I Often Get It Wrong

     I was thinking this morning about how many times I have misunderstood the nuance of what someone is saying to me.  I think all people do this.  I think neuro-atypical people undoubtedly do it more often. But it's something I work on, and as a result, it catches me by surprise when I've once again missed the nuance.  

    Interestingly, it happens in both directions.  What I mean is that there are times when I hear a "slight" in what someone has said to me that they did not intend.  This probably is a result of the "rejection sensitivity dysphoria" that I carry with me: people with rejection sensitivity dysphoria do tend to hear rejection or dismissal more than others do, even when it was not intended.  But there are also times when I hear something as a compliment that wasn't meant to be so.  This is much rarer, but it does happen.  And again, it's usually only afterwards, sometimes by a long time, when I finally catch up and realize that wasn't actually how their comment was meant.  

    Today I realized that when someone said to me at a memorial service where I officiated three years ago, "I really wish we'd been able to hear more from you in the service," that it wasn't meant as a compliment to what I might have said.  I explained at the time that the spouse of the person who had died was very clear that he did not want a homily or pastoral words during the service.  But still, I also said, "Thank you," since I heard it as "I wanted to hear more what you would have said."  And this morning I suddenly woke up realizing that it had nothing to do with me.  The man who said it wanted a homily.  That was all.  Didn't matter who it was who was officiating.  He was complaining about the lack of a pastoral message in the service.  He was not saying he liked what I had to say and wished I'd said more.  Huh.  

    Still, as I think about the times that I have mistakenly heard a comment as a compliment, I realize that it has never been a bad thing and has often led to a positive outcome even though I had mistaken the nuance.  For example, the time when someone said, "Wow you are really intense" and I laughed because indeed, I really am, rather than getting offended.  It changed the trajectory of the conversation from one that might have become defensive, to one that was amiable and positive.  In the situation I shared above, my saying "thank you" and again, hearing it as a compliment rather than as a complaint meant that I was able to explain the situation in a positive way, rather than a defensive one.  

    My point?  Personally, I want to do better at erring towards hearing things in a positive light since I don't find negative outcomes as a result of doing so.  In contrast, when I do become hurt or defensive in response to something someone has said, it never goes well.  So my point is also for all of us to try to work harder to see the good: to see the good in one another, to hear the good in what people say, to look for God (to put in theologically) in every interaction.  And then to respond in that way: to what is good, to what is kind, to what is God's leading, God's caring, God's light shining from the person in front of us.  I know, all too well, that this is not easy.  But it is a gift to all of us when we do that.

Parenting Part III

     The last two days I've written about the parenting challenges I've been having with my son and my youngest child.  Now we come to the eldest.  At 24, Eldest (they/them pronouns) really is an adult.  Sort of. Regardless of their status, I find Eldest the hardest to write about and yet for the last couple years Eldest has been the one I've been most concerned about.  They are the hardest to write about because it is not as easy to write about parenting them without betraying personal information that they would not be comfortable with my sharing in this format.  With Youngest, I wrote about a situation she is in that I have found challenging.  With Middle, I wrote about our relationship from my perspective.  But with Eldest?  My concerns about Eldest have much more to do with personal factors.  So I will do my best not to be "revealing" while still sharing the challenges of being a parent to my first child.

     Eldest is currently living at home.  They are attending an on-line graduate school.  That is their "work" for now and it made sense, then, for them to save money by living at home while attending school.  But this has been challenging for both of us.  

    In many ways parenting adults is harder than parenting kids in that we can step in when our kids are young, we can "take control" when we see that things are not right, we can insist on doing things a certain way.  When they are adults, it is not as easy.  I still weigh in, I can't help but do so.  However, that is as far as I can take it, especially with my 24-year-old. So when they make decisions that I think are unhealthy, even hurtful for themselves or others, I can say my piece but then I have to let it go.  That is hard. In some ways we've worked this through. The first year Eldest was home was really tough.  I had a hard time letting go of expectations for their involvement in certain activities that I felt were family activities and family commitments, for example.  But we did work that through.  I've been able to adjust my expectations so that now, if they decide to accompany us on something that I previously would have said was a "family event" I am very pleasantly surprised.  If they don't, that's their choice. It took work on my part to step back, but I've done it and so that part feels better.  

    But there remain these areas where I have a much harder time letting alone.  I have wishes for all of my children that I don't think are outrageous: I want them to interact with their world in ways that are positive and helpful.  I want them to find work that is, ideally, meaningful, but even if it isn't meaningful, I hope that it will be satisfying work for them.  I want them to have dreams and visions and to work towards those ends. I want them to have friends and positive, healthy relationships with others. I want them to have a spirituality that is life-giving and meaningful to them. I want them to pursue positive and healthy activities with their free time. But more than all of these, or maybe as a sum of all of these, what I really hope for them is that they are functional and have joy in their lives.  

    What happens, then, when they aren't?  When all of my hopes for them are not being fulfilled and when I cannot help them because they don't want my help, don't want to hear what I have to say, don't want to take my advice, don't want my interference, and don't want to do any of the things that I "know" would help?  I've tried so many different approaches: sharing articles, my own struggles, stories I've heard. Mostly I've just been direct.  But I can't fix this.  I cannot make my adult children make better choices, and I cannot help fix things or improve situations that they don't want me to fix.  And wow, is it hard to let that go!

    As I've said many times before, their pain is my pain.  When they hurt, I hurt.  So my job here is two-fold.  First, I need to learn to be okay with hurting for my kids and not trying to fix it.  I need to learn to sit in the pain and not try to move it out for my own sake.  

    Secondly, I have to learn how to love from a distance: to figure out how to live my own life and how to find my own sense of wholeness and joy, even when I see them struggling.  This second one is really tough.  

    There is a song that I first heard a few year ago now that used to remind me of my son, but now reminds me of number one child.  It's called "little flower" and some of the words that move me so deeply include: 

                                                            "I won't walk beside you. 

I won't take you home.  

But I'll hold your heart from a distance 

as all your blossoms come and go....

And when you wake all alone in the darkness

As the autumn winds are blowing cold

You might hear a voice in the distance

A love that never let you go"

    Eldest is with me, but in so many ways, Eldest is no longer with me.  This first child who used to be my shadow, my mirror, and in many ways my best friend, has gone in a different direction, even while home.  Eldest still lets me in, but it is very different now: there is a distance, a way of keeping me separate and apart, that is difficult when I want their life to be better, more full, happier and I am no longer allowed to help.  To love from a distance, while physically close together, is a new experience for me.  And it calls from me everything I have to give as a person and as a parent.     

    Parenting is both the most rewarding and the hardest work I've ever done.  I think I may be closer to the kids than I otherwise might have been because of the traumas we've experienced together.  But this particular stage of parenting, this one of letting go of each of them in different ways and to different degrees calls me to pull from resources deep within to learn to love from that distance. That kind of love feels even deeper than when I loved them up close as young children.  It is a more independent, respectful, and equal love.  But it also requires an ability to trust and to be okay with a distance that is new for me. 

    As I said when I wrote about Middle, that first day, I imagine God must feel the same as we ebb and flow in our relationships with our creator-parent. 

Walking in the Garden

    I've finished all the planting for the moment.  I've laid all the mulch for now.  I've dealt with sprinkler issues and arranged to have the rock ring in the front replaced with crushed granite.  I'm waiting to hear back from Contra Costa County's "Lawn to Garden Rebate Program" about replacing the one area of my yard that is still grass (well, dead grass).  At this point, then, all there is to do is maintenance: checking on the new plants to make sure they are not needing more or less water or just a little attention, looking for those weeds that are persistent and are trying to push through my weed barriers, trimming the trees a bit so they don't make walking on the path difficult. I add seeds to the bird feeders, I clean and refill the hummingbird feeder. I still get up every morning early and walk through the garden as I do this maintenance. I do the same in the afternoon when it is cool enough and often in the evening as well.

    Today I found myself thinking of these verses from Genesis 2:8-9 "During that day's cool evening breeze, they heard the sound of God walking in the garden... God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" 

    There is something incredible about walking among the plants (and animals) in the gardens that one has planted. I check in with each new plant that has not established itself yet, looking at its leaves, checking on its size and on the ground around it to see if it is settling in.  I talk to the plants, encouraging them, asking them if there is anything else they are needing. I talk to the birds and scold the squirrels trying to eat my tomatoes.  I love doing this.  It brings me a sense of calm, but also a strong feeling of wonder.  They are each their own self, which means that I ultimately do not control if they thrive or wither.  A friend passed on plants to me that he had propagated from his own yard, some of which have established and are thriving, a few that are struggling that I'm nurturing and hope will pull through, and some which died almost before I got them into the ground. There was nothing I could do about those plants. They weren't happy with having been moved from the cooler, closer-to-the-bay climate to the hot, smokey, dry summer of the Bay Area east of the Oakland hills.  Still, even those that have died are part of the wonder for me.  What likes my yard?  What seems happy to establish here?  What doesn't like it and just won't thrive here no matter what I do?  Who is each plant as the individual it is, even within its own species?  What does it need?  

    And again, I found myself thinking about this passage from Genesis.  In this story, God planted a garden, created animals and people, but once they were created, God no longer had control over how they would do or what they would do. They were creations, not puppets, each with its own thoughts and feelings and choices. The story of Adam and Eve is a story of making choices that were other than what God wanted. Despite this, God still chose relationship with them: they were part of God's garden, an important part, and even when they made choices God didn't like, God still nurtured and planted them where they would best thrive: no longer in that garden, but in the greater world.  That is the risk in creating (or planting, in the gardener's world) beings that are other, that are separate, that are themselves.  

    I found myself wondering if God also had that feeling of awe and wonder as God's creations made their own choices, even when they chose not to thrive well in the garden into which God placed them.  Does God delight in us just as we delight in the plants we put in our own gardens? I can't imagine God feels otherwise... when you create a garden: when you plan, when you dig, plant and nurture their lives, when you spend time and energy pulling the weeds that would hurt or kill the the plants you want, and when you touch the ground and plants and place them into the ground, deciding where they should go, it is automatic and normal to form attachments to those plants, to those beings. 

    And so, part of my delight in walking through my own garden is to walk with the God who delights in God's own gardens as well.  We are a part of those, an important part.  And our own gardens are joint efforts, not only with the plants and birds, but also with the God who created each and every plant, animal and person.  

    I return to work tomorrow.  But I have committed to walking in my garden each day before leaving for work.  It centers me, it brings me joy, it connects me with all life, and it connects me with God.    

Gardens and God

      Yesterday we went to Kew gardens and spent about five hours there.  Then we came back to our hotel in London, David got in some work (he’s required to work a certain number of hours while we are on this trip so he’s trying to squeeze those in while he can) while I walked over to Hyde park and walked it’s length, seeing many gardens, statues, lakes and wildlife. I found myself reflecting a lot on the nature of our relationships, both with nature and with God.

      I recently read the amazing and wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer.  I highly recommend it for anyone.  Professor Kimmerer is not only a botanical researcher and teacher, but she is also a Native American who brings with her the values of respect and appreciation for nature.  She discusses white Western culture’s “utility” mentality when it comes to the earth and the world.  We take what we want and see it as our right to do so.  Even when we talk about sustainability, she says, we do so often with the framework of being able to sustain our use and abuse of the planet’s resources.  We rarely, unlike Native cultures, think about the earth in terms of relationships in which there is a mutual give and take between all parties involved, between plants, animals, humans, and even the soil, rocks and minerals of our world.

     But as I walked around the gardens, I found myself thinking that maybe gardens bring a bit of exception to this utility thinking, at least the ones that are done well.  We do give back: we till the soil, we water the ground, we pull weeds that might harm, overpower or strangle the plants we are cultivating.  We work hard to create something lovely: the garden becomes the artist’s template for producing what is beautiful.  We put in the work, and in exchange, the garden gives us back not only beauty, but serenity, space, fresh air, amazing fragrances, and a grounding that I think only comes through getting our hands dirty in the soil of this planet.  

     I found myself translating this into thoughts about our relationships to God.  I think many people also “use” God in the same way that we use the planet.  We think if we worship, pray, follow the rules, and have right beliefs that God will give us what we want, that God will be in charge and controlling of everything so that we will have “blessed” lives.  It’s an exchange of sorts, but not one based on relationship: rather it is an exchange based on getting what we want.  This is often mirrored in the conversations I have had with people who believe that God is in control and in charge of everything.  “Everything happens for a reason” they say, believing God to really be a grand puppeteer who masterminds the smallest movements of living.  I’m sure that is a reassuring belief: that nothing happens that is not in God’s plans, so if we just do good, do right, God will reward us (though, even that is difficult for me to understand: if God is in charge of everything, aren’t our very thoughts controlled by God?  Then it is God who decides if we do good or not, right?).  

     My own beliefs are that God has given all creation free will.  That means I choose my thoughts and feelings, just as you choose yours.  God cannot control me or others, nor does God want to because God wants genuine relationship with us.  But in my conversations with those who believe in the “everything happens for a reason,” I have often been asked, then, what the point is in having a relationship with God.  If our prayers do not influence God to control what is happening, including other people and therefore control the outcomes, why pray?  If our worship does not influence God to be good to us, why worship?  

    That really goes back to the utilitarian approach to faith, life, the world, though, doesn’t it?  For me, we have relationship with God because the relationship, in itself, is worthwhile.  God is goodness, God is love, God is beauty.  Isn’t it always worth our time to be in relationship with goodness, love and beauty?  That relationship itself is a gift: enriching our lives and changing us for the better, just as any relationship with another who is good, loving and beautiful is enriching and changes us for the better.  Maybe that’s utilitarian, too; wanting relationships because they change us, enrich us, bless us.  But we recognize in these relationships that there is a give and take of both, not because we are trying to control or demand or even ask for certain things but because we genuinely value our time with the other, or in this case, with God.  If you don’t value that time with God, that is your choice.  And I believe it to be a choice God honors and does not punish.  I don’t believe God wants us to choose relationship with God out of fear of divine punishment or wrath, but out of love and a genuine yearning for connection.

    This causes me to wonder, once again, if “worship” is really what God values at all.  Because worshiping another keeps the worshipped being at a distance, does it not?  It’s not the same as talking, walking and listening to another.  It’s not a real exchange, it’s not a valuing of time together listening, learning and being together.  By the way, I don’t think this negates the value of church.  I just think that we need to imagine church differently.  It can be a place that encourages us to deepen in our relationships with God.

    Those are my thoughts this early morning in London as we prepare to leave on a tour of the greater England and Wales.  Blessings be with you this day, or rather deepening relationships be with you this day!

Kew Garden:

Hyde Park:

What Is Truth?

John 18:28-40

Psalm 145:10-13

3/27/22

 

Truth.  What is truth?  Today we are swamped with extreme stories in our news on both ends of the spectrum.  The tales become more and more wild, and what is real becomes harder and harder to determine.  As a result, people don’t know what to believe anymore.  We don’t know what is true, we don’t know what is TRUTH.  And it feels important, desperately important to know what is real, what is FACTUAL, what is historical, what is TRUE. 

As people try to navigate what is real, what is true, we are impacted by many who are actively trying to hide truth, thinking that truth will be damaging.  I think about what happened in our own Presbytery at Cameron house in San Francisco.  When the stories started to come out that the pastor who had led Cameron house for forty years had been molesting the boys he worked with the entire time he was there, the first response of the Presbytery was to hide it, to shut it down, believing that the truth would create more damage, would divide the church, would effectively stop important programs.  Of course, the opposite was true.  In trying to hide the truth, instead, they did much greater damage to those who had been harmed.  And this led to greater damage to the church because the stories did come out, despite the attempts at hiding them. The appearance of duplicity, the attempts to hide the stories are what made the church look bad and what drove people from it.  Truth matters, and the facts matter.  Telling the truth matters. 

But still, in a world where everyone sees things differently, what is truth?  What is it really? 

The “truths” that we are told, and our determinations of what is real, what is not, who to believe, who not to believe: these are tearing us apart as a country, as a people, as a nation.  And I would say that this is because under all the historical truths, under the facts, under the histories, we have forgotten the deeper meaning of what is really TRUE.  We have gotten so caught up in what is factual, what is historical, that we have forgotten what is true with a capital T. 

I realize that may sound complicated and confusing.  We come to know our world by what we believe to be true.  It determines our actions, it determines our friendships, it determines our lives.  But we also know that there is always more than one way to see any and every event.  Depending on where you stand, what preconceived understandings you already come with, and your core beliefs, you will see each event differently.  There are very few “facts” when it comes down to it.  Let me give you an example.  In front of you right now you see me, a solid.  You see me standing here as a solid person.  But when you dig a little deeper you find that we are all made of atoms and atoms are mostly space.  What you are seeing is not a solid, but mostly space at a core molecular level. 

Let me give you another example.  We see color all around us, but what is color?  To quote scientific Britannica: “color is simply the range of visible light that humans can see. Different colors, such as red and orange, and other invisible spectrums such as infrared light, move around in waves of electromagnetic energy. The human eye is capable of seeing only light with wavelengths between 380 and 750 nanometers. For example, the visible spectrum begins with the wavelengths that we call violet, between 380 and 450 nm, then moves on to blue, green, yellow, and orange, and ends with what we call red, between 590 and 750 nm. When you look at someone’s red shirt, for instance, that shirt will be absorbing or scattering wavelengths of light lower than 590 nm, so those waves will not reach your eyes. But a red shirt will be reflecting some wavelength between 590 and 750 nm, which your eyes process as red.” 

These two examples are just scientific examples.  But I could easily give you human examples too.  When we see other people’s behavior, we ascribe to each person motivations, “agendas” and feelings.  But if you ever think about why someone does something and then ask them why they did it, you will find that our ideas about people’s behaviors and their ideas about their own behaviors do not match.  And to be fair, people don’t see everything about themselves, let alone about other people.  Our motivations for every behavior are complex and are made up of our histories, our perceptions, and our values.  Each action builds on past actions, and our motivations for any one behavior will never be completely determined.

Even at a more basic level, interpreting what we hear and see others DO can be difficult.  I shared in a blog about a church where I had worked as organist/choir director during seminary.  After I graduated, the church hired another young woman to take my place.  One week that new young woman called me extremely upset and said that the pastor’s wife (who sang in the choir) was mean to her and didn’t like her at all.  I found this very hard to believe since the woman had been so kind and sweet to me.  But I listened and tried to encourage her to talk directly to the pastor’s wife.  A week later the pastor’s wife called me, explaining that she didn’t know what to do about the new choir director who misinterpreted everything she said.  She tried to joke with her and the director heard it as attacking.  She tried to offer care and the choir director heard it as telling her what to do.  Neither of them heard each other.  And neither of them could understand very well what was going on.

I remember watching a TV episode on sight.  They ran a bunch of tests on people on their sight, but it was also on their understandings.  One of the tests they ran was to have a group of 100 people watch a small video clip and then each of them wrote about what they saw.  None of what they wrote matched.  After sharing with the group each person’s memory of what had happened, they then had the same group rewatch the video.  And then had them once again write down what they saw.  And while each person’s vision of what had happened had changed a bit, each person had, at some level, incorporated what they heard the others had also seen into their descriptions, none the less, the descriptions still did not match.  What was fact here?  What was historical?  If all of this added up into what was “truth”, “truth” itself was more confusing and unclear than ever. 

In faith matters this becomes even more complex.  I can guarantee that if we were to spell out each one of our beliefs in this room, no two of us would agree 100%.  We are all worshiping in the same church, in the same denomination, in the same town and same building.  And yet even here, no two of us would be 100% in agreement in terms of faith beliefs.   If we define “truth” then in this way, we will find that no two of us can agree on what is true, what is real, or even what is factual. 

Bishop Michael Curry said it in his book, Love is the Way: page 221: “If you are only getting stories from people who look like you, you aren’t getting the truth.” And since Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week, our reach for “truth” needs some help.  When I talk to my brothers, sisters and siblings of color, for example, most of them have a depth of faith, an experience of God, that we can only imagine, that we can only hope to attain, hope to reach for.  And that should tell us something.  We, with our intellectualism and our cynicism and our skepticism are missing out on some very deep truths about God’s presence, God’s actions, and God’s movements.

Paul Kalanithi in his book, When Breath Becomes Air, said it this way, “In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture.  The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth.  Human knowledge is never contained in one person.  It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.  And Truth comes somewhere above all of them…”

But still, what is Truth?  One of my favorite movies is Second Hand Lions.  And there is a wonderful scene towards the end of the movie that I want to share with you.  The main character is a kid who has come to stay with his uncles over the summer.  His mother is horrible and has basically abandoned him to two old men she really doesn’t even know.  But these men tell the boy these huge, fantastic tales of their time as young men.  Truly the tales are outrageous, but at the same time, possibly true.  And at one point, the boy confronts one of the men with these words, “Those stories about Africa, about you, they are true aren’t they?”  The old uncle responds, “It doesn’t matter.” 

The boy continues, “It does too!  Around my mom all I hear is lies.  I don’t know what to believe.”

The man responds, “Son, if you want to believe in something, believe in it.  Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it.  …  Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a [person] needs to believe in the most.  That people are basically good.  That honor, courage and virtue are everything, that money and power are nothing.  That good always triumphs over evil and that love, and I want you to remember this, that true love never dies.  I want you to remember that, boy.  Remember that.  It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.  You see, a [person] should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”  C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series similarly said that it is better to believe in a lie that is wonderful than a “real” world that is hell.

William Faulkner has been quoted as saying, “Facts and Truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”

So what am I saying?  That “facts” don’t matter?  No.  What I’m saying is that we are part of creating what is real, and what is true.  And part of that start with our beliefs, with our visions and with our understandings of the world.  What is true is impacted by our faith.  A belief, for example, in love means that you will behave in ways that are loving, that you will trust your love and that will make a difference to all those you encounter.

Today we come to the story of Jesus’ trial before Pilate.  I wonder, when you think about Jesus, what you think his primary purpose here was?  We can think of many purposes.  A mirror into God, a model for how to live as faithful people, an example of what Love really looks like.  Many of our fundamentalist, evangelical, and even mainstream brothers and sisters would say Jesus’ purpose is death, or resurrection, or salvation from sins.  But this is not what Jesus himself says.  He doesn’t tell us his purpose is any of the theological reasons we might suppose.  No, instead, in this discussion with Pilate, he states very clearly and very simply that his purpose in coming is to testify to the truth.   Pilate then ends today’s readings with the simple question, “What is truth?”

And as we know, this “simple” question is anything but simple.

Frederick Buechner says this about Truth in his book Wishful Thinking: a theological ABC: “When Jesus says that he has come to bear witness to the truth, Pilate asks, ‘What is truth?’  Contrary to the traditional view that his question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat.  Instead of Truth, Pilate has only expedience.  His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient.  Pilate views [humanity] as alone in the universe with nothing but [our] own courage and ingenuity to see [us] through.  It is enough to choke up anybody.  Pilate asks What is truth?  And for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him.  The sound they make is like the sound of empty pails falling down the cellar stairs.  Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question.  He just stands there.  Stands, and stands there.”

Jesus stands there.  The one who has declared over and over “I am” stands there.  “I am” stands there.  And that is the truth that he presents.  His truth is that he is.  The truth to which he testifies is that God IS.

God is present in the heavens, and God is present in this person.  God is present in the very air we breathe, and, dare I say, God is present in YOU.  That is the truth that stands there.  That is the truth that Jesus presents by his very body, by his very being.  That is Truth.  And it is on that that we can base our faith, our determination, our lives.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Righteous Anger

 

1/16/22

John 2:13-25

Psalm 127:1-2

 

               Today we hear the story of Jesus chasing the money changers from the temple.  It is the strongest example we have of Jesus becoming angry and acting out of that anger.  And while we know and we understand that his anger was righteous anger, I am certain the people who were using the temple as a market did not feel the same way.  They saw his anger as an action of his claiming authority that he then failed (in their minds) to prove that he had a right to.  They in turn became angry, and I am certain that they, in turn, felt that their anger was righteous.  So how can we tell the difference?  How do we know when our anger is truly righteous or not?

               Anger is, almost always, a secondary emotion.  What that means is that it is a mask, or a cover, for a deeper primary emotion such as sadness or fear.  We may feel that sadness or fear are unacceptable, or “weak” so we move into anger as a result.  Sadness or weakness may hurt more, so that is another reason we move into anger.  When we look at the anger of the crowds in response to Jesus’ anger, we can see that their primary emotions were probably fear: fear of change, fear of being hurt as he was driving them out, fear of losing the income that their marketing in the temple was providing, fear of change.  They may also have been feeling guilt: which is also a primary emotion: guilt that he was calling them on their behavior, guilt that he was pointing out that what they were doing was wrong in God’s eyes, guilt that they hadn’t figured that out, addressed it, changed it themselves.  Their anger was not righteous anger for many reasons, but first of all because it was a cover up of these deeper feelings.

               So again, what is righteous anger?  Righteous Anger, according to many, involves three things: 1.  It reacts against actual wrongs: mistreatment, insult or malice of another.  Injustice towards others.  2.  Righteous anger focuses on God and on God’s concerns for the world.  It is not for one’s self: it is not about an offense towards you or something that personally offends you.  3.  Righteous anger is always self-controlled.  It does not retaliate or lose its temper.  It expresses itself in ways that are creative, that have purpose, and that change things for the better.  It is not destructive, abusive, withdrawing, passive-aggressive, or harming of anyone else.  It is not revenge, punishment or retaliation. 

Jesus’ anger was not for himself.  He was angry because their behavior did not honor God.  He didn’t care about the loss he, personally, would experience, in telling them to stop acting this way in the temple.  He did not focus on what it was costing him to point out their mistakes, their mis-steps.  His anger was righteous because it was inspired first and foremost by unjust behavior, and it was an expression of his care for God and God’s people.   The unjust behavior he was confronting was consistent, was long-standing, and again, did not affect him directly.  These are all signs of what makes anger righteous anger.  And his actions were about bringing positive change to the temple: no longer using it as a market but once again as a place of worship.  And even though it came out as angry, it was still controlled.  He did not injure people or animals in the process of chasing them out.   

I think as people we have a hard time with all of this.  We jump to anger easily in our culture, squashing down sadness, guilt or fear because we see these as weak or they are uncomfortable.  We jump to anger easily as a way to avoid self-reflection, too.  If we are angry, the problem is out there, and does not require us to look at ourselves to do the work within.  Even when we are angry on behalf of another person, our behavior often is retaliatory, punishing, revengeful, and an inability to hear any side other than the one we have chosen to hear is dangerous and damaging to relationships, to communities, and to the people who suffer our rage. 

But we are called to have compassion.  And that compassion has to start with compassion towards ourselves.  What are we afraid of?  What are we grieving?  Change is hard for all of us, and often the thing we fear is simply a change, a change we did not want, a change we did not anticipate.  The more our hearts are broken by something that has happened, is happening or will happen, the more we avoid those feelings of hurt and pain and opt for anger instead.

Parker J. Palmer wrote in  A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, “There are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about-a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity-a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome. As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world's suffering and joy, despair and hope.”

But the challenge, of course, of coming into that place of openness is that it hurts.  And we don’t like to hurt.  Bryan Stevenson said that fear and anger, however, are the essential components of injustice.  They are the essential components of injustice.  We therefore have to be aware of the roots of our anger, the deep roots within ourselves of any anger.  And we have to be committed to dealing with it directly, creatively, and kindly.  Anger can become a habit.  And it is a dangerous habit to practice.  As Mitch Albom said in, “the Five People you Meet in Heaven” (p141)  “Learn this from me.  Holding anger is a poison.  It eats you from the inside.  We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us.  But hatred is a curved blade.  And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.”

Bishop Michael Curry took on the work of supporting LGBTQ clergy within the Episcopal denomination.  This did not go over well, and he experienced a lot of anger that came his way, anger that people believed was “righteous” because they believed they were speaking for God.  Again, they were not.  They were acting out their own fear of that which they did not understand.  And they were acting out their own sadness over the loss of control over a group of people.  He was attacked repeatedly, but he recognized that his own anger, his own righteous anger, would not be righteous if he was acting out of revenge, out of a desire to harm or punish those who had harmed and punished him.  He wrote, “My only challenge was learning how to receive anger and not give it back in return.  I needed to do something very difficult: to stand and kneel at the same time.  I needed to sand in my conviction, laying out what I believed and why.  And when the response was anger, I needed to learn to kneel before it.  Believe me, standing in self-righteousness is so much easier.  But when you’re facing someone else who feels as strongly in their conviction as you do, anger is totally unproductive.  Actually it’s counterproductive.  You’ve got to create space for the other person.  This is the dance of nonviolent change.  You develop the spiritual discipline of receiving and then letting go, receiving and letting go, receiving then letting go.  This isn’t easy and it’s even harder if the anger is coming at you from people you love and cherish, rather than strangers.  I found it helpful to remember a few things.  First, I wasn’t God.  No one is God.  And therefore, I was not the ultimate decider of who was right.  I could only do what I believed to be right as best I could discern it.  Second, this wasn’t about me, ultimately.  They weren’t angry at me, but at what I represented. … If you know your own purpose, you can stay out of the emotional fray your beliefs may stir up in others.  If I reacted in anger, I would add even more destructive anxiety to the situation.  I knew enough about human nature to know that a sense of safety, not anxiety, is what puts people in a space to open their hearts to change.  Third, I started intentionally praying for (those) who were speaking against me. I didn’t pray for them to change their minds.  I prayed for them as children of God.”

Anger is a feeling, and as such it is not “bad” in itself.  It is there to tell us there is work to be done.  However, usually that work to be done is internal and we have the job of remembering that to be so.  Anger is not bad.  But we must be very careful what we do with it.  And we need to be very aware that most of the time, our anger is not righteous anger.  Remember, righteous anger is addressing an injustice, it is not about you, and it never is acted out in retaliatory or damaging ways.  If we can remember this, it can help us to deal with it in healthier ways.

I think in the end, it helps to remember that all things pass.  We can endure the struggles and pain of today because this, too, will pass.  We can face our demons, look inside, confront that which is hard for us to face, lean away from anger as a secondary emotion and into our sadness, guilt, fear, for what it is.  We can do this knowing that it will not last, and that doing the inner work will move us through the pain more quickly and more fully than the anger block that we set up can ever.  It will do that because the anger is a lie.  It is hiding the real feelings underneath.  And until we get to those real feelings, we cannot heal them.

        I found this poem about change that I wanted to share with you:

Ø  On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness by Arthur Guiterman (forwarded by Gordon)

The tusks which clashed in mighty brawls

Of mastodons, are billiard balls

 

The sword of Charlemagne the Just

Is Ferric Oxide, known as rust

 

The grizzly bear, whose potent hug,

Was feared by all, is now a rug.

 

Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf,

And I don’t feel so well myself.

 

All of these will pass.  But God’s love will remain.  We can rest in that truth.

So, is there a time for righteous anger?  Yes.  Jesus showed us that there was.  But I think we need to be very, very careful about when our anger is, indeed righteous and when it is “self-righteous” instead.  Does that mean we won’t get angry as a secondary emotion?  We will.  We are all human and we will.  But being able to step back, to own what is ours versus what is not, that is a start.  We are called into community, and community also means that we have to be very careful about how that anger is expressed.  Again, retaliation, abuse, passive aggressive actions and withdrawing should not be options for those committed to relationship, to community and to following God’s call for us.  Will we mess up?  Of course.  But that call to self-reflection will be there to help us once more. 

        Our feelings, even anger, are gifts because they call us to pay attention to what is really going on.  They call us to self-reflection, they call us into conversation, hopefully, with God.  The decisions to act out our feelings: these should take more time.  But even when we act out of our anger, the good news is always that God gives us another chance, more opportunities to learn, to grow and to choose differently the next time.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Discerning God's Messages

 

1 Samuel 3:1-21

John 20:21-23

Mark 10:35-45

               We have a hard time understanding the messages we receive from God.  We really do.  We have a hard time understanding scripture, for example.  Here in today’s passages we hear something in each one that is hard to understand.  In the Samuel passage we hear God promising to harm an entire family of people “forever” for something that the sons of Eli said.  In the John passage it sounds like Jesus is saying that if his disciples don’t forgive someone, neither will God forgive them.  And the passage from Mark might be read as saying that God chose from the beginning who would be included or put next to Jesus and that there is no influence from the choices people make in this lifetime: how people act or what they believe or anything that has to do with what a person is or does themself.  These are all hard to understand, at least for me.  And you will get many different responses or understandings when you read about them. 

               Starting with the Samuel passage, some commentators talk about God’s judgment and wrath, seeming to accept this declaration of Eli’s family’s destruction at face value.  Other commentators talk about how easy it is for Samuel to misunderstand God and what God might be trying to communicate here.  And still others say that the point of this story is just that the prophetic torch has passed from Eli to Samuel.  And from this perspective, Eli is amazing in that he doesn’t fight this, doesn’t deny it, but just accepts that this is God’s will and God’s will is what is paramount in every situation.  

               Even the biblical scholars, then, disagree about what is being communicated here.  And the same is true of the other passages.   For example, this passage from John that declares that if a disciple doesn’t forgive someone they won’t be forgiven.  Some say this means that God has given them the ability to decide who is ultimately forgivable.  Some have pointed out that this passage has been abused by pastors and priests to claim that they have the right of absolution from sins (and equally the right of withholding that absolution).  But others say that this was spoken not just to the disciples but to all those following Jesus.  And that John’s understanding of sin was not moral or behavioral transgression but “being blind to the revelation of God in Jesus”.  According to this understanding then, it is the community that has failed if people are still blind to this understanding.  In other words, this story is simply meant to communicate that they still have work to do.

The point here is that even those who study scripture for a living, spend all of their time doing nothing but reading, praying, discerning – they still disagree with one another, which means they are still struggling to really understand the message that God is sending.  Similarly with the disciples to Jesus’ words.  Some want to sit next to him, others think this is an unfair request.  They all misunderstand him by even having this debate.  They also misunderstand him when he talks about his upcoming death: they try to reason him out of that prediction and try to dissuade him from acting.  We know that Judas in particular disagreed with the way Jesus was doing things and what Jesus was saying.  He betrayed Jesus as a way to spur Jesus into action: into rising up against the tyranny of the Roman empire and when Jesus instead was killed, this was so devastating to him that his response was to commit suicide.  They didn’t understand.  Not one of them understood.  This is a consistent theme throughout the gospels: the lack of understanding of those closest to Jesus.  If those closest to Jesus did not understand, how are we supposed to understand?  How are we supposed to read the messages from God with accuracy?  How are we to understand scripture?  But even beyond that, how are we to understand God, human relationships to God, human relationships to each other and even our very selves?

               I think about the story we read about a month ago about Abraham believing he was called by God to sacrifice Isaac.  While God stopped him, there is an Islamic midrash on that story that says that Abraham was just crazy: was hearing voices that he decided were God’s.  According to this midrash Sarah saw what was happening and she is the one who brought the ram out for Abraham to find, saving HER only son from being sacrificed.  According to this midrash then, God was working through Sarah to stop crazy behavior.  We read these stories in different ways.  We understand them in different ways, and as a result we also hear God’s voice in different ways and we interpret what is God’s voice is VERY different ways. 

               I saw something recently that said in effect, “Fundamentalists understand Love through the laws of scripture.  Other Christians understand scripture through the eyes of Love.”  Or, as Arun Gandhi said it, “People of the book risk putting the book above people.”  But this too, mirrors my understanding.  As Jesus said it, “Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.”  When we put the law above real people, their needs, their souls, we miss the whole point of all of this.

               For me, in the end, I believe everything must be measured against the great commandments.  The great commandments are two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.  And, Love your neighbor as yourself.  Jesus told us that it is on these two laws that all the prophets and all the writings stand.  That this is a summary of all that is in scripture.  So for me, personally, if I don’t understand it, I go back to these two rules.  How, in light of these two laws, does this passage make sense?  What does it mean in light of these two great commandments?  Love.  It is the guidepost by which I weigh and understand everything else. 

               But what about when it comes to understanding God?  Well, if those are the laws of God, they reflect God.  So for me, they, too, describe God: wholeness, fullness, holiness.  Love.  That’s the bottom line of who God is, just as it was the bottom line of what we are called to do and be. 

               But am I right?  All these Christians understanding God differently.  The disciples all understanding Jesus differently.  And none of the disciples had it right.  But they were all on the journey.  They all sought to be with Jesus, they all wanted to be his disciples, they all chose to follow in the way.  And they did this, despite the fact that Jesus kept telling them “you don’t understand!” And kept correcting them and kept challenging them. 

               As I sat with this, I found myself thinking about the Kansas song, song “Carry On My Wayward Son” line: “And if I claim to be a wise man, well it surely means that I don't know.”  In the end, we are called to have humility in our understandings.  Those I fear the most are those who claim with absolute conviction that God told them to do something, or that God put them in charge of something, or that they know without a doubt – anything, really. 

               We are all on this journey.  All of us.  I come here and I tell you what I learned, and what I think and what I believe.  But that is my journey.  And I recognize that yours is different.  Your needs and your experiences, your lessons and your mentors, your relationships: both with others and with God.  They are your own. 

               There is a reason that one of the key phrases for me in the Presbyterian Book of Order is “God alone is Lord of the Conscience.”  We recognize that discernment is a challenge and NOT ONE PERSON in this whole world and in this whole life will always be right about anything, and that includes about faith issues.  Discernment is hard.

               So why is that? Why would God create a world in which discernment is not easy?  Why would God create a world with so many, many different ways of understanding the exact same book, the exact same words, the exact same scenario?  I love what God in Joan of Arcadia said to Joan in one episode when she asks God why there are so many religions, “It's because various people need various ways of relating to the divine.” I think that there are deep reasons why Jesus spoke mostly in parables.  Parables all have multiple interpretations, multiple points, multiple understandings.  And in that, they are gifts to different people in different ways.   No two of us will ever agree on everything.  It isn’t realistic.  It isn’t honest.  And that’s a beautiful part of our world and our life.  That diversity of thought is a gift to us if we can choose to be open to it, listen through our differences, learn from them.

               How, then, do we relate this back to our faith?  A final quote from Joan of Arcadia that I want to share with you: “People manage to believe in me, even though they have no idea what I am; they trust me even in the silence.”

               God’s presence is there as a gift to us.  God’s love is there to hold us, sustain us, carry us through.  We don’t have to understand everything.  We don’t have to agree with one another.  We are invited to learn from one another, but we don’t in the end have to come to the same understanding.  Still, we are invited to trust, to rest in the love of the God who creates us, carries us, holds us, and graces us into being. 

               Some of these biblical passages, such as the one we read today, are hard for us to understand.  And sometimes the world and nature and people’s behaviors are a challenge for us to understand.  But there is more to this world than understanding.  And there is much that is beautiful that goes far beyond our ability to understand.  Resting in God’s presence is more important, more needed, more reviving and restoring that knowing.  So, as Isaiah said it so profoundly, “Be still and know that God is God.”  That is all the knowing, ultimately that we need.  The rest is relationship: the rest is listening, caring, talking, and being with God.  More important than anything else we can do.

               And so, I want to end this shorter sermon with a moment of silence.  But rather than reflection, I invite you to rest in the loving, caring arms of God.  Rest, be, accept the love and grace that is offered you in this moment.  Amen.

"I Am"

Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:10-17

John 8:58

Psalm 46

World Communion Sunday

 

What are some of the ways that you come to know God?  Scripture, nature, worship, prayer, meditation, fasting, spiritual disciplines such as lectio divina and clearness committee and ....  Do you have one or two ways that speak to you more than others?  That you tend to gravitate towards?  Are there other ways of knowing God that are less comfortable for you?  Or ways that you avoid?

               You know the familiar story about the blind men and the elephant.  I read it to you in January.  But I think it’s a story we should all be remembering on a regular basis, especially as we seek to cross our differences, to be in relationship despite our disagreements, to work to love those who don’t see things the same ways that we do.  So here it is again:

It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,

Who went to see the elephant (though all of them were blind),

That each by observation might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant, and, happening to fall

Against his broad and burly side, at once began to call:

"I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a wall!"

The second, feeling of the tusk, cried, "Ho! What have we here?

So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear

This wonder of an elephant is very like a spear!"

The third approached the animal, and, happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up and spake,

"I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a snake!"

The fourth reached out his eager hand and felt about the knee:

"What most this wondrous beast is like is mighty plain," said he,

"'Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree!"

The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, said, "E'en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most. Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an elephant is very like a fan!"

The sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope,

Than, seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope,

"I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong,

though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

So oft in group endeavors, the members of the team

Rail on in utter ignorance of what each other mean,

As if it were an elephant not one of them has seen.

               So, too, I think we are all limited in our knowledge of God by many things.  For example, our circumstances in life limit what we see of God.  The limits of our experiences, the limits of the time that we can give over to our spiritual lives, these limit our understanding of God.  We are limited by our beliefs in seeing the whole picture of God.  The really wise person is the one who recognizes they lack knowledge because that is the person who is open to learning and experiencing more.  Our "knowledge" of God can often limit what we see of God, what we hear of God.  Let me give you a specific example - those who "know" that God is only male miss seeing the feminine or even binary or fluid aspects of God.  Those who "know" that people are made in the image of God may miss seeing aspects of God reflected and alive in nature or in other ways that are beyond human. 

               We see this with scripture too: if we only take scripture as literal and historic, we frankly miss the deeper messages within it.  When we miss those layers and layers of wisdom and meaning, we also miss out on deeper and different ways to see and understand God. 

               We also limit God by what we leave God out of in our lives, or what parts of our lives we keep separate from our faith.  Can you think of areas people hide away from God?  Can you think of areas that YOU keep separate from God?  Or areas of our lives in which it might be a challenge to include God in?   

               Besides all of these things that limit our relationships with God, I would also say that spending time with God only in the ways that are familiar and make us comfortable also limits our understanding of God.  We only see the part of God that we are touching, that we are exploring in those moments.  For example, when we only know God through prayer, we may come to see a God who listens, a God who loves, but we may miss that God also instructs, also guides, also has words to speak to us.  We have heard some people say they don't come to church because they find God better on their own.  Well, I suggest that only finding God in church, and conversely, only finding God outside of church - both of these limit our vision and understanding of God.

               The scriptures we heard today present two ways that people might meet God.  Moses met God in a burning bush.  The Psalmist tells us to meet God in silence.  Both are important.  Both give us information about God.  God appearing in the burning bush tells us that God is amazing, can do anything, can appear in any form, and that God does speak to us, does come to us, does have instruction for us.  It shows us the drama and wonder of God, the ways in which God can be so obvious, so hard to ignore, so beyond our expectations.  God telling us to be still to know God tells us that God is also gentle, and at times is not dramatic, but calls us into a stillness and into a place of listening and being present in the quiet and stillness.  That God is as close to us as our own breathing and heartbeats, if we but quiet down for a moment to experience God.

               In the book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert takes a year "sabbatical" or pilgrimage to explore her spirituality.  This was not always a comfortable experience for her.  She found herself confronting difficult parts of herself within her spiritual journey.  And some of the things she tried - extended periods of meditation for example, were downright frustrating and uncomfortable at first.  But she continued to try them, to work with them, to give them a chance.  It took time, it took commitment, it took a real desire to see God, to know God in a different way, in a fuller way, in a more complete way.  When we strive to know God in a different way, she discovered, we cannot just try something new for a minute or an hour, a day, or even a week.  It took months, but she was blessed with a deeper, broader, new look at God.  And she found that not only did she encounter God in new ways, but through her encounter with the Divine, she came to understand herself better, to heal some deep brokenness within and to find the courage to heal some brokenness outside of herself, in relationships, as well. 

               This is not surprising.  When we come to know God in a new way, we also come to understand ourselves more deeply, because we are made in God's image.  Similarly, we can come to understand those around us more deeply as well.  We can grow in our capacity to love and to care as we encounter Love itself, as we strive to know God better and in different ways.

               On this, World Communion Sunday, we remember that other Christians around the world, Christians who experience and celebrate God in different ways than we do, are also part of our faith family, part of the family of God.  In their different ways of worshiping and celebrating their faith, they have things to teach us about who God is and where God can be found.  In hearing and learning and experiencing the ways others do worship differently, and understand God differently, we come to see more aspects of God, more nuances to the face of God, more parts of who God is.  I would say this also expands beyond Christianity.  When we encounter and talk and interact with people from different faith traditions, even atheism and agnosticism, we can also learn from them.  Even those who say there is no God or that they don’t know if there is or they don’t care if there is, there are still things we can learn about God even from them!  As I worked on my doctoral dissertation, I interviewed a number of atheists and learned that those I interviewed had a very specific vision of God as a white bearded man sitting in the clouds, literally making the world in 7 of our human days, that they couldn’t accept.  Well, I can understand that.   I tend to agree with them on that.   

These beautiful passages in which God says God’s name is “I am” or “I will be who I will be” or “I am becoming who I am becoming” tell us that God is so very much bigger than we can imagine.  God IS, and in that BEING we find God.  It is not just God’s name.  It is who and what God is.  God IS being.  God IS.  We find that God in the burning bush and in the stillness and in so many ways.  Jesus, too identifies as “I am” repeatedly, “I AM the bread of life,” “I AM the way, the truth and the life,” etc.  Jesus also says this BEING existed from the beginning.  But we humans, we have a hard time with just “being”.  We want to define things more tightly.  We want to assign qualities and attributes.  And those qualities and attributes limit who God really is for us.  If you are happy, you are not sad.  If you are a democrat, you are not a republican.  If you are an athlete, you are not a coach potato.  Whatever it is: our attributes, even of God, limit in our minds not just who we are, and who other people are, but who God really is.  But God IS.  God IS.  And so, we expand our understanding by taking the time to intentionally see other sides of God that may not be as comfortable or easy. We expand beyond the boxes and the attributes and into the BEING of God.

               And so, my challenge for all of us is that we take the risk, and take the time, to try to know God in a way we haven't encountered God before.  I encourage us to try something that we may not have tried before.  We can try a classic spiritual discipline such as daily meditation for a month, or we can try a 24 hour fast.  You can invite someone to be your prayer partner, especially someone you don’t know very well, or someone you’ve had issues with.  This doesn’t necessarily have to be someone you pray with, but someone you can check in with about your prayer life and that can help hold you accountable to daily personal prayer.  You might try a Taize service, or attending one Sunday a service that is completely different.  You could help serve a meal with Winter Nights, or volunteer to help with our laundry program.  You can commit to reading a part of the Bible with which you are unfamiliar, to study it, to discuss it with a small group.  I would be happy to help you form that group.  You might take a journey or pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine.  You might talk to someone that you don't think you like.  Or simply make a commitment to take the time to be still, even amidst the crazy business of our lives.  But the challenge is not to just try this new thing one time, but to really give time to whatever you are trying that is new.  Give it time, give it space, give God time to talk to you through your new experience and to reveal God-self to you in a new way.  Whatever it is, I invite you to seek to feel more of the elephant...or rather, to seek to see more of God and who God is in your life, and in the world.   God is waiting to be known more fully by you, and God promises that in return you will know more of yourself as well.  Amen.