A Journey Toward Healing

12 Feb 2012

2 Kings 5:1-14

    Naaman, the Syrian general, traveled from Damascus to Samaria in search of healing. It was a great distance traveled at great risk and great expense. But he was a great general, and the king that he served was eager to reward his servant with the best medical care that money could buy. Even if it meant sending him into enemy territory.

    Diplomacy is the art of observing ceremony which allows proud and powerful enemies to meet together to achieve some desired end, without either party seeming to compromise. Naaman and his king observed careful diplomacy-- that is what we may gather from the mention of silver and gold and suits of clothing. It is an ostentatious display of wealth to indicate Naaman’s status, and an indication that something equally valuable is expected in exchange.

    The king of Israel is unprepared for the visit, and suspects that Syria’s hidden agenda is war-mongering. Apparently, the king of Israel was completely unaware of the treasure that was his in the person of the prophet Elisha.

    These are the players in the drama: Two kings and a mighty general, men of wealth and power and status, who have everything that money can buy but are powerless to relieve Namaan’s suffering, poor in spirit and ignorant of the man of God, the prophet in Israel. In that beautiful paradoxical way of scripture, it is the slave girl and the other nameless servants who provide what is needed.

    Pride and expectations nearly scuttle the mission. Because Naaman is a commander, a favorite, a victor, a hero—he is used to being treated in a particular way. When the prophet doesn’t even bother to come out of his house—that is simply not the done thing. Enraged, incensed, indignant! Naaman is ready to take his leprosy home to Damascus. It is his servants who stop him.

     If the prophet asked you to do something difficult, you would do it, right? All he said was wash and be clean. How easy is that? Why not try.

     I say the miracle didn’t happen in the Jordan River.

    The miracle happened right there, in front of Elisha’s house. The miracle happened in Naaman’s heart. A proud man, a mighty warrior, the King’s favorite, the victorious hero, humbled himself and took the advice of a servant, and was made new again.

Power and Authority: The Peter Parker Challenge

Mark 1:21-28

Sunday, January 29 

                When Peter Parker woke up the morning after he was bitten by a super-spider, he noticed something had changed. When he became more fully aware of the power he suddenly had, he instinctively used it to do what most teenage boys would do with sudden wealth or strength: get the girl. If you haven’t read the comic or seen the movie, I’m talking about Spiderman, before he became a superhero was a super dweeb. He tried to impress Mary Jane by beating up the school bullies, but she was disgusted. He figured she would respect him if he had a muscle car, so he looked for a way to earn some quick cash as a cage fighter “the Human Spider,” and buy the car of his dreams for the girl of his dreams. But it all went badly wrong.

                The last words his uncle Ben said to him were, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And after Uncle Ben’s death (in the formula typical of super-heroes) he dedicated himself to using his power to benefit the downtrodden and defeated victims of crime in the city.

                In the gospel lesson for today we read of a new power and authority. As the story goes, the people around Jesus are just waking up to the power in their midst. He teaches as one who has authority, not as one of the scribes who just quote the commentaries on the scripture. He teaches as if he has the authority to communicate the will of God. And besides that, he demonstrates a power we have never seen before.

                The gospel is teaching us to be aware of the power in our midst. Annie Dillard once wrote:

                “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ” 

 Are we aware of the power? I think we are. I think we know full well the power of the gospel and the challenge of discipleship. I think it frightens us. Because we are, as a generation, suspicious of power. “Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This we believe as if it were gospel, but it isn’t. It’s Lord Acton, a British historian. We witnessed the truth of the truism in the 20^th century, in the first great war to end all wars, and the second great war to end all wars, and all the wars after that. We witnessed it in politics local and global. We have been trained to challenge authority and beware of power.

                But we must remember that we have seen a different kind of power at work in the world as well. The power of nonviolent resistance to violence. The power the united behind Gandhi in India and King in Selma and Birmingham. It’s the same power we see at work in the gospel. The power to cast out the demons of colonial subjugation and racial segregation, the power to cast out the demon of economic, legal and social injustice.

                This is the power in our midst and with great power comes great responsibility.

How God’s Mind Changed

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (but you should read the whole story)

22 January 2012

                 “I believe in the New Testament God,” one of our legislators said to a Jewish friend of mine. Would he have said that, had he known she was Jewish? I don’t know. But his statement reflects one of the ridiculous things people say about God. The faith formation class heard me get all hot and bothered about this one a few weeks ago when somebody said, “Why is the God in the Old Testament all mean?”

“Where did you hear that?” I snapped.

“From my history teacher”

“Well your history teacher is an id—I mean your history teacher is sadly misinformed.”

The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same God. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible-- that's the bible that Jesus studied. That’s the bible from which Rabbi Jesus taught. That’s where he got all of his best material! So how can anyone say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of vengeance and the God of the New Testament a God of grace—that’s just messed up, and I won’t stand for it and neither should you and what’s a history teacher doing talking about the bible anyway—doesn’t he (or she) have enough material to cover? And furthermore, we know Jewish people who know that God is compassionate. Saying that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous God as if that were the whole story is not just a slander against God, but a slander against a whole faith community!

And here we have a case in point: the story of Jonah, from what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew bible, one of the books of the prophets. Jonah is distinguished among the prophets by his reluctance, to put it mildly. The story of Jonah is a parody, a send up, a spoof, a comic satire of a prophet’s story. Last week, we read about the call of the prophet Samuel. When Samuel was called, he replied “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” When God called Jonah, he ran away! As if a person could outrun the presence of God! Jonah ran for the coast, and boarded a ship headed for Tarshish, which I believe is Hebrew[1] for “the back of beyond,” or “far, far away.” When a storm came up Jonah hid in the hold, the belly of the ship, and you know how he got from there to the belly of the whale and was spit up on the beach, and there our reading for today took up the story.

The story of Jonah is a story of a man who went to ridiculous lengths to avoid the prophetic call of God. That makes him a sympathetic character, somebody we recognize, somebody we can relate to. He’s not a hero, Jonah is definitely not the hero of this story, he’s just a sympathetic character. We can sympathize with Jonah because honestly, who wants to be a prophet? Oh, we would all like to think we might be like Samuel or like Isaiah, and say “Here I am, Lord, send me.” But we know what happens to prophets. Prophets get to speak the truth to power, and power takes offense. Who wants to be exiled and outlawed, like Elijah, or thrown down a well, like Jeremiah?

The story goes to great lengths to demonstrate that once God has set God’s eye on you, you can’t run and you can’t hide. God will continue to pursue and win the game of hide and seek. There’s no evading God’s attentions. God is a persistent suitor.

When Jonah finally acquiesced, and obeyed God’s summons, we can tell his heart wasn’t really in it. He went to Nineveh—that great city. He didn’t even get to the center of the city, he walked one-third of the distance and he said, “Four days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And then, I suppose, he went out to find a safe place to watch the destruction of the city.

But here’s the strangest part of the story: you know how no one ever believes the prophet? You know how Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “You better let my people go or God will smite your firstborn,” and Pharaoh said, “Yeah, right. I’ll take my chances.” You know how Jeremiah said, if you go making deals with the devil the city will be overrun, and the royal family and all their supporters said, “Oh you be quiet, Jeremiah, you’re upsetting people,” and “Into the mud, prophet!”

Yes, the paradox of Jonah is that the most reluctant prophet ever also proved to be the most effective! The people actually listened, and repented, and when God saw that the people repented, then God repented of the destruction that God had planned—which is how prophecy is supposed to work. The job of the prophet is not to predict the future. That’s not prophecy, that’s fortune telling, a completely different business and not one that God is in. The job of the prophet is to tell the truth about what is happening now, and to show people where it might lead, if things keep on going the way they have been going. The goal of prophetic preaching is repentance.

Maybe the reason people get the idea that God, in the Old Testament, is all about punishment, is because they don’t read the whole story. The whole story is that God is—in Jonah’s own words, where he paraphrases a psalm[2]—merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Whenever and wherever people turn their hearts to God and emulate God’s mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, there is life. That is the whole of the law and the prophets, said Jesus, and so said Rabbi Hillel.

The Hebrew bible does not teach that God is vengeful. The Hebrew bible teaches us that God is mutable. God can change God’s mind. The mind of God is influenced by people, by who we are, by what we do and what we say. God listens, God learns, and God changes. Wherever and whenever people emulate God’s ability to listen and learn and change, there is life.

The gospel of Jonah and the gospel of Jesus is the same gospel, the good news of God’s compassion and mercy. The challenge of Jonah and the challenge of Jesus is the same challenge. We are challenged to respond to God’s call, even if our response is reluctant. We are called to speak the truth to power, even if we are afraid. Power might just surprise us, and respond with repentance, mercy and compassion.

One traditional interpretation of the story of Jonah is that Jonah is Israel. Jonah is a parable about Israel. God made a covenant with Abraham, in the early days, God made a covenant that through Abraham’s children, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Sometimes, Israel, like Jonah, avoided the call to be a blessing to all nations, or fulfilled that call only begrudgingly. Because Israel in the time of exile was so used to being disparaged among nations, Israel returned disparagement in kind. The book of Jonah challenges Israel to entertain the possibility that faithful people can be found in foreign lands. The exaggerated response of the people of Nineveh, who repent on a scale unheard of in Israel, emphasizes the possibility.

Jonah could also be interpreted as a parable about the church. We are called to carry the message of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, and God’s abundant mercy, to all the world. We have a message to deliver. A message about justice for the poor and marginalized. A message about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and not doing to others what you would not want done to you. We have a message about the God who is still speaking and about people needing to listen and learn and change.

But, like Jonah, sometimes we would rather run away from the call. Because, we know that no one is going to listen, that people have already made up their minds—that’s what we think we know, anyway. We’ll just tweet the message and run away. People have already made up their minds they aren’t going to change.

Truth is, it is we who have made up our minds about “those people,” the Ninevites, the fundamentalists, whoever we think “they” are. “They” will never change. Except, in the story, they do, they change. People can and do, sometimes, respond and repent. However reluctant, meek, or indifferent the messenger may be, people respond to the message.

Let us listen, and hear what the spirit is saying to the church, to us, today.

---

[1] Not really. Might have been Tarsus, in what we now call Turkey; or it might have been in Spain. Either one is far, far away.

[2] Several psalms, actually, and the torah. Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18.

The Voice

January 8, 2012

Mark 1:4-11; Psalm 29; Genesis 1:1-5

The power of the voice is celebrated in today’s scriptures-- the power of the voice of God to create, destroy, and re-create. It is the voice of God that calls creation into being, the voice of God that strips the forest bare, the voice of God that claims Jesus as “my beloved,” and calls him good.
Before the earth had shape and form the wind of God moved over the waters and God said… and it was so.
When Jesus came up out of the water he saw the Spirit descending on him in the form of a dove and he heard a voice from heaven call out, you are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased. In Mark’s gospel, no one else hears or sees what Jesus hears and sees. Jesus alone hears the voice. It is no wonder that immediately afterward he went into the wilderness for a 40 day retreat. He probably needed some alone time to think about what had just happened to him.
In our faith tradition, we proclaim that God is still speaking. We listen for the voice of God speaking not only through the scriptures, not only through tradition, but also through the world that God created. We listen for the still speaking God when we take our morning walk, and hear God in the silence of snow falling; we listen for God in the dark cold night and hear God in the boom of the ice cracking. We listen for God when we read and we hear God speaking through careful study of the world. We listen for God and hear God speaking in the world in many ways, in many languages, including the languages of mathematics and science. We hear God speaking from the Hubble telescope and we hear God speaking from the depths of the earth at CERN; we hear God speaking from the first spark of creation and we hear God speaking at the forward edge of the universe.
God is still speaking, and the voice of God continues to call the world into being. The voice shouts and the voice whispers in the ear, the voice is universal and intimately personal. The voice of God continues to create and destroy and re-create.
The power to destroy is not a power we like to ascribe to God, not as much as the ancients did anyway. Remember the last time a tornado ripped through the south end of town? The psalm seems to have been written in response to an event like that, the psalmist was awed by the power of the wind. It’s not in the destruction of barns and cattle that we see God at work. But what about the power to remove what needs to be removed, to make way for something better? The power to remove old prejudices, the power to remove accepted customs that we now see as barriers, these are the walls that the voice of God can knock down.
We perceive that God is still speaking. But not everyone seems to hear what we hear. And, other Christians seem to hear things that we don’t hear. What do we do when others don’t seem to hear what we hear? How do we know we aren’t just hearing what we want to hear? What’s the difference between hearing the voice of God and hearing voices?
Part of the work of the church is to discern the voice of God, to discern where God is at work in the world for good. We meet together as the church to help one another discern God’s loving Spirit. We meet together to listen for the voice of God, and to test every revelation through the measure of Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. We test every revelation—the new ones and the old standards—by asking if they measure up to Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. Which sounds simple when put so succinctly, but it gets complicated, we know it does. That is why it is vital that the congregation come together for worship, every week.
We know that “being the church” isn’t just about “going to church.” We know that the mission of the church begins at the doorstep. But it is here, in worship together, that we get our marching orders. It is here that we hear and discern the voice that calls us, and here that we get the inspiration and the power and the energy to be the church in the world. Ideally, that’s what worship is. Worship generates the power and light that fuels the mission.
We meet together to share with one another what we hear the voice of God calling us to do, to encourage one another, and to hold one another accountable.
God calls to you, God calls to each of us, “You are my beloved.” God calls to us as a congregation, “You are my beloved.” How then shall we live?

Ring in the New

                When I was a child of 12 or so years, I earned the esteemed and highly coveted position of bell-ringer at First Congregational Church in Moline (IL). The position was usually filled by boys, because it was heavy and messy work (it involved climbing crude wooden steps to a dirty, dusty, cobwebby bell tower, not something to be done in “girly clothes”), but my brother held the position before me and I learned the ropes from him. One rope, actually. You had to pull hard but once you got going you could ride the rope up off the ground, and that was exhilarating!

                That was just one of several church-related jobs I have held over the years. Another was baby-sitter to the children of our Associate Pastor and his wife, Bob & Julie Ullman, a job I sometimes shared with my sister. One New Years’ Eve when we were babysitting, Bob and Julie returned home before midnight and Bob offered to drive us down to church, to climb the bell tower and ring in the New Year! All along that river city, bells were ringing, from First Congregational and First Presbyterian, and First Lutheran, St. Mary’s… all the churches that still had bells in towers.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

                These lines, penned by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, are part of a much longer work, “In Memoriam,” published in 1850. The previous years had not been kind to Tennyson. For more than a decade, he had been mourning the loss of his close friend from college days. The one good thing, the love of his life to whom he had been engaged to be married, was lost to him: her family broke off the engagement when Tennyson lost the fortune he had inherited. Grief, heartbreak, diminished circumstances—no wonder he wrote “Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.”

                Of course we know nothing is really dying. We are turning a page, hanging a new calendar on the wall. January 1, 2012 will look very similar to December 31, 2011. But we pause to acknowledge the passing of time, perhaps to shed a tear for missed opportunities, perhaps to raise a parting glass in memory of those whom we have lost. And perhaps we will raise another, to life, to hope, to promise.

                What I sense most of all in Tennyson’s verses is release. “In Memoriam” seems to mark the end of grieving, a final relinquishment of mourning. Is it the poet’s declaration of independence from despair? Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is an invitation for hope to enter in.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

So be it. Amen.

                You can read more of “Ring Out, Wild Bells” here.

God and Material Engagement Theory

Here’s how my brain works:

One day last week, while driving from one place to another, I caught a snippet of an opinion piece on the radio. It was about resisting the ludicrous material excesses of the end-of-year holidays—all the time spent shopping and the money spent procuring just the right things to give to our friends and family, things which would be forgotten and possibly discarded before the thawing of the frozen ground. The voice on the radio suggested we cut the number of gifts we give in half. Use some of the money we would have spent on gifts to make a donation to a charitable organization that does some good in the world, like Heifer International. How very Puritan, I thought. Who is this guy, preaching the gospel like he invented it?

I found the answer on the National Public Radio website. This guy is Adam Frank, who authored a book called About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang. A couple of clicks later I was previewing the book on Amazon.com, and I noticed frequent use the phrase “material engagement.” So I “searched inside the book” as Amazon allows and discovered seventy-one results. That seemed significant. That led me to Google “material engagement,” and after I filtered out “fabric” and “weddings” I discovered Lambros Malafouris and Colin Refrew at Keble College, Oxford Univeristy, and soon I was in too deep.

So, paddling back to the shallower pools of Adam Frank (no offense intended), I pondered the phrase “material engagement.” It struck me because even though it is still Advent, my brain has long been contemplating Christmas and Epiphany, and God’s incarnation. Which is, it seems to me, God’s material engagement with the cosmos. The theological leap from the God who could not be seen face-to-face, whose voice could not be heard but through the prophets, who could only be addressed through the rituals the temple, to a God who is present in the person of Jesus—that leap requires a new theory of God. If God who spoke to no one face-to-face could suddenly be present in human form, that means God changed the rules of engagement with God’s creation, from immaterial engagement through dreams and visions, to material engagement in human flesh. What the church calls “incarnation,” God getting fleshy, could also be called God’s praxis of material engagement.

So what? Well let me tell you what. Many people live as if the material world doesn’t matter. Many of these people even consider their point of view to be Christian. What really matters, they say, is what is in your heart, what you believe. As long as you accept Jesus into your heart and believe, really believe, then you are saved. Saved from what? From this dirty world, which will be destroyed. And they proceed to excel the rate of destruction, because their engagement with the world is based on the assumption that mater doesn’t matter, or worse, that mater is evil.

That’s just messed up.

If God created the world, and loved the world enough to become materially engaged in the world, then everything—every last thing—has holy potential. Our own praxis of material engagement should be informed by God’s praxis of material engagement. If God was present in the person of Jesus, then God is potentially present in every person. If God slept in a manger in Bethlehem, then God is potentially present in every barn, every favela, every shanty town and shelter. If God walked the back roads of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, then every country lane from Mississippi to Mozambique to Myanmar and all around the world is highway in the Holy Land; and every city street is potentially a street in the City of God. If God bathed in the Jordan River, then every river… you get the drift, right?

How can we despise anyone who is potentially God? How can we abandon the streets of God’s city? How can we remove the mountain of God’s presence?

If we believe, really believe, or reluctantly believe or even entertain the possibility for a moment, that God is present in the world, then how should we live? Think about it.

Christ of the Carols: Child of God, Love's Pure Light

December 4, 2011

Text: Silent Night, Holy Night

When I was in elementary school, I remember seeing an educational film about the story of the song, Silent Night. The dramatic recreation of events was set in a small village in Austria and filmed in black and white. You probably know the story as well as I do, how the organ in the village church broke down, and no one could be found to repair it. So the Choir Master, Franz Gruber, and the Pastor, Joseph Mohr, collaborated on a simple hymn which could be accompanied by guitar.

It is a tale of adversity was transformed into advantage. Which is probably why it has become an American favorite. We like our legends of adversity overcome. We like to imagine that if it weren’t for the apparently unfortunate circumstance of the organ that went kaput, the song might never have been written. God works in a mysterious way, wonders to perform.

The thing is, no one can find an account of this story that predates 1965.

The hymn was written in 1818.

So this dramatic account is probably a complete fiction.

And yet, we know this is true: God does work in a mysterious way. God does turn disappointment into blessing, time and time again. And that is why the broken organ story will last. Because whether or not it actually happened that way, it is a true story. The story is not truth, but the story is a container ship of truth. It is the vessel that carries a truth into the future.

And that is why the stories of Christ’s nativity are so precious. They need not be factual to be true. We don’t need to pretend to suspend our disbelief in a virgin birth.  We don’t have to pretend to suspend our disbelief  that a star could guide travelers to one particular house among many, or that we could call men “wise” who thought that it did. We don’t have to pretend not to notice that Matthew and Luke’s gospel tell completely different stories of Jesus’ birth, and that two of the gospels don’t mention it at all. Because the truth of the story is not in the details. The story holds the truth. And it is a beautiful vessel for the truth. It is a story richly embroidered, lovingly crafted, polished to shine like gold.

The hymns and carols of Christmas similarly vessels of a truth, a faith, a devotion passed from generation to generation.  Still nacht, heilege nacht, Alles schlaft, eimsam wacht nur das traute hochheilege Paar, holder Knabe mit lockigen Haar, Schlafen in himmlishe ruh. Silent night, holy night, everyone sleeps, no one is awake except the faithful, holy few. The beautiful boy with the curly hair sleeps in heavenly rest.

Anyone who has spent a night with a newborn knows that the heavenly rest could not have lasted long! But don’t sweat the details, because that is not where the truth is found. The truth is that Jesus, like every baby, is born into a world that, for all its faults, becomes holy to those gathered around for the event. Time seems to stop, and for a moment there is no one in the world except mother and child, looking into one another’s eyes for the first time. The rest of the world might as well be asleep.

The truth is that generations of Christians have found in the person of Jesus a God-presence so powerful, so complete, that their devotion found expression in stories and songs that identify that presence as extending retroactively through childhood and into infancy. And so Jesus, the Man of God, became Jesus the infant Child of God. And our hymn for today is a song of praise to the Child of God, love’s pure light. Let us join with our brothers and sisters in Christ in all ages in this song of praise.