Hope, well-spent

Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover. He was there with the festival crowd. He made his entry into the city a demonstration, a mock-triumphal entry. As the Roman governor came into the city from Caesarea, mounted on a war-horse and accompanied by soldiers bearing swords and shields—a display intended to shock and awe the citizens of Jerusalem, and squelch any thought of rebellion—at the same time Jesus was coming in from the opposite direction, mounted on a donkey, and accompanied by peasants and children waving palm branches.
The next day Jesus went to the temple and overturned the tables of the currency exchange and the vendors of sacrificial animals. The authorities, both religious and civic, would have arrested him then, but the crowds were with him, and they did not want to risk the embarrassment of a riot while the Roman governor was in town.
The presence of the crowd protected Jesus the next day as well. And it is on this day that Jesus was sitting opposite the treasury and watching the people come and go.

Beware of the scribes, he said. Be aware. They may look devout, they may sound devout, but watch what they do. They devour widows’ houses.
And then, as if to illustrate the point, here comes the widow, putting her little all into the temple treasury.

Perhaps she was emulating the widow of Zarephath, who gave all she had, or all she thought she had, to the man of God, Elijah. Once the widow of the temple gave up all she had to live on, what happened next? Did she go away to die? Or, did she find, upon retuning to her home, a jar of wheat and a vial of oil that would never fail? Or perhaps she found a different kind of miracle. Perhaps she was taken into a neighbor’s home, and cared for, as one of God’s children.

I like to think that she was, because that is who God is, according to the Psalm, “the Lord upholds the orphan and widow.”
Happy are those who hope in God. The psalms arose from the hard-earned wisdom of crushed hope, from the days of exile, when trust in princes proved foolish. The people of Israel learned that hope in their princes was wasted. But hope in God—hope in God is hope well-spent.

You Are Surrounded: A Sermon for All Saints Day

When I was a little girl, about 4 years old, my parents left my brother and sister and me in the care of some friends of the family, and flew to the Bahamas for a “business convention.” I was so thrilled at the idea of flying through the clouds, I didn’t waste any time being mad at them for leaving. Until after they were gone. I was really excited to have them come home and tell me what heaven looked like. Because I knew that it was up there in the clouds, where baby angels bounced on cloud beds and never got yelled at for it, where older angels played harps and sang, and where everyone was happy in the company of God.
I don’t know where exactly I got that idea of heaven… books or movies or television or Sunday school. It was a firm image, developmentally appropriate for a four-year-old, but too fixed to last.
Some people seem to think that because I am a religious professional, I should know just exactly what happens after death. As if some secret knowledge were conferred on me at my ordination. But I don’t know. Nobody knows for sure. Yes, I have studied scripture front to back and sideways, but I still don’t know, not with the certitude of a four-year-old. And that too is developmentally appropriate. Because as we grow older and (ideally) wiser, we realize that the universe is infinite mystery. The more we know, the more we know we don’t know nothing!
But I can tell you, that I don’t worry about not knowing. Because the witness of scripture is that whatever happens next, it is good. It is rest from our labors. It is reunion with God and with all that we have lost. It is peace.
And I certainly don’t worry about hell. Because I don’t believe in it. I believe that in every person is the capacity to love, and that love is eternal. Love is the main thing, love is the kernel of the wheat, and the rest is like the chaff that the wind drives away. I think the apostle Paul put it best in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians: everything will pass away, except love.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
…For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Love is eternal. The songwriting team of Lennon & McCartney summed it up perfectly when they wrote: “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love (pause) you make.”
The early church had the expression “the communion of saints,” which became a part of one of the earliest creeds. The communion of saints describes the experience of the living “sensing” the presence of the dead. They sensed this presence most distinctly--it is described in the book of Hebrews as a great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us and cheers us on. It is a sense that the difference between the living and the dead is an illusory difference, that if we could see with the eyes of God, we would see that we are all, in life and in death, God’s children, fiercely loved.
And the church spoke of that presence in the great thanksgiving, the prayer that preceded the meal which they shared whenever they came together, the meal that we call Holy Communion. “Communion” is not descriptive of the bread and the wine, communion is not descriptive of the meal itself, but of the spiritual experience of being around this table with the living and the dead, with Christ, and with God. We commune, we live together. “And so we join, with all the saints, in giving praise to you.”
This experience became profoundly real to me after my parents and my sister died. As I was sitting during communion one Sunday, while others were distributing the trays of bread and the little cups, suddenly, I heard my sister giggle, and my mother shush her, and my father, I just felt him beside me. It was a memory, but it was more than that. It comforted me. That is my experience of the communion of saints.
As we share this meal today, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, who are with us in these photographs and mementos. With the help of these concrete reminders, I hope we will all be able to sense that presence, to hear those cheers, and to receive comfort in the assurance that we all live together, in the presence of God, whether alive or dead, we abide in God’s presence.
As we meditate upon these words, I invite you to write the name of someone you love, whom you wish to remember today, on that scrap of paper in your bulletin. I will ask the ushers to collect them up, and I will read the names aloud as we pray, as we commune with them today.

For All the Saints, Who From their Labors Rest

November 1st, All Saints Day, will be a day to remember those who have died. Jan Kurtz and Jackie Froemming will assist us in our worship as we interpret the custom of Dia de los Muertos (literally, “day of the dead”). You are invited to bring along to worship that day a photo, or an object of remembrance, representing someone you love who has died. It will be added to a display that will be created around the communion table as worship begins.
An object of remembrance can be something of sentimental value, like the fishing lure your grandpa gave you, or symbolic, like a soup ladle (but not necessarily her soup ladle) of an aunt who always had something cooking. It could even be something humorous, like a toy squirrel representing the rodent that vexed even a saintly gardener so much!
We will also have an opportunity, at Adult Forum the same day, to talk with others about how our loving relationships continue, even beyond the grave.
A few years ago, after Alice Jarvis died suddenly, her husband John signed all the thank you notes which he wrote to those who came to her funeral, “Love, John and Alice.” He continued to sign correspondence in that way, months after Alice had died. I was concerned. I shared my concern with my husband, who said, sympathetically, “Just because she has died doesn’t mean the relationship is over.” It was one of those “ah-ha” moments for me.
“For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave,” according to the Song of Solomon (8:6). This is wisdom born of centuries of experience. Love is not deceived by death. Love recognizes that the separation between the living and the dead is transitory, and ultimately, of little consequence. The love that we share in this life continues to nurture us, even when our beloved has died.
So the first of November will be a celebration of love, and life, and a day to remember the promises of God.

How do you know about God?

My friend Dan sent me a good question:

I’ve been very peaceful with my theology for some time. I start with the basic foundation that there is a God and that God loves us. Everything else grows from that premise. Everything must fit with the concept of a loving God.

So what’s the problem? It occurred to me a few days ago that the energy that I experience and what I call God could be the ‘collective unconscious’ of humanity. What if ‘God’ isn’t a conscious being or deity, but, rather the great cloud of ‘us.’ I’d rather believe that God is a benevolent entity, but how do I know? I won’t believe something just because someone said it’s so. I have to experience it for myself and it has to make sense to me. I thought I’d done that, but maybe not.

So… tell me… how do you come to believe that God exists? How do you know God is God and not just our higher selves?

My Answer:

I don’t know. And for me, that’s not a problem, it is as it should be. Not knowing is a prerequisite for faith. Or, rather, knowing that I don’t know, having the humility to know that I don’t know, is the prerequisite for faith.

There are a lot of the collected scriptures that teach us that when we think we know God, we had better watch out: God is going to surprise us. Like the bit from the book of Job that we will read in church on Sunday. Everybody in that story thinks they know God. Job’s friends think they know God. They consider all that Job has lost—all his children have died, all his wealth has been looted, and he is has become a sick, sad man—and they say to him, “Oh, man, you must have really messed up. Job, what have you done to made God so mad?” That’s a paraphrase, naturally.

Job thinks he knows God too, and he thinks that he has been treated unjustly. But when God finally speaks out of the whirlwind, God puts everybody in their place, saying, “You think you know me? You don’t know nothin’!” That’s a paraphrase too.

The fact that scriptures were written by people, who were doing their best to understand the unknowable, that in itself is an aid in interpretation. For thousands of years people have tried to understand God, and have told stories and written poems and songs to pass on to others the idea of God. Taken as a whole, the Bible, the Koran, the collected scriptures of the world's religions are perspectives on this mysterious concept of that presence that we sense, that in which we live and move and have our being, that breath that stirred the waters of the deep, that breath of life which is our beginning and our end.

So what if God is our “collective unconscious?” So what if God is the web of being that connects us to every living thing? So what if God is “our higher selves?” Those are all good metaphors. Metaphors are, by nature, both true and untrue. “A mighty fortress is our God,” is true and untrue. The experience of God can be like hunkering down in the castle keep during a battle, but not always. Sometimes God is an eagle that lifts us up out of danger. Sometimes God is a mother and I am a hungry infant, sometimes God is a shepherd and I am a lost sheep. Sometimes God is Ad-Aware and I am the hard-drive burdened with spy-ware and trojans—there’s an image too new for scripture, one which is probably already out of date.

I trust that God is. I believe that I will never know God perfectly, but that God is a worthy pursuit. What I have come to believe about God is that God is love, or the ability to love, or the quality that is love, that life-creating power. I believe that God smiles upon fairness, justice, mercy, kindness, whatever is good and pure and life-giving. I think God gets really pissed off at greed, and war, and waste, and meanness.

I believe that people live abundant life when we are part of the love of God. And I believe people are diminished when we fail to be loving. And I believe that whether people succeed or fail to love, as long as we live, we are undeniably connected to God, and in that connection is the potential for redemption, salvation, new life.

And I believe that we may continue in that relationship with God even when we cease to be, even in death, and afterwards. But I don’t know. And that is as it should be, for now.

Looking Out for Number One

Imagine you could have everything. Where would you put it? That’s just one observation on the problem of wealth. And it is a problem, no question about it. There was this rich guy once who ran up to Jesus, and asked him, “What must I do?”
And Jesus said the same thing every good Rabbi says, “You know the commandments? Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, etc….”
“Yes, yes!” the guy says, “I have kept these commandments since I was a boy!”
By this time, we’re picking up a sense of desperation. If he knows the commandments, and he keeps them, why is this guy running after Jesus? I mean, what more can he do?
So Jesus, looking at him and loving him—maybe because he too is sensing the anxiety that this man carries with him—said, “OK, here’s one more thing you can do. Sell all you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me.” And the man went away grieving, because he had many possessions.
Now, most of the time, I feel pretty smug about this rich man, because I know I am not him. I am not a man, and I am not rich by local standards. My car is old. I don’t even own my own mortgage. I buy store brands. I get some stuff at the secondhand store. This laptop computer I’m writing on has Windows XP! It’s like, four years old!
But the truth is, I have so much stuff I can’t walk a straight line across my basement. It’s full of possessions for which I have no immediate need. I thought about having a garage sale this summer, but the other people with whom I share this stuff, they vetoed the idea.
And I am haunted by a story I heard from Brian Sirchio, who goes to Haiti every now and then to get some perspective. He was working for the Sisters of Charity, being a barber because that’s what they needed him to be that day. As he was cutting a man’s hair they got to talking about the rich and the poor, and Brian asked him, “Do you think I’m rich?
“I don’t know you well enough to say,” the man replied. “Tell me, how many times a week do you eat?”
“Come again?"
“I mean, do you eat every day? Because if you eat food every day, you are rich.”
So. That changes my whole perspective on this grieving rich man who had a problem with possessions.
Now, the wealthy church tradition emphasizes the part of the text that assures us that with God, all things are possible. And the wealthy Protestant evangelist will rationalize that the man’s problem wasn’t his wealth but his lack of faith in Jesus—you see, the man was trying to be saved by his works.
But that is just too easy. I think we need to let this text keep us on edge. We need this text when we are tempted to believe that what Jesus wants most for us is to win the lottery. We need this text to remind us that Jesus did not say to the man, “Put a tenth of your gross income in the offering plate and don’t worry so much!”
Wealth, which is commonly viewed as a sign of God’s blessing by those who follow the prosperity gospel, is not so much a blessing as a burdensome temptation. It is the golden calf. Money provides the “daily bread” for which we pray, but money is also the thing which most threatens to replace God as our Lord and master.
The very first commandment: I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me. Perhaps Jesus demonstrated that the man had not, as he claimed, followed all the commandments since his youth. He should have been looking out for Number One.

--Thoughts for Sunday, October 11.

The Jesus Ethic

"Is it lawful..." began the question. "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"
It was a trick question. They already knew the answer. Which is why Jesus answered their question with a question, "What did Moses say about it?"
Yes. It is lawful.
But wait, there's more.
According to the law (see Deut 24:1), a man could divorce his wife if he found something objectionable about her. There is no elaboration on what sort of objectionable feature-- presumably if she burns the bread or talks back, or rolls her eyes at him in an objectionable way, a man could write up a bill of divorce and throw her out. There would be no division of assets, no custody disputes (the children remain the property of the father). There is no provision at all, in the law of Moses, for a wife to divorce her husband, and in fact, if the man makes false charges against a woman, he may not divorce her ever. Apparently, it did not occur to Moses that the woman might not wish to remain the wife of a man who would be so cruel. In the whole of the law, women and children are about equal with cattle.
The Jesus ethic is not about what is lawful. Jesus criticises the law as something created by Moses to accommodate men's hardness of heart.
Jesus would not ask "is it lawful?" Jesus would have us ask "Is it compassionate?"
Is is compassionate for a man to throw his wife out of the house with nothing but a certificate of divorce?
In the past, this gospel reading was excised from the context of the gospel and used as a mallet to beat on people who divorce and remarry. I suppose in some churches it is still used that way. But I don't think Jesus was about replacing the law of Moses with an even stricter legalism.
Consider the object lesson that follows this discussion.
They (and would they, perhaps, be women?) were bringing children (children being a little lower on the scale of humanity than women) to Jesus that he might bless them. The disciples "spoke sternly" to them, shooed them away. But when Jesus saw this he was indignant, and said "Let the children come!"
And he enfolded them in his arms and blessed them.
The last and the least of these, he blessed them.
"What would Jesus do?" is sometimes an inadequate question. How can we know what Jesus would do with our complex, urban, industrial, information-age quandries?
"What is lawful?" is also an inadequate question, as Jesus demonstrated. The law is of human origin, and therefore, always skewed to someone's benefit.
"What is compassionate?" Now there is a good question. "What is the most compassionate, loving way to respond to the benefit of the last and the least of God's children?" That, I believe, is the Jesus ethic.

for Sunday, October 4, 2009

Hold your tongue!

Look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!
James 3:4-5

We all make mistakes, "James" wrote. In speaking, in writing, in communicating we all make mistakes. Not many of you should be teachers, because teachers will be judged with a greater strictness, and we all make many mistakes in speaking. People who don't make mistakes in speaking, they must be perfect! Because if you can control your urge to speak (when you don't know what you are talking about, but you don't realize that you don't know what you are talking about), well, then you must be perfect.
The hardest thing about being a preacher: You have to speak. At least once a week, for 10 minutes or so, you have to have something to say, even if you know you don't know what you are talking about. The greatest temptation is to use the sermon to show people how clever is their pastor. That is always a mistake, for, when I try to be clever I am most likely to reveal myself as a fool, and not a "fool for Christ" either, just a damned fool.
As a child, for a long time I refused to speak. That was probably a good instinct. I was the youngest in the home and in the neighborhood, and I learned that when I spoke, people laughed. It offended me. So I kept my words to myself.
Perhaps we should all be so careful.
There are a lot of people who really ought to measure their words more carefully, mete them out as if they were nearing the end of their lifetime supply. Most of these people work for a certain television network.
Let there be more peace on earth, and let it begin with me. Amen.