And so it goes...

     As I've written before, I was unable to spend my time on the Camino, per my sabbatical plans.  Then, returning home, I've found that the last part of my sabbatical, which was supposed to be fixing up my own garden, has also been "sabotaged" in many ways.  First, the expense, even with dental insurance, of dealing with the infection in my tooth and jaw was extreme, which has made the buying of plants and mulch difficult.  Secondly, the excessive heat has also meant that while I can go outside for an hour or so in the morning, that really just allows me to do maintenance on what is already there.  Anything I would plant right now would have a hard time surviving, and my time outside is limited by my ability to endure the heat.  

    At any rate, all of this has caused me to do some serious reflection on the very nature of my life, and probably, all lives.

    Things don't go as planned.  Again, I can really only talk about my own life here.  But I've had dreams and plans, big and small, and very rarely have any of them gone the way I wanted or even expected.  Examples:

    I thought I would be married fairly young, but in fact wasn't married until I was 29.  I also didn't expect trauma, betrayal, divorce, or any of that, but no one ever does.

    I thought I would be a missionary; working for justice and empowerment overseas.  In fact, I really wasn't very good at that work when I tried it so that did not pan out.

    Then I thought I would settle into a home and raise my kids and be a permanent active part of a community throughout my life.  In fact, the longest I've ever lived in a home as an adult is 8 1/2 years, and that is my current home.  Before this, the longest we'd been in a house was 6 years. And I've lived all over: from the Southwest to the South to the Midwest and back here to CA.  

    My vacations have rarely gone as planned.  When Middle and I planned a hiking trip to Yosemite, the car broke down on the way there.  On a family trip to Tahoe, Middle and David had to return early for a school requirement we didn't know about until the last minute.  Another trip to Tahoe, I had to return because of a church situation.  And these stories go on.  As a matter of fact, this problem with vacations never working out the way they are planned is so consistent for me that I was certain before we left that something would go wrong.  As you know, it did.  I don't know why, then, I was so upset by it.  I mean, I expected it at some level, but just hoped so deeply that I was wrong and it would all work out.  

    As I said, small things, big things...

    But as I've sat with this, I've also remembered that many things have worked out better than I expected.  I've made friendships where they weren't expected.  I've connected with people who have shown up in my life in truly unexpected ways.  David was a surprise, a very good one.  I've also had surprises in my career.  I didn't expect to be asked if I wanted to co-moderate the Presbytery, for example.  That was a wonderful surprise!  All my jobs as a musician: not one of them have I applied for: they have all come to me, been offered to me, and each one has been a wonderful gift allowing me to play piano and do other things musically, and to experience the joys of doing so.  My job at Bethel came as an incredibly wonderful surprise, working with Sarah was a gift that has continued to give, even though neither of us are at Bethel any longer.  My job at St. Andrew's was also full of incredible surprises: the people and their care and generosity being number one.  The opening at Clayton Valley was a great surprise and getting the position here has been a wonderful gift. Having a publisher reach out to me repeatedly to publish my blogs into a couple books was also an amazing, wonderful surprise, as was being asked to write devotionals for These Days for a couple weeks.  The list goes on!

    Can we weigh these things?  I don't know that that would be helpful.  But I'm back to feeling that what I'm being called to do, both with this time and with the situations that have arisen in my life is to look for what is good, to look for what is beautiful.

    I've needed to name for myself, honestly, that I can tend to focus more on the negative, when there are good things all around.  My personality does not sit in the good as much as it struggles with the challenges.  But I have some choice in this.  I know gratitude is always a gift, and it is one that lifts spirits, brings joy, and helps us connect more fully with God, with Love, with Beauty.  So, as always, my lesson in this remains to spend the time each day that calls for me to reflect on what has come that has been good, that has been surprising but also gifting, where God has been and continues to be in my day, in my life.  

    Three weeks of Sabbatical left... and I am going to be intentional about this time.  It will go quickly!

Gratitude Does Not "Jinx" Us

    Yesterday I was driving home from the store with Youngest and David in the car.  We were listening to music and the song "Good Life" came on.  Here are some of the words:

"Sometimes there's airplanes I can't jump out

Sometimes there's b*** that don't work now

We now got stories so please, tell me

What there's to complain about

Oh, this has gotta be a good life

This has gotta be a good life

This could really be a good life, good life

I say oh, got this feeling that you can't fight

Like this city is on fire tonight

This could really be a good life

A good, good life"

Or something like that...that's what I hear anyway.  I like the way I hear it, even if the words aren't quite right.  At any rate, it caused me to stop and pause for a moment, and think.  

    In that moment I was truly happy.  I had two of my very favorite people in the car with me, we were driving home at dusk, a beautiful time of day, we had music, we were safe, the drive was very pretty.  More, as I reflected in the moment, we have more than enough to eat, we have a lovely home, our family is whole and healthy.  We have friends, we have extended family.  We have work we enjoy.  Youngest is learning, and has amazing opportunities, really.  She is in the drama program at school, she takes Aikido after school, and these are things we can afford.  We are putting two kids through college, one of whom will graduate in the spring, both of whom are launching into life successfully and well.  The weather is starting to turn into lovely fall temperatures, we have opportunities to walk and to sing.... I could go on and on.  The reality is we have SO MUCH that is so easy to take for granted.  Health, limbs that work, brains that work, air to breathe, good foods to eat, clean water to drink, community.   

    I talk regularly about the importance of gratitude. Being grateful, remembering all the ways in which we are blessed, and taking time to be thankful actually improves quality of life, helps with depression, helps with anxiety, helps us to really see where God is, where good is, where love is.  

    But I realized as I was driving home that there is a part of me that has held that off: that is afraid to sit in the joy, in the gratitude.  In those times of well being I'm afraid I might "jinx" my current life.  What I mean is that there is a part of me that worries that if things are going well, it is a sure sign that something terrible is about to happen.  This life, after all, seems to be about growing and learning.  We grow most from the challenges, the hardships that we must face.  So if I'm happy, maybe I'm not doing the work of this life, facing the rough patches that will help me to learn and grow.  Maybe I'm only supposed to focus on gratitude when things are hard: looking for what is good in the midst of the struggles, rather than seeing what is wonderful in the good times.   Because maybe if I name a time in my life as "good" I will lose it to another growth opportunity. 

    Rick Warren talked about how he used to see life as ups and downs but now sees it as a railroad track: one rail of the track is everything that is good and beautiful and the other rail are the challenges and hardships that we face.  He said he had come to realize both tracks are constant.  There is always something to be grateful for and always something difficult to face.  And while I experience the reality of this (even now there is a handful of things I am deeply worried about), there are still moments of pure joy that seem to release me from the hardship track, at least for a moment.  Am I to ignore those moments, to avoid being thrown head first back onto the rail of pain and/or fear?  

    I believe the only way to change our thinking is to look honestly and deeply at our feelings and thoughts.  It was a breakthrough moment for me to realize my fear that happiness would jinx my life.  I do not want to be held back by that fear.  I don't want to miss the beauty, the good, the awesomeness of my life now because I am worried that it will make whatever is to come harder to bear.  I think remembering and sitting in the good can empower us to walk with strength through the challenges.  And yes, those challenges will come.  But they will come whether I enjoy today or not.  They will not be harder because I have rested in the gifts of now.  I believe they will be easier to bear as I remember that good things are also always around me to be enjoyed, to be celebrated, to experience in awe and with gratitude.  

    So, for today, I am choosing to delight in the good.  Thanks be to God for this wonderful, beautiful, challenging, and amazing life!

A Loving Response

A Loving Response

7/5/20

Job 41:1-8; 42:1-17

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Suffering leads to deeper relationships with God.  OR, genuine relationship with God should be the goal.

               Today we finish up the story of Job, and as you heard, in many ways it is like a fairy tale ending.  Everything was wrong and now everything is right again.  But there is so much more in this final passage, and in the arc of the story that I want to focus on today.

As you may remember from a month ago, the book of Job begins with the accuser challenging the authenticity of Job’s goodness.  He basically says that Job is faithful and good because he believes that will be rewarded.  It’s quid pro quo.  I’ll do what you want me to do, God, and then, God, your job is to reward me.  And the accuser at the very beginning says that this is not a sign of being a good person.  This is payment for work done.  It is an exchange of goods, a trade.  He says Job is not innately good. He is just doing what he believes will bring him what he wants.  And both the accuser and God seem to be on the same page with the conclusion that this is, frankly, wrong.  This is NOT a good or right reason to be faithful or good. 

Why is it not a good reason?  This goes back to the mistaken idea that life is fair and just.  We discussed that a month ago, but it comes up here again as well since part of today’s passage is God confronting Job’s friends and telling them they were wrong.  Again, remember that Job’s friends kept telling Job that he was just reaping what he must have sown.  And God here clearly states that they are mistaken.  Their ideas about good people being rewarded and bad people being punished are just plain in error.  But again, we talked about this a month ago.

So today I want to focus more on the second problem with just being good in order to get what we want.  And I want to start again by asking you to think about why you are faithful and why you go to church.  Is it, like Job, because you are trying to win a way into heaven?  We know that for many, people answer this question with, basically “for heaven insurance”.  Many people have faith and go to church because they believe that is what will guarantee them entrance into heaven.  They are paying for their afterlife.  This is an exchange of goods idea, it is trade thinking.  For these people, they don’t come to church because it is meaningful to them now, or because they really feel called to give, and they don’t have a relationship with God because it is valuable, life-giving or important to them on a daily basis.  They are faithful and go to church because it is payment now for heaven reward later.   But I would say that even for those people who are not looking at an afterlife, for many, they are still using their faith, their actions and their church attendance as payment for good things in this life.  We still desperately want life to be fair.  And we believe that if we are good, if we do right, that we will be rewarded.  More problematically, we tend to believe that if other people are suffering, it must be because they have not tried, they have not worked, they have not “earned” the good things that we have.  We assume this in our very cores and tend to act this out in unbelievably cruel ways.  We assume that people who’ve been killed did something to deserve it.  We blame them for what they have experienced because then it makes life feel “fair”.  We believe that poor people are lazy.  We blame them for their own poverty.  We believe that those who are refugees or are suffering oppression must somehow be innately less-than, must deserve it, must have earned the trauma and disasters that they are experiencing.  We attack people who are already down, just like Job’s friends, saying that it is their fault that they are suffering, or enslaved, or imprisoned, or killed or kept down.  We become complicit with evil when we try to justify it happening and fail to call it for what it is. 

 I understand this thinking.  It is a way to regain a sense of control in our own lives.  If life is fair, then all we have to do is be good, do right, and we will be fine.  We can feel that all we have we have earned and we do not owe payments to the larger society or to one another.  We can feel a smug self-righteousness about what we have, what we do and who we are.

 Job, as we’ve discussed, was not exempt from this thinking.  He, too, believed that life was fair, that goodness would be rewarded, that his faithful actions would lead to good things.  His friends believed this too: hence their speeches.  But today’s passage is a confrontation of that.  God says, in no uncertain terms, that this is not the case.  Job’s friends, he states, are wrong: absolutely and unequivocally wrong.  That’s not how life – now, or after death – works.  You cannot “buy” good things, a good life or heaven in this way.  And if you are trying to do that, that is not genuine faith.  But more importantly, it is not a sign of being a good person.  That kind of thinking involves a complete lack of both humility and compassion for the other, and it is not what God wants for us.

I think about the parishioners I’ve heard about, and those who have come to me, who have wanted, begged even, over the years, for an actual experience of the Divine.  They usually have some formula for how they will achieve that, how they will find it.  And it, too, seems to be based on this “currency” model of relationship with God.  If I only do x, then I will receive what I am hoping for.  If I only go to church, pray more, do better, then God should reward me with a deep and true experience of the Divine.

And this leads me to the main part of what I want to talk with you about today.  The unfortunate truth is that all of those people I know who have had genuine, real experiences of God: those experiences have not come from being good or doing good.  Those experiences have come, without exception, from suffering. 

I am not saying that God causes suffering.  But I believe with everything in me that God is still creating, taking chaos and bringing good out of it.  And this is nowhere more clear than when God uses our suffering to bring resurrection and the highest good to our lives.  Suffering has many gifts with it.  It teaches humility, it helps us to grow, helps us to empathize.  More, suffering shows us who we really are.  How we respond to that suffering- either with anger or with compassion, shows who we are at our core.  Richard Rohr says transformation takes place in only two ways: either through great love or great suffering. 

And again, the impact of that suffering on our understanding and experience of God?  Job’s suffering and his lament allowed him to see God: Job was completely transformed by his experience of suffering.  Before his suffering he did not see beyond himself: his needs, his wants, what he needed to do to earn what he needed and wanted.  It was only through his suffering that he was given a larger vision of the world, its beauty, its immense majesty, its awesomeness.  And then a vision of God-self.

Perhaps even more profoundly and deeply than the story of Job is the story of Jacob.

Genesis 32:22-32:  That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.  After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.  So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.  When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.  Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered.  Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”  Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

               The very word, the very name “Israel” means “one who struggles with God”.  And that is deeply profound.  The very roots of our faith tradition stem from a struggle with God.  We experience, see, and have full relationship with God only when we are willing to jump fully into the questions, and into the pain of life.  When we choose to be fully real and transparent and engaged with God and God’s life, then we experience God.

               That brings us back to my first point:  why, then, should we really have faith?  And why should we go to church?  I think about when Jesus asked the disciples (John 6:67) “do you also want to leave?” and Simon Peter’s response, “Lord, where would we go?”  Their love for him was so great and so deep that they could not imagine being any place else.  It is like when we love our families.  The idea of going away from them makes no sense.  It is that love, that committed, unconditional love that is the only reason for our faith, for our commitment, for our dedication to God and to our community, to one another.

Job’s reason for his actions change completely.  And they change at the point of his lament, at the point of his crying out to God – it is in his suffering that his person changes, it is in his suffering that his reason for his actions changes.  He goes from being a person who is doing good in order to buy what he wants into a person who is actively and lovingly seeking a relationship with God.  His suffering opened up for him, pushed him to be absolutely real, himself, to wrestle, like Jacob, with God.    Until he spoke his pain, his goal of gaining for himself and then his self-obsession with his pain blocked his vision of God, blocked his ability even to see the amazing beauty of creation.  But his suffering broke him open so that the light could finally come in.  It broke him so that he could then see the beauty of creation and come to love God fully and completely. 

           I want to make one final point concerning Job.  Job never receives a real answer about why people suffer.  Instead he is shown a God who cares about that suffering and is there with him in that suffering.  In the end, this answer is enough for Job.  He has grown through his pain into being the person God called him to be: a person of humility who has seen God, who loves God and is choosing relationship with God.  God’s creative powers are not finished with any of us: there is still order that needs to be found, there is still chaos that needs to be subdued.  God is still creating until the world is at peace and justice has come.  God is still speaking.  God continues.  And so we end with the disaster that was Job being transformed, renewed and brought back to life:  God offers that to us as well: to bring beauty out of our chaos, and new vision out of our suffering. 

Our call to faith, our call to relationship with God should be about our love for God.  And our actions: coming to church, but also serving and caring for God’s people: these should be responses of gratitude for the relationship, the love, the care that we have for God.  We should not be acting “good” in order to manipulate God into gifting us with good things.  Instead, we act in faith and love because God first loved us and in gratitude for God’s love, we cannot help but respond with giving back.

Sorrow and Compassion

Job 1:1-22, 3:1-10

Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)

               As my own congregation will remember, I have chosen to use the Narrative lectionary this last year as a change from the three year cycle of the revised common lectionary that I’ve used for the last 20 some years.  The narrative lectionary is on a four year schedule and it looks more intensively at each book of the bible, following it through with longer readings, skipping a lot less material, in order for us to get a real look at these books.  For this next month, the narrative lectionary is looking in depth at the book of Job, which is not a scripture that we usually give much of our time.  When we do look at Job, we usually will give it a single week of our attention, rather than spreading it out over a number of weeks.  It is an uncomfortable book for many of us in many ways.  So today I want to give a bit of an overview.

               The book of Job is one of my favorite books in the bible, for reasons that we will explore more in the coming weeks.  One reason, which we will explore more today, is that many people have come to understand it as a book that addresses the question of why bad things happen to good people, or, to put it another way: many have understood it as a book that seeks to explore the age-old question of evil.  The question of evil is, in many ways, THE theological problem that people of faith face.  As many theologians explain it, in particular, Rabbi Kushner in his book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, and Frederick Buechner puts it in his book Wishful thinking, A Theological ABC, there are three statements that people of faith generally believe to be true:

1.       God is all Powerful

2.       God is all Good

3.       Bad things happen.

One of these three statements has to go.  They can’t all work together.  If God is all powerful and all good, then even things that look bad must in fact not be.  If God is all powerful but bad things happen, then God, the creator and controller of all things, must be the author of those bad things so God can’t be all good.  And finally, if God is all good but bad things happen, then God must not be all powerful.  There must be other forces at work in the world, in our lives and in the universe that have some sway and some say over what happens and that make for bad things to happen. 

People are uncomfortable with this.  And in general people strive and desperately want to believe that all three statements must be true.  We don’t want to believe that God is other than all powerful and all good.  But we also experience that bad things happen, every day, all around us.  And so we often jump through huge hoops in our thinking in order to make all three of these statements work.  And what we tend to discount can be a strong indicator of where we stand in our theology.

More fundamentalist and evangelicals, for example, tend to discount the statement that bad things happen.  They try to find ways in which the terrible things that happen are not really bad, or they say that the bad things didn’t really happen.  This often ends up with the devastating result that people say the most inhumane and unkind things to other people who are suffering.  Have you ever heard someone say to a person who has just lost a child, for example, “God needed that child more in heaven.”?  What a horrible thing to say to someone grieving: that they shouldn’t feel sad at the devastation they have just experienced because God somehow needs the baby more than they do!  Why would God “need” this child in heaven?    Or how about, “Everything happens for a reason” to someone who has just gone through an experience of loss or worse, has experienced some kind of truly torturous situation.  Their agony had a reason behind it?  Another favorite of mine is, “God never gives us more than we can handle” as if God had given us something bad in order to test our ability to handle things.  And we all know that people DO, all too often, experience more than they can handle.  People commit suicide because they are experiencing more than they can handle, they lose their minds, they become bitter or cynical, they DIE, overcome by disease or despair.  Every day people experience more than they can handle.  To tell someone who is on the verge of collapse that they haven’t been given more than they can handle is cruel because it declares their inability to handle the situation as a personal flaw.  And all of this points to a theology that says that the things that we experience as horrible are not, in fact horrible. 

Other times, people deal with the “bad things happen” part by assuming that anything bad that comes their way is punishment for bad behavior on their part.  This, too, is problematic for many reasons.  First of all, if God is all powerful, why would God allow us to act out bad behaviors that God then punishes?  Also, what kind of god is it that would hurt us because we made mistakes?  Not a very loving God, for sure.  But many people go to this place, don’t they?  Kushner himself tells the story of a parishioner who came to him after his daughter had died saying he had missed a high holy day at the temple and that this must be why God had punished him by killing his daughter.  Again, what kind of god does that describe?

Other faiths, perhaps, come to the conclusion that perhaps God is not all good, but is more like humans: a creator of good and evil who gets jealous, angry, vengeful and altogether destructive at times.  Since this is not a Christian understanding of God, people who believe God to be all good and all powerful but then experience terrible things sometimes end up chucking out faith in God at all.  They cannot believe in an all powerful god who would allow these terrible things to happen, so God must not be real, or must not be an entity worth worshiping. 

Finally, then, as we have discussed before, we come to the theology of people like Kushner and Buechner, and, frankly, of Job.  The story of Job does not describe a God who is punishing Job for bad behaviors.  The book of Job emphasizes repeatedly that Job is righteous.  And while some might say that perhaps the book of Job is describing a God who is perhaps not all good, who in fact makes an unfair contract with the devil even, there is a different way to understand this. 

I want to start, though, with a little historical critical look at Job.  The passages we read from the very beginning of Job has this word that is often translated “Satan” or “the Adversary” but is more accurately, from the Hebrew, translated as “the Accuser”.  There is no sense here of this accuser as being an “evil” one, or one who was working against God in the original.  Rather the sense is that this is a being whose job it is to see the truth in humanity and to hold people accountable for their actions, one who works with God in doing so.  This is very important distinction and it is how the Hebrew people would have originally heard and understood this.  To restate, this text is not a story of God somehow agreeing to the Devil’s demands.  This is a story in which the motives of Job, the deep understanding of Job is being questioned.  Additionally, when you look at what then happens, it is not that the Accuser goes down and causes problems for Job.  Some of what is described is natural disasters.  But most of it is the humans around Job doing damage.  As we hear, “A messenger came to Job and said: “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys were grazing nearby when the Sabeans took them and killed the young men with swords. I alone escaped to tell you.”  And then, “Chaldeans set up three companies, raided the camels and took them, killing the young men with swords. I alone escaped to tell you.”  In other words, this is not a story about two gods: a good god we call “God” who made everything good and a bad god whom we call “Satan” who makes everything bad that we can’t handle, and who somehow makes an agreement with the good god to torture an innocent man.  I know the story, especially in our English translations, can sound that way, but that misses the intention of the story.

               Instead this is, and again was intended to be, a story that invites us more deeply into the question of good and evil.  As we move through the book of Job, we will explore this in more depth.  But the point of this intro, as well as Job’s angry rant in reaction to the suffering that he has experienced, is that bad things happen to good people.  Job did not deserve his suffering, the intro makes that clear.  He was a good and righteous man.  His suffering was not punishment, his suffering was not revenge, his suffering was not God, nor some “devil character” lashing out.

                Much of my study leave last week was spent taking a class on process theology.  Process theology has many facets, but the main point of process theology is that God is NOT all powerful.  God has released power in favor of freewill.  I have said this before, but God wants genuine relationship with creation.  If we are controlled, there is no genuine relationship.  If we are puppets, there is no real relationship.  God has given us, and all creation, choices, our own personal power to act and react in this world.  We have the power to act, nature has the power to act.  Each of us chooses how we will be in the world, what we will do with the time given to us, what choices we will make.  That means that when people make bad choices or do bad things (like the Sabeans and Chaldeans in the Job story), people suffer.  And God has no power to prevent those people from making those choices.  God’s power at this point in time, is one of persuasion.  When people listen to God, when people lean into the mandates to love all others as one loves oneself, then good comes.  When people such as the Sabeans and Chaldeans in this story do not see others as brothers and sisters, do not feel the call to love them as themselves, do not treat them kindly or well, but instead abuse them and take what they want for themselves, raping the land and killing those they see as “other”, God is powerless to prevent it. 

I realize that for some, this is a scary thought.  It came up in one of our conversations during my study leave class that some people say, “If God can’t fix everything, if God is not all powerful, that is not a God I want to worship!”  The instructor’s response (and mine as well), “If God is not all Good, if God is not on the side of the suffering, if God has power and just stands by while terrible things happen, THAT is not a god I want to worship.”  (the third statement that bad things happen is not in question here: Job experienced them, I’ve experienced them and our world is experiencing them: so that is not the point in question here.)

(On a side note, this is the power we give to pastors in the Presbyterian church as well – we do not have the power to make decisions, though we usually take the crap when decisions don’t go the direction everyone wants, which is always – you just can’t please all the people all the time, EVER.  Pastors, too, in the Presbyterian church at least, are only given the power of persuasion.  That’s it.)

So, the idea here is that God does not interfere or prevent the bad things from happening.  The earth, just like humans, is active and alive and so things we call “natural disasters” because they devastate us happen.  Earthquakes happen.  Floods happen. Virus’ happen.  Sometimes, many times lately, humans make these things worse.  We affect the weather, we set up our societies in such a way that those most likely to get sick are also those least likely to get health care and therefore more than likely to spread disease to the rest of us.  But these are things WE do.  Not things God has done to us. 

“Let us not ask God to take away what we have been given responsibility to handle,” someone once said.  It’s our responsibility to prevent as many deaths as possible.  It is our responsibility to act in ways that limit our potential for earth’s destruction.  When we fail to take that responsibility, bad things will and do happen.  The world has been set up in such a way that there are consequences, in the big picture, for our actions; not because God is punishing, but because we have been given co-creative power and when we use that for evil, for destruction, for bad, then bad things come.  In a sense we are punished BY our sins, not FOR our sins.  On an individual basis, though, this means that life is not fair and there is suffering. 

Where is God in that suffering?  God is on the cross.  And this is the part that we have to understand.  Jesus, too, did not die because he deserved it.  His suffering, too, was not punishment, and it was not revenge.  His suffering, too, was deeply unfair.  When it comes to suffering and Christianity, it is clear that God did not prevent even the cross, but gave humans the freewill that enabled them to even kill the Son of God.  Barbara Brown Taylor in God in Pain said it like this, “Christianity is the only world religion that confesses a God who suffers.  It is not that popular an idea, even among Christians.  We prefer a God who prevents suffering, only that is not the God we have got.  What the cross teaches us is that God’s power is not the power to force human choices and end human pain.  It is, instead, the power to pick up the shattered pieces and make something holy out of them – not from a distance, but right close up.”

The question for us, then, is how do we respond in that suffering?  How do we respond when others suffer?  In relation to God, it is easy to praise God in the good times, but harder in the bad times.  We see this in Job.  He eventually gets upset.  His crisis of suffering is a spiritual crisis too, because he, as a member of his community, also had believed that the world was just and that suffering was punishment.  But now he sees otherwise: from his own experience, he is seeing things differently.  And while he doesn’t curse God, he never steps to the place in which he curses God like his wife suggests he do, he does curse his own life.  He rues the day he was born.  He laments.  He pours out his pain.  We will look more at this next week.  For today, though, my call for us is to sit in the question of evil.  Do you see, experience, feel suffering and evil in this world?  And if you do, do you choose to believe in a God who is all good, or a God who is all powerful?  Are you quick to blame God when things go badly?  Do you see a God who is angry and vengeful?  Or do you see a God who has loved you so deeply into being that God has given each of us free-will with the cost being that suffering comes?  These are hard questions.  They are questions that are not easily answered.   And for today, I invite you into the questions, into the exploration.  Unlike for many, I am not going to give you quick answers because I think God is in the very questions, pulling us closer, inviting us to listen, to hear, and to grow in our love for God.  I think that IS Good News.  A God in the questions.  Amen.

When Times are Dark

Isaiah 63:7-9,

Matthew 2:13-23

12/29/19

               The story we heard from Matthew today is the other side of Christmas, the dark side of Christmas. 

“A voice is heard in Ramah,

    weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.”

               This is the part we don’t want to look at, don’t want to talk about, and at some level deeply deny.  In many ways we, as a people, as a faith, as a country even, still believe in a Santa Claus God.  We hold on to the belief that if we are good, good things will come to us.  And if we experience bad things, it is “karma” or rather, it is God getting even with us, punishing us for the wrongs we have done.  The signs that we still believe in this are many, but I think the biggest indicator that we do is that one simple word, “Why”.  When things go wrong we cry out to God and demand a reason.  “Why?” we demand.  “Why are you doing this to me?”  This is often followed by “What have I done to deserve this?” A lesser form is the “why won’t you help me?”  but it still comes down to the same thing.  We want life to be fair, and we want to be rewarded for good behavior.  We also tend to want our enemies to be punished, to suffer for their misdeeds.  But both of these ideas come from a vision of God which just doesn’t hold with either scripture or with our experience.  Today’s scriptures are just one of the times when we see this reality.  Every male child in and around Bethlehem slaughtered.  Did any of these children deserve to die?  Of course not!  But it happened.  Like the Holocaust, like genocide, like all the evil things that happen in this world. 

Our wishes for a Santa Claus God who gives good to the good and bad to the bad just doesn’t play out in real life.  So my answer to you about the “whys” and the “how comes”, my answer in the face of this reality is the uncomfortable reality of free will.  The uncomfortable reality is that everyone has been given that same free will.  My answer to you is the uncomfortable reality that God does not micro-manage us because God wants genuine relationship with us and that means we are not puppets, none of us are controlled by God, made to behave properly, made to avoid hurting you or hurting one another.  If we are allowed to be ourselves, allowed to be who we are, allowed to pick and choose our behaviors, then sometimes, and unfortunately many times within humanity, people will make bad choices, choices that hurt others, choices that deny others’ humanity and deny the truth that we are all brothers and sisters to one another.  My answer to you is the uncomfortable reality that, as Jesus tells us, “the rain falls on the just and unjust alike.”  The bottom line here?

God is not doing this to you. 

Whatever it is that you are suffering, whatever it is, it is not something that God is doing to you.  It is not punishment for something that you did.  We have choices in this life, all of us.  And that means other people make choices that hurt us, hurt all of us, damage life, damage connection, injure hundred and thousands of people, take the lives of children, box them up, treat them like dirt.  God is not doing this.  God is the God of love and life.  If it is not loving and is not full of life, it is not God.  But still these things happen.  Life is unfair.  And we cannot control the choices of other people.

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

               So, the innocents were slaughtered, then, as they are today.  Children were killed then, as they are today.  And the reaction and the result was weeping, then, as it is today.  And just as then, when God did not stop Herod from the slaughter of all the babies, it still was not God’s will that those babies be killed.  It was not God’s wish, it was not God’s choice, it STILL is not God’s will or God’s choice when babies are slaughtered, when killings and destruction of God’s people is happening.  It is never God’s will when the children are slaughtered. 

               I will tell you the truth: I often lay awake at night and grieve our world: I grieve the children at the border.  The most obvious, most memorable refugees we know are in this story today: they are Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  I do not understand how you can fail to see them every time we are looking at the refugees at the border, I do not fail to remember that every time we hurt or kill or separate a child at the border, we are separating, killing and hurting Jesus himself.  And it fills me with inconsolable grief.   I also lay awake at night grieving my own children who will surely be destroyed by the climate change we are bringing about.  I know some of you do not believe this.  And you can have your opinions.  But I will also say to you that I cannot understand anyone who would refuse to act based on even the possibility that this is a reality, the possibility that we are reaching a point of no-return from which we cannot save our planet and ALL of our children will be destroyed because of it.  I grieve.  I lay awake sobbing with grief for my own children and potential grandchildren.  And I, too, demand to know why God will not stop the greed that I see as the only reason for not acting to save our beautiful world.  And I weep for the children that will be no more if we do not take action now.

               But just as in the slaughter of the innocents, God does not stop the evil from coming.  God does not stop those who have their own motives.  God does not make people see, or make people choose life, or make people care for one another or the planet.  God tells us to love, but God does not make us love.  And so, many of us now are weeping for our children, for, whether they are the children at the border or our own children affected by a dying planet, they are and will be no more.

So, where do we go with this?  Where on earth is the Good News in this?

There are two: first, God is still there with us in all this mess: “In all their distress he too was distressed.” As the passage from Isaiah told us.  God is with us in our pain, helping us to bear it, carrying us, loving us through the darkness.

But the second is that just as free will leads some to buy their heads in the sand, and others to act with greed and selfish inclinations, for some to act out violence and hatred and rage against their own brothers and sisters, and to inflict cruelty and yes, evil, onto the world, freewill also opens doors for good to come in, for light to shine, for hope and grace and compassion to shine forth.  Free will allows some people to choose love, no matter what is happening, and to love with a ferocity that is greater than their own lives, with a willingness to live out their love even to death.  Free will allows us to choose God, goodness, and love no matter what we are facing.  And that is a gift indeed.  Because as Mark 8:36 tells us, “what does it profit a person to gain the whole world only to lose their soul?”  the opposite is also true, some people lose their lives and are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of all and in doing so, they gain their very souls.

I found myself reflecting on this as we were lighting the candles for the last Taize service of the season Monday evening.  The candles we use have a very short lifespan.  They burn for maybe an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and then they are done.  So, as we were lighting the candles, many of which had begun their burning the previous week, I felt in some ways that we were fighting an uphill battle.  We’d light two candles and one would snuff itself out, running out of wax or drowning in the little wax that was still there.  We’d replace the candle and by the time it was replaced, another would have gone out.  David and I together were standing at the communion table lighting candles as people were coming in, and even with both of us working, we’d get a few done and another would burn out, needing to be replaced.  But despite the darkness that kept engulfing each little place where a candle stood, even though candles burnt out quickly and our ability to keep the light going needed constant attention, when we finally said, “well, we need to start the service, the candles that go out will just have to be out for the rest of our time today,” even as we said this and let them be, the light from those that were strong was enough.  It was bigger and brighter than the ones that had burnt out.  There remained more candles that were lit and burning than were out, even ‘til the end of the service.  And the ones that burned shown strong.  They pushed the darkness away for that time.  The light would not be put out, nor the darkness overcome it.  And in that is my hope.

There is a story written by Robert Fulghum in his book, It was on Fire when I Lay Down on it (New York: Ivy Books, 1989), p 171, that I would like to share with you this morning: click for story

God is the light.  God is the light.  We are mere reflections of that light.  But our job is to be strong and vigilant and to keep spreading the light: love, compassion, grace, the memory that we are ALL God’s children, all brothers and sisters to one another, all in need of love and healing, all called to be the ones to bring that love and healing.  We are called to spread that word and spread that light to all who will hear.  Once we have spoken, once we have shone our lights, it is not our job what happens then.  It is not up to us whether or not it makes a difference, whether or not it changes anyone.  That part is up to God.  Our part is just to keep shining the light.  Today.  Everyday.

I end this with a poem that was sent to me from Jan Richardson:

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you

who bear the light

in unbearable times,

who testify

to its endurance

amid the unendurable,

who bear witness

to its persistence

when everything seems

in shadow

and grief.

Blessed are you

in whom

the light lives,

in whom

the brightness blazes --

your heart

a chapel,

an altar where

in the deepest night

can be seen

the fire that

shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith,

in stubborn hope,

in love that illumines

every broken thing

it finds.

- Jan Richardson

from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings

A truly awful week, personally.

This has been the week from hell.  Sorry, if it offends you to hear a pastor say that, but it's true.
          It started with my (very young in terms of maturity) 18 year old trying to get back to school and being stuck in Chicago for two and a half days, first because of storms on the coast, and second because Southwest then "lost" her new ticket.  They lost her ticket while we were trying to get working phones from ATT and had limited phone, text, and email access. That alone, trying to help my panicked daughter who, at 9:15 at night, the day after her flight was originally supposed to leave Chicago but at the time the new flight was supposed to take her, and who was lost as far as they were concerned,  while my phone, text and email access were completely limited, was unbelievably stressful for all of us.  When we finally had her scheduled for a new flight, the next day (which also meant she would miss her first day of school, something that was also stressful to my daughter since all of her classes had wait lists and she was afraid she would be dropped from them because she missed those classes), and finally figured out a way to get her from the airport then to the school (shuttles were no longer running at that point since all kids were supposed to be back in school already), then we were able to see that in the middle of all that chaos, while the ATT guy had said the phones would mean we would add $30 more to our bill each month, we had just received an email from ATT telling us that in fact our bill would jump $270 for the first month and then $170 per month after that.  Trying to call ATT to get their help, we were told all offices were closed for the day and we would have to call back in the morning.  Okay...
        The next day when I woke up my hearing was completely gone from my right ear and very minimal in my left ear.  It felt like both were completely stuffed with cotton.  I still tried to follow up with ATT who reassured me that their written email detailing the cost was wrong and that I should just trust what they had told me in the store and were now telling me on the phone.  "Can I get this in writing?"  "Well... no."  Okaaay… still waiting to see what the actual bill will be, but at that point it will be too late to go back to the store and demand a refund.  Hm.
       The next day I was on my way to the doctor to see what was going on with my ears when I received a text from my son's school saying the school was in lock down because of a gunman on campus.  I moved into full panic mode, completely unsure what to do except to try to text my son and see if he had his phone on and could give me any more information at all.  A half hour later, I did hear from him that all was okay and he'd been released but that he knew nothing else about what had happened.  In the mean time, the doctor told me (I think, because honestly, it was hard to hear him both because I can't hear and also because I was freaking out about my son) that it would take about a month for my hearing to return because I have blocked Eustachian tubes (due to a combination of a cold and TMJ.  Really?  Then why has this never happened before?) because it will take that long for the medication he's prescribing (which, by the way, makes me ill: I feel nauseated and exhausted all the time) to kick in.  Okaaay…
       I've been refinancing the house in order to buy out the church's portion since, with David's income now helping as well, it helps both the church and us for us to do this.  The church then no longer is paying off a loan, and we can build more equity on the house if we own the entire thing.  Also, it means we can work on it now without needing the church to pay for a fifth of any work we do, which would also put strain on the church.  Great.  Except the following day the final paper work came and it appeared that the title company did it wrong: We refinanced, but it still appears the church has title to the house.
       Add to all of this some crisis at church (par for the course, but this was more stressful and serious in many ways than is often the case).
       Then we come to this morning.  I was driving my youngest daughter to school when a big monster truck decides to ride my tail.  He was probably within a foot of my bumper on a 45 mile per hour road.  I was behind someone else, so this was not because I was going too slowly: there was no way I could have gone faster.  I also know I didn't cut him off since I didn't change any lanes.  It was actually really scary, so I pulled over to let him pass.  He drove as close to our car as he could, even clipping the mirror as he passed.  As he passed, I could see the anti-everybody bumper stickers on his car.  I pulled out and followed, keeping a safe distance, and saw that he was not repeating this treatment to the car now in front of him.  It turns out this was another parent at Youngest's school: dropping off a child right in front of us.  The only thing I can think of why he was so awful is because he didn't like my "tolerance" bumper sticker.  And because he didn't like the sticker, he chose to terrify both Youngest and I.  We were both shaking after he clipped the mirror.  This reinforces my feeling that our country is in a place of civil war.  The distance between political view points is growing, the lack of tolerance for difference is intensifying; the anger, rage and hate that gets acted out with this terrorizing car behavior (as well as much more serious acts of violence and aggression) is dangerous, is attacking, and none of us can avoid this.
      My week.
      How was yours?
      Usually I would follow a long complaining session with a reflection on our ability to choose to focus on the good instead of the difficult.  I can celebrate with great relief that the gunman scare at my son's school turned out to be a false alarm and that no-one was hurt.  I can focus on the amazing gift of having friends in Chicago who were able to help my daughter, house my daughter, for the two nights she had to stay there.  I can focus on the great learning experience it was for her to take a taxi for the first time, to trust strangers, to make new friends and to go through airport hassle in many ways alone.  I can focus on the fact that my hearing isn't permanently lost, and that ATT is promising that things will not be as expensive as the bill is saying.  I can rejoice that while this horrible truck bumped my mirror, they didn't take it off, none of us were hurt, and we are all living to see another day.  I could do that.  I could also look at the amazing good of the week: I had the opportunity to see a musical with a very good friend, I went for a wonderful hike with another very good friend, I had dinner and dessert with other friends, and have watched my eldest daughter begin her second semester with a lot more confidence and hope than her first semester. All of my kids are thriving in their own ways, they are healthy, smart, and truly kind people.  My new husband is awesome and supportive and loving and kind... All of that is really good stuff, and if I were a better person I could focus on all of the good and encourage us all to be grateful for each day and the gifts (and learning that comes with the challenges) that we are each given in every moment. But the reality of being deeply scared and worried this week for all three of my kids to different degrees, not having my hearing, and feeling sick all the time because of the medication makes it hard to just be Pollyanna-ish, or even faithfully grateful.  It was, in many ways, a bad week.  And I can only hope that this next one will be better.
       The thing about good times and bad times is that they all pass.  And they do.  The only thing we can count on is change.  What I experience now, in this moment, will not be what I experience in the next moments or hours or days or weeks.  When things are really good, that reality is hard.  When things are bad, the reality of change is a promise of better things to come.  I wish many times lately that we lived in a world that was kinder, more compassionate, more understanding, and more grace-filled.  I wish people understood that the people you hate are parts of you, as much as we are all parts of one another, and that loving all of them is still in each of our best interest.  I yearn for a world with less fear, less anger, less hatred and violence.  But we live now, in this world, with all of its beauty and all of its pain.  And the best we can do is to breathe through the bad, and delight in the good; to grow from the challenges, and to try to be in the world the way we would want the world to be.  So, despite the fact that I still can't hear, that I still feel sick, and that I am still worried about many things, I will put on my big-girl pants and keep stepping forward with intention and a commitment to be grace-full.  It's all I can do.  I pray it is enough.

AND the good side...

      I know you want to hear the positive from the trip, too.  So this post is really just going to be a travel log...
      Sunday, June 17: Following church drove to Medford, Or.
      Monday, June 18: drove to Kelso, WA.  On the way, had a lovely visit at Crater Lake:

 

      Tuesday, June 19: drove to Port Angeles, WA and on the way saw Mt. Saint Helens. One of the amazing gifts we experienced was that we were able to take a helicopter ride to the Mountain and actually look into the crater itself.  What an awesome experience!!  We were also able to drive by the house where my grandfather had lived when I was a kid in Sequim, WA.

    Wednesday, June 20: We took the Ferry over into Victoria, BC.  There we checked into our hotel where we would stay for four nights, visited Miniature World and had High Tea at the Empress Hotel.

After High Tea, the girls and I found a lovely park to walk around in called Beacon Hill.  There we met a peacock who seemed convinced we were there to feed it.  It followed us around for awhile, finally giving up with a large squawk, before turning around and heading back.

 

     Thursday, June 21: Visited Butchart Gardens, the Butterfly Museum, did some foot exploring of the city of Victoria and rode a horse drawn carriage around an older part of the city.  We enjoyed this day very much.  The horse drawn carriage ride was meant to be a tour, but we ended up engaging the "tour guide" who was driving the carriage, instead, in conversation.  She is about to start her final year of college, is majoring in Medieval studies and Eldest, this young woman and I had way too much to talk about that just took priority over the tour.  That was a real gift: to meet this young woman and have such a wonderful conversation about school, politics, countries,  and life in general.

   Friday, June 22: We went to the Royal BC Museum and Craigdarroch Castle.  At the Royal BC Museum we were able to see an IMAX movie about the efforts in China to restore the Panda population from near extinction.  There is some success with these efforts and we are learning, so I think there will be more success as time goes by.  Additionally, several Indigenous Tribes were present at the Museum, and were giving talks about their cultures and the work throughout Canada to be more open, accepting and celebrating of Indigenous faiths,  practices and peoples.  We happened to be there at the time of an Indigenous Cultural Festival and there were dancers who came and shared some of the traditional dances, as well as the meanings of those dances.  That was amazing!  My pictures of this were not great, but perhaps that is better anyway.  This is part of who they are, not for our entertainment, but hopefully we learn from other people and can appreciate the beauty of our diversity, as we learn to honor other traditions, cultures and faiths.

    Saturday, June 23: We visited the Parliament building, the Maritime Museum, the Bug Zoo (some of us), Christ Church Cathedral (some of us), and then we walked around town more.  The kids, David and I ended up having dinner at a Games Café.  What a blast that was!  For $5 each, we could sit and play any of the games in their extensive games library as well as eating snacks and just being together.  We spent four and half hours exploring different games and having dinner.  We didn't buy any games, but we really had fun just being together.  

        Sunday, June 22: Well, I have to admit we didn't go to church.  However, the kids picked out a couple scriptures and asked me to give them an impromptu sermon... Honest to God, it was their idea!  They said they missed church and wanted me to preach for them.  While I was expostulating, we walked around downtown Victoria, found an outdoor market which we enjoyed, then walked along the North Harbor, across a bridge and along the Bay.  It was beautiful.  And we had a couple of amazing bonuses.  In the outdoor market, we came across a woman who made beautiful jewelry, including a Celtic Moon that was something Eldest had been looking for.  We talked for a while and the woman basically gave Eldest some of the Jewelry she made!  (I snuck back and paid her: I think it is really important to pay artists for the work they do.  But it was awesome that Eldest felt she'd been given this gift by someone who just liked her and wanted to do that for her!).  And THEN, as we were walking along the bridge to cross the bay into the North Harbor we saw Taxi Boats that were boating together and in patterns.  As we watched, we heard a loud speaker across the Bay announcing that the Taxi Boats were going to perform their "world famous water ballet" in a half hour! We'd been watching them practice in an area that was less touristy. So we walked for a half hour then sat on the shore of the Bay and watched the taxi boat ballet!  It was a blast.  Youngest said it was her favorite part of the whole trip, perhaps especially since it was unexpected, unplanned and we just happened to see it by wandering...

Later that day we took the ferry off of Vancouver Island and onto mainland Canada.

     Monday, June 25: We stayed in Vancouver but visited the British Columbia Museum of Mining (I didn't go in so I don't have any pictures: I hadn't been able to sleep the previous night and that morning had my run in with the guy I talked about yesterday who was mean in the café.  I just needed some alone time, so I rested a bit while the rest of the family went to the Museum).  The rest of the family learned a lot though.  The museum and guides talked about how their mining had destroyed the local river, wiping out several unique fish species and harming the people downstream who had made their livings as fisher-folk.  But they also shared that because of that disaster, their mining techniques have greatly improved and the river is on its way to recovery.  Afterwards we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park.  As I said, it had not been a great beginning to the day for me.  However, there was live music that really touched me in the Suspension Bridge Park.  We had lovely walks among the trees: just the kids and I (David doesn't do heights), and it was a healing, calming time. 

     Tuesday, June 26: We went to the Science World in Vancouver which was AWESOME!  We saw a guy do an amazing demonstration on illusions, watched a movie about the Amazon and natural selection, and were able to see just a part of the many wonderful exhibits in this museum.  We wanted to stay much longer, but we had to get through customs because we had a scheduled tour at Boeing in Seattle late that afternoon (where we were not allowed to take pictures... sorry).

  Wednesday, June 27: We started in Seattle with the Space Needle, the Chihuly Garden of Glass and the Science Fiction Museum/Pop Museum.  We were divided: those who don't like elevators or heights went to the Science Fiction Museum while the rest of us did the Space needle and Glass Garden.  After that we drove to Tacoma where we went to the Museum of Glass.  That was an unexpected awesome, too.  In the Tacoma museum of glass they have a theater space where on the stage are glass ovens and the glass workers.  A man with a microphone walks around answering questions for all of us to hear about the work the glass workers are doing.  You can sit for hours and watch this amazing process.  It was beautiful.

Thursday, June 28: We went to the Lewis and Clark Historical Park in Fort Clatsop where we walked among the trees as well as hearing history, seeing the fort, learning how to start fire with flint, and communing with different eco-systems.  We then went to Tilamook where we ate dinner at the cheese factory.  It was a delicious meal!  

Friday, June 29: Mostly a driving day along the Oregon Coast.  However, we made one stop at the Sandland Adventures area, where we were taken on a very fast Dune buggy ride over the sand dunes. It was a rollar coaster ride up to 60mph up and down and over and around.  I screamed a lot, Youngest gripped her seat in terror, Eldest opted out completely, but the boys loved it.  Big surprise there... No pictures of Dune Buggy ride: they warned against getting sand into your phone and camera..  But lots of beach pictures!

Saturday, June 30: more beach, and Trees of Mystery.  This is also the day we had our near head-on collision.  But we are fine, and again, the time in the trees was healing and helpful.

Sunday, July 1: We head home.  But not before going to the Skunk Train in Fort Bragg and the Mendocino Botanical Gardens.  The gardens were also a wonderful surprise.  Absolutely beyond our expectations.

We came home tired, but with our minds and hearts full.  Good people, good food, new experiences.  We had a lot of laughter, a great deal of learning, and most importantly, time together.  Some of the photos I posted here are just silly, some are sweet, some show beautiful or interesting things that we saw.  All of that is as true as what I wrote yesterday. I am very grateful for this time.  I hope it created life time memories for my kids.  I know it did for me.  The time away was full and meaningful.  And it was time to come home and be with my community once again.  I am grateful for it all.