Dangerous, angry times

     Aislynn and I went up to Old Sacramento on Saturday afternoon to have some mother-daughter time.  We went to the Crocker Art Museum and then walked down to the train museum and wharf to get some ice cream (because in my mind Old Sacramento means trains and ice cream).  As we walked into the ice cream store, we saw a sign in the middle of the entrance that read "Masks must be worn, as per state mandate.  Anyone failing to comply with this mandate will not be served."  We were wearing our masks, so not a big deal.  We walked up to the counter, ordered our ice cream and stepped aside for the next person to order.  Apparently the people who walked in behind us were not, however, wearing masks.  One of the workers (my guess is the manager) said to the woman behind me, "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but masks are required by state mandate within this facility.  Please put on a mask.  I believe I have one I can give you."  After a minute, though, he said, "Oh, I'm sorry.  It appears we have just run out.  If you do not have your own mask, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."  

    I don't know about you, but if I were asked to leave a facility, I would.  I would do it out of embarrassment if nothing else.  But also, I am lacking that sense of entitlement that some people apparently have.  This woman was one of those people.  "Well @#$% that!"  She said, "I'm not going anywhere!"

    She stepped up closer to the counter to order.  The worker said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but if you do not leave, I'm going to have to call the police."

    "You do that!" she said, and then proceeded to call him a list of nasty discriminatory slurs that I will not print here.  She then turned to two of the other workers insisting that they take her order.  The other workers both shook their heads and backed up, frankly looking a little scared.

    The first worker responded by saying that yep, the slur she had used absolutely applied to him, and that as a result he was better at certain graphicly described behaviors than she was.  He then repeated that if the woman did not leave, he was going to call the police.

    The woman responded by approaching the counter and knocking everything on it to the floor, spilling the tip jar, scattering coins, making a huge and violent ruckus.  The worker then bounded over the counter, the same counter that Aislynn and I were standing in front of (which we both quickly stepped back from), to move towards her, threatening to kill her at the same time and saying, "Don't think for a second that I won't do it!"  She laughed and ran out.

    Whew.  Situation over.  But frankly, Aislynn and I were so shaken by the incident that we did not have the ability to taste our ice creams at all.  

    While it is a challenge for me to NOT express some of my thoughts on all of this, today I am working hard to face that challenge because I don't see that as productive in this moment.  What I want to focus on instead is this: I think the divisions in our country and in our society, the divisions that I saw escalate in that store, reveal a much larger issue.  

    We have forgotten that we belong to one another.  We have forgotten that the person in front of you with whom you disagree is still your sister, is still your brother, is still your sibling.  We have forgotten that we are to be kind and loving to others, even when they disagree with us, even when we don't like what they believe or what they do, even when we are embarrassed or uneasy, or hurt.

    To put this a bit more forcefully: while it takes effort on our part to respond to anger with compassion, this is the job of being an adult.  Having no self-control or ability to respond to anger with a calm and listening presence can only increase the divisions and the struggles in our world.  To be kind, to be caring: these are not easy, but no one ever said that life would be easy.  Just as you can spread violence by reacting with more violence, you can spread kindness by reacting with a calm and caring presence.  YOU have the power to diffuse violent and scary situations with your very demeanor, with your caring, with listening deeply and responding with compassion.

    So once again we have a choice to make: do we add to the pain, anger, and panic of the world by responding in kind when others lose it?  Or can we be part of the solution and movement to make the world better by staying calm, by hearing one another, and by acting with love?  

    We won't always be able to do the right thing.  I know this.  As always, I'm preaching to myself here and I know that it is not easy to respond to nastiness, to hurtful comments or actions with kindness.  It takes practice.  But, for better or worse, we are getting a whole lot of practice of late!  So take it for the gift it is: to practice taking the high road in the face of anger.  People are stressed.  People are scared.  And ultimately, people are just people: flawed and trying to do the best they can in difficult circumstances.  Try to picture each person as your mother, or your sister, or your best friend: someone having a hard day.  You may disagree with them, but you can still love them.  

    If we can do anything to help the current situation in our culture, it's worth the effort.

    That interaction that Aislynn and I witnessed did not just upset the manager and the customer.  An ice cream store full of customers and employees were affected by what we experienced.  And while, fortunately, no one was hurt, things could have gotten worse, they could have escalated even more.  I am thankful that they didn't.  But also saddened that it happened at all.  It would have been so easy for either of the two main characters in this incident to take a different path.  The woman could have just left when asked to do so.  The manager could have stayed calm and just said, "I hear you are upset, but we are required to follow the law."  So much could have been done differently.  But it wasn't.  So I'm just taking the lesson for what it was: a chance to think through my own reaction for the next time someone acts out.  How will I respond?  How will you respond?  How will we make this world better together?  

Being Blessed

 

Genesis 27:1-4, 15-23; 28:10-17

Mark 9:38-50

John 1:50-51

               Today we hear a story about Jacob stealing his brother Jacob’s blessing from his father.  This follows after Jacob has stolen Esau’s birthright, too.  Jacob is a trickster, he is a con.  He lies, is disrespectful to his father, cheats his brother, schemes and steals and in every way is NOT the hero we would expect to be the patriarch of Israel, but in fact he is exactly that: the patriarch of Israel.  It is later in Genesis that Jacob’s name is changed, in fact, TO Israel. 

The truth is this whole story may seem very strange to us.  It may seem strange to us at many, many levels.  First of all, why can’t Isaac bless BOTH sons?  After all, they are twins.  Esau was born only minutes before Jacob.  What is this blessing that is so important but also so limited in who is to receive it and who can receive it?  And if it is created simply by a word, why can’t Isaac take back those words, change those words, amend those words?  If he was tricked by lies, why can’t he reciprocate and say the words spoken in response to a falsehood are therefore themselves false?  And then, why is it that God seems to bless Jacob, this trickster, to choose him to become Israel, to BE Israel and to lead the people forward?

These are all legitimate questions.  Real questions.  Some of which can be answered by saying that these ideas of blessings rested on social conventions which were difficult to challenge.  That the blessing was a promise of inheritance, in this case land and power.  That once those promises were made, the only thing that Isaac could then do would be to offer mitigating promises in addition. 

In terms of God’s response, Lewis Hyde stated, “Tricksters always appear where cultures are trying to guard their eternal truths, their sacred cows. New cultures spring up whenever some trickster gets past the guard dogs and steals those cows.”  And this is what Jacob does — He breaks the rules, creates a new pathway and therefore opens up possibilities.  The implication here, then, is that God uses tricksters to break us out of our cultural ruts, to challenge the paths we have gotten stuck on and to encourage us to see life and rules and even conventions from a new vantage point, one that is willing to alter, change and amend things.  In this case, Jacob actually challenges the idea that it is always the first son who gets everything.  In this case, Jacob and Esau were twins, born moments apart, so the idea that one son gets it all and the other nothing appears especially ridiculous.

But I think the bigger question for us today is what does it really mean to be blessed, in the first place?  I don’t mean what was this blessing that Jacob stole.  I mean, we all seek blessings, God’s blessings.  We want them.  We invoke them for others, “Bless you” we say when someone sneezes, which was supposed to be a way to ward off death.  But we also use it in other ways. “God bless you!” we say when we are leaving or sending someone off.  “Blessings,” we may say to sign our names at the end of correspondence.   We also use it in sentences such as “bless his heart” by which we often mean, “That person can’t change, won’t change, so the best we can do is bless him and send him on his way.”  

But again, what do we really mean by that?  And what really is a blessing?  We experience God’s blessing in places that we don’t expect, in places that don’t look familiar to us.  We also experience God’s blessings in ways that we don’t usually call blessings.  Jacob, though he stole the “blessing” from his brother, ended up out in the wilderness: running away from his family out of fear that Esau, out of anger, will hurt him.  He struggles, he does not have an easy life.  The “blessing” that he stole cost him everything that he valued, at least for a time.  And we know this often plays out for us as well: that which we strive for, work for the most, sometimes ends up costing us a great deal, costing us everything we thought we valued most. 

I remember reading this wondering article by Scott Dannemiller entitled, “The one thing Christian’s should stop saying” (click to read article):

Whew.  And Amen!

But it is also important to note that “blessing” does not mean ease of Life.  Jacob’s life after this is not easy.  Just as he tricked, so too will he be tricked.  He will be tricked by his uncle in trying to marry Rachel.  He will wrestle with God and be forever limping afterwards.  He will be tricked by his own sons who will try to kill his favorite, Joseph, and sell him into slavery instead, telling their father only that he has died.   

But still, is he blessed? 

Yes.  And not only by his father.  He is blessed by God’s presence with him, and that takes many forms.  Sometimes it is God’s presence in the struggles.  Sometimes it is God’s presence in the good times.  The blessing is the ability to experience God in those times, to hear God, to see God and to choose healing and growing that God offers.  The alternative is to become bitter, cynical, angry, cranky.

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”  Well, isn’t that an incredible blessing?

 

I think the bottom line is that when we say “blessing” what we mean is “gift”.  But our ideas of what are gifts, what comes to us through grace and not just LIFE, has to grow, has to expand a bit.  And the lesson for us today in this is that we should not miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way that we expect.

I’m reminded of a lovely poem by an unknown confederate soldier:

I asked God for strength that I might achieve.

I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things.

I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy.

I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.

I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.

I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

 

I want to end with a poem by Jan Richardson called

 

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you

who bear the light

in unbearable times,

who testify

to its endurance

amid the unendurable,

who bear witness

to its persistence

when everything seems

in shadow

and grief.

 

Blessed are you

in whom

the light lives,

in whom

the brightness blazes --

your heart

a chapel,

an altar where

in the deepest night

can be seen

the fire that

shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith,

in stubborn hope,

in love that illumines

every broken thing

it finds.

 

- Jan Richardson

 

The thing is, we are most richly blessed when we are giving and caring and loving others.  That is when we are most richly and most meaningfully blessed.  And that is a blessing we bring to and on ourselves through our own choices and our own decisions to care for and offer care for others.  This is a blessing we can claim for ourselves, not through the trickery of Jacob, not through the anger of Esau, but through the decision to love.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

The Assumptions We Make About Others Say More About Us

        I've said many times before that the things we attack in others are usually parts of our own shadow side: that part of ourselves that we cannot face we project outwards and seek to destroy in the other.  But to take this a step further, the assumptions we make about others also reflect much more on ourselves than they ever do about those our assumptions target or encompass.  We therefore betray our own worst selves with our assumptions.  

        I found myself reflecting on this more strongly yesterday.  My health insurance offers classes that you can take to reduce your co-pay and I'd taken one of their classes which happened to focus on forgiveness.  There were MANY wonderful suggestions about how to forgive in this class, but the one that I felt was most helpful and most profound still surfaces from time to time.  We were told to write down the story or scenario that was causing us to feel resentment, anger or any other long-held emotional baggage.  We were then to highlight or underline everything that we had stated as fact in our story.  Then, we were to take a huge step back and ask ourselves honestly, looking at each "fact", “Do I actually know this for sure?  Is this really a fact or is it my perception?”  If it was just a perception or if it was based on assumptions, we were to cross it off, and then write on a separate piece of paper what we know to be actually facts – the things that we know to be absolutely true.  So any motivations we assign to the other, any thoughts of the other, any feelings of the other - all of these we would have to cross out as things we could never actually know.  Any conversations that we "heard" about but weren't actually privy to, any stories we were told but didn't actually experience: all of these we would have to cross out.  Any assumptions we made about why things happened would have to go.  The only things that would be left would be just the facts of behaviors, what happened, what was said TO US.  Our assumptions even about what those words "actually meant" would also need to be crossed out.  Our interpretations of what was actually meant would have to be crossed out.  Then we were to write on a separate paper only those things then that were really facts.  And finally we were to get rid of the original story: burn it, shred it, whatever it takes.  

    This exercise is amazing and I would encourage each of you to try it.  

    In my own life, I recently found myself repeatedly having a conversation in my head with someone whom I had come to believe was intentionally hurting me.  What was ironic is that in this "conversation" she was making all sorts of assumptions about me that weren't true.  And I found myself becoming more and more upset about these assumptions she was making about me in my head.  (sigh).  Again, we can be our own worst enemies: and again putting out there onto other people what we are doing ourselves is oh-so-common a theme.  So I stopped.  And realized that I was getting upset because of assumptions that I was making.  I was assuming that she was assuming things that were just not true.  (As if that isn't confusing enough).  Thank you, God, for reminding me of this practice and also encouraging me, always, to look deeper at what my own assumptions had to tell me about myself (NOT about the other person!).

    My own assumptions spoke to me of my fear: fear of being misunderstood, fear of not being given the benefit of the doubt, fear of never being forgiven for being the human me that I am, fear of always being a disappointment and never being enough.  Once I was able to dig down that deep, I was also able to remind myself that I don't believe God calls us to be perfect.  We are just called to be who we are, and to strive to grow in love, compassion and the ability to offer grace to others.  That's all we can do.  That's all we can be.  I believe God cares more about our efforts to be kind than about being "right", and God certainly cares more about out intentions to be loving than about our efforts to be perfect.  And THAT reminder has allowed me to let go of the assumptions that have been fueling this imagined and internal conversation with this other person.

    I don't know what has led to the behaviors of the other that caused me pain.  Until the other chooses to talk to me about it, I can't know.  I am going to stop trying to guess, stop trying to make assumptions that I can't validate or check out.  I will rest in the grace of God and stop trying to guess about someone else's thinking.  That's the best I can do for now.  

    I encourage you all to likewise put aside assumptions.  The practice of discerning what is a "guess" and what is a fact is an amazing practice.  I wonder if more of us did this what we might be able to accomplish in the world in terms of peace-making, reconciliation and healing.  Until we try it, we will never know.

Expectations of Clergy And Other People of Faith

            I've heard several people lately say something to the affect that they left the church at some point in their lives because of the way other people in the church behaved.  They left because of a pastor, or because of the way members of the congregation behaved towards the pastor, or they left simply because members of the congregation were unkind towards other members of the congregation.  And the conclusion of each of these folk was something along the lines of "people in the church shouldn't behave that way."  After all, if we strive to follow God, shouldn't that make us better?

            I've been sitting with this question for years, actually.  It's common that people leave because of the hypocrisy they see in the church: so after a pastor messes up, or after mean people in the church do something unkind, or because of the judgmental stance of some churches or congregations.  Shouldn't we who profess to follow a loving, compassionate, gracious God work harder to do right?  To avoid hurting people?  To build people up and care about those who need our care?  Shouldn't our weekly time remembering what we are called to do and who we are called to be make some difference in our lives?

          My answer has changed over the years, some, but here it is as I think now:  Yes, our time in the church should make us better.  But it should not make us better than other people.  It should just make us better than we ourselves might have been had we not been in that place of remembrance and support for being the best we can be.  None of us will ever be perfect.  And I don't think we can ever compare ourselves to other people.  The best we can do is compare ourselves to ourselves.  Have we grown to be more loving, more forgiving, more gracious than we were before?  Or than we might otherwise have become?    

        I think about what Jesus himself said on this subject, (Luke 5:31-32): "Jesus answered, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do.  I didn’t come to call righteous people but sinners to change their hearts and lives.”  

        People come to church for many reasons.  But for many of us, it is because we are striving to be the people God calls us to be and we know we need the help and support of the community, of the time of worship and joint commitment to serve the poor and oppressed.  We need the time together to both reflect and work together to bring justice and peace to the world.  We can't do it on our own, or certainly we can't do it as well on our own.  For those who can, more power to them.  For the rest of us, our time in community and in church is essential for us to be the best we can be, for us to continue on the journey to be more whole, more caring and more loving.  That's all we can do.  We will never reach that goal, we will never be perfect.  But church allows us to grow towards it, to remember to self-reflect and work harder to be better.

        Some of what angers people is how big the mistakes are that some people within churches make.  I understand that.  But I have two responses to this.  First, I don't think God ranks "mistakes" or "sins" (to use a churchier word) in the same way that we do.  In the ten commandments, for example, murder is not listed as a worse sin than forgetting to take a day of rest.  I want you to think about that for a minute.  Murder is not ranked higher in the ten commandments than forgetting to honor the Sabbath.  There's no "ranking" of sins in scripture.  WE do that.  WE rank things and sometimes we really get those rankings off in some very strange ways.  Some Christians think that loving someone they have decided is inappropriate is worse than murder, for example.  We know this because they will KILL LGBTQ folk and feel justified in doing so.  But God wants wholeness for us and that means working for good in every aspect, working towards love and care, compassion and understanding in every way.  When we fail, we fail.  God forgives and we move on, hopefully having learned from the mistake.  

         The second thing I want to say about that is that again, we cannot be comparing people against other people: only against themselves.  And since we do not know what they would have been like had they NOT been in church, who are we to say that church has made no difference for them?  We can't know this.  

        Churches are human creations.  And as such they will be imperfect just as humans are imperfect.  They are there to build up, to honor God, to create community, to encourage us to be the church in the world, lifting up the oppressed, empowering the poor.  We who are in the church are part of that.  But because we are part of it, church will reflect our gifts, and our weaknesses.  We continually strive to do better, to make church better.  But it will never be perfect just as we as individuals will never be perfect.  

         I say again, church will make no person perfect.  It just won't.  But it can help.  At least it can help some of us.  And that's enough for me.    

Weird Gifts, or Answered Prayer

      I was going through my unposted blog writings yesterday.  I write a lot, but much of it I discard as not appropriate for the public eye, or too personal at times, or easy to misinterpret, or simply unfinished: I never found the time or the words to finish the post so it was never officially posted.  But I sometimes go through the old half-finished posts, and occasionally I will find a writing that I want to revisit, edit, finish or rewrite into something that I can post.  

     Yesterday I found something I wrote in 2017: "I'm really missing my lectionary group in Cleveland these last few months.  I miss their friendship, their camaraderie, their support, their wisdom, their commitment to action, their faithfulness and their steadfast presence in my life.  The group size changed while I was there as life circumstances moved some away and brought others in, but we were a solid 12 most of the six and a half years I was in Cleveland.  We met every week to study scripture, to offer each other support and care, to share food and to pray together.  We were a house church in the truest sense of that word: a small community of folk studying, working, praying and eating together: boosting each other up for the work we would do in our churches and in the world. I miss that. I think we are called to have that kind of supportive 'house church' kind of small community. It has been difficult to create something like that among my pastor colleagues here (I probably shouldn't say this, but Bay Areans tend to get much of our self-worth from being busy and needed, which means taking the time to be with people, to slow down and simply study scripture and pray together weekly is hard to make happen).  But this makes me very aware of the real gift that it was for me, and that it continues to be, for those who are a part of it."

      I found that writing.  And it was weird for me because I realized that that was a prayer, a request, an ask of God and the universe.  It was a need, not just a want, to have that kind of community.  And while God's timing is never my own, it was a prayer that was, in fact, answered.  And it wasn't answered by a substitute, it was answered by the real thing.  What I mean is that when the pandemic started and everyone moved their normal meetings to Zoom, my lectionary group in Cleveland moved their meetings to Zoom also and then invited those of us who had moved away to rejoin them.  I joined back right away and have been faithful in meeting with them weekly, even though their 9:30am Eastern meeting time means I have needed to be up, dressed, showered and ready by 6:30am Pacific time every Tuesday morning.

      I have said on many occasions that re-meeting with my lectionary group has been the greatest of the pandemic gifts for me.  I want to be clear: I am NOT saying the pandemic is a good thing.  What I am saying is that there are gifts to be found in every crisis, in every difficulty.  And for me, this ability to be part of this group again was the best of the gifts I received during this time.  And even though other groups have started to re-meet in person, our lectionary group has continued to meet through Zoom, which means I am still able to delight in this gift that has been so valuable to me.  

      I want to acknowledge that I recognize there are losses (for them, but also for me) in meeting like this.  The "eating together" part of the group no longer happens as we meet on Zoom.  Side one-on-one conversations really can't happen in the Zoom format, which means that the individual connections and closenesses maybe aren't as strong.  I miss those things too, as I'm sure they do.  I used to meet more one-on-one with a few of the folk in addition to the weekly group and we don't do that anymore.  But the gifts in weekly community, weekly "church" for me, weekly connection to other pastors, weekly study, weekly prayer in this way: those gifts just can't be underestimated or understated.  Seeing my old writing, my old lament, reminded me again of just what an amazing gift, not one I can ever take for granted, this has been.  

        It also called me to look again at some of the other prayers that have been answered, sometimes without my acknowledgement or even awareness.  I've shared this story before, but to say again: my uncle was angry at me (over a misunderstanding that I could not correct) for years.  I had tried to reconcile it without luck.  But I continued to pray, constantly, for that relationship to heal.  I prayed for ten years.  Out of the blue, almost 10 years after that rift had taken place, he decided to let it go and we were able to reconcile.  That happened just two months before he died, unexpectedly, of a heart attack.  That was an answer to prayer for which I will always be incredibly grateful.  

    The ability to take on this job at Clayton Valley, at exactly the point in time when my kids were each graduating from a different school, to move back home, to be present for my parents as my mom's health needs escalated, and to start my work here: that too was an incredible answer to prayer.

    I could go on and on with examples, but there is a point I'm wanting to make here.  I lifted up my lament about my lectionary group in 2017.  That was answered in 2020.  I lifted up prayers about my uncle for about 10 years before that reconciliation happened.  My journey to Clayton Valley was also long: certainly longer than I had planned.  As I've said before, God's timing is not my timing. 

     I currently have a hand-full of desperate prayers on the table.  And I can become frustrated, scared, sad when I am not seeing an answer to those prayers.  But my job, as always, is to keep lifting them up:  to do what is in front of me to be done: to do my part, what I can do.  Sometimes prayers are answered with ideas about what else we can do to move forward.  So it is also my part to listen.  To listen for movement, for wisdom, for guidance.  And finally, it is my part to trust and to wait.  Because the big prayers, the really important ones all have been answered.  That is my history, that is my experience.  I have to trust that the God who has made my life good and strong and healthy to this point will be the God who will answer my prayers when the time is right, a time rarely to be recognized or determined by me.  

    The reminders of the gifts I have received, the prayers that have been answered, the many wondrous experiences, connections, reconciliations, and healings that have come - those reminders, those memories are empowering and are the foundation on which I must stand with patience for the journey.  For sometimes the journey is long and the wait feels eternal.  But I can look back and remember that in the scheme of things, the wait has also had lessons within it.  And the journey has also been deeply valuable and full of experiences, learnings, and other gifts.    

    Hang in there, my friends.  And keep your eyes open to seeing God in this place, in this time.

If a certain category of people are always a problem for you, perhaps the problem is you.

          I found myself today remembering a kid I grew up with who had trouble in school every year.  Every single year the mantra was, "My teacher is mean to me."  "My teacher doesn't listen."  "My teacher doesn't care."  Eventually, he decided that all teachers were just unfeeling, un-listening, uncaring people.  His parents supported this attitude.  I remember often seeing them on campus, headed in to talk to teachers, to the principal, to administrators.  While as a child I was rarely privy to these conversations, I can remember coming in from recess one day in time to hear the parents shrieking at the teacher with whom they had been meeting that "All teachers at this school have it in for our child!"  I was in 6th grade at that point: old enough to realize that all his teachers probably had had conversations about this boy.  I was able to suppose that those conversations probably did set each one up at some level to be predisposed to see the worst in him. I wondered if any of them had given him a fair chance.  I wondered if they didn't begin by being impatient and a little stern with him from the get-go based on what they already "knew" of the boy. 

         As a kid myself, I don't remember being able to expand my thinking too much beyond that.  It didn't, for example, occur to me to remember that this boy was not just difficult in the classroom but out at recess, too.  Nor did I remember that he was a person all the rest of us kids avoided at any cost because he was mean and demanding, loud and pushy.   

         It also didn't occur to me to realize that I'd had many of the same teachers that this boy had had and that my experience of them towards myself had been consistently positive.  I wasn't able to have a wide enough vision to see that the common denominator in all of these interactions was the boy, not the individual teachers.  But then, I was a kid, and I identified more strongly with other children.  The school understood the situation better.  But again, because of previous interactions with the boy, I am certain the teachers as well as the administrators did approach this child with at least a little un-ease, and no doubt each year a pre-conceived idea of who he was, a bias.  In every interaction there are at least two people.  Therefore when there is conflict, when there are problems, at least two people have a part in those problems.  Sometimes the responsibility is more heavily weighted towards one side or the other, but where there is human interaction, both sides have at least a little culpability.  So, I'm certain the teachers were not completely blameless in this situation.  This kid obviously had problems and approaching him as someone in need of help rather than as just a problem to be dealt with might have changed the dynamic immensely.  But I write from the place of knowing I was a kid at the time, not privy to the exchanges of the adults, and certainly not knowledgeable about what had been tried, or what even could have been done.  I also know that we've come a long way in understanding the challenges our kids face and in finding appropriate ways to deal with them.  Resources exist now that simply weren't available when I was young.  It's easy to be condemning of the past and fail to remember that time has taught us some things.

        But my point here is that it was not easy for the parents or the child to see that if the kid was the one having an issue with all of these teachers, while other children were not having issues with all of these teachers, that chances were good that the kid contributed something to the problem.  They were so busy attacking and categorizing "all teachers" as uncaring, unfeeling, and unkind that they could use this label "teacher" to divide the world into the good and bad, with "teacher" being on the bad side.  Just as the teachers probably approached this kid with some preconceived ideas, this boy and his family approached "teacher" with a lot of preconceived ideas.  

        They all came with their tunnel vision to the conversations.  And while it was probably easy for an entire school to band together in mutual condemnation of this boy and his family, it was also amazingly easy for the boy and his parents to band together in a conviction that it was "all the teachers" in the school that were at fault.  From that place, there wasn't going to be a whole lot of movement on either side towards reconciliation, healing, change or growth.  There just wasn't.  

      Condemnation is easy.  Labeling is easy.  Deciding that one side is wrong/bad and the other side right/good makes the world neat and tidy.  In this scenario, I know who my friends are and I know who my enemies are.  I know what to think and believe.  I know who to trust and who to fear.  I know where to place my anger and my disappointment with the world, and I know where to look for salvation and hope.  I know who to convict and who to redeem, and I know that to be loyal means to choose the clear-cut side I've come to believe is always the right side.

      Oh, if only that matched reality in any way!

      The truth is so much more complicated.  But truth is very, very hard.  No one of us will EVER have a complete grasp of truth, because truth includes everyone's experiences, and opinions and feelings.  We will never have everyone's experiences and opinions and feelings so none of us will ever grasp the full truth.  Truth is also hard because it involves seeing that everyone has good gifts, and everyone has faults.  Everyone does some things right, and everyone makes mistakes, whether they are able to see them or not.  The best any of us can do is to keep trying to do better.  The best any of us can do is to keep searching for genuine understanding.  But let me just say the obvious here:

      Genuine understanding is not easy.  And it is far too easy for us to avoid seeking it.  If we were to seek genuine understanding, we'd have to expand our views.  If we were to strive to listen to the other side, or to engage those with whom we are angry, we might have to change.  If we were to open our eyes to a bigger vision that goes beyond us and them, black and white, my side and your side, we might have to face the reality that we aren't always right, or good.  And we might have to admit that we have not always been just to people who have deserved to be treated better.  

      This seems like such a hardship for most humans.  And that makes me very sad.  But my commitment this day is to try harder to see the greys, and to hear the other side of things.  My commitment is to be quicker to say "I'm sorry" and to forgive the other, but also faster to forgive myself for my part in conflicts (because, really, it is easier to face the truth of our errors if we know there will be forgiveness for them!). My commitment is to not just take the easy way of deciding who is right and who is wrong, but to recognize that everyone in a conflict is both right and wrong.  Everyone comes with stories and histories and everyone is in need of healing, reconciliation and forgiveness.  That's all I can do.  I can't change anyone else, but I can strive to do my part.

In the Beginning

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

John 1:1-5

               Today we have two very interesting passages that talk about the beginning of the world.  We have this story in Genesis, which tells us so much more about God and the nature of creation than it does about the hows of creation.  We learn from this story that God is creative, that this is the very nature of God to create, to make new, to shape. We also learn that God has a vision before acting, and that the very images of God begin the process of creating.  We learn that God speaks and the world is created, that it is in speaking, or moving thoughts out of ourselves through words that creation happens.  We learn that God values the passing of time and chooses to mark it with days and nights, and that God sees value in both light and dark, in days and nights.  We see that God values life and delights in huge diversity, creatures of the sea, animals that fly, creatures of the land, with so many different types and kinds.  We learn that God wanted relationship and creatures called humans who could be companions and have genuine interactions with God, ones that God would recognize as reflecting Godself.  We hear that the plan was not for killing, even for food, in the original.  Instead, to all animals and people was given the grasses and the seeds and fruit. We see that the work of creating is God’s work and is important, but that rest is also important.  And finally and most importantly, we come to see that all of this was made supremely good.  That creation, that earth, that life, that all animals and plants and stars and the moon and sun: all are very, very good.  Original blessing: something much stronger, by the way than any kind of “original sin” because it comes from God-self.  We learn therefore to appreciate and value the beautiful and wondrous creation that God has made, to not take it for granted, to not abuse it or mistreat it, but to honor it as the very creation of our good and loving and awesome God.  

                Breathe that in!  The awe, the wonder, the amazement.  It is good.  You are good.  The earth is good.  We were made good by God’s Words, by God’s WORD.  And we have been gifted by our time here; our time of work and our time of rest.  We have been blessed by the beauty of relationships and connection to God and to all living things.  We are part of this wondrous and amazing creation!  In Isaiah God said it this way, “Be glad forever and rejoice in what I create… for I create my people to be a delight.”  I invite you to just sit with that for a moment, sit in the awe and wonder of what God has created just by speaking.

               And then we come to the second scripture, the passage from John, which also talks about creation, about the beginning of everything and the vision for who God is, who we are and who we are to be together.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being.  What came into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”               This is such an incredible, beautiful passage.  But I want to start this section by asking you, what do you think this passage actually means?  Why “the Word”?  Just past this passage in John we learn that “the Word” is Jesus: Verse 14: The Word became flesh and made his home among us. “  But why?  How do you feel about this passage?

            As you saw during children’s time, charades, while a really fun game, can also be a really difficult or challenging game.  Especially when the phrases you are acting out include names, or places.  And what makes charades, or even games like Taboo hard is the limitation on our words, the words we can’t use, or the words we can’t say. 

           I think about Helen Keller.  She contracted scarlet fever when she was 20 months old and became both deaf and blind.  Because of this, her life became one of wildness, isolation and frustration.  When she was six, the family hired Anne Sullivan who came and began to teach Helen sign language into her hand in order to teach her how to communicate with others.  It took a long time for Helen to even understand what Anne was trying to do.  But once she understood, her life changed completely.  Through communication – through words, though not “spoken” words they were still words, she was able to earn a college degree and become a successful lecturer.  More importantly, she was able to have relationships with other people, lifelong friendships, connections.

           Communication is never easy.  We misunderstand one another so often.  We mishear, mis-interpret, misunderstand.  We misread people’s body language, or people’s intent.  We mis-speak or phrase or frame things in ways that are sometimes easy to misunderstand.  Those misunderstandings are the primary cause of human distress, conflicts, problems.  And the only solutions to those miscommunications are more words, are more communication, are intentional talking. 

           We also at times misuse our words for bad.  Words can be weapons.  While words create, they create relationships, they create dynamics, they create our world, the ways we use our words sometimes create in negative or harmful ways.  We can create relationships in need of healing, or dynamics that are negative.  We can bully each other, put each other down, destroy egos and community with our words.  We can do so much damage if we are not intentional, graceful and loving with our words. 

           Our words can also be simply confusing and unclear, especially for children.  Someone passed on to me this story, apparently from the movie, My Queen: “A visiting aunt, who is a nun, gave her little niece communion. It was basically just for fun, playing. She put the wafer on the child’s tongue and said, “Corpus Christi”. The kid asked what that meant. The aunt replied, “The Body of Christ.” Alarmed, the kid made a sour face and violently spit it out. In the next scene, though, the kid was baptizing her pet, and because she didn’t know the Latin that her aunt used, she spoke funny gibberish (shubba dubba…).”  We know this is a true story.  Our kids do not always understand our words, and frankly neither do the adults in our lives.

          And yet, despite the possibilities for errors and misunderstandings and harm of our words, still we return to this passage: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being.”

      The word “WORD” in the Bible means more than language.  As one commentator said it, “logos, is a rich and nuanced word, meaning mind or rationality, but also speech or communication…. In Jesus, God speaks God’s mind.”  (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.)  The mind that God speaks is creation, is creative, is love, is grace.  All was made through the Word.  But it is more than that.  It is also revelation and reconciliation.  Revelation is a revealing, an opening, a showing us who God is.  Reconciliation is a healing, a coming to understand one another, and a coming through that understanding to love one another and heal the breaches between us.  All of this is part of “word”.  A Word that speaks truth and opens up to us what we cannot see.  And a Word that brings understanding and healing, opening us to understand that which we do not understand in one another.  All of this is encompassed in the “WORD”.

This Word existed, we are told, from the beginning.  We knew God and God knew us.  God created through words.  God SAID “let there be light” and there was.  God SAID, “Let there be a dome…and it happened that way.”  “God SAID, ‘Let the waters swarm…”  “God said, “let the earth produce…” and thus it was.  God SAID, and it happened.   The WORD that was with God and the WORD that was God created it all with words, with THE Word.  Nothing and no one existed outside the word of God.  Nothing and no-one existed outside the creative, life-giving purposes of the Word.  Nothing has existence outside of the WORD.  It is the Word that tells us who, what and when because it is the Word that created who, what and when. 

In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Magician’s Nephew, Aslan created the new world by singing.  He brought into being the world, all it’s creatures, all it’s form through singing, speaking.  But unlike what CS Lewis said, this passage from John says that the Word is Jesus and that Jesus, as the Word, is God.  So the Words made the world, but the words themselves are not the world – instead God is the Word that made the world. 

It was the Word that created.  And then it was the Word that reconciles, reveals and redeems.  With the birth into this world of the Word, our knowing God, our understanding of God is different and everything else is different too.  Jesus as the Word then is the embodiment of revelation and reconciliation.  He is the embodiment of the creative energy that makes everything new, that reveals who God is, and that reconciles us to one another.

 When I think of words, I think first and foremost about communication.  And the key aspect of communication is that it only happens in community, in relationship.  This is, again, a strong statement about God as community and relationship, God as the author of community and relationship, and relationship being central.  In the beginning was God and the Word, and yet they are one.  They are relationship, they exist in relationship, and they create through relationship, through Words, through the Word, through speaking.

  So what is the message in all of this?  First, that God created and continues to create.  God creates through Words, through the Word, through communication with us and with all of creation.  God continues to speak, to reach out to reveal and reconcile.  That is God’s nature as shown to us through the creation and through Jesus.  We are created in and for community, for connection.  And that community and connection happens as our words of love and creation happen.  We are made in God’s image, called to use words to create, to build, to reimagine, to reveal just as God used the Word for the same purpose. 

               Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Waters Shall Break Forth in the Wilderness

 

Isaiah 35:4-7a

Mark 7:24-37

 

Over and over, people were told not to bother Jesus.  The children were told to go away, Jairus was told not to bother the teacher, women were scorned for talking to him and despised for trying, others who were “less desirable” were told to go away. 

At some level I think we understand this.  Jesus was seen as very important.  And his time was understood to be, therefore, very valuable.  The disciples understood that he had a mission and they didn’t’ want Jesus to be bothered with those who were “beneath” him.  They didn’t want him distracted or his precious time used up by people whom they didn’t see as valuable or important to Jesus’ work or mission.  It’s like people keeping homeless folk from talking to the President.  The same idea: he is important, they are seen as “less so”.

In this case, the woman we only know as a “Greek” woman, “Syrophoenician by birth” approaches Jesus and even Jesus seems to want to send her away.  And he doesn’t just tell her that he only came to serve the Jews, which is what he was intending to communicate, he also insults her in one of the worse possible ways.  Today being called a dog or being called a female dog is highly insulting.  It was not any less so in Jesus’ time.  To tell her that he is there to feed the children, the Jews, and it isn’t right to throw the food to the dogs, is highly insulting.  Even Jesus, it would seem from this comment, had moments where he couldn’t seem to escape the pervasive humanness of ranking people. 

               We all rank people.  All of us do.  Years ago now, I remember going to visit a parishioner who was in an extended care facility and when I walked into the room, I saw an older person in a wheel chair sitting next to the parishioner.  I had no problem joining them in conversation, interrupting their time together because I made assumptions – she was either a family member, or maybe another patient who had wandered in to talk.  I felt okay entering their group for a few minutes as long as I could “rank” them in this way.  But when it turned out that she was actually the physical therapist, then I felt that I had imposed on her time.  And I excused myself.  She “ranked higher” as one of the staff at the hospital, and my time with the patient took a back seat.  But as I left, it caused me to think for a few minutes about how I rank people. 

I experienced this from the other side when my last congregation housed families for a couple weeks at a time in a program very similar to our “Winter’s Nights” program.  I learned to avoid telling our guests that I was the pastor because my experience had been that once they knew that, they would often treat me differently.  And while that different treatment tended to be greater respect, I still didn’t want it.  Life sometimes separates us into the haves and have-nots, but I’m all too aware that that line can be all too easily crossed.  My being the pastor there, and someone with a home and income did not and does not make me “better” or more worthy of respect, attention, or care than any of the guests or helpers who were here.  And that singling out, that difference in treatment made me uneasy.  We are all children of God.  I am not more deserving of respect because of my status here. 

Another pastor friend of mine told me of a time when he was mopping the floor in the church kitchen when several of the church deacons came in.  “Oh no, pastor!  That is not for YOU to do!” they exclaimed, again with the same “You are too good for this work!” attitude, one he worked actively to eradicate, but one that was extremely hard to stamp out. 

When I lived in Ohio, I was part of a small ecumenical pastors’ group that met once a month (this is a different group from my weekly lectionary group).  Our churches were all within the same small town in the Cleveland suburbs and we worked on mission projects in the community together: feeding, summer children’s camps, etc..  One time when we met I remembered talking about what an amazing group of pastors we had in this area, who worked so very well together and were really and truly colleagues and friends to one another.  One of the other pastors commented that yes, in other ministerial groups of which he had been a part, there had often been a lot of “posturing” between the pastors, with some trying to claim an upper hand, or more prominence based on things like the size of their congregations, the work their churches did, or how long they had been in ministry.  I frankly do not understand that choice.  We should all have the humility to see that we are all children of God.  That posturing is an arrogance that is unbefitting to those who would serve God. 

Our own Anti-Racism group recently finished reading the book, Caste, in which the author, Isabel Wilkerson talks about the cultural ranking of people that we have in this society.  We know these ranks because we are taught them in extremely covert ways throughout our lives by our communities: These are not innate rankings, but socially prescribed and socially created rankings that have become entrenched in our society.  Women are ranked under men, children are ranked under adults, people with money are ranked higher than those without, people who have white collar jobs tend to be ranked above blue collar jobs, the homeless are ranked extremely low.  And people of color are often on the very bottom of our ranking systems.

But Jesus shows us a different way.  Jesus stepped in time and time again when the disciples would push someone away, send someone away, and tell them to leave Jesus alone.  Again and again Jesus had to stop that action on the part of his disciples, “let the little children come to me” he said, and “leave her alone.  She is doing a good thing for me.”  Those who were outcast, considered unclean because of illness and infirmity were given his special attention.  Those who were ranked on the bottom of the culture at the time, those assumed to be damaged because they deserved to be damaged were not beneath his notice but were the targets of his notice.  The second story in the gospel today, about the deaf man is one such story.  He, too would have been seen as “less than” and would have been pushed away: it would have been assumed that his infirmity was a sign that he was less worthy.  But Jesus took the time to heal him, not only restoring his physical disability, but also restoring him to right relationship within his community.  He specifically and intentionally chose to give attention and care to those everyone else in the culture ranked lower.  Also notice that he confronted a basic idea of what it meant to be “deserving”.  Jairus and his daughter and the women with the hemorrhage may not have been “deserving” of Jesus’ healing according to the codes of the time, or by any other ranking.  But we are told very little about them.  We don’t know if they were “deserving” or not.  What we do know is that Jesus didn’t ask.  He offered the gifts he had, of healing, of time, of attention and care, to all of them despite knowing or not knowing whether or not they deserved it. 

I love this story of the Syrophoenician woman, even though it was a hard conversation, a painful conversation that he had with this woman.  I love it because it is through that conversation that we hear clearly that Jesus’ mission was now to everyone,  not just the Jews, and that the last “rank” -in this case the differences in religion, geography and even ethnicity, were destroyed.  They no longer applied.  “Rank” or “Caste” were thrown out.

In today’s passage from Isaiah we hear another passage of reversals.  “The eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf will be cleared.  The lame will leap like the deer, and the tongue of the speechless will sing.  Waters will spring up in the desert and streams in the wilderness.  The burning sand will become a pool, and the thirsty ground, fountains of water.”  Those things that are harmed or damaged will be healed.  And that expands beyond the physical.  Those who have been held down will be raised up, and those who have been ranked lower will be found to be equally respected and valued children of God. 

We are called to be part of this new ordering of our world.  We, too, are called to bring healing, reconciliation, and to do away with the rankings that separate us and which leave some better off than others.  So what does that look like for us? 

Well, what are your gifts?  What are your resources?  And to whom do you offer them?  If you have the gift of music, do you play for those who can’t afford the cost of a ticket to come see you perform?  If you have the gift of resources, do you share them, with those who are ranked as less, on the bottom according to society?  If you have the gift of healing, do you offer to heal even those who can’t pay the usual doctor’s fee?  The list goes on.  The confrontation to our own choices and behaviors goes on as well.

I have shared with you before that at another church where I served, our congregation had become very close to an unhoused man who at one point fell and was put in the hospital with serious damage.  We found that because he could not pay, most of the hospital staff ignored him unless church members were there to push for his care. 

In one of the congregations where I served I also remember a person who was very socially awkward being treated very subtly but consistently as a second class citizen.  He was ranked as “less than” and he was treated as “less than” by the other members of the congregation.

We are called to confront that kind of treatment and to remind the world that we are all loved children of God, none valued more than another despite the way we would treat and value people differently.

I am so grateful for this community of people who treat each other, despite our differences, as people deserving of respect and care.  I am so deeply appreciative of your kindness to one another, the respect you show one another.  We are called to continue that in every place that we go with everyone that we encounter.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.