Assuming the Worst

       When I was in seminary, I supported myself by working as an organist/choir director for a local congregation.  I quit that position my final year of seminary to do my internship and finish school.  The church I had worked for hired another young woman to take my place.  After she had been there about two months she called me, very upset, and said that she believed the pastor's wife (who sang in the choir) did not like her, was "out to get her" and was frankly just plain mean.  This had not been my experience of the pastor's wife at all.  My experience of her was that she was very sweet, very kind and very supportive.  I tried to tell the new music director that I did not believe that the pastor's wife was acting out of malicious intentions, but the new music director did not believe me.  About a week later the pastor's wife called me and said that no matter what she did, this new young woman was misunderstanding and taking offense.  I suggested that perhaps both of them needed to be talking to each other, maybe with a third person present who knew them both, to help navigate the misunderstandings in their relationships.  I offered to help, but they did not take me up on it.  To this day, I don't know why either of them was calling me about it since they didn't really want my help and also weren't willing to change their assumptions about the thinking of the other.  

    On another occasion I received a letter from someone who similarly was accusing someone else of malicious intent after an event had occurred between them that had also ended in misunderstanding.  Once again, I tried to help them to see a bit differently: I did not think the intention of either was malicious or even unkind.  They had simply misunderstood one another.  

    Finally on a third occasion a letter caused a person to be very upset and to assume malicious intent when, if read with different eyes, the person would have instead heard the support and praise in the letter for what that person had been doing and had accomplished.

    I have found myself wondering recently why we assume the worst of the other.  Why, in each of these cases, was malicious intent assumed?  Why did each of these people take offense and feel hurt when, if they had chosen different eyes, a different approach, a different start place, they would not have had to feel the unintended, un-wished-for pain?

    But as I reflected on these three events, I realized that I had been doing the same with a couple folk in my own life.  A couple folk have been making decisions and choosing actions that I have been taking very personally.  I have been assuming anger towards myself or even hatred towards myself in both cases.  And reflecting on these other stories caused me to pause.  I could see that the women in the three stories above were hurt more by their own assumptions and their own decision to hear offense than the actions that led them to feel that way.  It was very, very clear to me in each case that they could have chosen differently.  They could have heard the support.  They could have heard the caring.  They could have seen whatever hurt them as an error on the part of the other, made without meanness or anger.  They could have had compassion on those who committed the errors, seeing that they were shortsighted or unthinking rather than intentionally hurtful.  But it took my reflecting on others' responses to see the error in my own.

    I've mentioned before that I have a friend who, at one point, shared with me that she'd reached out three times over the years to another friend but hadn't ever heard back.  When I asked about the friend, she said "Oh, yeah.  It's time for me to try again!"  She was not hurt at all that the friend had never responded.  It did not occur to her to assume that the silence on the part of the other was malicious or intentional.  My friend's actions showed me the possibility of a different way of responding in the face of "slights" or actions on the part of others that we don't necessarily understand.  

    Why do so many of us respond by assuming the worst?  Maybe we feel it is better to suffer hurt now, to assume hurt now than to be caught in the unexpected realization of intended offense later.  Maybe?

    When I was in high school I had the experience of a person saying something really mean to me about something I had done.  At the time, I assumed, in part because it was so attacking, they were kidding.  I reacted, therefore, by laughing at the truth in the comment and joking about how I would probably mess up again in the future.  Their response?  Surprise at first, but then they laughed too; and the whole interaction moved from something that was potentially a hurtful fight into a funny, companionable laugh.  It was their surprise that showed me that they had not intended it to be funny, but had intended for it to hurt.  None the less, because I had first assumed, wrongly, only good intent, the situation actually ended better for both of us than it should have, than it would have, and certainly than it could have.  My positive assumptions in that moment actually made things better.

    My take away as I reflect on all of these events is that I need to work much more intentionally towards assuming the best of the other.  I need to do it for them, for the situation, and mostly for myself.  Yes, there is the possibility that I will be caught by surprise and find that the intention really was malicious, that the action really was taken out of anger, hate or spite.  But my guess is the occasional discovery of true unkindness will be less painful, overall, than the many times I have mistakenly assumed mean intent.  This is my challenge for today, and probably for the many years to come.  Changing my mind-set around this will not be easy.  But I have to believe it will be worth the effort.  And again, I think the one who will benefit the most will be myself.  I see the constant joy my friend carries who does not assume the negative.  It is something I strive for in myself as well.

Come All Who Thirst

Isaiah 55:1-13

John 4:13-14

12/12/21

 

               Today is the third Sunday in Advent.  And we are invited to remember on this “joy” day of Advent, that God’s coming is one of great and unexpected joy: that we find God in the surprising, the beautiful, the weird and different, and in the most unexpected places.  So, I invite you to pause for a minute and think of when you were surprised by something beautiful that brought you joy.  As you think I will name a few places that I have found recently: the email from Rina/Honey/James that began a wonderful friendship with them and Lizzie: a real gift.  Kristi applying for our director position here.  A bouquet of flowers arriving on my doorstep from Hope Solutions.  Getting to see the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit and being deeply touched by it.  Seeing my son so easily making friends at school.  Hearing the deep questions at our Bible study: all of these things have been deep gifts where God’s joy, God’s delight, God’s beauty showed up unexpectedly and profoundly for me.  Do you have those joy moments of your own in your mind?  Share one with your neighbor.

But on this day, I want to tell you that on this joy day, it is not just that we are called to delight in the God who comes to us in beautiful and unexpected ways.  I want to say to you something different.  I want to tell you that it is also God’s joy to delight in YOU.  God has given you this life to LIVE it.  I had a wonderful conversation recently with one of my heroes: Rev BK Woodson,  a pastor friend of mine in Oakland whom I respect, admire and value immensely.  I was telling him that I felt our purpose in life was love, kindness, generosity, service.  I said to him that for me I also thought preaching, teaching, caring for the “least of these”, parenting, nurturing was part of my job or purpose in life.  That this thing called pastoring is what I am to do with my life.  And that part of my struggle with SABBATH and rest has been that when I rest, when I am not actively DOING, I can sink into a feeling that my life has no value, no worth.  In those moments of non-activity or non-service, I feel useless and pointless.  BK challenged me and said, “God gave you life to LIVE it.”  He said our purpose in life is to celebrate this beautiful life God has given us and that we honor God through delighting in the good of this amazing world.  Look around!  Take time to delight in the good!

Father Gregory Boyle, in his book Tattoos on the Heart, described a time when his father was dying of a brain tumor.  He was in the hospital and he requested a pillow from home – but specifically a pillow from his wife’s side of the bed.  Father Boyle said to him, “you know, the hospital provides pillows...” but this was what his dying father had requested.  Father Boyle and his mother went into the hospital room, gave him the pillow and then his mother left to use the restroom.  He writes,

“I’m about to make small talk about the view… but I turn and see that my father has placed the flowery pillow over his face.  He breathes in so deeply and then exhales, as he places the pillow behind his head.  For the rest of the morning, I catch him turning and savoring again the scent of the woman whose bed he’s shared for nearly half a century.  We breathe in the spirit that delights in our being – the fragrance of it.  And it works on us.  Then we exhale (for that breath has to go somewhere) – to breathe into the world this same spirit of delight, confident that this is God’s only agenda.” P151

               Later he wrote, “I was brought up and educated to give assent to certain propositions.  God is love, for example.  You concede, ‘God loves us,’ and yet there is this lurking sense that perhaps you aren’t fully part of the ‘us.’  The arms of God reach to embrace, and somehow you feel yourself just outside God’s fingertips.  Then you have no choice but to consider that ‘God loves me,’ yet you spend much of your life unable to shake off what feels like God only embracing you begrudgingly and reluctantly.  I suppose, if you insist, God has to love me too.  Then you can explain this next moment, when the utter fullness of God rushes in on you – when you completely know the One in whom ’you move and live and have your being,’ as St. Paul writes.  You see, then, that it has been God’s joy to love you all along.  And this is completely new.   Every time one of the Jesuits at Dolores Mission would celebrate a birthday, the same ritual would repeat itself.  ‘You know,’ one of the other Jesuits would say to me, for example, ‘Your birthday is Wednesday.  The people are throwing a ‘surprise party’ for you on the Saturday before.’  The protests are as predictable as the festivities.  ‘Oh come on,’ I’d say, ‘Can’t we pass this year?’  ‘Look,’ one of my brothers would say to me, ‘This party is not for you – it’s for the people.’  And so I am led into the parish hall for some bogus meeting, and I can hear the people ‘shushing’ one another – el padre ya viene.  As I step in the door, lights go on, people shout, mariachis strike themselves up.  I am called upon to muster up the same award-winning shock from last year.  They know that you know.  They don’t care.  They don’t just love you – it’s their joy to love you.”

One day, a professor entered the classroom and asked the students to prepare for a surprise test.  They all waited anxiously at their desks for the test to begin.  The professor handed out the exams with the text facing down as usual.  Once he handed them out, he asked the students to turn over the paper.  To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions – just a black dot at the center of the white sheet of paper.   The professor, seeing the expression on everyone’s faces, told them the following:    “I want you to write about what you see there.”  The students, confused, got started on the inexplicable task.  At the end of the class, the professor took all the exams and started reading each one out loud in front of all the students.  All of them, with no exception, defined the black dot, trying to explain its position in the center of the sheet. After all had been read, the classroom was silent, and the professor started to explain.  “I’m not going to grade you on this, I just wanted to give you something to think about.  No one wrote about the white sheet of paper.  Everyone focused on the black dot – the same thing happens in our lives.  We have a white piece of paper to observe and enjoy, while we always focus on the dark spots.  Our life is a gift from God, with love and care, and we always have reasons to celebrate – nature renewing itself every day, our friends around us, our jobs that provide our livelihood, the miracles we see every day.  However, we insist on focusing only on the dark spots—the health issues that bother us, the lack of money, the complicated relationship with a family member, the disappointment with a friend.  The dark spots are very small when compared with everything we have in our lives, but they’re the only ones that pollute our minds.  Enjoy each moment that live gives you.  Be happy and live a life filled with love.”

I believe it was Jill who passed this onto me at the beginning of COVID and I want to share it with you now: 

Me: Hey God.

God: Hello.....

Me: I'm falling apart. Can you put me back together?

God: I would rather not.

Me: Why?

God: Because you aren't a puzzle.

Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling down onto the ground?

God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.

Me: You don't understand! I'm breaking down!

God: No - you don't understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.

Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?

God: Only the very best pieces of you.

Me: I'm scared of changing.

God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!

Me: Becoming who?

God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.

Me: There goes another piece.

God: Yep. Let it be.

Me: So ... I'm not broken?

God: Of course Not! - but you are breaking like the dawn. It's a new day. Become!!!

               IN today’s scripture from Isaiah we are told to enjoy the richest of feasts.  We are told that in listening to God we will really live.  God tells us that God’s ways are more and expanded and bigger than we can imagine.  And that the sun and rain and snow come down as gifts to all.  As we read, “Yes, you will go out with celebration,

    and you will be brought back in peace.

Even the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you;

    all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

 In place of the thorn the cypress will grow;

    in place of the nettle the myrtle will grow” 

               And Jesus too says, “The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”  These are words, too, of celebration, of delight.  Of JOY.

We always read in the Christmas story, “'Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.”  This advent, I’d like you to consider that that great joy is for YOU, too.  That Jesus’ awaited coming was the amazing and often surprising joy of a baby born in hard circumstances: the first born to a young couple.  The joy is that while they may not have stayed in the inn, they stayed somewhere.  The joy is that others celebrated with them. The joy is that God was there with them, in the baby, in the relationships, in the birth.  And that joy is for YOU, too.  That God is with you, Emmanuel, God with us.  And that God calls you to live lives of celebration and thanksgiving and gratitude and joy!  Thanks be to God.  Amen. 

Advent Surprises

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14

John 11:25-26

12/05/21

Candle of Peace

               This passage from Ezekiel was written when the Israelites were in exile.  It is a promise to them that they will return from exile, that they will have life again, that things will return.  We know that this took an entire generation.  It was not the same people, for the most part, who were returning.  That meant that this promise of new life would not be brought to fulfillment, to fruition during the lifetimes of most of the people.  Still they were invited to trust that this promise, made to a community, and NOT to individuals, was true, and would happen for the Israelites.  They were invited to delight and celebrate and trust in the wonderful news that Israel would be restored, even though they, themselves, would not be part of that restoration and would not be around to see it, witness it, live it.  I think in many ways, the people of the time had a much better long-vision approach.  They could rest in these hopes for their children, and their children’s children, and find acceptance, joy, and contentment in that, even when they had to have known it would not be for themselves. 

               For us, Advent is a time of waiting for that new life to come to us, waiting for God to come to us in amazing and new ways.  It is often also considered a time of repentance, like lent.  We are invited to take the time of waiting to work on being the best that we can be so that when we encounter God with Us, Emmanuel, anew, we can present to God the best of ourselves.  As such, then, it is a time of deep self-reflection: which in turn can often be seen as an invitation into a rather dark place.  The darkening of the days, the shortening of the days during Advent mirrors this call or invitation which, when done seriously and with intention, will take us back through a history that includes regrets, losses, darkness.  Serious self-reflection invites us into parched, lonely periods in our spiritual journeys.  Looking deeply and truly at ourselves can lead into times of doubt, hopelessness, depression, fear and anxiety.  But we are invited into this dry valley during Advent, to do the work of preparation in anticipation of the Christmas, the new life, the resurrection of the bones, that is to come.

A poem written by Dempsy Calhoun reflects this.      

Bone

 

Bone lay scattered and artifactual

Wind-rowed like dead branches

Whose tree bodies repeat the desiccation

All hope bleached and lost

Living moisture evaporated

 

Calcified memories of what was

Or seeds of what could be

Wandering shards of vessels

That once thrummed with pure energy

Where honor and dishonor wrestled

 

Stripped of living water to walk the hills

Needing only gravity to line the valley

 

It was never about the bones anyway

Rather a glimpse of pure power

A reminder of who's in charge of restoration

Real hope lies in the Source

(Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide.)

Apparently when you look at the bones of a people, like in archeological digs, you can tell so much about those people: age, gender, general health, diet, diseases, injuries, habits, and what their diet was based on the density of those bones.  So, the invitation here, with the combination of this scripture during the advent call to self-reflection is to look at your spiritual bones to see what they reveal about you.  What do your spiritual bones tell you about your spiritual diet, about your age in terms of faith formation, about your spiritual health?  What do they say about what you have gone through, where your spiritual injuries have been?  Would they show habits of prayer and reflection, of conversation with God?  Would they show the gifts of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?  It invites us into the question, “Can these bones live?”  And to genuinely reflect on that.

We hear from the passage that God’s breath plays a major role in these bones returning to life.  Remember that in Hebrew, the word “ruach” means breath, spirit and wind.  It is the breath of God that breathes life into everything.  As the commentator from Feasting on the Word said it,

            “Ezekiel's vision is given for a people who have lost heart, who are suffering a death of the spirit, a living death in exile in a foreign land. Their temple has been destroyed, their holy city plundered, their leaders maimed and put in chains, their soldiers put to the sword, their young men and women either killed or dragged off into a foreign land. Ezekiel witnesses the soul of his people gradually wither and die, becoming as lifeless as a valley of dry bones. Can these bones live? That is what God asks.

This vision is held up again today, when so many in the world have had their own experience of dry bones, literally and metaphorically. Our earth has been fashioned into massive graveyards of dry bones, transforming valleys into vales of desolation—from Darfur and the Congo and Zimbabwe to Myanmar and Pakistan and Iraq, from the gang slayings and the drug wars in our cities to all those places lacking food or drink or clothing or shelter or any respect for life. Not only is there the physical toll people continue to pay, but also the spiritual death that poverty, natural disasters, and genocide exact from people to reduce them to a state of dry bones. Can these bones live?

Today we hear a promise only God can give. God tells the prophet to speak to these bones, saying: "Thus says the Lord God: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live" (v. 5). God promises not only sinews and flesh and skin, but, most importantly, God calls the breath to come from the four winds and breathe upon the slain. So it happens. This breath is the spirit of God, the life-giving ruach God breathed into the first human creature in the garden.” (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide.)

We are invited to be part of this self-work.  I will tell you, when people talk about things that have upset them, they usually focus on the other person.  “So and so did this.”  But a time of Advent is a call instead to look inward.  “I participated in this problem by doing x.”  “I contributed to this division, or this chaos, or this schism in this way.”  That self-reflection is the turning that we are called to during advent.

Advent is a time of waiting, of anticipation.  Advent is a time of reflection and preparation so that we may be the most whole, best that we can be to be present to God, With Us, Emmanuel, when God comes. 

Finally, Advent is also a time of great surprise. 

This story from Ezekiel is a vision, a metaphor for the life that God brings where life appears to be completely absent, completely gone.  But this story is put into such a completely shocking image… bones knitting back together, sinews and tendons reattaching themselves, the dead coming alive… These images are shocking and disturbing because the experience of the people to the presence of God is also that surprising, that shocking, and that unexpected.  Even as we wait for Christmas with the belief that we know what the baby looks like (after all aren’t we just celebrating something that already happened a long, long time ago?), that we know what to expect, what to anticipate; the promise is there that each time God comes, and God comes again and again and again, that it will be every bit as shocking and even terrifying in its incredibleness, it’s awesomeness, its unexpectedness, as this scene from Ezekiel. 

We hear in Mary’s Magnificat that the order of the world will be flipped on its head.  We are told God “has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

 He has brought down rulers from their thrones

    but has lifted up the humble.

 He has filled the hungry with good things

    but has sent the rich away empty.

 He has helped his servant Israel,

    remembering to be merciful”

And today in Ezekiel we hear this promise again.  The dead will be raised again.  Breath will move within those who have no breath.  But what does this mean for us?  Our bones will have life again.  The unkind will act in kindness towards one another.  The unforgiving will learn how to forgive.  The unseeing will see.  The unhearing will hear.  Those who are angry will learn compassion.  Those filled with hate will learn grace.  Those who lie and gossip will have tongues only for truth and confession.  The blaming and accusing will only reflect on their own contributions to discord.  All of this and more will happen.  This is what this new breath is about.  This is what new life invites.  This is what the wait for God’s coming promises. 

We may not see it in our lifetimes.  Like Israel’s people, we may have to wait for these promises until the next generation.  But we are still called to trust that they will come.  And we are invited to be part of it as we step into our own self-reflection, our own inner work, our own inventory of our own bones: where they are dry, where they are brittle, and where they need the breath of God to bring them to life.

These are the unexpected surprises of Advent.  It starts with you.  It starts with me.  We prepare and wait, repent and step into new life together, create the unexpected miracles of new life and new relationship once again.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

The Challenge of Writing True Stories

     I watched an interesting movie the other day: Let Them All Talk with Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen.  The main character, Alice, is a writer, and one of her friends is convinced that the book that made Alice famous and for which she won an important award, was actually the story of that friend's own trauma, a trauma she'd shared in confidence to Alice.  The friend can't forgive Alice for this.  The movie got me to thinking some about writing on the whole, and my own writing in particular.

    As writers, we write from our own experience.  We do.  Whether it is obvious or not, we can't write from anything other than our own experience.  We write for many reasons, but I believe the top two reasons are to share the things that we think others will value and to process our lives.  In a sense, writing is therapy.  This is true even if what we are writing is fiction, and even if the connections to our own lives are not obvious. We bring ourselves to our writing and that means it comes from our experiences. This is perhaps especially true for pastors.  We write what we hope will be meaningful to others.  We cannot do that apart from our own experiences because our faith is informed by our experiences: by our relationships to God and to people, and even to all of creation.  But this means two things for my own writing:

    First, people often assume that the points I am making are somehow "aimed" at them.  I've written about this before, in part because it happens so very often.  Does the behavior of other people around me influence or affect my writing?  My preaching?  Of course.  Again, I cannot write apart from my own experience because it has determined who I am, what I think, what I mean, what I do.  I cannot separate my own experiences from my writing, nor would I want to.  My experiences have given me what little wisdom I have: they have informed my beliefs and have challenged me to grow through and with them.  Since I believe faith is ultimately about a relationship with God and God's people, it is a living growing thing as all relationships are.  And that means that my writing and preaching also grow and change based on the life lessons that I face in each day.

    But as I've said before, I think it is very dangerous to preach "at" people.  So I work very hard to preach sermons "at" myself, or the things that I know I need to hear: to say the things that I know I need to remember to grow.  As Alice said in the movie I just watched, "Ultimately a writer is writing about herself."  Yes, even when it sounds like I am "preaching" at someone, usually that person is me.  It is very rare that I have an image of someone else in mind when I am writing or preaching.  And when I do have an image of someone else in mind, I have learned to take that as a cautionary note and try hard to work around it.  I will give a very specific example:

    There came a Sunday when the lectionary passage was Mathew 18:15-22.  It comes around once every three years and we are called to preach on it each and every time it does.  It is a passage that says that when someone has wronged us, we are to talk to them directly, not about them, not gossiping, not stirring up anger.  We are to go to them directly.  If that doesn't work, we are to take a couple "witnesses" with us and again, go to them directly.  If it still doesn't work, you expand the circle farther by bringing more "witnesses" to sit in on the conversation, but still you are called to talk to the person directly.  There's a key word here that I keep using: directly.  There is no room in this for gossip or triangulation.  

    Well, at the time that the passage came up for it's tri-annual sermon, the congregation I was serving was struggling with some serious gossip problems. I didn't know what to do.  I felt that it had come at a crucial time in the life of the congregation.  But I was also very aware that this was one of those occasions when it would be hard for me to resist using the pulpit to preach "at" people who were doing damage in the church.  My solution?  I pulled out a sermon I had written 6 years earlier, for a previous congregation, and I edited it only slightly so that it was not obviously from six years before.  I did not want to fall into the trap of preaching "at" or "to" anyone, so I made sure that I wasn't.  Still, people in the congregation  believed I was preaching "at" specific people.  Ironically, at least two people believed I was preaching at someone who was never in my mind as someone who needed to especially hear the sermon.  And since they never actually asked me if that was the case, (I again heard about it through more gossip, sigh) there was no space for me to explain my process or my thoughts.   

    Unfortunately, this has not been a one time event.  This is one of the curses of writing, of speaking in public ways and in public places.  There is always the chance that, no matter how hard I try not to hurt or upset anyone that someone will put their own interpretations on what I said and either become angry or hurt.  Once that happens it is very difficult to repair the damage. 

    Is it possible that sometimes I am, without intention, still tapping into some of my own feelings and therefore lashing out?  It's possible.  I try to be self reflective, honest with myself, and kind to the people in my area of influence.  But I'm also human.  I try to own my own mistakes.  But we also all have blind spots and I am no exception to that.

    The second point I want to make is that I do use stories to say what I want to say.  I use stories to illustrate my points, such as the story I just told about my gossip sermon.  Many times these stories come from books or movies.  But the stories that are most impactful, that make the most difference to those who hear them, and that ring the truest, are the stories that are true, and that I'm in the unique position to share because they come from my own life.  These stories are real.  But that necessarily means that other people are in those stories: other people who are also real and have been a part of my life.  So how do I avoid hurting people?  If the story involves someone easily identifiable, I often ask them if it's okay if I use it.  For example, if I tell a story involving my kids, I ask them if it's okay before telling it.  Sometimes, for whatever reason, I have a story and I am unable to ask those involved for permission.  In those cases, I will often change key elements of the story to "hide" their identity.  Sometimes I have not gone far enough in these efforts when I've believed the story would be heard as an apology or a clarification of something that has happened.  And so, occasionally, sometimes my stories have hurt others.  I've told a story that I thought would not be offensive or hurtful and the person who saw themselves in the story was hurt or offended.  Or I've told a story that I thought would in no way be connected with a specific person because they were distant, not in my sphere, or not connected to people who would read what I write, and was surprised to find that was not the case.  

    I remember when this has happened and I use those instances as warnings and reminders to myself to be careful.  But I am human and I do make mistakes.  It is for this reason that as I have sat with my book about what my family experienced in Ohio, I've had a hard time pushing it into a realm of publication.  I worry about the people who might be hurt.  I worry that no matter how hard I've worked to hide identities or change names that people will see themselves and will interpret what I've said negatively rather than complimentarily.  I think this is one of the biggest challenges of writing.  How do we speak truth without injuring others?  This remains a growing edge for me.  It might always be so.  All I can say is I'm working on it.  And that I hope that those who feel hurt by the things I have written or said would have the courage to talk to me about it.  I want to grow.  And I want the opportunities to make things right.

Gifts of Advent

 

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

John 14:27

               We’ve been reading a lot of difficult passages lately.  Looking intensely at some of the harder and harsher words from the Old Testament.  And I feel that today’s readings are a deep blessing instead.  They are a breath of deep and fresh air.  Today as we begin Advent, we begin with this promise of something beautiful.  We begin with seeing once again the deep love of God. 

While Jeremiah is addressing a people in captivity and in exile, I want to invite you to think for a minute about how these words might apply to you, too.  While we are not literally in captivity or in exile, there are areas within each of us that are in captivity and/or in exile.  Maybe you are in captivity to anger that you are holding against someone else.  Maybe you are in captivity to fear about what is happening to a loved one, to yourself, to the country.  Maybe you are in captivity to an addiction that you just can’t shake, no matter how much you may want to, or something you have to finish, a chore, a promise, a commitment that you simply do not want to fulfill, that is holding you captive in that it prevents you from moving on, from doing what you may want to do.  Maybe you feel your body is holding you in captivity in its limitations, in the ways you may now be limited physically, or prevented by bodily issues from doing the things that you would like to be able to do. 

And exile?  Are there people in your life from whom you are estranged?  Are there relationships that you cannot reconcile?  Are there places where you feel uncomfortable, uneasy, separated, distant?  Are there places that have meant “home” to you that are no longer accessible?  Or people with whom you felt at home that you can no longer be with (because of many things, even death, that keeps us apart)?  Where are the areas within you that you have pushed out or that you cannot face?  Where are your shadow sides that you have exiled away from you?  Are there parts of yourself that you hold off, keep distant, exile?

With those images in mind, I invite you to listen again to these beautiful promises of love, these sweet and awesome promises of the future.  Close your eyes and hear these words for you again:

“I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.  When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you.  When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me.  I will be present for you, declares the Lord, and I will end your captivity. I will gather you …, and I will bring you home after your long exile, declares the Lord.”  

I want you to hear those words in your hearts. These are advent promises, promises of a time to come, a time of unexpected release and comfort, a time of hope, a time of reconciliation and healing, a time of peace. 

In the book The Life of Pi, Pi had been on a boat that sank with all his family and everything that he had.   He was the only human who survived on a lifeboat.  But he was on that lifeboat for a very, very long time.  It was an incredibly difficult time.  As he described it, sometimes there weren’t any fish to catch, to eat.  And sometimes the sun was way too hot and the despair was absolutely overwhelming.  When he was asked how he survived it, if it was all just miserable and awful, he said, “You reach a point where you’re at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you’re the luckiest person on earth.  Why?  Because at your feet you have a tiny … fish [to eat].” (217).  

The truth is that we can, almost always, find signs (like a fish meal when we are hungry) of God’s love, of LIFE.  And those gifts, those signs of hope and of life are promises in themselves.  They are reminders that God created you because God loves and that is God’s very nature to love you into being YOU.

In the book, Finding Chika, Mitch Albom wrote about caring for Chika who was a little girl dying of a brain tumor.  He wrote about what he learned, how he grew during that time.  One of his chapters was entitled, “Lesson Three: A sense of wonder” and he wrote, “We took you to Disneyland once, Chika.  Do you remember?  It was after the radiation treatments.  You had been wondering about Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, which they show at the start of every Disney movie.  ‘Is that real?’ you’d ask, and we’d say that it was, and someday we would take you to see it.  One night, after putting you to bed, Miss Janine and I looked at the missing patch of hair above the back of your neck.  Your forehead was perspiring.  And we said to each other, ‘What are we waiting for?’  We made the reservations.  We flew to California.  I bought tickets for a weekday, hoping for smaller crowds, and we arrived before the park even opened.  What I remember most is what you did first.  We entered through Main Street, passing souvenir shops.  The rides were up ahead, and I wondered which would make you scream ‘Can we do that one?’  Instead we passed a small pond, and a gray duck wandered out of the water.  And with Astro Orbitor to your right, Thunder Mountain to your left, and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle straight ahead, you pointed down and yelled, ‘Look!  A duck!’ And you chased after it and giggled wildly, ‘Duck!  Duck!’… With all those amusement park attractions calling, you got low to marvel at another living creature.  … Children wonder at the world.  Parents wonder at their children’s wonder.  In so doing, we are all together young.”

This is the awe of Advent, the wonder of Advent.  Does it mean everything is okay?  Of course not.  Again, that story I read you about Chika was from a child who was dying.  A very young girl (5 -6 years of age) who died of a brain tumor.  An extremely tragic experience full of pain and loss, of painful treatments and hospital stays.  But it was in the midst of that that she found joy, wonder, delight.  God’s promise for us is one of peace: a place of rest, a place of healing for our souls: a freeing from the captivities of our minds, a return from the places of exile within.  Those moments of joy, of sight, of feeling, sensing, resting in God’s presence.  These are the gifts of Advent, the promise of that new life to come, of God’s being with us in person.

But Advent does not just leave us here.  Advent also calls us to be part of the movement, part of the growing, to pass on that hope, that peace, that joy and that love to those we encounter. 

Bishop Michael Curry, in his book, Love is the Way (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020.  P 154), wrote about the ministry his congregation was doing in the “rough” neighborhoods, in the poorest areas.  The congregants made a commitment to make a difference in those neighborhoods.  They started by singing on the street corners, and they preached five minute sermons about God’s love on the street corners.  He wrote, “During the winter holidays, we shifted to Christmas caroling.  One night, as we walked the streets near the church with our flashlights, I could sense that enthusiasm was waning. Caroling on the streets isn’t like singing in church.  In a church, voices bounce off the walls with a resonance that amplifies and improves the sound.  A mouse can belt like Patti LaBelle.  But on the streets, we got no such lift.  Our voices seemed quiet and flat, lost in the air of boarded-up and derelict homes.  Still, we stuck with it, determined to share some spirit that night.  We stopped on one block near an alley and began a quiet rendition of ‘Silent Night’ even though we couldn’t see a soul.  As we neared the finish of the first verse – ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ – we were about to walk on.  And then from the darkness of the alley, we heard a response.  A voice sang out from the darkness finishing the song, ‘Sleep in heavenly pea-ace, sle-eep in heavenly peace.’  I experienced surprised elation, but also sadness. Down that alley someone was listening.  And also down that ally someone was possibly cold, possibly hungry, possibly high.  I would never know, because he didn’t show his face.  And yet, he had responded.  Thanks to that unseen neighbor, we understood that even when it didn’t seem like it, somebody was listening.  That was a beginning, and over the years, a relationship between the community and the churches in the community began to emerge and grow. 

“I came to see that night as symbolic of the same transition we were going through as an entire congregation – a reawakening toward the community outside our walls, which was leading to a reawakening of the reality of God within and without.  It was, I suspect, part of why I was brought to St. James, and it was the hardest work any of us had ever done. 

“This is a hard and necessary work, for all of us.  It’s easy to contribute money and time to ‘do good’ and help others, whether through compassionate acts of service or by joining the movement for social justice and change.  It is far tougher to maintain a humble and dedicated relationship with God and with others, especially others who are not like you.  But that kind of relationship – the I-Thou relationship – is how we create a new dynamic, where there are no saviors, but only people working together for a better future for the good of all.  Without that mutuality our good acts all too easily replicate and reinforce the status quo.  When we draw on the ‘energies of love,’ to use Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s phrase, we reconnect with God and others, and in the end, with the whole world.

“As that happens, even if episodically, I-Thou overcomes I-It, and life becomes less about egoistic ‘me’ and more about altruistic ‘we.’”

MLK said it this way, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

So, during this advent we are invited to rest in the peace God offers, but also to extend that peace in every interaction we have.  To step forward with courage and confidence and to invite those around us to do likewise. 

There is a beautiful Amish proverb that says, “Faith gives us the courage to face the present with confidence and the future with expectancy.”  Those are the promises of Advent.

This first Sunday in Advent we focus on hope, the  hope that comes through trust, through faith.  We are invited to find that hope within, to lean on God to be able to pull that hope to our hearts, to claim it as the promise that it is.  And then to pass it along to those we encounter.  So I want to end our sermon today with the words that Jesus spoke in the scripture we read this morning.  These words are for YOU.  As we enter this Advent season, I invite you to bring them into your heart as the promise, the hope, the Advent of a new day that they are.   As we heard today from Jeremiah:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope for the future.”  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

All Saint's Day sermon (late)

 

Celebration of the Saints

1 Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13

John 2:19-21

10/31/21

               In the passage that we read today from 1 Kings, we hear of the amazing plans of Solomon for the building of the temple.  We also hear in that last line the intent of the temple.  “Then Solomon said, ‘The Lord said that he would live in a dark cloud, but I have indeed built you a lofty temple as a place where you can live forever.’”   We don’t tend to think of God as living in a temple, as living in a building, as residing in a specific place at all.  If we do, I think we envision heaven as the place where God lives.  But this is not really a biblical understanding.  And it is certainly not an Old Testament understanding.  The Israelites truly and deeply believed that God resided in the temple, in the Holy of Holies: the innermost part of the temple: in the Ark of the Covenant.  This was where God LIVED and could be found. 

               I invite you to think about that for a moment.  How would our faith, our practice of faith change if we believed God actually lived in the church, for example?  What would you do differently if we believed that this building was God’s HOUSE? 

               And then the next question is, if we believed that God lived here in this building and then the building was destroyed, especially by people we believed to be enemies, how would that impact you?  What would you do?  What would WE do? 

               That is in fact what happened to the Israelites.  For them the temple was sacred, absolutely holy in the highest sense of that word.  It was perfect, it was God’s home.  And then it was destroyed.  Twice it was destroyed.  And both times that destruction was beyond devastating.  It challenged everything they believed, everything they understood.  Did this mean that God was destroyed too?  Did it mean that God had left the “home” they had made for God?  And if so had God left them, too?

               They had come to a very unhealthy place in their understanding.  God had wanted a relationship with the Israelites.  But instead, they had made it into a set of rites, rituals and regulations.  But that became their core value, their core understanding.  And when that was destroyed?

               We all have beliefs, we all have “sacred cows” in our understandings and in our theology, but also in our mind sets.  Things that we cling to absolutely.  Those beliefs that we cling to become our grounding, our base.  They become foundational for us; core beliefs that effect everything else about the way we view the world.  They affect what information we can take in, what information we reject.  They also blind us to other pieces of information.  They blind us, many times to inconsistencies and to flaws in the arguments that support those beliefs.  They blind us to obvious truths that would challenge our way of thinking. 

But the thing is, sacred cows cannot survive in this world.  Anything other than God that we make into an idol is bound to fall, that we declare absolute, that we decide is “truth” cannot survive, ultimately.  Maybe not in our lifetimes, but everything that we make into an idol, or that we decide is unshakeable, or absolute will be challenged.  And when the beliefs or the idols or the sacred cows become challenged, as all sacred cows will, we will have a choice we must make. 

There are four ways people usually respond when their core beliefs are challenged. 

               The first is to continue to deny what has challenged our understanding.  This can only be done up to a certain point, but people do this.  Even when it is obvious to everyone around them that they are doing that, people still do this.  For example, if you were raised to believe that people who are rich have it because they deserve it, and people who are poor don’t have things because they don’t deserve to have good things, then these beliefs might be challenged the first time that you actually get to know a poor person, or someone who grew up in abject poverty.  Even so, I hear people find ways to cling to their old belief systems: “Well, this person is the exception”.  “Well, but MOST people who are poor are different.”  Or they discover how much harm someone who is rich has really done to those under them in order to climb that particular ladder.  Same deal: “Well, that action was the exception.  They don’t normally act that way.” 

               When I was in Ohio there was another clergy couple in our Presbytery who also went through a terrible scandal.  The male pastor was brought up on ecclesiastical charges for sexually abusing a bunch of different boys from three different Presbyteries around the country.  These boys were now all men, the pastor was past the statute of limitations so could not be brought up on criminal charges, but these boys were pressing ecclesiastical charges.  The pastor renounced jurisdiction, which means he gave up his ordination, in order to shut down the process so that no one would hear the charges or be able to confront him.  But the three Presbyteries involved decided this was unfair to the victims.  They hosted “listening” sessions that would simply allow the victims to share their experiences with this pastor.  When the charges were first brought, most people supported the pastor.  They denied the possibility that their beloved, charming, charismatic pastor could ever be found guilty of something like this.  But with the listening sessions man after man came forward to share their story.  And those these men had not previously known each other (some from California, some from Florida and now some in Ohio), their stories all had strong similarities and were all intensely painful.  Once those stories were out, it became much, much harder to deny the charges.  But his wife continued to hold on to her belief in his innocence.  She could not allow her core faith in her husband’s innocence to be shaken, despite the evidence. 

The second response that a person may have in the face of the face of a core belief being challenged is that a person may change lesser beliefs around the core belief in order to hold up their core belief.  I saw this with Martha Stewart.  People believed in her. Many idolized her. So when she was found guilty of insider trading, people changed other ideas they had in order to keep Martha Stewart as the idol she had been for so many.  “Oh, that’s not such a bad thing,” they decided.  Or “Well, she wasn’t really guilty.”  Or, “well, people make mistakes”.  And they forget that if it had been a poor, unknown person making that same “mistake”, they would have wanted them put away for life.

               However, if the situation is too big, too overwhelming, neither of these responses can be upheld.  Such was the case with the destruction of the temple.  It was far too clear and obvious that the temple had been destroyed for any denial to be long lasting.  So then again, they had a bigger choice to make about the cognitive dissonance they were experiencing.  One possible response is to throw out the whole belief system.  Some people decide that because a core understanding has been found to be flawed, the whole thing has to go.  We see this response in many situations.  When I was doing my dissertation on fundamentalism, as you know from a few weeks ago, I interviewed some people who had left fundamentalism to become atheists.  For these folk, they would find something in scripture that contradicted something else in scripture (like, for example, the order of creation in Genesis 1 versus the order of creation in Genesis 2, or Jesus’ constant confrontation and overturning of some of the old biblical laws: like the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” which he completely threw out saying “But I say to you, do not return evil for evil. But if someone slaps one cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”, etc.) then their core belief in a literal and inerrant scripture becomes challenged.  The reaction of some, then, is to throw out the entire faith.  “If this is wrong, the whole thing must be wrong.”

Another example I’ve often encountered is with the core belief that God is in charge of everything, and that everything happens for a reason.  If God is all-powerful and then something too terrible to be dealt with happens, what is a core belief for many is shaken.  If I believe that God can take control or is in control of everything, then I may have been able to say, “everything happens for a reason” when my brother died or when I lost my job.  But when an event such as the Holocaust happens?  Or when I know a child who is raped or tortured?  When I encounter first hand the thousands of people who die from starvation or dehydration?  Then the ability to say “well, God was in charge” and “everything happens for a reason” can be challenged.  The result for many who go through this experience is also one of choosing to reject faith completely.  There can’t be a God at all, certainly not a loving God, if these kinds of terrible things happen and God does not prevent them.

In the secular world, we see this happen when an idol is found to be human. When a politician or movie star or pastor is caught in a scandal that is so horrific that it cannot be denied, people may throw out the person all together.  They will flip from seeing the person as all good to seeing the person as all evil.  There is no in-between.  There is no humanity to be accounted for.  They were perfect.  And now they are the devil. 

Finally, the last, and obviously the most healthy response to that cognitive dissonance, to an irrefutable challenge to our core beliefs is to go through the grief and pain of adjusting them.  Can we make that choice to change how we think, to readjust our beliefs to include the new information?  This is the hardest self-reflective work that we will ever have to do in our lifetimes: to actually be willing to look at foundational beliefs, to accommodate information we did not have before, to change.  I cannot overstate how hard this is for people.  The grief involved in a complete mind-set change is so large that most people simply cannot do it.  It takes amazing strength, courage and wisdom to be able to look at new information and consider that we may have been wrong.

I think about the people who believed with absolute conviction that Hitler was doing a good thing for his people, and what they must have felt after WWII.  Were they able to see that they had in fact been wrong?  Were they able to change?  Where they able to see the evil in their own understandings?  Or did they die declaring he was right, or misunderstood, or that we just were focusing on the wrong thing?   Did they deny the evil he did?  Say it hadn’t really happened at all?  Did they deny the inhumanity of the concentration camps?  Or continue in prejudice, blind thinking?  Were they able to change?

We know that some were.  I think about Corrie Ten Boom’s writing about some of the guards she met when the Holocaust had ended.  I think about their confessions to her with sorrow and deep regret about the parts they played.  But how hard that must have been for them!  How hard for any of us to realize we have participated in something harmful, or destructive.  I’m reminded once again of Professor Dumbledore’s commentary at the end of the Harry Potter series about the evil Voldemort.   He said that even this evil man could heal, he could heal all the horrible, awful things he had done.  He could find “salvation” but only if he were willing to face what he had done and to feel remorse for it.  He also admitted that the pain of that remorse would be worse than he could imagine.  But it would save him.  Being willing to see and understand would save him.  But it would not come without a pain he was unwilling to experience. 

               Today we celebrate the saints.  And we tend to mean two things by this in the Presbyterian Church.  The first is those people who have gone ahead of us whom we honor.  When I think of the saints in my life, the people in my life whom I deeply respect, admire, look up to; they are, consistently, people who are willing to do the hard internal work of really looking at themselves, their core beliefs, and all of their actions throughout their lives that have come out of those core beliefs.  They are willing to turn, or go a different direction, when they have found that their most sacredly held beliefs have led them astray.  They are people, like Jack, who are willing to adjust, change, and go a different way.

               The other thing we in the church mean by “the saints” is all those whom we have cared about and valued who have passed before us.  Because we believe and understand that they are all children of God, all loved by God, all valued by God.  They have added to our lives, not always in a good way, but always they have added something, something we could learn from if not rest in.  They have made us who we are, they have made the church what it is.  They have struggled and suffered as we now struggle at times and suffer at times.  And their legacy informs ours and who we are and who we are becoming.  We remember them in all their humanity, in all their ideas that we now know to have been false, all their core beliefs that we have now come to see were flawed and limited.  Our remembering them can help us to be gentle with our own flawed beliefs.  Our remembering the building of the temple and the hope they placed in this building that was destroyed can help us to have compassion for those who remain stuck in their ideas, but also for ourselves when we are struggling to change.  It can also give us the courage to change: Remembering can give us the courage and strength to be willing to change our ideas when they are challenged. 

               So, on this All Saints Day, I call you to remember.  Remember a temple people thought housed God.  Remember that it fell.  Remember that the people had to choose how to respond when their core beliefs, their sacred cows, were destroyed.  Remember the saints we have known and their core beliefs that were challenged or shattered during their life times or afterwards.  And then remember to be gentle with yourself when you are faced with new information.  You have choices about how to respond.  Will we grow?  Will we learn?  Growing and learning will make our lives easier.  But know this good news: that even when we don’t, when we cannot stretch or cannot grow, God will still love us, hold us, and carry us into tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.