Making One Out of Two

 Mark 6:30-44, Ephesians 2:11-22 

            Today we continue with our second week study of the book of Ephesians.  And while we didn’t focus very much on Ephesians last week, today we will spend a little more time with it.  Today we hear these words of unity, of reconciliation, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,… His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.”

            What is interesting is that, biblically speaking, we usually talk about God’s “peace” as something God creates between us and God, or something that we find within ourselves.  But the promise here in Ephesians is extraordinary.  The promise is that peace will be created between divergent and even fighting peoples, as it was between the Christian Jews and Gentiles of that time.  When I think about the many generations of racial strife and fighting in our country, when I think about the Israelis and Palestinians currently, when I think about the divisions along political lines in our own country, the words of not only disagreement, but frankly hatred that I have heard people speak for those who disagree… when I think of ALL of this, to hear these words from Ephesians which speak of Christ’s sacrifice, his death, as a bridge that will create PEACE and reconciliation between these different groups, it is truly almost beyond hope.  How big and different from what we know will God’s realm, God’s reign have to be for us all to be in it together in peace, for us to come together as diverse people to love and care and connect to one another, to be “one”?

            But this passage from Ephesians promises this.  It says that Christ’s cross has destroyed and will destroy three things: a barrier or wall, the law of commandments and decrees, and most importantly enmity.  According to Ephesians, by dying on the cross, God breaks down a wall that separated humanity from God.  This is not about atonement, according to the author of Ephesians.  This is about experiencing and living fully our humanity.  As the NIV commentator said it, “Humans are too trapped in the deadly effects of sin to return to God on their own – or even to notice the wall that is keeping God out?  People still need to be convinced of God’s unconditional love for them….  People have to be loved into forgiveness.”  And it is from that place of being convinced of God’s unconditional love, of God’s unimaginable forgiveness, that breaking down of the barrier between us and God that all barriers between humans, between dividing forces are also being broken down.

            So how is this possible?  And since the cross has already happened, if the cross unites us, why are we not united?  Why are we still so very divided, still separating ourselves into “us” and “them”, still estranging ourselves from people who think differently, rather than being one, being reconciled, working towards healing, wholeness and the living into the new and full humanity that the cross has created for us?

            The thing is, as I have said so many times before, what we do for ourselves affects greatly what we do for others.  If we cannot accept God’s unconditional love for us, if we cannot accept in forgiveness, or grace, how can we extend that to others?  We can’t.  Period.  We can’t. 

            But I want to say again, that I think culturally the cards are stacked against us stepping into that.  Which is why faith is countercultural.  Faith calls us into a very different way of being than we see modeled and even idolized in our culture.  Faith calls us into a different set of values than what we have presented in our culture.  The cross, and the reconciliation it offers calls us to be very, very different in this world than what we are told is the best and right way to be.

            One of my lectionary friends told us this story this week:  there was a congregation down the road from her own congregation: a predominantly African American congregation and they ran a food pantry for many years.  But there came a point at which they needed help.  So they called on my friends’ congregation and asked if they could partner together to keep the food pantry alive.  After one week of working together, my friend asked the folk in the originating congregation how the food pantry work was going.

            “Terrible!”  one woman said, while all the others nodded in agreement. 

            “Terrible?  Why?” my friend asked.

            “Well, the folk from your church show up, they quickly load up the bags, they put them into the cars of the guests who are coming, they clean up everything perfectly and then they leave.  The whole thing lasted from 8am-10am and then it was over.”

            My friend was stunned.  This sounded wonderful.    But she had enough wisdom to ask, “What did it look like before, when it was not terrible?”

            “Oh!” the woman said with joy as she remembered how the food pantry used to be run.  And then the whole group of them began to quickly talk over each other sharing their past experiences.  “We would gather between 7 and 8, we’d talk, we’d check in with one another, we would laugh and play around as we gathered together the things to put in each bag.  Sometimes we’d stop, pause, sit down and have a drink to talk together and cool down.  Then when people came to get their food, we would talk to them, sit with them, ask them how they were doing, laugh more, talk more, sit again and share a coke for a bit.  We’d spend the whole day at the food pantry, just being together.”

            Different values, yes.  But I think we miss something with our emphasis on efficiency.  I speak to myself here.  I am the queen of efficiency.  I was thinking about this this last week when I went to pick up a book from a parishioner.  When I stopped at her house, she invited me in to sit and talk for a while. After we had talked for some time, she said to me as I was getting up to go, “I needed to grab you while you were here picking up the book because I know you are just so very busy.”  And it hit me differently.  I hear all of you say this, often, to me.  “Oh, I know you are so busy!”  and at some level, I think, I’ve always heard that as a positive: you all know how much I work, how hard I work, and that answers my value of needing to work hard, do well, work harder, do better.  But is that really a godly value?  As I heard one of you speak to me this last week, I realized that it would be more valuable to slow down, to be with people for more time, to dig in more deeply with people.  For the first time I heard “you are so busy” as a critique – not because it was meant to be, not because it was spoken as such, but because I heard it with different ears this time.  I could hear God whispering to me through this parishioner that I had gotten lost, distracted about what really matters, and had forgotten about what I am really here to do.  My job as a child of God, as a follower of Christ, as a person on the way, is not to be rushing around “accomplishing things” or “getting things done.”  My job, as a disciple of Christ, as a person striving to be closer to God is to take the time to be with each person who is in front of me in any one moment.  I think about the comment, “If you’ve ever seen a chicken running around after its head has been cut off, you know that running around is NOT a sign of life.”  We are called to live fully.  But what we are doing by being so busy is not fully living and is certainly not fully living into our calling as children of God.

            I think about Tolstoy’s three questions:  “Who is most important?  What is most important?  When is the most important time?”  He answers it this way, “The one you are with at any moment is the most important one.  The most important thing to do is what is right in front of you that needs to be done.  And the most important time is this moment that you have now, for there is no other.”

            I am not alone in these struggles.  As I was telling my lectionary group, a group of pastors who have committed to meeting every single week for two hours and sometimes more to pray together, study scripture together, check in and support one another: I could not get such a group going here in the Bay Area.  All the pastors here who I know are “too busy”.  Again, we feel our “importance” by filling our time with programs and activities and work.  But that is not what God is calling us to do.

            What does all of this have to do with the Ephesians passage?  Crossing those bridges, building those relationships, reconciliation, the peace with our neighbors – the one that is offered through Christ: these things take time, take commitment, and take intentionality.  If we are too busy “doing” things to sit with people who disagree with us, to talk together, to be in relationship with one another, to do the work of reconciliation, then that peace of Christ, which is what is being offered through these relationships and through our faith – it will never be ours.  

            Our churches are failing in this, maybe even more so than in the bigger community.  Did you know that the most segregated hour of the week is 10am Sunday morning?  Our churches are the last bastion of segregation.  And that is not what God wants from us nor for us. 

            The cross is there, reminding us that God knows all of what we live, all of what we suffer, all of what we struggle against; and it is offering us reconciliation, not only with God, but with one another.  It is a profound promise.  A very deep and full promise.  But we have to step into that.  If we truly want reconciliation, we have to act like we believe the promise that it is available for us.  If we truly want unity and wholeness, we have to step forward in the faith that it is a gift offered to us that we have only to claim.  If we want the peace of Christ in our lives, we have to start by working to trust God’s unconditional and overwhelming love, and more, to trust that through God’s grace it is offered to each one of us.  It’s all that easy, and all that hard.  Amen.

Choice

Ephesians 1:1-14

Mark 6:14-29

               Today in the narrative lectionary we begin a look at the book of Ephesians.  And for today what I want to say about this passage is simply that it is in many ways the elevator version of Christianity.  It talks about our being chosen first by God, our adoption, redemption, forgiveness, grace, mystery; the pleasure and plan of God for all to be gathered in, inheritance, the seal of the Holy Spirit.  But to be honest, as I looked over the passages for today, I felt much more called to focus on this very disturbing passage from Mark.  So, we will be discussing that today.  And what I want to look at in particular is this idea that Herod had, this belief that Herod had no choice but to behead John the Baptist. 

We know this story.  He imprisoned John the Baptist, and according to this story in Mark, it was because John had told him that he had acted unlawfully when he had married his son’s wife.  But at the same time as he had imprisoned him, it was also clear that he valued John the Baptist.  Herod was getting something from that relationship, it was freeing for him, it was teaching him, it was touching him.  He respected John.   

Then we come to the second part of the story.  His daughter, Herodius, dances for Herod and his guests.  Herod is so pleased that he says to her “ask me for anything and I will give it to you.”  Herodius asked her mother and her mother asked for John the Baptist’s head.  Now here is the interesting part.  The story says, “although the king was upset, because of his solemn pledge and his guests, he didn’t want to refuse her.  So he ordered a guard to bring John’s head. The guard went to the prison, cut off John’s head, brought his head on a plate, and gave it to the young woman, and she gave it to her mother.”

Herod believed that he had no choice.  He had no choice but to take a man’s life, an innocent life; a life, furthermore, that he greatly valued.  Now we can go into the specifics of why he felt this way.  We can talk about shame culture and the huge consequences he would have faced if he had done anything differently.  We can talk about what it means to have choice in this situation.  But regardless of whether you feel he did the right thing or the wrong thing for his place in that time and in that situation, the fact still remains that he had a choice to make and he made it, despite the things he told himself about lack of choice.

As I read this story, a Joan of Arcadia scene came to mind in which God asks Joan to play chess.  She joins the chess club at school and ends up beating the school chess champion though she really does not understand how to play the game.  Other disasters happen in which she is a part and finally she ends up in a chess game against God.  She still doesn’t really know how to play chess, but she sits down to begin.  She says,

“I don’t really know how to play chess.”

God responds, “Well, that’s fairly obvious.” 

“You know, God, for once I’m very glad to see you…  Because my life is completely unravelling.  I’m up to my eyeballs in the drama of the high school mating ritual and now, thanks to you, I’ve been mistaken as the high school chess champion.  How did this happen to me?”

“Which part?”

“How did I beat that kid at chess?”

“He was using logic.  You weren’t.  it’s impossible to guard against chaos.  It’s rare but it happens. Black’s move.”

“I don’t want to.” But even as she says this, she picks up her pawn and moves it.  “I don’t know how to play this game,” she says again.

“And yet you play the game.”

“Because I’m forced to!”

“Forced to!  Your friends make a suggestion which you follow up on and then you are surprised at the outcome!  It’s a causal universe.” He says as he moves his piece.   “Your move.”

“Wait a minute.  I’m being punished because I made a tiny little effort to fit in?”

“It’s not about punishment.  It’s that actions have consequences.  And to be in denial of that is to be disengaged from the laws of the universe which renders you powerless, and vulnerable to an inordinate amount of pain. Other than that, it’s no big deal. Move. ” Joan picks up a piece then puts it back down and reaches for another.

“Noooo,” God said.   “It’s a rule called touch move.  Once you’ve touched a piece you have to move that piece.”

“I’m not allowed to change my mind?  What kind of universe is that?”

“Oh, you can change your mind, but you still have to play that piece.  So you should think before you move.”

“Wait a minute.  This is a metaphor, right?”  She stares at the board for a few more minutes, mumbling under her breath and finally moves her piece.  “I took the bait so now I’m in the game.  How do I get out?”

“There are many ways to get out.  Surrender is one.  Losing is another.  Winning.  Cheating, which I don’t recommend.  But you have to do something.  You have to have a strategy.  You see, the number one rule of chess is this: whatever you do, don’t play the other person’s game.  Play your own.  Your move.”

-- 

Herod was playing the other person’s game.  Herod allowed the rules of a shame society to tell him that he had no choice but to have John the Baptist beheaded.  He played the other person’s game, and one man lost his life, and Herod lost his grounding.

I’m reminded of the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”.  The movie’s main character, Andi, starts as a person with goals and integrity.  She wants to be a journalist, and she has written about injustices such as poor work conditions.  She is in a committed relationship and values her time with her friends.  She enjoys her life, and has a cause or meaning, a purpose in her future.  Her values do not include shallow things like appearance, being thin, high fashion, owning expensive purses, clothing, things.  She puts work in its proper place as one aspect of who she is.  She is down-to-earth, centered, and knows where she is heading and what she wants.  When she first applies for the job as Assistant to the Director of Runway Magazine, she is appalled by the value system that surrounds her – the emphasis on accessories that make no real difference to one’s well-being, the insistence on being thin, on looking “right,” on dressing “right.”  But when she takes the job, she finds her values and her identity being slowly challenged, slowly and subtly being undermined and eroded.  She finds herself giving up more and more of her time with her friends and significant other in order to work.  She finds herself being pulled into the drama and the appeal of a fast-paced career with models and glamour and eventually into valuing the entire system of clothing and accessories and being thin and owning purses that cost thousands of dollars – all things she didn’t used to care about.  The choices she is faced with – to choose depth, meaning and relationships, or to choose appearance, glamour, fame and achievement are subtle choices, but she finds herself choosing for the latter again and again, and she finds herself saying to those who would challenge those choices, “well, I didn’t have a choice!” She chooses to do what her boss asks her to do, even when it means that she ends up deeply hurting a colleague who was becoming a friend.  And the entire time she is slipping she repeats that phrase, “I didn’t have a choice.”

What made her descent, her decline into a life that the movie, and I imagine many of us, would consider sinful so easy for her was that she didn’t realize she was playing by the rules of the other person.  Like Joan in the Joan of Arcadia episode, she kept saying to everyone, but especially herself, “I didn’t have a choice.” But that lie that she told herself, that she didn’t have a choice meant that she lost her friends, she lost her significant other, she lost her sense of self and her values.  As her boyfriend breaks up with her, she receives a phone call from her boss, and she says, “I’m sorry.  I have to answer this,” STILL not realizing she is making a choice.  As her boyfriend walks away he says to her, “You know, in case you were wondering?  The person whose calls you always take – that’s the relationship you’re in.”  Even after all of those losses she still didn’t realize the choices that she was making or that she had a choice to make, until her boss, Miranda, in the film pointed it out to her by comparing Andi’s choices with her own.  Andi could see that Miranda’s choices were hurtful, were harmful, were devastating.  But until Miranda pointed out that Andi had made the same choices, Andi couldn’t see. She could not see the choice she was making, or even THAT she was making a choice.

                In the movie, “You’ve Got Mail”  the main character’s book store has lost all kinds of business when a huge Barnes and Noble type store moves in across the street.  She tries everything to get her store to succeed, but it cannot compete against a Costco-like enterprise.  Finally she meets with her employees and says, “I’ve decided to close the store.”  Her dearest and longest employee responds, “closing the store is the brave thing to do!”  Meg Ryan’s character says, “What bull!”  To which Bertie responds, “It is!  You are envisioning a new future.  One you never expected and stepping into it boldly.”

               She did not have a choice about responding or not to the competition from across the street.  But she did have a choice about how she would respond.  And she made a choice that was her own game, her own step forward.  As sad as it made her, it also was a choice of hope.   

               As Dumbledore said in the Harry Potter series, “It is our choices that show who we are.  Not our abilities.”

I think about the stories I heard from a prisoner of seeing other prisoners saving food from their lunches and then calling the skunks. “Here, kitty, kitty!” they’d say and leave food for the skunks and other wildlife in the area.  They are in a situation over which they have very limited control, and certainly very few choices.  But this is a choice they can make: eat their food, or save it to share with the creatures around the prison.

Finally, I want to share with you one more movie story.  In the movie, Keeping the Faith, there is a wonderful conversation between a young priest and an older priest.  The young priest doubts his call into the priesthood after falling in love with a woman who is his friend.  Nothing happened between the two, but he found that the very fact of falling in love made him doubt a call that included celibacy.  He said to his older priest mentor, “If she had kissed me back, I would have given it all up.  She didn’t, but I keep thinking about what you said in the seminary that the life of a priest is hard and if you can see yourself doing anything else you should do that.”

The older priest responded, “Well that’s my recruitment speech which is good when you are starting out because it makes you feel like a marine!  But the truth is you can never tell yourself there is only one that you could be.  If you’re a priest or if you marry a woman, it is the same challenge.  You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept that it is a choice that you make again and again and again.  I’ve been a priest over 40 years, and I fall in love at least once every decade.”

The thing is, in every situation there are choices to be made. EVERY situation.  We choose how we see things, we choose how we act.  Sometimes we are making decisions between two terrible things.  Sometimes we are deciding between two wonderful things.  Sometimes it feels we don’t have a choice, but we still choose how we understand a situation, where we put our focus, whether we find gratitude or pain.  We choose whether we grow and learn, or whether we become bitter. And we choose whether we see God, whether we see the grace that is offered in every moment.  We choose whether or not to take the grace that is offered in each moment.  No matter how terrible a moment is, we still can choose to see the gift in having each breath we have to breathe.  In every single moment grace is offered.  But it is a choice we make whether we see it or not.  As Rick Warren said it, “I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.   Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.   No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems:   If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.”

Grace is offered to everyone in every moment.  But that doesn’t mean it is always easy to accept.  It also doesn’t mean that grace is always happy or even painless.  Sometimes the very breath we breathe is painful.  That grace, ruach, spirit, wind, breath that we are offered in each and every moment does not always come wrapped in a pretty package.  And sometimes that very breath itself is painful.   We know that sometimes wind becomes so strong it destroys things.  We know that sometimes the Spirit’s words to us are hard to take.  I think about at the end of Harry Potter, when the evil Voldemort was given a choice.  He could choose remorse, have his soul healed and live, or he could continue along his path of destruction that would lead to his ultimate destruction too.  He chose the latter because the pain of remorse was too much.  He chose to turn away from the Grace that was offered.  But that did not change the fact that it was being offered in that very moment.

In the story of Herod, we see that Herod’s inability to see his choices, to think beyond what he felt he had to do ended badly for John, and ultimately for Herod, too, who became obsessed with worrying that John’s ghost was haunting him.  He thought Jesus himself was John.  “But when Herod heard these rumors, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised to life.””.  But his inability to see did not mean that he did not have choice.  He could have pointed out to the girl that this request she made was really what her mother wanted and not what she, herself wanted.  He could have reasoned with her, talked to her.  After all, she was HIS daughter too.  But instead he felt bound by a blind, spur of the moment commitment he made.  And that feeling of being bound left him feeling impotent and blind to his choices.  He played her game, did not choose the grace of other options that were before him, and everyone suffered.

We have those same choices.  And my prayer is for us to see God’s grace, to choose God’s grace and to play the game the way God calls us to play it, for ourselves and for the world.  Amen.

A New Covenant

 Jeremiah 33:14-18; 31:31-34, Mark 6:1-13

               Today we finish our study of the book of Jeremiah.  And we finish it with two passages from Jeremiah that are, at their base, all about hope.  This is especially true of Jeremiah 31 with those very familiar words, “this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.  They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the Lord!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.” This is hope, at its core.  It is a promise that the new relationship the Israelites will have with God will be so close, so intentional that it will no longer have to be heard through words such as the prophets bring, or words such as are written in scripture.  It will be okay that the temple is destroyed because God will live within them and not just at the temple.  The new covenant will be written in our very hearts. Intermediaries will be unnecessary at all. And location will be unimportant.  We will know God because God is right there within us, speaking to us, part of our very beings.  God will be within, not holding grudges, no longer angry, but forgiving and living connected to us. 

               And then we read the passage from Mark.  And there are two parts to this.  In the first we hear that Jesus is not being recognized or honored in his hometown.  And in the second, we hear him give the disciples directions for their future.  He tells them to go into the community with nothing at all on them.  And what are they to do?  We hear it here, “So they went out and proclaimed that people should change their hearts and lives.  They cast out many demons and they anointed many sick people with olive oil and healed them.”  Why do you think these two stories are in Mark together? 

The first part of today’s message in Mark is the experience of Jesus that he then, in the second part, asks the disciples to carry through.  Jesus was proclaiming the Good News, liberty for the captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed.  And he was healing, bringing these things into a concrete form, making physical what he was proclaiming to be the Good News.  But in his hometown, he was not able to do the work that he felt he was called to do.  So he shook the dust off his feet, did what he could  and then moved along.  In the second part of today’s reading, then, he then tells the disciples to do the same: to go into the world, proclaim the good news, cast out demons, heal and anoint sick people.  If they too are not welcomed or heard, then they, too, are to shake the dust from their feet and move along. 

How does this tie in to the Jeremiah passage?  Jeremiah talks about a New Covenant written in our hearts.  But a Covenant is not a one-way street.  A covenant is something that is created in relationship and it goes both ways.  I commit to doing x and you commit to doing y and we both commit to this out of the depths of love and integrity that form a relationship.  Jeremiah describes what God puts in our heart, God’s commitment to forgiveness and connection.  And the Mark passage describes our part.

And what, again does that look like?  This passage from Mark in which Jesus tells the disciples what they are to do says so very much to us, some of which we recognize in what is NOT said as much as in what is said. 

For example, this passage tells us that the disciples, the followers of Jesus, are not called to fight.  They are not to beat people up with the Bible, with scripture, with the “good News”.  They are not to argue or cause problems.  They are to deliver their message, and if what they share is not received or heard, they are to move on.

               Second, what is the message that the disciples are to deliver?  “to proclaim that people should change their hearts and lives.  To cast out demons and anoint the sick and heal them.”  What is absent here from what we usually think the disciples are being asked to do?  Jesus is NOT telling the disciples to convert people to belief in Jesus.  He is NOT telling the disciples to make sure people have right beliefs.  He is not even telling the disciples to share about Jesus, what he has done and what he will do.  Instead, they are to invite people to change their hearts and their lives.  This is profound.  Once again this is about action, not belief.  And about relationship rather than just a barter exchange of faith for salvation.

               Mark Davis said it this way:  “In my own reading of Mark, I think it is an incredibly important moment when Jesus sends the twelve out preaching repentance. It relates to my somewhat-developed opinion of the so-called ‘messianic secret’ in Mark. The phrase “messianic secret” attempts to name a motif that certainly is central to Mark’s gospel – the repetitive ‘don’t say anything’ moments right where we don’t expect them. For me, however, it is not so much a secret as a re-direction. By attempting over and over to make Jesus ‘the Messiah,’ people were missing the point of his message, which was that the Reign of God was present and that they all were invited to participate in it. As long as they had the Messiah to embody the reign, they were missing the participation part. To ‘follow’ is not to point to, observe, marvel, coronate, or even profess. It is more about joining along, taking up the message, indeed taking up the cross that is central to the message, and “believing” by living in the present reign of God. It is healing the sick, delivering those who are oppressed, etc. In other words, I don’t think the “messianic secret” is a literary device by Mark, but a theological point that Mark saw Jesus trying to re-direct his message away from himself and toward following-as-participating.”

               So then we come to the question of what we are repenting from.  What are the demons that they are casting out?  And this, too, we come to understand by seeing how Jesus lived his life, what his values were, what his call was to the people and what he did.  And we see that lies, greed, addictions, oppression of any kind: these were what he fought against, these were the demons that he was casting out time and again.  They manifested in terrible ways in that time, and indeed they do in our time as well.  And what is at the heart of all of these?  Fear. Fear of not having enough, fear of being the underdogs, fear of losing power or control, or understanding of the world.   Jesus represented change and people were afraid of it.  And their demons were manifestations of that.  Our call, then, as we follow Jesus, is to challenge fear.  To reassure people that in Christ, in God, there is nothing left to fear.   When they accept that truth, accept it in their hearts: take it in as the Covenant in our hearts that God has placed there, then their demons are gone and they can truly live as people forgiven, renewed, and invited into the future.   

               I came across a wonderful song that I will be playing for you later called “Fear is a Liar” by Zach Williams.

               The words are:

When he told you you're not good enough
When he told you you're not right
When he told you you're not strong enough
To put up a good fight
When he told you you're not worthy
When he told you you're not loved
When he told you you're not beautiful
You'll never be enough

When he told you were troubled
You'll forever be alone
When he told you you should run away
You'll never find a home
When he told you you were dirty
And you should be ashamed
When he told you you could be the one
That grace could never change

Fear, he is a liar
He will take your breath
Stop you in your steps
Fear, he is a liar
He will rob your rest
Steal your happiness
Cast your fear in the fire
'Cause fear, he is a liar

Let your fire fall and cast out all my fears

Let your fire fall, your love is all I feel

Let your fire fall and cast out all my fears

Let your fire fall, your love is all I feel

Let your fire fall and cast out all my fears

Let your fire fall, your love is all I feel

Oh, let your fire fall and cast out all my fears

Let your fire fall, your love is all I feel

                And that leads us back to the Jeremiah passage.  Because the other side of fear is hope.  It is hope that there is something bigger than ourselves and something bigger than our fears. It is the hope that even when things are hard, that God’s love is greater than we can imagine, greater than any problems or struggles or pain that we may have.  It is the hope in a resurrection that overcomes every death and is bigger and stronger than even death.  It is a hope that says we CAN change and that things CAN be better.  God sends us this message of hope in so very many ways.  It is truly, all around us for us to hear. 

As you know, Jasmyn lost almost everything that she owns when she moved back to school at the beginning of the summer.  Her large suitcase, MY suitcase actually, went missing in transit with all of Jasmyn’s clothing, and several of her personal treasures.  Included in those personal treasures were three of her four favorite stuffed animals.  Maybe that feels like a small thing, but these were her comfort toys, her comfort animals, and it really was a blow to Jasmyn to face their loss on top of not having any clothing that is familiar to her, nothing that she picked out, and nothing at all to wear for the first week of her return to school.  And yet the other day, Jasmyn sent me this text:  “There was one stuffed animal that I couldn’t easily fit into my suitcase that I carried with me on the plane.  It was my red panda.  My red panda’s name is Hope.  I lost almost all my stuff, but Hope stayed with me.”

That hope is also there in the words from Mark which call on all of us to be better than we are, to turn, to repent, to be willing to go out into the world with NOTHING but a staff: no money, no food, nothing. 

One of the pastors in my lectionary group is Indian.  He was born and raised in India.  He told us this week that when he came to the United States, he had a small bag of personal items and $8.  That was it.  That was all he had with him, but he trusted that he would find here what he needed and he did.  That is the faith that cannot be separated from action.  That is the faith of repentance, or turning around, changing, going a new way.  And in that is great hope. 

There is also hope to be found in the words of Mark’s first story for today, “He  was unable to do any miracles there, except that he placed his hands on a few sick people and healed them.”  “Except that he placed his hands on a few sick people and healed them.”  While Jesus knows our experience of rejection, while Jesus has experienced it too, at the same time, he was still able to heal a few sick people.  And that may be our experience too.  We speak, we live lives that follow Christ’s call to us to be changers in this works.  And then the hope tells us that we can let go of the results.  All we can do is the work that is before us to do and trust God to do the change where God will.  The wind, the Spirit, the breath blows where it will and we are not in charge of the results.  Fear of failure is itself another demon of fear, one we are called to release, to “exorcise” or to cast out.  Even where Jesus was rejected, healing happened.  And even when we cannot see it, the lives we live for good make a difference in the world. 

If we look for God, we will see God.  And if we look for hope, we will find hope.  Hope is there all around us, all the time.  It is in Jeremiah’s message of God writing the new covenant directly onto our hearts, no more go-between, no more middle-man, no more needing to be told that God is with us because that new covenant is there for us, now, written directly onto our hearts.  It is in the fact that what we do makes a difference, even when and if we can’t see it.  It is in the risks people take to start their lives anew, to make the changes God calls us to make, to step forward with little to nothing in their hands.  And it is in the very covenant that God has written on our hearts: a covenant for good, for love, for connection, for Relationship!  That is powerful and amazing and wondrous and God gives it to us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.  

 

 

Grasping Life

 Mark 5:21-43, Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

This passage from Mark is one I personally find very moving and very inspiring.   The passage is really two stories put together.  In the first story, a man of some stature approaches Jesus about his little girl.  She is terribly ill, “to the point of death” we are told, and later in the story the man is told that she is dead.  We understand this father.  He is desperate, truly desperate for healing for his daughter.  He is desperate to the point that he doesn’t care that many of the other synagogue leaders and people in power are suspicious of Jesus and even want to have him killed.  He doesn’t care if he makes a fool out of himself in front of people who may be in his temple and may lose some respect for him, possibly making his position as leader in the synagogue difficult.  He doesn’t care because this is his little girl he is concerned about, and she is dying.  So he comes and falls at Jesus’ feet and he begs Jesus.  We are told that he begs Jesus repeatedly.  “Please, I beg you, come and heal my daughter.  Just put your hands on her, please, so that she may live!”

His desperation pushes him beyond caring about anything else except getting healing for his daughter.  His despair pushes him to an act that would otherwise be seen as very courageous, as very bold, maybe even as outrageous.  His love for his daughter caused him to concretely grasp hold of whatever he could to claim LIFE for his daughter.

Jesus is moved by the man’s desperation.  He is moved by the man’s pleas.  And he is moved by the man’s act of faith in approaching Jesus in this way.  We are told that he goes with the man to see his daughter.

At this point the story is interrupted by a second story.  In this second story a woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years approaches Jesus.   In those days to be bleeding meant that you were unclean.  She would have been a complete outcast, totally isolated from her community because of her status as diseased and therefore untouchable.  She has done everything that could be done in those days to help herself.  We are told she has spent all she had, every penny, going to doctor after doctor for help.  And all of it has only made her worse.  She too, then, is desperate.  This time not for someone else but for herself.  And she too is motivated by that desperation to be courageous.  She pushes her way through the crowd, “infecting” all those people, since (remember) she was unclean because of her hemorrhage, and she reaches out to touch this holy man, knowing that her touch basically makes him unclean as well, a great affront to a religious person.  “If I can only just touch him, I know I will be well.”   Unlike the father in the first story, she does not ask, she instead “takes” it - reaching out and touching him without speaking to him or asking for healing.

But she gets caught. Jesus feels the touch and asks the crowd about it despite everyone’s confusion since, as his disciples said, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘who touched me?’” And then the women performs another act of great courage: she comes before him trembling, falling down before him in shame and fear: and then she tells him everything, she admits to touching him, she tells the truth.

Jesus is again touched and moved by this woman’s courage and faith.  He is moved by her honesty and by her desperation.  He tells her to go in peace, he tells her that her very trust that he could hear her has made her well.  She was healed because she reached out to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

While Jesus is talking to the woman we are suddenly thrown back to the first story. Some people approach the synagogue leader “even as Jesus is speaking” to tell the father that his daughter has died and that there is no more to be done.  But Jesus calls them to even deeper faith.  He still goes, and he raises her from the dead.  This story is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke and is the first resurrection story in each of those gospels.  The first to be resurrected in the New Testament was this little daughter, this girl child, not someone normally considered important in that time or place.  Yet important enough to God to be the first to be raised from death. 

In each of the three Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the two stories of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage are told together.  These stories are told together because they are both part of the same commandment.  Jesus’ second commandment to all of us is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Mostly in church we focus on how much we need to love our neighbors and care for them as much as we care for ourselves.  But this story invites the reverse as well.  We are also called to love ourselves and take care of ourselves as much as to love our neighbors.  We are called by these stories to reach out for healing, for our loved ones, yes, for our

neighbors that we don’t even know - yes, AND for ourselves: to be courageous, to be bold, to even be outrageous and reach for the things we need to LIVE.  We are called to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT. 

            I want to point out that Jesus asks everyone to be quiet about what he has done.  He declares that the girl was not dead but asleep.  Why?  Well, in part, no doubt because the sooner he drew attention to himself, the less time he would have on earth to heal and proclaim his message.  But I believe there is another reason that is equally important here.  Jesus was restoring this little girl to her community.  Restoring her.  But if she became known as “the girl that was raised from the dead” she would not have been fully restored to the community.  She would have taken on solely that identity.  She might have been used as a political pawn: someone to be scorned by those who did not agree with Jesus: a lesson to be raised up by those who would have made her life difficult.  And an idol for those who followed Jesus.  No, his request to be quiet was for her sake as well.  We are called to live fully, to grasp life fully: and the courage that it takes to do that with integrity and with fullness should not be underestimated. 

I know this can be hard.  It is easier to ask for healing for our children, for example, than for ourselves.  While it might be hard to see how this is true in our own lives, we all know people who complain endlessly about ailments but never take the steps to heal them. At one point in time this stand of enduring problems without fixing them might have been considered self-less.  When my close friends’ aunt died, everyone said at her memorial service how giving and self-less she was.  But what that really meant was that she refused to seek help when she needed it, she refused to take care of herself at all, when things went wrong, she still declined seeking help.  And in the end that wasn’t really self-less at all.  She loved the attention she received because of all her pains and problems.  And she died early, leaving grieving and suffering children behind who would not have been motherless had she attended to her medical problems.  We are called not to live marginally through attention for our problems.  We are called to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Many of you know the stories of Lance Armstrong, and of people like him, who have

become heroes for facing terrible illness and for fighting back against amazing odds.  In Lance’s case, he was faced with, some estimate, a 3 % chance of surviving his testicular cancer that had spread to brain and lungs and had metastasized.  But he decided to try an aggressive chemotherapy that ended the cancer.  He then took the next step of deciding to enter the cyclist racing world again, a challenge he describes as even greater than the fight back from cancer.  He had lost all his strength in his battle with cancer.  Yet he decided to be cancer free was not enough.  He felt the pull, the call, even, to become strong again, to learn to ride again.  After his battle with cancer he won seven Tour de Frances, the most won by any individual in the history of the race.  Lance chose not only to survive, but truly to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Not all of us are Lance Armstrong.  Not all of us can find that kind of healing or at least, find the support and the doctors such as were available to Lance.  Sometimes, like the woman with the hemorrhage, we feel we’ve done all we can to heal ourselves.  We’ve spent all the money, we’ve gone to all the doctors.  And still we are no better.  But Jesus calls us even then to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.  That can mean so many different things: it can mean selling what we have and in one final effort joining the peace corps or a mission group and serving with

the little time we have left.  It can mean simply reaching out to help someone who needs it.  It can mean taking the chance to heal a relationship that seems beyond repair: making the hard phone calls, writing the difficult letter.  It can mean leaving a relationship that is not life giving, even though it may involve giving up security, to try to find a life that has safety and meaning and godliness.  It can mean starting a new career, one that is truly following an inner calling.  For someone else, it might mean planting a garden full of beautiful flowers or vegetables and fruits: helping bring forth new life and beauty.  For another it might involve joining or starting a campaign for something that is really meaningful to you, getting more involved in the community.  It can mean trying alternative medicine and healing practices.  It can mean praying in a different way or with more attention and devotion.

The second scripture passage we read today came from the book of Jeremiah.  And in it, despite all signs that Israel and Judah were about to be completely destroyed, Jeremiah is choosing something incredibly hopeful.  He goes and buys a field.  In the midst of the destruction of his country, his community, his faith body, he goes and buys a field in an extraordinary vision of hope.  There are witnesses to this and the deed is put in a clay pot and preserved so that when they are in exile, they know that that field is waiting for their return.  He puts a concrete action into the future: and by doing so makes the statement that the Israelites will be restored to their own land and that it will bear fruit.  By the way, the place where he buys the land, Anathoth – that word means “answer to prayer”. 

Richard Rohr says that the only thing that changes people completely are a combination of great love and great suffering.  We have the great love: God offers that every single day.  But suffering also comes and we have a choice about what we do with what we experience.  How do we walk into the future when the world seems despairing, when our lives feel despairing?  We choose: do we become bitter or do we get better.  John Dewey said, “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.” And that is a choice that we make.

While Jesus is not here today, I believe that offer to grasp life applies to us still.  We cannot touch Jesus, but we can touch the hem of his robe.  Our faith tells us that Jesus is with

us, in this very room.  And so, we too are invited to reach out and touch.  We touch the hem of his robe by asking for the support of one another.  We touch the fringe of his cloak by praying together in community.  We see Jesus in one another, we see Jesus in fellowship, in prayer, in worship.  We touch the hem of his robe by believing he is here among and within us and by having the courage to ask for help.  We touch the fringe of his cloak by reaching out to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Again, I’m not saying that means everyone will be healed from every illness.  What I am saying is that all of us have been offered life, new life, whole life, through our faith.  Whatever that looks like for you, Jesus invites us to reach out, to touch the very hem of his robe, for our loved ones, for our neighbors, for enemies, and even for ourselves: to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

A Word of Comfort

 Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14, Psalm 23, Mark 4:35-41

As we continue our journey through the book of Jeremiah, we have now come to the part in the book where the Israelites have been exiled.  They have experienced the consequences of their behavior, and they are now in Babylon, away from their home against their will, separated from the temple, lost and unable to return home.  They are in the pain.  But in that place of pain, of suffering, or struggle, God’s word is still coming to them.  God is still with them, and now God’s word is one of great comfort.  But also, one that may not be exactly what they want to hear. 

         God promises the community, and again it is very important here that this is the community of Israelites, the people of Israel and Judah that God is talking to, not individuals, but the community, that things will be better.  God promises that they will return to their home.  This exile is not forever.  This time of alienation and struggle is not eternal.  There will be a time of renewal.  God also promises and reassures them that in the meantime, even in their exile, God is still present with them.

        But the other side of this is that this is a future promise.  God tells them "things will be better in 70 years.”  They will be able to return home in 70 years!!  70 years was a full generation.  It was a number that meant “completion” or wholeness.  And again, this is part of how we know this promise is not for individuals, but for the large community.  None of those to whom God is now speaking will be alive to experience this return home.  None of those in despair and pain will live to see their return.  God even goes so far as to tell them they must ignore their hopes, ignore their dreams,  ignore those who are prophesying for a return home to come in their life times. 

            And I think, post-COVID, we can relate to this in a tiny way.  When COVID first hit, we all hoped it would be over in a couple weeks.  We would shut down and then in a couple weeks we’d be able to get back to normal.  The kids would go on early spring break for school, but they would return, surely, after just a couple weeks!  When that didn’t happen, it was, “well, they’ll be able to go back in the fall.”  And then, “in the spring”.  We kept putting our hopes on tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.  But sometimes having those hopes for the near future makes the disappointment greater.  It is easier to fall into despair when our hopes are being continually dashed.  So, Jeremiah warns against that.  “No.  It won’t be tomorrow or even in your lifetime.” 

But perhaps an even bigger issue is that when we have hopes that are imminent for a major change, for the possibility of renewal and a return to what is familiar or comforting or what we believe was “whole” for us, we often forget to live now.  We put it off.  “We will do that when things get back to normal.”  We will fix this, or go there, or see that person, or call that person, or heal that relationship, or work on our issues “when things get back to normal.” 

           And God through Jeremiah challenges this.  Jeremiah tells us that God’s call for us is clear, “Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away.  Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.”  In other words, LIVE.  Don’t put off living until you are able to return home, or return “to normal”.  Live now.  Do the things of living in this place and in this time.  We are called to preach the Good News, to live in faith, to do the work of our lives whether we are “in season” or “out of season”.  This was a very long “out of season” for the Israelites.  And while God called them not to just be okay with where they were in life but instead to continue to hope and trust in a future that was better, even while they were doing that,  still they were called to live.

           I want you to try to picture this.  These exiles were “forced immigrants”.  They were forced to be in another culture, in another place, away from their home and in terrible circumstances.  Think about the Africans who were brought here against their will: forced immigrants in this place.  Generations later, do they feel at home here?  Are they still experiencing discrimination?  You can still be an exile in your own country, the country of your birth if you are not respected and treated equally.  And this was the experience of these Israelites for 70 years.  That is a hard, hard place to be.  And it is to all exiles that this message of a future hope is spoken, but also a message of “live your lives NOW.”

            In the Church, big C, as we look at the shrinking numbers of people who identify as Christian, we often talk about the church, especially perhaps mainstream or progressive Christianity, as being in a wilderness time.  But the reality is that it is much more accurate to say that we are in exile.  In the wilderness there aren’t established institutions, everyone is wandering around, without grounding, without a sense of direction.  But when you are in exile, you are in another culture’s space, story and institutions.  Those around you do have grounding, are “at home”, and do have a sense of meaning, purpose and direction.  We have moved into a time of exile, as progressive Church, a time when the predominant culture goes two ways: into either a rejection of faith all together, or into a more fundamentalist stance.  As people who fit into neither position, we are in exile.  Part of how we know this is that it is when you are in exile that those in the dominant positions of the culture are given permission and it is even seen as “normal” for them to define who others are.  The fundamentalists define us as not being “real” Christians, of getting it wrong.  And the atheists or those of other faiths, or even those who define themselves as “spiritual but not religious” assume that even we in this building are fundamentalists and treat us as such.  Neither group is open to hearing something different.  Those in power have the power to define, and to insist that their definitions are the only ones worth attending to.  And so we are in exile, boxed, labelled and in many ways rejected.

          This last weekend I was outside watering my plants when someone that I’m generally friendly with passed by.  She had a baby a year ago and I was telling her that I would like to buy some of my favorite child-books for her daughter.  Her response was “Well, we don’t want any religious books.”  I was stunned, to be honest.  I’m not good on my feet, but if I had been I would have asked if, since she’s a CPA, if all the books she gives her kids are all about taxes.  Later that same day, I had a second experience like that.  Someone who had asked me to teach their child some basic piano skills wanted to be sure that I wasn’t going to teach their child “Christian music”.  These are people who know that we are at THIS church, where we fly a flag of inclusion, where they hired ME, a divorced and remarried female as a pastor!  But part of being in exile is that people in the dominant culture do not bother to feel they have to get to know you.  They do not feel they need to understand you.  They can ascribe to you and put on you all kinds of assumptions and if you argue against those assumptions, they will, more likely than not, assume you are LYING or hiding the truth.

            I remember when we were in Canada and I was wearing a CVPC t-shirt.  A lesbian couple got into the elevator with us, saw my shirt and immediately began to talk loudly with one another about how horrible and judgmental Christians are.  We didn’t know them, I didn’t engage the conversation, I understand why they believed that, but it again showed that assumptions made about us are manifold.  And do not apply to the folk here at this church.

          This is what it is to be in exile: to be strangers in a culture that is not your own.  But we cannot go back.  And the myth of “the good old days” is exactly that: a great big myth.  I would hope that we don’t really want to return to a time of slavery, or Jim Crow laws.  I certainly don’t want to return to a time, not much more than 50 years ago, when women could not BE pastors.  That nostalgic glorifying of the past is never of the true story. 

            But like in the Mark passage for today, when things become difficult, when things become stormy and those waves of trouble and tribulation are threatening, people forget that they had goal of getting somewhere specific, of sailing to the other side, or traveling to a specific place with a specific hope and goal for the future.  Instead, they replace this goal with the goal of basic survival, of simply staying afloat.  We are not called to just survive.  We are not called, out of fear, to put down living until things can “return” to what they were.  We are called to remember that in our frantic running around, trying to “survive” as a church, that Jesus is still in the boat, probably “in the way” even – something that cannot be ignored or overlooked as we trip over him to try to trim the sails.  He is there, calling for our attention and our focus, asking us to remember our call to LIVE, no matter what the circumstances are that we may face.

           The Good News it manifold.  There will be a time when we will no longer be in exile.  God is with us no matter what is going on with us.  The journey is bigger and longer and more beautiful than we can imagine.  And we are called into life THIS day.  We are invited to live NOW.  None of that may be easy.  Living in exile is a challenge.  But it teaches us compassion and understanding for those of our brothers and sisters who are also in exile.  For those who are suffering, for those who are treated as less than, for those rejected and oppressed by society.  We are invited to learn in our exile, to live in our exile, to continue the journey and not just simply focus on survival.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.