We Have Known Rivers; Rivers Have Known Us Too.

25 September 2011

Ezekiel 1:1-3 (by the Chebar the heavens were opened); Psalm 137:1-6 (by the rivers of Babylon)

Rev. 22: 1-5 (the river of the water of life); Matthew 3:13-17 (in the Jordan the heavens were opened) and

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes

                When God began to create, the story goes, there was water, “the deep,” and the Spirit of God moved over the waters. Water is the basic element from which all else emerges. According to another story, the second thing God created was a garden, which was watered by a river, which flowed out from Eden in four directions and gave life to all the nations.

                Anthropologists have taught us, through our school books, that rivers created civilization: In the fertile crescent between the Tigris and the Euphrates people farmed. They no longer had to spend every waking moment hunting and gathering food, wandering ceaselessly. They could stay in one place, grow their food, domesticate their prey, build cities, make art, tell stories, sing songs. Rivers made us who we are today.

                We have known rivers. Our people have known rivers. By the Nile the Hebrew slaves built the storehouses of Pharaoh and called out to God in their agony. Moses turned that river to blood to demonstrate the power of God. The Jordan River stopped to let the children of those slaves cross through it, to enter into their promised land, and soon after that same river carried the blood of Jericho’s dead. By the rivers of Babylon our people sat down and wept when their tormentors demanded entertainment; and the rivers of Babylon heard their call for vengeance. Rivers have seen us at our worst. And still rivers brought us life, the water of life, fed us and washed us and watered our fields and our cattle.

                Rivers have also witnessed our communion with God. It was by the river Chebar in Babylon that Ezekiel saw the heavens opened; and in the Jordan River Jesus saw the heavens opened, and the hand of God was upon each in his own time and place.

                In our call to worship I mentioned two other rivers that witnessed our faith history. It was on the Humber River, near Hull, that the Pilgrim congregation waited for the opportunity to cross the North Sea to Holland; and it was in Leiden, on the Rheine they found refuge.

Consider the river which runs through our town. We are here in this place because of that river, because the men of the northern railroad decided here was a good place to build a crossing. We’ll need a town there. It will need churches. And because they were New Englanders, they said amongst themselves, let’s establish both kinds of churches—Congregational and Episcopalian. And here we are to this day, worshipping on the same lot given to our people one hundred and almost forty years ago, by the men who decided that here was a good place for the railroad to cross the river.

                If that river could talk, what would it say about how we have treated it, and each other, over the years? We owe that river our life, but we hardly notice it, as we cross over it in our cars day in day out. Like God, in a way. The mater and matrix-- mother and medium-- of life, God provides the gift of life and witnesses the best and worst of our aspirations and misdeeds, and we live and move in God hardly noticing how precious and precarious is life, until we do.

                The river gives us a clue once or twice in a lifetime or so, that we shouldn’t take its power for granted. When it floods its banks, or runs dry, then we notice, then we realize, that what we do to the river we do to ourselves.  Then we realize that our actions have ultimate consequences, for us and for generations after us. Then we realize that we owe the river our life.

                And the river is a metaphor for God, a flowing, living, life-giving metaphor for the one who gives us life, who carries us along in our little bulrush baskets, who receives our tears and absorbs our blood and cleanses our wounds and quenches our thirst and waters our fields and receives our dead and gives us life and repeats the cycle endlessly, from creation to new creation, eternally flowing, never spent. Blessed be the river, the water of life, and the source, now and evermore, Amen.

Bread in the Desert

18 September 2011

Exodus 16:2-15; Matthew 15:29-38

Last week I mentioned briefly how the gospel of Matthew is a value-added gospel. I mean that the author or authors of the gospel elaborated on the source material that they had received, as they set it down in writing for a particular community of Christians in a particular time and place. For the other gospel writers, one miraculous feeding was sufficient, but not for Matthew’s gospel. The story I just read is the second feeding miracle in the gospel: a reprise of the feeding of the 5,000, this one set not on a hillside beside the sea but in the desert wilderness.

All of the additions to this gospel had a purpose. It wasn’t just to pad the gospel, to make it longer than all the other gospels; there was a theological purpose to the additional material. Like Matthew’s stories about Jesus’ birth, the feeding miracle was retold “to fulfill the scripture”—to connect Jesus to the prophets of the Hebrew scripture. The change in venue is significant-- bread in the desert—when was the last time the children of Israel received bread in the desert? This retelling casts Jesus as a prophet like Moses, the greatest prophet of all.

                As Moses himself had promised: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people….” (Deut. 18:15) Moses provided bread in the desert, Jesus provides bread in the desert, therefore, Jesus is a prophet like Moses. “Never since has there arisen a prophet like Moses,” (Deut. 34:10) until now.

                The manna story itself has an underlying purpose. The reason the story of the manna was told and retold and set in writing is because it said something true about God, something that was not simply true at the time, but something eternally true about the nature of God. In the desert wilderness, God provides.

                The wilderness is a scary place, if you are lost and alone with no provisions. The wilderness is even scarier when you are lost, and not alone, but you are there with people who are dependent on you. Some of you saw a new profile picture on my Facebook page, which Richard of me took when I was out in the Badlands with the youth group. In the picture I appear to be in a posture of meditation, and in fact I was, and some of my friends commented that I looked very peaceful. But I was not. Actually I was praying that I would not faint dead away out there, and spoil the trip for the children in my care. We were taken for a hike in the Badlands in the middle of the afternoon, in August, when no people in their right minds would go out there. But we went because it was on the program, and we trusted our guides, the staff at Re-member. When we arrived at this great cavernous bowl of dust, and I had already drank all my water, I thought, O my God they have brought us out here to kill us. Who are these people, really? What do we know about them? I am going to die here and my youth group is going to have to carry my body out. And that will just ruin their week.

                Though at the time I questioned the value of that trip into the wilderness, I really should be grateful for the insight into the states of mind of the Hebrew people in the wilderness. Who is this Moses? What do we know about him, really? Maybe he is a glassy-eyed megalomaniac, who brought us and our children out here in this wilderness to die. Pharaoh wasn’t so bad. Yes, we have the scars of the overseer’s whip on our backs, but we also had bread, and fruit, and water, and our children were safe. Pharaoh’s bread was better than no bread at all.

                Pharaoh’s bread was better, until there was bread from heaven. Moses sent the people out to gather up bread from heaven, every day, just enough for that day and no more. Every day except for the Sabbath, God’s day of rest, the people gathered bread from heaven.

                Eventually, forty years later so the story goes, the people entered the promised land, and they ate the bread of the land of Canaan that year, they ate the bread of the land that God had promised to their ancestors. All the manna ceased on that day, because manna is only for the wilderness.

                Many generations later, the descendants of the Hebrew slaves once again found themselves eating Pharaoh’s bread. Not Pharaoh’s, literally, actually it was Caesar’s bread. The wheat may have grown in their promised land, Caesar claimed it as his own. Caesar requisitioned it and redistributed it under his own brand name, so to speak, in the imperial bread dole. As long as conquered people remained loyal to Caesar, they could eat his bread. Rebel, and the bread dole ceases. Thus the empire was held under Caesar’s power, through bread, and the legions, bread and the sword.

                Jesus came like Moses to lead the people to freedom: to demonstrate that God still had the power and the will to provide bread in the desert, to make a way in the wilderness.

                This is true, and can be trusted. This is a story for our time. When people at the bread of their own land, when everyone had, so to speak, their own vineyards and their own fig trees, when we were self-sufficient, perhaps then we didn’t need this story so much. But now, we live in a land of foreclosures. We live in a land of broken homes and broken dreams. We are afraid that we might watch our children suffer. We are afraid that our children might see us suffer. We are shadows of our former selves, we are exiled from the land of plenty in which we used to live and we pine for the days of plenty. But the way forward is not backward. We step tentatively into an unknown future.

                And we bless bread, and break it, and share it with one another to remind ourselves and each other, that we don’t need pharaoh’s bread, or Caesar’s bread. We bless bread and we break it to tell each other something true about God: God provides bread in the desert, fountains in the wilderness. God provides. This is true, and can be trusted. Amen.

And Mercy, More Than Life

September 11, 2011
Matthew 18:21-35

How many times must I forgive a brother or sister? Peter asked Jesus. As many as seven times? That’s a lot. No, Jesus said, not seven times, and you can almost hear Peter begin to say “Whew.” Not seven times but seventy seven times, or seven times 70 times, or a bazillion times. Why? Because God’s forgiveness knows no limit. We forgive, because God has forgiven us.

Because, Jesus said, God is like this—and then he told a story. He told a story because people remember stories. We carry stories around inside ourselves. Sometimes we might forget a story until some clue calls it to mind, and we think to ourselves, gee, I haven’t thought of that story for years. But there it is. Like a lot of rabbis and prophets before him Jesus taught in stories. And here’s the story.

A king, or maybe we could say a banker, decided to call in his loans. One of his debtors owed him 10,000 talents, which in modern currency would be like you or I owing the bank a bazillion dollars. 10,000 talents is like 30 lifetimes of income-- an impossible amount. The debtor begged his creditor, have patience with me and I’ll pay you back every cent. This was a desperate lie. There was no way that he could pay the debt, unless he lived for about 2000 years.

In the prophetic tradition of parable-preaching, the king is and isn’t God—that’s the way it is with parables, it’s not a strict allegory. So the king is—and isn’t-- God, the servant is—and isn’t-- Israel, or we could say the church or the nation or all of us together. Everything we are, we owe to God. We could not possibly begin to repay God for the gift of life, for the earth our home, for the land and sky and sea and all the riches that we put to use as if they were our own. If God were to require payment, we would be in deep trouble. We could whine, plead, and try to make some desperate kind of deal, but really, we could never, ever pay for all that God has given us.

Fortunately, God doesn’t demand payment. Life is a gift. We are all benefactors of a generous God, a benevolent ruler, a merciful judge.

In the parable, after having been forgiven of this enormous, impossible, unpayable debt, after being saved from slavery along with his wife and children, the debtor, we’ll call him debtor #1, runs into a guy, we’ll call him debtor #2,  who owes him some money-- a lot of money, but not a ridiculous amount. 100 denari=100 days pay, so whatever 100 days pay is for you, we’ll say he owed that much. Debtor #2 begs for mercy, promises to pay the debt, which he could do. But the one who was shown mercy does not emulate his former creditor. Debtor #1 seems to forget immediately the mercy that he received, his brain is like a sieve, the memory of desperation and mercy and relief was there and then gone. Rather than forgive as he was forgiven, the unforgiving servant has debtor #2 thrown into prison.

I believe this is where Jesus ended the parable. But the author of the Gospel of Matthew seems to have been uneasy with open endings, and was always adding material, expanding and explaining parables. What’s the point of telling a parable if you’re going to explain it? But the author is a literary artist. Matthew’s conclusion to this passage puts a beautiful literary parentheses around the parable, frames the parable with these two phrases about forgiveness: Peter’s question “If a brother or sister sins against me” opens the parentheses and “if you do not forgive a brother or sister” closes it. Thus the parable is framed by our relationship to each other, as brothers and sisters, and by sin and forgiveness.

Every Sunday we pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” As if God’s forgiveness was conditioned upon our forgiving others. But according to the parable, it’s actually the other way around. God forgives us first. God has forgiven us our debt. We couldn’t begin to pay it anyway, but the least we can do in response to God’s mercy is to show mercy to others.

The quality of God’s mercy is not strained, as Portia testified in The Merchant of Venice. It pours down from heaven as the gentle rain. It is twice blessed, it blesses the one who gives as well as the one who receives. On earth as it is in heaven, earthly power is most like God’s “when mercy seasons justice.” When mercy seasons justice. I love that phrase.

As I remember 9/11/2001, the worst terrorist attack in the United States immediately inspired grace and mercy. I remember how strangers—even in New York, of all places (I like a lot of Midwesterners, had the idea that New York City is the last place on earth to look for kindness)-- helped each other find their way to safety. I remember that as some people ran from the cloud of dust as the towers fell, others ran toward it. I remember the generous expressions of sympathy from people all over the world.

But, I also remember how, in the days after 9/11, the cry for justice became a call to vengeance, and I remember how, as a nation, we disagreed over the measures of mercy and justice. We still disagree to this day, I know. Ten years later we still argue how things might have been different if only, if only…. Until we learn to forgive as we have been forgiven, to give as we have received from God, to show mercy as we have seen mercy, until then we live in a kind of hell of our own making. We torture ourselves.

On this tenth anniversary, I remember, and I hope that we can move into the future as better people, as people who have learned from the past and are ready to repent, as people who are ready to excel in showing mercy.

It is from the third verse of the hymn “America the Beautiful” that I take the title for this sermon, and it is my sincere hope that we may prove heroic in loving, and generous with mercy.

“O Beautiful, for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their county loved, and mercy, more than life. America, America, may God thy gold refine, ‘til all success be nobleness and every gain, divine.” May it be so. Amen.

Pulling Up Stakes

28 August 2011

Matthew 16:21-28

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

                Anyone who has attempted to make themselves understood in a second, acquired language knows the difficulty, and the importance of culture and context in making oneself understood. How many American exchange students in Germany have blundered, in an effort to communicate to their host family that their room is too warm, said: “I am hot—Ich bin heiss,” only to later realize that what they actually said was “I am enflamed with passion.” That would explain the Teutonic laughter.

                When we read scripture what we are actually reading is a translation of a transcript, which was itself translated and transmitted orally, so it is always possible that we have lost something in translation.

                “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The idea of “taking up the cross,” and the phrase “my cross to bear,” have become commonplace in our language. So much so that we hardly give the phrase a thought. We think we know what it means: to endure something unpleasant, because God apparently requires suffering.

                As in, yes, my husband beats me, but that’s just my cross to bear.”

                Yes, I have an addiction, but that’s just my cross to bear.”

                As if there is something singularly redemptive in enduring suffering, and something selfish and sinful in standing up and casting it off.

                Well, I think that’s just messed up.

                The actual Greek phrase could mean take up your cross, and considering the death that Jesus died, in hindsight that translation seemed to make sense. But literally, it says “take up your stick,” or “pull up your stake” as in, “strike camp.” Pull up stakes, get ready to go, don’t get comfortable here. Get moving!

                Considering Israel’s history as a migrant people, following flocks and herds across the land, and considering that Jesus frequently used pastoral images, this interpretation seems just as likely as the traditional. And, even more so, considering how the Hebrew Scriptures emphasize the preservation of life. God moves to preserve life. When Joseph was reunited with his brothers in Egypt, he reflected how God was at work in his story, to preserve not only his life, but his brother’s lives, to save their lives and preserve their future. Throughout the arc of scripture, God intervenes to save life. But often saving life requires letting go of everything else, even, in Joseph’s case, freedom.

                I think “taking up your cross,” or pulling up stakes, is more about preserving life than losing it. Or rather, more about preserving life that is real life, casting off a half-life or a living death. It’s about being ready to give up certitude for truth, and comfortable slavery for untested freedom.

                What it looks like, in practice, is cutting the ties that bind us to abusive relationships, and stepping up and out into a new life. Abuse is no one’s cross to bear.

                What it might look like, in practice, for the one who suffers from addiction is confronting that addiction, which is not an essential part of who you are, but a demon to be vanquished or a parasite to be purged from your system. Addiction is no one’s cross to bear.

                What “pulling up stakes” looks like for each of us, we have to work out for ourselves, by asking, “What is it that holds me down? What is it that holds me back from life that is really life?” Ask not “What am I willing to die for,” but ask “What am I willing to live for until I die?”

                So let us contemplate what the Spirit is telling the church, about how to live. Amen.