to neighbors and friends. There are parades and street parties with blasting music. The entire story of Esther (which is about twice as long as we heard today) is read two times – once at sundown and once at sunup – and committed celebrators stay up until the second reading is completed. Each time Mordecai or Esther are mentioned there is a cheer. Each time Haman speaks, everyone starts making noise; yelling, blowing horns or whistles, swinging rattles, and beating on drums in an effort to drown out the words of the “enemy of the Jews.” And, … there is even a scriptural injunction to imbibe a good deal of alcohol. Tradition says one should be so drunk by morning that one can no longer tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman. (If you do attend a celebration, you might want to hold off on that part.)
I was introduced to the festival of Purim while Carrie and I were in seminary. A few of the Jewish students on Earlham College’s campus worked for us at the Co-op, and they invited us to join them one year. Being a school sponsored group celebrating on campus with under-aged students, there was no alcohol, and being late twenty/early thirty-somethings, Carrie and I did not stay for the morning reading. But we did have a lot of fun, and I remember wondering why Christians (at least in the traditions I have experienced) don’t tend to let loose during religious celebrations in the same way.
Some people do have quite a lot of fun at Christmas or at Easter, and there are festivals on Saint’s days in some other countries, but in the Western world, there is no Christian holiday that we all mark with such a celebration. Even our communion celebrations are muted with just small sip of wine received in a muted atmosphere and not even that in many churches. Most often, it seems, we are sober-faced as well as sober. Where is the joy? Where is the grateful abandon of a community rejoicing in salvation and the richness of life renewed? Largely, it seems, forgotten or locked away for fear of impropriety.
Maybe things would be different if we had been brought back from the brink of annihilation. Maybe if Constantine had order that all Christians – man, woman, and child – be put to the sword before making Christianity the state religion. Maybe then we would dress up and dance in the streets to mark the day that we were saved from oblivion.
But it didn’t happen that way. Rome embraced Christianity – at least to some extent – and we eventually became the power behind the throne of many countries. And, eventually, along with the imperial power and all its trappings, Christianity has adopted an imperial attitude toward those outside its control, ignoring them, conquering them, and even seeking to wipe them out when “necessary” – that is when we felt they threatened our domination or showed too little respect for our power and our station. Sound like anyone we know?
In the August 16th issue of Newsweek, Lisa Miller wrote about the current discussion concerning a mosque scheduled to be built a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Centers. Imbedded in the article were three telling photographs of protesters holding signs that read:
“Stop scapegoating all Muslims for 9/11,”
“Don’t glorify the murders of 3,000… No 9/11 Victory Mosque,”
and, simply, “Islam kills.”
These pictures are meant to characterize the two different approaches taken by the women interviewed in the article. Both women lost sons in the attack on the Trade Centers. One, Sally Regenhard, has responded to the proposed mosque with anger and disbelief. She feels that the idea of the Muslim religious center is not only insensitive but a downright provocation that stabs at the heart of all Americans, especially those who lost loved ones in the attack. Though she does not advocate violence or any kind of persecution against Muslims, her voice has become one of those quoted by others who do, and she feels that they have a right to the anger they are expressing if not the way they propose to express it.
The other, Adele Welty, has responded controversy over the mosque by becoming a voice for tolerance and moderation. In her articles and interviews, she has repeated sought to remind Americans that those who are building the mosque are not responsible for the 9/11 attack, and that many of them lost loved ones too. The language of fear and anger that is being used, she says, goads us into curtailing the freedoms of others and leads to violence that we only live to regret. And, if the recent verbal attacks and the attempts at physical assault on those who are at the heart of the building project are any indication, she may well be right.
In one way, it is not surprising that Americans – who are largely Christian – are responding to the mosque in this way. We have all been deeply wounded whether we were directly affected by the September 11th attacks or not, and as Kathleen Parker pointed out in the Dominion Post’s Op-Ed section on Thursday, it was not wise or considerate of the Muslim community in Manhattan to go ahead with their symbolically charged building project without considering the emotional affect on their neighbors. People who are hurt or badly scared often react with anger and violence when their wounds are poked – even years after the events that scarred them. Jesus, himself, responded to the Canaanite woman with a disdain that had been harbored by his culture for hundreds of years – a disdain that would have cost the life of her son if she had not refused to be silenced.
We enjoyed the drama played out before us this morning, and it is fun to boo the villain and cheer the hero. But, the story of Esther is anything but funny – genocide just barely prevented and a vengeful death. I wonder if part of your laughter, like mine, was a bit … uncomfortable … a bit nervous because something about the characters (the ones we don’t like) hit a little too close to home. Did you find Esther’s courage? Did you find the king’s anger? Haman’s pride? Mordecai’s sense of relish at the defeat of his enemy?
It seems to be in our nature – whether we like it or not – to seek vengeance against those we feel have wronged us or at least to stand aside when they are threatened so as to protect our own. Sometimes, when we do so out of pride or envy, we are more like Haman. Sadly Christian history is full of those stories; many of us continue to write them today. I’d like to think that most of us, here, are not those people. We are probably more like the Sally Regenhards. Acting out of our own pain and vulnerability, we act with rashness and speak with sharp tongues, but we don’t really mean the harm we cause. Or, perhaps we are like Mordecai, standing aside as we watch others get “their just desserts.”
But I think we could do better. I believe we are called to do better. I believe that we could become like Adele Welty, speaking the voice of calm and compassion and tolerance into situations ruled by violent, thoughtless passion, speaking out in defense of those who are persecuted. We might even find it within ourselves to follow the path of Esther and risk our own position, our own comfort, … our own safety in order to prevent the suffering of others.
That’s the path Christ followed in the end. It’s the path he leads us down. And we could follow it if only we could find the courage …. If only we could find the courage.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Flying After Jesus
Sermon by Torin Eikler
Daniel 3 Luke 9:23-26
Have you ever been to the circus and watched trapeze artists in action? I remember the one time that I went to the circus as a child. It was a big one, and most of my memories are fuzzy with the over stimulation and adrenaline of over-sugared in the midst of 5,000 on-lookers. But I do remember watching the trapeze troupe swing back and forth and summersault through the air during the eternal moments between letting go and catching hold. And with absolute clarity, I remember the way that my stomach tensed up when one of them missed a catch and fell toward certain death only to be caught by the safety net that I hadn’t noticed before. Ever since that day, I have been fascinated by the men and women who continue the long tradition of astounding audiences by flying through the air.
As it turns out, I am not alone in this fascination. Henri Nouwen, the catholic priest and author that we mention every so often, was also a fan. In fact, he was so intrigued by trapeze artists that he befriended a troupe of trapezists called the Flying Rodleighs, and he was able to ask a question that I’ve always wondered about: how do “flyers,” as they’re called, manage to catch the hands of the other person on their swing. In his book, Servants, Misfits, and Martyrs: Saints and their Stories, James C. Howell recounts the response he received from the chief of the Flying Rodleighs.
The secret is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catchbar…. The worst thing the flyer can do is to try to catch the catcher. I’m not supposed to catch Joe. It’s Joe’s task to catch me…. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.”
While the trapeze artist clearly meant this to be a simple explanation of his technique, I find it to quite an elegant description of the life of faith. As people of faith we are all flyers. It is our job to swing off the platform and let go of the bar, risking a fall. And we must trust, with outstretched arms, that God will catch us as we seek to follow our guide and savior.
Enter Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, three young men from ruling families of Israel taken to the court of King Nebuchadnezzar to serve as court wise men as well as “hostages” ensuring the cooperation of the newly subjugated nation. Over the course of three or four years, they lived with the wise men of the Babylonian court along with their friend Daniel, offering advice and interpreting signs at the king’s behest. Eventually, they were appointed as governors of one province of the empire as a reward for interpreting a particularly troubling dream. A short time later, the king passed an edict commanding all his subjects to bow down and worship a golden statue on pain of death, and the three young men found themselves swinging precariously over a long, long drop into the fire.
You all know the rest of the story. The three men refused to worship anyone or anything other than their own God, holding firm even as they were thrown into a furnace so hot that their executioners were died just getting close enough to them flying. And fly they did, trusting, with arms outstretched that God would be there to catch them.
That the men survived does not stop the story from qualifying them as martyrs. Martyrs are no more or less than people who hold to their faith even if it means that they will die. But martyr stories are more than just tales that we tell for inspiration and encouragement. They are also stories that are intended to promote action and embolden faith on the part of listeners. In other words, the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, according to commentator Frederick J. Murphy, is not just a show of faith but a call to active, non-violent resistance to worldly power and symbols of colonization, and that’s something that we should know more than a little bit about.
Anabaptists have been resisting the power of colonialism, whether it be found in secular or church bureaucracies, for 500 years or more. It is what we were born to do in as much as our spiritual ancestors acted in direct defiance of both government and church when they baptized one another, hurling themselves into persecution and death to follow the path of discipleship … flying, arms outstretched, toward Jesus on the strength of their faith.
They, too, are martyrs – those who were burned, hung, or drowned as well as those who survived, and their stories invite us to the same active resistance. They call us to another way of living – a way that seeks follows the teachings and example of Jesus. Their legacy is ensconced in the way Mennonites and Brethren continue to characterize themselves: as disciples of Christ who seek continue his work together, reject violence, and strive for lives of simplicity lived in harmony with the rest of humanity and all of creation. … And, there are many of us who claim that heritage … that identity with our lives as well as our voices.
Most of us resist the violence of the world even in difficult situations, and there are some sisters and brothers who go farther. They seek not just to resist but to transform situations of injustice and oppression by applying the same discipline and self-sacrifice that armies devote to war to non-violent peace-making. Together they have formed an organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams that supports members as they confront systems of domination.
Where communities are experiencing oppression and the concrete threat of violence and death, CPTers step into the midst of the conflict and try to promote relationship and compassion in the place of brokenness and hatred by their own example. There are stories of stepping in front of loaded guns, accompanying people through dangerous territory or check-points where soldiers push them to the ground and shoot into the air above their heads, and sitting together in prayer as the military shells the neighborhood. Often, the response from both sides is anger and confusion, and many CPTers have been arrested, held in jail, deported, or banned by the powers they confront. One man, Tom Fox, was even killed after three months of being held hostage by a militant group in Iraq.
Others take “safer” paths, though those ways require sacrifice as well. Some, like our friends in Church Communities International (which some of you will know as the Bruderhof) choose to give up personal ownership and a measure of independence in order to embrace the richness of community. Others give up family life in order to dedicate themselves to Christ and the work of the Church. Still others choose the way of extreme simplicity, living in a way that neither abuses the earth nor supports inequity in the workplace.
Cliff and Arlene Kindy live in a small house on a farm in Northern Indiana. In their commitment to following Jesus, they have decided to live under the poverty level. They do this, in part, to avoid paying taxes that support the military, but they are also trying to live in solidarity with people across the country and the world who do not have the same advantages they do.
Once, when Arlene was explaining some of this to me, she told me that she had repeated chosen not to accept jobs as a teacher though that is her training and background. When I asked her why, she said that it wasn’t that the income would put them above the poverty line or that she disagreed with the celebration of violence in the curriculum. It was because there were other people as qualified as she who make much, much less than she would have, and she didn’t want to support a system with that kind of inequity. She had offered several times to teach for what she felt was a more just level of pay, but no one would hire her. So, she continued to work in her organic vegetable garden until she could find a position that would meet her criteria.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” It’s a verse that we have all heard so many times that I wonder if we pay attention to it anymore. I wonder if we think about what it is really asking us to do.
If you’re anything like me, you get caught up in cross imagery that is so often the focus of sermons on this text. You begin thinking about self-sacrifice, about martyrdom, and about self-denial in the spiritual, eternal sense. But, when was the last time you heard … really heard the end of the sentence: “take up their cross daily and follow me?”
What does it mean to follow Jesus … daily? I suppose there is no way around the fact that it could mean risking death for our faith, but how often does that come into any of our lives. And if we ever were called to sacrifice in the way Tom Fox did, that would be a once in a lifetime moment … not an every day practice.
Following Jesus is not just about the extreme of martyrdom which I think we admire and abhor in just about equal measure. It is also about our everyday choices: about how they grow out of love and compassion for others … or not, about how they resist the inequities and abuses in our world … or not, about how they help others to experience the Kingdom promise of wholeness and new life … or not. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there is any less self-denial, any less sacrifice involved though.
As people of faith and as Anabaptists, we are all called to make our lives speak about what is important to us just as loudly as our voices. We each have things that we need to give up, and we are each called to particular acts of compassion and love. What that denial is, what those actions are grows out of our own particular background. We may not all make the choices like Arlene’s, but each of us has passions born of our faith and experience. Whatever your passions are, where ever your faith leads you, we are all called to take up our cross daily and follow Jesus.
We are all called to let go of the bar and fly toward Christ.
Daniel 3 Luke 9:23-26
Have you ever been to the circus and watched trapeze artists in action? I remember the one time that I went to the circus as a child. It was a big one, and most of my memories are fuzzy with the over stimulation and adrenaline of over-sugared in the midst of 5,000 on-lookers. But I do remember watching the trapeze troupe swing back and forth and summersault through the air during the eternal moments between letting go and catching hold. And with absolute clarity, I remember the way that my stomach tensed up when one of them missed a catch and fell toward certain death only to be caught by the safety net that I hadn’t noticed before. Ever since that day, I have been fascinated by the men and women who continue the long tradition of astounding audiences by flying through the air.
As it turns out, I am not alone in this fascination. Henri Nouwen, the catholic priest and author that we mention every so often, was also a fan. In fact, he was so intrigued by trapeze artists that he befriended a troupe of trapezists called the Flying Rodleighs, and he was able to ask a question that I’ve always wondered about: how do “flyers,” as they’re called, manage to catch the hands of the other person on their swing. In his book, Servants, Misfits, and Martyrs: Saints and their Stories, James C. Howell recounts the response he received from the chief of the Flying Rodleighs.
The secret is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catchbar…. The worst thing the flyer can do is to try to catch the catcher. I’m not supposed to catch Joe. It’s Joe’s task to catch me…. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.”
While the trapeze artist clearly meant this to be a simple explanation of his technique, I find it to quite an elegant description of the life of faith. As people of faith we are all flyers. It is our job to swing off the platform and let go of the bar, risking a fall. And we must trust, with outstretched arms, that God will catch us as we seek to follow our guide and savior.
Enter Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, three young men from ruling families of Israel taken to the court of King Nebuchadnezzar to serve as court wise men as well as “hostages” ensuring the cooperation of the newly subjugated nation. Over the course of three or four years, they lived with the wise men of the Babylonian court along with their friend Daniel, offering advice and interpreting signs at the king’s behest. Eventually, they were appointed as governors of one province of the empire as a reward for interpreting a particularly troubling dream. A short time later, the king passed an edict commanding all his subjects to bow down and worship a golden statue on pain of death, and the three young men found themselves swinging precariously over a long, long drop into the fire.
You all know the rest of the story. The three men refused to worship anyone or anything other than their own God, holding firm even as they were thrown into a furnace so hot that their executioners were died just getting close enough to them flying. And fly they did, trusting, with arms outstretched that God would be there to catch them.
That the men survived does not stop the story from qualifying them as martyrs. Martyrs are no more or less than people who hold to their faith even if it means that they will die. But martyr stories are more than just tales that we tell for inspiration and encouragement. They are also stories that are intended to promote action and embolden faith on the part of listeners. In other words, the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, according to commentator Frederick J. Murphy, is not just a show of faith but a call to active, non-violent resistance to worldly power and symbols of colonization, and that’s something that we should know more than a little bit about.
Anabaptists have been resisting the power of colonialism, whether it be found in secular or church bureaucracies, for 500 years or more. It is what we were born to do in as much as our spiritual ancestors acted in direct defiance of both government and church when they baptized one another, hurling themselves into persecution and death to follow the path of discipleship … flying, arms outstretched, toward Jesus on the strength of their faith.
They, too, are martyrs – those who were burned, hung, or drowned as well as those who survived, and their stories invite us to the same active resistance. They call us to another way of living – a way that seeks follows the teachings and example of Jesus. Their legacy is ensconced in the way Mennonites and Brethren continue to characterize themselves: as disciples of Christ who seek continue his work together, reject violence, and strive for lives of simplicity lived in harmony with the rest of humanity and all of creation. … And, there are many of us who claim that heritage … that identity with our lives as well as our voices.
Most of us resist the violence of the world even in difficult situations, and there are some sisters and brothers who go farther. They seek not just to resist but to transform situations of injustice and oppression by applying the same discipline and self-sacrifice that armies devote to war to non-violent peace-making. Together they have formed an organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams that supports members as they confront systems of domination.
Where communities are experiencing oppression and the concrete threat of violence and death, CPTers step into the midst of the conflict and try to promote relationship and compassion in the place of brokenness and hatred by their own example. There are stories of stepping in front of loaded guns, accompanying people through dangerous territory or check-points where soldiers push them to the ground and shoot into the air above their heads, and sitting together in prayer as the military shells the neighborhood. Often, the response from both sides is anger and confusion, and many CPTers have been arrested, held in jail, deported, or banned by the powers they confront. One man, Tom Fox, was even killed after three months of being held hostage by a militant group in Iraq.
Others take “safer” paths, though those ways require sacrifice as well. Some, like our friends in Church Communities International (which some of you will know as the Bruderhof) choose to give up personal ownership and a measure of independence in order to embrace the richness of community. Others give up family life in order to dedicate themselves to Christ and the work of the Church. Still others choose the way of extreme simplicity, living in a way that neither abuses the earth nor supports inequity in the workplace.
Cliff and Arlene Kindy live in a small house on a farm in Northern Indiana. In their commitment to following Jesus, they have decided to live under the poverty level. They do this, in part, to avoid paying taxes that support the military, but they are also trying to live in solidarity with people across the country and the world who do not have the same advantages they do.
Once, when Arlene was explaining some of this to me, she told me that she had repeated chosen not to accept jobs as a teacher though that is her training and background. When I asked her why, she said that it wasn’t that the income would put them above the poverty line or that she disagreed with the celebration of violence in the curriculum. It was because there were other people as qualified as she who make much, much less than she would have, and she didn’t want to support a system with that kind of inequity. She had offered several times to teach for what she felt was a more just level of pay, but no one would hire her. So, she continued to work in her organic vegetable garden until she could find a position that would meet her criteria.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” It’s a verse that we have all heard so many times that I wonder if we pay attention to it anymore. I wonder if we think about what it is really asking us to do.
If you’re anything like me, you get caught up in cross imagery that is so often the focus of sermons on this text. You begin thinking about self-sacrifice, about martyrdom, and about self-denial in the spiritual, eternal sense. But, when was the last time you heard … really heard the end of the sentence: “take up their cross daily and follow me?”
What does it mean to follow Jesus … daily? I suppose there is no way around the fact that it could mean risking death for our faith, but how often does that come into any of our lives. And if we ever were called to sacrifice in the way Tom Fox did, that would be a once in a lifetime moment … not an every day practice.
Following Jesus is not just about the extreme of martyrdom which I think we admire and abhor in just about equal measure. It is also about our everyday choices: about how they grow out of love and compassion for others … or not, about how they resist the inequities and abuses in our world … or not, about how they help others to experience the Kingdom promise of wholeness and new life … or not. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there is any less self-denial, any less sacrifice involved though.
As people of faith and as Anabaptists, we are all called to make our lives speak about what is important to us just as loudly as our voices. We each have things that we need to give up, and we are each called to particular acts of compassion and love. What that denial is, what those actions are grows out of our own particular background. We may not all make the choices like Arlene’s, but each of us has passions born of our faith and experience. Whatever your passions are, where ever your faith leads you, we are all called to take up our cross daily and follow Jesus.
We are all called to let go of the bar and fly toward Christ.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)