Community and Suffering

 Ruth 1:1-22

The book of Ruth in so many ways shows us exactly the opposite of the book of Job.  In Job when everything goes wrong, he first piously pouts and prays, and then as things get worse and worse, he eventually yells at God.  I’ve shared with you before that I love the book of Job because it shows a God who responds to our pain, responds to our cries, responds even to our anger when it is expressed directly to God.  Our God shows up, is present and loving.  And in the end of Job, all that he had comes back to him in greater abundance than before.

But, while I deeply love the message of Job that God is there when we are honest, real and completely open with God, I think I love the book of Ruth even more.  In the book of Ruth, we see a very different response to a similar situation.  Naomi, who is, in many ways, the real star of the book of Ruth, has, like Job, lost everything.  As you know, women had no agency at this point in time.  They could not own property, they could not hold jobs.  Everything they had and everything they were was dependent on the men to whom they were attached.  So when Naomi loses not only her husband, but both of her sons, when her spouse and her children are dead and along with them, her livelihood, her property, and all that she has, she, too, has truly lost everything.  This can’t be understated.  Everything she knew was gone.  And as she says here herself, she is too old to remarry and produce more sons.  Unlike Job who can go on to remarry and have more children, Naomi is past that.  So, like Job, she too is angry and grieving.  As she says, “Don’t call me Naomi, (which means pleasant) but call me Mara (which means bitter) for El Shadai has made me very bitter.  I went away full, but the Lord has returned me empty.”  

Like Job, Naomi is angry.  Like Job, Naomi is in deep grief.  Like Job, Naomi seems beyond hope.  But unlike Job she does not act like she is beyond hope.  Job sits and complains.  Job sits covered in sackcloth.  But Naomi moves herself into action, instead.  She picks up to move back to her home land, having hope that there will be food there for her.  She doesn’t start with a complicated plan.  She just starts by putting one foot in front of the other.  We are told, “She arose… because while in the territory of Moab she had heard that the Lord had paid attention to his people by providing food for them.”  So while she may have been expressing pain, expressing despair, she chose to act out of her hope.

And what she finds, in this first step, this unclear, unplanned, but decisive first step to go home is that she is not alone.  Ruth, who has also lost her husband and therefore her livelihood as well, commits to going with her.  And Ruth is adamant in that decision.  Naomi takes a step into life, and in doing so finds she is not alone.

This is my message for each and every one of you today, and what I hope you will take from today.  When we choose to step forward in hope, to take action despite our feelings of grief, of loss, or of despair; when we follow the call to act, we will find that we are not alone.  We will not be sent on the journey by ourselves.  The helpers are there, and they will come.  And along with them, there is often a plan, often a vision, often the insight to see the call into the next step, and the next, and the next.

My family has been watching the series, “Call the Midwife”.  This week we watched an episode from the second season in which the main character, Jenny, is trying to help a woman who had been forced, out of complete destitution, to go into the workhouses in London.  She had been there for 35 years, until they closed.  And now her life is one of agony, one of deep poverty.  But at the base of her pain and her grief is the fact that when she had first gone into the workhouses, she had entered with five little children.  The way these workhouses functioned was that all children would be taken from you when you entered into the workhouse.  All five of these very young children were taken from her.  This woman, now an old woman, has no knowledge of what happened to her kids past the day that they were taken from her.  But she yearns for them, calls for them, cries out for them.  When one of the nurses goes to help her, all this woman can talk to her about is seeing her hope of seeing her daughter, Rosie, who at the time was the eldest of the five, and was 8 years of age, in particular, again.  The nurse, Jenny, is so upset by all of this that she decides to find out what happened to the children.  And she discovers that all of these five very young children died very quickly after being taken from their mother.  “Failure to thrive” it was said.  The system destroyed the children by taking them away from their mother.  Jenny doesn’t know what to do with this information.  She brings it back to Nanatus house, devastated by this history that she has discovered.  And the response?  “And what do you propose to do, Nurse Lee, now that you have garnered these unedifying facts?”  When Nurse Jenny Lee says she doesn’t know, the nun continues, then, to quote the apocrypha, “you have been curious in unnecessary matters.  The past remains the past.  The present, unamended.’”  Another of the sisters joins in, “Sister Monica Joan is right.  It’s what happens in the here and now that counts.”  Nurse Jenny Lee responds with, “Forgive me but her life in the here and now is not safe or filled with love.  She waits every day for a child.  For children that are never coming home.” The nuns respond, “Then you should turn your mind to that.”  And so she does.  Nurse Jenny goes and does more research, and she finds where the children have been buried, which is in a mass burial ground.  But within that mass grave, there are specific locations for each of the children.  She memorizes where each child is and then takes the old woman to the grave site.  She says “We are standing by a public grave.  There are many put in here.  This is where they buried the workhouse inmates.”  

“I had too many,” Mrs. Jenkins says.  

“Yes, and they are all here.”  Jenny replies.

“Together?” she asks.

“I was able to get plans of the cemetery and the graves in the public records.  It’s all written down.  Percy and May are lying next to each other.  Just over there.  Alice is to the right, over there.  I think in the summer that tree must cast some shade there.  And George is by the cross.  Rosie is right here, Mrs. Jenkins, almost underneath your feet.”  The old woman bent down, putting her hands on the snow over the grave of Rosie “I’d have liked her in with me to warm her feet.  But I can see she’s tucked up safe.”  She sobbed and cried, but was then was able to grieve properly and to finally find some peace, knowing where they were, knowing what had happened to them.  Jenny then invited her into a new life: invited her to help her community to sew and make costumes for the Christmas pageant.

Nurse Jenny had seen a problem: the suffering of this older woman who had no closure, no way to grieve, no way to move on past those horrible 35 years.  And while Jenny did not know what to do, she took her own suffering, her own pain, her own despair to her friends.  While they didn’t give her the exact answer, they pointed her in the right direction.  And in the end, after Jenny had taken the steps to learn, to share, to help move Mrs. Jenkins forward, it was the entire Convent that helped Mrs. Jenkins to find work, to find meaning in making the costumes.  They, together, invited her into their community, and they, together, helped her to grieve, to mourn, and to find peace.

 I think about Moses who knew what he had to do but was afraid to do it.  In choosing to step forward, God provided that Aaron and Miriam would go with him and would help him.  He was not alone.  

I think about the women who started MADD: when Candace Lightner’s child was killed by a drunk driver, she knew something had to change.  She put it out there and Cindi Lamb joined her (who had also lost a child due to a drunk driver).  Together they were able to make a huge change.  MADD has lowered the number of those who have died from drunk driving by half!  That is huge.  

The work that people are doing to help refugees from the Ukraine they are doing together.  The work that Hope Solutions is doing to help the homeless in Contra Costa County started with people from a church dreaming and envisioning and planning together.  There are so many needs in our world.  But when we get stuck in the “I don’t know what to do” there is no movement.  Pray, ask God what is the thing that is concerning you the MOST right now.  And then speak about that!  Share with us your fears, your concerns.  Do you try to solve these problems alone.  Together we can do so very much!

When we are in pain, when we are grieving, when we are struggling against loss and fear, we are called to listen to that pain as a calling from God to act.  And when we do not know what we can do to act, the first thing we must do is to say “yes”.  That’s it.  Say “yes, I will act.”  The second thing then that we are called to do is to remember that we are not lone rangers.  None of us is here alone.  Not one of us has been put here on this planet to solve the problems of the world on our own.  We are made for connection, we are made for community.  That pain in your heart, that tugging on your sleeve, that call to action: it is not given to any one of you alone.  Our lone ranger complexes keep us stuck in inaction.  And while God showed up for Job, and God will always show up for us, too, Job was not able to do what Ruth and Naomi did.  Job stands as a lone book.  Ruth, in contrast, is an ancestor of Jesus.  Our ideas that we should be able to figure it all out on our own keep us from acting at all.  We end up being Jobs rather than Naomis when we forget that God has not put us here alone.  

It was together that Ruth and Naomi were able to rise above their situation and survive.  It was together that Ruth and Naomi were able to make enough difference in the world that Ruth is listed as one of the ancestors of Jesus.  It was together that they were able to thrive.  And it is together that we, too, will change our world.  All we have to do is say “yes”.  And then look for the helpers.  They are there.  God makes sure of it!

Failure to see our own wrongs.

          I have said this before in a variety of ways, but I feel it must be said again, and this time perhaps more directly. 
           Whatever it is that bothers you most in other people is almost always a serious flaw within yourself.
          As our scriptures say it,  (Matthew 7:1-5): "Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. You’ll receive the same judgment you give. Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you.  Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother or sister, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when there’s a log in your eye?  You deceive yourself! First take the log out of your eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s or sister’s eye." 
          Scott Peck, in his book, People of the Lie, describes the truth of my statement above as the root of evil behavior.  He says that people project out onto others the parts of themselves that they cannot face, cannot see, cannot accept and then they actively work to destroy it in the other: that this is what leads to evil.
          It's so easy to see the truth of this in others, and to know that as a result, our choice to self-reflect is absolutely critical for the well-being of the world.  Yet, most people still do not do this.  And even those who understand the depth of this at a core level will find it so much easier to see in other people than in ourselves.  But perhaps we need to start there, with our observation of others, to enable us to apply it in our own lives.
        I think about the first time I really understood the seriousness or the truth of this.  As a child I knew someone who was constantly putting down another woman whom she felt chose to be a victim and more, chose to use that victimization to manipulate and control the people around her into doing what she wanted them to do.  The person complaining absolutely hated this other woman, and actively worked to discredit her with other people, constantly pointing out her victimization stance and the way she controlled her world with it.  But even as I child I could see with absolute clarity that the woman complaining was actually a master at the very same behavior she was criticizing in this other woman. 
        I see this constantly: the person who says everything comes down to a power play is the one for whom power plays are paramount.  The person who says people don't listen who, himself, does not listen.  The person who becomes enraged at someone else's bullying who is themself a bully.  The person who says gossip is an issue who uses that same gossip as their primary weapon.  We see this at a national level, too - the ones condemning LGBTQ folk who are so often LGBTQ folk themselves who cannot face it until they are caught in a same-gender liaison; the person who condemns others as liars who cannot himself say one word of truth; those who brag about their humility when they are narcissists in every sense of the word; the one shouting about not being valued or treated as a full human being who cannot see the ways in which she oppresses everyone who does not look like herself.  I could go on and on.
        On an almost daily basis I hear or see someone being critical of others for doing exactly what they embody as a human being.  And, like Scott Peck, I have come to believe that this behavior is itself causing an amazing amount of the damage in our world.  The call to self-reflect, to face our own flaws, to admit them: these are actions that lead to healing, not only for ourselves but for the world.  And yet, these are the hardest things to do.   
        My own worship committee has debated about the importance of the prayer of confession in our worship services.  They have felt that it does not raise us up, but slams down those who already have low self-esteem.  I understand this thinking.  But the truth is that we don't get to healing, we don't move to a place of being able to accept grace, accept a new beginning, start again; without naming those things that have hurt us the most.  And the thing that has hurt us the most, nine out of ten times, I am convinced, is our own refusal to face ourselves: our shadows, the parts of our own beings that we don't want to see.  If we can seriously take self-inventory (as our 12-step brothers and sisters do), then we can change, we can grow, and we can heal.  By facing ourselves, we begin to heal ourselves, which in turn begins the healing of our society.
        As a country we are being called to look at a flaw that many of us don't want to see, and that is our racism.  We don't want to be part of this problem, we don't want to see it, and so we deny it.  But it is real.  It is part of our culture, it is deep in our history, it is in the very fabric of our being.  You might say it is in our blood.  And we can see that those who deny it are the very ones who are acting it out most in this moment with violence, with aggression, with terror on our brothers and sisters of color.  I understand that it is hard to look at, but it is necessary to look, to name it, to be willing to take a deep and hard look at the messages that are part of our being, at the ways in which we live those out and act those out, at the ways in which we are damaging ourselves by allowing harm to happen to our brothers and sisters of color.  We are called in this moment to self-reflection of a very painful, but deep, important and true kind.
        How?
        Start with education: There are wonderful books out there to read on the subject.  Some of the ones I've read include Biased by Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, White Fragility by Robin J. DiAngelo, to name a few.  Join a book group that is reading these books so you have a place to discuss, to learn together, to face racism and our part in it, together.
        Move to action.  There are many groups that are taking action on this and if you would like to be hooked up with one, let me know.
        Most importantly, be willing to look at yourself.  I know it's hard.  I know this.  I comforted a very unhappy young woman yesterday who was lamenting her whiteness and feeling like she shouldn't exist in this world because of it.  But there is so much good we can do, as those with privilege, to support, empower, and challenge the system of oppression that denies power to our brothers and sisters.  I understand that self-reflection can lead at moments to despair, but without that intense inner look, there is no hope for movement out of destruction and into being helpers.  We are all on this journey.  All of us.  We need to take the steps together. 
        I started this post by pointing out that self-reflection is hard.  It is so easy to see the flaws of others and so hard to look at ourselves.  I include myself in this critique and I'm working with others to look at my own contribution to harm in this world.  I am grateful for the friends and community that allow me to do that work.  I encourage you to find the same.  We have to begin somewhere.  Being with those who love you enough to tell you the truth is the best place to start.  Thanks be to God for our communities of truth-telling. 

To Love as Called, Part II

Matthew 18:15-22

Luke 6:27-45

Last week I preached on how loving one another is hard and involves being patient, kind and truthful.  I said that sometimes the being truthful part is especially difficult.  But that loving one another doesn’t just mean being nice, but really means being willing to help one another grow – which sometimes means telling people truths that may be hard to tell, truths that may be hard to hear. 

Well today I want to follow up on that with the other side of the coin, because, as some have pointed out, there are some people who, in the name of “truth,” are also nothing but critical.  Often these people are also critical in a way that is impossible to hear, and impossible to actually grow from.  And I just want to assure you that this was not what I am advocating.  Again, if loving is working towards the highest spiritual good for the other, we have to find ways to live in truth and peace with one another that won’t tear each other down.

Todays’ reading from Matthew is very clear that we are to confront each other when we have been injured by one another – something we’ve talked about not just last week, but other times as well.  Still, when we do tell the truth, when we do confront one another, we have to find loving ways to do this.  Because while the passages that encourage truth telling are important, we have more passages that tell us that first and foremost the job is to support one another and uplift one another. 

For example, Romans 14:10-13 says, “You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written:  'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'  So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.  Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way.”

Romans 12:9-10 “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

Romans 12:15-20  “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.  Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.  Do not be conceited.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.  On the contrary: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink."

And, as we read from Luke today, Jesus is clear that we are not to be critical of one another without serious introspection, and self-reflection first.  We are to look at our own flaws first and work hard to remove them, before we ever even consider saying something to someone else.  Jesus still says that we do this in order to help the other.   “first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”  So, we still aren’t let off the hook from helping one another grow, too. 

But again, we are first called to look at our own flaws, our own challenges, our own areas of growth.  These, then, can help us to help one another. 

 A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean; she doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap."

Her husband looked on, remaining silent. Every time her neighbor hung her wash to dry, the young woman made the same comments. A month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and says to her husband: "Look, she's finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this? "

The husband replies, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows."

But today I especially want to talk about how we discuss our criticisms with others.

            In book two of  Anne of Green Gables series, Anne of Avonlea, Anne has made friends with a crotchety old man who is very critical of others.  (p.66 – 67)

“That old nuisance of a Rachel Lynde was here again today, pestering me for a subscription towards buying a carpet for the vestry room,” said Mr. Harrison wrathfully.  “I detest that woman more than anybody I know.  She can put a whole sermon, text, comment, and application into six words, and throw it at you like a brick.”

…(Anne replied), “The trouble is, you and Mrs. Lynde don’t understand one another,” she explained.  “That is always what is wrong when people don’t like each other.  I didn’t like Mrs. Lynde at first either, but as soon as I came to understand her I learned to.”

“Mrs. Lynde may be an acquired taste with some folks, but I didn’t keep on eating bananas because I was told I’d learn to like them if I did,” growled Mr. Harrison.  “And as for understanding her, I understand that she is a confirmed busybody and I told her so.”

“Oh, that must have hurt her feelings very much,” said Anne reproachfully.  “How could you say such a thing?  I said some dreadful things to Mrs. Lynde long ago but it was when I had lost my temper.  I couldn’t say them deliberately.”

“It was the truth and I believe in telling the truth to everybody.”

“But you didn’t tell the whole truth,” objected Anne.  “You only tell the disagreeable part of the truth.  Now, you’ve told me a dozen times that my hair was red, but you’ve never once told me that I had a nice nose.”

“I daresay you know it without any telling,” chuckled Mr. Harrison.

“I know I have red hair too.. although it’s much darker than it used to be.. so there’s no need of telling me that either.”

“Well, well.  I’ll try and not mention it again since you’re so sensitive.  You must excuse me, Anne.  I’ve got a habit of being outspoken and folks mustn’t mind it.”

“But they can’t help minding it.  And I don’t think it’s any help that it’s your habit.  What would you think of a person who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying, ‘Excuse me, you mustn’t mind it. It’s just a habit I’ve got.’ You’d think he was crazy, wouldn’t you?  And as for Mrs. Lynde being a busybody, perhaps she is.  But did you tell her she had a very kind heart and always helped the poor, and never said a word when Timothy Cotton stole a crock of butter out of her dairy and told his wife he’d bought it from her?  Mrs. Cotton cast it up to her the next time they met that it tasted of turnips and Mrs. Lynde just said she was sorry it had turned out so poorly.”

“I suppose she has some good qualities,” conceded Mr. Harrison grudgingly.  “Most folks have….”

As Anne put it so eloquently, it isn’t the whole truth to just criticize.  And we have to be careful about judging others.  You know the quote, “When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose to be kind.”  Wayne Dyer. 

I don’t know if any of you know anything about William’s syndrome, but it is a disease in which the person who has it cannot be discriminating and instead just loves and trusts everyone.  There is gift in that.  But sometimes people become extremely uncomfortable with that kind of care and love from a total stranger.  There was a show on PBS that was talking about this disease and a mom was sharing that her daughter had this condition.  People who didn’t know that she was struggling with a condition would sometimes yell at the mother out of their own discomfort or fear for the girl, “Haven’t you taught her to be careful of strangers?  It is extremely dangerous for her to just walk up to someone and sit on their lap, or climb in their car, or take someone’s hand!  What’s the matter with you for not teaching her these things?!!”  And we understand their judgment.  When we do not understand the whole of any situation, it is easy for us to judge.  Who here does not have judgment about someone about something;  Something someone said, something someone has done, something someone believes, something someone is? 

I’d like to ask you to think for a moment about the things that you judge in others.  Are there specific things or attitudes or behaviors that you find yourself judging in others?  Are there reasons why you have those specific judgments?  Past experiences?  Maybe it is hard to understand certain things?  As the Matthew passage tells us, even as the Luke passage tells us, in the case of our families, our friends, our church communities, and even others, there is a time and place for the gentle corrections that lead to growth.  But we have to speak without judgment.  We have to speak because of a genuine desire to serve the other.  We have to speak out of love.  If we aren’t, if we are speaking in anger, or judgment, or worse, in hatred, then we are not doing what we are called to do.  Speak your truth…speak with love….but try to speak the whole truth, including the good stuff. 

Psychologists give us a formula for this, a formula for confrontation which may seem hokey, but at least for me, I have found it to actually be very affective, very helpful.  It helps me to speak my truth.  More importantly, I believe it also helps the other person hear what I’m saying.  The formula is something like this: 1. You speak your care for the other person. 2.  You speak an affirmation about what is going well in the situation.  3. Then you talk about the thing that has upset you in terms of your own feelings and the way the other’s behavior has affected you.  For example, “I love you.  You are wonderful as a parent/teacher/friend.   AND, when you do x, I feel __________.”   

Today’s passage in Matthew follows the mandate to confront by telling us that we must forgive.  Forgiveness is also a part of all of this.  But as you see, forgiveness does not mean just forgetting about what someone has done, or failing to hold someone accountable.  Instead, it means dealing with a problem and then letting it go.  If you can’t deal directly with a problem because the person you are upset with isn’t willing or isn’t available, then you finally have to work it out within yourself, bring healing in yourself and forgive for your own sake.  As I’ve talked about before, our anger only hurts ourselves.  But most of the time, we are simply afraid to speak our truths.

Loving is not easy.  It involves kindness, it involves truth.  It is all the things that last week's passage from 1 Corinthians 13 mentioned: patience, faith, steadfastness.  But the author of love itself is there to help us.  And that is good news indeed.

To Love as Called

                                                1 Cor 13:1-13

John 13:33-35

1 John 3:11-18, 4:7-12

Most of you are probably familiar with this First Corinthians passage on love.  Where is it most often used?  Weddings.  The first time a couple I married asked to use this Corinthian passage, I found myself thinking it was odd and ironic because this passage was written to a church that was undergoing strife.  Paul is talking to a congregation in which the members are fighting with each other and Paul is trying to tell them how, in the midst of their discord and disharmony, they are still called to love and care for one another.  He says in the midst of your anger, in the midst of your dislike, even, you are called to find patience, and humility, you are called to be truthful, to trust and hope and persevere and work towards harmony.  You are called in the midst of pain to avoid self-righteousness and keeping score of wrongs.  And twenty years ago, I thought, what an odd thing that a couple in the height of new love, in the high of falling in love, would choose a passage in which they are being lectured on how to survive, how to be loving, in the midst of pain and strife and struggle.

But the more I have worked with this passage, and no doubt with the longer I’ve lived through a marriage, a divorce and now in another marriage, I have come to see it as the perfect wedding passage, for exactly the reason that it was written to a congregation in strife.  For no marriage, no matter how ideal, is without conflict or difficulties.  No marriage should be without conflict because we are called to come to every relationship honestly and wholly ourselves.  That honesty will necessarily lead to differences with others.  Those differences will cause disagreements, and sometimes those disagreements will cause strife.

           But obviously, it is not just in marriage that we are called to work through conflict and find ways to love one another.  And as this passage and all of scripture shows us, learning to truly love others is not easy.  It is not easy.  Scott Peck defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”  I love this definition and want to read it to you again.  Love, according to Peck, is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”  This definition says several things which I think are valuable, two of which I want to point out today.  First, love is an action exercised by the will.  Love, in the biblical understanding of the word, is not a feeling, it is not a liking. It is a decision and then an act of the will.  We care for one another, we love one another not by feeling strongly about them, but by acting in the other’s best interest.  Secondly, this definition tells us that the highest end of love, according to Scott Peck, is growth - Spiritual growth.  We love by caring for and wanting the best growth for the person to whom we are extending love.  Notice that by this definition, acting loving does not mean making the other comfortable.  It does not mean flattering the other.  It does not mean making nice.  It does not mean leaving uncomfortable situations, either.  Is it loving to walk away from difficult people?  It isn’t loving towards those difficult people.
          We often hide our unloving behavior under the guise of “politeness.”  Of course, there are noted exceptions.  Have any of you seen the PBS miniseries of Jane Eyre that was originally aired about eight years ago, or even read the book?  In both I was struck by Jane’s refusal to lie to Mr. Rochester when he wanted to be flattered.  “Am I handsome, Jane?”  He asks.  “Not in the least,” she answered.  In the book, even more than in the movie, Jane is committed to Mr. Rochester’s highest growth, highest spiritual good, without regard of whether it might cause Mr. Rochester to care for her less, or whether her comments might hurt his feelings.  One conversation in particular struck me.  Mr. Rochester admitted to Jane that he had done a great wrong.  For many of us today, this would have been a solicitation for us to be comforting to the one who did the wrong.  “Oh, no, you aren’t wrong.” or “What you did isn’t as bad as you think.” Or, “Well, I’m sure it all worked out okay.” Or, “Even if it was bad, it’s okay because you didn’t really mean to hurt so-and-so.  And you’re really sorry now, so it’s okay.”  But Jane, instead, does not deny the wrong.  Instead she encourages repentance, reformation, the making of amends, and the commitment to do better.  This is love, truth, and a call for growth from one another.
           Have any of you seen the movie “Borat”?  Well, it’s actually a very offensive movie, but still, there is much in it that we can learn about ourselves, and about love. Sacha Baron Cohen, playing the character of Borat, approached different people using highly offensive words and behavior.  The behavior of those he approached was then recorded, and generally speaking, their reactions fell into three categories.  Some responded to Borat’s offensiveness by acting in kind with similar racist, sexist, offensive and horrible behavior.  Other people, people who would take serious offense at the ideas Borat expressed, were simply ruled more by manners, or perhaps by fear of confrontation than by love.  These people allowed Borat to express his terrible offensive ideas and even to act on them, but did nothing to defend the people Borat would insult or even injure, did nothing to stand up for or care for those who would be injured.  Additionally, they could not see Borat as someone they were also called to love, someone they might help, however unlikely it might be, by presenting another view point, another choice of a way to act in the world.  While I agree it was unlikely that their expression of better thought would really have changed the Borat character, even if he had been a real person, not a character, God does not put us in charge of the outcome of our loving actions, God simply calls us to act in love despite all possible outcomes.  
           There was a third reaction to his behavior. There were a few people who chose a different reaction, a very few people who did chose to act in love.  When Borat approached women from a group called the Veteran Feminists of America, with sexist, racist, horrible ideas, these women did choose, articulately and respectfully, to respond to Borat by suggesting other viewpoints.  They acted in love, even in the face of horrible, insulting, attacking ideas.  And while the character of Borat did not respond to their loving behavior by showing change or growth, it is again, not our job to determine the outcome of loving efforts.  It is only our job to choose love.
             It is hard to act loving.
             Aikido is a martial art based on the principle of peace. The founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, said, “To control aggression without inflicting injury is the art of peace.”  It is in that spirit that he developed the martial art of Aikido.  It is a form of self-defense which attempts to respond to an aggressor’s attacks by moving the aggressor’s energy away from violence or injury into a movement in which aggression is diffused and diminished.  The word Aikido uses a combination of three Japanese characters - joining, spirit, and way.  It emphasizes one-ness or blending together rather than clashing.  Practitioners of Aikido attempt to join in the rhythm and direction of the other person’s energy, and in doing so, the aggressive action becomes more dance-like, it becomes a joining rather than a fighting.  Aikido then seems to me to be an amazing way of practicing love.  It takes a flaw of another - it takes aggression, or anger, or violence.  And instead of returning anger for anger, instead of seeking revenge or striking out, aikido works for the highest good of the other and attempts to show that anger or aggression a new way: to mold it, to turn it, to spin it into an act of peace, without injury.
           What would happen in our world if we genuinely embraced Jesus’ principles of love?  What would happen, if instead of responding to the violence of things like war with more violence, more hatred, more aggression, we instead committed to loving our enemies and working towards their highest growth and highest gain?  What if we found ways to take negative, aggressive energy and use it towards genuine acts of peace, if our goal in acting was that we “controlled aggression without inflicting injury?”  If we are truly about loving the other, loving our enemy, then we cannot respond to aggression with more aggression.  It is not loving to try to hurt anyone, anytime, anyway.  How do we act with love both towards those we would defend and our enemies whom we are also called to love?  Turning the other cheek, loving our enemy, turning aggression into something else, something beautiful, something unifying, something graceful may be the challenge we are called to as we are called to love one another.  It is hard to act loving.
           While I don’t really enjoy watching American Idol, there was a time, fifteen years ago or so, when it was often on in my house, through no choice of my own, so I ended up watching a number of episodes.  On one of these American Idol evenings, we watched auditions that took place in Birmingham Alabama.  One of the interesting things that seemed to separate out the contestants in Birmingham from those in other places was their responses to the comments of the judges.  In other cities, when the judges, Simon in particular, became rude, many of the contestants would argue with his critiques, or return insult for insult: they would strike out at those who had struck out at them.  But in Birmingham, many of the contestants responded to the critiques with simple, “Thank yous.”  And I found myself thinking that this was a case in which the loving thing and the polite thing were, in fact, the same.  Maybe they said “thank you” because they genuinely understood that they could learn and grow from the critique.  Maybe they said “thank you” because they were genuinely thankful for the opportunity to audition and for the judges spending a little time with them that day.  Maybe they were simply being polite.  But whatever the reason, their politeness had an effect on the judges.  Maybe not a long lasting one.  But again, we are not responsible for the results of our loving behaviors.  I saw surprise and moments of genuine reflection cross the judges faces as they had to ask themselves why people were thanking them, even for their cruel and insulting rejections.  What’s more, as the evening went on, their attacks became less cruel, and turned into more constructive critique.  And I have to hope that in the face of others behaving better than they themselves usually do, that maybe they might reflect on ways they could continue to present their critiques less hurtfully, less harshly, with more truth, and also with more love.    
            It is not easy to love.  It is not easy to be patient, and kind and truthful in the face of rudeness, in the face of aggression, in the face of hatred.  And yet it is our call: the only call besides loving God.  The passage we read today from John tells us this is the defining call of Christians: loving each other, this is what sets us apart from other people.  What sets us apart as people of Christ, as Christians, is how we act.  Choosing to love, choosing the hard task of working to care for one another and even for our enemies, that is what will show you to be a disciple of Christ.
          While not easy, the good news in this call to love is shown to us in the 1^st John passage which tells us the reward for loving.  “If we love one another, God lives in us and God’s love is made complete in us.”  This is our reward: we have God, God-self, living in us and making God’s love complete in us through our loving.  What an awesome thing.  What an awesome opportunity for us.
          So, go, love, and find God within you, building God’s temple, bringing love to completion.  In Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.

Arguing with God

Exodus 33:vs. 3 and 12-23

Jonah 3:10-4:11

Mark 7:24-30

Do you feel it is disrespectful to God and inappropriate to argue with God?  Why or why not?

Whether or not you, personally, think it is disrespectful to argue with God, many people do believe this.  Many people struggle with how to be respectful to God, especially at times when they have feelings of injustice or anger or pain which they feel they shouldn’t express to God. 

Yet, despite our own discomfort, scripture shows us example after example of people arguing with God.  Today we have three examples of that.   In the passage from Exodus, God refused to go with the people into the land flowing with milk and honey because, as God says, “I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”  Moses confronts this, giving good solid reasons for why God should recant in that decision.  Moses argues that God should show Moses what to do by being with the people.  Moses also says that the people will not know that they are doing the right thing if God’s presence is not with them.  And finally, Moses reminds God that the Israelites are God’s own people and that they therefore need God to go with them.  Moses argues with God.  Moses pleads with God.  Moses pleaded with God on other occasions as well, like when he begged God not to bring disaster on the people after they made the golden calf.  Moses said, “change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.”  Moses went on to remind God that God promised to multiply Abraham’s descendants.  Moses pointed out that if God were to kill the Israelites now, that other nations would think less of God as being a God who just led God’s people out of Egypt in order to destroy them.   And again, Moses reminded God that the Israelites were God’s own people.  So we see that Moses regularly argued with God. 

In the second scripture for today we see that Jonah, too, argued with God.  Jonah was angry that God had told Jonah to deliver a message of destruction that he did not want to deliver and that now God wasn’t going to do the destroying God had promised to do.  Jonah felt that God had made a fool out of Jonah.  And Jonah was angry.  He yelled at God, argued with God and then he sat nearby to watch, waiting to see if God would then change God’s mind and destroy the city after all.  Jonah, too, a chosen prophet of God, argued with God.

In case we feel that Moses and Jonah somehow had authority as God’s special people to argue with God where we don’t have that authority, we have the gospel passage to look to.  Here we have a woman who was considered a nobody, because of her gender, because of her ethnicity or culture, and because of her religion.  She was a Syrophoenician, a woman, a person rejected and excluded by the Israelites.  Even Jesus begins by rejecting her, with the words, “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” a comment that would have been considered even more insulting in Jesus’ day than it is in ours.  But this rejected, Syrophoenician, Gentile woman argued then with Jesus, saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  So a third time we are shown people arguing, standing up for themselves with Jesus, and with God in the Bible.

These are not, by any means, the only examples in our Bible of people arguing with God.  Take, for example, the story of Job.  Everything was going badly for Job – everything.  Still, he insisted on not arguing with God about it.  He insisted on not talking to God about it.  He believed that this was the right thing to do, that it would somehow be wrong to speak out against something God had decided.  Finally, things got so bad that his wife encouraged him to speak out believing that God would then kill him, and that death was better than the living hell he was experiencing.  Finally, when death did seem a preferred alternative to his suffering, Job, too spoke out against God.  He, even more than the other scriptures I read to you today, argued and even railed against God with words such as “Why did you bring me forth from the womb?  Would that I had died before any eye had seen me, and were as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave.”  And even more “Withdraw your hand far from me and do not let dread of you terrify me. .. Why do you count me as your enemy?...I cry to you and you do not answer me; I stand and you merely look at me.  You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me.  ..you toss me about in the roar of the storm.”  Job, too, then spoke out in anger to God.

The psalms also give many examples of people speaking out in anger or argument against God.  Psalm 4 begins, “Answer me when I call, O God of my right!...” 

And Psalm 79 “How long, O Lord?  Will you be angry forever?  Will your jealous wrath burn like fire?  Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call on your name.”

Psalm 10 - Why, O LORD, do you stand far off?  Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Psalm 22 - My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?   Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?

Psalm 42 - I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me?  Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?"

Psalm 44  - Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.  Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?

Psalm 74 - Why have you rejected us forever, O God?  Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?  Take it from the folds of your garment.

So, if arguing with God is disrespectful, how do we understand these scriptures? 

One commentator explained it this way, “While many of these passages seem … downright disrespectful of God, they are an authentic representation of how the psalmist feels. Is it ever improper to have our prayer reflect the condition of our fallen heart?  In the past, I have tended to restrain my prayers out of respect for God. I am now coming to realize that my inauthenticity is actually an insult, not respect. God knows my heart, and my prayer should not be a facade. If it is, I am only fooling myself.”

I think it is also very important to take some time to look at how God responds when God’s people do argue.  Starting with the passages from Exodus, how did God respond when Moses argued?  Not only did God listen, but God relented, changing God’s mind based on what Moses had to say.  God honored Moses because of the arguments he was able to give God.  As Exodus 32:14 says, “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”  And Exodus 33:17  “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.’”  God knows Moses by name because Moses is authentic with God and has the strength, courage and wisdom to speak up and to tell God when he disagrees with the decisions God has made.  Moses found favor in God’s sight because God is proud of Moses’ ability to make good and sound points in his arguments, just as sometimes we as parents or teachers can find ourselves proud of the arguments our children put forth to convince us to change our minds. 

            With Jonah, God wasn’t changed or convinced by Jonah’s arguments.  God didn’t say “yes” to Jonah’s appeal that God destroy the people of Nineveh.  But neither did God leave Jonah alone, or just say “too bad for you!” or even get angry with Jonah for speaking his mind.   Instead, God talked with Jonah, showed Jonah that God has the same compassion for the people of Nineveh that Jonah had for a mere bush.  God was present with Jonah and offered care of Jonah, even as God disagreed.  Jonah’s angry prayer, while not eliciting the answer he hoped for, none the less continued and deepened Jonah’s relationship with God.

In the story of the Syrophoenician woman we see a similar response as the one given to Moses.  Jesus is impressed with her answer and changes his mind, giving her what she has asked for because of the eloquence of her argument.  “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter” he says.  So Jesus shows us a God who stays in the conversation – God continues the conversation and even allows God-self to be bent by the arguments.

With Job, we are given a combination of these responses.  God does argue back with Job.  But God also returns to Job ten-fold the blessings of Job’s life.  But for me, the most important part of Job is that God responds most profoundly by simply showing up.  God doesn’t smite Job or leave Job in silence or alone.  God takes Job’s words and the arguments of Job’s mouth as an invitation to be in deeper relationship with Job.  Job is real with God, and God returns the favor by being real and tangible for Job.

And finally, with the psalms…We are not given a glimpse into the reaction of God to the psalms, but we are invited to pray them ourselves – with all of the emotions that they express: we are invited to express our anger, our sorrow, our fear, our gratitude, our joy and love – we are invited to pray or sing the psalms and express all that we are to God.  We are invited to be authentic with all the feelings and thoughts that we have - the arguments and anger as well as the submission and joy.

The important thing here is this: God calls us into genuine relationships.  God really, truly, wants to be with you exactly as you are.  God loves you for all of who you are, completely as yourself, fully as the person, the individual that you are.  But we tend to think that we have to be different than our genuine selves for God to truly love us.  Or we think it is impolite to express all of what we really feel and all of who we truly are.  And that is not only wrong, but dangerous.  For as I’ve said before, the parts of ourselves we squish down are the very parts of ourselves that tend to manifest in dangerous, threatening, violent and yes, even evil, ways.  Because of our fear, we all tend to wear masks, masks that cover who we really are – not just from those around us, not just from ourselves but even from God.  These masks hide the deeper truths of who we are and keep us from being fully the people God calls us to be.  Whether these masks are obvious or not, they exist, and they exist for us all.

I found myself thinking about the movie Don Juan DeMarco.  In this movie, a teenager tries to commit suicide and when confronted by a psychiatrist he tells the doctor that he is Don Juan.  The teen is, of course, committed to the mental hospital.  He was wearing a mask, as the Don Juan in the stories does, but the mental hospital takes it away from him.  He is very angry about this and says to the psychiatrist, “Think how you would feel if you were made to take off this mask that you are wearing?” 

Later in the movie the doctor and Don Juan have another conversation in which the Doctor asks Don Juan if he knows who the doctor is.  Don Juan replies, “You are Don Octavio de Flores, the uncle of Don Francisco de Silva.”

The Doctor responds, “And where are we, here?”  To which Don Juan responds, “well, I haven’t seen a deed but I assume that this villa is yours.”

The Doctor continues, “What would you say to someone who was to say that this is a psychiatric hospital and that you are a patient here and that I am your psychiatrist?” 

Don Juan answers, “I would say that he has a rather limited and uncreative way of looking at the situation.  Look.  You want to know if I understand that this is a mental hospital.  Yes, I understand that.  But then how can I say that you are Don Octavio and that I am a guest at your villa, correct?  By seeing beyond what is visible to the eye.  Now, there are those of course who do not share my perceptions, it’s true….but I see people and this situation for what they truly are…glorious, spectacular, radiant… and perfect - because I am not limited by my eyesight.”

That is the way that God sees us.  That is also the depth to which God sees us.  And if we don’t voice all of who we are to God, that doesn’t prevent God from knowing those feelings and thoughts are there, more fully than we ourselves know them.

In Mitch Albom book, Have a Little Faith,  (p.181) Albom is interviewing or spending time with his life-long Rabbi, and the Rabbi, whom he calls “the Reb” shares with him that when his daughter, Rinah (which means Joy) was four years old she suffered from a terrible asthma attack that took her life.  When the Rabbi was asked about how he responded to this, how he responded when his little girl died so suddenly, he honestly and openly shared, “I cursed God.  I asked God over and over, ‘Why her?  What did this little girl do?  She was four years old.  She didn’t hurt a soul.’”  Albom asked the Rabbi, “Did you get an answer from God?” 

“I still have no answer,” he replied.
“Did that make you angry?”

“For a while, furious.”

“Did you feel guilty cursing God – you, of all people?”

“No,” he said.  “Because even in doing so, I was recognizing that there was a greater power than me.”  He paused.  “And that is how I began to heal.”…His faith soothed him, and while it could not save little Rinah from death, it could make her death more bearable, by reminding him that we are all frail parts of something (much more) powerful.”

That arguing with God, that talking to God, that authentic relationship with God, that is the start of healing, no matter how God answers your arguments or your prayers.  Many times (as we’ve seen from the Exodus and Mark passages) the answer won’t be “no” but instead God will respond with delight and joy in our requests.  Other times, the answer will be “no” but even then, even when the answer is “no” we deepen our relationship with God by being authentic.  God can handle our thoughts and feelings.  And God knows what they are even better than we know them ourselves.  What a comfort then, to not have to “hide” them from God, but to just be wholly ourselves in a loving relationship with our God. 

Amen.

Matthew 25: Clothing the Naked

Genesis 9:18-27

John 4:5-42

Matthew 25:31-46

Today we continue our study of Matthew 25 by focusing on clothing the naked.  But while making sure that everyone has enough to wear is an important call for all of us, today I actually want to focus on this at a metaphoric level. While I believe that Jesus meant these passages to be very literal, the gift in Jesus’ words and I think in all of scripture, is that there are always multiple levels of meaning and of value to us.  Since clothing people is generally not as big an issue in the United States (as we know our thrift stores tend to be overrun with donations of clothing and if you are like me, you clean out your closets of unused clothing or clothing that kids and ourselves outgrow on a regular basis), I want to focus on the other levels of clothing the naked.

Looking on someone’s nakedness is generally considered wrong.  This was even more true in biblical times.  As we read in the passage from Genesis, even when it involved an adult man seeing his father naked, this was a wrong that could lead to a complete change in one’s rank within the community and even within one’s family, apparently for generations. 

But we do this – this looking on the naked, in more than just physical ways.  For example, when someone is “exposed” – when a piece of a person’s private life, is thrown onto the TV screen through news stories, we tend not only to want to see, but to STARE.  We are curious.  We rubberneck on freeways when there has been an accident, we watch the news avidly when someone’s tragedy is aired, we talk and chitchat with others about the scandals we’ve heard about.  We look on the nakedness of those who are suffering and exposed in our communities on a regular basis, and usually we have very little shame in doing so. 

The result of this?  Well, we are given a small glimpse of the results of that in today’s first gospel lesson:  We have a woman who is “naked” in her community.  She has had five husbands and now is living with a man who is not her husband.  We don’t know the why’s of this.  We don’t know the reasons behind this.  We don’t know what has led her to this place or what has happened to her husbands, or why she is with the person she is with now.  But we know it is easy to condemn her even today.  And we know that she was severely condemned then by her community.  We know that in the middle of the desert she is choosing the hottest, most horrible and inappropriate time of day to come to the well.  And we know that the only reason why she would have done this was to avoid other people in her community.  The reason to avoid other people in her community is because she has been condemned, alienated, estranged by those others and left to come to the well at this, the only time she can.  She is naked in her community – stripped of her dignity, her respect, her place among her people.  Despite this, despite the shame she experiences probably daily, when she speaks with Jesus, she still chooses to be transparent, to be open and honest when Jesus asks her to bring her husband.  And that, I think, is a great part of why he chooses to stay in conversation with her at that time and to offer her water and life.  She stands naked in her community, and what he is really offering her is the clothing of a new life.

For us, offering the exposed, the naked, the vulnerable in our communities “clothing” is not always easy and the way in which we can do that is not always clear.  I encourage you to think about what that might look like in this place and time. 

There is an organization called BACA – Bikers against Child Abuse.  This is a group of self-identified “scary”, rough bikers whose goal is to protect, support and care for children who have suffered abuse.  A news story a few years back told about one specific girl who was sexually abused by her step-father.  She was so terrified by this man and by her experiences that she could not sleep at night, was scared all the time and was falling apart.  BACA began to escort her to school, they went to court with her and literally stood around her as she testified against her step dad. They stayed outside her house all night in a circle, on their bikes, so she could sleep at night.  That is a profound example of clothing the naked – helping them to find and wear strength once again, to wear a sense of pride and acceptance for who they are.  This is an example of protecting those who have been stripped, completely, of dignity, pride, and a sense of self, and helping them to find those again.

Another group of bikers, the Patriot Guard Riders forms an honor guard at military burials, helps protect mourners from harassment and fills out the ranks at burials of indigent and homeless veterans.  In addition to attending funerals, the group also greets troops returning from overseas at homecoming celebrations and performs volunteer work for veteran's organizations such as Veterans Homes.  They, too, stand with those who have been stripped by mourning and grief, who stand naked in their feelings, trying to honor them while others would expose them and take away their pride, their experiences and their opportunities for transitions such as memorials and returning into the community. 

Recently a new movement has also started in the United States to help heal the raw naked feelings of those soldiers who are returning after serving from war.  Our soldiers often return hurting, injured in feeling if not in body.  A program called Warrior’s Journey Home uses the principles of Native Americans welcoming back their fighters.  In Native American cultures, the fighters are sent to the perimeters to protect the tribe and when they come back, they are put in the center of the circle and promised the protection of the tribe from their naked, raw feelings in exchange.  We are beginning to do a similar thing here in the U.S., intentionally inviting our returning soldiers into circles of love and care where they are reassured that it is now our time to heal them, care for them, and offer them protection from their memories, from their “nakedness”, from the experiences which now haunt them.  The movement has an amazing success rate in beginning and encouraging the healing from PTSD.  I was able to be part of such a group, as a support person, at my last congregation, and found it to be an amazing tool of healing and empowerment for those suffering from their own experiences in war. It is a way of clothing the vulnerable and naked who have had raw experiences which leave them in a feeling of fear and exposure.

These are three ways that people clothe those who are “naked” in their feelings, and in their experiences, who are raw to what the world has thrown them and exposed as a result. 

But you will notice that none of these groups are church groups.  None of the programs I’ve mentioned stem from religious communities. The commentary, “Feasting on the Word” has this to say about Matthew 25:  “(Matthew 25 makes several very radical statements.  One) is about the practice of religion. You cannot read the paper and not be concerned about the role religion plays in the world. Terrible atrocities are committed by people shouting, ‘God is great.’ Religious officials hide clergy abuse, deny sacraments to those with whom they disagree. Religious leaders condemn each other, excommunicate each other, invest inordinate amounts of energy and resources fighting one another over who gets in and who is kept out, over whose doctrinal formulas are true and whose are false—over a whole laundry list of issues about which Jesus had absolutely nothing to say.  He did, however, say this: ‘When you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’  Students of the New Testament know that the only description of the last judgment is in Matthew 25. There is nothing in it about ecclesiastical connections or religious practices. There is not a word in this passage about theology, creeds, orthodoxies. There is only one criterion here, and that it is whether or not you saw Jesus Christ in the face of the needy and whether or not you gave yourself away in love in his name.”  (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 4: Season After Pentecost 2 (Propers 17 - Reign of Christ).)

What that says to me is that in some places at least, church is a place where we have one of the hardest times accepting the naked or vulnerable.  We hide behind our theologies and our creeds, arguing with each other, excluding each other, and being least authentic with each other.  We are so uneasy with the vulnerable that we not only fail to protect those who are, but we also fail to be vulnerable ourselves. 

James Angell in his book, Yes is a world wrote, “Church ought to be a set of moments when we become most expansively, openly and honestly ourselves.  Yet it is in the church where we often find it hardest to be ourselves: where we are often the most guarded, the most paranoid, the most unsure of being accepted and understood.”  It is in part for this reason, too, that clergy children have one of the highest rates of suicide and other emotional issues.  As Religion News Service says, “Beneath the stereotypes of preacher’s kids as either goody two-shoes or devilish hellions lies a tense and sometimes taxing reality, the children of clergy say. Studies show that many PK’s, as the lingo goes, struggle with issues of identity, privacy and morality.”  Rick Warren is the author of “purpose driven Life” and “purpose driven Church”, pastor of the Mega church Saddleback in Southern CA.  His 27 year old son committed suicide a few years ago.   Jay Bakker, the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, said he identifies with Matthew Warren as a fellow PK and as someone who has also suffered from depression.  “It’s especially hard because his dad wrote the book `The Purpose Driven Life,’ which has this incredibly optimistic tone,” Bakker said. “My parents wrote the same kind of books, and it was like, `Things are good for everyone else. What’s wrong with me?’ I can’t imagine the pressure he must have felt.” 

My own son’s counselor when I was in Ohio said to me numerous times that the best thing I might do for my son would be to leave serving the church as a career, where everything he did and every response I made in caring for him was evaluated by 80-100 eyes.  While I don’t find that same kind of critical looking here, I am aware that he has chosen to stay quiet and unobserved in the back most of the time he is at church.  He protects himself by being invisible inside these walls.

We all know each other’s business and mine has been completely transparent for the last 6 years or so.  We are all, in a sense, naked in front of each other.  How do we clothe each other, then, with care, with grace, with faith, and most especially with love?  How do we walk that path? 

First of all, we intentionally do not choose to stare at someone’s humiliation and shame.  That means we stay away from gossiping about what other people go through, we avoid focusing on other’s tragedies from a place of curiosity.  It also means standing WITH those who are exposed.  Being human clothing for others as we protect them from other staring eyes.  We walk all of this with intention.  We intentionally invite and welcome in those who are struggling.  We intentionally invite and welcome in those who are in pain.  And we do do this.  Through housing our recovery groups, through opportunities like the grief group that we offered for awhile, through other small group opportunities like the women’s Tuesday afternoon group, the quilting group, the men’s group, we do get to know each other, support each other and love each other.  But again, we are also called to do it for the “least of these”, which begins with keeping our eyes open to see God’s face in each and every person we meet. 

The Good News is that we can trust that, just as with the woman at the well, when we find ourselves “naked” and exposed, Jesus will come to us and clothe us as well.  Jesus sought out those most “exposed”, most naked in their communities because of their shame (like the woman today as well as the woman caught in adultery and the tax collectors and prostitutes), or because of their condition (the blind man, the deaf man, those with leprosy, the bleeding woman).  Whatever it is that leaves us exposed, Jesus seeks us out to clothe us with righteousness.  That is what God does – God finds us when we are in our most vulnerable, rejected states and God clothes us with love, with faith, with hope when we are most hurting, most exposed.  We can count on that Good News.  Today and every day.

Sunday's Sermon - Gentle and Loving Confrontation

Proverbs 8:1-14

Matthew 18: 15-22

Immediately after college I served as a volunteer in mission in New Mexico.  While I was there the local church music director offered to teach me organ lessons in exchange for working as her piano accompanist for the music and voice classes she taught at the local community college.  It was my first experience with the organ but after just a couple weeks, the music director called me one Sunday morning saying she was very ill and would I play for her in church that day.  Well, as a very nervous new organist I agreed.  The service went fine and afterwards people were very positive about how things had gone.  Three days later I received a letter in the mail.  The letter was written by Sally, a long term member, the widow of a Presbyterian Minister, and a fellow musician.  When I opened the letter the first thing I noticed was that it actually was not addressed to me.  Instead, it was a copy of a letter she had written to the pastor, the music director, the worship committee, and every member of the session.  She wrote,

“I was appalled on Sunday to hear the abominable organ playing done by Barbara Barkley.  She was a disaster.  I have rarely heard anything so disgraceful in church.  I’m writing to you in the hope that you will see to it that such an atrocity does not again take place.”

She concluded her letter by writing,

“In the future, I would be happy to voluntarily serve as a substitute organist at any time.  With love, Sally.”

As you can imagine, I was devastated.  Moreover, I was humiliated.  I had never before received anything like such a letter, and I was absolutely cut to the quick.  For a moment I thought it might be a joke.  But that idea was soon banished by a phone call I received from the music director, followed by another from the pastor.  They each were kind and reassuring in their own ways.  The music director assured me that Sally was just upset that I had been asked to play instead of her.  The pastor told me that I should feel I had really made it in their congregation: I wasn’t really part of the in-crowd at the church until I had received a devastating letter from Sally, something he received on a regular basis as well as most of the leadership in the church.  He also told me he thought I’d played well.  But for all their kind words, I still felt so ashamed that I wondered if I would ever again be able to show my face at the church, let alone continue to study organ.  A part of my confidence, my enthusiasm for learning and trying new things, my spirit was broken, a part that it took a long time to heal.  Sally sinned against me on that day.  She was right to say how she felt.  But out of love, she should have talked to me, alone and in person.  She was right to express her concerns, but in love, she should have been more careful about the words she chose and how she chose to use them.

But actually, it is not about Sally’s errors that I wish to focus today.  Instead, it is my own sin and sins of my cohorts at the church of which I want to speak.  It is about the lack of a loving response on my part, on the part of the pastor and music director and yes, on the part of the session.  Because we all responded to the letter - by ignoring it.  I ignored it, as I ignored Sally from then on, out of fear.  She had hurt me once, what would she do or say if I actually spoke to her?  The choir director ignored it because, as she said, “Sally is old and set in her ways.  She can’t really change at this point.”  The session ignored it because they received so many of these kinds of letters from Sally that they discounted them without a second thought.  And the pastor ignored it in the name of “forgiveness.”  “We need to forgive Sally,” he said, “by just letting it go.”

But in our failure to confront, each of us missed an opportunity for growth, and we failed to heal the wounds.  We also failed to prevent future hurtful letters to be written by her hands.  Most importantly, we failed to really hear Sally and we missed an opportunity to care for her in one of the truest senses of the word.

It is hard to confront.  It is hard to face people who are angry with us or with whom we are angry or upset.  And so we often choose to take the easy way out and not deal directly with the hurts and wrongs others have done to us.  We justify this in a number of ways, “It wouldn’t do any good to say anything” or “I can just as easily process this with someone else and then let it go.” or my favorite, “I don’t need to confront because I have forgiven them.”  But in today’s passage, Jesus does not say, “talk to those who have sinned against you IF you are still angry with them.”  He does not say, “Talk to them IF you think it will do any good.”  Jesus tells us to confront those in our community who have hurt us.  To act in a loving way, to act as a brother or sister to one another necessitates telling people the hard truth about how things affect us, how we feel, how another person’s actions have impacted us.

We confront to let go of our own anger so that we can really see each other as brothers and sisters.  We confront to help one another grow and walk together in our Christian journeys.  We confront so that other brothers and sisters are not hurt in the same way as we were.  Most importantly, we confront as a sign that we think the ones who have hurt us are important enough to deserve our communication, our honesty, even our correction leading to our ultimate forgiveness.

Jesus follows his instructions on confrontation with the command to forgive one another.  These two passages flow together: they are part of the same act.  Communicating hard truths is a necessary part of forgiveness because it says that I love you enough to not let anything come between us.  And I love you enough to want to work with you, together, in our growing.

God does not leave us simply with the difficult direction to lovingly confront.  Jesus gives us guidelines on how we are to deal with one another in our pain, how we are to lovingly confront.  And yet, the directions that Jesus gives us are not easy.  The first direction is perhaps the most difficult of all.  When someone has hurt or wronged us, the first thing we are to do is to go to the person themself and face to face express our pain and our opinions.  This is difficult.  I would much rather write a letter, forget about it, or get someone else to talk to the person for me.  We often want, and too often choose, to discuss the problem with other people.  Or at least process it with other people first.  We want to get our thoughts together, we want another’s opinion, we want support.  But whatever our good intentions in talking to others, often our conversations become gossip.  Our conversations with others can intensify our judgments of one another, and can bring others into a problem that is not their own.  After receiving Sally’s letter, I didn’t want to confront her, so I talked about her instead to the music director, the pastor and anyone else who would listen and care.  My words about her expressed my own hurt, but they were also condemning, critical and judging.  And through my pain, I incited others’ anger and judgment against her as well.  It wasn’t my intention to do this.  But in not dealing with Sally directly, these were the consequences.

In the church especially, avoiding loving confrontation can be damaging.  We are a close-knit community.  And so when there is a problem and it is not dealt with directly, the one hurt can end up bottling the pain.  More often I think when someone in the church is upset with something we have done, we will still hear critique.  But it will come through a third party. But there are many problems with this.  First of all, almost always when we are upset about something it says more about us than it does about whatever we are upset about. The real problems cannot therefore be addressed when issues are spoken about as coming from an anonymous person.  Secondly, when a person hears critique out of context, they often are unable to know what exactly they have done to cause the upset and so they can’t really use the criticism to fix the problem or to grow. We can also focus on the other person’s failure to speak directly about the problem and avoid looking at our own part.  Also when we do not know exactly where critique has come from we can feel that the church itself is judging us.  The anonymous accuser becomes in our minds a menacing group or even the church itself.  The church stops feeling safe or a place where we can trust and learn.

James Angell in his book, “Yes is a world” wrote, “Church ought to be a set of moments when we become most expansively, openly and honestly ourselves.  Yet it is in the church where we often find it hardest to be ourselves: where we are often the most guarded, the most paranoid, the most unsure of being accepted and understood.”  The church is a place in which, every Sunday, we take time to acknowledge our broken-ness and our need for God’s forgiveness to make us whole. But it still remains difficult for us to lovingly speak truth to one another thereby helping one another grow towards wholeness.

In our legal system we have rules that insist that an accused person has the right to see and hear their accuser.  Accusations are not admissible in court if they remain anonymous.  How much more so should this be the case in our church?  We are to be as family to one another.  The passage that we read today uses the phrase, “if another member sins against you,” but the word translated here as “another member” is actually “brother” in Greek.  With family we don’t have to hide behind anonymity. We are called to be fully who we are, to speak directly, to trust that love will carry us through any conflict. And finally, when we do not want others to know what we are saying, that may be a call for us to actually look at what we are saying, to determine if it is really appropriate, true, and helpful or if it is simply hurtful. 

There are times when taking the risk of speaking directly will lead us to nothing, when the person who has hurt us will not listen. It is at that point and only at that point that Jesus asks us to invite others in the church to witness and listen. But the key words here are “witness” and “listen”.  The other church members are there to aid in the conversation, but they remain observers.  The discussion itself still remains between the one hurt and the one being confronted.

The directions that Jesus gives us for confrontation are not easy.  But we alone suffer the consequences of not following Jesus’ words.  Because I never confronted Sally, my fear of her and her judgment remained with me.  It took me eight years after receiving her letter before I could even mention the story with people who weren’t directly involved in the situation.  And while I can share about it now, simply talking to her at the time might have saved me years of shame and insecurity. 

Was Sally wrong? Was she unkind? Was she just unnecessarily cruel in her words and manner of addressing this? Of course. We are called to be direct – a letter is not direct. But more importantly, we are called to speak to one another in love. Attacking words, an attacking posture, attacking, angry language is also not okay. We are called to be direct, but still loving.  And that must affect how we speak things, how we phrase things, and the posture with which we speak.  But recognizing Sally’s fault in this does not, did not give us permission to act in a similarly unloving way. Failing to talk to her, ignoring her unkindness, ignoring her was unkind, and I was the one left scarred by that decision.

Jesus asks a lot of us. And loving confrontation may seem to be one more difficult task for us to take on. But, each of Jesus’ instructions are gifts to the person asked to do them. So today we celebrate the gift that Jesus has given us in this request to lovingly confront one another. We celebrate that we are family to each other and we are called to love each other enough to risk telling the truth, face to face, to our brothers and sisters. We celebrate that as we confront, we ourselves will grow in our ability to care, to understand, to remember that even those who hurt us are human and make mistakes just as we do.  We will grow in our ability to forgive and truly love one another.