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.

The Last Word

sermon by Torin Eikler
2 Samuel 22: 2-4, 17-20, 32-36, 47-51           2 Samuel 23:1-7

Give that back.

No, it’s mine.
Hunh-un, it’s everyones.
Nunh-un, it’s mine.
No….  Yes….  No…. Yes….

Does that sound at all familiar?  If it doesn’t, please tell me how you managed to get through life up to this point without hearing that because it’s a very common refrain in our home.  Usually it ends with tears or with one of us stepping in and saying something like, “Boys!  (pause) Give me the ball.  (pause) Sebastian is right.  This was your ball when we first got it, but we’ve had it for awhile now and everyone in the family is allowed to play with it.  Can you share nicely, or does the ball need to have a time out?”

Sometimes it’s Sebastian and sometimes it’s Alistair.  It could be a ball or a car or any one of the toys that we have at home.  But the refrain is always the same.  Someone had a toy and someone took the toy without asking or offering to play with it together, and the highest authority that my boys seem to be able to appeal to is ownership, better known as “mine, mine, mine.”

I suppose that I should be grateful that we have progressed beyond the point of simply grabbing on the assumption that possession is 9/10^ths of the law, and I am definitely relieved that we don’t have to deal with a child who resorts to the power of superior strength (at least not yet).  But, I am really, really tired of having to referee playtime so that everyone can have fun … at least everyone except me.

I suppose that all of this could be “just the way kids are,” but I can’t help wondering if part of the struggle to get my children to share well might grow from my own patterns of interaction.  I am not one to simply grab my “things” out of the hands of my children or my wife for that matter … at least not unless the objects are dangerous or delicate, but I do react strongly when the boys pick up “adult” objects like necklaces or checkbooks.  And, I have been known to get disproportionately upset when I discover that my pillow has become one of the props for playtime.  (DO NOT TOUCH MY PILLOW.  Don’t judge me, please.  We all have our own little hang-ups.) 

But that’s not what I really wonder about because the back and forth isn’t just about who gets to have what toy.  It happens every time the boys have a disagreement about anything.  It always seems to come down to “yes … no … yes … no,” and I suspect that the boys may be picking up on my own need to have the last word.  I suspect that they may have understood that a truth about our society.  Very often, the person who gets the last word in is – or seems to be – the winner, and they want very much to be the winner.

They’ve got it right, you know.  It is always the winner who gets the last word.  It’s the people who end up in control who have the power to write history – or the present – into whatever form they want to.  The history books when I grew up said nothing about the intentional use of small-pox carrying blankets to destroy or at least weaken the native peoples of the Americas so that Europeans could lay claim to this land or that the United States received a message of surrender days before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I wonder how many countless other events that we would call atrocities if we considered them have been conveniently shoved under the carpet by those who want to claim that their lofty accomplishments were not brought about by horrible means.

In the back of our minds, we know that this is the truth.  We know it because we do it on a small scale every day.  We tell each other … and sometimes even ourselves … that the mean way we treat people or the things that we do even though we shouldn’t are okay.  Or if they are not really “okay,” then they are at least justified.  Or if there’s really not a justification, then we try to believe that it all comes down to a matter of perspective, that we didn’t know … didn’t understand what our actions would do to other people.  And if that doesn’t work, we just close our eyes and forget.

There’s a whole lot of forgetting in this world right now.  There’s so much that we don’t want to remember because it saps the energy of our hope and faith to face the realities.  It’s so much easier to let things slip by us, turning a blind eye to the suffering and injustice that we know is there even if we won’t quite look at it straight on.  The thing is, if we won’t even look at the inhumanity of our world, how on earth will we ever be able to work at changing anything?

Our commitment to forgetting is not unique.  People have been selective about what they want to remember throughout history.  We choose to hold the greatest moments of our families or tribes or nations or whatever groups we belong to.  Every once in awhile, we record the worst moments as well.  And that mix of the great and the horrible is what comes to define us.  It gives us an understanding of our past, shows us where we have been headed, and lays out the building blocks of our future.

One of the great gifts of the histories in the Hebrew Scriptures (and the books of 1^st and 2^nd Samuel fit into that category) – one of their great gifts to us is that they were allowed to include so much of the day to day.  The good stuff and the bad stuff as well as the defining moments.  That gives us a much greater understanding of who we have been in relationship to God.  It acknowledges that even the greatest of heroic rulers is nothing like being perfect, and it shows us how even the least esteemed people among us can accomplish great things.

So, we have heard the story of a faithful woman, Hannah, who patiently and passionately railed at YHWH for withholding the blessing of a child, and we have heard how she was rewarded with a son who became the last, great judge of Israel.  We have heard of Eli’s failure as a priest and his courage and wisdom in stepping aside and guiding Samuel on his own journey.  We know how Samuel whined and complained about the coming of the kings, and we can remember how he sought out both Saul and David, naming them each YHWH’s chosen in turn.

We have heard how Saul grew in power and wisdom and became a great king who righteously obeyed YHWH and drove back all of Israel’s enemies.  And we have heard how Saul became too full of himself and his own power, how he forgot the power behind the throne and lost the support of his God.  We can remember the story of how he descended into despair and a kind of madness so obsessed with killing David that he brought about the death of his own son.

And we have heard the story of David’s reign with all its ups and downs.  We know how he started out as a shepherd boy nearly forgotten in the fields.  We have heard how he slew Goliath and began the defeat of the Philistines.  We can tell of the mercy he showed when he spared Saul’s at least three times even as he was defending himself from that paranoid king.  And we have also gotten to hear the stories of how David failed to do the will of YHWH, how he had a friend and supporter killed in battle so that he could seduce that man’s wife, and how he ended up killing his own son just as Saul had before him.

That history – that raw history is a gift to us because it lets us join in the story.  Hannah, Eli, Samuel, Saul, David – they were by no means perfect people.  They are people that we can imagine ourselves being.  They felt things that we have felt.  They did things that we might do ourselves.  But here, at the end of 2^nd Samuel, we have, perhaps, the greatest gift of the whole two books.  In these last words of king David, we have a window onto the deeper truth of the story.  We have an opening into understanding the story that is within, underneath, and surrounding the tales of the kings.

These two scriptures – the two psalms of David that are included at the end of the books of Samuel serve another purpose besides just summing up David’s life.  They mirror the song of Hannah that Carrie shared with us six weeks ago.  Together, the songs form a theological context in which the whole story of Samuel and Saul and David should be understood.  It’s a context that we don’t usually get to hear because of the way that we pick scriptures here and there for our worship, but it’s an essential counterpoint to our sense of the glorification of the kings and especially king David.

1^st and 2^nd Samuel are not simply a tale of power and conflict as the kingdom of Israel arose.  They are about the deliverance of YHWH – of the God who has chosen to act in this world in order to bring about a deeper Shalom – a deeper wholeness and peace.  With Hannah’s doxology at the beginning and David’s psalm of praise at the end, it was easier for Israel to remember – to remember and believe – that even though it was by David’s hand that they were saved from the hands of the nations around them, it was always and everywhere YHWH – the God of Israel – who was the true source of their deliverance.[1] 

David’s last words – the words that he spoke as he reflected on his own life were not words of regret or words of self-congratulation.  They were words of praise and thanksgiving that spoke the truth that YHWH had had, that God always has the last word … and that word is salvation….  And if we have been able to see ourselves in David and in the other characters in these stories – if we have been able to step into these scriptures through them, then we also can take this truth for ourselves.  YHWH is our deliverer just as she was theirs.

YHWH is our deliverer just as she was theirs…. 

Those are lovely words to hear, lovely words to say.  So much nicer for us preachers when we get to say things like that rather than pronouncing judgment with gnashing of tear and eternal darkness.

But what do we do with that truth?  YHWH is our deliverer, our salvation, and ….  Does it actually make any difference?  Does it make any difference to you?

I’ll tell you what it means for me.  It means that I don’t need to feel alone or responsible for everything.  It means that I don’t have to live up to that false ideal of Mountaineer self-sufficiency which is a mercy because I can’t live up to it anyway.  It means that even when I feel like I cannot do what needs to be done in order to bring an end to the suffering and injustice around me or when I know that I could do more but I just don’t have the energy or the desire … that is not the end of the story. 

In my better moments, that gives me hope and courage.  Remembering that others before me have been through the same struggles and were able to do some things well, to overcome their failings with God’s help – that gives me the strength to resist despair and to imagine a future that is different.  At other times, it at least gives me relief.  I am not the end of the story … or its beginning.  The last word will always be God’s, and I am no more and no less than an imperfect channel for that benediction.

Grace, mercy, and hope … that’s what it means for me. 

What does it mean for you?

---

[1] Walter Brueggeman, First and Second Samuel in the Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for teaching and preaching (John Knox Press, Louisville 1990) 339.

Where is Home?

sermon by Carrie Eikler
5th in Samuel Series

     2 Samuel 6:1-3a, 12-22
      2 Samuel 7:1-17

(During this service, we said good-bye to the Cockroft Family: Kim, Martin, Merry, Elspeth, and Beatrix.  They are moving away from the area and will be missed!)

For Father’s Day this year, our family went camping in North Bend State Park, a couple hours from here. I figured it would probably be the last time I would feel eager to go camping this summer, before my belly gets too big for our small tent (and my own comfort). For those of you who have ever gone camping…and I should say tent camping…you may experience what I do when first finding that camp site in a public camping area or state park.

You drive or hike around, surveying the area. Look at the other campers. Survey where the

bathrooms and water sources are. Where are there trees? What looks flat? Where is far enough from others that the noise of small children at 6:30 in the morning won’t be took annoying, but close enough to hear you scream in the event of a bear attack (what? you’ve never thought that?)

And then the unloading begins. Tent, stakes, hammer, tarp. Unfolding and folding, like some outdoorsy origami. Which way to put the door? Where does the breeze come from? Clear the sticks, the stones, chase out the silverfish and beetles that somehow made their home in the tent when you aired it out the day before…

 Ah. The simplicity of camping.

Maybe it gets simpler if you do it more frequently than we do, and you get it down to an easy

routine. Once it was all said and done, Torin and I looked at each other with the expression saying, “All that work for only one night?” But I have to admit, even as the thunder crashed and rain pounded on our thankfully-very waterproof tent, legs of little boys intertwined among us, life seemed pretty sweet in that little tent.

Did you know that YHWH lived in a tent? Of course it was a bit fancier than our four person Kelty tent. If you remember, when the Hebrews escaped from Egypt they took with them the Ark of the Covenant, which was a chest that contained the tablets on which the 10 commandments were written. OK, if that doesn’t spark your memory, think Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark…ring a bell?

As the Israelites began their long wanderings in the wilderness they took the ark with them, with the distinct connection that YHWH’s presence was within it. To protect the ark they also created a tabernacle, or tent. It was essentially a portable dwelling place for YHWH, a moveable place of worship. It went with the people. It stopped with the people. It wandered with the people. It suffered alongside the people.

As we have been moving through the books of Samuel, we have seen the ark stolen and returned, buffeted about with the insecurity of the Israelite people who are seeking some security by installing a king. The ark is last mentioned in the seventh chapter of I Samuel, sort of “dropped off” in the house of Abindadab after the Philistines returned it to the Israelites. It made sense—any Philistines who touched with was basically struck down dead. Not really worth it to keep it.Send it back.

 So now after all this time, David—now King David-- remembers the ark. And in an impressive political move, oozing with religious significance, David decides that things are settled down enough, it’s time put down roots in Jerusalem. Throw away the tent and build a permanent dwelling place for YHWH. Build a temple. Things are looking up--it seems like a good time to invest in real estate.

So David implies to the prophet Nathan that maybe it is time to build something for YHWH. And here we have “incredulous” YHWH again, reminiscent of the voice who spoke to Samuel when the people wanted a king. The voice says, “Hey, I’ve been fine all this time. If it needs to happen, it will happen, but remember that I didn’t ask for this. You’ve never heard me complaining about being on the move.” There is even a subtle concern expressed—YHWH wonders about his freedom to be with the people if he’s not able to move with his people.

Funny thing for the divine to wonder about.

As we continue on in the books of Samuel and 1 and 2nd Kings, we discover that eventually a temple is created, but it is not David who will do it, but his son, Solomon. YHWH is clear about one thing with David, though. While David might not build the house of worship for YHWH, YHWH covenants to build a dynasty, beginning with David, passed on through David’s descendents.

So there are two houses in tension here, both are from the same Hebrew word for house: bayit. David wants to build a physical house, a bayit for YHWH. YHWH wants to build a spiritual house, a bayit, for David and his people. There will be time for the physical temple, but at this moment what is important is YHWHs covenant to bless the descendants of David—this is ahouse of blessing.

We might wonder why YHWY liked being on the move so much. But then, maybe we can understand it. Americans are such a transitory people. According to census reports, the average

American moves an average of 14 times in their lives. And while it seems like we are a people constantly looking for the next job opportunity or big adventure, or simply moving somewhere that seems really “cool,” I think there is also a part of our spirits that yearn to put down roots, and feel like we are creating a home to live out our lives.

And as this congregation has certainly felt in the last two years, there are factors beyond our

control that decide whether or not we wander: family responsibilities, job loss, health conditions. It is not something we necessarily have control over, no matter how much we want to. 

There has been a series on NPR looking at the American Dream and how it is understood by different people and different cultures living in the US. There is a variety of understandings of what this American Dream looks like, but one thing is clear: for many, the American Dream seems like an unattainable goal, or a remnant from a bygone era. It seems like that life with the house, job, car, enough saved up for retirement…those things that exude security is not possible for young, working Americans.

And while we Americans might balk at the idea of living in one house for the rest of our lives, we realize at some point, there is a need in us for security. The house I came home to from the hospital as a newborn, was the same house I left for my wedding day. After 28 years my parents did leave that house…to move to the farm house that had been in the family for eight generations, twenty miles away. To add to that, my parents both had the same job from before I was born until they were able to take early retirement. Talk about creating a sense of security that is not realistic today.

 Torin’s family, on the other hand, basically moved every three years as his father worked in various medical clinics, until they settled in North Manchester, IN when he was in Jr. High. Aside from that time in his teenage-hood, the house he has ever lived in longer than 3 years—has been on the corner of Virginia and Center, in Morgantown, WV.

Needless to say, reconciling our visions of what “security” means has been a challenge. For me, it is rooted in a house, a place, a dwelling, a job. For Torin, it is something else, that I still cannot necessarily articulate...but am trying to appreciate.

But in this tension, and the tension that I see presented in our scripture, I am beginning to discover something. And it is a discovery rooted in that one Hebrew word with multiple meanings: bayit, house…In our lives there is a physical house and a spiritual home. YHWH recognizes the need for the physical, the rooted temple. But YHWH promises to be the cultivator and sustainer of the spiritual, rooted within us, are bodies acting like the tabernacle on the move.

 If you’ve ever moved into a new town, and if you are “average” according to the US Census, you have, you know there is a difference between having a home, and actually feeling at home. The house is necessary for physical protection, but that only satisfies part of us—albeit, a very important part, but not the only.

And for many of us, as individuals and families, houses will come and go, places to live and

work and create relationships will come and go. But it seems like YHWH understands that, in fact, YHWH experienced that. And maybe for some of you your bodies will find a long-term home of brick and mortar, wood and nails, but really, that’s all up to the winds of fate.

But the true holy home rests within us. It’s not the house you build for God, like David’s idea of a temple, but the home that God is building within you. 

It is the home that is built by the blessings we extend and receive, warmed by the souls we touch and who touch us, decorated by the grace and generosity we share of God’s bounteous love. And no matter how much we are forced into wandering, or inclined to put down roots, that home cannot be taken away.

 So I’d like to extend a blessing to all of you, as you are looking for physical houses, and cultivating spiritual homes. Again, this comes from the book of blessings of John O’Donohue [we used an O'Donahue blessing in our sending for the Cockrofts].

I invite you close your eyes and visualize…

visualize the house you live in or are moving to.

or some of you may picture the church building,You are seeing the physical dwellings that are important in your life.

 Now next to it, try to create an image of how you see your spiritual homemaybe it is your family or friends. maybe it’s an image of something that brings you peace,or something that inspires you.

Put to image what your soul might look like,

maybe it’s just you and your body

Here now are two homes…perhaps they are known, perhaps they are unknown.

But they are homes for your body and spirit.

Receive this blessing for your whole bayit:

"May this house shelter your life

When you come in home here,

May all the weight of the world

Fall from your shoulders

May your heart be tranquil here

Blessed by peace the world cannot give

May this home be a lucky place,

Where the graces your life desires

Always find the pathway to your door

May nothing destructive

Ever cross your threshold

May this be a safe place

Full of understanding and acceptance

Where you can be as you are

Without the need of any mask

Of pretense or image

May this home be a place of discovery,

Where the possibilities that sleep

in the clay of your soul
can emerge

To deepen and refine your vision

For all that is yet to come to birth.

May it be a home of courage

Where healing and growth are loved

Where dignity and forgiveness prevail;

A home where patience and spirit is prized

And the sight of the destination is never lost

Though the journey be difficult and slow.

May there be great delight around this hearth.

May it be a house of welcome

For the broken and diminished.

May you have the eyes to see

That no visitor arrives without a gift

And no guest leaves without a blessing"

from To Bless the Space Between Us by John O'Donohue