051312 Dance of Love

The Dance of Love

Genesis 3:20-24                                                                      Mother’s Day, May 10, 2012

John 15:9-17                                                                           Russell Eidmann-Hicks

Here’s some definitions of love as told by children aged 4-8:

‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.’

Bobby – age 7

 

‘If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,’

Nikka – age 6

 

‘Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that.  They look gross when they kiss.’    Emily – age 8

 

‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.’   Tommy – age 6

‘During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.’     Cindy – age 8

‘My mommy loves me more than anybody.  You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.’    Clare – age 6

‘Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.’   Elaine-age 5

‘When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’

Karen – age 7

Good definitions, huh?  We hear Jesus talking about love today in scripture.  He says:  ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’ (John 15:8)  His definition goes beyond sentimentality or Hallmark cards or sugary hearts or stars: his is the bottom line – the greatest love is selfless love, the willingness to lay down one’s life for another.  Real love lives in self-giving.

 

Today we are celebrating love in families on this Mother’s Day.  The truth is that a mother’s love, a parent’s love, is essentially this kind of love – a love willing to sacrifice, a love ready to give all of itself for love of another.   We recently heard of a mother who lost both of her legs sheltering her child in a terrible tornado out west.  Parents do that.  Their love is ‘agape’ love, self-giving love.

Willa Cather wrote this about family love in her novel Obscure Destinies:

“Sometimes in the morning, if her feet ached more than usual, Mrs. Harris felt a little low. (Nobody did anything about broken arches in those days, and the common endurance test of old age was to keep going after every step cost something.)  She would hang up her towel with a sigh and go into the kitchen, feeling that it was hard to make a start.  But the moment she heard the children running down the uncarpeted back stairs, she forgot to be low.  Indeed, she ceased to be an individual, an old woman with aching feet; she became part of a group, became a relationship.  She was drunk up into their freshness when they burst in upon her, telling her about their dreams, explaining their troubles with buttons and shoelaces and underwear shrunk too small.  The tired, solitary old woman Grandmother had been at daybreak vanished.  Suddenly, the morning seemed as important to her as it did to the children, and the mornings ahead stretched out sunshiny, important.”

Love can be wearing; it can hurt the feet and the hands and the soul.  But it can also offer us renewal and inspiration and the light of life.

Today we honor how this love binds us together and changes our hearts.  We honor mothers, parents, grandparents, spouses and partners, who love whole-heartedly and who lay down their lives day after day after day.   Love.  We use the word all the time – in fact this love is at the very center of our faith.  Jesus boiled down all of the law and teachings of faith to two laws: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.  Love.  And he did more than talk and teach about it; he lived it, offering his life for each of us on the cross. That’s the whole deal, the complete story.

We speak today of a love – as Jesus did – that unites us as communities and also as marriage partners.  Jesus saw marriage reflecting Eve and Adam – as two persons becoming one flesh – as a kind of unity of heart and soul that transcends differences.  He talks of a love in which two person grow over time into a profound intimacy that allows us to offer our lives for the other, day after day in simple ways.  This is not only found in marriage – it can be found in deep friendships, in communities of faith, in soul-mates who unite in spirit.   I am grateful to our president for standing up to affirm the right of same sex couples to have their committed and loyal relationships sanctioned by society and celebrated publicly by friends and family.    No one should be denied this kind of profound relationship, in which deep love is recognized and celebrated.

How do we cultivate and appreciate this love when we find it?   What makes it work long-term?

Plenty of traits and habits threaten soul unity; lots of toxins erode and undermine committed love.  Our critical minds and judgmental hearts can cause bitterness and resentments to grow.  The beauty of our faith is that it reassures us that love will win out.  Love is eternal.  Love is life. God is love.  The heart of the universe beats with the pulse of this love.  And so our hope and our faith is that love overcomes selfishness and trauma and our own sinful natures.

 

A guy in his late 80’s was driving with his wife out West, and saw a road sign that said: Keys to a great marriage:  (and underneath it said…)

• I love you
• How can I help?
• Let’s go out to eat.
• I’m sorry
• You look great.

Whoever put up that sign was doing a great public service.  In fact that sign should go up all around the country, don’t you think?   (Some of us should have these words tattooed onto our arms to be able to read them out when needed.)

We need these words because so often we get into trouble in our relationships and in our families by not paying attention, by being selfish, by taking the other for granted, by not listening.  Living in families and in committed relationships is tough.  We live ‘east of Eden’ and are no longer in the Garden, where everything we do or say is OK.   We have to struggle to survive, in our daily work, but also in our loving and domestic living.   On this Mother’s Day, we celebrate the love that a love that is strong enough to give us the patience and the dedication not to do damage to each other.   It is good for us to consider what it is that keeps love alive.

Harville Hendrix, a marriage counselor, has some great advice to offer to couples and families, who are locked in resentments or conflicts.   In fact, he says most couples get stuck in power struggles, striving to meet innermost desires and dreams.  Unless we can find ways out of these conflicts and toxic battles, our relationships can be undermined.   Here is some of his advice:

Stop trying to control each other. Conflict isn’t necessarily bad and it doesn’t mean the two of you shouldn’t be together or lack some basic skill that happier couples have. Rather, it’s a sign that the psyche is trying to survive and break through its defenses. In fact, Hendrix believes that those who claim they never fight have simply given up on the relationship and tuned out. “Instead of sharing their lives, they begin to lead parallel lives,” he explains. But there is a right and a wrong way to fight. Hang up the boxing gloves and stop being judgmental. Your goal should be zero negativity, because any time you put your partner down, you create an unequal relationship that leads to anxiety and anger. Instead, ask yourself: Do you want to be right — or do you want to be happily married? Let go of the toxins polluting your marriage: the grudges, the eye rolls and name-calling, the sarcasm or pettiness, the globalizing (you always this, you never that) that might have slipped into your conversations.

Learn to listen deeply and empathically. Many couples who’ve been together a long time assume that they know what the other is thinking or feeling — and they’re often dead wrong. Or they believe that if a partner really loved them, really cared about their welfare, they’d just know what was upsetting them. Wrong again.  Banish the mind-reader syndrome by carving out time for a heart-to-heart talk (a personal state of the union address).

Compliment each other. When was the last time you told her how sexy she looks in those jeans? Did you let him know that you admire the way he handled a dicey work situation?  At the start of your marriage, you probably showered one another with praise and affection. Maybe you think that since you’ve said those things before, there’s no reason to repeat them. There is: Praising and admiring each other can keep your marital engine humming. Forget to exchange regular compliments and you risk chipping away at the foundation of respect and love that supports your marriage.

Remember that you can’t change each other but you can change yourself. Sometimes, no matter how many times you ask, cajole (OK, berate) your partner for always being late or sloppy or (fill in the blank), nothing changes. You could continue to fume about it, or you could find ways to flip his annoying behavior into a win for you.  If he’s paying too much attention to the TV, use the “free” time to do something for yourself. Pull out your iPad and read a few chapters in your book. Catch up on emails. This way, you dial down your stress level so you can both enjoy the evening.   Keep in mind that any change will be incremental, not revolutionary. The guy who has always raced through the airport at the last minute will not suddenly become the one who checks in a leisurely two hours before takeoff. The more we accept our spouses for who they really are, the more they become the person we want them to be.

All good advice.   And you know our faith tradition has some good advice as well.  St. Paul has some fantastic advice that he wrote not so much about families and marriage, but about living in community with each other.   His advice includes simple instructions about not holding grudges, forgiving, having patience, staying positive and more.  Living in families, being in relationships is also about living in community; and so these words are read at many weddings for that reason.   Certain basic rules apply when it comes to love:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.” (I Cor 13:4-6)

This is what we celebrate on Mother’s Day.  We celebrate the self-giving love of Mothers; their courageous willingness to get out and care for their kids, no matter what.  We celebrate love in families, where we are accepted for who we are and the door is open when we need shelter.   We celebrate love in community life, where we can find family, even when our own families of origin have been sources of trauma or neglect.

Love is what makes life worthwhile. It lifts our spirits and brightens the day.  Our work, our homes, our church, our moments are filled with meaning when they are filled with love.

Let’s celebrate love! Amen.

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050612 Connected to What?

Connected to What?

Acts 8:26-40                                                                                 May 6, 2012

John 15:1-8                                                                Russell Eidmann-Hicks

One day the abbot of a monastery walked out into the garden behind the meditation hall and heard a group of zucchini arguing with each other.  “You took my favorite spot,” said one.  “I was in the sun, now the sun is shining on you.”  “You stupid, gourd,” yelled another.  “You’ve got the wettest spot around.  Nobody wants to be near me it’s so dry.”  “Yea,” replied another.  “It’s no wonder.  If you weren’t so ugly, we would all want to be in your spot.”

“Be quiet!”  yelled the abbot.  “Pray in silence!”  The zucchini all shut up and sat in silence.   “Now, put your hands on top of your heads!”  They all put their hands up and found that on top of their heads was a vine.  This vine, they found, was connected to another vine, that was connected to the main root.  In other words, they were all connected!   That stopped their arguments and they lived in peace after that.

As much as we think we are independent and disconnected, we are all interconnected.   We need others for our sustenance and our success.  In almost every situation we need to use the word, “we.”  We are all closely intertwined.    Imagine our planet, spinning in its fragile and colorful delicacy in the bleak vacuum of outer space.  We are all part of one another.  We are part of one eco-system, one atmosphere, one great ocean, one God.  We are all connected, now more than ever.

A story illustrates this: “Under a cultural exchange program, Alan Abramsky and his family in Roanoke, Texas, were hosts to a rabbi from Russia at Christmastime.  They decided to introduce him to a culinary treat that was probably not available in his country, so they took him to their favorite Chinese restaurant.  Throughout the meal, the rabbi spoke excitedly about the wonders of North America in comparison to the bleak conditions in his homeland.  When they had finished eating, the waiter brought the check and presented each of them with a small brass Christmas tree ornament as a seasonal gift.

         They all laughed when Abramsky’s father pointed out that the ornaments were stamped “Made in India.”  But the laughter subsided when they saw that the rabbi was quietly crying.  Concerned, Abramsky’s father asked the rabbi if he was offended because he’d been given a gift for a Christian holiday.  He smiled, shook his head, and said, “Nyet.  I was shedding tears of joy to be in a wonderful country in which a Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu!”

Yes, we are all connected.   Jesus imagines this as a vine, “Abide in me as I abide in you.  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.”  (Jn 15:5)

Nothing illustrates this better in our age than the Internet: our vast web of  wires and phone lines, satellite beams and fiber optic cable that reaches out to every corner of the globe enabling people to touch distant sites at the speed of light.  We be talking with someone from India or the Philippines, while shopping online in Spain or in Hawaii.   Many of us spend hours each day hooked in to this intertwining net tying our planet together in one communication system. Yes, we are all connected, but connected to what? There are plenty of vines out there – political chat rooms, dating services, web sites for rare stamps, obscure history, auto mechanics, newts, or rare medical disorders.  It’s all there.   Pornography and gambling on the Internet are epidemic, and addictive to many.  The web can be a source of great insight and inspiring conversation; or it can be like a spider web that traps us in a huge waste or time or worse. This is true of other parts of our lives.  What vine are you grafted to?  What gives you life?

Another web we are connected to is the web of the economy.  For many of us, fulfillment and happiness comes through money, through having enough cash to do what we want and what we enjoy.  In fact for many it is the only web that seems to matter – more important than family, friends or community; it is the religious altar many worship before.  It is our common denominator, the common language we speak, and the way we judge ourselves and others.   This is the vine that connects the world in a great web of enterprise, producing vital and creative endeavors.   Yet, if this is our only vine, the only way we connect to meaning and community, then we can find ourselves impoverished spiritually.   Like Scrooge, we can have plenty, but end up bitter and isolated in our greed.   And, it can fall apart very quickly.  It can crash, or we can get our identities stolen, or we can get hacked and our accounts cleared out, or we can get terribly sick; and our debt can overwhelm us.  What is the vine, the root that is more secure, more enduring?

Anthony Robinson in the Still Speaking Devotional this week said this: “I once heard an Irish priest say, “God shakes the earth from time to time so that those who are alive at the time may discover what cannot be shaken.” When we are shaken, whether in our personal lives or as a society, we often turn to the church. Almost instinctively, we seek for what cannot be shaken.”

God is not shaken; God endures. God’s Spirit is like an ancient vine that unites us to the root source of all life.

Jesus encourages us to ‘abide’ in the connection we have with God. Jesus was very clear about this.   He said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s; we are encouraged to connected to God and God’s reality, and not only to Caesar’s money.   He wasn’t talking about being connected to any vine; he said he wished us to be connected to the true vine of God.  If you are, then you will become spiritually strong and wise and confident and joyful and self-giving.  “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.”  In Paul’s words the fruit of the spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) We will be able to give to others with our whole hearts.   Ultimately this fruit grows into eternal life.  This is the vine to which we strive to connect.  If not, if we are connected to something that is not as life-giving or as spiritually fulfilling. We run the danger of having our spiritual sap run dry.  Jesus says, “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers…Apart from me you can do nothing.”

We need God and each other.  Truthfully, we also need the webs of the Internet and Finance; we rely on our networks to sustain us.  But we especially need the network of God.   In faith we are in communion with the Spirit and each other; even when we do not recognize it. Through the vine of community we find sustenance, nourishment, inner strength, and vitality.   We connect to God through prayer, loyalty, service, love and hope; not only by intellectual belief.   In faith we connect to God like a tree reaching up and out into the heavens in prayer, connecting through sunlight, atmosphere, and nutrients.   And like a tree’s roots we find nourishment by connecting to each other with intertwining our roots.  In this way we become stronger and wiser.

I’ve heard that an apple tree can grow 14 different kinds of apples based on the grafting of different branches onto the tree.  This is a good image of our multi-cultural church tradition. This is something we can celebrate in our age that is increasingly diverse.  This was also true in the early church.   We connect to the one root in differing and surprising ways.

This is what Philip was doing in our scripture lesson from Acts this morning.  He was striving to bring someone into the vine of Jesus Christ, to graft him to the source of life.  An angel “happened” to tell him to go to a certain road where  he met a foreign official in a fancy chariot on the road outside of Jerusalem.  He “happened” to see him reading scripture, Isaiah 53, which one of the “suffering servant” stories in Isaiah.

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.

 

This man had traveled over a thousand miles to Jerusalem to worship in the Jewish Temple, and now was wrestling with his faith.   Philip took the time to teach him about Jesus the suffering savior and his salvation history.   The man’s faith was kindled to the extent that he asked to be baptized – to graft himself to the vine of Christ.  “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” he asked Philip.

Well…there could have been many things.  This man was an Ethiopian, a gentile, black man, and therefore racially different from the Jewish people in the area. The Ethiopian represented someone from the end of the earth – about as far as you could go, from the Court of Queen Candace of Ethiopia: like someone from the moon.  Plus he was a eunuch, who could have been what was called a ‘natural eunuch’ – someone who from birth was not interested in women; someone today we would call a homosexual.    Philip was a Jew, a disciple of Jesus.  He knew there were scriptures and Jewish laws that forbade him from including this man.  But he was called by the Spirit of God to cross over that line, to include someone into the vine of Christ who was a foreigner, a Gentile, and someone who was sexually different.

This man was unable to have children or to be married; he was not allowed to convert to Judaism; he could not be part of a vine of tradition that stretched into the future.   Yet, he could be grafted onto the vine of God’s people on the basis of his love of God and faith in God’s promise.  And this connection made him an equal member of our vast web of interconnections in Christ.  On the basis of his baptism his family suddenly became vast.  He was a part of a great sea of people who welcome him, not because of the color of his skin or his orientation, but on the basis of his faith.

As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. (Acts 8:35)

Nothing got in the way of his becoming a full and equal member of the church of Jesus Christ.  He was grafted onto the vine of Jesus Christ on the basis of his faith, which continues to graft diverse people into the great web of the spirit.

So how do we connect to the vine of Christ?  There is only one criteria – through faith.  It is with our hearts, not just believing with our minds, but connecting through our love, our trust, our hope, our worship, our prayers. It is not on the basis of wealth or status or skin color or equipment. Baptism is our initial connecting to the vine, and what brings us into the network of faith.  Yet it is our continued faith and devotion that keeps us connected and that allows us to bear fruit from this abiding presence.

 

This is Communion Sunday, when we celebrate the fruit of the vine by sharing it with each other, symbolizing our unity and connection with the spirit of God through Christ.   Communion is the supreme ritual celebrating the mystery of our connectedness.   This is the vine of Jesus Christ, the fellowship of the spirit.  It is open to all who have faith, who wish to connect on the basis of their love of God.   If we abide in this vine, God will make us grow stronger and wise and deeper and more joyful.  God will cause us to bear fruit that we can give away to others.  Whatever happens, just hold on. Abide. Amen.

 

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042912 Lay Down Life – Alex Haines

1 John 3:16-24     Alex Haines

Matthew 19:16-26

 

Self Giving Love

Last Sunday, the confirmation class went to a nearby mosque. We were talking with some folks there about our respective religions, and one of the Muslim men mentioned that in Islam, there’s some insecurity over knowing how God feels about you because there aren’t priests whom you can confess to and be told that you are forgiven, like in Roman Catholicism. To which Reverend Rusty responded that we have the same problem: we call it Protestant Angst.

He’s right. We’ve always been uncertain if we’re saved or not. Coming from all these traditions, we could very well have a lot of Protestant Angst. And it seems that this Angst – this fear that we might not have eternal life – isn’t unique to us Protestants.

In fact, the young man speaking with Jesus – he has that Angst. Today’s story from Matthew begins with this fear.

A young man in Judea was worried. He was a decent man; he hadn’t really done anything wrong. “I’m not a murderer or a liar or a thief. I’m faithful to my wife. I can’t think of any reason God shouldn’t give me eternal life. I’m a good, righteous person. Aren’t I?” “Aren’t I?”

But he kept wondering. For some reason, his heart was still condemning him. He still had that Protestant Angst. So he came to Jesus: “Teacher, what should I do to have eternal life?” Perhaps this teacher can give some reassurance, or at least show him what he ought to be doing. “Yes, I’ve kept the commandments. I haven’t hurt my neighbor or done anything wrong. But what else should I be doing?” And then Jesus looks at him tenderly, and says “Give it all away. All of it. Sell everything you own. Then come and be my follower.”

Whoa. I imagine the young man, standing there, thinking to himself: “What is this teacher saying? Is this what’s been gnawing at my heart? I have kept the commandments. Give it all away? I almost wish I could, but doesn’t Jesus know that I have people who depend on me? Doesn’t he know that if I gave it all away, I couldn’t keep supporting the Temple, or buying animals for the sacrifices to God there? I couldn’t possibly part with all the things I have.” And with these, and a hundred other excuses, the young man walked away from Jesus.

It’s really easy to criticize this man. We could come out and say “He’s selfish! See how wealth ruined him! It’s so hard for a rich person to have eternal life – I’m glad I’m not like that.”

But if we do that, we make the first mistake of reading the Bible: we think it’s not about us.

Don’t we feel pangs of conscience too?

We’re faced with the same problem as that young man when we read the first letter of John and hear the words “we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

Lay down our lives for one another. Give it all up – your possessions and even your life. Isn’t this a pretty high bar? Maybe some elite Christians might meet this – maybe the fathers and mothers, the martyrs whom we sang about in the first hymn. But this sounds more like something for a special few than instructions for a vast number of people. John might have written this for everyone, but does it really work for all Christians? How can we be called to lay down our lives? Doesn’t John understand that we have families to care for too? Doesn’t he understand that there are people who depend on us? This is the sort of rule that’s better applied to celibate priests and nuns. It made sense in the early, desperate years of Christianity, but it can’t possibly apply now.

And just like that, we walk away. Like the young man, we walk away.

John writes “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” The phrase translated as “refuses help” is more literally “closes his or her heart to them.” Closing your heart. That’s an apt description of what we do. Or course we close our hearts. We can’t be moved by every sob story we hear. We can’t get emotionally invested in the lives of everyone around us. We have to close our hearts, or else they’ll get broken.

And, in closing our hearts, we walk away.

 

 

But what if we didn’t walk away? What if we didn’t close our hearts. What if we let our hearts be broken? That’s what Jesus let happen for himself. He let himself be moved by every person in need around him. So many times, Jesus is asked to come quickly, Jesus is asked to stop and heal someone, Jesus is asked to take time to teach or advise, as with the rich young man. But he never refuses. If anyone has something more important to do with his time, it’s Jesus. But he always goes to do what he can – not always what people think he ought to do, but always something. He walked around with his heart unshielded. Did that hurt him? Yeah – it got him crucified.

But he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

Talk about a bleeding heart.

And now, we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us. This is what love is supposed to be. But for us to love like this? This is neither expected nor is it easy. This is the challenging, profoundly uncommon love that we’re commanded to practice. And there’s no way that we can be up for this without the name of Jesus Christ. Without Jesus we don’t even know what love is. When we believe in the name of the one who laid down his life for us – when we believe in the name of the one who died and was raised from the dead – when we believe in the name of the Son of God who came to us in the flesh – we know that the rules have changed. The world is not as it was before the resurrection because the world is not in charge anymore. Our guiding concern isn’t supposed to be our own needs anymore. As we heard last week, Jesus says not to worry about our lives, what we will eat, or about our bodies, what we will wear. We don’t need to worry about those things anymore. God will provide us with what we really need (which might not include what we think we need), while we’re supposed to lay down our lives for one another, to help when our brother or sister is in need, with all the resources we have. We’re supposed to give it all away. Because Jesus laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

 

 

We need to build up and edify one another in this community too. For me, being here and having the privilege to get to know this church and getting to know you, I have been so encouraged in seeing so many people so active in the church. [The Gilberts leading the youth group, the support of parents and others for the confirmation class. Just last Saturday, the work crew sprucing up the church. All the people who showed up when the basement was flooded and we had to carry the carpets all outside. All the people who do work behind the scenes with committees. And I’m just mentioning a few.] There are so many ways in which this congregation supports one another. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. When we see a need, we’re supposed to do all we can to fulfill it. If you’ve been thinking about getting involved in one of our missions or programs, or thinking of volunteering yourself when the next church event comes and the sign-up list is circulated, do it! There’s certainly a need. And if you notice a need that the church isn’t meeting yet, that’s even better. Because giving it all means that the thought “it would be nice to have another regular Bible study” can be quickly followed by seeing who’s interested and getting a group together. Maybe we need a men’s fellowship and discussion group, or a prayer and painting group. Maybe we need to spruce up the older gravestones in the cemetery, or re-organize the basements or attics. Or maybe not – maybe we need something else. I’m not sure what we need – but when I am, I hope I’m willing to step up and give it my all. If you know something that we need, don’t be afraid to step up and give it your all. It’s a little intimidating to try, but it’s exciting that we can do something real – to love not just in words, but to love in our actions.

We should take these commands seriously: to lay down our lives for one another, and to go and sell our possessions. It’s so easy to brush these aside and think that they only apply to other people – only to the disciples back then, or only to a select elite few. And the freedom of leaving our possessions behind to follow Christ – however scary – is compelling. There really is a powerful freedom to giving up our worries about our things. Our priorities are supposed to be God, other people, and ourselves, but somehow our worldly goods sneak in there and hold us down – they got the young man to walk away when Jesus invited him to be a disciple. “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But the young man walked away in grief, because he had many possessions.

But what if he didn’t walk away? What if he looked at Jesus, knelt down, and said: “Lord Jesus, I know that you want me to give up everything and serve you. I want to, but I need your help. Help me to give it all away.” Jesus would certainly help him. Imagine the lives that would be transformed. Those in need who received the proceeds of the young man’s sale of his possessions – imagine receiving such generosity – the incredible witness of a selfless person following Christ. And imagine the man himself, giving everything up and coming with Jesus. He could get to be close to Jesus, become friends with the disciples. They would work, learn and travel together, and sit together at the table of the last supper. He might come with the women to be near Jesus when he was on the cross at Golgotha.  And he certainly would have been together with the disciples as they celebrated Jesus’ Easter resurrection!

In that moment, speaking with Jesus, if he had said “Okay, I’ll give it all away.” Instead of Jesus telling the disciples how hard it is to enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus would have told them to welcome his new follower, told them to welcome their new brother. In giving it all up, the young man might have stayed. Amen.

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042212 Earth Day Sermon

The Example of Jesus Will Save the World

Psalm 104:24-30                                                                                 April 22, 2012

Luke 12:16-28                                                                         Russell Eidmann-Hicks

On Wednesday I was in the church office and received a call.  The caller ID said “Search Engine” – and I was told by an automated voice that it was Google, calling to verify our business information.  I pushed one and got a human being! She said she’d like to talk with the owner of the business, and was I that person?  I said, “Sort of; I’m the minister of the church.”   She said, “I will call back again when the owner of the business is available.”  I responded, “The owner of the business is Jesus Christ!”   By that time she had already hung up.

 

On this Earth Sunday, we affirm that the owner of this whole business, his earth, all of nature, this universe, is not any one of us; it is God.   At the heart of the biblical understanding of the land, the resources and food it offers, and the breath of life; all belong to God, Creator, Source, and Ground of Being.   We find this in the creation stories at in Genesis, when God’s spirit fashioned order from the stormy waters of chaos, in the laws in Leviticus that remind us that land is not our own and must be returned to ancestral beginnings, and in Jesus reminding us that life and sustenance all come from God alone.

            “Then the devil led Jesus up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.  And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and a this authority, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”  Jesus answered: “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only God.’” (Lk 4:16)

In your bulletin is a depiction of an ancient Israelite view of the cosmos.  In the picture is a round dome that rests on the ‘pillars of the sky’.  This dome is called the firmament, and it serves to keep out the primordial waters of chaos out of which God fashioned this world and life itself.   Stars hang under the firmament, as does the sun and stars, but above those is the dome that keeps out water that would snuff out life, if it was allowed in.   In the time of Noah, when humans rebelled against God, these waters were released, and caused the great flood that swallowed the earth and all life, except for the little biosphere of Noah’s Ark that allowed life to continue.   God, as Creator, cause the Red Sea to part, allowing the Israelites to cross on dry land.   God as Lord of life, allowed Jesus to rise again at Easter, recreating the ways of life and death.

This vision of creation sounds quaint and very old-fashioned, doesn’t it?   It’s certainly a terribly small vision of what we now know to be infinite space filled with millions and billions of galaxies, not to mention stars, planets, dust clouds millions of light years across that become nurseries for new stars.  Our cosmology, our understanding of the universe, has expanded exponentially in past several thousand years.  What was once on a human scale and understandable, has now become so vast, so mysterious and so awesome, that we are left in silence.   Physicists are now telling us that time itself is an illusion, and what makes up matter and the universe is far beyond our knowledge.  Instead of four dimensions, there may be as many as ten; and all things may be interconnected on a scale that bends the imagination.

And yet, look at this jewel of a planet, this fragile, green and blue globe that floats through the frigid emptiness of space.   Yes, there is a dome, bubbled of life called ‘atmosphere’ and not ‘firmament.’  Instead of water this atmosphere keeps out the deadly and airless vacuum of space and ozone protects us from ultraviolet rays that would destroy all life.   A bubble of air preserves us from death; a dome of life has been carved out of chaos and nothingness.    This ancient view of the universe is not so far off after all.

We are realizing now how very fragile, how very delicate is the balance of life on this tiny planet.    In order to survive into the distant future, we will need to learn to live in harmony with the laws that govern this planet.  Ancient Israelites would say that we need to live in obedience to God and the laws of God’s will in order to prosper and grow.   In either case, the understanding is clear: to sustain life we need to work together to obey certain guidelines and boundaries set down by the Creator and the laws of the Universe.

The problem, of course, is that we have been ignoring this simple truth.   In our enthusiastic rush toward greater development and industrialization, we humans have been populating this planet far too quickly.  We are using up resources and throwing out pollutants at an exponential pace.  In our naïve trust in the earth’s ability to restore itself, we have assumed that this can go on forever.   Some continue to put their heads in the sand, and insist that this is indeed sustainable, that this is just a natural cycle and humans have nothing to do with it.  Right.  We humans have nothing to do with changing this planet. Yup.  Sadly, the reality is that basic rules still function: what goes up must come down, what goes around comes around, and you reap what you sow.

This weekend a conference is going on in Washington DC for religious people and institutions to speak up against climate change.  This is sponsored by our own Central Atlantic Conference of the UCC, along with many other mainline churches.  Here is the declaration for us to consider:

First, it is morally wrong to unjustifiably cause human suffering and death. Human-induced climate change is correlated with storms, floods, droughts, crop failures, diseases, and water and food shortages, as well as associated breakdowns in political, economic, social and ecological systems. The greatest impacts are falling on low-income people, communities of color, indigenous peoples, and others who have contributed little to climate change.

Second, we must honor our moral obligation for equity and justice. The shift to a sustainable, energy efficient and renewable energy economy can create millions of good jobs and support healthy families and communities.   

Third, we must protect the Earth, which is the source of all life. Virtually all the world’s religious and spiritual traditions proclaim that we have a moral obligation to be good stewards of the Earth and all of its creatures and processes. To disrupt the climate that is the cornerstone of all life and to squander the extraordinary abundance of life, diversity, and beauty of the planet is a moral failure of the first order.  

In the past decade we’ve been led to believe that this is pie-in-the-sky nonsense, that there really is little or nothing we can or should do to protect this planet.  But truthfully, our job today is similar to that of ancient peoples. They knew that the way to a full and happy life was to live according to the boundaries and laws of the Creator.   These include compassion and justice, equality and care for the common good, self-control and simplicity of living.   The problem is not the science or technology; the problem is us.

From the Christian Century – April 18, 2012 by Calvin B. DeWitt:

            “In his 1993 Templeton Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, British historian of science Colin Russell examined prospects for restoring Earth’s environmental integrity.  After careful consideration of floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, he described the disasters and degradation that people inflict on the environment.   Probing the causes, he did not indict science and technology.  Instead, he found the underlying problem in the motivating springs of human action: human arrogance, greed, and aggression.  Human beings know what environmental integrity means, yet they degrade he earth.”

 

The crisis we face is not because of science or technology, but because of human sin and greed. These are the real culprits, and they are religious issues more than technological.  “Russell remarkably concludes that the ancient view espoused by scripture has the very qualities that are in concord with modern science.  This biblical view perceived Earth and the heavens as unified within the same universe under their Creator.  It affirms consistent and lawful operation of the earth and universe.   Russell concludes that the Bible’s image of human stewardship is the key to responding to human and environmental degradation.”

 

In Genesis we hear that God placed Adam in the garden to “till it and tend it.”   To till and to tend it as steward and gardener.  Just that.   We are not called to degrade, to exploit and destroy, to drain dry, but rather to sustain and to care for the earth.

Calvin DeWitt continues:  “In Genesis 2:15, the Hebrew word ‘avad is variously translated ‘work, till, dress or serve.’  We know from experience that gardens (and the biosphere) serve us – with good food, flavorful herbs, useful fiber, healing remedies, pleasant microclimates, soil-making, nutrient-processing and seed production …What God expects of Adam and of us, is returning the service of the garden with service of our own: a reciprocal service – a con-service, a conservancy, a conservation.  This reciprocal service defines the relationship between garden and gardeners.   Our love of God our Creator, God’s love of the creation, and our imaging this love of God join together to commission us as con-servers of creation.   This is the essence of stewardship.”  (P. 33 Christian Century 4.18.12)

 

We are called to be stewards, to tend the earth, rather than destroy it; to work to build up and sustain the garden, and thus to benefit from it.  Jesus said he came not be served but to serve.  That is what we are learning about life itself: to be stewards.   If we are simply consumers and users and abusers of this planet, we will not survive.  But if we learn to serve this world, like a gardener serves his or her garden by tilling and tending it; then we will thrive.

This leads to my key contention in this sermon: if we follow the model of Jesus Christ, we will find the way to life.   Jesus modeled for us a way to live as servants and stewards.  This is not only spiritually fulfilling and leads to salvation; he also taught us a way for this planet to survive.   Here’s how:

First he showed us how to live in community with one another, and not as warriors embattled and defended, but like gardeners who sow a harvest.  He washed the feet of those he came to serve and teach.   When we learn to share, like those 5,000 who were fed in the wilderness, we don’t need so much and can live full lives with very little.  If we give, we also receive.

Secondly, he lived simply and modeled a lifestyle that didn’t put consumerism and money at the center of everything.  God is at the center.  God is the owner of all, and will provide for us, as long as we are faithful and obedient.  Jesus was tempted in the desert to deny God and to worship wealth and power; but he insisted that God is the one in control.   Jesus shows us how to resist the temptation to use and abuse others and this planet.

Lastly, he modeled a way of self-giving love, not only for people, but also for this world.   He was willing to die, rather than kill.   He instructed us to give, to be generous, to assist others, and to not to only serve ourselves and our appetites.    This is called “deep ecology,” a willingness to see our own lives as part of the biosphere, and not separate; as willing to give ourselves for life.

If we followed his example and live as he lived, we will create communities and societies that would be sustainable and healthy, living within the laws and boundaries of the Creator.    This is what religious traditions offers to us: pathways toward sustainable health and blossoming.

An old story tells of a Zen Master who is climbing a mountain with several of his students, going to visit another Master who was well known for his wisdom.   As they walked along a stream, they noticed a cabbage leaf floating down in the rushing water.  The Zen Master turned around immediately, because he did not want to visit anyone who could be so wasteful as to throw away an entire cabbage leaf.  As they walked they heard someone running down the mountain path.  It was the teacher they were going to visit!  “Have you seen a cabbage leaf float by?” cried the teacher as he ran past them.    Not being wasteful is a great virtue.

Not wasting, living simply, living with attention and discipline is at the heart of many religious traditions, including our own.   These ancient traditions can teach us valuable lessons about how to retrain ourselves to reclaim ways to live in harmony with the ways of the Creator.  This is the pathway to a good and prosperous life.    Amen.

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041512 Generous Hospitality

Celebrate Generous Hospitality

Isaiah 56:6-8                                                                                       April 15, 2012

Luke 19:1-10                                                                           Russell Eidmann-Hicks

Happy Easter!  We celebrate our Risen Savior, who has broken out of the tomb and who is alive with us now.   Jesus has risen from the grave of yesterday to be with us today; he has left the confines of religious hatred and bigotry; the violence and cruelty of the Roman Empire; the narrow box of the law, to live amongst us.   Alleluia! Christ is Risen.  Let us live in His Light and rise from our graves also.

I recently learned about a small UCC church in Minnesota, whose pastor was moved to push his church to following in the footsteps of the UCC and other churches to become Open and Affirming to people of different sexual orientation, who have suffered discrimination and hatred for centuries.   He preached about the need for equality, the fact that this is a genetic issue and a civil rights issue, and not a moral issue.  People pointed to passages in the bible, but he pointed to the love of Jesus in scripture, and ways that Jesus moved beyond laws segregating and excluding those deemed unclean.  He pleaded with his people, that this was an opportunity to treat people like Jesus did, not to reject those whom society condemned, but to reach out in love.   In response, two thirds of the people in the church left and refused to return.   The church lost most of its funding, and is on the edge of bankruptcy.   A large UCC church in Houston Texas, the Cathedral of Hope, heard about this, and in spite of tight budgets and difficulties with funding, they raised $15,000 and sent it on as a gift to this church in Minnesota.  This money has allowed the church to pay its mortgage and to keep going, hoping to rebuild its membership and its vision.

It is not easy to stand with Jesus and to declare God’s grace, in the face of prejudice and scapegoating.  It is not easy to walk in the ways of equality, of compassion and mutual understanding, in an era of partisan politics and cultural warfare.  It is not easy often to speak up, when so many want to you to remain silent, locked in your closet, or your ghetto, or your grave or your place.

 

Many Christians would like to keep Jesus locked up in Palestine 2,000 years ago, locked up in his tomb of biblical literalism and fundamentalism, wearing a robe and headscarf and sandals, and to not allow him to step into our present reality at Risen Savior.  They want to keep Jesus locked away in the pages of the bible; to not let Jesus live today so that they don’t have to think about how he would deal with our present reality or the people we know.   Let’s keep Jesus hating those labeled as unclean, as unacceptable, even though he himself reached out to those whom his religion rejected: tax collectors, lepers, the disabled, women, immigrants and foreigners, the very poor, and others….

No, this Easter, let us allow Jesus to live here and now in 2012, and to allow him to welcome those in our day who have need of grace and healing.

Oddly, it is often Christians who want to tell us that we ought to stop opening our hearts as Jesus did, and to stay in our tombs of bigotry or intolerance.  I just read the review of a book by Trip York in the Christian Century that speaks to this:   He writes that he finds Christians practicing:

“racism, sexism, homophobia, fear, hatred, bigotry of all sorts, and a strong desire to make the world in one’s own image.”   “Using Satan as an explanation for everything you personally do not like,” he writes, “is not only theologically problematic, it is also terribly dangerous.   It opens the door to the rampant demonization of other people, despite Christianity’s claim that all humans, regardless of creed, race, nationality, gender or faith tradition (or lack therof), are created in the image of God.”   (Christian Century April 18, 2012)

Jesus certainly had an understanding of all people – all people, sinners and saints, Jewish or gentile, women or men, clean or unclean – as children of God and deserved compassion and a chance to repent and transform their lives.   Sadly we often want to forget about that Jesus, who walked among us and

sat and ate with those whom society hated and rejected.   He did this openly, without apology or complicated arguments.  He did it because it was right, even if it got him in trouble.

With tremendous simplicity, Jesus vaulted over tremendous boundaries of simmering conflict, longstanding mistrust, decades of resentment, cycles of violence -   to meet the tax collector, Zacchaeus.   His simple act of inviting himself to dinner was every bit as incendiary and explosive as Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus, or a Chinese student standing in front of a tank in Tieneman Square, or young people gathering in Tahrir Square in Egypt, or monks walking in the streets of Mayanmar.

Jesus’ high-wire act of friendship left many furious and confused.  “How could a good man associate with someone like Zacchaeus?”   Zacchaeus was no neo-Nazi or drug dealer, but he certainly was hated in a similar way.   He owned the tax franchise for the town of Jericho, and so had the ability to collect as much as he could from its populous, by whatever means, as long as he gave the Romans their cut.  He worked closely with the hated gentile occupiers and their army, which regularly violently killed local residents.   Their hard earned money was taken for taxes, which did not go to relief for the poor or for Social Security or medical care – no it went to support the Roman army and the Empire that was oppressing them.   His riches were reminders of his immorality and theft.

But Zacchaeus’ riches and position were also enormous walls that separated him from his fellow Jews.   Because of his work, he could not go to the Temple or talk with fellow Jews, because he was labeled a sinner and unclean because of his association with gentiles. Jewish zealots would have been happy to cut his throat as a Roman collaborator.  His family had probably renounced him years before. Walls of hatred and mistrust were all around him.

One small act of kindness, shattered in a moment these walls of hatred and mistrust.   Jesus saw Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree, and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”    Those words, that simple invitation, cracked the glass window separating him from others.    By including Zacchaeus, by treating him like a friend, a fellow Jew, a neighbor, Jesus broke down the dividing wall – without weapons. And Zacchaeus himself was reconciled and transformed by grace. This is the chance that we are meant to offer to all who desire to seek the Risen Christ.

Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, now has 1,000 churches that have declared themselves to be Open and Affirming – welcoming to people of all races, nationalities, ethnic backgrounds, disabilities, and sexual orientation.  Too many people are treated like Zacchaeus, spit upon, rejected, ignored.  We are a welcoming people, a movement that opens its doors and hearts to those whom society often shuns, declaring equality, dignity and truth. This is thirty-two years after the national UCC passed its first “Open & Affirming” declaration in 1985; and seven years after it voted to affirm marriage equality. Prejudices die slowly and gradually.

Martin B. Copenhaver, a UCC pastor in CT, wrote this recently:

In his memoirs Oscar Wilde recalled the experience of being brought from the prison, where he was held after being declared—in the strange manner of his day — “guilty” of homosexuality. He writes: “When I was brought down from my prison between two policemen, a man I know waited in the long dreary corridor so that, before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me as, handcuffed and with bowed head, I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that.”

After Episcopal Archbishop Desmond Tutu won a Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent struggle against apartheid in South Africa, he was asked to recall the formative experiences of his life. He replied, “One incident comes to mind immediately. When I was a young child I saw a man tip his hat to a black woman. Please understand that such a gesture is completely unheard of in my country. The white man was an Episcopal bishop and the black woman was my mother.”

“These two stories remind me that even a small, fragile gesture can take on grand dimensions when it is offered in love. Our own efforts may be small, but through them the largest of all realities — the love of God — can be communicated. A mere tip of the hat can offer hope and change a life.”

A church declaring itself “Open and Affirming” is a tip of the hat.  It is not going to change society in any fundamental way, beyond our own church community. It is a symbolic gesture, since it does not change the law of the land.  But it communicates a stand – a stand for grace, for human dignity, for kindness, for hope that humanity can be transformed to become the people Jesus intends us to be.   We have stood up against slavery.  We have stood up for equality for women, for the environment, against racism, for accessibility for those with handicaps, for the civil rights movement, for equality for the LGBT community.  And I hope we will continue to do so.

Why do this?  Because Jesus did this.  It was shocking in his day, and look where it got him: to the cross.  But what we celebrate at Easter is that it also got him, and us, to the joy of resurrection and the blessings of God.

St. Paul writes in Ephesians 2:14  “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”   Jesus breaks down antagonism and division.  He shatters walls that separate people.   In the same way he reached out to a poor woman bent over by paralysis, saying “She too is a daughter of Abraham,” now Jesus reaches out to Zacchaeus, saying “He too is a son of Abraham.”    Jesus does not recognize barriers between people: poverty, illness, religious belief, ethnicity, sin; he breaks them down.  He creates peace, destroys hostility, fosters reconciliation. This is Jesus’ ministry, reaching out, bringing us back to the fold.

111 years ago, on November 30, 1900, the world lost one of its most important literary figures, Oscar Wilde.  Wilde died from meningitis, a complication of an ear infection sustained in prison, where he was serving a two-year sentence for having committed “gross indecencies.” He wrote this in his book, De Profundis, following his imprisonment:

“Society as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed.  She will hang with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.”  [Oscar Wilde, De Profundis]

My faith tells me that God in Jesus is what Wilde would call ‘Nature.’ God is grace, God is love, God is compassionate, and in Jesus God breaks down the walls of prejudice, hostility and hatred.  In this Easter Season, on this Tax Day, let us learn this simple lesson of grace.

Let us allow Jesus to invite himself over, to call us down from our trees of fear, to come to our houses and to eat with us, and to transform us and to open our hearts in love.   Amen.

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040812 Roll the Stone Away

Who Will Roll Away the Stone?

Isaiah  25:6-9                                                            April 8, 2012

Mark 16:1-11                                                             Russell Eidmann-Hicks

The women coming to the tomb on Easter morning assumed the worst.  They had convinced themselves that troubles had defeated them.  First they wondered who would help them to roll the enormous rock away from the mouth of the tomb.  That obstacle would make all their plans futile.  They worried about this to avoid the real terror that awaited them, seeing the body of their beloved teacher lying on a stone slab – cold and unmoving.  They brought spices and perfumes to mask the awful certainty of death; in the ways that we send flowers and cards to paint a pretty picture over a terrible truth.  Their grief was a rythmic drumbeat reminding them: their Savior was gone.  This rock of sorrow blocked all light and hope.   Only God’s grace could remove that.

 

The writer Kevin Kling writes this in his book The Dog Says How:

On August 11, 2001, when I came to the intersection of Lyndale Avenue and Lake Street in south Minneapolis a car pulled in front of me and before I could touch the fully functional brakes, I crashed. Over the next several hours I was in sections of the newspaper I’d never known and headed for one section I very much wanted to avoid. As I lay unconscious I had that end-of-life experience so often talked about. I never saw “the light,” but as doctors were working to save my life, I was heading for this amazing sense of peace. At some point I was given the choice to continue on or return to this plane of existence where it was made clear there would be consequences. I decided to come back. At first it bothered me that I had returned. Why didn’t I follow that peace? 

I remembered Australia. In 1987 I was visiting Australia. It was so peaceful, so beautiful. I wanted to stay there the rest of my life. The problem was my visa was only good for three months. As the clock was winding down this woman named Rea said she would marry me, so I could stay and acquire citizenship. I had just met her that day and she said, “Yeah, I don’t care. I’ll marry you.” We were all set to go when at the last minute I said, “No. I can’t go through with this. I have to get home. I need to be back where I can do something about this world we live in.” I need tension in my life.   

AT THIS POINT, there were people praying for me and sending well wishes. It’s hard to deny the power of prayer when you’re on the receiving end of it. I know it helped me heal. At times it was like waterskiing behind a powerboat. All I had to do was hang on.  (Kling, Kevin (2009-07-24). The Dog Says How (p. 7)

Like a waterskiier being pulled him back into life and toward healing, Kevin had people praying for him that helped draw him back into life.  God’s grace & the power of prayer removes what keeps us from life, not our own efforts.  The women at the tomb found the stone already rolled away, by grace.

The stone that blocks our way back to life takes many forms.  It can be a terrible accident or illness or disability.  It can be deep inner shame, guilt or grief.  It can be bad timing or bad luck or a bad break.  It can be low self-esteem or pride or rage or fear.  It can be unemployment, poverty, bad luck, or anxiety.

Stones block doorways into the life that Jesus envisions: a world in which the poor are fed and offered good news, the grieving are comforted, the meek inherit the earth, debts are forgiven, the oppressed go free.   Stones block our society from offering hope to those facing foreclosures, rising costs, medical emergencies and bills, education that does not lead to jobs, and more.   Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke this in his April 4, 1967 “A Time to Break Silence” speech at Riverside Church in NY:  “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”   It is time to roll stones away from the doorways of justice, equality, compassion, and hope, to reclaim the vision of Christ’s beloved community in a cruel and heartless world.

Many things block the doorway from the tomb out into the sunlight of new life.   Often we need help, some grace to move that stone away: the prayers and encouragement of caring friends, or the strength that comes with inner struggle, or the grace and love of God in Christ Jesus.  Dead stones can’t deny us resurrection. What if the two Marys and Salome gave up, and headed back home?  How sad.  Don’t let despair, sorrow or shame or dread rule us and block the doorway to new life.

A beautiful article by Karen Mclintock called Shame-Less and Grace-Full describes what it takes to roll a stone away from inside our hearts.  She writes: My parents were graceful dancers. They often went to dance clubs and then returned home to dance a little longer around the living room. I come from a line of elegant people. So I wasn’t surprised when my parents made clear to my older sister and me that we would attend the Jeanne Borsky School of Dance. My parents believed dance was one of my callings. They said that I walked around the living room on the tips of my toes at the age of two, so we all hoped for my future stardom. As soon as my feet were strong enough to be crammed into little satin toe shoes, my mother took me to enroll in class. 

In our pink tights and black leotards, fifteen delicate, bouncy girls lined up along the bar to practice our turnout. In walked Jeanne Borsky. She glided along the floor. Her hair was pinned up high on her head, and she wore thick pancake makeup, as if she were still in the spotlight on stage. She was old, yet ageless. I wanted to be graceful like Mrs. Borsky. She was perfectly balanced, flexible, and strong. This must be grace.  

This moment quickly faded as we got down to the work of being graceful. The music had a beat that I found I couldn’t keep, Mrs. Borsky’s smile began to fade, and before long I felt as awkward as a young giraffe taking his first steps. I forced my body into stretches and movements that felt more like contortions than beautiful extensions. 

I learned that comparison is a form of shame. In ballet training you have to look exactly like the others. We were all mercilessly compared to the best students in the class. We were shamed for not properly executing the steps, for not conveying the right feelings, for not having the right body shape, for anything short of perfection. We soon learned to do each move correctly or else. 

Here is what I learned about grace (and shame) at Mrs. Borsky’s. I learned that her grace is not free: either your parents pay for the lessons or you do. I learned that her grace doesn’t come naturally. I learned that I couldn’t become graceful out of my desire to dance; I had to overcome my unworthiness by righteous hard work. Only when I had achieved the perfect line, the perfect form, the perfect leap into the air, then, maybe, I could enjoy the riches of grace.   Forty years later, I am still shaking off the ill effects of the shame I learned at Jeanne Borsky’s School of Dance. And maybe you haven’t shaken off the cultural and church-­taught idea that grace must be earned through hard work and self-­incrimination.  

After years of studying shame and overcoming no small amount of my own, I have come to see shame and grace differently. I also see my old ballet teacher differently. Jeanne Borsky knew a lot about ballet and a lot about shame, but she didn’t really know a thing about grace. Even though her body was flexible, strong, and well-shaped, as a teacher, she was mean spirited and her behaviors were ugly. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking of myself as misshapen and inadequate. This was not the experience I had hoped for or the one my parents had wanted for me.  Jeanne was a shame-­driven leader. She couldn’t make genuine grace happen. What a shame that was! 

Karen found the stone of shame blocked her ability to claim inner acceptance, grace and confidence, and prevented her from moving out into freedom of spirit. If we let inner stones rule our lives, then our hearts remain burdened with regrets, fears, anxiety and uncertainties.

What rock is stuck across your pathway to new life?   What heartsickness or sorrow or rage or fear is bottling up your freedom and joy?    Too often we take stones for granted, and don’t imagine that they can be moved.  We hold on to our negative thinking as a way to order our lives.  We passively accept limitations of inner despair or addiction; or the abuse of others, rather than seeking God’s help to roll the stone away.

Karen McClintock continues:

Many faith communities teach the doctrine of shame, often without knowing it. You may have been raised in such a congregation. For example, a core shame message in many Christian congregations is that you must be like Jesus at all times; anything less than that and you have failed. You just don’t measure up. You will never be good enough. These are the messages that people with shame are used to hearing.   

The faith community you participate in needs your help in creating a place of joy and grace. To do this, you must learn to recognize and heal the shame of your own upbringing, to recognize shame in the behavior of other leaders and clergy around you, to reduce shame-reinforcing theology, and to provide alternative messages of hope and healing.  

This is the grace God offers us – to roll the stones away that block our path to fullness of life.   Jesus promises us ‘living water that bubbles up to eternal life,’ the ‘bread of life,’ and the joy of abundant life.  Jesus rolls stones away from the doorways of our souls; the pathway to glorious light is always right in front of us.  Angels appear to greet us, and open our eyes and call us to keep moving forward. God does not call us to hold onto our shame, sorrows or the past, but pushes us toward healing and grace.  Injustice, cruelty, violence, poverty and oppression can be transformed.  Jesus has gone ahead, even into death, to clear the path.

Karen McClintock shares a final story about rolling the stone of shame away:   In worship one morning, members of the choir, dressed in their beautiful robes, processed into the chancel area, shuffled into place so that everyone could see the director, and after hearing their pitch, began to sing.

The women in the front row started singing the melody and the men in the back row came in, but they were obviously not in sync. As they plowed ahead for a few bars, their faces became flushed and distorted, their shoulders drooped, and their breathing grew shallow. The choir director waved her hands to stop the pianist and looked up at them. The choir members all held their breaths like children about to be scolded. What would she say? This could have been a moment for shame. She might have sighed and said, “Let’s try again,” exposing her frustration and their failure. Instead she said, “I want to start over, because I have heard you sing this song beautifully.” They stood up taller, they breathed more deeply, and when they began again, it went off without a hitch. They were singing from a place of grace. They were led by a grace-based leader. We can become one too. 

“But wait, what is there?” the women at the tomb cried.  The stone had already been rolled away!  Astounded, they tiptoed forward, fearing the worst.  Stepping into shadow, out of the glare of the sun their eyes adjusted, and they saw, not a prone body, but someone sitting up – alive!  Terrifying!   But wait, it was an angel telling them good news!  Their lord, their friend, was not dead, but going before them into Galilee!  Their worst fear and defeat was transformed into a tremendous joy, and their hearts rejoiced!

 

What stone is blocking your way?    Why keep the Spirit of the Risen Savior locked up in the tomb?  Come on now.  Isn’t it time to celebrate Easter and come out into the light?

Happy Easter!  Amen.

 

 

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040112 Christ Enters In

Christ Enters In

Psalm 118:19-29                                                       April 1, 2012 Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11                                                             Russell Eidmann-Hicks

Eli Wiesel wrote this story: Once, in a Concentration camp during World War II, the Jewish people imprisoned there decided to put God on trial for failing to live up to his promises to protect them.  Officiating at the trial were three rabbis, who appointed a lawyer for the people and a lawyer for God.   There was much evidence introduced and many days of deliberation.  Finally the verdict was read, and God was found guilty.

When the trial was over, the people were quiet.  They looked at the rabbis and one person asked, “What do we do now?”  The only answer that made sense to the people, the only answer in the face of reality, was that they must pray.

God appears to be guilty.   A six year-old boy lies in a cancer ward dying of a brain tumor.  Or a young soldier goes on a rampage and kills children, women, and innocent villagers.  Or peaceful protestors in Syria are mowed down by machine guns and mortar fire.  Or a drunken driver does not stop at the light. Why doesn’t God stop it?  How can we still trust in a loving God?  After all, God left God’s own son hung bleeding, crying out in agony on a splintered cross on a forgotten hill.   Jesus was innocent; he was a gentle man, a teacher, a man of compassion and goodness.  He spent his whole life reaching out to others, guiding, healing, encouraging, preaching.  Is this his reward?  He’s betrayed, arrested, humiliated, tortured and hung up to die.  God seems to be guilty.  There are times when we feel hung out on a barren cross, ready to cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

So then what do we do?  How do we go on when we feel that God is guilty, when we feel lost, alone, abandoned by God?  How do we handle the cross?   We pray.  Like the people in Weisel’s story, we pray because we are not a people without hope.  We pray because Christ walked this road ahead of us and drank this bitter cup down to its dregs.  We pray because God does not abandon us, no matter how dark the night, no matter how cold the wind, no matter how desperate the situation.  We pray because God has already entered into our suffering and is with us at its worst.

Michael Schwartzentrubber is a pastor and pastoral counselor who went through a severe health crisis, culminating in a heart and lung transplant. At one point he wrote: “Why does God allow suffering and death to happen, not just to me, but to anyone?  It occurred to me…that I didn’t want an answer.  I was not looking for a reason to bear my suffering.  I was looking for compassion. No answer, no reason, I realized, would relieve the pain and hurt resulting from my lost health and wholeness.   I did not want an explanation, but rather, comfort and consolation.  I wanted God and those around me to know how much I hurt.  I wanted to be loved and held.  I wanted something to fill the emptiness, my loss left.  No answer could accomplish such a feat.   At its most profound level, the cry “why?” might not require such an answer, but I believe it does plead for a response.  And there is a response.   I believe God has provided the response.  In the alienation, suffering, and death of Jesus, I witness a God who has shared all the pain of human experience.  The question then is no longer, “Why does God allow suffering?” but, “How does God relate to us in our suffering?”  The response of God, symbolized in the life and death of Jesus, is one of compassion.  Compassion means, literally, “to suffer with.”

 

Christ suffers with and for us.  Christ enters in; Jesus rides into the city of our sorrow, the city of our betrayal, the city of death – with fearless faith.  Jesus didn’t avoid Jerusalem, but he set his face like flint and rode in, humbly, on a donkey, courageously, majestically.  He obeyed God’s plan even when it involved humiliation, shame, torture, betrayal, abandonment and death.

 

Christ rides in.  He was lifted up to die, and by doing so lifted up our fears, our agonies, our despair, our crises, and pain. He doesn’t stay on the sidelines.  He doesn’t sit at home and watch the replays on TV.  He doesn’t take coffee-breaks or go out to lunch just when we need him.  No, he enters in.  He journeys with us in our time of darkness.  He is beside us when we carry our cross.  He is with us in the hospital room or in the funeral parlor or on the lonely road.  Christ rides in.

 

John Vannorsdall, who was chaplain at Yale when I was there, wrote:  “Palm Sunday is not a day when we throw up our hands because Jesus was killed.  It is not a day of pessimism when we condemn the people who went home to supper, the crowds which later became ugly.  It’s not a day when we get morose over the money-changers in the temple and declare that nothing ever turns out well; that even God’s small parade was a fiasco.  Palm Sunday, rather, is a day when we say, knowing all of this, knowing that people are fickle, get tired of parades and go home, knowing that religious leaders like things neat and tidy and kill reformers, knowing that the humble truth teller is walked upon, knowing that people will sell their soul for a handful of silver, knowing that even good friends will sleep while we suffer, it’s a day when knowing all of this, Jesus came riding.” 

 

Yes, Jesus comes riding.  Jesus rides right in to where we are, in spite of the evil and sin and ugliness in the world.  Christ brings compassion because he endured the worst life can dish out.   He saw it all and yet still suffers with us.

 

Jesus rides in to the Jerusalem’s of our lives, to be with us in our shame, our trials, imprisonment, and crucifixion.  Christ is there, when we are betrayed with a kiss, when a friend denies us; when we are lost and alone in our Garden of Gethsemane, when we are abandoned by those we love, when we are humiliated or abused, when we are crucified with pain, even when innocent.  Christ enters in – humbly, quietly, under the radar of the authorities, with a direct, kind, and courageous love.   Jesus suffers with us.  Our vindication is near.  And that makes all the difference.

 

On this Passion Sunday and throughout this Holy Week, let us ask ourselves: Have we declared God guilty and absent and turned away?  Or do we still pray and find Christ riding into the shadowed corners, concentration camps, and tearstained hallways of our experience?   Do we walk with our savior along the steep and bloody road to Golgotha?

 

As we share communion this Sunday, let us each honor our Savior, who is with us and who rides humbly into our hearts this Lent and always.  Amen.

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032512 A Grain of Wheat

A Grain of Wheat

Jeremiah 31:31-34                                                                               March 25, 2012

John 12:20-33                                                                         Russell Eidmann-Hicks

In order to install new software on a computer, you need to re-start it, re-boot the drive, shut it down, wipe out the screen memory, and start fresh. Resurrection; it begins with a death.   To start your life over again, you need to let go of the past, and forget the complicated mess of sin that you got yourself into.  If we do this, life unfolds and blossoms.

Jesus uses the image of a grain of wheat.  (Sadly, he didn’t have computers in his day…)  A wheat berry cannot sprout unless it is buried in the darkness of the soil.  Like a body buried in the tomb of the earth, it undergoes the mystery of green renewal.  Jesus tells us in Mark, the seed germinates in the cold dark of dirt, allowing it to then bear fruit.  He says: “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”  (Mark 4:26-27)   We do not know how, but it works. The dark, of course, is similar to the rock tomb in which his body is laid after the crucifixion.   He lays like a seed in the shadowy silence, until he too rises like a green shoot into the sunlight. “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  (John 12:24-25)

Our souls germinate and bear fruit once we are willing to offer our lives up for a greater cause, a new life in God.  When we do this, we discover unexpected gifts like inner peace, forgiveness and love.   This is at the heart of our faith. We are enriched by those who give themselves for the common good.

We see this over and over again in popular culture – Spiderman or Batman or GI Joe or Jack Bauer or any hero or heroine worth their salt offers to exchange their lives for others.   In the Hunger Games in the first chapter, the heroine, Katniss, jumps in to take the place of her little sister, when her sister is chosen by lottery for the violent games.    “Prim!” The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to move again.   “Prim!”  I don’t need to shove through the crowd.  The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage.  I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.  “I volunteer!” I gasp.   “I volunteer as tribute!”

When we are willing to give up our small selves to become part of a larger cause, our lives gain a tremendous meaning and power and love.   Consider those who fought the evils of the 3^rd Reich or even of Al Qaida; those who marched in the South for civil rights in the face of lynching, police dogs and vicious insults.   Or what about parents who have offered their health, their savings, their happiness for the good of their children and their families?

Jesus’ death transformed the cross into a symbol of God’s love.   And Christians, living in the shadow of Jesus’ cross, have been bearing their own crosses ever since.  In the 1st Century, Romans lined the roadsides with crosses to kill Christians.  As time progressed, people found other ways to kill Christians — burning them at the stake — beheading — and a host of others.  You would think, given the persecutions that Christians have endured, that there wouldn’t be a Christian left on the face of the earth.

The Passion of St. Perpetua, St. Felicitas, and their Companions is said to preserve the actual words of martyrs and their friends in the year 203, during the persecutions of the emperor Septimius Severus. Five Christian catechumens, among whom Perpetua and Felicity, were arrested for their faith and executed.  According to her “Acta”, the terrors of imprisonment were increased for Perpetua by anxiety for her baby boy, just weeks old, and with her in prison. Two deacons succeeded in gaining admittance by bribing the jailer, and Perpetua’s mother brought Perpetua’s son in her arms, whom she was permitted to nurse and keep with her.  Perpetua’s response was: “straightway I became well and was lightened of my labor and care for the child; and suddenly the prison was made a palace for me.”  A vision assured her of her approaching martyrdom: Perpetua saw herself treading on a dragon’s head and ascending a perilous bronze ladder leading to green meadows, where a flock of sheep was grazing.

On the day of the games, the five were led into the amphitheatre. At the demand of the crowd they were first scourged; then a boar, a bear, and a leopard, were set on the men, and a wild cow on the women. Wounded by the wild animals, they gave each other the kiss of peace and were then put to the sword. “But Perpetua, that she might have some taste of pain, was pierced between the bones and shrieked out; and when the swordsman’s hand wandered still (for he was a novice), herself set it upon her own neck.”

 

 

Imagine the faith it took to endure that kind of death; the sense of urgency about her entrance into glory; her trust in the grace and protection of God.  Hers was not a faith that expected God to prevent suffering, sorrow or even death; hers was a faith that saw with crystal clarity that saving power of God in life after death.   She understood the necessity to put her lives on the line for the greater vision of the kingdom: for a life of community, sharing, justice and equality.  Women were as strong as men in this regard; slaves were equal in their courage and devotion; those of all backgrounds walked hand in hand into the most terrible of deaths, with confidence in the Lord of Life.

 

Our faith is based on self-giving love.  It was born in the fiery furnace of centuries of horrific persecution in which thousands of martyrs walked willingly to their deaths, offering their lives in the trust that God would bring them through that ordeal to eternal life.  The cross transforms our hearts to let go of small minded worries and fears, and then allows us to rise up to our full potential in God.

 

Do we have that kind of courage?  Are we willing to die for what we believe?  Would we lay down our lives for the truths and values that Jesus stood for?  Would we die to save the innocents in our own world or to help this world blossom?

 

For many of us this is an alien notion.  We imagine faith to be something that brings us comfort, tranquility and satisfaction; rather than something that drives us toward suffering or extreme self-sacrifice.  Belief in hell brings with it a sense of urgency; a compulsion to change our lives to avoid that terrible heat.   Many of us do not believe in a literal hell, and so have lost that sense of urgency.  But we can still realize that hell is real.  Hell is found in terrible poverty in which parents must endure the starvation of those they love.  Hell is found in work camps or in sexual slavery or in the abduction of child soldiers or in gang violence.  Hell is with us in emergency room traumas or cancer wards or lack of health care or unhealed wounds – whether physical or emotional.    Hell is real, and we must find ways to overcome its terrors.  As people of faith we are urgently called to put our lives on the line to help those in need – to change needless suffering and the horrors this world inflicts, and also the horrors inflicted by heartless people: injustice, racism, violence and poverty.

 

Jesus showed us a different kind of power, a strong resistance to evil that did not just re-create the evil.  He stood up to the demonic, to injustice, violence, hatred, and intolerance; but he did it without copying the violence and terror.  This is no small task; it takes tremendous courage and creativity.

 

An example of this kind of self-giving love comes from YES! Magazine that ran a feature on 15 people, who have transformed this world.   One is a man named Nipon Mehta.  His family moved to this country from India when he was 12, and then he went to the University of California in Berkley, where he studied Philosophy and Computer Science.  He landed his first job at Sun Mirocro-systems before graduation, setting himself up for a life of privilege.  But something shifted within him when he went through the dot-com greed of the 90’s, which conflicted with his childhood values of simplicity and kindness.  He decided to leave his job, which his family thought was crazy.   “My ultimate intent was that I wanted to be a better person,” says Mehta.   He has formed ServiceSpace, a nonprofit web business with influential projects ranging from the positive e-news service DailyGood to Karma Kitchen, a restaurant chain in Berkeley, D.C. and Chicago that operates on a model of peer-to-peer generosity.  Each person pays forward for the next diner’s tab.   He believes that generosity is the key to liberating people from greed and redefining wealth; promoting relationships and community rather than currency is especially valuable in times of economic austerity.   For more than a decade, Mehta has integrated what is known as gift-economics into the modern world, by way of the Internet.

Goods and services are not sold or exchanged, but given freely.  People share their material possessions, time, and skills, gifting these through the network and relying on others to do the same.   “According to the IRS, I’m definitely poor,” Mehta says.  “But anyone who knows me will tell you that I live like a king.”    Mehta realizes the gift economy is not an immediate solution to America’s economic woes, but says it does offer an inner transformation, while creating a pattern for change.  “All this, though, starts with a simple thing – be kind today,” he says.  “Even if just for a moment, that’s how the whole pattern emerges, and then one fine day, you wake up and realize that you’re swimming in the spirit of gift economy.”

 

Mehta is an example of someone who has gone through a transformation, like a grain of wheat buried, which dies, and then breaks open to grow and bear fruit.    His generosity comes from a place of inner openness and peace; allowing others to change as well.

 

Jesus offers us this divine paradox.  The seed must die if it is to bear fruit.  The person who strives to play it safe perishes, while the one who sacrifices life lives.  The road to glory is servant-hood.  That was true for Jesus, and it is true for all who would follow him.   He teaches us the irony that we conquer the “ruler of this world” through dying, rather than through violence.   We gain eternal life through letting go of life.  We succeed and prosper through self-surrender and love, rather than through selfish triumph and violence.

 

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”      Amen.

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031812 Snake in the Tree

Snake in the Tree

Numbers 21:4-9                                                                                  March 18, 2012

John 3:14-21                                                                           Russell Eidmann-Hicks

Tears rolled slowly down the face of the woman seated across from the therapist, as she reached into her bag to pull out tissues.  “I’ve never, ever told anyone about that night,” she sobbed.  “It was too humiliating, too terrible. I didn’t even tell my mother. I didn’t even admit it to myself until a few years ago. I’ve kept it hidden; I stuffed it down into a dark place in my heart, so that it wouldn’t continue to wound me.  But now I see it has been the source of my depression, the cause of my inner numbness and lack of feeling, and maybe why my first marriage never worked.  I can’t believe it has taken me this long to bring it out in the open, to talk about it.”

The therapist nodded, smiled and said, “Before you brought this memory into the light of day it continued to fester inside.  You’ve had the courage to go down into the dark and to bring it up.  First it came in your dreams, but now you’ve brought it into your conscious mind.  Well done.  I know it hurts, but now you know.  Now that it is out in the light, it will begin to heal.  Good work.”

 

Healing often occurs when what is wounded, what is sick, what is repressed is brought out into the light of day.   This is true of bedsores or wounds, of mold or mildew, of terrible memories or trauma or grief.  The more we can talk about hurts and sorrows, the better able we cope and to recover.

In our Old Testament lesson we have one of the weirdest stories in the bible; and believe me, there are some very weird stories in there.   It is from the book of Numbers and is about a scourge of snakebites that is inflicting the Israelite camp, during their 40 years of wandering in the Sinai desert.   The people confessed that this had happened because they had sinned against God by not trusting in God’s provision and guidance.  The way God brought healing was remarkable.  Instead of scolding the people or punishing them further, God, through Moses, simply brought it into the light.    “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’  So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”  (Numbers 21:8-9)

Early Christians interpreted this passage as a reference to Christ crucified, held up upon the cross, exposed to the world.  On the cross was exposed the sins of the world: merciless violence, torturing the innocent, disregard of God’s justice, destroying the joys of community, caring, and compassion.  All of this was held up for the world to see.  And by bringing this into the light, we discover healing and growth.  We understand a new way to live.  We discover a different path; one of forgiveness, peace, unity, equality, and hope.

Our tradition calls us to bring what is hidden out into the light.   We hear in our scripture reading from John today:  “For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.  But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”  (Jn 3:20-21)   Evil, when exposed, evaporates or is healed.  We are still reeling from the terrible news last week of a US sergeant, who in the dark of night, snuck off of his base in Afghanistan and killed 16 innocent adults and children.   Shockingly it has come to light, but in that light we experience shame, repentance, confession and then renewed vigilance and hope.

In Ephesians we hear:  “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything visible is light.  Therefore it says, “Sleeper awake!  Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”  (Eph. 5:11-14)   In the light comes healing and change.

We see the truth of this in scandals that come out in the media: politicians who have crazy affairs or take off their shirts on “Youtube,” or who use bribery to secure power.  Lobbyists bend and spin the truth so that we’re not sure what to believe.  We’ve heard of the terrible way some religious leaders or schoolteachers have taken advantage of their students.  Graft or corruption in institutions is exposed, leading to reforms and a cleansing of the rules.  When corruption comes to light, it is transformed and healed.

But some would say too much comes out into the light in our day and age.  On daytime TV, for example, we hear wild, first-hand stories of abuse or startling changes or weird families or terrible traumas or scary operations or who knows what else.  Shock TV is all about exposing everything in public.   Many say enough is enough.  For many this is offensive and distasteful.   Why can’t people just keep these things to themselves?

For many, though, being honest and open can be profoundly healing.   Being recognized for who you are and affirmed, is profoundly consoling.   Staying locked in a closet and shut away in the shameful dark, is not pleasant and erodes the soul.  And the more we understand people and their pain, the more compassion we feel. It is difficult to shun and exclude someone when you’ve really heard their story, and understand their pain. Jesus’ ministry has story after story of led out into the light, after being shunned and shamed by society for generations; people welcomed, cared for and embraced by God.   Jesus accepted lepers, tax collectors, the disabled, slaves, foreigners, soldiers, the mentally ill, and so many other ‘untouchables’ brought out into the light of God’s love and offered equality and inclusion.

Our own church’s Open & Affirming decision is an example of this.  We’ve learned that when we meet face-to-face and hear each other out, then barriers of fear and prejudice break down.  When we bring out into the light what was hidden and shameful; it is often transformed into compassion and community.

 

Today we celebrate New Member Sunday, when we ask people who have been worshiping with us and in the community, state publicly, out in the light, their vows to become members of this church.   Our faith is one that asks us to be open and honest, to stand in the full light of integrity and fearless truth. Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”  (Jn 8:12)

 

In Luke we hear:  “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light; and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.” (Lk 12:2-3)   Our tradition is not about secret answers, but honest dialogue.  Whenever you run into someone who says that they have all the religious answers, then watch out!

Sin flourishes in the dark; but diminishes in the light.  Open and honest living is the best way to prevent sin, and disease, and illness. Let us live in the light.  Amen.

 

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022212 My Messy House – Ash Wednesday

My Messy House

Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012

Kathleen Norris tells the story of a little boy she was teaching in a children’s writing program, who came from a troubled home. The boy wrote a poem called “The Monster Who Was Sorry.” In the poem, the boy’s father yells at him, so he responds by throwing his little sister down the stairs. He goes on to trash his room, and then the entire town. His poem concludes: “Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, ‘I shouldn’t have done all that.’”

Norris reflects: “‘My messy house’ says it all; with more honesty than most adults could have mustered, the boy made a metaphor for himself that admitted the depth of his rage and also gave him a way out. If that boy had been a novice in a fourth-century monastic desert, his elders might have told him that he was well on the way toward repentance, not such a monster after all, but only human. If the house is messy, they might have said, why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might wish to dwell?”
–Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead, 1998)

That is our task on this Ash Wednesday evening, as we gather under the cross and receive ashes as signs of our humility and repentance.   During Lent we resolve to clean up our messes.   We vow to do better in ordering our messy lives and to pick up after ourselves and to right some of the wrongs we have inflicted and continue to inflict.   We resolve to look into the messy confusion within our own hears and minds and to straighten things up so God can dwell.

The first step toward cleaning up is deciding to change things; resolving to turn our lives around.  We call this repentance.  Repentance begins with confession, confessing what a trash-heap we’ve made of things, admitting the chaos we’ve created and the ways we’ve messed up.

– M. Scott Peck, in his book The Different Drum writes this:

Community requires the confession of brokenness. But how remarkable it is that in our culture brokenness must be “confessed.” We think of confession as an act that should be carried out in secret, in the darkness of the confessional, with the guarantee of professional priestly or psychiatric confidentiality. Yet the reality is that every human being is broken and vulnerable. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded!
We are all messes in our own ways, all broken and hurting.

When I was a kid, my room was usually a total mess.  Strangely, it felt natural and comfortable to drop almost everything onto the floor, and then to wade through them day after day, to my parent’s utter frustration and disgust.   Part of my maturity over time was to discover the beauty of order and cleanliness and self-discipline.  My daughter is now walking in my footsteps. This is the journey of Lent, the path of picking up after ourselves in our relationships, our work, our emotional life, and our spiritual lives.  The more we do this, the stronger and clearer our light will shine.

I once heard of a school bus driver who would drop his kids off at school, and then go a nearby parking lot to wait for the next assignment.   Every day he’d drive into this lot, which was near a park, but which was littered with lots of discarded paper, soda cans, and other trash.  He’d sit there, day after day, looking at this mess, until one day, he got out of the bus, and began picking some of this up and throwing it into a dumpster on the side of the property.  He did a bit the first day, a bit more the second, and then every day he would get out and pick up a bit of the trash.  Then as he looked out each day, the lot looked better; he noticed the birds on the nearby trees, wildflowers poking through the grass.  He brought along some flower seeds one day, and planted them in the spring, and throughout the summer he tended a small garden. He noticed that people started to walk their children and dogs by the lot, enjoying the view.  It felt good.

The second step to cleaning up and healing our brokenness, is letting go.  It is allowing God to enter into our hearts, like waters of the flood that cleanse us of sin and allow us a new beginning.   We are meant to breathe out the stale air of our sins and mistakes, and then breathe in the holy breath of God, filled with life and possibility.   We are to empty ourselves, as Jesus emptied himself on the cross, so that we can then be filled with the bread of heaven.   Letting go is a kind of dying, taking up our cross with Jesus, and leaving behind our greed, our anger, our failures, our sorrow, our fears.   We hear this in Paul’s hymn in Philippians:

Though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

In a few days I will be going on a week-long silent retreat, when I hope to empty out my stress and relentless thinking, and look without flinching at my own messy thinking and feelings, to lay aside fears and sorrows.  I hope to clean house.   It is a kind of spiritual spring-cleaning, which is what Lent is about.   It’s about taking responsibility, rolling up our sleeves, and scrubbing out those dingy corners of the soul.   Ultimately, though, it is God’s grace that wipes the slate clean, that forgives, and allows us to start fresh.  When we let go and empty ourselves, then God’s spirit fills us with grace, health and renewal.

God knows very well that we make messes.  Human being has been doing that from day one.  Look at Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the people lost in the flood, the people in the “Tower of Babel,” or the soldiers around Jesus’ cross.  It has never been pretty.  But then Jesus came and taught us that we could turn our lives around.  He took his place on the cross to show us that he understood the worst of the worst of human nature, and the messes that they would create – even killing a kind and innocent rabbi – even the son of God.   And even then, even then, we still had the chance to turn things around.  “Lord, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”    Christ got himself into the biggest of messes to show us that there is still a way through.  Through self-giving love, a change of heart, compassion, and self-control, a new way is found.   Out of the ashes of our failures, we can discover hope.

 

Chaplain Barbara Sherer, U.S. Army, tells the story of a little miracle she encountered while preparing for an Ash Wednesday service for soldiers in Kuwait. A complex of several dining tents in the camp had caught on fire, and tragedy was averted when all the soldiers inside managed to escape without serious injury.  Looking around for a source of ashes to use for the upcoming service, Chaplain Sherer decided to use some of the ashes from the burned mess tents. Obtaining permission from the MPs who were guarding the site, she filled a small plastic bag with ashes.
The story concludes in her own words: “Two days later I decided to open the bag and see if I needed to crunch up the ashes into smaller pieces. I was digging around in the cup with a plastic knife when I noticed the edge of something metallic. I reached in, and pulled out a cross. A flat, metal cross. It had some dark smudges on it from the fire, but it was otherwise undamaged. I could still read the etching on it: ‘Jesus is Lord.’

“I can’t even fathom the odds of picking the exact site of that cross out of the acreage destroyed by the fire. It doesn’t matter. The message to me is clear: God walks with us through the terrible firestorms of our lives, and we are lifted unharmed out of the ashes. We may be marked in some way, like the cross of ash placed on our foreheads during Ash Wednesday. However, that mark is a symbol of God’s love and protection.

“I wear that cross now on my dogtags. No matter where the Army may send me, or what God may ask of me, I will cherish this special reminder that God will never leave us alone to face the tragedies in our lives. With God’s help, we will always rise out of the ashes.”   –Barbara Sherer, “Out of the ashes,” Beliefnet.com, March 29, 2003.

 

Ash Wednesday is an opportunity for us to make a fresh start: to resolve to get into our messy room and clean it up, to look into our messy hearts and seek transformation and light, to talk with those in our lives who are hurting or divided or angry, and to make things right.   We smudge a dirty spot on our foreheads to remind us of our messes and our foolishness.  We admit our sin, and empty ourselves of our pride.  Then we vow to follow in the steps of our Savior to try a new way, a way of decency and order and honesty and kindness. This Lent open the door and let God clean house.     Amen.

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