The Covenant on Our Hearts

 Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-31, Mark 4:26-34

               Today we continue our study of the book of Jeremiah.  To give the background of this passage, Jehoiakim was one of Josiah’s sons.  And while Josiah and Jeremiah were on the same page in terms of what God wanted and therefore how to lead the people, Jehoiakim, the King, did not agree with the prophet Jeremiah about how the country of Israel should be run.  Jeremiah was really clear about what God wanted: God wanted the lying the stop, God wanted justice for the poorest of the poor, God wanted kindness to the “least of these”.  But Jehoiakim was not listening and he resented everything that Jeremiah had to say about it.  He tried to arrest Jeremiah, unsuccessfully.  And then when Jeremiah continued to proclaim the message that the behavior of this king HAD to change, that he HAD to repent, that he had to stop the lying, the denying of the word of God as spoken through Jeremiah, Jeremiah said that if he did not change his behavior, his injustices, his acts of cruelty, that there would be consequences.  God was angry, and destruction would come if the behavior continued.  Jehoiakim’s reaction then was to destroy the words that Jeremiah had had Baruch write down.  His reaction was denial, was the ostrich putting its head in the sand, “If I just make these words go away, then the prophecy will end.”  His response was censorship.  But instead of succeeding in destroying the words, the words Jeremiah spoke on behalf of God moved from being conditional, “If you don’t stop this injustice and lying, you will be destroyed” to absolute, “You have gone past the point of no return and the consequences are coming.  You cannot turn back now.”  In addition, the words were expanded, including all that was said before and much, much more.  Unfortunately, the consequences for Jehoiakim’s actions extended beyond himself, too.  As a leader, his mis-steps were not only destroying himself, but would come down on all the people as well.  Jehoiakim’s reaction was not repentance, and it was not an offer to change.  He felt that if he just destroyed the words of God’s prophet, they would no longer have an affect.  But this is false.  We can deny the past all we want, but it still affects every single thing about the present.  Denying it, squashing it, trying to destroy the realities of what happened before, of our history, as ugly as it is, does not undo what has been done.  It does not change that past.  Instead, our denial of it cements the consequences that result from our past actions.  Rather than opening us up to change, to repentance, and therefore to healing and new life, both as individuals, but more importantly as communities, as countries, as nations, our denial of what has gone before simply ensures our doom, ensures we will not grow, ensures we will not change, ensures that we will continue to act with injustice and ensures that the consequences for those behaviors will take place.

               These are very hard words for us to hear.  VERY hard words for us to hear.  How many times have I heard people say, “I don’t like the God of the Old Testament because that God seems to very violent!”  But I want to be clear here.  This is not about punishment.  This is about consequences.  Our actions have consequences.  There isn’t any way to get around that.  There are consequences for our actions.  And, while it is especially hard to hear the words from Jeremiah today in which Jeremiah moves from the place of saying “you must repent” to, “there is no going back,”  there is truth that we must understand in which there comes a point when change is too late, when we cannot undo what we have done.  While I deeply believe that God is a God of second and third, fourth, fifth chances, at some point, there is no escaping the reality that the world has been built in such a way that there are consequences of our behaviors. 

            Many scientist are now saying, for example, that we have reached that point of no return in terms of the environment.  That we have crossed a line in terms of the rape and damage we have done to our world, to our environment.  The climate change that is a consequence of the destruction of our ozone, the build up of carbon in our atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect from which we cannot return.  As an article written in November on EcoWatch said it, “The only way to have prevented runaway climate change would have been to have stopped burning fossil fuels between 1960 and 1970, the model found, as USA TODAY reported. In order to stop temperatures and sea levels from rising now, we would have to remove at least 33 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year starting this one.” 

         The eight year drought that our damage has caused in the northern triangle: Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala is the single most cause of the influx of immigrants into this country.  The drought means the people can’t farm their own lands and they can’t feed their families.  This is driving folk here.  We are reaping the consequences of being the largest historic emitter of carbon. 

         UN did a study a few years back that said that there would be 100 million ecological refugees by 2100 in large part as a consequence of droughts in African pushing people towards Europe.  But more recently they have renewed the study taking into account the domino affects of conflict, war, and water scarcity.  The new estimate as a result is that  there will now be  two billion ecological refugees by year 2100.  Population closer to 10 billion by then.  That means 1/5 will be internally and externally displaced people.    Again, these are the consequences of choices we have made as nations.

      But we, too, like to deny truth, like to squish it in the hopes that it will just go away.  I think about the fact that Oklahoma has declared it will not include in its history the Tulsa riots, that others are proclaiming they will not change the history books to include the horrible things that we have done to African Americans, to Native peoples, to the Japanese and the Chinese in this country.  They will not include these historical facts.  Why?  It is just like Jehoiakim: if they don’t write it down they believe it can’t hurt them.  But burning the scrolls of life, the truths of our history does not change the central, scary and challenging message to “love your enemies”.  Instead, it cements our fate in horrible ways.  Perhaps if we had been honest about our history from the beginning we would not be experiencing the great racial strife that we face now.  But people fear the truth, they fear the stories and in doing so, they seal the fate of our country, of our people, of the world. 

               Howard Thurman in his book The Mood of Christmas wrote an essay called “The Great Incarnate Words” (P 111-118),

But the word would not be stilled:

               Let your motive be simple;

               Your words, yea, yea; naysay.

               Hypocrisy for self-defense—

               Is that the sinless sin?

               Does it degrade the soul at last

               And sweep the raft against the rocks?

               Deceive, and live for yet another day!

               Declare, and run the risk of sure destruction!

But why?

The Word knew:

               There is a point beyond which (humans) cannot go,

               Without yielding (their) right to try again.

               To play God false to save one’s skin,

               May jeopardize all there is that makes (humans, Human).

                              “What would a person give in exchange for (their) soul?”

               This is the great Decision!

               Even death becomes a little thing.

               To survive with inner cleanness;

To compromise where ground forsook can be retrieved;

               To stand unyielding when the moment comes;

This is the meaning of the Word!

 

Love. The word—LOVE.

Hate is the last great fortress of the weak.

The moving current of resentment flows through the channels

               of the heart,

When overarching wrong inflicts its bitter lash,

But this may pass.

                So then we come to the New Testament reading, the story of the mustard seed.  We know this story.  We here in CA also know mustard.  We know that we do nothing, not a thing, and every spring the mustard plants spring up all over the Bay Area with carpets of yellow.  They can’t be stopped, they can’t be controlled.  They are wild and they live on their own.  They grow tall and big and expansive and there is little to nothing that can be done to prevent it.  But this is a word of hope from God: mustard does not have to be planted, and mustard is not controlled.  So, too, is the word of God.  And so too, are the stories of truth. 

              Despite the attempts to block history, to confine history, to rewrite history, cell phones catching things like the murder of George Floyd can no longer be stopped.  People writing the history that is out there, in the underground sometimes, can no longer be stopped.  We think that we can control things in this way, but we can’t.  God’s work for truth, for justice, is unstoppable. 

               I think about the movie, “Two Weeks Notice”.  In the Movie, Sandra Bullock plays a character who has actively followed on “the way” as she understands it.  She has stood up for the oppressed, been a voice for the voiceless, fought against injustice at every level.  But there comes a moment at which she hits a place of despair.  She is done.  Her father is upset by her decision to no longer live a life of action.  And he confronts her saying, “we didn’t teach you to sit on the sidelines.”  She argues that what she does makes no difference.  To which he responds, “Then you change your tactics.  As long as people can change, the world can change.”  She says, “But what if people can’t change?” 

               The father in the movie I just quoted paused for a moment in consideration, “Let me put it this way.  I am eating a piece of cheesecake made entirely of soy.  I hate it.  But because of my health issues, I am doing it.”

               He didn’t like it.  But he did it, and that started with truth.  His change in behavior started with being unable to deny the truth about his health conditions, the truth about what he needed to do to stay well.  It did not stem from hiding from the realities of his situation.  It did not come about from burying his head, like an ostrich, in the sand.  He didn’t like it, but truth is powerful, it is unstoppable. 

               The word of God is like that.  It spreads despite what people try to do, despite what people try to hide, despite the lies.  It is like mustard that sprouts up regardless. 

               As the commentator David Jacobsen wrote, ““As I wrote these words, the court testimony of the sidewalk bystanders in the George Floyd killing seemed empty of hope. In their cell phone videos, you too can see them: the EMT, the youth, the martial arts expert, and the convenience store cashier lined up pleading with the white policeman kneeling on a Black man’s neck to stop and render assistance to George Floyd. As you watched their own videos, it seemed even to the bystanders themselves that all they could do from the sidewalk was to cry out and plead, but effect nothing.  One teenager on the sidewalk even testified in court how she apologizes over and over again to George Floyd at night. She asks herself whether she could have done more.  And why did her pleading or their yelling not suffice? Her haunting words make Jesus’ mysterious parable hard to hear. What about Mark’s seedy hope of an automatic Kingdom of God can survive her tearful testimony?  And then came the verdict on April 20. As many said, while justice did not come that day, accountability did. How did the lead prosecutor put it?: the bystanders were a “bouquet of humanity.” The very people who cried out from the sidewalk and made videos with smartphones were a surprise flowering of what it means to be human. The bystanders did not save George Floyd’s life, but they were a mysterious, living, testifying, bouquet of humanity. And in a moment, something of our view of Mark’s seed parable changes. What it offers now is a glimpse of change, a germination that flowers right there on a cracked sidewalk at 38th and Chicago.  Now that is mysterious and even a little revealing. Even so, there is one thing I now lay hold of. There may well be an arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice, but that modern view is for us both a promise and a goal. The famous quote from Parker and King and Obama uses the intransitive verb, “bend.” But there is no one who says that we can’t lay hold of that arc and in the name of the promise bend it a little bit ourselves with a little transitive joy. For we, thanks to Mark, are people who even now glimpse germinating seeds yielding bouquets of humanity: a surprising, sudden, fragile yield of the Kingdom’s mysterious grace and justice.” – Working Preacher, David Jacobsen.

               “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  The kingdom of God is a seed that grounds our hope that eventually things can change.  To remember that Mark’s gospel was written close to the time of the destruction of the temple in 70CE, that the context of that time was public chaos, control, confusion, oppression and pain.  And that it was in the midst of that that we hear the words of hope from today’s Gospel reading.  These are powerful stories of possibility.  And that possibility is in our midst as well.

               The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed: it is not planted, it is not sown.  And yet it takes off, it grows big and expansive and wild.  While we may hinder it for a while, we cannot stop it.  The word of Love, the word of hope, the word of healing and possibility: these are the words of God’s kingdom.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Comfort

           My experience of God has been, consistently, that God shows up most fully during our hardest times.  For me, God's presence was tangible during our horrible family crises that started ten years ago and really became more manageable for most of us five years ago.  During those first few years, especially, when every day it was a challenge to get up, to breathe, to put one foot in front of the other, God's presence was so real and so powerful that it gave me a rock to cling to, an anchor to ground myself and my kids, a life-force that made it possible to face each day.  Without that, I do not know how we would have come through with the strength and healing that is part of who we are today.  I have seen many people become embittered by the experiences of life.  But for us I think we are more compassionate, more gentle in our approach to the pains and struggles.  Again, this could not have been the case without the love, the presence, the compassion of God that made itself manifest in so many different ways: through people, through nature, through art and music, through the "coincidences" and "serendipities" that touched us daily at first and then spread out more as we needed them less.

    I think that God always shows up most strongly for those who are struggling the most which is why God can consistently be found among the poor, among the oppressed.  If we want to really meet God we must choose to be with those people, helping, uplifting, empowering.  That is where we will and do experience a living God.  It's the story of the mother who is asked "which of your children do you love the most?"  to which she answers, "the one who is most in need of my love."  God's love is like this, too.  I've seen it, I've experienced it, I've lived it.

         We are in another such time.  Sleepless nights, stress, strain, struggle and pain.  Decisions that must be made, steps that must be taken, disappointments that must be faced, inventory that must be taken, amends that must be made, and amidst it all the growing questions of purpose, meaning, call, and existence.  This is reality for many of us at this time.  It is a reality for me as well.  And, just as before, God is showing up again in incredible, amazing, tangible ways.  Yesterday it was in the form of words.  I tend to begin my mornings with puzzles as I eat my breakfast.  Yesterday as I ate I did several cryptograms, which is a puzzle where you figure out an encoded quote.  Each of the quotes that I decoded felt like a personal message, a gift from God.  Then later we decided as a family to re-watch the movie "Wall-E".  It's a really good movie and one I think that I may show for a faith and film night at some point.  At the end, during the credits, they play a Peter Gabriel song "Down to Earth" and these words, too, hit me in a new and specific way.  I'm posting some of yesterday's wisdom here for you, then.  These words spoke to me in specific ways which I realize will not be the same for everyone.  The specifics of what they meant for me are not important.  I hope that they will offer wisdom to you for wherever you are in this moment.

    "A mistake should be your teacher, not your attacker.  A mistake is a lesson not a loss.  It is a temporary necessary detour, not a dead end."

    "Learning comes in three distinct phases: as a young child one hungers for knowledge, then as a teenager one knows it all, and finally as an adult the real learning can commence."

    "Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind (sic).  It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man (sic)." - Mahatma Gandhi.

    "At your best you still won't be good enough for the wrong [one].  At your worst, you'll still be worth it to the right [one]."

And from the Peter Gabriel song:

Did you think that your feet had been bound
By what gravity brings to the ground?
Did you feel you were tricked
By the future you picked?
Well, come on down

All these rules don't apply
When you're high in the sky
So come on down
Come on down

We're coming down to the ground
There's no better place to go
We've got snow up on the mountains
We've got rivers down below

We're coming down to the ground
To hear the birds sing in the trees
And the land will be looked after
We send the seeds out in the breeze

Did you think you'd escaped from routine
By changing the script and the scene?
Despite all you made of it
You're always afraid of the change

You've got a lot on your chest
Well, you can come as my guest
So come on down
Come on down

Like the fish in the ocean

We felt at home in the sea
We learned to live off the good land
We learned to climb up a tree

Then we got up on two legs
But we wanted to fly
Oh, when we messed up our homeland
And set sail for the sky

We're coming down

Comin' down to earth
Like babies at birth
Comin' down to earth
Redefine your priorities
These are extraordinary qualities

To find on earth

Faith Vs Sight

2 Corinthians 5:1-21

Matthew 14:13-21

8/3/20

               As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. has said, we are not in fact physical beings on a spiritual journey.  Rather, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  I think we can see this to be the case at times.  I remember when we first got the three kittens that are now my kids’ cats.  I remember watching them “try on” their bodies.  At least that was how it looked to me.  They were figuring them out: figuring out how to make them work, how to walk, how to balance, how to use their paws.  I remember moments when they would do something and it would startle them – as if they were saying, “oh, so this is what happens when I do this!”   We’ve seen this with our human babies too, but I think because cats develop and grow into adults so much more quickly, it was all the more obvious to me with the kittens.  I saw that they were beings wearing cat pajamas and trying to explore the limitations and gifts of those pajamas as they navigated this new world for them. 

               In many ways we hear this echoed in Paul’s words.  He talks about God’s house as the real house, the house where we want to be, ultimately.  He talks about our human residence as a tent that weighs us down, a place away from “home”.  These feelings too are familiar to many of us.  I have lived in other places besides the Bay Area in my life, but each time I was in these other places, I felt this strong pull, this strong yearning within me, “I just want to go home” I would say.  But the reality is that whenever I would then move back here, back “home”, those yearnings were ever only partly answered.  There is still a strong desire within me to “go home”, to “be home”.  A spiritual being seeking for a physical home in a physical world.

               What is “home” for you?  Have you ever felt those yearnings to go home or be home, and if so, what did you mean by it?  What are the feelings that you associate with “home”?  If you were here, I would ask you to tell me, but since we are apart, I’m going to have to guess what some of those feelings are.  When people tell me about their “homes” they talk about warm fires and food, good conversation and music.  But the two feelings that I hear most are unconditional love/acceptance and safety.  Home is the place where you feel safe.  Home is the place where you are loved and accepted as you are, where you can be fully and wholly yourself without fear of pain or rejection.

               I’m part of a clergy group here in the Bay Area that meets for an hour every other week.  Most of the other people in this group are people of color.  The African American man who leads the group asked us this last week when and where we felt safe.  To a tee all of the black or African American pastors and faith leaders in our group said that there was no place here where they felt safe.  No place where they felt free to be themselves without threat to their person.  Can you imagine what that feels like?  I can’t imagine what that feels like in terms of physical safety.  I usually feel safe in my house or car, for example.  But I do know what that feels like emotionally.  There have been times in my life where there is no place that I have felt safe emotionally. There have been times in my life where I felt I had to be “on guard” every hour of every day, not knowing where the next “hit” would come, where the next slam would hit, where the next demand on my time, energy and personhood would be exacted.  And again, in all of those moments, I found my soul crying out “I just want to go home!”  And I knew that what that meant for me was that I just wanted to find that place that felt safe, where I would be loved and accepted as I am, where I would no longer be the spiritual being on a painful, intense, long and difficult human journey; but where instead I would be seen in fullness for all of who I am, and loved not just in spite of it, but because of it. 

               I think that because of this deep-seated desire for safety and unconditional love that some people describe another human being as their “home”.  My home is where YOU are.  My home is where THEY are.  But, as Meg Ryan said in the movie French Kiss, “There is no home safe enough, there is no country nice enough, there’s no relationship secure enough.”  And no matter how romantic and wonderful it is when two people stay married and in love their entire lives, those of us who’ve been divorced can tell you that every relationship has conditions.  “Unconditional love” in romance isn’t real.  There are conditions.  And if your partner has met them for the entirety of their life, then you are one of the lucky ones to have found that.  For most of us, the conditions have been found and named and fall short in human beings.  And I would say that even for those who’ve been married their entire lives, there have been moments with your partners that have not felt good, that have not felt emotionally safe or loving.  That’s part of being human.  No one is perfect and when you get two imperfect people together, there will be disagreements and times of pain.

               So in the midst of that, where do we find “home”?  Where do we finally look for that place of unconditional love and safety?

               Many people look towards heaven for that.  This ties back once again to the idea of us as spiritual beings on a human journey.  The number of people who have said to me towards the end of their lives, “I just want to go home” is too many to count.  For them, “home” is that place after death: heaven, or rest, or a kind of Eden where there is no more pain, emotional, physical or spiritual; there is just love and safety. 

               But what I would challenge you with today is the idea that when we call the ones we love “home,” and when we talk about heaven as home, and when we see something beautiful in nature, or hear an amazing piece of music, or visit a country that touches us, or have those mountain-top experiences that feel like home – that all of these point to the same reality.  And that reality is that “home” is where God is.  This home isn’t created or limited by space or time, by life or death, by the people we are with or those we are missing.  And while Paul says, “we live by faith and not sight”, I would say that God’s presence is here for us to see as well as to have faith in, in every moment of every day.

               And that brings us to the gospel lesson for the day.  Jesus is trying to withdraw.  He is tired, he is wanting some space to himself.  But the people are following him, and despite his personal needs, we are told that “Jesus had compassion for them and healed those who were sick.”  Evening came and his disciples tried to get Jesus to send the people into the village and buy food for themselves.  Once again, I want to point out, God here, Jesus here, is not a good business person.  He could have sent them into the village to buy food for themselves, to “boost the economy” and to support local trade.  But he doesn’t.  He also does not “fix it” for everyone.  We tend to change this story in our heads into one of Jesus passing out the food which multiplies and multiplies in abundance.  That is how we tend to hear this story because that is how we’ve been taught to hear this story.  But that is not what happens.  Instead, Jesus says to his disciples, “There’s no need to send them away.  YOU give them something to eat.” 

               The disciples did not want to do that.  They did not want to share.  “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”  So, Jesus prays over the food and then, giving it back to the disciples, asks them to give it to the crowd, which they do.  We don’t know what happened.  We don’t know if the food did in fact multiply – the story does NOT tell us that.  What we know is that once people started sharing what they had, which began with a small group but grew out into the crowds, that there was more than enough for everyone.  And THAT is where we see God, and that is heaven, and that is the safe and loving place that we call home – it is all around us at all times.  But we do not see it because we do not truly believe in it, we do not act on it, we do not live it. 

               I'm reminded of the stone soup story from our childhood.  A man comes to town and, though he is very hungry, no one will help him, no one will feed him.  They feel they don't have enough to share, they don't have enough to give.  So he takes out his pot, gets some water from the local stream and begins to cook it with just a stone inside.  People are curious and come out.  He says to them, "I am making a wonderful, magical, amazing soup!  I will share it, but it surely could use a carrot."  One of the villagers thinks, "well, I have a carrot I could add" and he returns with carrots to throw into the soup.  Then the stranger says, "Hm.  It surely tastes good now, but it could use a potato or two," and one of the villagers remembers that she has some potatoes to throw in.  This continues until the stew is an amazing soup of everyone's ingredients which the stranger is then able to share with all.  They didn't think there was enough.  But together, there was more than enough for all.

               There is always more.  There is always enough, if we could choose to trust in it and share it.  Did you know there was a study out recently that was looking at how people use money?  No surprise, the more money you have, the less you share it.  What was so interesting though is that the poorest of the poor really were the first to share what little food they had.  Greed is a spiritual illness that grows along with how much people have.  The more a person has, the more they are afraid of losing it and less likely they are to share it.  We see this through our country, we see this not just as individuals but as groups, too.  We forget how to see God’s kingdom.  We forget to be “home” for one another.  The bottom line, we forget how much we have been given and how much we have to share.  This does not just apply to money, either.

               I remember a time when my youngest child was just a baby of about 6 months old, my son was 2 and my eldest daughter was 5.  I would not have been winning any parenting awards on that day, and at one point I even considered shipping off at least one of my lovely three children to someone who I knew would be much better capable of managing what I came to think of as my own personal monkey cage.  I had come to expect help on Fridays, but this particular Friday I was completely on my own all day.  The kids had been in rare form; all demanding things in temper tantrum format all afternoon.  By 7:00 I was a stressed-out mess.  With Youngest in her bouncy chair, and Eldest in the shower, I was trying to get Middle dressed for bed.  But when I tried to put his pajama top over his head I was greeted with yet another temper tantrum.  He would not tell me what he wanted, but instead ripped the shirt off and started to scream at the top of his lungs.  At that moment, Eldest called me to help her wash her hair and Youngest decided this was the perfect moment to put in her two cents as well and she started crying like there was no tomorrow.  I explained to Middle that if he was going to fight me I couldn’t help him, I left him in his room, went and picked up Youngest who continued to scream, took her into the bathroom with me to help Eldest with her hair with my one free hand that wasn’t holding Youngest, and I tried to take a deep breath.  When Middle came running into the bathroom after me, it was all I could do to not snap his head off with a “What is it now?” But instead of crying, or screaming, my two year old boy walked up to me, wrapped his arms around my legs and with a look of deep compassion said very simply, “I’m sorry I was fighting with you, Mama.”  In that moment I saw him again - my little, caring, sweet boy who needed my attention, who needed my love.  Yes, I could give it.  I had reserves that I didn’t even know I had, just for him, just for then.

               A friend of mine told me the story this week of his sister-in-law who is a doctor-of-all-trades whose primary job it is to fill in when other doctors can’t go in.  She’s basically on-call all the time at a particular hospital, for wherever she is needed and in whatever capacity.  Well, her husband died recently.  The day of the memorial service, she not only hosted the service, but hosted the party afterwards at her house.  Before everyone had even left, she received a call that one of the doctors who was supposed to give a lecture that day to a class of medical students just hadn’t shown.  The lecture was supposed to have started already and while the person calling understood she had just lost her husband and that the service was that day, she just didn’t know who else to call.  My friend’s sister-in-law thought for a minute and then realized she, too, had “more than enough”.  She chose to do the class because she had it to give.  That energy, that choice to share what we have whether it is resources, time, energy or money – that is where the kingdom of God, that is where “home”, that is where God, God-self is to be found.

               It’s not that faith isn’t important.  It is faith that tells us that there is enough for everyone.  It is faith that tells us to share and to give.  It is faith that hopes, trusts and believes that if we give what we have, there will still be enough for us.      

               We are, right now, in a time of increasing need.  While some people’s rents have been “put off”, they will have to pay them eventually and many simply won’t be able to.  The increase in numbers of homeless is growing exponentially.  The number of those who don’t have health care during this terrible time is growing.  The lines at the soup kitchens, the food pantries, the need-based agencies is growing exponentially.  This is a time when we need those loaves and fishes to go a long way.  But God gave us the ability to make that happen as God has given us the ability to share what we have, and not from our abundance, but from our recognition that these people are our brothers and sisters, our community, our family, who are in need.  The choice to believe that Jesus alone turned the bread and fish into a feast is a choice to abdicate our responsibility here.  We are not off the hook.  It was to his disciples that he said, “give them something to eat” and in this story from today it is the disciples’ own food that they are being asked to share.  Can God take that and make something amazing out of it?  Of course.  But it must start with our choice to share, to give, and to trust that there will be enough for us all.    

               “We walk by faith and not by sight”  Paul tells us.  But that faith becomes sight, and the world becomes “home” when we choose to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and to love fully, remembering that we are spiritual beings on this human journey together, called to live that out as the people of God that we were made to be.  Amen.

The Ability to Affect Change in Those We Encounter

       As I mentioned in my sermon last Sunday, my son and I have been watching MASH episodes.  I have always enjoyed the show and I continue to do so.  But I'm also seeing them from a slightly different perspective as I grow and become older.  While the sexist and demeaning remarks of the men in the show towards the nurses used to be funny to me (and that was their intention), they now bother me a lot more as I see them for what they are: harrassing, objectifying, and again, extremely sexist.  At the same time, these attitudes expressed in the show do improve as the show progresses through time.  Additionally, the women become less of an "accessory" and more central to the show.  Margaret's character, in particular, moves from a one-dimensional, unintelligent sex-object into a real person who is not only powerful and strong, but also confronts some of these attitudes that come her way.  I woke up this morning thinking about the ways in which her character not only challenges the behaviors of those around her, but actually makes a difference in who they are, in the ways they treat her, and possibly all those around them.  This happens many times, more so as the show progresses, but there are three times in which it especially stands out for me.
        In Season 5, Episode 19, "Hepatitus", Hawkeye has to give Margaret a shot for hepatitus.  These shots are to be given in one's rear end and Hawkeye litters the conversation with these objectifying remarks.  But Margaret ends the scene with these words:
        "How dare you! You come in here on the pretext of giving me a shot and then stand there ogling me as thought I were a side show attraction!"
        "Margaret, I'm trying to show you some appreciation and you hit the roof!  What do you want from me?"
        "Respect.  Simple respect.  I expect nothing more, and I'll accept nothing less."
         Hawkeye looks like he's been hit.  He looks like her words impacted him in a way that nothing else in their relationship had up until that point.  And he shows this to be true by his response when he then says: "That's pretty good.  You got me with that.  You really did.  You know in some ways you really are magnificent, and not just on the outside."
       In season 10, episode 5, "Wheelers and Dealers," BJ is struggling because his wife at home is having to go to work to pay some of their bills.  He is extremely upset and is acting out by being unkind to everyone around him.  Eventually he gives Hawkeye and Margaret a lecture explaining how they can't possibly understand his suffering because they don't have a family at home.  Margaret comes back at him with these words: "How dare you!  How dare you stand there acting like your brand of suffering is worse than anybody else's!  Well, I guess that's the only way you can justify treating the rest of us like dirt.  Well let me tell you something, sad sack!  If the worse thing that has happened to you is that your pretty little wife has to help pay the bills for a while don't come to me for sympathy.  Maybe you do have the most to lose.  But that's only because you've got the most!"  And again, we see that BJ hears her.  He brings a gift to his friends of cookies that his wife made and as he shares them he says, "I'm still full from last night's serving of humble pie."
      Finally, in season 8 episode 14, "Stars and Stripes" Margaret is having a romance with Scully until he dismisses her work and her profession as unimportant, less-than, and almost "play acting."  He says, "You're a nurse.  Being a major is an honorary thing, so you can boss around a bunch of nurses.  But not real soldiers."
      Margaret responds with "Is that so?  Well, let me tell you something, Private. I'm damn proud of these." (pointing at her major pin)  "Nobody gave these to me.  I earned them. And I'm just as much a major as any other major.  You'll notice these leaves come in gold.  Not pink for girls and blue for boys."
      And then later when they have another conversation in which he is again trying to put her back into the singular role of subservient woman, she says, "You take it for granted that everything you want is yours.  What about what I want?  What do you suppose I am deep down?  I'm me: sometimes a nurse, sometimes a major, sometimes a woman in love, sometimes all three at once... and sometimes that's lonely. Cooking eggs and playing house used to be fine for an afternoon.  But now I want more out of my life than an afternoon..."  Scully leaves.  Perhaps she doesn't change him with her words this time, but my guess is that she does: it just takes longer for those words to have an impact, to make it inside to that place where he might become a bit more self-reflective and might grow and learn a bit.
     There are other times too, when Margaret is able to truly impact those around her, with her strength, and with her wisdom.  Since this is a TV show, I have found myself wondering, more realistically, how many people the character's words actually affected through the airing of these thoughts, ideas, beliefs and even values.
      I think for me, that ability to make a difference, to change ourselves, but through that to impact others in ways that help them to be kinder, more self-reflective, more understanding, more compassionate, more grace-filled - that is my deepest goal and hope.  This isn't really measurable.  I will never know if my words have impacted or changed others.  My life is small, the ways in which I affect the larger world are small.  I will never know if I have been able to make a difference in the lives of those around me.  But it is my goal, my hope, that my impact in this world is positive, and makes change for the better.
      At the same time, I had someone remind me today that we pastors are not the "source" but are the medium, like a river bed, for the river to flow through.  That our goal, really, should be to move ourselves out of the way so that the river can flow through us to those we encounter.  While it can be hard to put our egos aside, any goal that lifts up our own success or our own ability to make a difference is not following that deeper call from God.  So, I am trying to sit into this, to listen to those words of wisdom and to move myself out of the way.  Still, I think God works through us, no matter our flaws and our humanity, whenever we are open to God, and whenever our intentions aim towards Love.  I will continue to value the character of Margaret in MASH because she is able to change her world for the better.  It is something I would wish for all of us; that we can become the mirrors reflecting the Light, that we can become the arms, holding one another in love; that we can become the river bed, a shute for a river of compassion, grace and justice to flow through us into a broken and hurting world.

Life Isn't Fair

       A few weeks ago my sermon focused on why bad things happen to good people.  This is the age old question in theology.  If there is a good God, why do these terrible things happen? Personally, I believe God chooses genuine relationship with us which requires that we are given free will.  I believe that, as a result, people have the ability to make bad choices and do things which really harm others.  But in reality that is only a partially satisfying answer.  I believe that the place God is when bad things are happening is with those who are suffering.  But this, too, is an only partially satisfying answer.
       I find myself looking at people's lives a great deal and noticing themes.  There are some people who truly have what I would call a "charmed" life.  Their lives seem incredibly blessed.  They have an abundance of gifts, resources and opportunities, and when they share their stories I'm always amazed at what doors open to them and at what they are able to accomplish just by wishing things into existence.  And then there are others who seem to never be able to catch a break.  Everything they touch seems to crumble, to fall apart, to create chaos and devastation.
       Most of us are somewhere in between.  I tease my kids that I have two special "karmas".  I have an amazing parking karma.  It doesn't matter how crowded a parking area is, I always find a parking spot and usually it is in a prime location.  It's something we can count on, to the point that other people ask to ride with me places because they know if I'm driving, a parking spot will be found.  I also recognize that I seem to attract free gifts.  Wherever I go and whatever the circumstances, gifts seem to come my way.  Well over half of what I have has been a gift (and usually a very unexpected gift) from someone else.  I am deeply and truly blessed by the generosity of folk around me, often and in abundance.  On the other hand, I have one big negative "karma" - anything electronic that I touch breaks down.  What's more than all of this, though, is that the hard stuff that has come my way is always big and painful.  Hard and intense childhood. Difficult and painful situations as an adult. Big things. Catastrophes. Humiliations and losses and traumas and victimization.  The threat of financial devastation, homelessness (always having a place to stay with friends and family, but without a home base of any kind for several months at a time); an extremely public, humiliating, scandalous and horrible situation that led to a painful divorce.  So constant is this kind of stuff in our lives that when my daughter and I were on a small trip together and we had someone trying to break into our hotel room, pounding on the door, rattling the handle and looking under the door in the middle of the night, my daughter just took it in stride.  The next day when I asked her how it was possible for her to immediately go back to sleep once the guy had left, "Well, it's just one more thing and in the scheme of what we've been through, not so bad."  At some level that broke my heart: that her life has been so full of trauma that when someone is trying to break into our room in the middle of the night, it seems minor to her.
      In the face of this, my "whys" sometimes deepen.  Why are the lives of some people so very charmed and the lives of others so hard?
      This need for life to somehow be "fair" is so ingrained in humanity that throughout history we have tried to create explanations for life's great inequities.  The Bible talks about the "sins of the fathers" being carried down seven generations.  So, if something was wrong with someone, and the community couldn't see an obvious reason for their suffering, it was assumed that someone in their history misbehaved, causing their pain and struggles.  For many, karma described how a person's past deeds in past lives dictated how this life would be experienced: if you were born poor it was because of mistakes in your past life.  If you were born rich and powerful, it must be because you did it right in your past life.  We want life to be fair.  And it so obviously isn't.  So we've created ways to make it fair so that we can bear the injustices.
       But more and more I am letting go of the searching for a way to make life fair, and I'm coming to just accept that life is what it is.  It is unjust.  It is unfair.  Some people suffer deeply.  Others don't.  We can always find someone whose life is better and we can always find someone who has suffered more.  But no one can say that life is fair.  And the work we go through attempting to explain or justify the struggles in life for individuals have a greater potential to add damage to another person's suffering than they do of helping us to understand.  If we assume that each person's suffering is somehow their fault, we add to their pain when we should be easing it with compassion and care.
       But at another level, I do believe there is responsibility here.  I believe that we have been given enough, as a world, for all.  I believe that we have the resources, talents and abilities to ease suffering and to minimize it.  But we don't do this as a people and all of us suffer as a result.  That is not about God or about Karma.  That is about us as flawed people who forget that we are all connected and that all are our brothers and sisters.  We forget to love the other as much as we love ourselves and we act, therefore, in selfish ways that injure other people, damage our world and create immense suffering.  We are greedy and want what we want for ourselves and our loved ones.  We forget that others' needs are also our responsibility and that we have the ability, as the human race, to help one another.  But this is where we are right now.
       So what do we do with this?
       First, I believe we all need to keep working for a world that is more just.  We need to honor and lift up sharing and caring so that others are inspired and moved to do the same.  We need to see one another with eyes of compassion and grace, to forgive often, to give more, and to love without ceasing.
       Second, as I have said many times before, I do believe in a God who is there, always, to bring resurrection out of death, to bring the highest good out of the lowest low, to help us to use our experiences and even our struggles for the good of ourselves and others.  It isn't an easy path to choose to bring good out of suffering.  It is an uphill climb.  But the views are amazing, both during the climb and on those occasional peeks.
        I look at my life, the things that we have gone through.  I would not have chosen any of the really hard stuff.  But I am also so very aware that without those experiences I would not be who I am today, I would not have what I have today in terms of friends, community, family, work; I would not be able to address things in the way I can now address them.  I am so deeply grateful for the experiences that have challenged me to see with eyes of greater compassion and less judgment.  I am thankful that I am becoming more the person I want to be, with greater ability to self-reflect and to choose how I want to act when faced with difficulties.
       Finally, we have to hold on to the knowledge that all things pass, everything is temporary and whatever we are experiencing now is just another step in our journeys.
       Life is not fair.  But we can make it more fair by bringing good out of bad, by working for justice for everyone, by appreciating and loving all that life has to offer.

What is Justice?

Amos 8:1-12, Luke 10:25-37

In light of these scriptures and in light of other scripture what is your idea of justice?  What do you believe or understand justice to be? 

We’ve all experienced injustice.  And I thought I would start today by reading you a letter I wrote to Eldest when she was almost three years old.  Before I read this I need to tell you that she was a very tiny child.  The doctors believed she would remain a “little person”.  When she hit 4’8” they said she was done growing.  She surprised us all by jumping another 6” that same year to hear gigantic height now of 5’2”.  But this was unexpected.  When she was little she was truly tiny.  That’s the context for this letter.

“My dearest Child,

Sunday was a hard day.  You were invited to the birthday party of your little friend, who was turning three.  The party was a great extravaganza of food, noise and play as lots of little almost-three and just-barely-three year olds took over the house, running, eating, laughing and playing, and mostly, you had a good time.  In one corner, your friend's mother had invited a friend to do face painting with the children.  You all stood in line, some more patiently than others, waiting your turns to be turned into a lion, a butterfly, or anything else your hearts desired.  You, my daughter, ended up at the very end of the line, but you patiently waited.  As we stood there, you excitedly watched your friends’ faces being painted and you told me over and over, “I want to be a tiger!  I’m going to be a tiger!”  Finally, you got to the front of the line.  The face painter turned to you and with a firm quickness proclaimed, “She’s too little, she’ll be too wiggly.” And she grabbed her paints and began to close them up. 

I was stunned.  So stunned that it took me a minute to respond.  “My child is the same age as these other children!” I proclaimed.  The woman took one look at you, my tiny, elf-faced daughter and brushed me off, “No, she’s not.  She won’t be able to hold still.”  And, with me arguing, begging and shouting protests as she packed up, she left.

It took me a minute to get the full effect of this.  But after reassuring you and offering to buy some face paints myself to make you into a tiger, the anger that moved inside of me made me cry.  As I stood there talking to you, my little daughter whom I love more than my own life, I realized that this was undoubtedly the first of many experiences you will have in your life where you experience discrimination because of your size. 

Yes, daughter, you are small.  On the growth charts you are somewhere under the second percentile, meaning that 98% of the children your age are taller and heavier than you are.  In addition, you are quiet and do not “show off” your speech, so strangers cannot judge your age by listening to you.  You are also smart.  Smart enough that you got the full effect of what happened.  For the last two days I have heard over and over from you, “The woman with the paint wouldn’t make me into a tiger because she said I was too small and would be too wiggly.  She painted Moira’s face.  She painted Lauren’s face.  She wouldn’t paint my face.”  Yes, you got it.  But you’re not yet wise enough to understand that it was not your fault.  You are not yet worldly enough to get that this was not really about you, but about a woman’s prejudice.  Not old enough to feel okay about this event. 

What can I say to you, my daughter, to ease the pain of this?  To make it okay that you are small?  To tell you that I know you are not wiggly and can hold still and that the woman was prejudice and blind?  You are so young.  I did not want you to experience this kind of thing at such a young age.  But this is the world we live in.  Welcome to the world, my daughter.  There is blindness and cruelty out there.  And you will not be immune from it, even at the young age of “almost-three.”

As I’ve reflected on this, I’ve had some time to think about what other people go through and I realize that we are lucky.  Yes, my daughter, you are small.  But you can learn to stand up for yourself; you will have to.  And when people realize you are older than you look, smarter than you look, I expect they will treat you more fairly. 

Not so with racial prejudice.  Not so with prejudice against the poor or the immigrant.  Not so with gender discrimination.  Not so for those with disabilities.  People suffer real discrimination, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, from the hands of fearful, prejudiced people.  Sometimes people are kept from work because of their appearance, sometimes they suffer cruelty beyond imagination because of their ethnicity, sometimes they die because people are afraid of them, don’t understand them, condemn them.  For some, they cannot afford to get upset every time they experience discrimination, fear or hatred because it is part of their everyday life.  We are lucky, my daughter.  We don’t experience much prejudice.  We do not know what it is to be judged everyday by our skin color or our accents when we talk.  I assume my privilege, which is why I have the luxury to become angry when someone mistreats you, daughter.  When something like this happens, it angers me.  It is also a reminder of just how fortunate and privileged our lives really are.

Where is God in this?  We know where God is: God is with Jesus, talking to the woman, offering the Samaritan water, touching the “unclean.”  God is also with us, inviting us to do as Jesus did, to postpone judgment, to walk unafraid.  God is inviting us to create a new world where these situations are rare for everyone, where everyone can stand up and be counted and treated as a child of God, worthy of respect and love.

So what can I tell you, my daughter?  Even these very early experiences are an opportunity to learn to stand up and say, “No, I will not be treated as less-than.”  But I also want you to learn from this how we should be towards others who may experience pain in the world.  It is not enough to say, “I will not let you do this to me.”  We must also say, “I will not do this myself.” And even, “I will not let you treat my brother or sister in this way.” 

Yes, my daughter, you were judged unfairly.  Remember this and choose to act differently.  There is another way to be in the world.  There is a God who created you beautiful and who loves you regardless of size, race, appearance.  God calls you to be part of recreating a world where all are treated fairly.  Jesus calls us to see and know and mostly, to love.  The Spirit gives us the strength to walk unafraid in the world, with openness and compassion. 

I love you, my daughter.  I am sorry you were treated unfairly.  And yet I hope for you it will help you know your God - a God who does know you, who does love you, and who does want all the best things for you - a God who would paint you a tiger, if that is what your heart so desired.”

It is from this place, of having experienced injustice, as all of us have at one time or another, that I call us now to look at the ways in which we are called to live lives of justice.

For Amos, like Micah and almost all the prophets, the profound call was and is for us to act with justice.  Amos states that our worship is meaningless, pointless, even hateful - if not accompanied by justice.  Amos tells us God is angry with injustice.

But again, what does it mean to do justice?

A few decades ago Princeton seminary decided to really test its ministerial candidates.  All of the candidates had to walk through a specific tunnel on their way to one of the class rooms.  On the day of the final exam for the class, the dean “put” an “injured” person in the tunnel whom all of the students would need to pass by on their way to their final.  The result?  What we would probably consider a shocking number of students - 70% of these ministerial students did not stop to help the man because they were worried about being late for their final. What would you have done?  Like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan, like the people Jesus and Amos condemned, sometimes like us, these people failed to do justice.  We can see that.  We can see what it is to miss the justice boat.

But still, in our every day living, it can be harder to see how to act with justice.  As I understand justice, there are several things that are required.

I’ve shared with you before about the incredible documentary, “The Color of Fear?”  This movie documents a group of men from different ethnicities and cultures who gathered together for a weekend to talk about racism. One white man who was present spent the most part of the weekend fighting hard against the idea that racism was real.  In the face of the stories of deep pain, isolation, limits on opportunities, and cruelty that the men of color around him were sharing, he kept saying to them, “Why do you have to see yourselves as different?  We’re all the same.  Why can’t you just be like me?  You’re imagining any oppression.  No one really cares what color you are.”  No matter what the other men in the room told him, he could not hear their real experience of racism, of invisibility, of abuse.  Finally one of the men said to him, “What would it mean to you if what we are telling you about our experience were true?”  The man looked startled for a moment.  Finally, he answered, “It would mean that the world isn’t as safe or beautiful as I had thought...And it would mean that I was part of the problem.”  With those words he began to cry. 

It hurts to see.  But I believe the first part of justice requires opening our eyes, being courageous enough to see the world’s injustices, to believe the pain that others experience, and even harder, to look honestly at our part in contributing to the injustice in the world.  In what way do we, in our own corners, in our relationships with the hurting neighbor that no one likes and therefore no one speaks to contribute to the pain and injustice in the world?  In what ways do we refuse to listen to or stand up for our children, for family and therefore become part of the injustice that they experience?  In the larger world, in what ways do we contribute to injustice, by the choices we make about the products we use, buying things without thought that were made by children paid a penny a day?  By the choices we make in the food we eat, in the choices about who we vote for - will this candidate lift people out of oppression and injustice, or will this candidate support the status quo and contribute to greater inequality in the world?  We are first called to see the pain in the world and own our part in its injustice.

At one church where I served,  we were part of a community of churches that provided food, showers, haircuts, community fellowship, resources for getting one’s life back together, clothing and a variety of other services and goods.  Through this work and through our time with the homeless people in our community, we developed a very close relationship with one homeless man in particular.  This man was very loving, very giving, very caring.  He began attending our church and when he did so, he offered to run our sound system, he helped with the gardening, he was always on hand to help us in any way.  He was not unintelligent, but he was a severe alcoholic who could not seem to get through the disease to a place where he could give up drinking.  He would give it up for a week or two and then something would happen and he would be drinking again.  We saw him fight for his life against this disease and we saw him losing the battle.  For awhile he lived on the church campus, but we, too set boundaries around his drinking behavior and when he could not live up to them, he could no longer stay on the church campus.  Still, he understood our need to protect the children and families who came to the church and so he continued to be an active member of our community, and we continued to provide care, love and support within the boundaries.  At one point however in our relationship with George, he had a seizure while walking along the street, fell and hit his head.  The police found him hours later and took him to the local hospital.  His injuries, especially to his brain, were very serious and he was admitted for long term hospitalization and rehabilitation.  However, when the nurses and doctors at the hospital came to understand that he was a homeless, jobless, resource-less man, they gave up caring for him.  He remained at the hospital for quite a while, because he was unable to walk a straight line, he could not speak clearly and had very little control over his movements.  But in large part he was at the hospital for so long because they would not provide the care to get him to a place where they could discharge him.  The people of the church loved George for the gentle caring soul that he was, and it broke all of our hearts to see our brother in faith, our brother in Christ, our neighbor, the neighbor Jesus calls us to care for, treated in this way.  But the only time that George received any attention – the only time he would be brought his meals even – was when one of us was there to insist on it.  We paid what we could to the hospital, but this church was mostly made of working class families and retired folk on fixed income, and we simply did not have the resources to pay for better medical care for our brother.  Still, we brought him food.  We sat with him.  We fought for him with the medical personnel.  We cared for him.

The second thing justice requires is , then, is loving and caring for those we can touch who cannot care for or speak for themselves- reaching out to those right in front of us who are in need, whether they be a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a community member, a homeless person, or a stranger on the street.  Like with the story of the Good Samaritan, whomever God places in front of us: that is the most important person at each moment: that is the one we are called to serve and love.  But justice doesn’t end there.

Doing justice also means taking the risk, stepping out of our comfort zones to confront and challenge the status quo.  It is hard, it is challenging.  And yet, we are required by our love of God, by our love of neighbor.  Mostly, we are called by God’s love for us to do nothing less.  Because we will never be whole until our brothers and sisters find justice.  We, too will be lessened, we too live in injustices as long as they exist.

I am reminded of a poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left

to speak out for me.

Justice is remembering that we are all connected.  This takes us back to the very first story that I told about my daughter.  We are called to live lives of justice out of love and gratitude.  We often find that love from a place of remembering our own pain.  Because justice is about living out our deep connections to all others, by knowing our pain and then by seeing the pain of our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, even our enemies and then by being willing to own our part in the worlds’ pain and being willing to change it.  Justice is acting with love and compassion for those in front of us.  Justice is standing up against the status quo even for those we will never meet.  Justice is knowing that while I do this out of love for you, in serving you, I serve myself because without your justice, there is no justice for me; without your peace, there is no peace for me; without your wholeness, I too am broken.

Amen.

Mother's Day

John 13:31-35

Luke 13:31-35

Mark 3:31-34

               From Wit and Wisdom from the Peanut Butter Gang by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1994):

 “When you mother is mad and asks you, “Do I look stupid?” it’s best not to answer her.”

“I’ll never take my mom’s car out again until I can do it legally.”

“If your mom’s asleep, don’t wake her up.”

“It’s no fun to stay up all night if your parents don’t care.”

“Despite all the loving and caring relationships in the world, there is nothing more loving than the feel of my mother’s hand on my forehead when I am sick.”

“You should never laugh at your (mom) if (she’s) mad at you.”

“If mom’s not happy, nobody’s happy.”

“You only have one mom and you should take care of her.”

And finally, “Parents don’t get enough appreciation.”

               As you know, today is Mother’s Day.  And while the worship committee asked that we do a service that really and truly centered on Mother’s Day, and while I agreed to do it, I actually find Mother’s Day to be one of the hardest days of the year for pastors and one of the hardest subjects to preach on. 

               Mother’s Day is difficult because it is a loaded day for so many people, for so many reasons.  If you had a great childhood, but your mother is now passed on, it can be a day of deep sorrow as you miss your mother.  If you had a terrible childhood it can be a day of anger and a day to remind you of the difficult things that you experienced as a kid.   This is made even worse if you suffered abuse at the hands of your mother, or if your mother failed to protect you from the abuse of other family members.

Mother’s Day can call up feelings of guilt since most of the time sermons on Mother’s Day focus on appreciation for and the need to care for our mothers.  If you cannot do that for your mother, or even if just couldn’t do it all the time, this can be a very difficult and challenging day.

If you were adopted, it can be a day of confusion: who do I really count as my mother and how do I feel about both my biological mother and the mother that raised me.  If you have struggled to have your own children and were unable to do so, it can be a day of deep grief as you mourn never having the opportunity to be a mother.  If you have lost a child it can also be a day of deep grief as you mourn the loss of that child or those children.  If you raised your kids and they are struggling, it can be a day of real regrets: regretting the way you parented or specific things that you said or did in your parenting. It can be a day of anger at the judgements of others on your parenting, including pastors in Mother’s Day sermons.  (Did you know that one of the top reasons women pastors leave the ministry is because of all the unsolicited judgments and advice they are given on their parenting? 80% of all pastors feel ministry negatively impacts their families).  If you aborted a child, Mother’s Day can bring up all kinds of feelings: grief, fear, anger, etc.  If you have never been a mother and had or have no desire to be a mother, it can also be a hard day as the expectations of being a mother can feel so pressing and there can be so much judgment around that decision too.

  Mother’s Day can be a day to avoid the world for some people, and especially to avoid a church service which may be honoring the very people who damaged you in some real way, or a situation that you can’t or don’t want to be a part of.

In the midst of all of this, then, we have Mother’s Day.  And I picked three passages, all of which I feel have something to tell us about this day, about God’s relationships with us and about our relationships with one another. 

We start with the John passage and we are told that our biggest command, our final command, Jesus’ central message is that we love one another.  We are to be known as Jesus’ disciples by the way that we love, fully and unconditionally, despite differences, despite whatever we have been through, despite the way others treat us.  We are to be known through the way that we love.  And I believe that the best way that we know how it is to love in the way that God calls us to love is by reflecting the way that good parents love their kids.  Whether or not we’ve had good parents, whether or not we’ve been good parents, whether or not we’ve experienced that kind of deep and unconditional and abiding love, we all know what it looks like when a good mother loves her children.  There is nothing that will come in the way of that love: no belief, no choice, no action.  No matter how we are treated, no matter which of our deepest values our children reject or denounce, no matter if they mess up, lead lives that we don’t understand and can’t support, do unspeakable things or put us through hell, we continue to love them, fiercely, with all that we are and in such a way that we would easily and quickly give up our own lives for them.  That is what it is and what it means to be good parents. 

Jesus mirrors this understanding when he says in today’s passage from Luke, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”  Even in the face of our pain, of rejection from our children at times, good mothers love and want to protect their children.  God who reflects God shows us this kind of love and calls us to love all people in the same way. 

There is one other passage that always comes to mind for me when I think of what it is to be a mother.  And that passage is John 19:26-27.   Jesus is dying on the cross.  And we are told, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”  That passage to me is profound in so many ways.  But to me it is more than simply the obvious: “take care of my mother because I love you both.”  It is also a more universal statement.  We are all deeply connected.  We are all children and parents to one another.  We are all called to love one another with the fierceness of motherhood, to care for one another, to bring those who need it into our spaces, into our homes, to see them as family and to love them with all that we are as if they were our own flesh and blood.

The people who are our true mother and brothers, as Jesus points out in today’s passage from Mark, are those who treat us in this way.  Sometimes those are the women who birthed us.  Sometimes those are the parents who raised us.  And sometimes, as Jesus himself says in this passage, they aren’t.  Sometimes they are other people, who raise us and embrace us and love us with that fierce unconditional love that God calls us to. 

I think about all the strange stories of animals that have adopted other animals.  The crow who found a kitten and took care of it by bringing it worms until the kitten was big enough to start hunting on its own.  This crow continued to watch over the kitten until it was a full grown cat, leading it to food sources and just staying nearby in case anyone tried to threaten the kitten.  I think about the Leopard who attacked the baboon, discovered that the baboon had a baby on it’s back, and the Leopard adopted the baby baboon, watching over it and keeping it warm at night.  Completely unexpected and counter intuitive, but there it was.  Do you remember the story of MZee and Owen?  Owen was a baby hippopotamus who was separated from his family by a tsunami.  He was rescued and brought to a refuge where there was a tortoise named MZee.  The tortoise was 130 years old and very much a loner.  But Owen attached to MZee, following him around, and within a very short time, MZee took Owen under his care, watched over him, took him in as a mother would. 

And it brings me back to a story by Barbara Brown Taylor that I shared with you before but which embodies this kind of motherhood to a tee.  Barbara Brown Taylor has a silkie chicken which she obtained when one of her hens died, leaving an orphaned guinea chick.  She had heard that silkies were good adoptive mothers, so she bought one and brought it home.  She wrote, “I needed a foster mother for our orphaned guinea chick.  I had heard that Silkies are good mothers, so I shopped around in the Market Bulletin until I found some for sale…  When the Silkie and I got home… first I lay on the grass while she and the baby watched each other through the mesh of the cage.  Then I placed her inside.  Both she and the baby froze.  The baby cheeped.  The hen did not move a feather.  The baby cheeped again.  The hen staed right where she was.  The baby took a few steps toward her.  I held my breath.  The gray hen liften her wings.  The baby scooted right into that open door.  When I checked on them an hour later, all I could see was a little guinea chick head poking out from under that gray hen’s wing….This is counterintuitive, I might add.  If this hen is into the preservation of her species, then she ought to be looking out for her own babies and letting the others go hand, but she does not.  She accepts all comers, no questions asked.  She has neer seen a chick she didn’t like.  I ought to trust her by now, yet every time I introduce her to a new baby with nowhere else to go, I can feel the back of my throat get tight.  Please, please, please, don’t peck this baby, I plead.  It’s so little.  It has never laid eyes on any momma but you.  Then I set the chick in the cage with her, sitting down where I can watch what happens.  The baby cheeps.  The hen does not move a feather.  The baby cheeps again.  The hen stays right where she is.  The baby takes a few steps toward her.  The hen lifts her wings.  Come to momma, honey.  ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’  Jesus had chicken neighbors too, I guess, and from them he learned about God’s wings.  Watching them, he knew what he wanted to be and do.  One cluck from him, and I know too.”

On this Mother’s day, I invite you to remember that we are called to follow Jesus by loving in the way that he did.  That means loving one another, loving ALL the one anothers, with this kind of love, a Mother’s love.  I invite you to celebrate that love with me by reading together the Mother’s Day Litany that is printed in your bulletins.