God is Holding Our Lives

Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:4-9, Luke 13:31-36

When asked what scripture most informed and shaped our faith life, several of us wrote of the power of trust and surrender. Jill T. contributed the verses from Proverbs, Kathy O., the verses from Philippians. Psalm 23 was an anonymous suggestion and I added the gospel for good measure, and in a moment I'll tell you why I picked that lament over Jerusalem.

But first, I want to assure the activists and type A's among us-- who are probably squirming in the pews and thinking, Oh Lord, here it comes, another "Let Go and Let God" moment-- that it's OK to have a mission. It's OK to have a plan. It's OK to have goals and objectives and target dates and check lists. The wisdom of surrender, the wisdom of letting go and letting God, is not a concession to injustice, or a command to throw away our five-year plan.

But, when our plan is set askew by forces beyond our influence, when injustice happens and cannot be justly ameliorated, that's the time to remember that God is holding our lives. That is the time to remember these words of wisdom from our people.

An image of wood and water which I read somewhere comes to mind. Wood is good, useful, strong. You can build a boat with wood, and ride out the flood. But, wood doesn't do well against rocks. When thrown upon the rocks, the wood will insist on holding its form. It may stand up to the first toss against the rocks, maybe the second and third as well, but eventually its resistance will fail and it will shatter. The water, on the other hand, finds is way around the rocks, and eventually, the water will wear that rock away. Sometimes, it's good to be wood. But against the rocks, it's wise to be water.

The wisdom of surrender comes from thousands of year of experience. It's the wisdom of Joseph, betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused unjustly imprisoned, who later becomes the savior of his family, and is able to forgive his brothers and say to them, "You did what you did, it was wrong... but God used it for good." God is holding our lives, and saving them no matter what.

It's the wisdom Ruth, widowed, homeless, and childless, an alien in the land, who becomes a great grandmother to King David, an ancestress of the royal house. We see in her story, that God is holding our lives.

It's the wisdom of Jesus, who refused to be afraid when people came to warn him that Herod was aiming to kill. I'm not surprised, Jesus said. But I must do what I have come to do. I'm going to keep on preaching, keep on healing, keep on teaching, come what may. Because God is holding our lives.

Jesus, in this moment is to me like the antithesis of chicken little. Someone is shouting, "Run Jesus run, the sky is going to fall on you." And Jesus says, "We'll see."

For all of us who are anxious little chicks, God, like a mother hen is opening her wings and saying, "Come on in from the heat of the day, come on in from the cold, cold night."

Whether or not we have the will or the wisdom to seek the shelter of the Lord, to return to our mother's wingspan or our prodigal father's open arms, this is true: God is holding our lives.

(25 July 2010)

To Go and Do Likewise (preached July11)

Texts: 1 John 4:7-8; Luke 10:25-37

Today our uncommon lectionary intersects with the Revised Common Lectionary. When asked
"What's your story?" or "What scripture informs your faith?" Love was a common theme.

"The one that says 'God is Love'" was one unsigned submission.

"How to truly love our neighbors as ourselves" was another. And from Marcia Ferris, this request came with a song: "The greatest love of all."

I believe that children are the future

Teach them well and let them lead the way

Show them all the beauty they possess inside

Give them a sense of pride....

...The greatest love of all is happening to me...

...Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.

I remember singing along with Whitney, whenever that song came on the radio. All the residents of Stanger Hall (I was in college at the time) would sing along. Sometimes I worried that it was a bit sacrilegious, to sing that "the greatest love of all" was love of self (rather than the love of God). But, for many people that is indeed where it needs to begin: with an understanding of how God sees each and every one of us: as a beloved child, loved just for being.

Unfortunately, many children are brought up knowing that they are unloved and believing that it is because they are unlovable. My parents were two cases in point: they each lost a parent at an early age, and so they were brought up, during the Great Depression, by people who never let them forget what an imposition they were. In my father's case it was a stepfather, in my mother's case it was foster parents. Fortunately, they also had people in their lives who did love them, and they were able to heal enough to be good parents to my siblings and me.

Ideally, every child should all be nurtured from the cradle, to know that he or she is a beloved child of God. Every child should know someone whose love is unconditional, someone who models God's love to him or her. Ideally, that love should be strong enough to stand up to the challenges of contradictory messages which will besiege the child as he or she grows. The messages that say she is unattractive, he is unworthy, they are incomplete without something or other, which they can buy for the low, low price of....

Ideally, but so many of us, we have to learn to love ourselves, so that we can know what it is to love our neighbors as ourselves. I believe worship is, to some extent, group cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is the practice of learning new thought patterns, reinforcing healthy messages and blocking unhealthy messages. When we address God in prayer, as just and merciful, we say these things not to "butter God up" to get on God's good side. God knows who God is. We say these things to remind ourselves who God is, lest we forget, lest we forget. Praying in this way is like holding up a mirror, to see ourselves as God sees us. Beloved. Welcome. Forgiven, and Blessed.

But we can't get too stuck on ourselves. We also are reminded that we are not God's only children. We have brothers and sisters in the neighborhood who are equally loved, welcome, forgiven and blessed. Who are these brothers and sisters? Wherever you go, whoever you see, your looking at them.

"Seeking to justify himself," the scripture says, "seeking to justify himself," the lawyer asked, "So, who is my neighbor?" What kind of an answer was he fishing for? I suppose one that would allow him to go on living and loving his own family and friends, while ignoring the suffering of strangers, and being an accomplice after the fact, which is one way to describe a person whose indifference compounds suffering-- an accomplice after the fact.

How do we truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves? This is an open question. It is a question we should carry into our lives every day. We should never presume to have any answer beyond that which lies hidden in plain sight, in the parable. That is the only solution to the puzzle, the only answer that Jesus offers.

Which of these, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

Go and do likewise.

Do We Always Have to Win?

This spring, when I invited members of the congregation to submit ideas for our "uncommon lectionary" series, two responses were very similar, both along the same lines of how to relate to people who believe differently than we do:

I have been thinking about the story of Elijah's contest with the priests of Baal. What does this say to us about relationships with Muslims, Jews,Hindus, etc.-- Do we have to “win”? How about our relationships with “the evangelicals.” Are we right and they wrong, or visa versa? Or does that miss the point of the story? (Dorothy L.)

“No one comes to the father but by me.” Fundamentalists often throw this up when someone suggests Gandhi might be in heaven (or Nirvana?). There are a few other verses like this that people use to justify mission work that resembles more the crusades than the work of Jesus. (Erik S.)

We opened our worship with one of Stan Lundberg's favorite hymns: "Immortal, invisible, God, only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes...." This was not one of my favorites, but Stan convinced me of the brilliance of this hymn, which evokes humility and wonder, both of which are necessary postures when we approach the unknowable God. Time and again in scripture, when people think they have the last word on God, God interrupts their story to assure them that they don't know even the first thing. For example, when God needed to let people know that God is more merciful than they could imagine, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, "Your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher are my thoughts than your thoughts, and my ways than your ways."

And you know how the story of Job ended. Job and each of his three friends thought they knew what was what, they thought they knew the be all and end all of God, but at the end of the story God spoke from the whirlwind and said, "You think you know me? You don't know me! Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

Which is why we should approach all questions about God with great humility. Because God is so much larger than any language can describe. We have our language, our story, our customs, handed down from the ages, and all of these are limited. But God is limitless. That is why we relate to people of different faiths as brothers and sisters, all children of God. Because who are we to say that God has not spoken through Buddha or Mohammed?

So what do we do with stories like Elijah and the prophets of Baal? We must remember that the Bible is a collection of stories, handed down through the ages, and the stories are not told in a unified voice. In the scriptures we hear many voices. Some of those voices in the Hebrew scriptures say, "It would be better if the Jews were the only people in Israel." These voices tell stories that imagine genocide as an answer to the problem of foreign influence. (The prophets of Baal were brought to Israel by the foreign Queen Jezebel, wife of King Ahab.) But there are other voices too, voices of faithful foreigners, like Ruth the Moabite, an ancestor of king David. The story of Ruth tells us that a foreigner can be righteous and faithful and Godly.

Whenever we read the Hebrew scriptures, we really ought to remember that they don't belong to us. We borrowed them from the Jewish faith, and so we really ought to consult the people who have the primary claim to the scripture. Rabbinic traditions recognize that scripture is full of arguments... the scriptures argue with each other. And in reading and studying, we join in on a longstanding family argument. The voices of dissent are not silenced, they are preserved, because they come from family. Working it out, finding the balance, that is part of practicing the faith.

In the United Church of Christ, and in many other mainline progressive Christian faith communities, at this point in time, we choose to honor-- no! conscience calls us to honor-- the faith practices of others. We do not seek to convert faithful Muslims, or Jews, or Hindus or Buddhists, or American Indians, though we once did, we do not do that anymore. Instead of preaching Christ and forcing conversion, we practice what Jesus taught, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. We seek to imitate Christ: to feed the hungry, heal the sick, teach those who have no one else to teach them, work for justice, walk the path of peace.

So, more often, our problem is not how to relate to people of other faiths or no faith, but how, how do we relate to others who claim the same name, Christian, but who condemn us for failing to live up to their expectations of what Christian means to them. Some Christians think that converting souls to Christ is the primary moral obligation of the Christian. And, as Erik pointed out, one of the scriptures they cite is from the 14th chapter of John's gospel.

"I am the way." To me, that means "follow me." Walk this way. Do what I do. To me that means that in every nation, whoever does what is righteous and merciful and, well, Christ-like, is "on the way." Take Erik's example of Gandhi. Born into a good family, trained in the West as a solicitor (what we Americans call a lawyer), he could have had a very comfortable life. But, moved by the suffering of others, he gave it all up, and put on the clothes of a servant. He touched the untouchables, and ate with them. He worked with them and he bled with them.

The apostle Paul described Jesus as the one who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being found in human form he was obedient to death (Philippians 2:6-8).

So, who is more Christ-like, I want to ask, Gandhi, or the American televangelist?

I also think it is important to remember that the "I am the way" statement comes right after Jesus speaks of God's house having "many rooms." If there is room for you and me, why not room for all God's children, all over the world?

That's what I want to ask, but, that would not be helpful, when talking with an evangelist, trained to follow the script, given a flow chart of scripture verses to answer every protest. That remark would not bring peace, but further division. How can we respond in a Christ-like way to someone who uses scripture like a weapon? Probably not by doing as they do.

This is not a new problem. A Quaker Friend, Steve Long and I were discussing this after we finished a worship service at Bethany, where I was preaching and Steve was playing the piano. When I have the nursing home marathon (five worship services, five locations, in two mornings), as I did last week, I consider it an opportunity to give the upcoming Sunday's sermon a practice run, so Steve heard this sermon and he could relate to this problem. How does a pacifist respond to hostility?

Faithfully. Patiently. Balancing certitude and openness. Balancing self-regard with regard for others. Remembering that the opposition are children of God, and so are we. Sometimes it feels like a high-wire walk, all this balancing.

Do we always have to win? What does winning have to do with the Christian faith? Was Jesus a winner?

Do we have to be right? Do we have to prove others wrong? No, I don't think so. We are called to be faithful followers. Don't look down, don't look behind: let's keep our eyes upon the one who calls us to follow in the servant way, and walk on.

Sunday's scriptures:

1Kings 18:20-40

1 Cor 10:23-11:1

John 14:1-7

Noah and the Message from the Birds

After forty days Noah opened a window and sent out a raven. It did not come back, but kept flying around until the water was completely gone. Meanwhile, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down, but since the water still covered all the land, the dove did not find a place to light. It flew back to the boat, and Noah reached out and took it in. He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again. It returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water had gone down. Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove once more; this time it did not come back.

--Genesis 8:6-12 (TEV)

In the universal language of symbol, birds bring messages from the spirit world. Around the globe, across cultures and all along the time line, this is so. The eagle, the owl, the heron, the crane, the raven, the dove, all have been assigned spiritual attributes in various cultures. I remember an Anishinaabe elder explaining that when the loon makes that victorious yodeling call, it means a warrior has entered the spirit world.

In this old, old story of the flood and the ark, we have a tale of birds bearing a message from God. Four messages actually: 1. Wait. 2. Not yet. 3. Almost. 4. Now, it's going to be alright. In other versions of the story, God and Noah speak directly to each other, but in this version, the birds are the intermediaries. The birds carry the hope of humanity up to the heavens, and return with the gospel, the good news from the Great Spirit. Peace.

Even though we humans have almost forgotten the old language of the spirit, even though we have nearly forgotten how to read the signs of nature, because we have fixated on our own languages, as if we are the only sentient beings on the planet, even now, if we listen, we can hear it-- the spirit who speaks through the birds.

Listen to the brown pelican, in the gulf. It says, "I'm dying out here."

Listen to the loon on Gull Lake. It says, "These mercury levels are higher than they ever have been."

Listen to the passenger pigeon... oops, too late!

Remember how the story of Noah ends? God says, "I'm never going to destroy the earth again. Ever. That was a stupid idea and I will never do that again."

God has given us everything we need, and messengers to help us get it right. Do we listen?

Are We Following Jesus-- Or Just Believing in Christ?

Title credit goes to Bryan Sirchio, it's from the chorus of the song entitle "Follow Me (87 times).

Are We Following Jesus, or Just Believing in Christ

Because, I can believe and not change a thing,

but following could change my whole life.

Jesus never said, "Come, acknowledge my existence."

Or, "Believe in me, I'm the second person of the Trinity."

But 87 times, he said, "Follow Me."

Conscientious people, really thoughtful people, the kind of people you want to have in your church, are often the least ready to become members of the church. Not that that means all who are members have no conscience! Not at all! But usually when confirmands or prospective members are struggling with the decision of whether or not to stand up in church and declare their faith, it is because they dread hypocrisy most of all vices. No one wants to be a fraud.

If becoming a member of the church is about declaring one's own perfection in belief, with complete confidence, then there should be no members of the church at all, except maybe a few dead saints. But I don't think that's what it's about. I don't thing that has ever been the intention of church membership.

Maybe we shouldn't even use the word membership. It was a good word, once. It intended to mean that we are all members of one body, the ways arms and legs are members of our body, but we rarely use the word that way any more. More often we use it as a term of belonging to a social club. A member of the club remains a member in good standing so long as the dues are paid. That's not what we are talking about when we speak of membership in the church. Not at all.

Maybe a better word would be "followship" if there were such a word (but my spellchecker asserts there is not), and we are followers of Jesus. Maybe, we should call each other travelers, because we are signing on for a journey. Not a literal journey. Maybe pilgrim, if we could get the John Wayne accent out of our heads when we said it, "Pilgrim."

Whatever we call it, what we are about is following Jesus, to the best of our ability. We look to the stories of Jesus for guidance. We notice that for Jesus an ethic of compassion overrides an ethic of law, and so we seek to do likewise. We notice that Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, forgave sins, and so we seek to do likewise. We notice that Jesus prayed often, in silence, and with others in the congregations (that is what synagogue means, congregation), and so we seek to do likewise. We note that Jesus, even Jesus, learned from others, and so we seek to do likewise.

Like the first followers, we get it wrong once in a while. It isn't easy, this followship, but we are not left to follow all alone. We have this company of followers called the church, and when we walk together we help one another. Sometimes we carry, sometimes we are carried. Sometimes we feed, sometimes we are fed. Sometimes we lose sight of the goal, and others draw our attention back to the one who goes before us, Jesus. Jesus, the pioneer, Jesus the one who completes us.

And that is why we are here. That is the duty and delight of the follower of Jesus. We will walk together in all God's ways, made known and to be made known, by God's gracious Spirit, arm in arm, side by side, hand in hand. Let's walk.

Following Jesus: the Meaning of Membership

Here is another "Q & A" based on not one conversation in particular, but culled from many similar encounters.

What does it mean to "become a member" of the church? What do I have to say? What do I have to commit to? What if I don't believe everything you believe?

I think that if a person is ready to go on a journey of faith, then that person is ready to claim "membership" in the church. If you can say, "I have decided to follow Jesus," then I think you are ready to join the church.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

Following Jesus means serving others as Jesus served: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, bringing good news to the poor, keeping company with outcasts, loving everyone.

Following Jesus means doing as Jesus taught: forgiving others as we have been forgiven, giving generously to those in need, sharing our possessions, refusing to allow our possessions to own us.

Following Jesus means praying as Jesus prayed, every day, in private, and with others.

Following Jesus means listening to and learning from others, even those who we think have nothing to teach us.

Following Jesus means that we are always on a journey. There is always more to learn, more to pray, more to share, more to do, our whole lives long. Therefore, we walk humbly, knowing that we may never arrive at perfection, but ultimately trusting in God to complete us.

And so I propose this simple covenant become what we promise to each other when we receive new members into the church: We promise to walk together in all God's ways, made known to us through the life of Jesus, the witness of scripture, and the Holy Spirit which continues to reveal to us the height and depth and breadth of God's love.

Is Paul really all that?

This question came to me through our "Uncommon Lectionary" exercise:

Why is Paul's theology given such prominence as compared to the gospels? Shouldn't the experience of those who were with Jesus in his lifetime take prominence over Paul, who only knew Christ after the resurrection?

Which inspires me to ask a couple of questions in response: Is Paul's theology given prominence? And, do the gospels pre-date Paul?

The second question is an easier answer so I will address that first. When Eugene Wehrli taught Introduction to New Testament at Eden Seminary in 1987, he began with 1 Thessalonians, because that is, according to people smarter than me (and maybe even smarter than Dr. Wehrli), the earliest book in the New Testament. Dr. Wehrli organized the syllabus chronologically, so we began with the Pauline letters, then the gospel according to Mark, then Matthew, Luke-Acts, then I think we went to the pastoral epistles, the gospel of John, and the Revelation.

As far as we can tell, Paul died before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. That seems to be the event that inspired the compilation of the gospels, from the oral tradition, the collective memory of Christians and perhaps from some written collections of the sayings of Jesus. Apparently, the first Christians were expecting Jesus' imminent return at the end of the age in their lifetimes. As they got older, they realized they might need to write something down if they wanted to share the stories of Jesus with future generations.

Is Paul's theology given prominence in the New Testament? Paul is pretty prominent, and his prominence is well-deserved. He built a global church (well, an empire-wide church anyway) without a written gospel to leave behind, without a leadership pipeline, without an army of administrators to aid him, without any support and with occasional hindrance from headquarters in Jerusalem. Take a look at how much of the New Testament is attributed to Paul. It's significant.

In church history, Paul's popularity waxes and wains, I suppose. Martin Luther was wild about Paul, so was John Calvin. John Wesley, not so much. Paul wrote some things I wish he hadn't, or I wish no one had bothered to preserve. He didn't set out to write the bible, remember. He had a bible already, it was the same bible that Jews read and study today in synagogues all over the world. Had he known that people would be reading out bits of his letters in worship 2000 years later, would he have written things differently? I like to think so. Who knows?

For all his faults, he gave us some pretty good material. "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol." That's good. "Now we see as in a mirror, dimly, then we will see face to face." That's brilliant. That's much more poetic than "love your neighbor as yourself," and "judge not, lest you be judged." Same thing, really, just said a different way.

So, does that answer your question?