Gift of Renewal

 

Luke 3:1-22

Mark 1:4-11

There once was a little boy named Sam who was very excited about Halloween.  But his parents kept putting off getting his costume until finally the day of Halloween his mother came home with a costume that Sam hated.  It was of some comic book character who had been big once but who now was seen by all the kids to be ridiculous and only for the littlest of children.  Sam was devastated.  How could he ever wear this?  He couldn’t possibly go out on Halloween in this costume!  He was so upset, he ran down the street to where an older couple who had become surrogate grandparents to Sam lived.  He ran into their house and cried and cried about the terrible costume his mother had picked out for him.  Well, Norm, the older man thought for a few minutes and then he said to his wife, “Don’t we have some old costumes up in the attic from when our kids were children?”

“Why, I believe we do!”  she replied.  Up they all went into the attic and down they came with an old ghost costume.  Really, it was just a sheet with holes cut in it for the eyes.  But Sam was so thrilled with the costume, he just couldn’t wait to put it on.  With a look of awe in his eyes, he pulled the sheet down over his head and before anyone could stop him, he went running out the door to go trick or treating and ran straight through the yard and bam into a tree!  Norm saw this and he dashed out after him, picked up the little boy, but before he could stop him, there Sam took off again, running as fast as he could until bam he ran smack into another tree!  This time the force pushed him flat onto his back where he lay still until Norm came running up.  Norm wondered what on earth was going on until he looked into Sam’s face and realized that Sam had not lined up the eye holes to match his eyes.  He had been virtually blind, running around the yard, completely unable to see where he was going.  Norm gently but firmly took hold of the sheet, pulled it around until Sam was able to see through the eye holes, tied a rope around his waist to hold the costume in place and sent Sam off on a much more successful and enjoyable Halloween evening of trick-or-treating!

Blindness.  The inability to see without help.  Walking around in the dark, not because it is dark, but because our vision is covered, obscured in some way.  The darkness of failing to realize that we could see, if someone were to just help us adjust our costumes, adjust our outlook, adjust our approach, just a little bit.  Oftentimes it is this blindness which causes us to err, to sin, to take a wrong path so that somebody gets hit, whether it be just a tree or another person, someone gets hurt: and we obviously do as well. 

We all have our costumes a little bit askew.  We all think that we are speaking the same language, like the little boy knowing it is Halloween, knowing he is supposed to wear a costume and go out into the night.  Sometimes when we come thinking we know how things are supposed to work, we miss the very cues that tell us our eyes are not seeing clearly right now.

Similarly, when new people come into our spaces, it is sometimes hard to read them as well and so we have a goal for ourselves to see our vision of God’s hand at work in this place and to try to interpret that for any who are new coming into our space.  But regardless, I think it is important that we treat one another with patience, always, knowing that even as we speak the same languages, and even when we’ve known each other a long time, we never completely understand one another, we never completely can see with the same vision as one another.  So we struggle at times to walk together, learn together, work together, as we learn to see through the eye holes of our new trappings.  We try to respect different traditions, try to honor different values in ministry, recognizing that by the very nature of our being different people, with different church experiences and, raised with different values and different visions, we will do things differently, but we know that as people, we do and will step on toes, we do and will create and experience challenges that help us all grow, and we do and will undoubtedly make mistakes.  Part of what helps is to share with one another our stories, sharing what matters most to each of us about your lives, striving to trust one another with honesty, openness, to be the people who, when we have run into a tree can come and adjust the eye-holes and with grace and forgiveness, set us going on a path that will make our walks easier, cleaner, straighter and will involve us hitting as few trees, or even people, as possible.  

It also involves forgiveness, and seeking to heal relationships when things have not gone well, when we have hit trees, when we haven’t been able to see correctly.  One of the wisest sayings I know is that you never understand what someone else is going through.  We never do, so seeking to remember that, to have compassion for the other, to be kind, is essential.  Giving the other the benefit of the doubt is absolutely necessary if we are to find peace in this life-time.  As I’ve shared with you before, it is extremely important that we forgive, not for the sake of the one we are forgiving, but really for our own sakes.  Studies are showing more and more exactly how important this is.  Our physical well-being seems deeply connected to forgiveness.  The lack of forgiveness increases blood pressure, increases chances of stroke and heart disease, and greatly affects people’s chances of surviving cancers.  Emotionally, the lack of forgiveness can lead to bitterness, depression, and an inability to move forward.  But we often don’t know HOW to forgive.  I’ve been taking a weekly course through the Board of Pensions on forgiving and forgiveness.  And this last week in my webinar, they gave us an exercise to do.  They told us to write out a story about something we were having a difficult time forgiving.  Then they said on a separate piece of paper, take out of the story we wrote only facts.  Not guesses about what the other person thought or what their intentions were or what they believed or didn’t believe.  Just write down the facts of what happened.  And then take the original story and throw it away.  I tried this exercise and found that it was AMAZING.  That most of what I had been upset or angry about were things I had assumed, guessed, “intuited”.  Similarly, I have been attacked and accused of feelings or thoughts or ideas that were never my own: that other people’s anger at me usually is based on something unreal. 

About two years ago I went for a hike with a friend from college.  She was asking me about mutual friends whom I was more in touch with than she was.  And then I asked her about mutual friends with whom she had closer connections.  When I asked her about one friend in particular, she told me that “oh, yeah!  I called her about a year ago but didn’t hear back, and then I tried again about 6 months ago.  It’s time for me to try to reach out again!”  She said this without critique, without judgement, and what struck me more, without any kind of pain or sense of being ignored.  If I had reached out to someone repeatedly and they had not responded, I would have felt rejected, intentionally attacked in a passive-aggressive way.  I would assume that the person I had tried to contact was sending me a very clear message of “I don’t care about you.  I don’t like you.  I don’t want you in my life.”  So I asked her about it.  And SHE was stunned by my reaction.  “Oh!” she said, “I just assume she was busy and meant to call me back but got distracted by other things.”  My friends’ different approach, different assumptions, different understanding caught me off guard.  It showed me once again that the things that often offend me, or hurt me, or get my “ire” up – the things that may lead me to feel hurt and to hold on to grudges: these are often, if not always, a matter of my own interpretation. 

Today is baptism of the Lord Sunday.  It is the day when God comes and washes the dirt from our eyes.  It is the day when we celebrate that God offers us first, calls us first, even before we are able to ask for it, the gift of being made new, being made clean, of being given the possibility of different sight, different vision.  It is the second Sunday of epiphany, an appropriate time to recognize that Baptism is a gift we receive from God.  With its cleansing and renewing waters, then, we can see enough to strive to talk to others, to build relationships with others, to give to others, to forgive others and ourselves. 

Part of learning to walk with one another with our costumes on straight has to start with knowing who each other are, getting to know each other more deeply as individuals within a community.  But then it must continue with forgiveness, with the willingness to recognize our assumptions that are blocking our ability to forgive, to understand, to truly see and love one another.

Today, on this second Sunday of Epiphany, we are called to reflect on the amazing gift of baptism that God has given to first Jesus, and then us.  It is a gift of remembering that God calls us into relationship with God.  It is a gift of remembering that God initiates care for us, call to us, purpose and meaning for our lives, before we are even old enough to choose to respond. It is a gift that says, “because I first chose you, because I first brought new life to you, because I begin your life by giving to you every day again and again, because I always look for the best of who you are and forgiven and erase the past that is the worst; now you are called to return that gift to all God’s people, caring back, giving second chances to others, forgiving, choosing to love and live and care for others in the way that I have cared for you.” 

Often when we are meeting together on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, I choose to do some kind of remembrance of our baptism and baptism vows.  We are apart this year, which makes this more difficult.  But instead, I want us to do two different things in our separate spaces.  First, I am going to reread to you the promises that we make during baptism. 

Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?

Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?

Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, share in its worship and ministry through your prayers and gifts, your study and service and so fulfill your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

               Secondly, I would invite you to do the exercise that I was taught in my forgiveness webinar.  Think of someone you are struggling to forgive.  Think of what exactly it is that you are having trouble forgiving and write it down.  Write all of it down: all your thoughts, all your ideas, all your assumptions about their thoughts, their motivations.  “He was a selfish jerk and he just wanted to make my life miserable” kind of stuff.  Write it all down. Once you have finished with that, take a separate piece of paper and write down only the facts, the things you absolutely know.  What was said, what actually happened, what actually took place.  Not what you’ve heard, not what you’ve assumed, NOT what anyone else has told you, but the actual facts that you witnessed, that you saw, that you know.  Then take the first story that you wrote and throw it away.  Let it go.  Forgive.  By the way, that same forgiveness needs to be offered to ourselves as well: we often have the hardest time forgiving ourselves.

            This giving the benefit of the doubt, this erasing of the past, this creation of new relationships, new possibilities, new life – this is what God offers us.  And we are called, as I said, to do the same.  Take this remembrance of Jesus’ baptism, of your own, to remember all that God has done for you and to celebrate and offer the same to those around you.  Amen.

Thinking about the poison of Gossip

         We all know how poisonous gossip can be.  We all know that it can tear apart communities, it can destroy individuals, it can irreparably damage relationships.  We know this.  Most of us have seen this happen to someone else if we haven't experienced it directly. Recently I have seen it doing damage again, spreading and dividing a community again, with stories and tales that contain only a seed of truth and with growing venom that has hurt relationships and individuals.
          And yet, as damaging as we know it to be, there seems to be something deep in the human psyche that cannot resist passing on a juicy bit of "news" that we've heard, and something in our beings that has a hard time not embellishing and changing what we've heard... just a little... as we pass it along.  What is that?  Why is that?
          Perhaps we are needing to process through the things that we've heard, maybe we need to say it out loud in order for it to be real for us.  Maybe we are impacted by what we have heard and share it as a way to deal with our feelings.  Why then do we pass on the information changed?
        Perhaps we feel it won't be taken with enough seriousness if we don't make it bigger than we heard it was.  Maybe we believe people will not give it the full attention it needs if we don't change it a tiny bit in the sharing.
        There are cases when I think people use and manipulate gossip in order to get what they want.  And I believe there are times when people use gossip as a way to hurt or damage others.  But most of the time, I think people are not being mean or unkind or manipulative.
       Still I think the practice of gossip gets a great deal of cultural support.  People like being told news, they like being on the "in" and hearing the stories that others have to share.  That's a good thing when people are sharing their own stories.  But it is a very harmful thing when it comes to other people talking about and sharing stories that are not theirs to share.
        Most of the time I think people are not intending to hurt others.  But gossip is hurtful.  And I think the only thing that will affectively put a stop to the evil of gossip is the realization that we are just as guilty as the gossiper when we choose to engage the stories, when we support the practice of gossip by eagerly listening (not just passing along, but even listening) to the tales others tell us about other people.  I know it's not easy to do, but a simple, "I think I'd feel more comfortable hearing this story from the subject themself."  "I'm not sure 'Jane' would want me to be hearing this from anyone but Jane herself."  "I'm uncomfortable hearing this without Ed being with us."  "This sounds like it's Frank's story to tell."
         I realize direct confrontation around gossip is uncomfortable.  Walking away, or out of a circle of gossip, may be an easier way to handle it: sending a less direct but none the less clear communication that you are uneasy with the gossip.  This too can be hard, because it does communicate an unwillingness to engage a behavior our friends may be participating in.  I also realize that any time we choose not to engage in the circle of gossip, we risk becoming the target of the gossip itself.
         I understand all of that.
         But I also know that any time we choose to do what is best for a person who is being harmed, that any time we choose to opt out of or even confront something that is harmful to another person, we are choosing to make our community a tiny bit better for someone else.  And that is a deeply worth-while goal.
        I can't stop reflecting on the damage that I recently witnessed done to someone who did not deserve such hurt, condemnation, exclusion or broken relationships.  And I keep thinking that if even one person, early on in the situation, had stood up and said, "no" to the gossip circle, that things would have ended very differently.  That is tragic to me.  But it's also a call for a stronger determination to choose differently when the choices present themselves to either engage with gossip or to refuse to do so.  May we all have the strength to say "no."

Having the Courage to Include

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

How do we understand who we are?  How do we understand what makes us ourselves?  In a lot of ways we do this by identifying what we are NOT, and who we are NOT.  I am NOT male, not a Southerner or East Coast person, NOT a fundamentalist, NOT a sporty kind of gal.  It is okay to figure out who we are in relationship to what and who we are not.  But often we then take this to the next step of excluding others, keeping out those we identify ourselves against.  We exclude folk, don’t invite them to our gatherings, to our dinners, to our activities. We pick people usually who are in the same “categories” that we put ourselves in.  And we either don’t even see, or specifically bar and exclude people who don’t fit into our categories or what is okay, what is good, what is “us”.  But in so doing, we run the risk of keeping people from God, from God’s grace, from God’s redemption, from the life that God gives to each of us. 

We know this.  As we’ve worked closely, for example, with the Rainbow Community Center, it has become extremely clear that the Church (big C) has lost thousands of LGBTQ+ members as a result of Christian exclusion, or prejudice, of unkindness, of intolerance.  Again, we know this.  We are called to be known by our love.  But how many times, instead, are we known by our judgments, our exclusion, and even our hate?

We too easily feel threatened, feel jealous, feel scared of those who are different.  We are too easily afraid we will be “corrupted” or damage or harmed by those who are different from us.  We judge as a way to protect.  We set up boundaries of inclusion as a way to try to be safe.  But these choices to exclude are much more dangerous than any inclusion could possibly be.

All three of today’s passage emphasizes the deep and real importance of not excluding, not keeping others from God.  The story of Esther is a story of a woman who had the courage to beg the king to not destroy her people, people who were being excluded because Haman, the king’s advisor, felt threatened by them.  Haman almost succeeded.  His fear, his jealousy, his anger led him to almost destroy an entire group of people.

In the James passage we are encouraged to not ever give up on someone else, to never consider another beyond redemption but to rejoice in the possibility that all can find their way back.

And of course the Mark passage emphasizes that when we are quick to exclude, we need to look again.  I love this passage because the disciples were clearly people like all of us: they became jealous, they felt threatened by the power and attention that this other person was getting.  And Jesus basically said, “do not allow those feelings to cause you to treat another person as an enemy.  Don’t decide they are against you because they aren’t with you at the moment.  Don’t decide they are your foe because they hang out with other people, look different, make different choices, see the world differently.”

I have shared with you before some of what author Mitch Albom has written. In his book, Have a Little Faith, he really is writing his own story of ‘drifting’ from his faith.  As he looks into why he drifted away from his own faith, he at first claimed that it was mostly apathy.  But as he told his own story, it became clear that there were other reasons at the heart of his drifting from his faith.  He noticed hypocrisy.  Well, we all do, right?  We all know about the many people of faith who claim to be about love who act hateful, for example.  Or the many people who shout condemnation only to be caught doing whatever it is they are condemning…

(On a side note, I find it a bit confusing that people expect church folk to BE perfect, or to somehow be less hypocritical than everyone else.  We are here because we need TO grow.  So if we came in perfect, what would be the point?  As Jesus himself said, Mark 2:17, “ It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”).

But for Mitch, also, he started to notice that he was excluded, as a Jewish person, from the larger culture.  And instead of staying true to his faith but stepping away from an exclusive culture, he chose to be part of the culture and step away from a faith that would leave him out. Additionally, and this is described more than stated in his book, he found good things in other traditions…he married an Arab Christian, not rejecting her because of her faith, not finding her hideous or unacceptable because of her faith.  And yet because of his own upbringing, he felt guilty about not having an exclusivist vision when it came to his faith.  He found wisdom in other faiths, such as Christianity, and felt this must be wrong.  At one point when he was talking to his Rabbi, the Rabbi had made the comment, “I have what I need, why bother chasing more?”  To which Albom responded, “You’re like that Biblical quote, what profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”

“That’s Jesus” responded the Rabbi.

“Oops, sorry,” I said.

“Don’t apologize,” he said, smiling.  “It’s still good.” 

The Rabbi was able to accept the wisdom in other traditions.  Albom, though, felt guilty in quoting Jesus.  He felt he was crossing an unacceptable line by valuing wisdom from different faiths.   

At one point Albom confronted the Rabbi about this asking how he could be so “open-minded” as a clergy person for the Jewish faith.

The Rabbi responded, “Look.  I know what I believe.  It’s in my soul.  But I constantly tell our people: you should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don’t know everything.  And since we don’t know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.” He sighed.  “I’m not being original here, Mitch.  Most religions teach us to love our neighbor.”

Albom continues, “I thought about how much I admired him at that moment.  How he never, even in private, even in old age, tried to bully another belief, or bad-mouth someone else’s devotion.  And I realized I had been a bit of a coward on this whole faith thing.  I should have been proud, less intimidated.  I shouldn’t have bitten my tongue.  If the only thing wrong with Moses is that he’s not yours; if the only thing wrong with Jesus is that he’s not yours; if the only thing wrong with mosques, Lent, chanting, Mecca, Buddha, confession, or reincarnation is that they’re not yours - well, maybe the problem is you.  One more question? I asked the Reb.  He nodded.  When someone from another faith says, ‘God bless you’ what do you say?  ‘I say, “thank you, and God bless you, too.’  Really? ‘Why shouldn’t I’  I went to answer and realized I had no answer.  No answer at all.” (p 168)…  “You can embrace your own faith’s authenticity and still accept that others believe in something else.”

            My son and I were watching the movie “The Help” last week.  It’s one of my favorite movies, so we’ve watched it a number of times.  But this time what struck me the most was the story that Skeeter’s mother finally told her about what had happened to their life-long African American maid who disappeared from the family while Skeeter was away at college. The story takes place in the 60s in Mississipi, where the household servants were exclusively African American woman serving all white families. Skeeter had been raised by their help, their maid, by Constantine.  Constantine had been with and worked for this family forever.  And in many ways she was one of the family, though in other ways the limits and social behaviors of the time would never allow for close connection.  But at the point at which the Daughters of America had come out to offer Skeeter’s mother an award and the President of the Daughters of America behaved in a very racist, exclusive way, expected the same exclusive, judging, condemning and belittling behavior in Skeeter’s mother, when suddenly Skeeter’s mother was being judged for being too kind, too inviting of the woman who had raised her kids, who had taken care of their family for decades, suddenly Skeeter’s mother had a terrible choice to make.  She either had to stand up to a woman she respected, the woman who had the power to give her this honor that she had sought for so long, or she had to throw out the helper, Constantine and her daughter who had given all of their lives to care for Skeeter’s mother and her family.  Skeeter’s mother made a terrible choice.  She chose to impress her guests by kicking out and firing Constantine and her daughter for coming in through the front door of her house, something that had never been unacceptable in that house before.  She chose to impress her guests by taking livelihood and a family away from someone she loved.  She chose to exclude, to judge, to condemn – all for the sake of appearances, for the sake of her own acceptance into a group that was behaving in a manner we know to be deeply racist, to be utterly atrocious.

            We may not face these exact same challenges.  But we know there are times for many people when they are called on to choose between being inclusive but losing the respect of people they had otherwise looked up to, or to exclude in a way we know is wrong but puts us in a better place with someone who has power in our lives.  This can happen at work, this can happen at the store, this can happen on the BART train when we witness cruelty towards a Muslim or an immigrant.  Do we choose to speak up?  To stand up for those who are being attacked?  Do we choose to include, to love, to stand up for people who are different from us even when we might lose something, personally, by doing so?

            I was reminded of a time in one of the churches I served where one of the members who volunteered constantly to be a greeter was a woman that others found… well, slightly repulsive.  She didn’t bath nearly as often as she should have, she didn’t have a good sense of personal space, but would tend to stand too close, and touch too often.  She said whatever came into her head, which was never unkind, but often revealed more than people really wanted to hear.  And I remember when one of our other church members “suggested” that having her act as a greeter might be sending the wrong message to visitors.  “She isn’t like the rest of us.  She should not be the spokesperson for our congregation.  She will turn people off!  We want people who dress right and look good and say the right things to welcome our guests.”  We were in a group of people when this man declared this, and as I looked around to see how other people felt, I could see the discomfort.  The man speaking in this way was highly respected, a big donor, a leader in the church.  At the same time I think most of the people in that room also knew that our job as people of faith, as Christians, is not to turn away someone from a service they feel called to do because they don’t fit the stereotypes we have.  I finally gently suggested that I thought her presence as a greeter sent exactly the right message: that all are welcome in this place, that we are not just a country club for the rich and comfortable, but a sanctuary for all people.  But I have to admit that for me, too, it was not easy to say those words, it was not easy to put a different perspective forward, even if it was one of inclusion, one of love, one of acceptance and celebration of all of who we are.

            The reality is it goes farther than simple inclusion.  It also has to extend to really seeing the other.. it has to extend to respect.

            Thinking about all the #metoo stuff that’s been going on lately, and the harrassments and assaults that have been coming to the forefront of our awareness lately, reminded me of one of my favorite MASH episodes.  Hawkeye needs to give Margaret a shot because Hepatitis is raging through camp.  This is shot that you get on your rear.  And Hawkeye is making comments about Margaret’s appearance, which he believes to be a compliment, but which she hears, as most women would, as crossing a line, as being a form of harassment, of being an invasion, of being disrespectful.  She doesn’t like it.  And she says to him, “How dare you come in here on the pretext of giving me a shot and then stand there ogling me as though I were a sideshow attraction.”

His clueless response, “Boy, I show you a little appreciation, and you hit the roof. - What do you want from me?”

To which she responds, “Respect. Simple respect. I expect nothing more, and I'll accept nothing less.”

            Because in MASH people actually grow and change he is able to hear that, he is able to hear her and learn.  Can we do the same?  Can we learn to include, and more, learn to respect, even people who are different from us? Who have different visions of the world, different views, different understandings, different backgrounds, different skin colors, different heritages, different genders and orientations, different ways of being human in an increasingly complex and difficult world?

            It takes great courage at times to stand up for one another.  It takes deep courage to include people that other people would reject.  But Jesus’ phrase, “for whoever is not against us is for us,” is one that we need to take to heart, in our dealings with one another, and in our choices to live with courage in the face of other’s judgements, exclusive behavior, and acts of injustice and oppression towards others.

Ageism

     I've read a number of articles recently that have been talking about the ageist culture that we live in here in the United States.  Youth is considered the ideal.  Part of our definition of beauty includes having gray-less or white-less full heads of hair; smooth, unwrinkled and spotless skin; tight, flab-less, droop-less, and hair-free bodies; and perfectly white and straight teeth.  People who are older have a much harder time getting jobs, they are treated with less respect, and at some point they can even start to be almost invisible.  The needs and issues of the elderly are mostly pushed under the rug, hidden away.  Additionally, the images we have of older people on TV are mostly of people past their usefulness, past their meaning, past being contributing members of society.  If we do see them active, they are usually golfing with other older people; not volunteering, working, or giving back to the society, and certainly not teaching or mentoring or working with younger folk.We celebrate and idolize our youth.
     This is especially true for women.  My 17 year old took a drama class over the summer in which they actually spent time looking at what ages and what percentages of women and men are hired for differing acting roles.  Men, they found, tend to be hired for more jobs as they age, up to a point.  Women have, almost without exception, about a 5 year period in which they are highly sought after, after which they 'age out' and are no longer hired, especially for key and prominent acting roles.  The same is true in the church: older men's experience is valued, but without exception my female pastor friends are finding they "age out" at about 50 in terms of being able to get a new pastoring job.  The ads on TV mostly aim to make women look younger.  Men, with the exception of a culture that pushes for full heads of hair, do not need to pretend to be younger than they are by changing their bodies to look younger. 
      Again, there is article after article out there about this problem.  I don't need to repeat them all.  We know it to be true.  We no longer value the wisdom of age, the old images of the "wise woman" are no longer prevalent (though we still have a few of the wizened older man), and a huge portion of the advertisements we see focus on ways to make us look younger for longer, to try to hold on to our youth rather than to age with grace and even joy.
       Instead of repeating what we know, what I want to talk about is the change we need to make to confront this.  It will take courage and it will take intentionality to do so.  But I believe one of the ways we can fight this is to actively, publicly and with commitment and intentionality step into our own aging with delight and pride, rather than with despair and shame.  That means a number of things:
     1. Refusing to dye our hair when it starts to become white or gray, but instead choosing to see the different colors for the beauty, the variety, the signs of experience that they are.
     2. Stopping spending large amounts of money on "anti-wrinkle creams", botox treatments, anti-cellulite treatments and instead seeing every wrinkle, scar and age mark as the medals of having really lived.
     3. Sharing our age with a sense of pride and acceptance rather than shame. 
     4.  Talking about the joys and gifts, as well as the struggles and pains of aging, not in hushed whispers but in open conversations, both with others who are our own ages, as well as with younger folk. 
      5. Talking to potential employers about the gifts we've gained through experience and with the wisdom of our age. 
      6. Refusing to become stuck in our ideas and mind-sets as we age, but using the time we've been given to continue to learn and grow, striving to become better human beings. 
      7.  Seeing ourselves as mentors for younger folk and not being afraid to offer our wisdom, knowledge and advice.  Acknowledging to the world that we really do grow with time, we mature and learn through experience.
      8.  Be willing to turn to folk older than ourselves for advice, mentoring and wisdom: practice valuing the aging as well as the elderly and model that valuing for others.
       I know there are many other ways and I would love to hear your thoughts about them.
       I also understand that this is not easy to do within a culture that actively fights against aging and does not value our elderly.  I know this from my own experience.  The other day I pulled my hair back into a pony-tail and my son responded with "That makes you look older."  Without even thinking about it, I said, "Well, that's too bad," and I removed the pony-tail. 
        Fortunately, I've been talking about ageism with my kids and my eldest daughter called me on my response right away.  "Why is it too bad?" she asked.  "Isn't it a good thing to celebrate looking older? Isn't that what you are teaching us?  That you are okay with the growing gray?  That you celebrate the wrinkles and signs of age?"   
        "You are right.  There is that loud voice of culture still in my head and in my life, even as I fight against it.  Thank you for the reminder.  I need to step back into my intentionality of aging with grace and joy."  I put the pony-tail back in my hair.  But I could not deny that there was still a part of me struggling with the idea that I'm looking older.  It remains a part of me that I have to intentionally confront, regularly.
         I look forward to hearing your ideas about confronting ageism.  I look forward to seeing the ways in which we, together, can change a culture back to one that values the wisdom and experience that time give.

Forgiveness, again.

I love Don Henley's song about forgiveness: The Heart of the Matter.

        All the words to this song resonate with me.  But there are a few in particular that really speak to me:

Ah, these times are so uncertain

There's a yearning undefined

And people filled with rage

We all need a little tenderness

How can love survive in such a graceless age?

...

There are people in your life

Who've come and gone

They let you down

You know they hurt your pride

You better put it all behind you, baby

'Cause life goes on

You keep carrying that anger

It'll eat you up inside, baby

I've been trying to get down

To the heart of the matter

But my will gets weak

And my thoughts seem to scatter

But I think it's about forgiveness,

Forgiveness

Even if, even if, you don't love me anymore.

     I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I've hurt people I've loved.  I've also been hurt by people I've loved. But while it may be that the losses or rifts or hurts that one person experiences may be more or less than what another person experiences, all of us suffer at the hands of one another, and all of us injure each other.  It's part of being human.  And we therefore have to make choices. Do we live lives of anger, bitterness and cynicism?  Do we nurse every pain we've experienced and carry grudges to our death beds?  Or do we learn how to forgive, to let go, to honor what was good and to move on from what was hard?

     Some people are better at this than others.  I recently read a story about a man who had contracted AIDS through a partner who knew he had it but who had chosen not to share that knowledge. The man who was now dying of AIDS harbored no anger or resentment, however. He didn't have room in his life for that kind of pain. He chose instead to spend his remaining days sharing laughter and stories and songs with his friends and family.  

      I envy that level of serenity.  I crave that ability to let anger pass through and out and on so that life can be lived in the "now" with joy and peace rather than anxiety, fear, and pain.  Anger hurts. And the one it hurts most is the one carrying it. It hurts us inside as it tears at us, increases blood pressure, blocks rational thought, impacts memory and cognition, causes ulcers and other physical damage. It can also destroy relationships, or stunt them, or damage them in such a way that they cannot be mended. It can affect how we deal with other people.  People who are very angry carry chips on their shoulders that do not allow them to form positive relationships with others. Anger can prevent us from trusting or from risking deep caring. That is tragic.  The inability to forgive is a fatal human flaw.  It eats us from the inside and creates shell-people: people who cannot see the blessings around them, who no longer delight in the beauty of life, and who often spread more pain and damage to others.

     Anger is meant to be a gift: it lets us know that something is unjust and should be changed.  It is a strong emotion because it must be in order to motivate us to do the work of changing that which is oppressive, dis-empowering and unfair.  But there are things that cannot be changed.  Once the man in the story above had contracted AIDS, his anger could no longer help him. In recognizing that truth, he chose, then, to let the anger go.  That ability to discern when anger can help us to do what needs to be done, and when it is simply a destructive and poisonous emotion can be elusive, however. Moreover, even when people realize their anger is not serving them, the ability to walk through it, out the other side and into freedom from that kind of imprisoning rage is not always easily gained.  

     And there is the other side of this as well: the other people with whom we interact also may not have the gift of being able to forgive. When we love someone who cannot forgive us, we are called to a deeper level of forgiveness yet: one that requires us to both forgive ourselves for our piece in the damage to the relationship, and to forgive the other's inability to forgive: to let go of the relationship or what we had hoped or envisioned the relationship to be: to forgive into finding peace with the schism, with the rift. 

      What helps us to be able to do that?  Number one thing that I've found to help is meditation: centering down, spending time in quiet; praying, if that's what it is for you; listening, as it is for me. Intentional calming of the heart and mind helps me more than anything else. There are so many ways to do this: centering prayer, Tai Chi, Yoga, breathing meditations, guided meditations. But besides meditation there are other things that can help: long hikes or runs where one's heart rate is really increased and the muscles are truly working. Dancing does the same. Playing the piano, writing, creating poetry or art. Finding a hilarious movie or song or joke and just enjoying some intensive laughter.  Notice that none of these things actually focus on the anger itself. And yet they all help more than anything I know.  There are other things that do involve focusing on the anger: talking to a friend, talking to a counselor, journalling about the experience and the feelings.  If there is a way to address the problem directly, it is important to try, but I think calming down enough that the anger is not leading the conversation is crucial. As I said before, anger actually blocks our ability to think clearly.  So when we are reacting from anger, we often end up saying or doing even more unforgivable things. Calming down first is therefore essential.

      All of these help us in striving to forgive.  But underneath there are two other things that are essential:  Time, and a commitment to forgiveness. Time does not heal all wounds.  But it does help. And sometimes that time is the only thing that can move us from anger into peace.  But along with that there must be a commitment, a decision, an intention to forgive.  Without that, there is no chance, no hope for reconciliation, for healing, or for peace with that which can't be reconciled or healed.  

      I continue to work on this, both forgiving those who've hurt me, and letting go of the need for healing and reconciliation from those who cannot forgive me.  It is a process.  And time is with me.  I rest in the time, I let go in meditation, and I walk forward in the hope of a more forgiving existence for all of us.

Palm Sunday - Blessed is the One

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Matthew 21:1-11

We know the story.  We hear it every year.  On Palm Sunday, the people are so excited about Jesus, they line up along the streets, they wave palms, they put their cloaks on the ground, they shout out “Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” they treat Jesus like the King they hope he will be.  Within a very short time many of the same people are shouting “Crucify him!  Crucify him!  Crucify him!”  We understand this story.  The people had expectations, they had high hopes, they put all of their dreams onto one man.  But they wanted him to change their lives in a very specific way.  They wanted him to overthrow the control of the Roman government over their lives.  They wanted a military leader who would end their oppression and set them free.  They wanted a Savior, but one who met their ideas of what that looked like and how it would affect their lives.  One who would save them now from the hardships of this lifetime by ending those hardships, by coming in glory and allowing them to live full, vibrant and rich lives.  And when he did not live up to their expectations, when he did not do what they wanted in the way that they wanted, when he overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple, when he confronted both the ways they were thinking and the ways they were behaving, when he acted from a place of peace rather than in a military fashion, when he called them to fix themselves and care for others rather than having him fix “the others” (the Romans) and pamper to their wants in the way they wanted them, when he called them to faithfulness and love rather than simply making their lives better for them - they became so irate, so angry, so disappointed, that they had him killed.

Jesus went in a week’s time from being lauded, sought after, adored, worshipped, hailed as the Messiah and the promised King to being seen as a villain.  I’ve shared with you before Kierkegaard’s saying about grief – “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.”  Well, they had envisioned a future that Jesus was not going to deliver.  And the disappointment from that was so real, so great, so tangible for people; those in this capital city felt so broken-hearted that they felt personally betrayed that Jesus was not the person they wanted him to be, and they responded by rejecting him to the point of wanting him dead and having him killed in a most horrible way.

Do we do this?  Is this a mirror for us into our own feelings and thoughts?  When our hopes and dreams are disappointed, when the future that we envision will not come to pass and we have to let it go, we can feel so hurt and betrayed that we want another’s destruction.  We can feel so angry and harmed by the behavior and disappointing actions of people who are not the way we want them to be, who do not do what we hope they will do, who do not live up to our hopes and dreams or even our expectations, that we can have deep and repeating visions of revenge.  But while we may feel this way, I think very few of us are actually people who would actively work or even actively wish for someone to die, and certainly not to die in this kind of horrible way in which Jesus was killed.  What would it take for us to feel that way?  What kind of pain must those who were shouting “crucify” at the end of the week have been feeling that they wanted him dead?  The pain must have been intense.  It must have been deep.  What kind of disappointment would it take for you to feel that way?

My experience of this community is that it is made up of very thoughtful, caring people.  We are thoughtful and caring enough that I would imagine we would probably recognize our disappointment at some level as being about ourselves.  We are thoughtful enough that we might know that it was our issue, at the core level, that caused us to envision who someone else should be, what they should do and how they should do it, and what our future should look like.  But even when we can’t do that, even when we still blame the other for what has come to pass or failed to come to pass, even when we are heart-broken, we still probably wouldn’t try to kill the object of our disappointment.  It would take something enormous for us to feel that way.  Even in the situation we read about surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion, in which the hopes of a future free from political oppression, the hopes of a person who would save them in this political and practical way were dashed, I still think that we probably would not, even so, be baying for blood.  That kind of violent reaction is just not normally how we behave.  But then I find myself wondering.  Where were the people who could have stood up next to Jesus and supported him when the crowd became angry, violent and cried for his death?  Where were they?  Where were the people who could have said, “No! He is doing what God has called him to do.  It may not be what you expected.  It may not be what we wanted, but we need to open our hearts, open our minds to the new thing that God is doing.”  Or even those who had less insight into who Jesus was and his identity, but who still must have seen that killing him wouldn’t solve anything – where were those sane voices of calm and reason?  Voices that said, “Killing this man will not make you feel better!  It will not ease your disappointment, it will not bring about the peace that you are hoping for.”  While there can be a mob mentality towards destruction, I think most of us probably would not have been part of it. 

But still, where would we have been?  My fear for myself is not that I would have been fighting for his death.  My fear for my own place in that scenario is that I would have been the quiet voice that failed to speak out against the injustice of their cries for his death.  I think it is more likely, in other words, that we would have been part of the silent crowd, celebrating his entry into Jerusalem, and then being silent when those extremely disappointed with the reality of God’s reign of peace turned to violence.  We would have remained silent.  We would have stood by, maybe shaking our heads at the insanity of it, but not acting ourselves to stop it.  There are a lot of reasons for that silence.  The strongest reason of course being fear.  If they stood up to those crying for his crucifixion, they, too may have ended up dead.  There children might have been left without parents.  Their children might have been killed too.  But despite that fear we are called to ask, what is that silence?  Is that less evil?  Is that less guilty in the face of Jesus’ death?

Bonhoeffer said - “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.  Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”  He said this during World War II as he saw the many people who may not have participated in Hitler’s reign of terror, but who also failed to confront it.  These too were people who were afraid.  They were afraid for their own lives, afraid for the lives of their families.  Their fear makes sense.  But standing and being silent witnesses to Jesus’ entry, to Jesus’ actions in that week and to Jesus’ death – these are acts that leave us guilty as well.  They also call us into the current reality of our world.  And we have to ask ourselves in what ways do we remain silent now.  Who do we fail to defend?  Who do we fail to stand up for?  What injustices and even evils in the world do we choose to be silent about?  To simply stand by and watch, or wait, for God or someone else to fix.  What things are we afraid to take a stand on, for good reasons?  I watched a documentary this last with with my son on Anne Frank.  One of those who lived through the Holocaust, I believe it was actually Anne’s father said  that the nicest people in the world were the Germans who did nothing. They were nice, they did not create waves. But they also did not stand up to injustice. Again, we can understand the danger, the risk they would have been taking had they chosen to speak. But in failing to do so, they allowed great evil to occur and were participants in it.

It is hard to stand up to injustice. It is even harder to defend people whom we, too, may not like, may not understand, or who may have disappointed us.  But Bonhoeffer also said, “Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”  Scott Peck described evil as the inability to face the dark sides of ourselves, which we then project out onto others and work to destroy in the other.  And Mitch Albom in his book, “the Five People you Meet in Heaven” put it like this.  “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.”

               It is important for us to understand the pull within our own beings towards either destruction or silence in the face of injustice, especially when we are afraid.  It is important as we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem those things that cause us to react with such rage and anger in the face of disappointment.  It is important as we remember the passion of Christ to remember the times that we, too, stand by in silence.  And then, as we look at that square in the face, as we are called to face our own destructive tendencies and our own tendencies to be silent in the face of evil, we are called to two things. 

The first is to own our own part so that we can change it.  We cannot become the people God calls us to be without seeing, owning and repenting our own destructive tendencies and our own failure to speak against evil. To work to change it.  To commit to standing for those who have no one to stand up with them.  This is not easy.  It is deeply hard, especially when we are afraid.  But when we cannot face the evil in ourselves, we are in grave danger of letting it take us over.  We must face it, we must confront it.  Especially when it takes the form of apathy, and of inactivity.

But the second thing that we are called to, which can be even harder, is, even in the face of such evil as the crucifixion of Christ, to try to respond with some grace to those who did react to Jesus in this way, these people who turned 180 degrees in their behavior towards him.  We are called to search out and find compassion, rather than judgment and condemnation, even for these people.  That doesn’t mean we allow them to act this way.  It doesn’t mean we allow injustice.  But when we can understand the other, the one doing evil, we have a much greater chance of changing it, of confronting it.  We must do this – see the other with compassion for two reasons.  First because they are ourselves.  And second because Jesus calls us to love and not anger, rage or destruction towards others.  Connie Schultz put it like this, (56), “If we can’t remember the wrong turns, we’re bound to get lost again.”   Passion week, Holy week, calls us to remember the wrong turns and to strive to get it right the next time.

               As I wrote this sermon I was reminded of a scene from MASH.  In this episode, kids from the United States wrote letters to the MASH doctors and staff.  Most of the letters were positive, expressing gratitude for the work the doctors had done.  Some asked questions.  But one of the letters that Hawkeye received was from a kid who was spouting deep anger and even hatred at the MASH doctors.  He wrote that his brother had been injured and had been sent to a MASH unit.  The doctors in the MASH unit fixed him up, but in doing so, they enabled him to return to fighting and he had then been killed.  The young kid hated the doctors who had made his brother better because in making him well, they had sent him to his death.  The letter deeply affected Hawkeye.  But eventually, he responded in this way:

“Ronnie, it’s not a good idea to take the love you had for your brother and turn it into hate.  Hate makes war and war is what killed him.  I understand your feelings.  Sometimes I hate myself for being here.  But once in a while in the midst of this insanity a very small event can make my being here seem almost bearable.  I’m sorry I don’t have an answer for you, Ronnie, except to suggest that you look for good wherever you can find it.”

               We are called to love.  Love is action.  But it is not the action of simply joining a fickle crowd who moves from worship to destruction in the course of a week.  And neither is it the silent standing by while the destruction takes place without standing up to say “no”. 

I’ve shared this poem before, but every Palm Sunday I am reminded of it again: by Martin Niemöller.

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Perhaps we would write the poem differently, and I would encourage you to think about how you might write this poem today.  Maybe we are called to reflect back on what we studied in Matthew this month and rewrite it this way:

First they came for the hungry, but I did not speak out because I was not hungry.

Then they came for the thirsty, and I did not speak out because I was not thirsty.

Then they came for the naked, but I did not speak out because I was not naked.

Then they came for the stranger, the immigrant, but I did not speak out because I was not a stranger, not an immigrant.

Then they came for the sick, but I did not speak out because I was not sick.

Then they came for those in prison, but I did not speak out because I was not in prison.

And finally they came for me…and there was no one left to speak for me.”

               As we walk this week through the Passion of Christ once again, I invite you to spend some time reflecting on and striving to understand all of those who acted in this part of our faith story.  To understand, I invite you to take some time to picture and to place yourself in all of those positions.  See yourself as one who went from hailing Christ to shouting for his death.  What does that teach us about ourselves?  How do we have compassion for that kind of pain and disappointment that can turn so quickly from love to hate and destruction?  See yourself as one who stood by silently.  In what ways do we still do this?  In what ways is it easier and yet just as evil to fail to stand by those who need us to speak for them?  See yourself as one who did take a stand but found your voice silenced and ineffective.  How did that feel?  Where are you able to find God and hope and life in that?  And finally, picture yourself as one who takes up your cross and follows Christ all the way to the end.  Where does that lead you in your relationship with God? 

               We walk towards this cross this week.  We go from hailing and celebrating Jesus’ coming to finding ourselves in pain and loss.  The good news, even in this hard, holy, passionate week, is that God is with us at every step.  God understands how we feel and why.  God has compassion and forgiveness and grace for us even when we can’t find it for ourselves.  And God calls us beyond even the cross – and eventually into the new life of Easter.  It is just around the corner, waiting for us with lilies and joy.  Amen.