To Infinity ... and Beyond!

sermon by Torin Eikler
1st sermon in a seven week "Dwelling in the Word" series focusing on
Ephesians 3:7-21

Series Introduction
We are preparing for something different in worship in the next seven weeks.  Across the Mennonite Church USA, congregations are being invited into a process called “Dwelling in the Word.”  We, in this congregation, have been introduced to this through the process known as Lectio Divina, or divine reading.  But Dwelling in the Word is a bit different—one of the major differences is that the scriptures we are looking at are longer, and we are “dwelling” with them for a longer amount of time ... which I can admit, feels daunting, even perhaps boring. 

But Dwelling in the Word is a spiritual practice of reading and dwelling in the biblical text with an openness to be formed and transformed by the Living Word.  This practice is a unique way of allowing God to speak to us both individually and corporately.  Dwelling in the Word values listening deeply to God and to one another.  We read for spiritual formation by coming to the Word and patiently allowing the text to intrude into our lives—in this case for yes, seven whole weeks!—we open our selves to let the text address us, and to encounter God in new ways.

This is a formational reading and hearing, rather than an informational reading and hearing.  In the next seven Sundays, you will hear seven different perspectives on Pauls’ letter to the Ephesians 3:7-21, a scripture that appropriately calls us to be rooted and grounded in Love. 

By reading this text formationally

·         we dwell in God’s Word to gain new insights and understandings—not seeing only what we heard or read about a particular text, or what we think we know about it.
·         we read and listen to the scripture text aware of God’s presence—not reading through it quickly and unconsciously.
·         we read formationally with a desire to be shaped by God’s Word—not to control God’s Word based on our desires, wants, and needs.
·         and we become humble servants of the text—not masters of it.

We acknowledge that there is risk involved in doing things differently in worship.  This is not a routine we are used to.  We are used to hearing a variety of texts from week to week.   But we trust that God moves in our lives, illuminating to us newness each week—even with the same text.  We trust that the seven speakers have listened to the Spirit themselves and are each different people with different perspectives, and different ways of expressing the Good News.

And we know that we benefit from and need a variety of ways to study and read God’s Word.  The Spirit of God has the power to transform our souls and lives in whatever way we approach the Scripture.  Dwelling in the Word with the community invites the Living Word to penetrate to the innermost being of our lives—individually and together.  It is here that God desires to dwell.

Sermon
“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Some time ago, one of my sons asked me, “God loves me, right?”  (I think it was just after he had gotten into a lot of trouble for doing something very dangerous).  My response was, “Of course God loves you, and I do too.”  His next question was, “How much?” which surprised me because we have never played the kind of games that try to measure the limit of love.  (You know, the ones where a child says, “I love you to the moon,” and the parent responds, “I love you to the moon and back.”)  So, I said, “God loves you to infinity … and beyond!”

Some of you may not be familiar with that phrase.  So, I’ll give you some background.  “To infinity … and beyond!” is the catchy exclamation used by Buzz Lightyear in the “Toy Story” movies that have been popular among children for the last several years.  The movies tell the story of three of the great adventures shared by a group of toys who have come to life when their owner, Andy, is away.  They play games together, take care of each other, and generally do all the things that the rest of us do within the limitations of their own construction.

Buzz is one of the latest additions to Andy’s toy box, and in the first movie, it falls to the rest of the toys to help him understand that he is really just a toy and not an intergalactic space ranger whose mission is to save the universe from the predations of the evil Emperor Zogg.  But until they manage to convince him that he cannot actually shoot laser beams or contact galactic control, he repeatedly tries to use his little plastic wings to fly, shouting “To infinity … and beyond!” with each attempt.

Aside from being fairly high quality, entertaining movies in their own right, the Toy Story series has given birth to many interesting and entertaining conversations with my children….

“Where is infinity?” Sebastian asked me shortly after we watched the first movie for the third time. 

“Infinity isn’t really a place,” I answered after a little chuckle.
"But Buzz Lightyear said, ‘to infinity and beyond,’” he responded with the undeniable logic of a child who understands the word “where.”

Clearly there was more explaining to do.

 

I’ll save you the details of the rest of the conversation.  Suffice it to say that we still have conversations about what infinity means.  It seems that there are no end to Sebastian’s questions about the concept, and now that Alistair is in on the discussions, they promise to continue for a number of years.  I just don’t know how explain it so that a boy of 6 can comprehend let alone a 3-year-old.

In truth, I’m not sure I could explain infinity to a full-grown adult because … I don’t really comprehend it myself.  I can say that it’s the highest number there is, but it’s not really a number.  I can say that it means something so big that it has no end, but what does that actually mean?  I can say that if you were to start off in one direction and travel forever, you would never reach infinity, but that’s not much better.  What it comes down to is that I do not (maybe cannot) comprehend it.  I can only grasp enough of what it means to stand in awe of the mystery it represents and struggle to move deeper into that mystery as I try to help my sons.

 

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

 

The same thing is true about God.  When we talk about theology we use all sorts of words that defy comprehension.  God is omniscient and knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen, even if the future is yet to be determined.  God is omnipresent – in every place and time that exists simultaneously.  God is omnipotent which means that God both can and cannot create a rock that even God cannot move.  All of these words have definitions that we have made to speak of the infinite nature of God, and we can only grasp the smallest part of what they mean.

But love … love is something that we can understand.  In our lives we often feel powerless.  We often wish that we could be in more than one place at a time in order to get everything done.  We sometimes regret that we didn’t know or understand more of what was going on around us … of what our actions would mean.  Yet every day we know the power of love.  We know how it lives deep, deep within us.  We know the empathy and compassion that it inspires in us.  And, we know the lengths we will go to take care of those we hold dear.  We even have a sense of how broad love can be.

 

I remember asking my mother … (once or twice) … who she loved more, me or one of my brothers.  As all wise parents do, she told me told me that she didn’t love any of us more than the others.  She just loved us differently.  “You know,” she went on, “like you love me and your father and your brothers differently.”

That answer shut me up.  It didn’t relieve any of my fears or my desire to be the favorite son.  That wasn’t what ended the conversation.  No, … it was too complex and confusing for me.  Sure I loved my brothers and my parents differently, but at any given time, I could have told you who I loved more.  It was clear from more of that children’s logic that whoever had just given me what I asked for or let me do what I wanted was at the top of the list.

Eventually, I outgrew that limited understanding of love (or I hope I have), and now that I am older – now that I have children of my own, especially – I understand my mother’s answer, and I have used it myself the few times that my boys have posed the same question I did.  It’s not that I want to be confusing or misdirect them (although I do my share of that at other times).  It’s simply the truth, and what they have trouble understanding – what it took me years to learn myself – is that love is not a limited commodity.  We don’t have to share it out in portions that grow smaller with each person that we welcome into our heart because an endless supply of it wells up within us.  In fact, it often seems like the more we open our hearts to others, the more love flows into and through us.  We become fuller and more complete rather than stretched and divided.

That may be the closest any of us get to the infinite ... at least within ourselves, and that is something that we can hold on to as we struggle to comprehend who God is.  Yet even that – even the abundance of our love – is only a reflection of the love that God holds for all of us – the love that God revealed in Christ.  That is a love that is so broad … so deep that we humans rarely (if ever) comprehend.

 

I think that’s why the author of Ephesians phrased this particular part of the letter as a prayer rather than a theological treatise.  There is really no way for us to decipher the infinite nature of God since we are limited creatures.  Our intellect has amazing power to perceive, but there is a fullness in the infinite God that lies beyond mere knowing.

There is a love that reaches out to embrace all things and all people….  A love that knows everything – all the good and the bad together – knows it all and accepts it.  Knows it, accepts it, and lets it be despite the power to change it.  Lets it be … imperfect as it is and remains content with calling us all toward a more complete wholeness. 

That love comes to us borne on the wings of the Spirit from the heart of God into our own hearts.  It takes root there in the rich soil of our own love and sinks roots deep down into our beings, giving rather than taking nourishment.  It spreads its branches out to embrace our souls, rocks us into the infinite space of our dreams … and then beyond into the place of God’s dreams for us.

What a wonderful gift – a fullness and richness beyond anything we could create or even dream of ourselves.  It’s worth a prayer or two.  And so, I add my own voice to the prayer offered for the Ephesians and extend it for you … for all of us, knowing that the faithfulness of our God will make it so.  And so ...

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Faithful Hearts

sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 7:1-8, 14-23

I'm not sure how it is with you, but often when I read a scripture, it calls to mind others that I have read before.  I know that shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.  Maybe it’s just a hold over from a time when I felt like I didn’t know the bible very well, but I’m not really a biblical scholar, and the congregations I grew up in didn’t particularly encourage memorizing passages of scripture.  So, it still amazes me when connections come to mind … and especially when I actually know where to find the text that comes to mind.

This week was one of those times.  When I read the last three verses of the scripture from Mark, I immediately thought of Matthew, chapter 18, verses 8 and 9.  Those verses read:

            If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away;
                        it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame
                               than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into eternal fire.
            And if you eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away;
                        it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes
                                and to be thrown into the hell of fire.

 

If you don’t see the link between the two texts, I don’t blame you.  It’s not the kind of connection that usually leads from one scripture to another, but I think that it does underscore what Jesus told his disciples as he explained his statement about what is clean and what is unclean.  I know that still doesn’t make the link clear.  So, let me do some explaining myself … and I should say that most of this comes from a lecture I had with Professor Jeff Bach rather than my own thinking.

 

Take a moment to think about those verses in Matthew.  “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off ….  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out….”  They sound horrible and inhumane … and impossible.  Even the most extreme zealots would have to think twice about doing that, though some have followed these instructions over the years.  But, even if you take the teachings literally, it make little sense to maim or blind yourself … because, after all, it is not your hand or your foot or your eye that causes you to sin.  All of those parts of your body are controlled by your brain.

And what controls your brain?  The answer to that is up for discussion.  You might say that it’s your spirit that holds those controls.  Or your conscience.  Or your will.  Or your sense of yourself – your ego.  But in the time when Jesus was teaching, the heart was the seat of all of those different pieces that make a person … a person.  So, one of the points that Jesus may have been trying to make was that sin and evil did not come from some outside source.  It came from the heart – from a heart that was not in tune with God.

But, if the heart is the seat of sinfulness and evil, it is also the seat of righteousness and good.  It is the place where our highest purposes are born and nurtured and brought to life.  It is dwelling place of our souls and the place where we connect most directly with the Spirit of the Divine.  It is the wellspring of the love and compassion, the mercy and justice, the hope and faith that inspire and empower our lives as children of God and followers of Christ.  And, … it is the arena in which our struggle to choose between right and wrong … to choose for or against God takes place … to embody a heart of faith or live with a heart of stone.

 

As far as I know, there is only one sin that the Bible tells us is unforgiveable – blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.  It’s not in the Ten Commandments.  It’s not part of the law taught by the priests or rabbis.  But it was condemned by Jesus a few chapters before this in Mark.  So, I think that we need to take that seriously.

At the same time, I think we need to take the spiritual condition of a hardened heart just as seriously.  It seems to come in a close second, and Jesus saves his harshest criticism for those in the religious community who demonstrate hard hearts.  That’s what this whole little tableau is about.  Earlier, some of these same people (or at least people with the same credentials) had incited a crowd to try and kill Jesus because he had healed a man’s hand on the Sabbath.  Now they are condemning the disciples for eating food without washing their hands first.  That was a rule originally meant for priests who were about to eat the sacrificial bread, but it had been transformed into a ritual practice for all upright and observant Jews.

The Pharisees and scribes had apparently missed the point the point the first time around.  So Jesus spelled it out, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”  It is the selfish actions that demean people, ignore or cause pain and suffering in others, or seek to elevate one person at the expense of a brother or sister that make a person unclean. 

The message seems clear, especially after Jesus explains further to the disciples.  In abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition, the Pharisees had lost touch with the compassion at the heart of the law – a compassion for all people born of God’s great love.  If they had had faithful hearts, they would have been much less concerned with physical purity.  They would not have been pointing fingers.  Instead they would have been reaching out to people with open hands … helping hands … loving, compassionate hands.

 

We need to be careful too.  It’s easy to point fingers at the Pharisees and dismiss their “legalism,” but if we stop there, we, too, have missed the point.  The rules that they followed had been formed over generations by well-meaning people who were honestly trying to follow the commandments they had received from God.  They were just trying to make sure that they didn’t slip up – didn’t accidentally break those laws through ignorance.  But the hedge that they had built around the law had grown to obscure its meaning over time.  Little by little, they had wandered from the path.  Step by step, their hearts had become hardened even as they were trying to remain faithful.

That happens to us too.  We start off following Christ with good intentions … and end up far from the compassion that Jesus himself modeled.  Usually we aren’t even aware that we have strayed because the reasons that started our wandering have become such a part of us that we no longer question them until someone comes along and challenges us.

That has been my experience, at least.  When I was in High School, I went to Christian Citizenship Seminar in New York and Washington, DC.  CCS is a program offered by the Church of the Brethren to bring youth together once a year to learn about a particular social, spiritual, and political issue that is important in the life of our society.  They have focused on militarism, the environment, and racism among other things.  The one that I am remembering concentrated on poverty, and I came out of it with a conviction that I should do more to care for the hungry and homeless around me.

That sense conviction has stayed with me over the years, and I still feel a compulsion to help whenever someone asks me for some change.  But, I have learned a lot more about the complex reasons behind homelessness, and I have seen many, many hungry people who will take whatever money they get to buy drugs or alcohol rather than food.  And so I have generally stopped giving money.

It used to be that I would carry food with me to give to people instead of money.  After a while, I stopped doing that, but I would take the time to walk with someone into a nearby restaurant or convenience store and buy them something to eat … if they were willing to go along.  Eventually, though, I stopped doing that as well.  Now, I usually just walk on past.  Sometimes I will say hello.  Sometimes I don’t even afford them that little offering of humanity.  When I think about it (which isn’t too often since it makes me so uncomfortable), I feel a deep sadness that I seem to have lost touch with the power of that 17-year-old’s conviction … that I don’t know how to change the hardened defense that separates me from those who are suffering back into a softer more compassionate heart.

 

This week I remembered a story that I hadn’t thought of in years.  It was shared by David Radcliff during the week of that same Christian Citizenship Seminar, and I found it to be quite inspiring.  David’s job required him to visit Washington, DC regularly, and he spent quite a lot of time in and around Union Station where many of the homeless men and women of Capitol Hill hang out.  So, he was often asked to help out with some spare change.

At first he gave whatever change was in his pocket to people, but then the word spread and more people would ask him for money.  He began to make sure that he never carried change in his pocket so that he could honestly say that he had none to give, but that didn’t sit well with him.  So, he stopped speaking to people and, eventually, even started to walk with his eyes on the floor so that he wouldn’t make eye contact.

A few months later, he was outside Union Station waiting to meet someone, and a homeless man was standing nearby.  David tried to be polite but distant when the man greeted him, but as his short wait grew into a long one, he ended up having a conversation with the "Sam."  Over the next hour, he heard a bit about Sam’s history, and when it was time for him to leave, he gave Sam $5 even though he had never asked for it.

Over the course of the next several weeks, similar situations gave David and Sam a chance to get to know one another better, and David came to care about Sam and to see him as a unique individual.  Over the course of the year, they became what some might call friends, and David began to plan his schedule so that they could have lunch together once a week.  In that way, he was able to reach out to one person and help.

 

But, we all know it goes deeper and farther than just how we deal with the hungry or homeless, though it would go a long way if we could find a way to show them compassion at every turn.  Our human habits have taken us a long way from Jesus’ teachings about faithful living.  He taught us to forgive others, and we gladly accept forgiveness from others.  We live with the assurance that our all our sins are forgiven through the grace of God.  Yet, we often harbor long-term resentment toward those who have offended us.

Jesus also taught us to love our enemies and to refuse violence even in the most dire of circumstances, and when it is a far away thing – a war somewhere else – we can generally go along with that.  Yet, when we often respond with physical, verbal, or emotional violence when we feel personally threatened.

And what about welcoming the stranger or visiting those in prison?  We are a very hospitable congregation.  It’s one of our spiritual gifts as a community of faith to open our doors and our hearts to the people who walk through our open doors.  Yet, look around you.  We have our differences, but in the larger scheme of things, we are all pretty similar to each other.  I think part of that is because the people who seek this place out are looking for a church like this, but I know that we have difficulty reaching out to invite others to join us.  And, I wonder if it part of it is that we struggle to accept and welcome people who are really different from us – who stretch our comfort zone.  I wonder if the way that we “do” church is a barrier – if our religious traditions have taken the edge off of the welcome we want to offer.

 

It is not easy to meet the central challenge of the gospel.  It is hard to transform our hearts.  And even when we have made the effort - struggled to meet the challenge to best of our ability, trusting God to do the rest – it is so easy to give in to the habits of our past and the weight of our culture.  It is so easy to wander … little by little … step by step … to wander from the path of compassionate love that Jesus set out before us – to let our faithful hearts become callous and hard.

Maybe the answer lies in personal relationships like the one David developed.  It is harder to ignore people when you know them well.  Or maybe it’s as simple as practicing.  Using our physical muscles makes them stronger, and many people have found the same to be true with our spiritual muscles.  Or maybe we need something else altogether.  I’m sure it’s different for each one of us, but there is one thing that remains the same regardless of who we are … we need to keep working at it.  If we are too live up to our dreams of being followers of Christ in more than name alone, we need to nurture faithful hearts … loving hearts … hearts that reach out to others in gentleness and compassion.

 
May it be so.

Woman Wisdom

homily by Carrie Eikler

John 56-69, Proverbs 9:1-6

(followed with Holy Communion)

I don’t know how many of you heard Axel Anderson’s response in the children’s story last week.  Mary asked the kids what is the difference between being wise and being smart.  And Axel said “Being wise is knowing between right and wrong and how to act.  Being smart is knowing stuff…you know…like math and things.”  The writers of Proverbs probably couldn’t have said it any better.  Today’s scripture reading in Proverbs, is sort of like a sister scripture to last week’s Psalm.  Remember last week?  Come, my children, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.  Well we talked about what the fear of the Lord meant, and can mean for us today.  But we didn’t talk so much about the teaching part.  The learning part.  The getting wise in the way of God.  Getting wisdom.

And wisdom is a big thing in the community that the Proverbs were written for.  Proverbs were these sayings written for and by the Hebrew people to pass down wisdom through the generations.  Wisdom--which is a feminine noun, the same way Spirit is a feminine noun—was not just something you learned in your head.  Wisdom was, what Wil Gafney describes as—a heart-and-hand-and head type of living.  After all, the seat of the soul for the Hebrew people was in the heart.  Wisdom was incorporating the Torah, the law, into oneself.  Making it part of one’s life.  Wisdom was living life by the words of the Law.

But before we do what many Christians do and say, well we live by the words of Christ, not the Law…let me clarify that the Hebrew people, despite our interpretations, weren’t as legalistic as we like to make them out to be.  The law was not merely rules to follow but was, rather, the offer of relationships—a means to provide guidance and strength for life. 

The writer of proverbs creates a character, a personification of wisdom, to offer a winsome invitation to us, so that we may choose the way of God.  That’s basically what it is, this proverb.  It’s an invitation: Wisdom—the heart-and-hand-and-head living—has prepared a table for us.  She’s built a shelter for us.  She has procured sustenance.  And she invites all.  No carefully selected guest list here.  She sends her people to the top of the mountain to shout it to everyone.

I know the liturgical calendar isn’t not planned this way, but what better time to explore Woman Wisdom’s Table as the world celebrates 100 years since the birth of Julia Child.  I mean, if I were to personify the creative passion of Wisdom who chops trees, carves stones, butchers her own fresh meat, mixes her wine, and sets her table” in order to bring both joy and “heart-and-hand-and-head knowledge” to the people…I think Julia would probably be it.  Aside from leaving a lasting culinary legacy among the finest chefs in the world, Julia Child told all housewives (and husbands) that cooking was not just “for fluffies.”

Over the past few years our family have collected a few DVD sets of old French Chef episodes, and other Julia Child cooking shows.  The boys love to watch them—especially the one on how to stuff your own sausages.  It’s a far cry from the popular cooking shows that now have cooking as a competition: who can be top chef? who can be reduced to tears the easiest in the kitchen? Not the type of kitchen Woman Wisdom would be caught dead in.

No I think Julia’s kitchen may be more like what we’re seeing in proverbs.  Bob Spitz the author “Dearie”, the recently released Julia Child biography, reflected that Julia’s genius as a bringer of culinary wisdom as good news to ordinary people lay in her ability to demystify the process, to not be intimidated by it, to be fearless, to plunge right in.  Technique was essential of course, but you had to find the pleasure in.”  Once Julia asked the viewing audience “What makes a great chef?” and she answers “Well, training of technique of course, plus a great love of food, a generous personality and…  the ability to invent hot chocolate truffles…”

What a feast of food—and wisdom--she gave us…As Christians we can certainly relate to the image of the feast.  This feast that Wisdom prepares in Proverbs is a lot like Christ’s invitation in the gospel reading of today.  Although, admittedly, this Eucharistic image is lot “harder to swallow” than other descriptions of communion.  He’s talking about his flesh and blood that they will eat.  Now this is not the public relations savvy Jesus here.  Not the warm, welcoming invitation of Julia Child as Woman Wisdom.  No chocolate truffles to sweeten the bitter taste of sacrifice.

And unlike Julia, Jesus doesn’t clarify much, but he simply invites people into thinking about it: and as we often see today , when we actually invite people to think about these things, or invite them to experience creatively in a physical act that has a spiritual dimension…they started walking away.  Even his own disciples throw up their hands at him, saying this is too hard!

Someone who was really worried about the number in his entourage would have tried to find a way to convince them.  But as Walter Bubar says, “… Jesus let them go! He let them just wander off and made no attempt to stop them. He didn’t say, “Hey, hold on a second! Let me break it down for you.” He didn’t offer a Jesus for Dummies version of things. Instead he made things difficult. He left his followers with their questions unanswered, apparently preferring to let them go off and wrestle with those questions rather than give them easy answers or a user-friendly faith.”

He doesn’t spell it out in a powerpoint lecture for the disciples to learn.  Rather he sort of… slips up next to Woman Wisdom.  And after she dusts the flour off her brow, sends her servant girls up the mountain to call all those skeptics back, she sits down with Jesus and her well-earned glass of homebrewed wine. 

They sit together, not with a lecture, but with an invitation to a feast, where the disciples—and us—can learn wisdom through word, and action, and feasting, and failing, and loving, and experiencing the head-and-heart-and-hand wisdom of the Divine.

 

[For a wonderful remix of Julia Child's philosophy and scrumptous cooking, check out this video]

Learning to Fear

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Psalm 34:9-14
What are you afraid of?  I asked the “new friends” on our “new Facebook page” what they were fear-full of, and Trent Milam all the way from California made me promise to quote him on Sunday that his fear is “Banana Spiders.  Worse. Thing. Ever” he says.  I personally have never come across one, so I don’t know how I’d feel about them.  Another friend of mine in my book group responded that her fear was “vomit.”  OK, I have experienced that one.  My fear, being the Midwestern girl I am is tornadoes.  My mother: snakes.  Torin’s fear, I’d venture to say: baboons.  Just ask him why.  So what is your fear?

Those fears, they are somewhat situational aren’t they.  They come about when you happen upon a scary beast, or inclement weather.  But I’d venture to say that most of us here are living in some type of fear that is bigger that these things.  Fear about your job.  Or your retirement security.  Fear about the well being of someone you love, or losing your house, or your health.  Fear about what comes next?  Fear about the environment, and what kind of world your children and grandchildren will be left.

These fears aren’t so easy to post about on social media, or to share with one another in a faith community, or even tell your pastor about so she can hold you in prayer.

And do know, I have my own.  I stand before you with my fears, unique, but maybe not so different from your own, at least, not so different in how our spirits and bodies and minds react to those deep fears.  Maybe we’ve both been looking at the clock at 1:37am, you and I in our separate houses, praying our minds will just settle down, our fears dissolve momentarily, so we could each find sleep.

Now here’s a harder question. How many of you fear God?  How many of you fear God?  That’s a tricky question. After all we are constantly being told “do not fear”: Genesis 15:1, Luke 1:30, even in the terrifying book of Revelation, chapter 1 verse 17 we are told “do not be afraid.”  It’s almost as if it is one of God’s most favorite phrase: do not be afraid.

So why then, are we told in the Psalm for today…to fear?  Probably as much as we are told to “not be afraid” we are told to “fear the Lord”, to learn the “fear of the Lord,” that those who “fear the Lord” will be blessed.

There is a not-very-healthy strain of Christianity that “grows by highlighting a negative fear of the Lord”[i]  It is a fear that emphasizes judgment and terror. You probably know what I’m talking about It is a fear that “sets a deep guilt into our souls, and it feeds on itself…”  It’s turns that fear within us and projects it outwards, looking at the world and everything not like ourselves, or our image of what is “right” and encourages self-protection, and a zealous purity whose ramifications can be disastrous.  While some may flock to the churches emphasizing this, many feel repelled by it, and find it contradictory to the loving message of Jesus.  And yet, we are still left with question “what is this fear we are supposed to have for the Lord?”

Well, as often happens in scripture, there is a lot lost in translation.  What is translated in English as “fear” is perhaps an unsatisfactory translation of the Hebrew.  The word that is used is “yare” which can mean to “be afraid of” but when used towards a diety, such as God, the scripture would better be read as “revere YHWH”: this is probably better translated as “revere YHWH alone by honoring and obeying only YHWH.”  I like how Eugene Peterson translates this in The Message:

Worship God if you want the best; worship opens doors to all his goodness.  Young lions on the prowl get hungry, but God-seekers are full of God.  Come, children, listen closely, I’ll give you a lesson in God worship.  Who out there has a lust for life?  Can’t wait each day to come upon beauty?  Guard your tongue from profanity, and no more lying through your teeth.  Turn your back on sin; do something good.  Embrace peace—don’t let it get away!

This is yare, the worship of God that frees us, not the fear of God that freezes us.

When we were on our way to Maine for our vacation, we stopped for breakfast at a Roy Rogers in Cumberland, Maryland.  There was a TV on, and they were reporting on the shooting in Colorado, which happened just the night before.  I situated the boys in a booth so they couldn’t see the TV while they noshed on their breakfast sandwich.  I didn’t want them to see or hear about what was going on. Shortly after we arrived home, it felt like for a few days my breakfasts were punctuated with scrambling to turn down NPR when reports of the killings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin came on: they boys are old enough now to ignore the mundane chatter, but they sure do pick up words like “kill” and “shoot” and “dead.” 

Fear is a word to describe the experiences of many in this past month.  On my part, fear of the boys feeling scared and unsafe, fear of my own incompetence to talk to them about the hard reality of life.  Witnessing fear and xenophobia of a country whose ethnic and religious tension grows everyday.  Fear of living in a country like that.  Fear of my own fear. 

I don’t want that fear any more.  I don’t want any of God’s children to live out of that fear—fear which leads to such violence. I want the fear of the Lord.  The reverence.  The awe.  The joy in a God that moves me from negative fear to a life seeking peace and pursuing it, even when it seems the world around me is falling apart.

The Reverend Janet Hunt, a Lutheran pastor, was serving a congregation in DeKalb Illinois in 2008 when a gunman opened fire at Northern Illinois University, injuring 25 and killing six, including himself.  

Hunt recounts snippets of that first day[ii]: The call that came saying there had been a shooting Standing in candlelight vigil with students on a cold February night. Dwelling with one family huddled together as they received the unimaginable news that their daughter who had survived a tour in Iraq had been murdered in a college classroom in DeKalb, Illinois. These images flood back to her whenever the headline of another senseless shooting reaches her

But the story that still touches my heart is this one, she says: A friend, a member of the congregation I was then serving, is the Director of Emergency Services at our community hospital. While dozens and dozens of courageous people were about saving lives that day, her staff walked into some of the worst of it. It was the end of the day --- The wounded had been tended and had gone home with families or sent on for surgery or other needed interventions. But there were still six dead young people: five students and the gunman…who had turned his ammunition on himself. There were families waiting to see them, to make final identifications, to go deeper into the grief that was already gripping them. [She knew] that someone would need to clean up their bodies so as to at least ease in some small way the horror that was waiting their families. And so she did. [It wasn’t her job to do, but she] said she didn't want her staff to carry those memories and so one by one she went into room after room after room and wiped away the blood from their wounds. She did so for the shooter, too. Later she said he looked like the boy next door...not some monster capable of inflicting such senseless suffering.

For I say this in all truth. I hear news of the kinds of shootings we hear of again in these last days ---- at a midnight showing of a movie in Colorado --- in a Sikh Temple outside of Milwaukee --- and a great sense of helplessness overcomes me. As I have stood with those who grieve such senseless losses before, I find myself aching as I imagine the pain being felt by so many today. And yet it seems to me there must be more than empathy for us to offer. Yes, even more than walking in and picking up the pieces and wiping up the blood to ease the suffering of those left behind in some small way. ..[M]ustn't our faith, our following Jesus, still make some difference in all of this?

“And maybe that difference is simply this.” she proposes, and where I see her almost become the psalmist who wrote our words we read today:  Every one of those who grew up into those who would pack up an armory of weapons and ammunition and inflict such violence --- every one of them was someone's child, confirmation student, team member, student, next door neighbor. So perhaps it simply comes down to this: maybe I need to begin to take a second look at the boy, the girl next door. Maybe I need to begin to see all those I encounter --- in my office, at worship, at coffee hour, in the grocery line, at a high school football game, on the bike path, in the car next to mine at the stoplight ---maybe I need to see all those I encounter as those who hold all the potential in the world. To SEE them, not with a heart made dull by indifference or quickened by fear but [to see them] rather with a heart full of wonder, and curiosity and hope. To see us all as bearing the very face of Jesus, for in fact we do. And then to begin to act like this is so.

What Hunt is talking about, that is the fear of the Lord: hearts full of wonder, and curiosity, and hope: “To see us all as bearing the very face of Jesus, for in fact we do.  And then to begin to act like this is so.”

Worship God if you want the best; worship opens doors to all his goodness.  Young lions on the prowl get hungry, but God-seekers are full of God.  Come, children, listen closely, I’ll give you a lesson in God worship.  Who out there has a lust for life?  Can’t wait each day to come upon beauty?  Guard your tongue from profanity, and no more lying through your teeth.  Turn your back on sin; do something good.  Embrace peace—don’t let it get away!

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[i] Candler, Sam “Homiletical Perspective: Psalm 34:9-14 Feasting on the Word

[ii] Hunt, Janet.  “The Boy Next Door: Another Senseless Shooting”  www.dancingwiththeword.com

You Are What You Eat

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 6:35, 41-51         Ephesians 4:25-5:2

I grew up hearing the words “You are what you eat” … a lot.  I got it from my mother, and I got it from my teachers at school.  But, the image that always comes to mind when I hear it now is the one that came from School House Rock.  That was the series of short cartoons that brought my generation songs like “Conjunction Junction,” “I’m just a Bill,” and “Yuck Mouth” which taught us about grammar, how Congress passes laws, and the importance of brushing our teeth, respectively.  And in the several shorts called “Time for Timer,” School House Rock gave me images to go along with the idea of eating healthy.

Thanks to “The Body Machine,” “You are What You Eat,” and various shorts about healthy snacks, I have comforting animated pictures of cheese and cracker wagon wheels and chicken sandwiches moving through my stomach and intestines to give me the energy and building blocks that I need to turn me into a walking chicken leg or a fish with legs … or at least keep my body a healthy, functioning machine instead of a blob of fat with feet.  Ah, the wonders of Saturday morning cartoons in the 80s.  I sometimes wish they still played those kind of public service messages.  They might even convince me to get cable so that my children could share in the fun!

Well, in this section of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul seems to have been sending his own version of a PSA to a congregation that needs to learn about healthy eating.  In other places he was much more explicit about watching what you eat … literally.  In Corinthians and Galatians, he talked about eating food offered as a sacrifice in Roman temples and how some believers should avoid that if it was a threat to their faith.  Here though, he was speaking about something less mundane and much more dangerous to everyone – the threat of seduction by the surrounding culture.

The Ephesians, it seems, had taken on many of the more … undesirable traits of the people they lived with.  They were lying to one another, holding grudges, gossiping, and speaking hurtful words.  They were even stealing and “brawling” in violation of both the eighth commandment and the spirit of Christ’s teachings about shunning violence and caring for one another.  Those kinds of immorality were common in culture of the time as they are still common today, but they are good food of a body of believers.  Paul encourages the believers to leave them behind in favor of a healthier diet.

Founded on the Bread of Life, that spiritual diet seems to have been just about the opposite of what the Ephesians were eating.  Certainly there were some things that they had been doing right, and Paul simply left those things out – perhaps to save space and perhaps because he trusted their inherent understanding of morality and the power of guilt and shame to reveal what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong.  At the least, his writing at the beginning of this letter showed that he trusted in their faith and the strength of character it took to become a Christian in the midst of a society that was unfriendly to followers of the way.

Still, he found himself compelled to speak about these specific issues that threatened the health of the community.  In place of lying, he encouraged speaking the truth.  More specifically he spoke of sharing the truth in a loving way so that it did not become a tool that caused even more pain.  In place of anger, he encouraged love.  In place of stealing, he told them to commit themselves to work honestly with their hands so that they could share with each other the fruits of their labors.  And in place of hurtful words and violence, he prescribed kindness, tenderness, compassion, and forgiveness.  In that way, he built an image of a healthy community for them that would serve to guide them as well as my cartoons have served me.

As much as I believe that Paul’s letters do have important things to teach us, I have trouble believing that all of this is relevant for this congregation.  I don’t think that many of us have an issue with brawling, though I suppose that the occasional violent act crosses our minds … and maybe finds release.  I also believe that none of us have taken to stealing as a way to support ourselves.  I suspect that most of us do have some work to do in the area of forgiveness and letting go of grudges born of anger or frustration.  Where I do think we have a lot to learn, though, is in speaking truth in love which may be the most important piece in this list of advice since Paul mentions it in several other places.

As it turns out, telling lies – even white lies – is bad for your health.  I found this out on Wednesday from a reporter who asked if he could interview me on the topic for the evening news, and while the final cut of my interview left me feeling a little sheepish, it also got me interested in looking up the facts of the study.

Apparently the average American lies about 11 times each week – which actually doesn’t seem like all that much.  But the stress of it still gets to us.  The strain that comes from worrying if we will be found out triggers our fight or flight responses, and with nowhere to run and nothing to fight, we internalize the pressure for action.  The results can be as minor as tight shoulders and feelings of tension and melancholy or as significant as greater vulnerability to headaches and colds.[1]  Some people even speculate that regular lying could lead to greater risk of heart attacks and strokes based on other studies about stress-related risks.  It would seem that honesty is not only “the best policy,” it is also good for your health.

 Paul didn’t have any access to that kind of information, but he understood other dangers that come from being careless with the truth.  Broken relationships, angry spirits, and even violence can come from lying, but just being honest is not enough.  If we are not careful and caring in our telling, the truth can do a lot of damage. Wielded without thought, it can become a weapon with the power to cut much more deeply than a sword.  It can break relationships, give birth to angry spirits, and incite violence and suffering just as well as lies.  A few poorly chosen words can reach right to the core of a person’s self-image and wreak havoc that spills over into every part of their life.  It can cause pain and suffering that last a lifetime and resist every kind of healing that we have to offer.  Sometimes, it can seem kinder to lie.  The solution that Paul proposes to this dilemma is to speak the truth but only with an eye to easing whatever pain those words may cause – to speak the truth in love.

Speak the truth in love … it sounds like an easy task as first glance, but I suspect that all of us know that it’s not nearly so simple when we actually try to do it.  We feel helpless as we watch someone we love dearly do crazy and even self-destructive things, and we don’t have any idea how to tell them what’s going on without embarrassing them.  We know that we need to let them know, but we’re worried about how they will respond and we don’t want to hurt them.  And the longer we wait, the harder it gets.  How do you tell someone that they are hurting others or betraying their own ethics without driving them away?

There’s no easy answer to that question.  Even experience doesn’t guarantee success. What works once doesn’t always work again … even with the same person because each situation is different and people change.  Jesus, himself, didn’t always get it right.  Though some would argue that he knew what he was doing when he used his truth as a weapon, it seems to me that he might have had more success if he hadn’t called the Pharisees hypocrites quite so many times in public.  He might have won more converts among them if he had used a different approach. 

Still, he did understand the need for compassion with most people.  When he spoke to the rich young ruler, he didn’t condemn him.  In fact, he celebrated the many achievements that the man had made in his struggle toward righteous living before sharing the need for him to share his riches with the poor.  And rather than condemning the woman caught in adultery, he told her, “Go and sin no more.”  Neither of those two people went away from their meeting with Jesus’ truth content and happy, but they both had hope and a reason to work at changing their lives.

It takes practice and commitment to speak truth in love.  It takes the courage to risk mistakes and the humility to ask for forgiveness when we fail.  It’s a learning process … a skill that we must cultivate with care and love … a process of growth and maturing that we need to nurture with prayer and faith if we are to live into our potential as believers and disciples.

A pre-school teacher tells the story of a four year old who was sent to apologize to a child he had hit on the playground.  Several minutes later, he did the same thing again.  When the teacher called him over, the boy explained, “That’s okay.  I’ll apologize to him again later.”  It took the teacher quite a while to persuade the child that hitting someone was never okay and that that’s not the point of apologizing.

When it comes to speaking to each other in love, we are all children with a lot to learn.  There are times when we do it well, and we think that we’ve got it figured out.  And there are times – probably more times – when we do our best and find that we have let loose a punch that we didn’t mean to throw.  But we need to keep at it.  We need to keep trying … keep working at it so that we can find a way to share our own pieces of truth with one another.  Without that sharing, the body of Christ will never become what it could be and we will never grow into God’s vision for us as children of the Peaceable Kingdom.

Our society teaches us that we must care for ourselves and our own above and beyond anything else because no one else will do it for us.  It tells us that it is okay to lie or cheat or steal in order to get ahead.  That’s the meat and potatoes of the American dream after all, and in the past several years, we have seen so many people get away with it that it makes us wonder why we should be any different.

But we have fed ourselves on a different diet.  We have eaten the Bread of Life and drunk the Wine of Compassion – foods that foster an entirely different spirit … that encourage a different kind of living – foods that bring forth love, joy, and peace … kindness, generosity, and faithfulness … gentleness and self-control.  With those building blocks and that fuel powering our “Body Machine,” we have what we need to nurture a different way of living and loving in this world.

We are not yet … may never be perfect imitators of Christ, but we have hope.  We have brothers and sisters, companions in the struggle, friends we know and trust to walk with us on the path, lovingly sharing the truth that we need to hear along the way.  And we have the Bread of Life to sustain us - a stream of spiritual nourishment that will never run out –a source of hope boundless enough to feed all of God’s children.  It is ours … given to us in love … given that we may know life without end.

  

Sisters and brothers, that is hope.  That is grace.  That is the compassion of Christ laid out for us that we may come to know what is the height, the breadth and the depth of God’s love for us – to know and to share with one another and with all the hungry souls of this world.  May it be so.

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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/honesty-healthy-lies-truth_n_1748144.html

The Bread of Life

sermon by Torin Eikler
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15   John 6:22-35

“I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

Those are the words that Jesus said to the crowds that had followed him after he multiplied the five loaves and two fish.  They had tried to set him up as a king, but he had escaped them, going first to the mountain alone and then sailing across the sea with his disciples.  But the people followed him.  They sought him out, and when they found him, Jesus rebuked them.  And the question that comes to my mind when I hear that story is the same question they asked him … what’s wrong with that?

Of course, they put it a different way.  They said, “Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘he gave them bread from heaven to eat.”  What sign can you give us that could be more powerful than that … than the miracle you have already shown us?  Why shouldn’t we want bread in the same way?

And Jesus gives them no sign.  He doesn’t even address their question … not really.  Instead he tells them that he, himself, is the bread from heaven that gives life to the world…  that whoever comes to him will never be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty.  All fine and good, and we know those words.  We have heard them and others like them many times before, and if I asked you, I’m sure that you would probably say that you believe them.  And yet, they are patently untrue… at least in the context that Jesus spoke them.  People do get hungry and thirsty no matter how strong or pure their faith is.  So, why did Jesus refuse to feed the people?

When Carrie and I were first married and living in Washington, DC, we were volunteering with two different organizations.  I was working as a cook and kitchen manager in a soup kitchen on Capitol Hill.  Carrie was working as an organizer with School of the Americas Watch – an organization devoted to raising awareness about the United States role in training Central American military staff in torturous methods of dealing with citizens that threatened their regimes.  It was my job to address the immediate needs of people who didn’t have enough to eat.  It was her job to work at changing the systems that brought about injustice and abuse.

In the course of our year there, we made several friends in our various “fields” and were invited to several evening get-togethers where talk inevitably turned to the “evils” we were all addressing in our society or in the world.  What surprised us was not the passion … or even the single-mindedness with which people did their work, it was the amount of judgment (and sometimes disdain) that seemed to divide the non-profit world in that city.

People who worked at advocacy felt that it was useless to simply treat the symptoms of our cultural ills by feeding or housing people in need.  At the very least, that did nothing to address the deeper issues, and it might even support an unjust system by relieving the pressure on policy-makers to change things.  One evening when he was feeling particularly extreme, one person even suggested that people should be left on the streets, starving so that the government would have to acknowledge the sheer size of the problem, address the issue, or accept responsibility for the injustice and inhumanity of their policies.

On the other side, people who worked to feed and house those in need were often angry and frustrated at the attitude of policy advocates.  They accused them of being callous and calculating.  They wasted time and resources that could actually do some good if they were directed toward succoring the people who fell through the cracks of our social support systems.

It was a strange situation to be in.  Our work made us intimately aware of how both sides of the discussion were unquestionably correct in thinking that their efforts were important – essential even – to the health and wellbeing of the people of the world and to the progress of our society toward a better way of living together.  But, I could never understand why there was animosity between the two camps.  The expression, “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime,” has truth to it.  But, if you don’t give that man a fish to eat, then he may not survive to learn.  It seemed clear – still seems clear to me that the two should be working together.

I think that Jesus would certainly agree on that point.  He showed that he understood it when he fed the crowd so that they would have the strength to continue to seek out the new truth that he was teaching.  And, I suppose that one might be able to make the argument that the rebuke he offers in this story was aimed at limiting the people’s dependence on him and pushing them to learn how to take care of themselves.  After all, wasn’t Jesus was teaching a new way of living together – the kingdom way that provided for everyone exactly what they needed through compassionate sharing?  But while that was a big part of Jesus purpose while he walked the earth, I don’t think that was what he was getting at here.

In the story we heard from Exodus this morning – the story that the crowds quoted when talking to Jesus – the Israelites were stuck in the wilderness without any source of food.  They had brought a lot of supplies with them out of Egypt.  But 600,000 people go through a lot of bread, and they had no means of getting any more.  They were in a bad place and had begun thinking that it might have been better to stay slaves than to die of starvation.

When they turned to Moses with their concerns, he, in turn, went up the chain of command and put the problem squarely in God’s lap.  And God responded by providing Manna – bread from heaven in unbelievable amounts.  God even went a step further and sent quail to the people in the evenings so that they would have at least a little variety in their diet.

What our reading left out, though, was the people’s response to God’s gift.  Warned that they should not collect any more than they needed if they didn’t want an infestation of worms and an outbreak of disease … assured that the providence of God would continue to sustain them, they still took matters into their own hands, and the result was exactly what had been promised.  Worms grew in the meat and the flour they had collected and many of the wanderers got sick. 

But the illness wasn’t really the problem.  It wasn’t even the disobedience.  They learned their lesson, and God did not withdraw the food from them.  What their actions showed was that they had missed the point completely.  God was providing for them so that they didn’t need to worry about the future.  They were free to leave behind their fears and their insecurities, but they failed to answer the call to leave behind their need to have more than enough – to leave behind their greed.

I think that is what Jesus’ confrontation with the crowd was really about.  They, too, had missed the significance of the miracle they had witnessed.  They failed to understand it as a sign that spoke of God’s love and care for the people and a call to set aside their own hunger and desire.  They failed to see that God’s love was among them in Jesus.  They sought him out not so much to learn more about God’s love and grace as to see more and get more for themselves….  More than they needed.

There are times when I am sure that we are in the same situation.  Not always, at least not in this congregation.  I have seen this community share deeply from their own bounty to support those in need, and I would not say that any of us are really greedy.  But there are times when we do gather more than we need, times when we forget that God is caring for us and we don’t need to fear … times when we forget the meaning of God’s powerful signs of love, forget that Jesus lives among us holding out grace offered freely for our needs.

This morning, as we take communion, I invite to consider that grace … to consider it and let go of all the things that you hold onto … that hold onto you.  Let go of the things that you don’t need and accept the new life offered to you through the love of God.