Worried? Jesus has the Cure!
In our times together this year, meditating upon the Word proclaimed and its response in our lives, we have shared and pondered many realities, continuing to ask God to speak to our hearts and give us the courage and strength to listen. Jack preached a sermon-series on the stain glass windows that surround us, and he has recently preached powerful, succinct sermons about the meaning of Jesus’ actions in the Gospels—spurring us to ask: What is Grace? What is the meaning of the Resurrection; what transformation lies ahead as we answer the call of God in our lives?
In sermons with you this past year, I recall preaching about grace alongside my fear of water. We talked about the dance of the Trinity as well as the magnificent Advent quote in Isaiah, where the lion and lamb lie down together. We have also grappled with Jesus’ peculiar interaction with fig trees.
Preparing today’s sermon, I came across this forceful quotation from Presbyterian author and pastor, Frederick Buechner. Defining the word, “sermon,” Buechner writes:
SERMON
Well, something one cannot deny if one preaches as Buechner describes, daring to look authentically at human experience and how God breaks into our world and shakes things up (or seemingly lacks the ability to do so), one of the most challenging realities in the world today is fear and correspondingly worry…
You don’t have to have a PhD in counseling to know that there is great pain and corresponding worry in the world. We talk about it in small groups and sometimes it wakes up us at night, religious questions, financial questions, existential questions,. We recognize worry as we strive to recruit and build our organizations and town businesses. We sometimes even see our pain and worry when we consider our children’s futures or the future of our church.
Fear and its reciprocal response of being worry meets us early… at the first loss of a pet… or the first sign or taste of injustice….
For me, as for so many, memories of injustice begin soon—too soon. As an example, I recall one of my classmates in kindergarten named Carmencita. Carmencita was the only Latino student in my class and, even at such a young age, I recognized how she often experienced a kind of alienation and loneliness in the context of our little classroom.
In our world of harshness, where we know what it is like to worry, we meet today’s Scripture…. And we dive and are driving into the core of authentic human experience!
And then one might wonder: What does this Scripture say to me? At the surface of the text, simple and true, a profound message appears:
Do not fear. You are not alone. The Father & I are one, and so you need not worry about being snatched away. You are my sheep, and the shepherd knows how to care for his sheep.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.
(FOLLOW ME)
Handel has his famous refrain speaking to this theme:
He Shall Feed His Flock, like a shepherd. And he shall gather the lambs in his arms. In his arms. And carry them in his bosom.
In the wider context of our Gospel, the Gospel of John, we see increasing meaning for our passage:
Consider the Gospel of John itself
John 1—The Word (Jesus) with God.
** God, the Good Shepherd, cares for us. Christ comes to us in divine-human form to represent the shepherd, to become and be the shepherd. We now see the shepherd in the flesh. We experience the reality of divine compassion.
Moving on: Beginning his ministry
“The Jews”—2:13 Beginning of conversation with the Jews
Jewish religious establishment in Jerusalem is being spoken to
What question are “the Jews” asking here? Are you the Messiah?!
Luke 22:67 ‡ 23 (Conversation with Pilate)
** God, the Good Shepherd, cares for us. Christ comes to us in divine-human form to represent the shepherd. to become and be the shepherd. We now see the shepherd in the flesh. We experience the reality of divine compassion.
The Samaritan Woman: 4:25
** God, the Good Shepherd, cares for us. Christ comes to us in divine-human form to represent the shepherd. to become and be the shepherd. We now see the shepherd in the flesh. We experience the reality of divine compassion.
*** OUR VERSE: Theological conclusion to Jesus’ public ministry
OUR PASSAGE:
The Feast of Dedication
This is the Jewish festival of Hanukkah
The liberation of Jerusalem from the reign of the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes
Portico—eastern side—most protected during the winter
Jews have a new question for Jesus. They wonder: How long will you keep us in suspense? Translated in the Greek, many suggest the question likewise suggests: How long will you take away our life/continue to annoy us? What is your intention here?
Then, Jesus gets into the MEAT of a fairly direct, theological conversation. No parables here. He says plainly: I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me; 26but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. (WORKS—sometimes translated as miracles—It refers to everything—from the water‡ wine, Jesus’ work in the temple, Jesus’ encounter with the Samitarian woman—and he says POWERFULLY: My children, my sheep. They know me. And they do not need to worry or go over and over and over again in their heads: Who is this Jesus? Does he have any meaning to me? They know: He and the Father God are ONE.
He and God are united in the work that they do.
God gives life; Jesus gives life.
God judges. Jesus judges. God, the Good Shepherd, cares for us. Christ comes to us in divine-human form to represent the shepherd. Christ is the shepherd. We see the shepherd in the flesh. We experience the reality of divine compassion.)
Jesus continues: 27My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
For those of us who need to hear this kind of message more than once… give it time to sink in amongst many of the contrary messages that our culture gives us… let me say it again:
Jesus tells us: 27My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
Friends, have you been feeling this grace? Have you been experiencing the profound life that God gives? Our world is full of pain, and we have many reasons to feel overwhelmed by it all. But this passage, this Scripture for us today, says: Dare to know that if you are worried… If you are, like so many, worried and worn down by the world’s suffering, God has a special word for you today:
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
Looking in our passage further, another morsel of encouragement appears:
Shepherd Info!!
Prominent figure-
Sheep- sign of wealth
Shepherd-
1) Symbol for God
Psalms 23
Psalm 80- Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel,
you who lead Joseph like a flock;
you who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth
Isaiah 40:11-- 11 He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young. (handel)
MOVING INTO THE NT:
(2) As a Figure for Jesus
Hebrews 13:20 – Jesus as the Great Shepherd of the Sheep
1 Peter 2:25—Jesus as the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
shift as example to follow‡
Ephesians 4:11 The world used for pastor is the same word used for shepherd.
1 Peter 5:2-4 – warning to get rich at other’s expense.
2Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; 3not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 4And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.
WORRY
In our world of great worry, Jesus, the Chief Shepherd, has suggested that we live a new reality… a powerful reality in a world of great worry and concern: Let us pastor each other, according to the example of our Triune God!
Carmencita Story
Monday, April 26, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Sermon # 5
And I promise I will stop numbering my sermons shortly....
Today's Sermon, I used as an opportunity to step a little away from my manuscript and to work more with notes. Where you see the Luke Scripture quoted, I improvised, with the help of the Spirit, to contextualize the Scripture and otherwise make the Word do what it will, which is to come to life!
Was Jesus a ‘Tree-Hugger’?: Sermon on Luke 13 & Isaiah 55
You know, us Christians… us human beings… We often like progress, movement forward, achievement, mmm! In some ways, we’d rather talk about speed than steadiness, theory than praxis, quantity than quality, and being cured rather than the sometimes slow, labor- filled process that is real healing.
And Jesus… Jesus is amazing. His parables address these visceral, in our heart and in our mind concerns—and they come out of the stuff of life, center upon the very things that the people he was in ministry with would regularly encounter.
In today’s Gospel, our everyday object is the fig tree—but rather than being cursed, it is salvaged for a year--- with the call to spread more fertilizer – or manure-- which prompts the question from my sermon title:
Was Jesus a Tree-Hugger?
A slightly bizarre question, you might say, and I would agree with you. It’s not everyday that we hear words like tree-hugger as we sit in these pews; it’s a word more often heard in cultural conversations… and even at times, (at least in the part of the country where I’m from), the word has a slightly negative feel to it; hence, a tree hugger is someone who supports environmental concerns but might, just maybe, has his or her head in the clouds—
Unfortunately, in our present cultural climate, values of universal importance find themselves connected to specific political agendas… leading one to wonder how caring for the earth could become confined to the interest of only a few people? Don’t we desire our young people to have opportunities to explore and preserve Creation and hence we support organizations like the Girl Scouts & Boy Scouts—amazing breakfast!; shouldn’t we all do our part to make sure Mother Earth survives into the future.
It is words like tree-hugger that remind us to question the influence of our cultural rhetoric, unless we find ourselves mistakenly politicizing or quarreling about the very thing that Jesus would have us do!
Ultimately, in Jesus’ telling of the fig tree parable, we receive an important message about tree hugging and it is nothing to do with our mere cultural concept. What this message is may not immediately meet the eye, yet it is remarkably meaningful!
Trouble in the Text
Today’s Gospel lesson feels almost just right for Lent. We are met with several images and depictions that appear, at first, weird, and then full of foreboding. First, there is the discussion of the dreadful fate of the Galileans: Pilate and the Roman forces exact upon them a particular awful form of suffering. Pilate slaughtered a group of these Galileans with the result that their blood mingled with that of their sacrifices. The fact that the suffering of Galileans is mentioned is not particularly shocking: Biblical commentaries suggest that Josephus, an early historian, records Pilate’s bloody confrontations with various peoples—his troops killed a group climbing Mt. Gerizim or there was the time when Pilate seized Temple treasury funds to build an aqueduct.
The mention of these particular Galileans, however, comes up suddenly, seemingly from a member of the crowd, and we don’t know much in the way of any back-story. Yet a powerful, emotional question exists underneath: Were these Galileans somehow worse sinners than other Galileans that they suffered these things?
And then the turning tide continues. More suffering is mentioned: Apparently the tower of Siloam fell, killing 18 people. Were these folks someone worse sinners too?
Jesus’ answer is quick and to the point: It has a grace and an uncomfortable challenge: No—Jus because they suffered this way does not mean that they were worse sinners! Do you hear that?!?! But unless you repent, Jesus says: we all will perish as they did.
Trouble in the World
When it comes to the question of suffering, we cannot help but jump out of 1st century Palestine and consider too the suffering going on right before our eyes! There was the earthquake in Haiti, for instance, and what some of the youth group found out the other week when we were fasting together for the Thirty Hour Famine, it is not just countries like Ethiopia or Haiti that are suffering but also Chile, with their recent earthquake, and even suffering among the poor in our own country… those suffering on this island and just across the bridge.
Beyond economic/physical suffering, there is the emotional suffering
Own despair over the things that keep us from being productive as we’d like
Our over-fatigue, our commitment to so many things that we feel committed to none of them.. We consider what we wrote on our Lent cards as things we’re hoping to take out of our lives during lent—addictions, frustrations, hostilities.
Isaiah passage speaks to this circumstance—Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Grace in the Text
But then, just when we think at all is lost, our text hits us square in the eye with grace when Jesus tells the parable of the “tree-hugger.” What does Jesus tell us it means to be a Tree Hugger?
Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any.
So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?'
" 'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'
Our days are precious—We have some responsibility to act, on God’s initiative.
Manure with the growth --- things fail---
Christ the Gardener does not say and so as you garden your lives you should not say: Why waste the soil? -- Even when you are not being productive, it does not mean you’re wasting the soil.
Grace in the World
All the community groups on our campus. The AA group is finishing just as the youth group arrive.
Frederick Buechner:
“It is simply a group of human beings coming together with the common problem of alcohol, . . . saying we simply cannot live full human lives without each other and without [a] Higher Power. Miracles happen. I've seen them happen. In little ways, I think I have experienced them happen in myself. I just can't help wondering to what degree this is perhaps what the church originally was, that is to say, if you went back to the earliest days of the Christian community . . . I suspect you would have found something like this. A little group of people coming together wherever they could and simply helping each other and helping each other find a God who [found them first and] would help them became human beings.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus as tree-hugger is our gardener.
STRONG ROOTS
Garden for others…
Give Thanks!
Communion: "Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Amen.
Today's Sermon, I used as an opportunity to step a little away from my manuscript and to work more with notes. Where you see the Luke Scripture quoted, I improvised, with the help of the Spirit, to contextualize the Scripture and otherwise make the Word do what it will, which is to come to life!
Was Jesus a ‘Tree-Hugger’?: Sermon on Luke 13 & Isaiah 55
You know, us Christians… us human beings… We often like progress, movement forward, achievement, mmm! In some ways, we’d rather talk about speed than steadiness, theory than praxis, quantity than quality, and being cured rather than the sometimes slow, labor- filled process that is real healing.
And Jesus… Jesus is amazing. His parables address these visceral, in our heart and in our mind concerns—and they come out of the stuff of life, center upon the very things that the people he was in ministry with would regularly encounter.
In today’s Gospel, our everyday object is the fig tree—but rather than being cursed, it is salvaged for a year--- with the call to spread more fertilizer – or manure-- which prompts the question from my sermon title:
Was Jesus a Tree-Hugger?
A slightly bizarre question, you might say, and I would agree with you. It’s not everyday that we hear words like tree-hugger as we sit in these pews; it’s a word more often heard in cultural conversations… and even at times, (at least in the part of the country where I’m from), the word has a slightly negative feel to it; hence, a tree hugger is someone who supports environmental concerns but might, just maybe, has his or her head in the clouds—
Unfortunately, in our present cultural climate, values of universal importance find themselves connected to specific political agendas… leading one to wonder how caring for the earth could become confined to the interest of only a few people? Don’t we desire our young people to have opportunities to explore and preserve Creation and hence we support organizations like the Girl Scouts & Boy Scouts—amazing breakfast!; shouldn’t we all do our part to make sure Mother Earth survives into the future.
It is words like tree-hugger that remind us to question the influence of our cultural rhetoric, unless we find ourselves mistakenly politicizing or quarreling about the very thing that Jesus would have us do!
Ultimately, in Jesus’ telling of the fig tree parable, we receive an important message about tree hugging and it is nothing to do with our mere cultural concept. What this message is may not immediately meet the eye, yet it is remarkably meaningful!
Trouble in the Text
Today’s Gospel lesson feels almost just right for Lent. We are met with several images and depictions that appear, at first, weird, and then full of foreboding. First, there is the discussion of the dreadful fate of the Galileans: Pilate and the Roman forces exact upon them a particular awful form of suffering. Pilate slaughtered a group of these Galileans with the result that their blood mingled with that of their sacrifices. The fact that the suffering of Galileans is mentioned is not particularly shocking: Biblical commentaries suggest that Josephus, an early historian, records Pilate’s bloody confrontations with various peoples—his troops killed a group climbing Mt. Gerizim or there was the time when Pilate seized Temple treasury funds to build an aqueduct.
The mention of these particular Galileans, however, comes up suddenly, seemingly from a member of the crowd, and we don’t know much in the way of any back-story. Yet a powerful, emotional question exists underneath: Were these Galileans somehow worse sinners than other Galileans that they suffered these things?
And then the turning tide continues. More suffering is mentioned: Apparently the tower of Siloam fell, killing 18 people. Were these folks someone worse sinners too?
Jesus’ answer is quick and to the point: It has a grace and an uncomfortable challenge: No—Jus because they suffered this way does not mean that they were worse sinners! Do you hear that?!?! But unless you repent, Jesus says: we all will perish as they did.
Trouble in the World
When it comes to the question of suffering, we cannot help but jump out of 1st century Palestine and consider too the suffering going on right before our eyes! There was the earthquake in Haiti, for instance, and what some of the youth group found out the other week when we were fasting together for the Thirty Hour Famine, it is not just countries like Ethiopia or Haiti that are suffering but also Chile, with their recent earthquake, and even suffering among the poor in our own country… those suffering on this island and just across the bridge.
Beyond economic/physical suffering, there is the emotional suffering
Own despair over the things that keep us from being productive as we’d like
Our over-fatigue, our commitment to so many things that we feel committed to none of them.. We consider what we wrote on our Lent cards as things we’re hoping to take out of our lives during lent—addictions, frustrations, hostilities.
Isaiah passage speaks to this circumstance—Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Grace in the Text
But then, just when we think at all is lost, our text hits us square in the eye with grace when Jesus tells the parable of the “tree-hugger.” What does Jesus tell us it means to be a Tree Hugger?
Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any.
So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?'
" 'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'
Our days are precious—We have some responsibility to act, on God’s initiative.
Manure with the growth --- things fail---
Christ the Gardener does not say and so as you garden your lives you should not say: Why waste the soil? -- Even when you are not being productive, it does not mean you’re wasting the soil.
Grace in the World
All the community groups on our campus. The AA group is finishing just as the youth group arrive.
Frederick Buechner:
“It is simply a group of human beings coming together with the common problem of alcohol, . . . saying we simply cannot live full human lives without each other and without [a] Higher Power. Miracles happen. I've seen them happen. In little ways, I think I have experienced them happen in myself. I just can't help wondering to what degree this is perhaps what the church originally was, that is to say, if you went back to the earliest days of the Christian community . . . I suspect you would have found something like this. A little group of people coming together wherever they could and simply helping each other and helping each other find a God who [found them first and] would help them became human beings.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus as tree-hugger is our gardener.
STRONG ROOTS
Garden for others…
Give Thanks!
Communion: "Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Amen.
Sermon # 4
hearts be acceptable to You, O Lord & Savior.
An Offering for Advent:
One of my favorite passages of Scripture we often hear as our cyclical church calendar spins into Advent-time & then finally into Christmas. It is neither one of our Scripture lessons today and yet these words offer us a starting place from which to contemplate today’s Scriptures as well as the imminent questions: What is all this fuss about Advent—and why is Advent framed with scriptures that speak about what we seminarians call eschatology or, in plain-speak, the question of the end time of history and when Christ will return. For me, these questions are significant, they are powerful, and they likewise spring from yet another one, a question that naturally flows from these much loved scripture verses:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, . . . and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will NOT judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.
These words come to us from the 11th chapter of Isaiah; consider the way that they depict the person of Jesus Christ for us Christians. Christ, as part of the Trinity, is intimately connected with the Holy Spirit--- and Christ acts from this spirit—a spirit of wisdom and of understanding…. a spirit of counsel and of power…. The wickedness that we know on the earth: Our personal sins in which we disobey God’s guidance in our lives and objectify those around us as well as the powers that be who look only to self-interest, the systemic forces that keep people in poverty, that oppress native peoples binding individuals in addiction, self-loathing, and violence --- all of this wickedness will be blown (with breath) away and instead that mystical, heavenly portrait appears: the wolf and the lamb together, the leopard and the goat, the lion and the calf with even the yearling--- (predator safely beside prey) – and a little child will lead them.
Why the little child we wonder and then need look only to our Sunday School program perhaps to find an answer? Yet, I have wondered “Why the Child” myself many times. In Scripture, we find Christ telling his disciples to allow the little children to come to him. We are told in Matthew 18: 3 that unless we become like children, we will “never enter the kingdom of heaven.” There are many ideas about what is special about children; one thing I have noticed is their intrinsic sense of right & wrong. I have seen this most specifically while watching children learn about the abuses of history—they are shocked that the Holocaust could have happened only 60+ years ago, they are saddened by the gap between the rich and the poor, many of them understand what MLK meant when he spoke his famous words about his children being judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, and they are righteously indigent—our adult politics aside--about child labor, human trafficking, and pollution.
And so that aforementioned question that springs from all of this, that emerges with the poignancy of an African American spiritual, the intensity that likewise revealed itself in the words of a teenage girl who said, in the midst of losing everything, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart,” and this question which likewise flows when one learns about the emotional courage of Hutu and Tutsi young school children in Rwanda who refused to step aside so that 1/2 of them could be killed; this is our question: (PAUSE) When, O God, when… When will your peace come to this earth?!
This advent we symbolically wait for your Son to come, a little child, who ushered forth a new kingdom on Earth. But your child has come, and we are also waiting for something else? We wonder when all the pain in this world will finally cease and the lion and the lamb can in fact lie down together—and no one ends up in the Emergency Room. For, otherwise, as Woody Allen jokes: “The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep.”
With this question of pain waiting and hovering just between our eyes, we come to today’s Gospel lesson. Our lesson from Luke is an apocalyptic text. It is clear that Luke’s community is grappling with the question of time or, more specifically, God’s timing of when the promised return of Jesus and consummation of history will occur. As Preaching Professor at Luther Seminary, David Lose shares: “Whereas Mark seems to tie [the end times and return of Christ] to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Luke distances the promised end of history. Luke is, in fact, down right vague about when Jesus will return, refusing to offer any specific time-table.” Woe to all of us Schedulers or Type A folk who like our 5 year plans and love to draw up our trim and tidy schedules; we are not talking about 2012— this scripture is not comfortable and although it provides us with some certainty, it seems to be more of the gray kind than the black and white one; but perhaps—at least for those of us here in North America who struggle with the ways in which our use of certainty has hurt others—this is a good news. Perhaps too there is something in this Scripture that we must be certain about—a certainty that we need faithfully exclaim!
If you are reading along with me in your Bibles, take a look at verse 29. Christ hastens his followers, rather than the lilies, to consider the fig tree. “Just as budding fig leaves unmistakably herald the [coming] of summer, so also will the signs of the coming kingdom be [seen] to the Christian community.” The emphasis of the Scripture therefore shifts from when these things will happen to the issue of how the Christian community should act. Look at the fig tre & SEE.
This call to see reminds me of the book that our Book Club has been reading this past month: AJ Jacob’s Year of Living Biblically. Herein, Jacobs comes to Christian faith after trying and failing to live out literally all the laws from the Old and New Testaments. About 3/5 of the way through the book, we read of Jacobs’ experience of taking on the food laws, in particular the rule that one may only eat fruit that is older than four years old. Jacobs finally discovers that, from planting to produce, cherries take five years. They are safe! On this experience of cherry-eating, Jacobs writes:
Each cherry took about 3 seconds to eat. Three seconds to eat but at least five years in the making. It seemed unfair to the hard-working cherry tree. The least I could do was devote my attention to the cherry in those three seconds, really appreciate the tartness of the skin and the faint crunching sound when I bite down. I guess it’s called mindfulness. Or being in the moment, or making the mundane sacred. Whatever it is, I’m doing it more. . . . The fruit taboo made me more aware of the whole cherry process, the seed, the soil, the five years of watering and waiting. That’s the paradox: I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world” (Jacobs, Year of Living Biblically, 172).
What strikes me about Jesus’ parable in Luke is that it functions in a similar way. After revealing many signs of the end of history—signs which people have continuously used to prove their own timetables and oftentimes to condemn the sinfulness of others rather, perhaps, than their own sin--- Luke urges his readers to be mindful: Interpreting the signs of the end is like watching the blossoming of trees. In this sense, regardless of how you interpret the signs themselves, they should be fairly obvious. The important action that is often missed is the watching of the signs—or the watching of the sign-maker. Do not be so bogged down in your own cares that you miss what our Triune God is doing! When you pray and ask God for help, be attentive to how God will respond to your need; as the well-known story goes, don’t refuse the boat, the helicopter, and the ambulance!
This topic of the Apocalypse occasions many emotions and feelings for us; it is just the kind of text that could fill the seminarian with an appropriate amount of fear and trembling. Many, out of faith, speak of the end of history as that great event when the Prince of Peace will come back to earth and those who have loved him will be with him in eternity. Yet depictions of this event fluctuate: some are particularly violent and even seem triumphalist —like kids on the playground, one shouts: It! Not It! Others’ depictions are more gentle—wondering: When, O God, will your You and your Kingdom come to earth?
Today, in our prayers and faith life, let us all look to the 28th verse in today’s chapter. It reads
:
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
This text reminds me of why, when we say the Assurance of Pardon, I want to shout with enthusiasm! Our God of Love cares for us so much that God desires the absolute best for us. How do we live into that best?! How do we care for others and, empowering them, allow God to touch their lives too? How do we speak of our faith not as something we can dissect or use as a weapon or a selfish tool of self-justification but afford it as the kind of thing it is: Something alive, something moving the world, something speaking a truth so precious that we need not be ashamed to say: We are Christian people. We love our Church. As Paul reminds us in 1 Thessalonians and as many of us have been saying to each other this Holiday Season, we are thankful for you. Church, I am thankful for you. I am thankful for what God is doing in you: The way that our community serves the Midway Shelter. How we rise around those in pain and grief. Let our love for our God, for each other, and even ourselves— because we cannot love our neighbor unless we have also loved ourselves— Let this love GROW!
Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world but to save the world. Writing about judgment, Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner tells us: “We are all of us judged every day. We are judged by the face that looks back at us from the bathroom mirror. We are judged by the faces of the people we love and by the faces and lives of our children and our dreams. . . . Each day finds us at the junction of many roads, and we are judged as much by the roads we have not taken as by the roads we have. The NT proclaims that at some unforeseeable time in the future, God will ring down the final curtain on history, and there will come a Day on which all our days and all the judgments upon us and all our judgments upon each other will themselves be judged. The judge will be Christ. In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully. Romantic love [often] is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ’s love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.” Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 58.
In conclusion,
“We live, according to Luke, between the two great poles of God's intervention in the world”: the coming of Christ as the baby we celebrate on Christmas morning & Christ’s triumph over death on Easter as well as the coming of Christ in glory at the end of time and his triumph over all the powers of earth and heaven. “We are in the in-between space. We hold by faith and trust belief in what happened in the past—the story’s beginning-- and we now reside in the difficult time before our story’s ending.” Do you know that part of the purpose behind apocalyptic literature was comfort—to communicate hope. Even though we live in a world with great suffering, there is reason to hope. And so, you might wonder: What is the comfort we have from today’s Scripture?!
Congregation folks here at the First Presbyterian Church of Alameda, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is our comfort: We are free to struggle, to wait, to work, to witness, to love- – indeed to live and die – with hope because we know the end of the story…We know the end is in the hands of our Triune God who chose to humble himself, to suffer himself, so that we might live. This Advent, as we wait for the coming of Christ on Christmas, let us remember that all the suffering we experience together is temporary, let us work together to comfort each other, and let us hold firm in faith and be watchful for the day when the lion and the lamb will truly be able to lay down together. Amen.
An Offering for Advent:
One of my favorite passages of Scripture we often hear as our cyclical church calendar spins into Advent-time & then finally into Christmas. It is neither one of our Scripture lessons today and yet these words offer us a starting place from which to contemplate today’s Scriptures as well as the imminent questions: What is all this fuss about Advent—and why is Advent framed with scriptures that speak about what we seminarians call eschatology or, in plain-speak, the question of the end time of history and when Christ will return. For me, these questions are significant, they are powerful, and they likewise spring from yet another one, a question that naturally flows from these much loved scripture verses:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, . . . and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will NOT judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.
These words come to us from the 11th chapter of Isaiah; consider the way that they depict the person of Jesus Christ for us Christians. Christ, as part of the Trinity, is intimately connected with the Holy Spirit--- and Christ acts from this spirit—a spirit of wisdom and of understanding…. a spirit of counsel and of power…. The wickedness that we know on the earth: Our personal sins in which we disobey God’s guidance in our lives and objectify those around us as well as the powers that be who look only to self-interest, the systemic forces that keep people in poverty, that oppress native peoples binding individuals in addiction, self-loathing, and violence --- all of this wickedness will be blown (with breath) away and instead that mystical, heavenly portrait appears: the wolf and the lamb together, the leopard and the goat, the lion and the calf with even the yearling--- (predator safely beside prey) – and a little child will lead them.
Why the little child we wonder and then need look only to our Sunday School program perhaps to find an answer? Yet, I have wondered “Why the Child” myself many times. In Scripture, we find Christ telling his disciples to allow the little children to come to him. We are told in Matthew 18: 3 that unless we become like children, we will “never enter the kingdom of heaven.” There are many ideas about what is special about children; one thing I have noticed is their intrinsic sense of right & wrong. I have seen this most specifically while watching children learn about the abuses of history—they are shocked that the Holocaust could have happened only 60+ years ago, they are saddened by the gap between the rich and the poor, many of them understand what MLK meant when he spoke his famous words about his children being judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, and they are righteously indigent—our adult politics aside--about child labor, human trafficking, and pollution.
And so that aforementioned question that springs from all of this, that emerges with the poignancy of an African American spiritual, the intensity that likewise revealed itself in the words of a teenage girl who said, in the midst of losing everything, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart,” and this question which likewise flows when one learns about the emotional courage of Hutu and Tutsi young school children in Rwanda who refused to step aside so that 1/2 of them could be killed; this is our question: (PAUSE) When, O God, when… When will your peace come to this earth?!
This advent we symbolically wait for your Son to come, a little child, who ushered forth a new kingdom on Earth. But your child has come, and we are also waiting for something else? We wonder when all the pain in this world will finally cease and the lion and the lamb can in fact lie down together—and no one ends up in the Emergency Room. For, otherwise, as Woody Allen jokes: “The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep.”
With this question of pain waiting and hovering just between our eyes, we come to today’s Gospel lesson. Our lesson from Luke is an apocalyptic text. It is clear that Luke’s community is grappling with the question of time or, more specifically, God’s timing of when the promised return of Jesus and consummation of history will occur. As Preaching Professor at Luther Seminary, David Lose shares: “Whereas Mark seems to tie [the end times and return of Christ] to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Luke distances the promised end of history. Luke is, in fact, down right vague about when Jesus will return, refusing to offer any specific time-table.” Woe to all of us Schedulers or Type A folk who like our 5 year plans and love to draw up our trim and tidy schedules; we are not talking about 2012— this scripture is not comfortable and although it provides us with some certainty, it seems to be more of the gray kind than the black and white one; but perhaps—at least for those of us here in North America who struggle with the ways in which our use of certainty has hurt others—this is a good news. Perhaps too there is something in this Scripture that we must be certain about—a certainty that we need faithfully exclaim!
If you are reading along with me in your Bibles, take a look at verse 29. Christ hastens his followers, rather than the lilies, to consider the fig tree. “Just as budding fig leaves unmistakably herald the [coming] of summer, so also will the signs of the coming kingdom be [seen] to the Christian community.” The emphasis of the Scripture therefore shifts from when these things will happen to the issue of how the Christian community should act. Look at the fig tre & SEE.
This call to see reminds me of the book that our Book Club has been reading this past month: AJ Jacob’s Year of Living Biblically. Herein, Jacobs comes to Christian faith after trying and failing to live out literally all the laws from the Old and New Testaments. About 3/5 of the way through the book, we read of Jacobs’ experience of taking on the food laws, in particular the rule that one may only eat fruit that is older than four years old. Jacobs finally discovers that, from planting to produce, cherries take five years. They are safe! On this experience of cherry-eating, Jacobs writes:
Each cherry took about 3 seconds to eat. Three seconds to eat but at least five years in the making. It seemed unfair to the hard-working cherry tree. The least I could do was devote my attention to the cherry in those three seconds, really appreciate the tartness of the skin and the faint crunching sound when I bite down. I guess it’s called mindfulness. Or being in the moment, or making the mundane sacred. Whatever it is, I’m doing it more. . . . The fruit taboo made me more aware of the whole cherry process, the seed, the soil, the five years of watering and waiting. That’s the paradox: I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world” (Jacobs, Year of Living Biblically, 172).
What strikes me about Jesus’ parable in Luke is that it functions in a similar way. After revealing many signs of the end of history—signs which people have continuously used to prove their own timetables and oftentimes to condemn the sinfulness of others rather, perhaps, than their own sin--- Luke urges his readers to be mindful: Interpreting the signs of the end is like watching the blossoming of trees. In this sense, regardless of how you interpret the signs themselves, they should be fairly obvious. The important action that is often missed is the watching of the signs—or the watching of the sign-maker. Do not be so bogged down in your own cares that you miss what our Triune God is doing! When you pray and ask God for help, be attentive to how God will respond to your need; as the well-known story goes, don’t refuse the boat, the helicopter, and the ambulance!
This topic of the Apocalypse occasions many emotions and feelings for us; it is just the kind of text that could fill the seminarian with an appropriate amount of fear and trembling. Many, out of faith, speak of the end of history as that great event when the Prince of Peace will come back to earth and those who have loved him will be with him in eternity. Yet depictions of this event fluctuate: some are particularly violent and even seem triumphalist —like kids on the playground, one shouts: It! Not It! Others’ depictions are more gentle—wondering: When, O God, will your You and your Kingdom come to earth?
Today, in our prayers and faith life, let us all look to the 28th verse in today’s chapter. It reads
:
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
This text reminds me of why, when we say the Assurance of Pardon, I want to shout with enthusiasm! Our God of Love cares for us so much that God desires the absolute best for us. How do we live into that best?! How do we care for others and, empowering them, allow God to touch their lives too? How do we speak of our faith not as something we can dissect or use as a weapon or a selfish tool of self-justification but afford it as the kind of thing it is: Something alive, something moving the world, something speaking a truth so precious that we need not be ashamed to say: We are Christian people. We love our Church. As Paul reminds us in 1 Thessalonians and as many of us have been saying to each other this Holiday Season, we are thankful for you. Church, I am thankful for you. I am thankful for what God is doing in you: The way that our community serves the Midway Shelter. How we rise around those in pain and grief. Let our love for our God, for each other, and even ourselves— because we cannot love our neighbor unless we have also loved ourselves— Let this love GROW!
Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world but to save the world. Writing about judgment, Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner tells us: “We are all of us judged every day. We are judged by the face that looks back at us from the bathroom mirror. We are judged by the faces of the people we love and by the faces and lives of our children and our dreams. . . . Each day finds us at the junction of many roads, and we are judged as much by the roads we have not taken as by the roads we have. The NT proclaims that at some unforeseeable time in the future, God will ring down the final curtain on history, and there will come a Day on which all our days and all the judgments upon us and all our judgments upon each other will themselves be judged. The judge will be Christ. In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully. Romantic love [often] is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ’s love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.” Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 58.
In conclusion,
“We live, according to Luke, between the two great poles of God's intervention in the world”: the coming of Christ as the baby we celebrate on Christmas morning & Christ’s triumph over death on Easter as well as the coming of Christ in glory at the end of time and his triumph over all the powers of earth and heaven. “We are in the in-between space. We hold by faith and trust belief in what happened in the past—the story’s beginning-- and we now reside in the difficult time before our story’s ending.” Do you know that part of the purpose behind apocalyptic literature was comfort—to communicate hope. Even though we live in a world with great suffering, there is reason to hope. And so, you might wonder: What is the comfort we have from today’s Scripture?!
Congregation folks here at the First Presbyterian Church of Alameda, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is our comfort: We are free to struggle, to wait, to work, to witness, to love- – indeed to live and die – with hope because we know the end of the story…We know the end is in the hands of our Triune God who chose to humble himself, to suffer himself, so that we might live. This Advent, as we wait for the coming of Christ on Christmas, let us remember that all the suffering we experience together is temporary, let us work together to comfort each other, and let us hold firm in faith and be watchful for the day when the lion and the lamb will truly be able to lay down together. Amen.
Sermon # 3
The sermon for today is called
“Never Alone”
If I were to add a Sub-title to this sermon, I would also call it: Dare to Dance!
Prayer of Illumination-- Silence all voices but thine own.
Let us hear your Word for us today: Amen.
They cut me down, and I leapt up high! I am the Life that will never, never die. I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me. I am the Lord of the Dance said he!
Dance then… wherever you may be.. I am the Lord of the Dance, said He. And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance said he.
From Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalk,” Classical Ballet, to square-dancing (which I actually got to learn in gym class of all places), the Macarena, DDR, and Step dance, we Americans are a people who enjoy dancing. Now, after hearing our Scriptures read this morning--- Psalms 23—which has a special place in the heart of many of our congregation members as the beloved Scripture of our member Ruthie Pond, who recently passed--- and John 14—( ….) you might be scratching your heads and wondering, rightly: What in the world do these scriptures have to say about Dance?…
And to top this all off, what do these Scriptures and DANCING then have to say about our featured stain glass window for today? For as some of you know, our sermon series the past number of weeks has focused on the church’s stain glass windows. Today, we will focus on this window. I want to encourage you to just take a moment and look carefully at the window and ponder---- What do you see there….
As I speak to you today, be challenged to hear what Word the Lord of the Dance would give you- not some other day—but this day.
I invite you all to contemplate and pray with me on this theme:
Even when life feels odd--- remember you’re loved by a Dancing God.
In other words, when we’re walking through the valley of the shadows, remember that our Triune God has our back; just as in the dance of love we see displayed in the Trinity relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—so the Holy Spirit will come and stir a dance in our hearts--- a dance of the soul, a dance of life—and for this reason, no matter the challenges, let us be bold--- Because God will never leave us alone. We will never be orphaned. Hence, if we live in God, God will live with us—just as the song I sang in opening expressed.
Well, I am a sucker for stories… and our stain glass window for today has a very interesting one. It was created in the memory of a woman named Sarah Hastings by her son. Doing research on this window, one uncovers these words, describing the life-filled spirit of this woman, Mrs. Hastings. She is described as:
“A moving spirit in the Church, a very intelligent and capable woman, who gave considerable financial assistance. One of the earliest members, connected from the start.”
Perhaps this phrase depicting Mrs. Hastings as a “moving spirit” strikes us— We imagine her fluttering through the congregation, like some kind of Energizer Bunny of skill and intelligence. And her memory causes us to imagine the beginnings of our church and the founding of any church community—The hope. The power. The passion. The possibility—all enmeshed and wrapped up in one little community’s devotion and faith in their living God.
The window offers another significant image. It depicts the human SOUL as the young woman we see in the frame--- hand-in-hand with Christ. Yes, the woman pictured in the window with Jesus is not Mary Magdalene or another female… but the woman represents the “human soul.”
The depiction of the soul as a woman might shock us at first—perhaps even particularly at the time when the window was first created. Perhaps, for some of us, it makes sense. But beyond the gender-element of the illustration, I want you to pay close attention to the illustration itself:
Here, the soul is depicted as being deeply CLOSE with Christ. Perhaps if one were to squint just so or merely use the imagination, we could imagine the image being that of the two figures, Christ & soul, just about to break into a dance.
The illustration of the SOUL in this window possesses a very special theological significance for us to contemplate: In the OT, the Hebrew word for soul is the word, nepes. It has a wide range of meanings but is primarily used to express the LIFE FORCE OF LIVING CREATURES. ‘Thus, [in Genesis 1:20-21 we read how] all the earth is full of ‘living creatures’ that have the ‘breath of life.’ [And] when God creates Adam, God breathes the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils, and Adam becomes a ‘living being,’” a nepes, a SOUL. Far from referring simply to one part of a person, the ‘soul’ refers to the whole person… and in such places as 1 Kings 19:4 and Ezekiel 32:10, we see where the SOUL refers to a person’s very life itself. We see the way in which SOUL and LIFE refer to one another in our Psalm 23—Here the psalm is often translated: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul…
OR (this last section is also translated): He restores my LIFE.
In the NT, the word soul appears in significant places as well. In Mark 3:4, Jesus asks the synagogue authorities whether it is lawful on the Sabbath to ‘save life [or SOUL] or to kill.’ In the parable of the rich young fool in Luke 12:13-20, the ‘young man says to his soul that he has ample goods laid up for many years; Jesus then tells him: ‘This very night your soul (life force) is being demanded of you.’
If I desire to follow Christ, the decision has SOUL & LIFE SIGNIFICANCE
From these meanings of SOUL, there seems to be something in this window’s depiction about how closeness with God, with the 2nd person of the Trinity, God’s Son, gives life… Herein, we encounter or need meditate on Christ’s words to us in John 14 today: BECAUSE I LIVE, YOU ALSO WILL LIVE. See here how everything starts with God’s action. As Presbyterian Christians in the Reformed Tradition, we believe that God is the life-force, the source, the LOVING initiator that enabled our relationship in the first place. It is a willingness to let go of our hard-heartedness, our own prerogatives, and‡ living as our unique selves, as who God created us to be‡ dare to dive into living relationship with God.
Personally speaking, as I see this window too, my imagination is drawn to remember the spirituality course I recently took called Contemplative Listening. Here, as seminarians-in-training, we were encouraged to LEARN how to listen to another’s soul as well as listen to our own.
This matter of soul listening is crucial. When have you listened to another’s soul?!—Perhaps, taken a seat at your favorite café, and just looked at another human being, their whole self, in the eyes—and de-cluttering yourself from your usual preoccupations, dared to ask: HOW ARE YOU?! Perhaps you (could) sit down with someone at Jims and Tuckers and ask: How is God moving & active in your life?
When I think about a good soul listener, two people come to mind: My college chaplain, who would often take us to the local independent coffee shop for honest conversations. I remember most how his eyes would sparkle at times when he encouraged us to imagine how God was moving and, to quote one of his favorite phrases, being a life-giving source for us.
He would remind us that: Even when life feels odd--- remember you’re loved by a Dancing God—and challenged us to see where LIFE was. There was space to express our doubts, our fears, and our hopes. He would remind us, in the vein of Socrates’ well-known phrase, that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living,’ and encourage us to truly listen to our heart & mind, OUR SOUL, to be willing to risk asking the HARD QUESTIONS, and to love God, as the Scripture proclaims, with all our heart & Mind--- and hence SOUL…..Also in these conversations with my college chaplain, he would sometimes share from an appropriate, mutual place that made us feel like We’re Not Alone.
b) My Grandmother was another triumphant listener. I still remember how, when my Grandfather’s Alzheimer’s got very bad, her care-giving skills kicked in. She had this incredible way of attentiveness- of noticing when something little was off or wrong. When the dreadful time came where my Grandfather had to move into a health care center—and we all cried and she, in particular, felt greatly distressed—I will always remember how she spent her days there at the center, caring deeply for my Grandfather…. And then ALSO going and listening to the stories of the other patients there. She knew everyone by name. She would give them a head and listen to their stories. There was “Sea Daddy,”—the old Navy captain, Ted, Dan, Silvia… and my Grandmother loved all of them….
Reminding me of the Scripture, paraphrasing, if we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our father in heaven take care of us?!
Here, time takes on a different pace—less studded by the pressures of the blackberry or the false belief that we can always be secure from dead, communication OPENED, masks dropped, and SOUL & LIFE LISTENING HAPPENED.
Hard NOW:
Things have been hard for us. Our congregation has seen a good amount of pain: people we love in the hospital and struggling with illness. We have many of us that are looking day in and out for work. We have leads and possibilities and then
Our businesses, our homes, and even our congregation is facing significant financial questions. In this vein and others, there might seem to be little to dance about.
YET—there are a few interesting things about dancing---
First, comes to mind for me—the image from high school dances, actually- or something from the 1980’s TV Show “Saved by the Bell”--- Here, the question remains: What- if I approach this person and ask them to dance, will they refuse or back away from the dance? THE AMAZING THING ABOUT OUR GOD IS, HOWEVER, IS THAT HE NEVER BACKS AWAY.
Another interesting thing about dancing is that it is ultimately something about CONNECTION & INTIMACY: I imagine the beautiful scene from the “King & I” where the lead characters sing, “Shall We Dance.” I imagine the gentle, rocking dance between a mother and her baby…. Or the first dance of a couple on their wedding day—danced to their special song. Dance is about CONNECTION & INTIMACY.
And so let us remember, even when life feels odd--- remember you’re loved by a Dancing God.
But you might be wondering: What is it that makes God a dancing God – and is there anything in our theology to support this idea? And I say YES and it starts with our understanding of the Trinity!
In a contemporary text of Reformed Theology, Daniel Migliore writes about the dance between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit called PERICHORERIS in our understanding of the Trinity. He says:
Perichoresis is a Greek word translated ‘mutual indwelling’ or ‘interpenetration.’ It was first used by the patristic theologians (or Church Fathers] to describe the mutual indwelling of the divine and human natures in Christ, the Incarnate Word. Then, in the eight century, John of Damascus” used the term to describe the unique communion of the God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Trinity relationship. The three persons of the Trinity live in, with, and through each other in ineffable communion. (INDEX- Migliore) And you know one way that modern theologians enjoy depicting this communion—as something like a triangle dance (rather than square) where God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit live in harmony with each other—and therein, knowing relationship themselves, invite us to enter relationship with them, with our One God!
Friends, this is huge! It means simply that, like the woman-soul & Christ depicted in that window, God desires to be in relationship with us.
I was talking with a friend from another country the other day who is also in seminary, and he told me these words… words that I have been pondering in my heart deeply and so I share with you. He asked me: Is the United States of America going to end up like Europe—where our churches are empty and fading in significance because we no longer believe in God as an active, moving reality in our life—as God as more than just an idea that we can control for our own benefit but never truly engage with.
Although part of me grimaced at these words, I sensed within them a call—a call for all of us—to remember who and whose we are! To dare to… believe more and more fully again. We are all of us on a journey, and we are here together because we trust that God has something to say to us and that it is God who is at the helm of this ship.
Reading from the Dictionary of Theological Interpretation of the Bible the other day, one comes upon these words:
“Humanity can never interpret itself in terms of itself, but only in terms of God, its creator.” -- We are always related to God—and let us remember this orientation in all times and stages of our life—when we’re doing the innocent swirls of childhood, the enthusiastic dances of youth, the tango of middle age… and the opening broad waltz of age.
This section from John’s Gospel we read today is also known as “The Farewell Discourse.”
“The primary orientation of the Farewell Discourse is not to an event that preceded it, but to an event whose arrival is imminent—that is, Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension.” IT is from this trio-action of death, resurrection, and ascension that we have hope!
From John 14, we see that belief in Jesus empowers the community—and we learn that we are never alone—The first time that the Holy Spirit or Paraclete is mentioned. The Holy Spirit will be our Comforter, Counselor, Advocate to keep us in the dance of communion with our God.
And so, let us dance then—wherever we may be!
To love Jesus is to live with God the Creator and Jesus & the Holy Spirit—that is, to enter into relationship with them, to come home. (WORD)
And so, dance then—wherever we may be!
Even though I walk through the valley—I fear no evil..
For you, God, are with me!
The dancing of our congregation has taken us to many places: The Midway Shelter, baseball stadiums, bible study home meetings, at death beds and hospital beds where newborn babies are born.
And so, even when Life seems Odd, Remember that you are Loved by a Dancing God.
The God, who is our shepherd—who like a horse whisperer, communicates to us, the flock, in ways even stronger than what might first meet the eye—beyond our pain and disappointment. God is in the still, small voice. God the Holy Spirit is alive and working in the world! Will we enter the dance? By God’s grace, friends, we already have! Let us remember this! This is something to dance about!
“Never Alone”
If I were to add a Sub-title to this sermon, I would also call it: Dare to Dance!
Prayer of Illumination-- Silence all voices but thine own.
Let us hear your Word for us today: Amen.
They cut me down, and I leapt up high! I am the Life that will never, never die. I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me. I am the Lord of the Dance said he!
Dance then… wherever you may be.. I am the Lord of the Dance, said He. And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance said he.
From Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalk,” Classical Ballet, to square-dancing (which I actually got to learn in gym class of all places), the Macarena, DDR, and Step dance, we Americans are a people who enjoy dancing. Now, after hearing our Scriptures read this morning--- Psalms 23—which has a special place in the heart of many of our congregation members as the beloved Scripture of our member Ruthie Pond, who recently passed--- and John 14—( ….) you might be scratching your heads and wondering, rightly: What in the world do these scriptures have to say about Dance?…
And to top this all off, what do these Scriptures and DANCING then have to say about our featured stain glass window for today? For as some of you know, our sermon series the past number of weeks has focused on the church’s stain glass windows. Today, we will focus on this window
As I speak to you today, be challenged to hear what Word the Lord of the Dance would give you- not some other day—but this day.
I invite you all to contemplate and pray with me on this theme:
Even when life feels odd--- remember you’re loved by a Dancing God.
In other words, when we’re walking through the valley of the shadows, remember that our Triune God has our back; just as in the dance of love we see displayed in the Trinity relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—so the Holy Spirit will come and stir a dance in our hearts--- a dance of the soul, a dance of life—and for this reason, no matter the challenges, let us be bold--- Because God will never leave us alone. We will never be orphaned. Hence, if we live in God, God will live with us—just as the song I sang in opening expressed.
Well, I am a sucker for stories… and our stain glass window for today has a very interesting one. It was created in the memory of a woman named Sarah Hastings by her son. Doing research on this window, one uncovers these words, describing the life-filled spirit of this woman, Mrs. Hastings. She is described as:
“A moving spirit in the Church, a very intelligent and capable woman, who gave considerable financial assistance. One of the earliest members, connected from the start.”
Perhaps this phrase depicting Mrs. Hastings as a “moving spirit” strikes us— We imagine her fluttering through the congregation, like some kind of Energizer Bunny of skill and intelligence. And her memory causes us to imagine the beginnings of our church and the founding of any church community—The hope. The power. The passion. The possibility—all enmeshed and wrapped up in one little community’s devotion and faith in their living God.
The window offers another significant image. It depicts the human SOUL as the young woman we see in the frame--- hand-in-hand with Christ. Yes, the woman pictured in the window with Jesus is not Mary Magdalene or another female… but the woman represents the “human soul.”
The depiction of the soul as a woman might shock us at first—perhaps even particularly at the time when the window was first created. Perhaps, for some of us, it makes sense. But beyond the gender-element of the illustration, I want you to pay close attention to the illustration itself:
Here, the soul is depicted as being deeply CLOSE with Christ. Perhaps if one were to squint just so or merely use the imagination, we could imagine the image being that of the two figures, Christ & soul, just about to break into a dance.
The illustration of the SOUL in this window possesses a very special theological significance for us to contemplate: In the OT, the Hebrew word for soul is the word, nepes. It has a wide range of meanings but is primarily used to express the LIFE FORCE OF LIVING CREATURES. ‘Thus, [in Genesis 1:20-21 we read how] all the earth is full of ‘living creatures’ that have the ‘breath of life.’ [And] when God creates Adam, God breathes the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils, and Adam becomes a ‘living being,’” a nepes, a SOUL. Far from referring simply to one part of a person, the ‘soul’ refers to the whole person… and in such places as 1 Kings 19:4 and Ezekiel 32:10, we see where the SOUL refers to a person’s very life itself. We see the way in which SOUL and LIFE refer to one another in our Psalm 23—Here the psalm is often translated: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul…
OR (this last section is also translated): He restores my LIFE.
In the NT, the word soul appears in significant places as well. In Mark 3:4, Jesus asks the synagogue authorities whether it is lawful on the Sabbath to ‘save life [or SOUL] or to kill.’ In the parable of the rich young fool in Luke 12:13-20, the ‘young man says to his soul that he has ample goods laid up for many years; Jesus then tells him: ‘This very night your soul (life force) is being demanded of you.’
If I desire to follow Christ, the decision has SOUL & LIFE SIGNIFICANCE
From these meanings of SOUL, there seems to be something in this window’s depiction about how closeness with God, with the 2nd person of the Trinity, God’s Son, gives life… Herein, we encounter or need meditate on Christ’s words to us in John 14 today: BECAUSE I LIVE, YOU ALSO WILL LIVE. See here how everything starts with God’s action. As Presbyterian Christians in the Reformed Tradition, we believe that God is the life-force, the source, the LOVING initiator that enabled our relationship in the first place. It is a willingness to let go of our hard-heartedness, our own prerogatives, and‡ living as our unique selves, as who God created us to be‡ dare to dive into living relationship with God.
Personally speaking, as I see this window too, my imagination is drawn to remember the spirituality course I recently took called Contemplative Listening. Here, as seminarians-in-training, we were encouraged to LEARN how to listen to another’s soul as well as listen to our own.
This matter of soul listening is crucial. When have you listened to another’s soul?!—Perhaps, taken a seat at your favorite café, and just looked at another human being, their whole self, in the eyes—and de-cluttering yourself from your usual preoccupations, dared to ask: HOW ARE YOU?! Perhaps you (could) sit down with someone at Jims and Tuckers and ask: How is God moving & active in your life?
When I think about a good soul listener, two people come to mind: My college chaplain, who would often take us to the local independent coffee shop for honest conversations. I remember most how his eyes would sparkle at times when he encouraged us to imagine how God was moving and, to quote one of his favorite phrases, being a life-giving source for us.
He would remind us that: Even when life feels odd--- remember you’re loved by a Dancing God—and challenged us to see where LIFE was. There was space to express our doubts, our fears, and our hopes. He would remind us, in the vein of Socrates’ well-known phrase, that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living,’ and encourage us to truly listen to our heart & mind, OUR SOUL, to be willing to risk asking the HARD QUESTIONS, and to love God, as the Scripture proclaims, with all our heart & Mind--- and hence SOUL…..Also in these conversations with my college chaplain, he would sometimes share from an appropriate, mutual place that made us feel like We’re Not Alone.
b) My Grandmother was another triumphant listener. I still remember how, when my Grandfather’s Alzheimer’s got very bad, her care-giving skills kicked in. She had this incredible way of attentiveness- of noticing when something little was off or wrong. When the dreadful time came where my Grandfather had to move into a health care center—and we all cried and she, in particular, felt greatly distressed—I will always remember how she spent her days there at the center, caring deeply for my Grandfather…. And then ALSO going and listening to the stories of the other patients there. She knew everyone by name. She would give them a head and listen to their stories. There was “Sea Daddy,”—the old Navy captain, Ted, Dan, Silvia… and my Grandmother loved all of them….
Reminding me of the Scripture, paraphrasing, if we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our father in heaven take care of us?!
Here, time takes on a different pace—less studded by the pressures of the blackberry or the false belief that we can always be secure from dead, communication OPENED, masks dropped, and SOUL & LIFE LISTENING HAPPENED.
Hard NOW:
Things have been hard for us. Our congregation has seen a good amount of pain: people we love in the hospital and struggling with illness. We have many of us that are looking day in and out for work. We have leads and possibilities and then
Our businesses, our homes, and even our congregation is facing significant financial questions. In this vein and others, there might seem to be little to dance about.
YET—there are a few interesting things about dancing---
First, comes to mind for me—the image from high school dances, actually- or something from the 1980’s TV Show “Saved by the Bell”--- Here, the question remains: What- if I approach this person and ask them to dance, will they refuse or back away from the dance? THE AMAZING THING ABOUT OUR GOD IS, HOWEVER, IS THAT HE NEVER BACKS AWAY.
Another interesting thing about dancing is that it is ultimately something about CONNECTION & INTIMACY: I imagine the beautiful scene from the “King & I” where the lead characters sing, “Shall We Dance.” I imagine the gentle, rocking dance between a mother and her baby…. Or the first dance of a couple on their wedding day—danced to their special song. Dance is about CONNECTION & INTIMACY.
And so let us remember, even when life feels odd--- remember you’re loved by a Dancing God.
But you might be wondering: What is it that makes God a dancing God – and is there anything in our theology to support this idea? And I say YES and it starts with our understanding of the Trinity!
In a contemporary text of Reformed Theology, Daniel Migliore writes about the dance between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit called PERICHORERIS in our understanding of the Trinity. He says:
Perichoresis is a Greek word translated ‘mutual indwelling’ or ‘interpenetration.’ It was first used by the patristic theologians (or Church Fathers] to describe the mutual indwelling of the divine and human natures in Christ, the Incarnate Word. Then, in the eight century, John of Damascus” used the term to describe the unique communion of the God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Trinity relationship. The three persons of the Trinity live in, with, and through each other in ineffable communion. (INDEX- Migliore) And you know one way that modern theologians enjoy depicting this communion—as something like a triangle dance (rather than square) where God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit live in harmony with each other—and therein, knowing relationship themselves, invite us to enter relationship with them, with our One God!
Friends, this is huge! It means simply that, like the woman-soul & Christ depicted in that window, God desires to be in relationship with us.
I was talking with a friend from another country the other day who is also in seminary, and he told me these words… words that I have been pondering in my heart deeply and so I share with you. He asked me: Is the United States of America going to end up like Europe—where our churches are empty and fading in significance because we no longer believe in God as an active, moving reality in our life—as God as more than just an idea that we can control for our own benefit but never truly engage with.
Although part of me grimaced at these words, I sensed within them a call—a call for all of us—to remember who and whose we are! To dare to… believe more and more fully again. We are all of us on a journey, and we are here together because we trust that God has something to say to us and that it is God who is at the helm of this ship.
Reading from the Dictionary of Theological Interpretation of the Bible the other day, one comes upon these words:
“Humanity can never interpret itself in terms of itself, but only in terms of God, its creator.” -- We are always related to God—and let us remember this orientation in all times and stages of our life—when we’re doing the innocent swirls of childhood, the enthusiastic dances of youth, the tango of middle age… and the opening broad waltz of age.
This section from John’s Gospel we read today is also known as “The Farewell Discourse.”
“The primary orientation of the Farewell Discourse is not to an event that preceded it, but to an event whose arrival is imminent—that is, Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension.” IT is from this trio-action of death, resurrection, and ascension that we have hope!
From John 14, we see that belief in Jesus empowers the community—and we learn that we are never alone—The first time that the Holy Spirit or Paraclete is mentioned. The Holy Spirit will be our Comforter, Counselor, Advocate to keep us in the dance of communion with our God.
And so, let us dance then—wherever we may be!
To love Jesus is to live with God the Creator and Jesus & the Holy Spirit—that is, to enter into relationship with them, to come home. (WORD)
And so, dance then—wherever we may be!
Even though I walk through the valley—I fear no evil..
For you, God, are with me!
The dancing of our congregation has taken us to many places: The Midway Shelter, baseball stadiums, bible study home meetings, at death beds and hospital beds where newborn babies are born.
And so, even when Life seems Odd, Remember that you are Loved by a Dancing God.
The God, who is our shepherd—who like a horse whisperer, communicates to us, the flock, in ways even stronger than what might first meet the eye—beyond our pain and disappointment. God is in the still, small voice. God the Holy Spirit is alive and working in the world! Will we enter the dance? By God’s grace, friends, we already have! Let us remember this! This is something to dance about!
Sermon # 2
Because it is sometimes nonsensical to start with # 1.
Well, these are definitely not the days to talk about houses…. Real estate, the bottom line, assets—these aren’t popular topics either…. but definitely not houses…. In fact, its associated word, that word economy has come to feel all the more and more ominous —like a one-word formula to define all the problems going on the world.—And you don’t need me to tell you this—We even hear it in conversation:: How is your cousin doing?! Well, you know, the economy. How are you feeling!? Well, you know, the economy. What do you think about the future?! Well … the economy.
According to the biblical account surrounding the life of King David, we have good right to imagine that the life of the people of Israel was likewise unstable and fraught with complications. As Biblical scholars are quick to note, these people of Israel were a small band often in competition with the peoples surrounding them… competing for land and resources. Perhaps we get a sense of this instability when we consider the emotion and pathos that must have birthed the Exodus narrative and imagine that tremendous, frightening escape out of the land of Egypt—and how, regardless of how one interprets it, the manna must have glittered like specks of gold across the horizon… As we move further through the pages of the Old Testament, we hear the resounding words of the prophets, who spoke with boldness & clarity, demanding an end to the unjust exporting practices of the rich few in their midst—likewise showcasing the instability of the world… And perhaps we discern the instability of life for these biblical witnesses even in the little bit of text that precedes this one in 2 Samuel: In the narrative that denotes the capriciousness of a God who would decide to bless King Saul and then drop him with the wink of an eye. Nonetheless, I know for myself that it doesn’t just take Economy talk to bring up the issue of instability—although that one usually does it. But too, I am moving into the last years of my degree program, and many days I literally feel like my future could take almost any form or bring me to any place. Instability--- yes, sometimes we feel like we are riding a rollercoaster…. Setting sail along the pendulum swing and we’re not sure where is up or down… Yet to imagine that God is likewise an inhabitant of this pendulum swing, of a seemingly topsy-turvy, out of control—kind of roller-coaster ride, may be --- as we’ll see as well in the case of King David--- unwise.
..Nonetheless, in today’s passage, it appears that things aren’t that bad or unstable for King David. In fact, we find striking language of settledness & seeming relaxation…. The Philistine attack is repulsed, the Ark is in Jerusalem, and King David is described as “settled in his house” and given “rest from all of his enemies.” You all know those long days when you wake up with the alarm clock, jerk out of bed, and then continue to surmount item after item, activity after activity, on your to-do list. But then you come home, your husband or wife or friend is no longer angry about your behavior a few days ago, the insurance company sends you a letter, realizing that they mistakingly over-charged you and so you have an extra cheque in your pocket; you begin to draw yourself a gentle warm bath, and then walk into your bedroom and someone has made up the bed for you---even put a chocolate on your pillow and arranged that comforter you like the most. Perhaps this description is stacked high, but my point, I think, is made: King David is comfortable and, no longer roaming the wilderness, fighting off aggressors, he is now living in a house of cedar--- those beautiful cedars of Lebanon. And so, as things are pretty good for him and … out of seemingly good intention, he imagines: Well, this is great for me—I bet that God would like this too… I know—I should build God a house!
There is something of mythic & theological significance in this move—This deciding to put the Ark of God in a house…
According to the OT, the two tablets of stone constituting the "testimony" or evidence of God's covenant with the people (i.e. The Ten Commandments) were kept within the Ark itself. A golden jar containing some of the manna from the Israelites' trek in the wilderness and the rod of Aaron were added to the contents of the Ark (According to Ex. 16:32-34; Heb. 9:4)…. . A Rabbinic tradition states that Moses also put the broken fragments of the first tablets of the Law into the Ark. And some scholars have argued that the plans to the Tabernacle were contained in the Ark.
But no matter the distinctions coming to us from tradition, the Ark was a symbol of sacredness and sanctity--- meant to depict the actual dwelling place of God. And hence, when King David suggests that the Ark be put in a house, the nuance of meaning we glean is this: That the Spirit of God can belong to one particular place and be kept there. But, as our 2 Samuel passage reveals, God, in true punster-form, offers King David, through the mouthpiece of Nathan, a different option: “No… I do not belong in a box! God says: “You will not make me a house…” But I will make you a house—the word in Hebrew is bayit--- and it can also refer to the term household or dynasty. In my musings for today, I will also use the term realm. But this point is huge: Our God cannot be categorized or limited to our own human needs and perceptions.” As I said before, it is not wise to put God in a box…..
In another book that deals with houses… the one we’ve been reading for our upcoming Tuesday night book club, The Shack… this same point is brought to bear: Mackenzie who goes by Mack, a middle-aged father who has known great tragedy, has an experience with the Holy Trinity—the book is a story of redemption and we read of his conversations with Jesus, God, and Sarayu—a special name the author crafts for the Holy Spirit. Listen into this conversation between God, who is called Papa in the book, and Mackenzie:
Page: 98
But what does this mean for us today?! To that question, let’s turn to today’s Gospel reading—a few short verses but with a lot of weight to consider. We hear these words: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it , because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”
• I first met this story on some cartoon television film when I was quite young, and from my perspective at the time, the message was this: “ Do the right thing, be a good Christian, or your life will fall apart like the dilapidated house at the bottom of the shore. There is some truth to this statement. There come times in our lives when we have to make a stand and when personal responsibility and response is crucial. And yet, as too many of us know (and as Leslie pointed out last week), bad things happen and we cannot necessarily equate them to our actions. Sometimes the economy falls apart, a Hurricane comes and rips apart your house, and you had nothing to do about it.
• But I also believe that today’s passage offers something else for us to chew on.
The first thing that this passage does is echo that cute title of “Lord, Lord” that we see other places in the Bible—the first place that strikes me is that famous line…”Not all those who say the word, Lord, Lord”--- The title suggests: “Be real. Wipe away your niceties… your encounters that lack real encounter, real communication…. And get serious. This faith stuff.., this religious stuff is important. It’s meaningful. It’s the kind of thing to base your life on!
Second, the passage endorses a triple way of approaching God: “The act of coming to God, hearing God’s words, and acting on them.” So often, we in communities of faith find ourselves arguing over the way to do things—making faith come down to either: A) cognitive belief—“the act of coming to God”— B) l istening to God & prayer—or how spiritual you are – which could be described as hearing God’s words,--- and C) service & social justice--- “acting on God’s words.” In today’s Gospel passage, we see that all three of these faithful responses are significant and important. The wise person is one who does all three…
Finally, third, today’s Gospel passage beckons us to consider our own foundation… to ask– What is our foundation?!
And that wise one we want to emulate in Luke, who comes to God, hears God’s words, and acts of them (NOTE THAT TRIPLE FAITH ACTION) is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on rock.
What is this rock that the Gospel passage refers to?! To me, it is quite simple—so simple that it’s in some ways too complicated to express… The Sunday School answer works— Jesus, or the one who announces the coming house, the realm of God. And too—let us consider the term Foundation; it is an evocative word. It connotes structure and stability and yet too--- in some of its other lingual uses—foundation as an organization that exists to create change as an example, to help those in need, the term suggests something that is capable of empowering transformation, non-rigidity--- SPACE FOR GRACE. This is significant.
If we only think of this story of the wise man building his house on the rock as a drama of moral rules we must follow, we risk making the same mistake that David did: Thinking that we could build God a house—while instead it is the other way around. The triune God announces a house, a realm, that we can both experience and help to announce—the kingdom of God—where we live as brothers and sisters, where reconciliation is the rhetoric of reality, and where the story of God’s great grace is given space to speak.
In one of his famous reflections on the spiritual life, priest and theologian Henri Nouwen (Note: L’Arche )wrote about the important step of moving from the house of fear to the house of love…. It is hard to just say move from the house of fear to the house of love…. Something about it to our contemporary ears usually sounds so soothing —and so you don’t have to convince anyone to think about it more deeply--- to others it can sound so sweet and syrupy, that people feel like: “Oh gee… More naivety for us.” Some fear is helpful—practical…. But moving from the house of fear to the house of love is the work of a lifetime. Ronald Rolheiser, President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, expands on the concept for us:
Henri Nouwen, in his writings, frequently asked this question: "How can we live inside a world marked by fear, hatred, and violence and not be destroyed by it?"
At a certain point in life that becomes the real task of spirituality: How do we stop ourselves from being sucked into the house of fear so as to live in the house of love? What's meant by this?
We live in a world of division, hatred, and violence. One only has to watch the news to see this. Daily we see fear and hatred translated into violence and death all over the world. What's true at this level is true too, in a less pronounced way, in our ordinary lives. Inside our families, churches, and communities we see the problems of the world played out on the small-screen of our daily lives. Bitterness, suspicion, the sense of injustice, anger, jealousy, hatred, division, and subtle forms of violence eventually penetrate even our most intimate relationships. We often don't recognize these for what they are and consider them simply part of the normal give and take of everyday life….
What this does is keep us, almost always, inside the house of fear. Because we live inside of families, churches, and communities where there is suspicion, gossip, cynicism, jealousy, and bitterness, it's natural that our first instinct so often is to protect ourselves, to be suspicious, to be hard… We live, as Nouwen puts it, inside the house of fear rather than inside the house of love.
How do we save ourselves from getting lost there? How do we remain tender when so much around us is hard? How do we remain free of fear when we there is so much anger around? . . .
There are no easy answers. Moreover this is not, as Nouwen himself points out, something that we can ever accomplish once and for all. (Although this actually gives me some hope) The world is not divided up between those who have conquered fear and those who haven't. Rather our own days and hours are divided up between those times when we live more in fear and those times when we live more in love. There are times when our fears take over and we act out of them, just as there ****** are other times when grace opens us beyond fear and we can act in graciousness and love.”
How do I think we can live within the house of Love?!—the realm of God. I obviously do not have the whole answer, but three last convictions have struck me:
1) First, it’s all about Grace. God is building the house. We need to respond, but it’s all wrapped up in the story of grace.
2) First is to remember a thing about rocks. When they are under pressure, they become diamonds!
3) In the Shack: story……
Well, these are definitely not the days to talk about houses…. Real estate, the bottom line, assets—these aren’t popular topics either…. but definitely not houses…. In fact, its associated word, that word economy has come to feel all the more and more ominous —like a one-word formula to define all the problems going on the world.—And you don’t need me to tell you this—We even hear it in conversation:: How is your cousin doing?! Well, you know, the economy. How are you feeling!? Well, you know, the economy. What do you think about the future?! Well … the economy.
According to the biblical account surrounding the life of King David, we have good right to imagine that the life of the people of Israel was likewise unstable and fraught with complications. As Biblical scholars are quick to note, these people of Israel were a small band often in competition with the peoples surrounding them… competing for land and resources. Perhaps we get a sense of this instability when we consider the emotion and pathos that must have birthed the Exodus narrative and imagine that tremendous, frightening escape out of the land of Egypt—and how, regardless of how one interprets it, the manna must have glittered like specks of gold across the horizon… As we move further through the pages of the Old Testament, we hear the resounding words of the prophets, who spoke with boldness & clarity, demanding an end to the unjust exporting practices of the rich few in their midst—likewise showcasing the instability of the world… And perhaps we discern the instability of life for these biblical witnesses even in the little bit of text that precedes this one in 2 Samuel: In the narrative that denotes the capriciousness of a God who would decide to bless King Saul and then drop him with the wink of an eye. Nonetheless, I know for myself that it doesn’t just take Economy talk to bring up the issue of instability—although that one usually does it. But too, I am moving into the last years of my degree program, and many days I literally feel like my future could take almost any form or bring me to any place. Instability--- yes, sometimes we feel like we are riding a rollercoaster…. Setting sail along the pendulum swing and we’re not sure where is up or down… Yet to imagine that God is likewise an inhabitant of this pendulum swing, of a seemingly topsy-turvy, out of control—kind of roller-coaster ride, may be --- as we’ll see as well in the case of King David--- unwise.
..Nonetheless, in today’s passage, it appears that things aren’t that bad or unstable for King David. In fact, we find striking language of settledness & seeming relaxation…. The Philistine attack is repulsed, the Ark is in Jerusalem, and King David is described as “settled in his house” and given “rest from all of his enemies.” You all know those long days when you wake up with the alarm clock, jerk out of bed, and then continue to surmount item after item, activity after activity, on your to-do list. But then you come home, your husband or wife or friend is no longer angry about your behavior a few days ago, the insurance company sends you a letter, realizing that they mistakingly over-charged you and so you have an extra cheque in your pocket; you begin to draw yourself a gentle warm bath, and then walk into your bedroom and someone has made up the bed for you---even put a chocolate on your pillow and arranged that comforter you like the most. Perhaps this description is stacked high, but my point, I think, is made: King David is comfortable and, no longer roaming the wilderness, fighting off aggressors, he is now living in a house of cedar--- those beautiful cedars of Lebanon. And so, as things are pretty good for him and … out of seemingly good intention, he imagines: Well, this is great for me—I bet that God would like this too… I know—I should build God a house!
There is something of mythic & theological significance in this move—This deciding to put the Ark of God in a house…
According to the OT, the two tablets of stone constituting the "testimony" or evidence of God's covenant with the people (i.e. The Ten Commandments) were kept within the Ark itself. A golden jar containing some of the manna from the Israelites' trek in the wilderness and the rod of Aaron were added to the contents of the Ark (According to Ex. 16:32-34; Heb. 9:4)…. . A Rabbinic tradition states that Moses also put the broken fragments of the first tablets of the Law into the Ark. And some scholars have argued that the plans to the Tabernacle were contained in the Ark.
But no matter the distinctions coming to us from tradition, the Ark was a symbol of sacredness and sanctity--- meant to depict the actual dwelling place of God. And hence, when King David suggests that the Ark be put in a house, the nuance of meaning we glean is this: That the Spirit of God can belong to one particular place and be kept there. But, as our 2 Samuel passage reveals, God, in true punster-form, offers King David, through the mouthpiece of Nathan, a different option: “No… I do not belong in a box! God says: “You will not make me a house…” But I will make you a house—the word in Hebrew is bayit--- and it can also refer to the term household or dynasty. In my musings for today, I will also use the term realm. But this point is huge: Our God cannot be categorized or limited to our own human needs and perceptions.” As I said before, it is not wise to put God in a box…..
In another book that deals with houses… the one we’ve been reading for our upcoming Tuesday night book club, The Shack… this same point is brought to bear: Mackenzie who goes by Mack, a middle-aged father who has known great tragedy, has an experience with the Holy Trinity—the book is a story of redemption and we read of his conversations with Jesus, God, and Sarayu—a special name the author crafts for the Holy Spirit. Listen into this conversation between God, who is called Papa in the book, and Mackenzie:
Page: 98
But what does this mean for us today?! To that question, let’s turn to today’s Gospel reading—a few short verses but with a lot of weight to consider. We hear these words: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it , because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”
• I first met this story on some cartoon television film when I was quite young, and from my perspective at the time, the message was this: “ Do the right thing, be a good Christian, or your life will fall apart like the dilapidated house at the bottom of the shore. There is some truth to this statement. There come times in our lives when we have to make a stand and when personal responsibility and response is crucial. And yet, as too many of us know (and as Leslie pointed out last week), bad things happen and we cannot necessarily equate them to our actions. Sometimes the economy falls apart, a Hurricane comes and rips apart your house, and you had nothing to do about it.
• But I also believe that today’s passage offers something else for us to chew on.
The first thing that this passage does is echo that cute title of “Lord, Lord” that we see other places in the Bible—the first place that strikes me is that famous line…”Not all those who say the word, Lord, Lord”--- The title suggests: “Be real. Wipe away your niceties… your encounters that lack real encounter, real communication…. And get serious. This faith stuff.., this religious stuff is important. It’s meaningful. It’s the kind of thing to base your life on!
Second, the passage endorses a triple way of approaching God: “The act of coming to God, hearing God’s words, and acting on them.” So often, we in communities of faith find ourselves arguing over the way to do things—making faith come down to either: A) cognitive belief—“the act of coming to God”— B) l istening to God & prayer—or how spiritual you are – which could be described as hearing God’s words,--- and C) service & social justice--- “acting on God’s words.” In today’s Gospel passage, we see that all three of these faithful responses are significant and important. The wise person is one who does all three…
Finally, third, today’s Gospel passage beckons us to consider our own foundation… to ask– What is our foundation?!
And that wise one we want to emulate in Luke, who comes to God, hears God’s words, and acts of them (NOTE THAT TRIPLE FAITH ACTION) is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on rock.
What is this rock that the Gospel passage refers to?! To me, it is quite simple—so simple that it’s in some ways too complicated to express… The Sunday School answer works— Jesus, or the one who announces the coming house, the realm of God. And too—let us consider the term Foundation; it is an evocative word. It connotes structure and stability and yet too--- in some of its other lingual uses—foundation as an organization that exists to create change as an example, to help those in need, the term suggests something that is capable of empowering transformation, non-rigidity--- SPACE FOR GRACE. This is significant.
If we only think of this story of the wise man building his house on the rock as a drama of moral rules we must follow, we risk making the same mistake that David did: Thinking that we could build God a house—while instead it is the other way around. The triune God announces a house, a realm, that we can both experience and help to announce—the kingdom of God—where we live as brothers and sisters, where reconciliation is the rhetoric of reality, and where the story of God’s great grace is given space to speak.
In one of his famous reflections on the spiritual life, priest and theologian Henri Nouwen (Note: L’Arche )wrote about the important step of moving from the house of fear to the house of love…. It is hard to just say move from the house of fear to the house of love…. Something about it to our contemporary ears usually sounds so soothing —and so you don’t have to convince anyone to think about it more deeply--- to others it can sound so sweet and syrupy, that people feel like: “Oh gee… More naivety for us.” Some fear is helpful—practical…. But moving from the house of fear to the house of love is the work of a lifetime. Ronald Rolheiser, President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, expands on the concept for us:
Henri Nouwen, in his writings, frequently asked this question: "How can we live inside a world marked by fear, hatred, and violence and not be destroyed by it?"
At a certain point in life that becomes the real task of spirituality: How do we stop ourselves from being sucked into the house of fear so as to live in the house of love? What's meant by this?
We live in a world of division, hatred, and violence. One only has to watch the news to see this. Daily we see fear and hatred translated into violence and death all over the world. What's true at this level is true too, in a less pronounced way, in our ordinary lives. Inside our families, churches, and communities we see the problems of the world played out on the small-screen of our daily lives. Bitterness, suspicion, the sense of injustice, anger, jealousy, hatred, division, and subtle forms of violence eventually penetrate even our most intimate relationships. We often don't recognize these for what they are and consider them simply part of the normal give and take of everyday life….
What this does is keep us, almost always, inside the house of fear. Because we live inside of families, churches, and communities where there is suspicion, gossip, cynicism, jealousy, and bitterness, it's natural that our first instinct so often is to protect ourselves, to be suspicious, to be hard… We live, as Nouwen puts it, inside the house of fear rather than inside the house of love.
How do we save ourselves from getting lost there? How do we remain tender when so much around us is hard? How do we remain free of fear when we there is so much anger around? . . .
There are no easy answers. Moreover this is not, as Nouwen himself points out, something that we can ever accomplish once and for all. (Although this actually gives me some hope) The world is not divided up between those who have conquered fear and those who haven't. Rather our own days and hours are divided up between those times when we live more in fear and those times when we live more in love. There are times when our fears take over and we act out of them, just as there ****** are other times when grace opens us beyond fear and we can act in graciousness and love.”
How do I think we can live within the house of Love?!—the realm of God. I obviously do not have the whole answer, but three last convictions have struck me:
1) First, it’s all about Grace. God is building the house. We need to respond, but it’s all wrapped up in the story of grace.
2) First is to remember a thing about rocks. When they are under pressure, they become diamonds!
3) In the Shack: story……
Blog in Construction
This blog is being cleaned up and transformed into a place to post my sermons! Apologies for the messiness but perhaps it resonates with the rough edges and surprising grace of life. :)
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Recently, I have found myself concerned about the future, wondering what decisions I should make, and where I am heading. The fragility of this place is hard. I wish all the answers I needed would simply lay themselves at my lap. Nonetheless, this involves the precious exercises of putting my fear in its place, of listening to the wisdom that suggests that worry will not help a thing but rather trustful, open-eyed, laughter......... Trying.
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