God in Our Doubts

  1 Kings 19:1-18

John 20:24-29

Mark 12:38-44

 

               In today’s Old Testament story we hear Elijah going through a spiritual crisis.  While in chapter 18 he had no problem standing up to the politics of the time, standing up to Queen Jezebel and her mandates on religion, here in chapter 19, he has fallen out of that place of confidence.  He is terrified, he is running away, he is hiding in a cave.  He is in a spiritual crisis.  He is in a time of doubt, a dark night of the soul.  And as a result he is lost in purpose, in meaning.  He is depressed, saying he’d rather die than face what is coming.  He has lost his sense of self.

               I think this is an almost universal feeling at some point: the feeling of being alone, unsure, scared, out of energy, out of meaning, confused in purpose, and yet still required to go on with your life: a place of having challenges that are overwhelming and don’t seem to be shared by those around us, but still needing to continue.  That feeling of depression and a sense of being lost as a person: wondering what you have done, or failed to do with your life; what you have or have not accomplished. A place of thinking through what has brought you to THIS point and being unsure how to move beyond or through it, a time of deep struggle.  I think about when our family went through its very hardest time and the fact that I often felt completely alone with all the work that was before me: taking care of three children and a congregation on my own in the midst of deep personal loss and grief, stress, humiliation and judgment.  But, unlike Elijah, I didn’t have the option to run away into the wilderness: I could not see any other option than to continue, to keep going.  Those moments can call one into a deep feeling of self-pity, or they can call us into being the best, the strongest, that we can be.  For Elijah this was a time of self-pity.  A cry for help.  A time of despair.  And that blinded Elijah to the truth.  As Paul Tilich once said it, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”  But Elijah could not see that, so in his doubt he felt nothing but despair.

               And he believed himself, mistakenly, to be alone.  He was not alone.  There were many others in Israel who still followed, believed and were serving Yhwh.  We are told there were 7000 that were with him in vision, understanding and belief.  And at the end of the passage he anoints Jehu as king and Elisha as a prophet.  It was a temptation of Elijah to feel that he was alone, to believe he had to walk his path in isolation and without support.  It was an illusion to believe that he was being called on, the only one, to alone do this impossible task.  It was a place of self-indulgence to feel that self-pity and to hide in his cave of angst, despair and inaction.

               But what he found when he ran away from the frenetic activity of his life, when he escaped into the wilderness was not judgment or condemnation.  Instead, he was fed there.  How profound is that?  God did not yell at him for running away.  God recognizes that these times of doubt, of struggle and the need for retreat: these are part of being human.  These are necessary times of growth and regrouping in our lives.  And so God did not get angry or abandon Elijah.  Instead, God fed Elijah.  I believe this to be at two levels: physically and spiritually he was fed there.  His sense of inadequacy and his activity were keeping him from his relationship with God, but there in the wilderness, where he was alone with his self-pity and his thoughts, God’s response is first and foremost to FEED him.  We all need those times of reprieve, of break, and he took it and found he was fed.  He then continued on his journey and he came to the cave.  And there, too, God did not leave him alone.  First, he is confronted by his choices, “What are you doing here?” God asked.  It was not an attack, it was a question: why are you here rather than in Israel doing the work I call you do to?  Elijah responded by continuing in his complaint: I’ve done it all, all on my own, all that I was asked to do and now they are going to kill me!

               But even in that time of doubt, of self-pity, of fear, when he feels separated from God and wants to give up on his call, on his ministry, on his work, God is there.  Feeding him, calling him, present with him.  Because God is the one who pulls us out of that doubt.  We are called to be open to God’s presence, but it is God’s strength that enables us to move beyond those times.

               God speaks to Elijah, but not in the way he probably expected.  God does not speak to him in a flash of wondrous awe, God does not speak to him by shaking the ground and flipping the world upside down, God does not take charge and route the enemy for him.  Instead, God came to him in the way he least expected: in the silence.  This passage is not meant to suggest that this is the only way God approaches us or that God is mostly or only present in silence.  Rather this passage tells us that God often, if not always, comes in the ways that are not expected, in the least suspected places and times God shows up.  God is not always obvious.  God’s presence is not always clear.  While we like to know what to expect, while we like to have things outlined and clear, that’s just not how God functions.  There’s no map for us about where and how we will find God.  But God is there if we choose to pay attention. 

When Elijah finally does pay attention, God’s speaking here to Elijah is clear: go out and do what I am calling you to do.  Go and be who I am calling you to be.  Be done with the self-pity.  I want to point out again that God does not chastise or get upset with Elijah’s doubt: for doubt is a part of the journey.  Retreat is part of the journey.  Taking time away, time off is part of the journey.  Sabbath and Sabbatical are necessary parts of our faith.  But God does call him out of staying stuck in that place.  “You’ve been fed, you’ve had your time away, your time apart, your time off.  You’ve had your time of doubt, your time of anxiety, your dark-night of the soul.  But now it is time to live again: to be your full and complete self: the one I created and called you to be.” 

Today is Stewardship Sunday.  And I have to admit, at first I felt that to tie all of this into stewardship was going to be a real stretch.  But the reality is for all of us, our call is multifaceted, as well as a growing, living, active thing.  When we are young, we might be called to build houses for habitat, to earn money so that we have more resources to share, or to be a person who does things like bike for Bike Aid.  As we grow, that call maybe change: we are called to be the wise person serving on session or on deacons, listening, teaching, guiding; the comforter, the person who provides foods.  As we become even older, our call may change even more: we are called to less active pursuits, but still called to be the voice of truth, the voice or reason, the mediator, the bridge, and still generous.  Our calls change throughout our lives.  But in the midst of all of that change, our call to being present with God, loving to one another; and our call to be generous with whatever our times, our talents, and our resources are in that moment does not change.  That is not to say that there won’t be times of scarcity and times of plenty.  These, too, are part of the changing calls in our lives.  But we are universally called to give, not out of our abundance, but out of our scarcity as well.  The passage from Mark that was read today talked about the widow’s giving out of her poverty.  And what that means is that we give, even from the places where we feel “limited”.  This goes for finances, but for other things as well.  For example, we use the phrase, “putting in my two cents worth”.  Do we sometimes feel that we have nothing to contribute to a conversation?  That we are poor in our thoughts, in our ideas?  We are still called to give of them: God has an amazing way of speaking through our own ignorance or poverty of thought.  Do we say we have no talent in a certain way?  God has an amazing way of calling us to give even in areas where we feel we have no skills.  I never would have signed up to spend a summer building houses in Alabama, but when I signed up for a mission year, that is where I was sent.  That area: my lack of ability to do construction, was called upon.  I was called to give out of my poverty: out of my area where I felt I had no skills.  And in terms of finances, this also applies.

I preach this to myself as well.  There will be times for all of us that feel “tight”.  This year as I have two kids in college is one of those.  But the call of those in need, the call of our brothers and sisters who hunger and thirst at so many levels: physically, emotionally, spiritually: their need should be more important that our luxuries.  And what I find, consistently, is that the more I give, the more abundance returns to me.  This is the constant of my life, the consistent presence of God.  This is true at every possible level.  When I give more of my time, I find I have more time to give.  When I give more of my energy, I have more energy to share.  When I listen more fully to others, I find that they listen more fully to me as well.  And when I give more of my resources, such as money, they return to me in amazing, and unexpected ways! 

The truth is that our budgets say more about what we value than any mission statements we may have.  This is true personally as well as institutionally.  Where we put our money, where we put our resources: our time, our talents: this says everything about what we really value.  Do we value our buildings?  Or do we value our service to the poor?  Do we value our personnel?  Or do we value feeding people?  I realize I say this at my own risk, but this is true.  Where do we put our money?  That tells us, without exception, where are hearts really lie.

I want to return to the story of Elijah and point out that, again, as with everything, there are ebbs and flows, always.  Elijah needed that retreat time.  That time of doubt, that time of withdrawing: this is a normal and natural part of the faith journey.  God understands this.  God accepts this reality as part of what it is to be human.  When Jesus was in the garden at Gethsemane, he, too, expressed that doubt, that struggle, that fear and lack of confidence, and God did not criticize, judge or condemn it.  God understood that as well.  Finally in the passage from John we hear of Thomas’ doubt.  And it too was not condemned, critiqued or judged.

In every case, God allows it to be, and then God responds to that pain, that struggle, that choice to withdraw, to doubt, to fear, to be in pain: God responds to it by showing up.  God responds to it by being present.  God responds to it by restoring the trust that was broken, addressing the doubt with presence, calling attention to the relationship that grounds each of them in their faith, their love for God, their connection to God.  Just like with the story of Thomas.  Jesus did not withdraw from Thomas in Thomas’ doubt.  Instead, he came forward, presented himself, showed himself; restored the trust and the relationship.  Jesus understood and accepted where Thomas was.

But then Jesus called him into something new.  And then God calls us, too, into something new.  We can have our time of retreat: those times are necessary.  Sabbaticals, times away that are longer than the weekly Sabbath are deeply important.  We each need them.  But then we are called back into our callings, into our actions, and into our giving. 

On this Stewardship Sunday I want you to think about all the ways in which you give: your time, your talents, your BEING to God and to the service of God’s people.  How do you answer your call?  In what ways are you not answering the call fully?  In what areas are you afraid to answer or give in the way God calls you to answer or give?  In what areas do you feel poor?  In what ways are you avoiding the call you may be feeling?  In what areas have you retreated from your call and in what areas are you needing a break but have failed to claim it?  Where is God calling you in this moment?  With your giving of all that you are?  These are the questions of stewardship.  These are the questions of call.  These are the questions that these three passages, with their themes of retreat and return, doubt and faith, withdrawal and reengagement, fear and hope – these are the questions that they ask of us. 

So, as always, I invite you into a time of self-reflection, of asking and answering the questions for yourself.  Where is God with me today?  Where is God calling me to be today?  What parts of my call need my attention today?  And in what way can I respond to that call, to give of myself back to God and to one another with more honesty, integrity, commitment, generosity and truth? 

Peace be with you this day and on this journey of discernment.

More on the disturbing nature of miracles.

     Despite the title I have given to this blog post, I want to talk about finances for a minute.  I realize we don't usually share in public anything about finances, especially personal finances, but I'm going to break that rule for this blog because I think it is often the things we most avoid discussing that are really the most important things to discuss.
      So let me start by saying that I am very fiscally conservative in my personal life.  I don't "do" debt.  I pay off my credit cards each month, I'm big on saving, I don't buy a new car until I can pay for the whole thing up front (hence still having our 2001 Toyota), and frankly, I'm uncomfortable even carrying a mortgage on a house, let alone doing the "shared equity" thing that I am currently doing with my church in order to afford to live here in the Bay Area.  I've also had financial help from my parents, on more than one occasion: something I'm not proud of, and something I've worked hard to pay back as quickly as possible.  Still, I am so deeply aware that the reason I am able to "not do debt" is because I come from a place of extreme privilege.  I have parents who have been able to help me financially, and not in small ways.  I'm part of a congregation that had the resources to be able to join me in a "shared equity" agreement on my house.  These are gifts that are in no way small.  And I therefore understand that other people who do go into debt are usually doing so from a place of less privilege.  I have no judgment on that situation, therefore.  It truly is because of the advantaged situation into which I have been born (not through any actions or choices of my own) that I can claim the healthy financial situation in which I have lived through my life.  There have been huge financial demands that have arisen at various times.  The fact that I was able to get through those times - through savings, through equity built up on our house, through the help of family... again, I do not at all take for granted that that came from extreme privilege.
     But what I want to focus on in this blog has more to do with times when we came close to having serious financial crisis.  I mentioned in the sermon I posted yesterday that there was a time when I had a half time, presbytery-minimum salary position, we had just moved into a three bed-room house from a two, and at the last minute the people who had been buying our old house pulled out leaving us with two mortgages, the shower pan in the bathroom cracked, damaging the floor and walls as well as making the bathroom completely unusable and it was Christmas: a  Christmas with three kids who would not receive presents from their parents that year.  I didn't tell the end of that story which was that just as we came to the month when all of our savings would have been used up, the old house did sell, fulltime better paying work did come along, enough that we were able to have the bathroom fixed without a problem, and my kids were blessed with so much at Christmas from those around us that they did not feel deprived despite my not having the finances, personally, to buy them gifts.  We were cared for.  We were okay.  That has happened other times as well (needing to pay legal fees of close to $100K for example), where I have come close to needing to go into debt or needing to borrow from family or needing financial help but because of savings or other privileged situations, the money has always appeared, has always been there. When disaster happened in our family, I was able to take on full time work immediately and our finances were never in danger.  At all of these times I have recognized our financial well being for the miracles they have been. And this month it happened again.  I had personally payed for the building supplies for our church work day (part of my contribution to the church for something I felt very strongly about).  But then the car broke down, my mortgage company failed to pay the insurance company out of my impound account and my insurance was about to be cancelled so I had to pay it directly out of my account, and a large medical bill for one of my kids came due.  All of it happened at the same time.  And when the bills came, I wasn't sure how I was going to pay them.  But then today I received two large checks in the mail: one from my insurance company back in Ohio that needed to pay back an overpayment (and a LARGE overpayment) on the house I used to have there, and one for work I had not thought I would be paid for.  Neither were expected and the timing of both was, in fact, a miracle.  They came exactly in the right amount and exactly at the right time.  I felt the hand of God in the timing.  I felt truly "taken care of" by the Divine when I was starting to panic and feel financially fragile.
          But my next feeling was one of being very disturbed by the miracles, by the timing, by the gifts, by the reality that I have always been so well cared for financially.  Why is it that I have been taken care of, again and again in these concrete ways, when there are people starving to death in the world?  When there are so many people who cannot meet their bills this month or any month?  People truly in desperate need of food, shelter, medicines, who simply don't have them?  Does God not care about them equally well?  The God I believe in does. I know people who believe that we are taken care of when we help ourselves.  But I've known too many less privileged people, seen how hard they work and how desperate they are at times to get their basic needs met, to have any illusions that somehow these financial gifts are due to something I have done or am.  Some would claim it's because I have faith. Again, not accurate. Many of the poorest folk I know are people of very deep faith. And I know God loves all people just as much, regardless of what they believe. No, I have been lucky beyond my due; and others have suffered far beyond theirs.  So, while I never want to be ungrateful for the well-being and gifts that have come my way, I remain disturbed by the question of why some people receive the miracles they need at a particular point in time while others don't.
         To expand this beyond finances, I have read recently about a family whose daughter miraculously survived and overcame a dreadful precondition that should have killed her instantly. She says she was blessed by a miracle from God. People in my congregations have shared miracle stories of children surviving terrible accidents or diseases as well.  But I also know wonderful, incredible people who have lost children to death of one kind or another, people of deep faith and love.  And the randomness of who is saved and who is lost eludes me. I wonder, for the families who have lost their children, if it is not beyond painful to hear others whose children were saved talking about the miracle of that child's survival.  I wonder if they do not scream at God, "If you could save, Jane, why didn't you save Ramon?"  And my fear is that we end up blaming the victims way too often.  "Maybe their faith wasn't strong enough". Or we come up with other justifications. "Maybe God needed that child in heaven".  "Maybe it is the sins of the father being visited down upon the child". NO.  None of these reasons work for me.  Not one.  It still remains the case that miracles happen all the time.  But some people still experience in this life much more than they can handle.  And they lose children.  Or they struggle with unimagined financial stress.  Or they literally starve or dehydrate to death.  Some suffer torture.  Some die in wars.  Some die of abuse. Some are killed for no reason whatsoever because of where they live, or their skin color, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It isn't okay.  And the randomness of who survives, who receives miracles and who doesn't continues to escape me.
        I find myself grateful that I am aware that I don't deserve the gifts that come my way and can choose to be humbled and extremely thankful for them.  But I still struggle with the bigger questions. Why some and not others?  
       I've posted this before, but this is what Frederick Buechner says: “God is all-powerful.  God is all-good.  Terrible things happen.  You can reconcile any two of these propositions with each other, but you can’t reconcile all three.  The problem of evil is perhaps the greatest single problem for religious faith.  There have been numerous theological and philosophical attempts to solve it, but when it comes down to the reality of evil itself they are none of them worth much.  When a child is raped and murdered, the parents are not apt to take much comfort from the explanation (better than most) that since God wants people to love God, people must be free to love or not to love and thus free to rape and murder a child if he takes a notion to.  Christian science solves the problem of evil by saying that it does not exist except as an illusion of mortal mind.  Buddhism solves it in terms of reincarnation and an inexorable law of cause and effect whereby the raped child is merely reaping the consequences of evil deeds it committed in another life.  Christianity, on the other hand, ultimately offers no theoretical solution at all.  It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene – not even this – but that God can turn it to good.”
       I see that.  I preach that.  But because there really aren't answers, I still struggle with it. While I do see many of the miracles that happen all around every single day, it still hurts to see so many people struggle so much.  But when the question of evil arises, it is one of those times when we are called to live into the question. I also hear in the question a call.. where we see need, we are called to be the miracle for those around us. Remembering how we have been blessed and graced, we are called to bring blessings and grace to those for whom the miracles are not as obvious or so forthcoming.  So for today,  I will take the gifts and the miracles that I am given and do my best to pass them forward.

Sunday's Sermon - Ordinary Miracles or "Can God Defy the Laws of Physics?

9/25/16
Acts 9:1-12
John 21:1-19

When we invited you to write your questions for our interfaith panel, some of them were questions that were more Christian or even Presbyterian in content.  I put those off to focus on the questions that were more written for our guests of differing faiths.  But over the next few months, I hope to try to answer, from my own perspective, some of the other questions that you asked.  Today I want to start by giving my answer to a question that the other panel members did address but which I did not.  The question was, “Does God have the ability to defy the laws of physics?”
This is a question about the validity of miracles, whether or not they really take place, but it also goes a step further into the question of the nature of those miracles, in what ways they happen or in what ways they CAN happen. Does God set up the rules in such a way that God never breaks them?  Or can God break the very rules God has set up for our world and our universe?
Not to put anyone on the spot, but have any of you seen or experienced a miracle?  How about one that defies the laws of physics?
         Today we hear a couple different stories about miracles.  We hear about Paul’s conversion experience of encountering the risen Christ.  And we hear about Jesus’ third appearance to the disciples after his resurrection.  We know that throughout the Bible there are many stories of miracles.  The parting of the Red Sea, Daniel escaping the lions in the lion’s den, Jesus’ many miracles of healing.  It is common to wonder what these stories have to do with us today.  Did these miracles really happen?  If so, do miracles still happen?  If so, why don’t we hear about them?  If not, why not?  Do the old stories, whether historically accurate or not, still have meaning for us today?  And if God gives miracles, why do they happen for some but not for all?  Why do they seem so random?  And how do they fit in with the world God created with its laws and science?  Why have those physical laws if they are just going to be broken on special occasions?
        Frederick Buechner, in his book “Wishful Thinking” speaks eloquently for us in his essay on miracles when he says, “A cancer unexplicably cured.  A voice in a dream.  A statue that weeps.  A miracle is an event that strengthens faith.  It is possible to look at most miracles and find a rational explanation in terms of natural cause and effect.  It is possible to look at Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus and find a rational explanation in terms of paint and canvas.  Faith in God is less apt to proceed from miracles than miracles from faith in God.”
            Still, even people of deep faith struggle with the idea of miracles.  There is great dispute among biblical scholars about the historicity of Jesus’ healings, for example.  Some believe these stories of Jesus’ miracles were added later to legitimate Jesus as God’s son.  For these scholars, the miracle stories offend, first because they are attempts to “prove” God to a people who are called to trust without proof.  Second because again, they call into question why some receive miracles while others don’t.  Third, miracles seem to have “dried up,” at least the big ones, which calls into question why God would have done big miracles in the past but allowed atrocities like the Witch burnings and the Holocaust to occur without intervention.  I am not telling you this to shock or upset you or even to challenge you to question those miracles.  But I am telling you this because I find their reasoning fascinating.  Scholars like Marcus Borg and faithful scientists like the physicist Polkinghorn are offended by the idea that God needs to step outside the wonderful, beautiful laws of nature which God has created in order to prove God’s existence or presence, to prove God’s will and intervention in our lives.  They ask, what do faithful people really need in order to believe in God’s presence?  What kind of signs do we require in order to believe God loves us?  Would we still believe that Jesus was the Christ without the miracles we read about in scripture?  Isn’t God’s presence and existence more profound, more deep, more intensive and infused throughout all life than a need for “miracles?”  And what kind of faith is it that requires stepping outside the laws of physics in order to believe truly in God’s existence or love for us?
         There is a great deal of reason to be cautious in our understanding, and expectation of miracles.  Rev. Kay Landers has been a hospital chaplain for over thirty years.  A colleague in ministry asked Kay (through e-mail) about her experiences with miracles and in particular the miracle of healing, and I would like to read to you Kay’s response.  She wrote, “I am cautious about using the word ‘healing’ when I pray with and for my patients and their families.  There are many ways we are healed.  But my own life experience has been that actual healing of bodily ills and wounds is very rare and that those who suffer and are not healed are not deprived of God's presence and that those who experience the miracle of healing have been touched in a way quite unique from the majority of God's children.  C.S. Lewis believed that the miracles we seek are rare and come only when God intervenes in the natural order of life….death is the natural order and eventually carries us all away.  C.S. Lewis then wrote that miracles are generally only for God's youngest "children" in faith, and as we mature our trust in God grows so that we need to increase our faith in God's presence without an outward, visible sign of God’s constant and true presence, for Jesus will never leave us nor forsake us.   There are many times in the Intensive Care Unit at Highland Hospital that family will request that the doctor "do everything" for the dying patient as they "know God will heal their loved one."  There are those moments when a patient will slowly experience some form of recovery and, rarely, a recovery of major proportions.  However, most are not healed in the way the family desires and that will sometimes turn the family away from God because "God didn't do what we asked."  This is a puzzlement to me, especially when those who were strongly committed to "doing everything" no longer visit their loved ones who remain in comas or vegetative states in our Fairmont beds.”
              Still, I want to give you a couple examples from my own personal life of what I experience to be miracles.  I believe I shared this with you the night before I Candidated here and I know I’ve shared it with our midweek program as well, but for me it remains a powerful story.  This was about 9 years ago.  I was working at Bethel in a half time, minimum Presbytery salary job.  My husband had the full time position but his job had ended and he had not been able to find a new job.  Additionally, we had moved recently, buying one house and attempting to sell the other, when the people who were buying our old house pulled out.  Our new house sprung a major leak in one of the two bathrooms and needed at least $4000 of repair work before it would be functional.  We were, therefore, in the situation of trying to pay two mortgages, with a torn apart bathroom (including the floor that had been ruined by water) letting bugs and the cold into the house, trying to support ourselves on my Presbytery minimum half time salary in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I was scared.  Add to this that it was right before Christmas, we had to figure out how to make it a good and meaningful Christmas for our three children without spending any money on presents or an elaborate meal, and…well, you get the idea.  I finally hit the wall.  It is rare in my private prayer time that I pray for specifics for myself and my family, but this was a rare situation in which, driving home from work late one night I found myself praying for a miracle.  “God, we just need a miracle.  We need to get through this, we need it to all be okay.  We just need some kind of miracle.”  The next morning I got up as I had for several weeks, grumpy, scared and tired, when suddenly I heard a yell from the front of the house.  I ran to see what was the matter, thinking to myself, “What now, O God?  Can this really get any harder?”  But when I ran to the living room, what I found was a six foot tall Christmas tree sitting on our front porch, addressed to us, with a little note that just said, “Merry Christmas.”  While my children squealed with delight, I myself was simply stunned.  Was this the miracle I had been waiting for?  It certainly wasn’t what I had in mind.  But since it did a lot to cheer my children, it set the day in a good way.  We got on with our day and I took Youngest to her little community center class that morning.  But when I got to class, there was a note pinned to the attendance sheet asking me to come to the office.  I went to the office and the secretary started to tell me there was a problem with my class registration.  I was beginning to get all worked up when suddenly she reached behind her desk and pulled out a huge bag of presents for our family from “Santa Claus.”  At first I thought it must be a mistake, but each present was addressed to a specific member of our family.  For the second time that day, we had been given an unexpected and joyful gift.  This one was more practical, too, for it contained things like a gift card to the local grocery store and pajamas for all the kids.  I was again stunned, and to this day cannot figure out who this gift could possibly have been from.  But still, an answer to my prayer for a miracle?  We came home from class, with my confusion moving into a sense of awe.  I sat on the couch with Youngest and for the first time ever in her 20 months of age (at that time), she reached up, held my face in both of her little hands, and said, “Mama, I love you.”  And in those words, in that miracle, I beheld the presence of God.  It was with her words that I knew the miracle I had prayed for, had in fact, taken place.  Again, not what I had asked for.  It wasn’t a job.  It wasn’t the sale of our old house.  It wasn’t someone volunteering to fix our bathroom issues.  But instead it was an overflowing sign of love – from God, from God’s people, a love that has, and continues to sustain us through the hard times because the hard times are always there if we focus on them.  And the love is always there to sustain us, if we can just see it when we need it.  Miracles, are all around us, every day, if we choose to see them.
         One day towards the end of my pregnancy with Youngest, I went to pick up my eldest daughter from school just at the time that her pre-school class was filing in from outside.  I found myself caught by the moving traffic of children and I ended up standing just inside the doorway, holding the door open for the kids as they came inside.  As I stood there with extended belly, most of the kids were talking to each other, or fooling around, all anxious to get inside to be picked up by their parents or eat their lunches.  Yet, one by one, as they passed, each child, without having noticed the other children doing the same, reached out and put their hands on my tummy, quietly, but with intention, with focus, with a moment of silent connection.  Not one of those children looked into my face, acted shy about reaching out or in any other way acknowledged me: it wasn’t about me.  And for each child, it was just a moment, just an automatic reaching out and touching.  But personally, I was awed by the experience, deeply touched, and a little astounded.  I felt I had been blessed, that Youngest had been blessed, by the hands of all these little children of God.  All these three and four year olds who connected to life at all levels, at deep levels, not knowing why or caring why, but being part of that blessing and connection.
        I could go on and on and on about times God’s presence for me has been strong.  Times I have heard God through other people, through nature, and on a couple occasions what felt very directly.  But none of these events, these miracles that I experience as part of simply living in this world answer the question that was asked, “does God have the ability to defy the laws of physics.”  There isn’t a right or wrong answer to that.  And sometimes I think living in the question is more important than ever finding an answer, because God is there in the journey, in the question, in the exploration.
None the less, I will answer the question from my own perspective and place.  When I look back on biblical stories, I don’t know if all of those things actually happened, and I’ll tell you a secret – I don’t actually care if they did or not.  To me, those stories, whether historically accurate or not, have deeper truths to tell us and I think that if we focus solely on the historicity of those events we miss the point of those stories, the deeper wisdom and truths that they have to tell us.  But regardless of whether each of them happened the way they are described, things do happen that we cannot explain. I think that in many ways we are just at the beginning of our understanding of science.  In another 200 years, if humans are still around, we will look back and be amazed at what we thought we ‘knew’ to be true.  I believe what we perceive to be miracles do happen, even things that would give the appearance of “defying the laws of physics”.  But I believe that, given enough time, we might come to understand how those things could have happened within the scientific universe the way it has been designed.  I believe anything is possible because I’ve seen too many things happen that I cannot explain.  But I also believe God set up the world in such a way that we have what we need to make it work, and this does not require “breaking” or “defying” what God has set up.  We just don’t understand everything yet.
        But what is more important to me than if God can defy the laws of physics (and truly, I think God can do anything God chooses.  That is, after all, the nature of God), I think the deeper question goes back to how we know God is there and how we know God loves us.  Does God still interact with humanity?  Does God still play a part?  Does God still care about each of us all the time?
For me the answer goes back to my favorite Einstein quote: “There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”  Perhaps because I choose the later, I see God around me every day.  All the time.  Our lives are filled with grace, with blessings, with miracles.  Because that is the nature of the God who loves us.  God set up the laws of physics, however we will eventually be able to understand them, out of love for us, out of an understanding that we need order to help us make sense of our lives.  But God is still ultimately in charge of it all.  And God’s choice is always for us, for love, for good.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - the Cost of Doubt

The Cost of Doubt

1 John 1

John 20: 19-31

8/23/15

Today we hear the very familiar story of doubting Thomas. He has heard the news that Jesus appeared among the disciples and yet he does not believe it - or rather he is unsure, for as he describes it, he is not against believing, he just wants proof. And after Jesus gives him that proof Jesus says to Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

This reminds me of the story of a little boy, the son of a pastor whose parent told him to go wash his hands after playing in the dirt because of all the germs.  The child refused saying “Germs and Jesus!  Germs and Jesus!  That’s all I ever hear around this house and I’ve never seen either one!”

At least most of us here have probably never seen the risen Christ and so we are part of that group of Christians who, by our very presence in this room, are proclaiming that we believe in some way in a resurrected Christ. Whether you believe that to be literal or a story does not matter.  Your presence here declares that the story has meaning for you, that resurrection and the new life that it proclaims are realities for you. We are, therefore, part of that group of blessed people who have believed in some way without seeing. But we live in a time when Christianity has been around for awhile. I think back to the time of Jesus and find myself wondering how easy it would have been to believe around the time of Jesus’ death?  If we were living at that time, I think it might have been much harder for us to accept that a person we had actually seen and heard about, maybe even someone who grew up in our home town, maybe someone we went to school with, had arisen in any way from the dead. The farther back in time an event occurred, I think the easier it probably is to believe in it: the more distance we have from knowing the person personally, the less their story has to compete with an image of who we thought they were. I imagine that knowing Jesus and seeing him as a person might have made it very difficult for some, like Thomas, to believe without some kind of proof.

The gospel writer John is very clear about his reason for writing his gospel stories.  He says, “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Many scholars believe that the gospel of John was written around 125 AD, so few, if any, of the people who met Jesus were still alive. Still, it was a time close enough to Jesus’ life that it was still probably difficult for many to believe a resurrection story about someone they may have connections with, either through friends or relatives. “Aaron’s cousin, Jesus, was said to have risen from the dead. What do you think of that?” It is in this context - of not knowing Jesus, but probably knowing people who did know or were somehow related to Jesus, that John is writing his gospel. And he is encouraging them to believe without sight, saying this is a blessed thing; to believe even when their senses have not been given the same proof the disciples were given. Hard for many people today. No doubt even harder for the people of Jesus’ time. 

But whatever you believe the resurrection to mean or be about, my question for you today is what does this story tell us about doubt, about our own doubts, about our times of faith struggle, and about where God is in those times and experiences?

With Eldest’s permission, I want to share with you some of the faith story of my eldest daughter. Eldest is now 15, but, perhaps especially when she was little, she had a very special relationship with God.  She talked to God starting at a very young age, and she would often tell us about things that God had said to her. I believe in those conversations. I think children are in a unique place, before the cynicism of age has crept in, before the “realism” of life raises doubts in them, to really hear God’s voice in ways that most adults can no longer do. Someday I will share with you some of the things Eldest has shared with me about her conversations about God.  But today I want to share something different. When Eldest was about 7 years old at dinner one night (where all my deep theological conversations with my daughter seem to take place), Eldest popped up with “Mama, I’ve been thinking and I’ve been realizing that believing in something doesn’t make it real. I mean, we can believe things that aren’t real, that aren’t true.”

“Yes, that’s true!” I agreed, thinking of the many times Eldest had said things to me such as, “I know you don’t think fairies are real, but they are.  I know you don’t think Pegasus’ are real, but they are.”

But Eldest continued, “So it is possible that we believe in God, but God might not be real. Our believing in God could just be a belief that doesn’t make God real.”

So I answered, “Yes, you are right. Believing does not make something real.  That is why our belief is called ‘faith’. It isn’t something you can prove or disprove. It is something you believe without that.”

This answer made Eldest very uncomfortable. She thought about it and began to cry, “Well, then how do we know God is real?”

“Well the simple answer is that we don’t know if by knowing you mean having hard, scientific evidence. We believe it. We trust it. But many people, at least, would say that we don’t know in the sense of having irrefutable proof.” After a pause I added, “You yourself have told me on many occasions that God has spoken to you. You have told me of things that God has said to you. So you have heard God. Don’t those conversations act as a proof for you that God is real?” 

“Well, it’s occurred to me that those things I thought God told me just might be my own voice inside my head.” She was clearly very distressed by this. And I found myself both a little sad and a little proud. The sad part was that she had finally grown beyond the innocent blind acceptance of her faith. That magical childhood time of unwavering and unquestioning faith she had begun to leave behind. When Jesus said, “you must come to me as a little child”, I believe he meant we must come knowing that there is more to learn, that God is not done with us, that we don’t have all the answers. I believe Jesus meant we must come searching for answers and wanting to know more. I don’t think he meant we need to come without questions or doubts.  But still, as with any parent, there are some moments of grief as our children leave aspects of their childhood behind. I had enjoyed hearing about Eldest’s conversations with God and it occurred to me that they were now changing, or her absolute faith in them was now changing.   

The pride part for me held a recognition that she was also beginning to engage her faith with her mind, something God also calls us to do. Yes, those who can believe without proof may be, as Jesus said, “happy.” I mean face it, it is easier to have all the answers. It is easier to have an unwavering faith. It is easier, and I would say happier even, to believe 100 % without doubts or reservations in a God who is with us, who loves us, who has been resurrected and calls us into new life with God. 

But God calls us to love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and Jesus added MIND to the list - and that mind engagement is going to cause moments of doubt, moments of crisis, moments of questioning and exploration. As we’ve discussed before, it is, according to the spiritual development experts, those very periods of crisis, including periods of doubt, that cause our faith to grow, to develop, to become deeper and more real. Real faith is a living, breathing thing. It must be allowed to be explored and searched. If we keep it boxed into a rigid tight doctrine, it is not real, it cannot spread roots, it cannot grow up to the heavens, it cannot be firmly rooted in the creation God has made.

In other words, doubt is a gift. Frederick Buechner describes doubt this way. “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

None the less doubt is uncomfortable. It isn’t comfortable to be unsure, to be in crisis, to be in a time of spiritual turmoil. This is not comfortable at all. And it has the possibility of leading into cynicism which is unhealthy and causes unhappiness. But for those willing to truly engage it, look at it, explore it, doubt is a gift. For it calls us to take our faith seriously, to explore with God what it means to be a person of faith, to continue to grow in our relationship to God and in our understanding. 

It does even more than that. In today’s scripture when Thomas doubted, how did Jesus respond? Did he say “well, forget you, Thomas. You needed proof, so I no longer accept you as one of my own!” Did he say, “Happy are those who believe without proof and cursed are those who need it?” No. Instead, what did he do? He came to Thomas. He came to Thomas and invited Thomas into a much closer relationship with him: he invited Thomas to touch him, to experience him with his eyes, his ears and even his sense of touch. Jesus was their teacher, the “Rabbi” as they described him, and for him to allow himself to be touched would have been breaking, once again, some of the most important Jewish rules of the time: to be touched in this way at this time would have made Jesus “unclean” by the laws of the day. But Jesus crossed this line: he chose intimacy with Thomas, he chose relationship. Helping Thomas believe was much more important than anything else and Jesus was willing to do whatever was needed to meet Thomas and offer this gift of faith to him.  For Thomas, his doubt brought him this deep gift. Doubt brought his faith to a deeper and more intimate level.

For those of you who are curious, my answer to Eldest, as it would be to any of you in the middle of a faith crisis was simply this, “I believe in those conversations (or experiences) you had with God. The God I know and love does say or communicate the things you have told me about; things like ‘This is my world’ and ‘I am always with you.’ But if my belief in your conversations with God, if my belief in God is not enough for you right now, that is okay too.  Because my God is okay with your doubt as well as your faith. My God loves all of who you are, with your struggles, with your questions, with your confusion, with your doubts. And God’s love for you and God’s faith in you, even if you do not have faith in God, is enough to save the whole world.”

But the story didn’t end there. Just like Thomas, Eldest was not content to just stay in the doubt. For months after her first expression of this doubt she continued to do what felt like “badgering” to me. Every day or so she would pop up with things like “Well, except we don’t really know if God is real or not,” and she sounded defiant or angry every time she said it, like she was testing me, I thought. But finally, I heard it a little differently and I said to her, “It sounds like your doubt is really upsetting you.” She acknowledged that it was. So I said to her, “As I’ve told you before, God can handle your doubt. So take it to God. Ask God what to do with or about it. Ask God how you can feel sure that God is real.”

A few days later as we were driving home from school, Eldest said to me, “You know, God loves this earth and really wants us to take care of it.”  

Her tone was so different from the last few months’ conversations about God that I had to ask, “You really sound sure about that.  Did you talk to God like I suggested before?”

“Yes,” she told me, and she continued, “I talked to God about whether or not God was real and God said to me, ‘I am more real than any of you. I’m more real than your friends, I’m more real than your mama, I’m more real than your sister and brother, and I’m even more real than you.’ So I don’t doubt anymore. God is more real than any of us.”  Out of the mouths of babes.

Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Risking it all for something better

Exodus 14:19-31

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

As I reflected on today’s lectionary scriptures, they all seem to me to be calling us to take risks, to reach out in trust and faith for that better thing, that wholeness, that new way of being that God calls us to.  Not easy.  Never easy.  But it is what I hear, in different ways, in all three of today’s scriptures.

The Israelites were called to risk everything in order to no longer be slaves in Egypt.  More, they were called to risk everything so that their children would no longer be slaves in Egypt.  For as we know, they were in the wilderness for 40 years, a generation and more passed before they came to their own place, their own home.  They risked everything so that their children might no longer be an enslaved people.  How scary for them!  How terrifying to leave everything they knew, everything they trusted, everything they experienced and understood and lived, for the risk of a better life for their kids.  Of course it was hard, horrible, and at times they expressed great anger at Moses, at Aaron, at GOD for leading them out, for encouraging such a rick.  There were many, many times when they felt, and said, and yelled that it would have been better to just stay slaves than to go through the painful, difficult transitions of risk, of change, not knowing for sure that they would have something better, but instead only hoping, trusting, having faith that they would.

Then we come to the passage in Romans.  And at first it does not seem to be talking about risk.  But it, too, is.  The new Christian community in Rome was called to take the risk of letting go of some of their principle ways and principle beliefs about what could be eaten, when and how.  Those who grew up as Jews had strong opinions, based on their Torah, our first five books of the Bible, about what was legal and okay to eat, when, and how.  But those who joined them from the Gentile community did not share those beliefs or practices.  This was very hard on many of the people who came from the Jewish tradition.  They felt that the writings of what we now consider the Old Testament were as important in this new community as they had been before.  The laws written in scripture about what could and couldn’t be eaten, they felt, must be upheld.  They were willing to fight for these laws, insisting that those who did not follow them were not true Christians, were not people who should be part of the church.  But Paul challenged that, saying that Christ was about Love and only about Love and that these laws about eating (and other things) that people held on to so strongly had to be released.  These new  Jewish Christians were called to let go of some of their ways, or at least let go of the judgments of others that accompanied these hard and fast beliefs.  They could continue to practice their eating laws and other laws, but they could no longer judge, attack, or exclude those who would come to the faith who did not practice these same laws and rules.  But what Paul was asking of these Jewish Christians was hard.  He was asking them to take a huge risk of letting go of judgment.  That might feel so small to us.  But for them it was huge.  HUGE.  It meant letting go of who they WERE at their core, letting go of being JEWISH in their veins, or at least of being part of a community in which everyone followed the same rules.  And again, many of them simply could not do it.  They heard and knew and understood that they were called to LOVE and not to judge.  But some couldn't do it.  It was simply too hard to take that risk. 

And then finally, lastly, we come to the gospel story for today.  And we are told to forgive and forgive and forgive.  And we are told, what’s more, that in the same way that we fail to forgive, so God will fail to forgive us.  This is calling us to a radical forgiveness.  And that, too, is an invitation to risk everything that we hold on to, to risk the anger and the judgments and the fear that we hold on to, to risk letting all of it go in the reach for a different way of being in the world. 

Can we do this?  We are not being asked to leave our country of origin.  We don’t have the same judgments about food.  But we still have beliefs and judgments and practices that God may be calling us to risk changing.  When Jesus calls us to love and to forgive, even our enemies, even people we fear, can we let go of judgment and risk loving?  Can we let God be in charge of holding people accountable? 

We hear the passage from Exodus and we can only imagine how absolutely terrifying it must have been for the Israelites to pack up their stuff and to leave their homes in search of something better.  We know that people throughout history have done the same, packed up everything, without a job waiting for them or a home already picked out, without a clear image of where they were going or if there would be a place for them, or a welcome, or food to find along the way.  And we know it must have terrifying.  Many of our ancestors came to this country in a similar way, escaping persecution and risking everything to start a new life.  If you are like me you think of those people as people of great courage and faith, being willing to leave behind a country that was their own in search of something better.  But my guess is that it is even harder to risk giving up our most deeply held beliefs, rituals, and practices, in search for something better – community, a new way of relating to God.

               I think about people who spend years in counseling, in therapy, and how hard it is to look at the old stuff, to work it through so that a new way of relating to the world might be found.  I think about the stories plastering the news this last week about Domestic Violence, and how hard it is for these beaten and abused people, mostly women, to leave their partners, their spouses, even when they are being beaten up regularly.  I volunteered for a time on a domestic violence hotline and it was the very, VERY rare victim who would find the courage to leave.  I think about people choosing to make friends and cross cultural, religious, ethnic, etc. boundaries with people who are different from them, people whom they normally judge.  All of this is hard, hard stuff to do.

               Paul Tillich said the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.  Usually I hear this quote as meaning that faith in God requires believing in something that can’t be proved either way.  But this week I heard this very differently.  I heard it being about everything else that we hold dear.  When we have faith, we are called to risk our certainty about how we see things, who we judge, how we do things, how we live, and we are called to instead rely on the faith that when God calls us forward into a new way of being, that God really does want and intend the best for us.  That no matter how hard it can be to take those risks, that is what faith calls us to do. 

               As I thought about this risk that we take, the movie the Spitfire Grill came to mind.  The movie is about a very young woman who has just come out of prison for manslaughter and is looking to start a new life.  She finds a small town where she is hired to work at the Spitfire Grill.  And while at first there is a lot of fear and judgment towards Percy, as people get to know her they come to see her and love her for who she is.  There is one exception in the movie, however.  Nahum is extremely protective of his aunt, for whom Percy works, his family and his town.  He sees Percy as a stranger, and as a threat.  He doesn’t want to know her story, or really anything about her.  He cannot take the risk of getting to know Percy or, as he fears, getting hoodwinked by her charm.  In the end, his failure to risk seeing her ends up in a terrible tragedy for the town.  I won’t give away what that is for those who haven’t seen the movie, but I will say that it is only after this irreversible tragedy that he can see his own failure to risk forgiveness, to risk love, to risk seeing this other person as a human being.  That failure to risk a new vision leads to the tragedy, a deep loss for everyone in the town. 

               Most of what we fail to miss by not having the faith to trust in love, in forgiveness, in God’s call to us to be open to both, most of the results of that are only personal.  We miss risking and living for something bigger and better, but it mostly only impacts ourselves.  Still, God calls us to something better.  But sometimes those risks are not just personal but communal as well.  I think about this in terms of Church.  As denominations and as the Christian Church on the whole, are we willing to take risks to be more what God calls us to be?  Are we willing to take stands to say, “we are God’s people and we will stand up for the oppressed, the mistreated, the outcast!”  Are we willing to risk praying, and listening and following God’s call even when it seems scary and threatening and open-ended; even when we cannot see where we are going or what God is leading us to?  Are we willing to take the risk, knowing that God wants the best for us, for our children, and for our communities? 

               I want to end this by simply inviting us into a period of silent listening.  I invite you to simply open yourself to hearing what God is calling you to do, calling US to do. 

               I pray we will have the hearts to risk it all for something better.  That something better is God’s kingdom.  Every week we pray that God’s Kingdom will come here as it is in heaven.  We help bring that about by being willing to risk listening to God’s call and God’s will, by being willing to forgive, no matter how hard that is, by being willing to LOVE.