Refined Courage

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Micah 3:1-4, Luke 1:68-79
December 9, 2012 (Advent 2)

You know me.  I stand up here every two weeks and share my insights into the gospel, stories from my life.  It’s not an easy thing.  It’s not necessarily a fun thing.  Frankly, it’s quite a vulnerable thing. But it is a blessed thing, for me in my life, and hopefully for you. 

And if you know me, you know how much I love the PBS icon Julia Child.  Not just because she was a fascinating cook and media personality, but because she was so…real. 

One of the most beloved scenes in her French Chef episodes, is when she attempt s to flip a potato pancake.  As she is holding the pan over the flame (or probably, the electric range), she is sweating over all the heat and exertion she has been putting in the kitchen, and as she’s kind of out of breath and she says “When you flip anything…you just have to have the courage of your convictions” and she flips this loose mass of potatoes and some fall out of the side to which she delightfully responds “Well that didn’t go very well, but you can always pick it up.  [and she plops it back into the pan] And if you are alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?”

Courage.  From the Latin cor, or from the heart. 
Courage. 
What you’ve got when do you the things you don’t think you can do. 
Courage. 
A little known prophet named Malachi speaking about God’s power and judgment. 
Courage. 
A man name Zecheriah, rendered mute by his understandable doubts, proclaiming greatness of an unseen God in the face of immediate occupation. 
Courage.

Maybe what got you out of bed this moring.

One thing I like about these two texts today, is that they are courageous words spoken from minor characters.  Malachi, eh…he was one of the minor prophets.  Not an Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or even an Amos.  In the face of these prophets, Malachi is a short, simple book about “bored priests, unfaithful husbands, and complaining laity.” [i]

And the reading from Luke comes from Zecheriah…who?  we might ask ourselves.  Zechariah.  Husband of Elizabeth.  Father of John the Baptist.  When an angel tells him that Elizabeth will bear a child, he scoffs and snorts riiight. And he is rendered mute, unable to speak, until the child is born.  And after nine months of not speaking, watching the evidence of the truth of this prophecy growing larger and larger, he *bursts* out with this song of praise.

So really, these are *eh* kind of characters and prophets in our tradition.  Easily forgotten.  Nothing too grand.  But what they say, and how we can receive what they say, can pierce us to the heart.  Can burn us like the refiner’s fire.

And really, each day of our life is like this.  Small struggles, perhaps insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but they are huge in our lives.  They each take some small (and big) acts of courage.   Actions that require us to move from our heart.  And I know that it may sound strange, but I’m sure you can attest…
 any act of courage you have undertaken, requires an enormous amount…of vulnerability.

And we don’t like vulnerability.  Vulnerability means opening ourselves up to get hurt.  Vulnerability means fleeing from the heat of our God’s love for fear we will be consumed completely.  Only that’s not what Malachi says.  God’s fire is not about consumption.  Judgment is not about condemnation.  In the heat of God’s fire for us we come out-- not perfected-- but righteous.  We come out more loved than we thought possible.  More worthy than our world would have us believe.

Advent is a time of waiting.  But not really a kick your feet up and lean back sort of waiting
If you have been a woman pregnant and waiting to give birth,
or a man waiting to be a father,
or an angel who has waited with someone who is scared
—and I’m sure those three have covered everyone here—
you know…this type of waiting and expectation is infused with intense vulnerability. 

And it changes you.

The vulnerability of Advent is not something we think about, because vulnerability is not something we like to think about.  Am I right?  I mean, if I actually had to stop and think about my vulnerabilities, I’d probably be incapacitated for hours.

We protect ourselves by hiding where and how we are vulnerable, for fear that others might find that weak spot—that place of pain—and exploit it, and hurt us.  So we act like it’s not there. 

Brené Brown is a shame and vulnerability expert.  That sure does sound appealing, doesn’t it?  Brown gave a speech at a TEDx Conference a few years ago that went viral—meaning, it took off across the internet.  Some of you may have heard of these TED Conferences.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.  They were created, as they put it, to share ideas worth spreading.  Notable Nobel Prize winners, scientists, former presidents have all been speakers.  Brown is a social work professor who researches shame and vulnerability.  Much of her research focuses on how we experience
and process
and use
and avoid
shame and vulnerability
 in our contemporary American context.

So what is vulnerability?  Well Brown says, “When I ask people what is vulnerability the answers were things like
                         my first date after my divorce,
                                           saying I love you first,
                                                 asking for a raise,
sitting with my wife who has Stage III breast cancer and trying to make plans for our children,

To me,” she says “vulnerability is courage. It's about the willingness to show up and be seen in our lives. And… those moments when we show up… are the most powerful meaning-making moments of our lives even if they don't go well. I think they define who we are.”[ii]

The scriptures today all have a thread of vulnerability to the outside world and the strength to move through the fire, the struggle, the occupation, the inability to speak and come out on the other side—not just alive, not just stronger--but completely transformed.

Brown recounts “The most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming out from underneath things I didn't know I could get out from underneath. …[those moments of struggle] those are the moments that made me,”

And what is Jesus’ life encapsulated in, if not vulnerability.  Born with animals, with a price on his head from the King.  Ended:  stripped, on a cross, a crown to mock him.  Think about it--our god was born not into opulence and power, but into vulnerability.  And that’s what makes his gospel seem like foolishness sometimes: loving your enemies, turning the cheek, being the servant, soulforce over brute force.  We think it’s foolishness because it requires us not to be brave, but to be courageous—to be vulnerable.

But that appears to be what we’re invited into this season.  To reconnect with vulnerability.  Whether through the fire we’ve been put through, or the cleansing we are experiencing, or the hard reality that our lives are simply beyond our control—if we open ourselves to that vulnerability, we are opening ourselves to known and transformed by God.  Transformed by the circumstances in our lives.

--

I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to resonate with Malachi’s image of fire, of the judgment from the righteous Lord.  It’s hard for me, even when it is “softened by Zechariah’s words that show us the end result of God’s work—[is that] light [will be given] to those who sit in darkness and [will guide] our feet into the way of peace.”[iii]

So I was happy when I came across a metaphor by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a physician, therapist, and storyteller. So let’s move away from the fiery furnace to the coolness of the ocean floor.  Our Advent theme is, after all, rooted in water imagery.  Imagine each of us an oyster.  Now this image may actually seem completely opposite of what a refining fire does—eliminating the impurities.  But somehow these two connected for me, and helped understand Malachi’s words and Zecheriah’s prophecy and how they invite us into transforming vulnerability.

So an oyster.

 Open up an oyster and you will see that it is “soft, tender, and vulnerable.
      Without the sanctuary of its shell it could not survive. 
           But oysters must open their shells in order to “breathe” water. 
Sometimes while an oyster is breathing, a grain of sand will enter its shell and become a part of its life from then on.

Such grains of sand cause pain, but an oyster does not alter its… nature because of this.
 It does not become hard and leathery in order not to feel.
            It continues to entrust itself to the ocean, to open and breathe in order to live. 
 But it does respond. 
Slowly and patiently, the oyster wraps the grain of sand in thin translucent layers until,
 over time,
it has created something of great value in the place where it was most vulnerable to its pain.  A pearl… might be thought of as an oyster’s response to its suffering. 

Sand is a way of life for an oyster.  If you are soft and tender and must live on the sandy floor of the ocean, making pearls becomes a necessity if you are to live well.”

As Dr. Remen reflects, “Disappointment and loss are a part of every life.  Many times we can put such things behind us and get on with the rest of our lives.  But not everything is amenable to this approach.  Some things are too big or too deep to do this, and we will have to leave important parts of ourselves behind if we treat them in this way.  These are the places where wisdom begins to grow in us.  It begins with suffering that we do not avoid or rationalize or put behind us.  It starts with the realization that our loss, whatever it is, has become a part of us and has altered our lives so profoundly that we cannot go back to the way it was before.

Something in us can transform such suffering into wisdom.  The process of turning pain into wisdom often looks like a sorting process.  First we experience everything.  Then one by one we let things go, the anger, the blame, the sense of injustice, and finally even the pain itself, until all we have left is a deeper sense of the value of life and a greater capacity to live it.”[iv]

Whether through fire, or water, the washer ringer or due to a grain of sand, or simply getting flipped wrong and falling out of the pan, or cancer or divorce or unemployment or Alzheimer’s… our pain is entrusted to God.
 

But it can burn.  It can burn like the hottest fires of hell, like soap in your eyes
and you wonder if there is a force that is putting you into it
           and a grace that can take you out. 

But the courage is there.  Call on it.  And it will refine you.  May it be so.

[Silence in Waiting Worship]

Hymn-How firm a foundation

Benediction – For my benediction, I leave with you the words of another little prophet of sorts: Christopher Robin from Winnie and the Pooh.  Christopher and Pooh are sitting in a tree one night, and the little boy tells the loveable bear, “If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. I'll always be with you.”

 

                                                                                                                    

---

[i] Schuller, Eileen M., “The Book of Malachi.”    The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary vol VII. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996)

[ii] Brené Brown from interview “Brené Brown on Vulnerability” with Krista Tippet.  On Being (www.onbeing.org)

 

[iii]Advent Worship Resources in The Leader (Harrisonburg, VA: MennoMedia)

[iv] Remen, Rachel Naomi.  My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging (New York: Penguin Press, 2000)

A Flood of Mercy

Sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 21:25-36             Jeremiah 33:10-16

This week I received one of those little stories that are often forwarded again and again on email.  Usually I feel put out by messages like that because they take up space and waste my time, but this one came from someone who knows me well and doesn’t often send them my way.  So I opened it up for a glance before deleting it.  Here’s what I found….

 The Best Explanation of Stress…

A young lady confidently walked around the room while leading and explaining stress management to an audience with a raised glass of water.  Everyone knew she was going to ask the ultimate question, 'half empty or half full?'..

She fooled them all .... "How heavy is this glass of water?" she inquired with a smile. Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." She continued, "and that's the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on."

"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden - holding stress longer and better each time practiced.”

We stand at the beginning of the season of Advent:  a season of hope … a season of joy and happiness … a season in which we celebrate liberating love.  But, this is also a season of business and of stress.  There seem to be too many events to get to and too much to get done.  And then there are the presents.  Who do we buy for, and what do we buy?  Can we get a gift that seems to fit a friend perfectly without buying something for everyone else that we know?  Who do we have to get something for even if we know that it’s something they won’t really love?  And … can we afford to get even small things for everyone on that list.

That’s just part of my list.  (You all know that.  You have your own lists.)  But Even that’s enough to stress me out … to twist my advent season into a bit of a nightmare instead of a joy. … And then there’s the added challenge of doing all of this … of putting together a meaningful Advent season for all of us to share, and it doesn’t help when the whole thing starts off with hints of the apocalypse that will come with the end of time….

In the words of Emory Gillespie[1] … When Advent comes, I worry, agonize and [stress out]. Advent is daunting. Advent is my Everest….  The problem is that I’m working with a hairball of Advent scriptural phrases.

Once again I read the account of “distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” Once again I react—both personally and as a pastor thinking of my congregation—to ominous forecasts that speak of people fainting “from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.” People are fainting, heavens are shaking, and there is fear and foreboding in abundance—how am I to shape all of this into something that the congregation will find charming …?

Advent scriptures are unapologetically crude. Their prophetic barking and guttural slings make me feel spat upon. My personal context is to blame for this oversensitivity. I’m feeling fairly normal right now, fairly pulled-together. My family is healthy. My employment at church seems solid—knock on wood. My phone is ringing a modest number of times with modest news. My wardrobe is working. In ordinary times such as this, when my family is afloat on a sea of relative stability, the bellicose and crass war cries of Advent are incomprehensible to me. They come off as misplaced, misanthropic rants, to which I’m tempted to reply, “You can’t mean me. If, by chance, you can and do mean me, your anger is disproportionate to my [transgression]."

 

That is exactly how I feel every year.  Who me?  Again?  Then I start thinking about the past year and worrying if I have actually done anything that might warrant such a response.  I usually come with some small things but nothing that deserves an apocalypse on the scale of roaring seas or a shaking of the heavens.  “I can live with this,” I think to myself.  “It’s meant for other people.”  And I feel okay… for a while.

But this text from Luke doesn’t go away so easily.  It doesn’t let you off the hook just because you are reasonably well-behaved.  The coming of the Son of Man will affect everyone.  We will all see the signs in the heavens.  We will all hear the roaring of the waves.  We will all feel the overwhelming sense of foreboding that leaves some fainting from fear.  We will see and hear and feel it all … unless we have kept our hearts free from the worries of this life. 

 

Where is the hope in that?  Who among us is free from worries?  Those teachings about following the example of the birds of the air and the flowers of the fields are all well and good, but it is hard to live that way.  It would be difficult enough for a person who is all alone, but for those of us with families to care about, it is next to impossible.  It would seem that these words just add one more worry to my list.

But Jesus is speaking in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets here.  He is intending to offer hope.  In the face of a world gone wrong – a world where justice has been perverted and compassion seems to have gone extinct, Jesus was offering a vision that stood at the heart of the Jewish faith … a vision that stands at the heart of our faith – a vision of a future where the world will be remade according to God’s intentions rather than our own.

If the prophets are to be believed (and I choose to believe them), that world will be a place where justice and righteousness hold sway in place of corruption and greed.  Its soul is marked with love and compassion in place of hatred and selfishness.  And instead of suffering and want all people will enjoy abundance and peace.

Jeremiah describes the wonder of that future with powerful images of renewal:  In the wasteland there will be towns filled with people, animals will graze on lush grasses in the desolate places, and those who live in bondage will know freedom.  And what is the source of all this wonderful change … of this outpouring of mercy on the people?  “The days are surely coming,” he says, when the Lord “will cause a righteous branch to spring up . . . and Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.”

There's our hope. 

There's the fulfillment of the promise we have been given. 

Christ will come … the Prince of peace … the one who brings justice to the oppressed … Loves Perfection … Immanuel – God dwelling with us … pouring out enough mercy and grace to cleanse us of our sins and wash away our worries.

 

You remember that glass of stress that I mentioned earlier this morning.  As we head into Advent – into the time of preparation for the coming of our hope, instead of adding more and more to that glass and trying to hold it up even though it may be killing our souls.  Set the glass down and take a break….

Better yet, pour it all out.  Give it all to the God whose grace bring new life.  Empty your heart of all the worries that weigh you down, and make space for mercy to flood into your soul. 
Make space for the Son of Man … the shoot of Jesse’s tree.

Make space for a flood of mercy that comes to us in a little baby whose birth brings us hope.

---

[1] from Living by the Word in the November 28 edition of The Christian Century.

Are You Afraid?

sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 13:1-8    Daniel 12:1-4

“Are you frightened? … Not nearly enough.  I know what hunts you.”  Those are some of the first words spoken by Strider to Frodo Baggins in Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring.  He is speaking of the Ring Wraiths – nine human kings who passed into the eternal shadows of evil all because of their hunger for power.  They have become fearsome beings – immortal and immensely powerful with both swords and magic.  There reappearance on the scene is an announcement of the end of life as all people know it.  They are the sign that apocalyptic times have descended on Frodo and Strider and everyone else in Middle Earth.  They are right to be afraid.

Of course, we on this Earth don’t need to fear the ring wraiths (though I suspect we could find our own version of them without looking too far).  But we, too, are living in apocalyptic times complete with signs like the Super-storm Sandy and the burgeoning war between the Israelis and the Palestinians and prophets predicting the end of life as we know it.  Either the world economy will implode leaving us back in the dark ages … or Iran will finally develop its nuclear missile bringing on a terrible war that will render the cradle of Western civilization dead and sterile for centuries … or we will reach the tipping point on global warming and whole countries will disappear as ice caps melt and oceans rise.  Everywhere you look you hear news reporters, talk show hosts, political activists, and scientists shouting … DOOM!

It would seem that times haven’t changed all that much in the last 2000 years.  All throughout Israel’s history there were prophets of the apocalypse, but things really started gearing up about 200 years before Jesus was born.  The kingdom of Israel had come and gone a couple of times, and the land was passed back and forth between several kingdoms over the course of four or five centuries until the Roman Empire finally took control and provided some kind of stability and tolerance, allowing the Jews to continue their particular religious practices.

After a time, the people began to feel stable enough to think about throwing off the yoke the empire and there were a few rebellions that were brutally put down.  The spirit of the people was not broken, though, and they began to dwell on the prophesies of the Messiah who would lead the chosen people back into a second golden age.

Daniel wrote of this coming change with vivid imagery that described the end of the world as it was and the birth of a new reality, and while his prophesies were full of suffering and destruction, they were meant as a message of hope rather than fear for the people.  All the bad stuff, after all, would be happening to the unjust and unfaithful who were abusing the righteous believers.  In other words, it would be the Romans and their supporters who would suffer while the rest of the Jews would be delivered and raised up to shine like stars come to Earth … as long as they lived Godly lives that got them written into The Book of Life.

The refrain was carried on by others – some of them recorded in the apocryphal books that didn’t make the final cut but are sometimes included in study Bibles.  Eventually, we hear the same message proclaimed by John the Baptist – repent … turn back to God for the Kingdom of God has drawn near and the end of these times is upon us.  And finally, Jesus takes his turn.

“Do you see all these great buildings? …. Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” 

And when will this happen?

“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars ….  [When] nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom.  [When] there [are] earthquakes in various places, and famines” (and flood and storms?).  “These are the beginnings of birth pains.”

Not really a clear answer to say the least.  It would seem that the birth pains have been going on for quite some time.

 

That’s the thing about apocalyptic talk… whether or not it is intended to comfort us, it is so vague that it inevitably evokes fear in us.  We can never really know if we will be the on the good or the bad end of things, and there’s nothing at all that we can to change what’s coming.  We can’t even know when to expect the crisis.  So it leaves us swinging in the anxious wind of anticipation, and that can damage our health and twist our sense of perspective.

As Stephen Fowl puts it in his writing for the most current issue of The Christian Century, “Apocalyptic visions generate fear.  This fear can be a good motive for action, particularly when your home is on fire or when a bus is barreling down on you as you cross the street.  In such a situation fear may save lives …. But, for the most part, the fear induced by apocalyptic scenarios can so truncate and focus our vision on such a narrow field as to render us almost blind.”[1]

Take a moment to look inside yourself.  Find some aspect of your own life where you feel like things are racing out of control toward a crisis that you can’t really anticipate. 

 

Now take a deep breath and step back for a moment. 

 

Try to look at the situation from a broader perspective.

If you can do that (and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it’s sometimes impossible) … if you can do that, you will probably find that your fears have done exactly what Fowl describes.  They have focused you on one part of your life so much that it has become disconnected from the rest.  They have made you feel like you must act just a quickly and decisively as if you were in the path of speeding car.  And they have convinced you that you have only a few options open to you … that you must accept one of those options even if none of them fits the life you most want to live.

That’s not the healthiest way to make navigate life.  We need to move past those fears … to cast them out and make way for more spacious, life-giving way of living.  And fortunately, the scriptures give us many clues to how to do exactly that.  They are most clearly summed up in  first John, chapter 4 where it says that perfect love casts out fear.

Again … Stephen Fowl….

“For Jesus, navigating one’s way through apocalyptic times calls not for split-second judgments made in isolation but for clear vision, faithful insight and holy patience.  Fear is the enemy of all of these practices of faithful living.  Fear narrows our vision so that we fail to see the good in those who disagree with us.  Fear-induced blindness causes us to fail to see the great host of witnesses that surround, support, and sustain us…. Fear … [makes] us forget that only God can save us and leads us to treat others as obstacles that we must overcome.

Jesus' alternative is an invitation to be like those wise people awaiting the bridegroom’s arrival.  We need to cultivate a patient yet ardent desire for God to arrive in fullness in our lives … a desire not driven by a desire for triumph or vindication or by fear of one’s opponents … a desire sustained by our love for God and our eager hope for communion with the One who loves us without reserve.

The more apocalyptic our present seems, the more important it is for Christians courageously to rely on love to cast out fear (1John 4:17).” [2]

 

I read that last week, and I thought, “right … that sounds good in theory.  We can say that we rely on love to cast out fear all we want to, but how, exactly, does that work?”  But then we had our Church Council meeting, and I began to catch a glimpse of what it might look like.

What I saw was a gathering of faithful people facing difficult decisions.  It is clear – and has been clear for some time – that we don’t have the resources to keep doing things the way that we have done in the past.  We don’t have the money, and we don’t have the people.  Like it or not, our lives together in this congregation are going to change.

In the past, the coming crisis has been a cause for fear and anxiety.  We have struggled to trim our budget and adjust the structure that guides our leadership in the hope that the situation will get better with time, and that has served us fairly well … for a while. 

Yet the more that time has passed, the  closer we have come to the brink of change.  The more “apocalyptic” our visions, the less open we have become to the unexpected possibilities that are sometimes offered by the Holy Spirit.  We have focused more and more tightly on how we can cut back our spending without undermining the basic values expressed by our budget, and we have come to answer all … or at least most of the difficult questions about how we will live together with the answer, “we just need more people.”

But last week, something changed.  Nick suggested that we set up a committee to assess our options for the future, and the idea of yet another committee was greeted with … well if not with joyful enthusiasm, at least with without the sense of one more burden added to an already heavy load.  What I felt as we continued to discuss how and when that committee would do its work was a lightening of the congregation’s spirit … maybe even the beginnings of the birth pains of new hope for the future.

 

Living in the shadow of fear closes us off … hems us in … and makes us less than we are.  It leave us isolated and alone.  Living in the light of love – love for one another and love for our God – opens us up … allows our hearts and our dreams to grow bigger … and ties us into life – the true life that flows from God.  It draws us together and sets our feet on the path where God walks with us.

And relying on love to cast out fear is not simply a comfort to us.  The power of love continually transforms us.  It draws us, always, toward being the best people we can be.  That is a wonderful thing … a powerfully good thing for us and for those we love, AND it is also the doorway to the world.  The more we are guided by love, the more our compassion leads us out of our doors and beyond our families and friends to care for the suffering around us, and we reach out with the most valuable gift we have to give - the love and the hope that fills our lives with meaning and promise.

 

---

[1] Christian Century, November 14, 2012, page 20.

[2] ibid.

Dwelling in the Word

[Torin and I have just returned full time to our pastoral duties after the birth of our son, Patrick.  While we were on parental leave, our congregation engaged in a process known as Dwelling in the Word.  For seven weeks we lived with Paul's words in Ephesians 3:7-21 and had seven different speakers, including Torin and myself, come with their thoughts and perspectives.

Unfortunately, I don't have the sermons from all of our speakers, and this Sunday was the concluding sermon in the series.  We hope you take some time to dwell with this text, and see how it may call you to a rooting and grounding in God's love]

Ephesians 3:7-21
Dwelling in the Word

Wow.  I can’t believe that it has been over two months since I last preached!  I don’t know how you feel about it, but it feels good to be here with you, exploring the word, dwelling in the word.  And yes, our seven weeks of dwelling in the word has come to an end.  I don’t know how you feel about that either.  Some of you may like to stay a bit longer and continue exploring what Ephesians 3:7-21 is working out in you.  Some are probably ready to get back to our regular routine.  At least, you’ve had enough of Paul, and need a little Jesus.  Or Moses.  Or even some Psalms for crying out loud. 

It is true that Paul can certainly be pedantic.  Long winded.  Confusing.  Boring.  Why would we want to spend 7 weeks looking at one of his letters?  Probably because he can be…pedantic, long-winded, confusing, and boring.  I mean if you just listen to one sermon on one part of his letters, it’s easy to dismiss him, to tune out, and wait till next Sunday when you get into more interesting, gospel stuff.  Spending 7 weeks with Paul, for some of you, may be like being stuck in the middle of the ocean on a boat with him .  You may want to jump ship, you may be searching for the shoreline when you can get off this boat.  But if you actually have a conversation with him, you just might learn something.  About him.  About yourself.  About God.

So yes, jumping back into the pulpit to face Paul—not just dwelling with him, but trying to make sense of him—seemed a bit exhausting.

And I don’t like being exhausted. Which is not good when you have two young boys and a baby.  So as you can imagine snatching small bits of rest in the day is crucial for me as a mother.  And for my naps I like to have book close by for those times when I wake up from a nap before any of the boys do, and I don’t want to walk around for fear they will wake up and demand something of me. And since I never know how long the quiet and stillness will last, I like having a book that has small segments with powerful thoughts.

A friend gave me the book Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry by Katrina Kenison.  One of the reflections is on nature, where she explored the ideas of Robert Michael Pyle.

Robert Michael Pyle is a nature writer, and a lepidopterist—someone who studies moths and butterflies.  And Pyle has presented in some of his works a rather provocative allegation.  He has observed that many children today—and probably many adults as well—suffer from what he calls “the extinction of experience.” 

Now at first, that sounds a bit counterintuitive because, as a mother, I know that there is an intense drive in contemporary parents to give our children experiences.  We want them to experience music, languages, art, dance, sports and so we rush around trying to get them signed up for this program and that lesson.  Will they ever really learn the piano if they are not in lessons by age 3?  Will they be severely deficient in our pluralistic culture if they aren’t learning Spanish and Mandarin by second grade?  We want them to know all these things, so of course we’re trying to get them experience in them, to have someone teach them, and have our children learn them.

But Pyle, being a naturalist, is not talking about this kind of experience.  He is referring to the extinction of experience with the natural world.  He says that unlike earlier generations, children do not have the kind of direct, frequent contact with the earth and its creatures that result in a passionate, lasting relationship with the natural world. 

Now it doesn’t mean that children are unaware of the natural world.  They know what a leaf is.  They know bugs.  And they certainly know about “the environment.”  In fact, Pyle suggests that our children are well versed in issues of the environment and may have “politically correct” response to whales, global warming, pollution, and rain forests; they  can speak to these major environmental issues—but far less grounded in their own visceral, firsthand experiences of nature just beyond their door.  Pyle of course, says it’s not enough to teach children about nature; we must allow our children to grow up in nature. 

The difference between knowing with our head, and a knowing, that Paul says, surpasses understanding.

 The difference between knowing and experiencing,

 between head thought, and heart revelation.

When Paul speaks to us about knowing the length and breadth and height and depth of Christ’s love;  when he speaks about knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, I think he is on to us.  He’s on to our skeptical minds.  He’s onto our contemporary need to know intellectually. for sure. what the answers about God are.  To know what is true about Christ…

We’ve been watching these wonderful videos in adult Sunday School, a series called Living the Questions where popular theologians, scholars, and clergy take on a variety of topics and then invite us to continue the conversation.  A few weeks ago the topic was on the biblical story, and how, essentially, it is possible to take the Bible seriously without always taking it literally.  It looked at questions about creation, and the nativity story, and our hangups about saying things did or did not happen in a certain way.

And I could tell, especially with the group gathered that day, it was a welcomed conversation.  And someone said in the midst of the conversation, “But how to you know it’s the truth.”  Of course, I wanted to get all sagely and philosophical and ask “Well what do you mean by know.”  and “well what is truth?”

If anything, this is where I know I can get hung up, most certainly.  I’m asking the questions, I’m seeking the answers.  I want to know when this was written and by whom and was it Paul or wasn’t it who wrote Ephesians.  I wonder what is the politically correct thing to think about the gender or lack thereof of God?  What is the right thing to believe about God’s  working in the world?  What is the limit that I can believe if I still want to be seen as intellectual?

If I’m honest, I’m so busy thinking about me when I approach God, there isn’t much height or depth or length or breadth to dive into.  It’s more like I’m…standing in a kiddie pool with not much water.

Sure, we know a lot about God, from what we learn from sermons, or books, or Sunday School, or bible studies.  I can say what so-and-so has said about God, I rehearse arguments about God, I can do theology.  But is that the same as knowing of God? 

Just like many children and adults know about the environment, we too have thought about God…but can you say you have experienced God? [pause] Not only that, but can you say you are filled with the fullness of God?  Daily living out of the divine spark within you?

So as we prepared to dwell with this challenge, I was asking myself “how do we know? how do we know?”

And what I’m left with, after these seven weeks, is a surprising invitation.: Stop trying to know.  Stop trying to find the answers that fit neatly.

Now I’m not saying don’t ask the questions, and it’s not a get out of jail free card with the response, “well, we never will know so let’s just live in the mystery”.  But it does require us to think about how we “know” in a different way.

Hear some of Katrina Kenison’s thoughts on knowledge, as she continues reflecting on our experience with nature.  You could probably switch out some of the words about nature and replace them with God, to more clearly see where I’m going with this.

Our children offer us an opportunity to rediscover the marvels of nature for ourselves.  You don’t need any special knowledge, any equipment, or even much of a plan.  You don’t need to be a naturalist or a teacher.  In fact you don’t need to identify a single bird or flower or constellation.  All you need is a willingness to go, to look, and to drink in the mystery and beauty of the world before your eyes.  I used to wish I had more knowledge to impart, a better foundation in the earth sciences, so that I could explain the world to my children instead of simply experiencing it with them.  Certainly our outings gave rise to more questions than answers.  But as we watched and wondered together, I came to suspect that our shared experience was probably more valuable to my children than any education I could provide.  In time, they will acquire knowledge, too—but first they need the time and space to develop an emotional connection with the land, forging their own relationships with plants and animals, earth and sky.  [The naturalist Rachel Carson reminds us,] “It is not half so important to know as to feel.”

So maybe the same is true with how we approach our lives with God.  And maybe in a way, our faith life can be a bit like Paul.  A bit pedantic..talking through ideas, figuring out who we are, criticizing bad behavior of others, trying to know, defending our position.  But thankfully, Paul surprises us with a blessing.  A blessing that tells us to let it all fall away

To not get hung up on trying to understand with our minds, but to live a life that open to experiencing the love of Christ.  And this love of Christ can and does compel us to plumb the deepest of our fears, and soar to the highest of what makes us joyful.  Christ’s love entices us to broaden our arms to welcome into our lives the unexpected: the unexpected person, or event, or possibility as well as encouraging us to go to lengths we may not have ever known possible.

So to conclude this portion of dwelling in the word, J I’ll just bestow on you the same blessing in a different way. 

What you know is not nearly sufficient to experience the Christ.  In snatches of moments,

Feel Christ’s love working through you. 

Hear Christ’s love as the wind blowing through the trees. 

See Christ’s love in great acts of courage and small acts of devotion.

Engage your whole self in being part of Christ’s love, moving past what you can understand intellectually

and open yourself up to being filled with the fullness of God.

 

 

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.