Days 14 & 15 - And the question: Human Being Vs. Human Doing

Tuesday we went to Filoli and the Pulgas Water Temple.  Pics:

Wednesday we visited the Sonoma Botanical Gardens.  More pics:

    In the last few days, though, the inevitable has finally descended for me: after two weeks of my three month sabbatical, I am deeply struggling with the whole idea of sabbatical. The guilt I feel at not working during this time has become overwhelming.  I hear in my head the words, "We are human beings, not human doings," but I find myself wondering if this is not a western ideal that I honestly don't subscribe to. 

    What is our point of being?  From a faith perspective I have usually argued that the point is love. It's all love.  That takes many forms: love of our neighbors means doing what we can to ensure that they have lives worth living, lives full of the same things that bring us joy.  Love of God is the same: serving the beauty of the creation that God has made by taking care of it, not exploiting it for our own uses, but being good stewards of everything we have been lent during our lives here to use for the good of all.  Love of self?  That's harder.  And what I mean by that is that we justify a lot of "self-care" that I think is exploitive of the larger world.  We say "you deserve it" and "aren't we meant to enjoy the beautiful life God has given us?"  The first of those statements is just plain problematic. The second can be twisted into justifying all kinds of things. There is value in learning to enjoy simply living in each day, without the extravagance that we seem to believe we are owed.  And we know that our cars and the airplanes we fly are doing great damage to the earth.  But we still use them to drive and to fly to other places so we can enjoy seeing and experiencing those places.  Are they better than the places at home?  I think they are just different. We value seeing and experiencing new things and I do think that other places, people and cultures can give us insight and a deeper understanding of our own.  But I've often wondered if the surface dives we do when we go other places aren't a way of skimming the top.  The deep dive into understanding requires a lot more than just a tour or visit of a place, and more than just meeting people and cultures that are "other."  It truly requires spending time and getting to know those others.  Frankly, we could do that here. We are surrounded by people of different socio-economic differences and different cultures and ethnicities.  Taking the time to get to know, for example, our unhoused neighbors, might bring us into deeper understanding and appreciation of the world we have than we know.  But that may also feel scarier as we face the fragility of our own situations.  

    So back to the question of being vs doing, or really, the question is about working vs doing things that are simply self-satisfying.  Is there room for both?  Is there room to take time to walk gardens, to see new places, to write, to pray, away from working, away from serving others?  Jesus took time away to pray.  He took 40 days or "a long time" in the wilderness.  And I guess that's what a sabbatical really is: taking that time away to refocus, to remember that we have value just because we ARE, aside from what we do.  

    But I continue to struggle with it.  As I run around visiting beautiful gardens, and soon will leave on longer trips away, I struggle with what worth my life has during those times when it is solely focused on the service of myself and my family, even if it is only for a three month period.  That is the deep challenge of this time for me.  While the other day I wrote about the challenge of doing too much each day, I am aware that for me the "busy busy" of rushing around is a way to avoid the deeper issues. It is a physical running away from the deeper questions of purpose and meaning. Today is a slower day before the pace picks back up again tomorrow.  And in that space, the loudness of the deep concern about worth rears its head.  Today I am sitting in the questions. I have no answers and will need to be okay with that today.

God's Call for Our Lives

 Isaiah 6:1-8

Luke 5:1-11

            Today we have two scriptures that both show a strong call from God to follow.  Unlike many of our other call stories, in both of these stories, those called also easily take on the call they’ve been given.  Isaiah, we are told, readily jumps up and proclaims, “here I am, Lord!  Send me!”  And in the Luke passage, we are told, “As soon as they brought the boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus.”  Unlike with most of our prophets, like Jonah and Jeremiah, for example, in neither of these stories is there hesitation or even a moment in which those called think twice. And perhaps that is because the calls in both are so clear, so forceful, so undeniable.  In the Isaiah passage, he is given a vision of deep, complete and life-changing forgiveness.  And in the story in Luke, the fishermen have this amazing example of the abundance and life-giving fulfillment of fishing with complete success, after a long time of failed fishing, when they choose to follow what Jesus has asked them to do.  So both most of felt like pretty safe calls to accept.  One chooses to follow someone who can completely erase one’s past.  The others choose to follow someone who provides abundance for them.

            Have any of you ever had an experience like that?  Where the call was so clear, so undeniable and so compelling that you simply could not refuse?  These are not times when prayers were answered.  This isn’t about asking for something and having it show up.  In neither of these situations did it appear that the people approached were the initiators.  They weren’t asking someone to show them the way, they weren’t asking for Jesus or God to throw their lives upside down and bring them into a new calling, a new situation.  But in both cases, they were called in amazing and undeniable ways.  For Isaiah, his choice to say “yes” meant a life time of confronting injustices and declaring that God cares what people do to and for those who are poorer, have less power and fewer resources, those being treated unfairly or oppressively.  For Peter, James and John, we are told that they left everything they had: family, work, their homes – everything to follow Jesus. 

            Has there been a time when you have felt so moved, so called that you left everything in order to start something new?  There probably has for a few of you.  And for many more of us there have been smaller versions of this, perhaps.  For example, moving to a new country or across the country in order to start something new, not completely leaving behind family, maybe, but still taking a big risk in order to start something different.  It is still the case that immigrants often struggle unbelievable hardships in order to come here, risking everything in order to do so.

            It is much easier to take those risks, and to jump into something new when there has been a deep sign, and when there has been a promise of abundance (especially in a time of scarcity or deep struggles and pain), like Jesus gave to the disciples or like God gave to Isaiah with his abundant forgiveness.  But those just don’t come as clearly or as often for most of us, do they? 

            The call of most people we would consider to be heroes in some ways does happen like this.  A job shows up, a situation presents itself, and our heroes are those who step up to meet the challenges set before them, who may feel they have no choice but to respond in those situations, when they show.  I realize this is just a story, but when I think about people responding to a call that shows up in front of them, the Dr. Seuss story, “Horton hears a Who” often comes to mind for me first.  Horton was just minding his own business when he heard the cry of distress from a tiny person on a clover flower.  He could have ignored it, but he chose not to.  As he says, “because a person’s a person, no matter how small.”  He protects the people who are so small they can’t be seen by him, but only heard, from the elements, from other animals, from unkindness again and again.  He, himself, suffers pain and humiliation but he isn’t willing to give up caring for the Whos because he knows that to do so would mean their destruction.  He is the hero in the story not because that’s who he has always been, and not because he sought out being a hero, but because he wasn’t willing to allow the destruction or harm of these very small people that couldn’t even be seen.  That’s what heroes do: when they stand up for injustices, they often are standing up for those whom we would see as “small” or unimportant or not valuable.  That stepping up and standing up when there is an opportunity to do so: that is the difference between a hero and someone who isn’t.

            But while our calls may not look heroic, still, every single person has a call.  I’m sure you are all probably familiar with Frederick Buechner’s comment that call is where a person’s deepest passion and the world’s deepest need meet.  I always add into this that our deepest gifts need to be part of that too.  And the example I most often give is of the people on American Idol who have the passion for singing and see that the world is fed deeply by art, but who can’t carry a tune in a bucket.  Our gifts must be part of any true calling.  And a true call does not usually leave us alone.  Most of the time God gives us more than one chance to say yes to those calls.

            As I was thinking about call, I was reminded of this page in Mitch Album’s book, Have a little faith (p234. New York: Hyperion, 2009):

It is summer and we are sitting in his office.  I ask him why he thinks he became a rabbi. 

He counts on his finders.

“Number one, I always like people.

“Number two, I love gentleness.

“Number three, I have patience.

“Number four, I love teaching.

“Number five, I am determined in my faith.

“Number six, it connects me to my past.

“Number seven – and lastly – it allows me to fulfill the message of our tradition: to live good, to do good, and to be blessed.”

I didn’t hear God in there.

He smiles.

“God was there before number one.”

I believe that is true for all of us, whether we are aware of it or not.  When we are really, truly, deeply fulfilling the call of our hearts, the call that God placed there before we were born, before we were made, before we knew ourselves that we had a passion or even a purpose, then it shows.  It shows in the passion with which we work.  It shows in the love with which we tackle any calling.  It shows in our joy and in the time we commit to our work.  It shows in all that we are and all that we do. 

I think about certain people I’ve met who are absolutely doing the work of a calling.  It doesn’t actually matter what the work is.  You can see it in a person.  My kids had a preschool teacher who was so incredibly gifted at her work.  She loved the kids, the kids loved her, and that love and care shone from her on a daily basis.  A real estate person I knew years ago absolutely loved helping people find homes that would work for them. She did her work with passion and joy.

How do you tell the difference between something you just simply love to do and a real call?  I think it comes down to whether or not the particular task you are doing does, indeed, meet a need of the world.  Does the task you are doing just serve you?  Or does it really help people, feed people, care for people, provide for them?  Even the real estate agent I mentioned: she took her work as a call: she worked hard to make sure that people found houses that they could afford but that also would serve them long term.  She didn’t hesitate to tell people, even if it meant loss of a sale for her, when she thought the neighborhood was questionable or the house wouldn’t grow with a growing family.  She didn’t hesitate to give realtor discounts if she thought it would help a family get into a house that would work for them.  She really saw her work as a call and she lived that out fully.

That doesn’t mean that when we are following a call, we are happy all the time.  It doesn’t mean that our work is easy all the time.  In the movie, Keeping the Faith, there is a wonderful conversation between a young priest and an older priest.  The young priest doubts his call into the priesthood after falling in love with a woman who is his friend.  Nothing happened between the two, but he found that the very fact of falling in love made him doubt a call that included celibacy.  He said to his older priest mentor, “If she had kissed me back, I would have given it all up.  She didn’t, but I keep thinking about what you said in the seminary that the life of a priest is hard and if you can see yourself doing anything else you should do that.”

The older priest responded, “Well that’s my recruitment speech which is good when you are starting out because it makes you feel like a marine!  But the truth is you can never tell yourself there is only one that you could be.  If you’re a priest or if you marry a woman, it is the same challenge.  You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept that it is a choice that you make again and again and again.  I’ve been a priest over 40 years, and I fall in love at least once every decade.”

That is part of call too – those doubts, those times of struggle.  The older priest in the movie went on to say that God would give the younger priest his answer.  And I think that in times of doubt, God ultimately does give us answers: but often the answer comes in the form of a deeper question: what do I do, what can I do, that serves God and God’s people the most?  Where do we find God the most in our work, our tasks, our lives? Where is our passion and gifts that meet the world’s deepest needs?  And how do we do that work to the best of our ability?

Josie Jones was a very rich woman who felt and answered God’s call to serve the homeless population in Oakland.  She felt certain that God was calling her to do so out of her own resources.  So, she gave everything that she had and opened a transitional house for homeless women trying to move out and beyond their situation.  She got them into job training programs, enrolled in school, she helped them to take control of their lives and to move permanently from homelessness into full and productive living.  When Josie heard this call, she had everything.  She had a huge mansion and very nice cars.  She had a good job as a lawyer, but she was also independently wealthy and very, very comfortable.  Still, she heard God’s call.  And so she began by taking out her savings to being this program.  But as she served and worked with these women, she ended up giving more and more to fund it.  She did not want to take funds from government grants because she found that most grants came with a great deal of caveats, demanding a list of specifics that would not have given Josie the freedom she needed to really serve, empower and change these women’s lives.  Josie became materially poorer and poorer, personally, giving up her cars, her large house, her beautiful clothing, everything, until she lived truly as poorly and simply as the women she was serving with her care.  But in becoming like them, she was able to serve them and relate to them and care for them in a way that truly

transformed lives.  Josie died just a few years ago, and until the very end she described herself as one of the richest women alive.  God had not filled her life with popularity, with fame, or, in the end, with wealth.  God had instead filled her life, daily, with visions of the resurrection as she saw new life beginning and transforming around her and within her: bringing her life meaning, love, life.

As I think about people like Josie Jones, I am reminded of an Amy Grant/Gary Chapman song that I have always loved entitled, “All I ever have to be”:  “

When the weight of all my dreams is resting heavy on my head,

and the thoughtful words of help and hope have all been nicely said. 

But I'm still hurting, wondering if I'll ever be the one I think I am…

Then you gently re-remind me that you've made me from the first,

And the more I try to be the best the more I get the worst.

And I realize the good in me, is only there because of who you are. Who you are...

And all I ever have to be is what you've made me.

Any more or less would be a step out of your plan.

As you daily recreate me, help me always keep in mind

That I only have to do what I can find.

And all I ever have to be:

 All I have to be:

 All I ever have to be Is what you've made me.” 

Beautiful words about a life lesson to let go and let God so that God’s purpose can be made manifest in your life.

Sometimes we look too hard for the right call when if we were to relax a little and see what comes before us, we would know what it is we are being called to do in any one moment.  I think about this with my own life.  I would hope that being a pastor is a call: I’ve always wanted to be a pastor, I love my work, I enjoy almost all aspects of it.  But there is another part of my work that I also think is a call and that’s the one I want to talk with you about today.  The one job that I have never sought but that keeps coming to ME, is that of playing the piano (and organ), or, in particular, accompanying church choirs.  Even when I think, again and again, that that part of my work is done, it pops up for me again.  When I was serving my church in Ohio as pastor, our organist graduated and moved on to another state for graduate school.  My congregation asked if I would fill in until they found someone else.  Months later, they finally admitted to me that they didn’t want someone else and hoped that I would continue to play.  Then, as many of you know, I was asked this last fall by one of the choir directors at St. Bonaventure if I would be willing to accompany their resurrection choir that primarily plays for memorial services.  I struggled with this decision.  Even after I had asked session approval and had played for them for a few weeks, I struggled with this.  I’m already so busy after all… But it is an ecumenical choir and a few of our members sing with that choir.  One Monday morning when I was just on the verge of deciding that this was not something I could continue to do, one of our members who sings in that choir approached me and told me that the work we were doing, of giving music and meaning to people who were grieving, was deeply important, was a true calling from God.  In particular, he said, my using my piano playing in this way was what God was asking me to do.  I am sure he has no idea how much those words hit me, or that it has kept me playing for this choir.  Playing music is not the job I think I should have.  It’s not the work I want to say that I am “called” to do, and yet it keeps presenting itself: showing up before me in ways I don’t ask for or expect.

What are you called to do?  Whatever your gifts, your purposes, your life lessons, God calls you to use them, to see them, to grow with them and to work with them for the common good.  So my challenge for all of us is to look this next week, is to reflect on the callings God has for you specifically.  Thanks be to God for the prophets, the teachers, the nurturers, the servers, for all God’s people, since we are all called.  God help us to fulfill Your purposes for us.  Amen.

For My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

For My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, Luke 2:22-40

12/30/18

            Simeon was a normal person who, after a long life, was able to see salvation, salvation given, as we are told in Luke, to ALL people.  And that salvation, holding that baby in his arms, finding the peace of knowing that salvation has come to the world and for the world, he now feels he has finished his tasks here on earth, completed what he came to do, and he asks God to then let him go, “you may now dismiss your servant in peace.”   

            As we approach New Year’s eve, I often think about what tasks we have yet to do, what we have yet to see, to learn, or to accomplish here in this life time that will then allow us to go, when it is our time, in peace, work completed, job done, accomplished, finished, a whole life, bookended with a call and a response, created in love and allowed to move forward in peace.  New Years is often a time of reflection.  We reflect on our past year, but we can also use it as a time to reflect on the whole of our lives.  What have been your life lessons?  What has been your life calling?  I think these are often different: some things we are called to accomplish, some things we are called to learn. It usually is not just one thing, but I think God does call each of us to certain tasks in our lives.  I also think there are specific tasks for each life - they are not always the same for every person.  They are not always obvious, not always clear, but each of us has a call, sometimes multiple calls, throughout our lives, reasons to be here. I think we have things we are supposed to learn and things we are supposed to do. Sometimes those reasons are things that carry us through a long life, sometimes it is something that we have to learn over and over again.  And sometimes we may learn and do things early on.

            Do you know what you are being called to do and called to learn in your life?  To help you think through this, let me give you some examples.  I think I’ve had several life lessons, or things that I have found myself called to do and learn.  One of my life lessons, or something that I feel I’ve been called throughout my life to learn has been what I would describe as the call to be an adult.  While others appear called to learn to surrender to God, to let go of their egos and allow God to be the driver, I find that every time I pray for God to tell me what to do, every time I ask God to make the decisions, I hear God calling me in turn in multiple ways and through many different forms, to take some risks and chances and make my own decisions, some of which will be good and others which won’t, which I will just have to learn from.  I hear God telling me to trust that God will be with me in those choices, but that God will not make them for me.  

I’ve had other life lessons as well.  Such as facing my judgments.  Every time I have judged someone, it comes back at me, and I find I have to deal with that, face that, in my own life.   

What are your life lessons?  They usually are not things that come easily, but they are deep calls to us to be the best and most whole we can be, for God, for others and for ourselves.

            As people reach the end of their lives, I am often asked the question, “Why am I still here?  Why haven’t I been able to die?  Has God forgotten me? I feel done here, so why hasn’t God taken me?” My answer is always the same.  “Perhaps there is something still left here for you to do.  Our job then is, with your time left, to figure out what that is.”  Often a person is not able to completely name what that is, what is left undone, what needs still to be done.  But I have walked now with many people at the end of their lives and I find it is very often an amazing time of coming to terms with their lives, of reconciling relationships, of making peace with what has been and with what is. 

            As I reflected on this, I thought of Thornton Wilder’s book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2014. New York: Harper Perennial).  The book begins with these words, “On Friday noon, July the 20^th, 1714 the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”  This collapse began an intense search into the “why” of that strange tragedy.  In particular, a monk was convinced that if we were to look at the five lives of those who died, we would see that each life was at a place where something had been concluded, that each life was “done” in some profound way, that God’s hand was in the bigger picture of the collapse because their callings, their purposes, their “jobs” here on earth were concluded and so it was simply time for God to call them home.  It is a question that many ponder.  Does everything happen for a reason?  Or at least, do we die at an appointed time?  Is there a bigger pattern and bigger picture that determines the very hour and even minute at which we will die?  Or does God call us home when our jobs here are done?  When we have finished our “tests” or our tasks and done what we are called to do, learned what we have been asked to learn?  In many ways, the story doesn’t actually answer the question about providence, destiny and fate.  In describing these lives and where they were at their final moment of death, the story causes the readers to explore more fully their own beliefs.  But it does so while leaving more questions than answers.  Towards the beginning of the book, Wilder says this about whether or not their fates, their lives and their deaths are determined, “Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”

But more to the point of this sermon, the book ends with these words, “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.  But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.  Even memory is not necessary for love.  There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Under all of our calls, under all of our life lessons, there is a bigger call, a deeper call.  It is to listen and follow God.  It is to follow Love, since that is what God is.  It is to bridge and reconcile and heal all of life with that Love. It is to learn to embody and be and act and live that love out. Thomas Merton put it this way, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." 

Sometimes the distinction between loving God for our own happiness and loving God for God is a subtle difference. “God, help me to find what will make my life whole,” is really a question about me.  It is a question that invokes God, but it still is about me.  “God, how can I serve you?  Where would it be most helpful to you for me to be and what would serve you and your people and your world the most for me to do in that place?” is slightly, but profoundly different.  That difference, between turning to God to make our lives whole, and turning to God so that we might serve God and help God make the world whole, that is the difference between asking God to be with us, following us in our journeys, and following God. 

Simeon had seen love incarnate.  He had seen it, recognized it, allowed it into his heart. He followed God in his call.  He had been given a task, and that task was seeing, recognizing and proclaiming who Jesus was.  Anna, too, had that task.  Their proclamations were about love, were about Jesus.  And having finished their work, they were ready to depart.  They came for the one thing that would make each whole and they did it.  And as Simeon declared, he was then made ready to cross that bridge of love and to be dismissed in peace. 

How are you called to follow the way of Love?  How are you called to serve God with eyes of love rather than fear?  As we enter the New Year, my hope for us all would be to move more fully into a commitment to loving God and serving God with our whole beings.  It is the call, the meaning, the resolution that matters most.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Hard Choices

Isa. 43:16-21

Psalm 126

John 12:1-8

               The story we hear from John is one that I find filled with challenges for all of us as people who strive to follow Jesus on the Way.  Jesus himself feeds people, heals people, comforts people.  He tells us that whenever we feed, visit, care for, or provide clothing or shelter for the least of these we do it for God.  He calls us to follow in his path of caring for and loving others completely.  And yet in this story a woman has just spent an extraordinary amount of money to celebrate Jesus, who he is, what he has done and what he will do.  She recognizes that his path is one that will lead to his own destruction and yet to life for so many, and she comes to celebrate and honor that choice. This is a story that is told in all four of the gospels, though slightly differently. In Luke, the woman is not Mary but a “woman of ill repute”, someone who is seen as unclean, unworthy and untouchable.  In that version especially, there are parts of the story that we recognize as the way that Jesus always behaves: Jesus is not afraid to talk to or even be touched by a woman that others reject and condemn as sinful and unclean.  Jesus honors and lifts up a person whom others would not see except to harm, and would not ever approve of.  Jesus empowers, supports, and LOVes a person others saw as the dregs of society.  We get that.  That is the Jesus I love.  That is the Jesus I follow.  That is the Jesus I want to be like.  But I have to admit, Judas had a point here, too.  The nard with which she anointed Jesus represented a great deal of money.  And it could have been used for the poor.  John discounts Judas’ motives saying that he wanted that money for himself.  In the other gospels, it is all of the disciples who are upset at this use of the money, and it is for exactly the reason they say: they think, as any of us might, that this extravagance was a huge waste of money, money that could have served many people. 

               I preached on a similar passage before when I talked to you about how in the midst of suffering and struggle, God is not only the God of comfort and healing, God is also the God of celebration, of abundance, of JOY.  And that is true.  We see it in the overflowing of food when he fed the 5000.  We see it in the overflowing of wine when he turned the water into wine.  We see it in the two old testament passages we read for today.  And we see it here as well… “This woman has done a wonderful thing for me!  Let her alone.”  I shared with you before the story of Dorothy Day, founder off the Catholic worker making a very similar choice when given an expensive diamond ring that she chose to give to a poor woman.  The other volunteers at the center condemned her saying that she could have sold that ring and helped many, many people with the money.  Dorothy Day responded by saying, “Do you believe Diamonds were only made for the rich?”  and we recognize in her words the Jesus who did not condemn the woman who celebrated him with this expensive nard.

               But I think Jesus was about something very different in this story.   

               As I have said before, even God’s celebrations are about lifting up those who are downtrodden.  We have Luke 14:13-14 in which Jesus says, “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid (at the resurrection of the righteous).”  In today’s story, Jesus is lifting up the woman who has been scorned and rejected.  Every time there is a celebration, those who previously have not had the opportunity to celebrate and “party” are given that chance.  But this story is more, even, than that.  While the woman in the story was honoring Jesus, she was also being given the opportunity to give something back.  In Jewish practice it is considered a blessing, a Mitzvah, to allow someone to serve you.  It is considered an act of service to allow another to serve you, to give something back to you.  This is a woman, again, who was rejected by society, according to the other gospels.  She would not have been allowed to touch others, to serve others, in any way.  But Jesus gives her the gift of allowing her to serve him, to give to him.  And he honors that, says her actions will be remembered, and raises her gifts and her offerings up for all to see.

We know from psychological studies that when people are allowed to contribute to what they are given, it impacts them very differently than when they are only served and not allowed to give anything back in exchange.  It was for this reason that one of the soup kitchens where I volunteered “charged” those who came a quarter for their meal.  This was a token amount and did not begin to make any difference financially for the soup kitchen.  But in terms of the esteem and sense of worth of those who came, it made a huge difference.  The guests no longer felt they were receiving charity.  Instead, they felt that they were paying for something, contributing to their own nourishment, participating in their own lives in a different way than when they were just given food for free.  It changed the way they saw the exchange, and we found that many asked to volunteer to prepare and serve the food as well and to give back in other ways, too.  They saw themselves as worthy and able enough to contribute when we asked them to “pay” for their meals in some small way. They came to the table as equals: people who had paid for what they were given.  And that equality allowed them to offer more, to contribute and care more about what they were giving and doing.

               I think this is a practice we need to consider whenever we give someone a gift of our service.  During the many years that I have visited people who are “shut ins” or who are in the hospital and convalescent homes, the comment I have heard the most often, and which I hear again and again and again, is that the people in these situations feel useless, pointless.  I try to explain to them that they are giving a gift by allowing others to serve them.  They have served others many times, and now it is their turn to receive.  And while I believe that deeply, I find it is not satisfying for those listening to what I am saying.  They often would rather die (and they express this to me in phrases such as "Why am I still alive?  There is no reason for me to still be here!") than to live without purpose or meaning. And I have found myself wondering, isn’t there instead a way that we can help even those in the hospital and those who are shut in to “give back”?  We can bring those whose hands and arms are still functioning yarn and invite them to knit hats or scarves for various programs and projects.  We can bring in birthday cards and ask them to send them to those in the church who are having birthdays this month.  We can ask them for advice and listen to their wisdom.  We can bring them small hand sewing projects. 

               Again, the studies show that when people are given the opportunity to be useful, they recover much more quickly and much more fully.  When they have a purpose, meaning, a reason – no matter how small – to continue, they make a fuller effort to do exactly that. 

               I invite you to think for a moment about your own experiences and ask if this isn’t true for you as well.  Personally, I am reminded of a time when my church was invited to join other congregations in serving a monthly community meal.  We were already serving a monthly community meal in an inner city Presbyterian church, but our local Ecumenical group also served one just down the street and we were encouraged to be part of that as well, to join with our brothers and sisters of all faiths in serving people in our own neighborhood.  About ten of us showed up to help, only to find that the woman in charge of the kitchen would not allow any of us to help.  She kept saying kind things, “Oh, you all do so much already!  Just sit back and let me serve you!” and these words were sweet, sounded generous and helpful, they seemed good and right.  But I’ll tell you, all of us left feeling useless, frustrated, pointless in that situation.  And none of us returned to help again. 

               In contrast, when I have visited people in prison, I often hear stories of even the prisoners’ needs to serve in some way, to help, to GIVE in some way.  One person told me he would not eat everything from his meal but take the morning bread he was given to feed the birds.  He needed that opportunity to give and found it in his own way.  He told me that he noticed that several of the other prisoners were feeding the local skunks in the same way, calling “Here kitty, kitty” each morning as the skunks came by – incorporating laughter with their “service”.  And while at some level this was just funny, it was also necessary.  They found their spirits lifted immensely by this simple act of giving to something else.

               I think we get stuck in an ideology of either serving or being served.  But this doesn’t help us.  We all need to give as much, if not more, than we need to receive.  It doesn’t matter how old we are, it doesn’t matter what we have been through, it doesn’t matter what we have done or failed to do, how much we have given or been given in the past.  Having purpose, giving to others, serving others, and receiving care – all are vital to our well-being. But sometimes we get stuck in an ideology of competition which serves no one.

               "There was a farmer who grew excellent quality corn. Every year he won the award for the best grown corn. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors. “How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.

“Why sir,” said the farmer, “Didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.”

So it is with our lives.  When we deny education, for example, so some people, all of us are lessened in our wisdom, our insight, our ability to grow and learn more fully.  When we deny food to our neighbors, all of us are lessened by not connecting with these others who would bless our lives.  And when we deny others the ability to give and to serve, we take away a collective sense of purpose, of meaning, and of true community. The fact is, none of us truly wins, until we all win!

               In today’s story, Jesus served the woman, whoever she was, by allowing her to do a good thing for him, by honoring that service and by celebrating it.  We are called to do the same.  We are not called to just serve others, but to see them for the full humans they are, people in need not only of our love, but people in need of loving as well; people not only in need of being served and cared for, but people in need of serving and caring for others as well.  It is a gift to allow another to serve you, whoever they may be.  Jesus saw that and recognized that in allowing the woman in today’s story to offer him care.  Let us pray to be just as generous in allowing ourselves to be served as well.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - For My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, Luke 2:22-40

Simeon was a normal person who, after a long life, was able to see salvation, salvation given, as we are told in Luke, to ALL people.  And that salvation, holding that baby in his arms, finding the peace of knowing that salvation has come to the world and for the world, he now feels he has finished his tasks here on earth, completed what he came to do, and he asks God to then let him go, “you may now dismiss your servant in peace.”
As we approach New Year’s eve, I often think about what tasks we have yet to do, what we have yet to accomplish here in this life time that will then allow us to go, when it is our time, in peace, work completed, job done, accomplished, finished, a whole life, bookended with a call and a response, created in love and allowed to move forward in peace.  New Years is often a time of reflection.  We reflect on our past year, but we can also use it as a time to reflect on the whole of our lives.  What have been your life lessons?  What has been your life calling?  It usually is not just one thing, but I think God does call each of us to certain tasks in our lives.  I also think there are specific tasks for each life - they are not always the same for every person.  They are not always obvious, not always clear, but we have a call, or multiple calls, a reason to be here.  Sometimes that reason is something that carries us through a long life, sometimes it is something that we have to learn over and over again.  And sometimes it appears to be learned or accomplished and finished early on.
Do you know what you are being called to do in your life?  To help you think through this, let me give you some examples.  I think I've had several life lessons, or things that I have found myself called to do and learn.  One of my life calls has been to be an adult.  While others are called to learn to surrender to God, to let go of their egos and allow God to be the driver, I find that every time I pray for God to tell me what to do, I hear God calling me in turn to take some risks and chances and make my own decisions, some of which will be good and others which won’t, which I will just have to learn from.  I hear God telling me to trust that God will be with me in those choices, but that God will not make them for me.  I’ve had other callings or life lessons as well.  Such as facing my judgments.  Every time I have judged someone, it comes back at me, and I find I have to deal with that, face that, in my own life.  For example, I used to judge women who didn’t know what their husbands were up to.  We hear stories in the news about men who have several wives in different towns and I always judged them – “how can you not know what your husband is up to?”  Yeah. Thanks, God.  I don’t judge that anymore.  What are your life lessons?  They usually are not things that come easily, but they are deep calls to us to be the best and most whole we can be, for God, for others and for ourselves.
As people reach the end of their lives, I am often asked the question, “Why am I still here?  Why haven’t I been able to die?  Has God forgotten me? I feel done here, so why hasn’t God taken me?” My answer is always the same.  “There is something still left here for you to do.  Our job then is, with your time left, to figure out what that is.”  Often a person is not able to completely name what that is, what is left undone, what needs still to be done.  But I have watched people at the end of their lives and I find it is often an amazing time of coming to terms with their lives, of reconciling relationships, of making peace with what has been and with what is.
As I reflected on this, I thought of Thornton Wilder’s book, “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”.  The book begins with these words, “On Friday noon, July the 20th, 1714 the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”  This collapse began an intense search into the “why” of that strange tragedy.  In particular, a monk was convinced that if we were to look at the five lives of those who died, we would see that each life was at a place where something had been concluded, that each life was “done” in some profound way, that God’s hand was in the bigger picture of the collapse because their callings, their purposes, their “jobs” here on earth was concluded and so it was simply time for God to call them home.  It is a question that many ponder.  Does everything happen for a reason?  Or at least, do we die at an appointed time?  Is there a bigger pattern and bigger picture that determines the very hour and even minute at which we will die?  Or does God call us home when our jobs here are done?  When we have finished our “tests” or our tasks and done what we are called to do, learned what we have been asked to learn?  In many ways, the story doesn’t actually answer the question about providence, destiny and fate.  In describing these lives and where they were at their final moment of death, the story causes the readers to explore more fully their own beliefs.  But it does so while leaving more questions than answers.  Towards the beginning of the book, Wilder says this about whether or not their fates, their lives and their deaths are determined, “Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God. “
       But more to the point of this sermon, the book ends with these words, “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.  But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.  Even memory is not necessary for love.  There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
       Under all of our calls, under all of our life lessons, there is a bigger call, a deeper call.  It is to listen and follow God.  It is to follow Love, since that is what God is.  It is to bridge and reconcile and heal all of life with that Love.  Thomas Merton put it this way, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."
          Sometimes the distinction between loving God for our own happiness and loving God for God is a subtle difference. “God, help me to find what it is you are calling me to do,” is really a question about me.  It is a question that invokes God, but it still is about me.  “God, how can I serve you?  Where would it be most helpful to you for me to be and what would serve you and your people and your world the most for me to do in that place?” is slightly, but profoundly different.  That difference, between turning to God to make our lives whole, and turning to God so that we might serve God and help God make the world whole, that is the difference between asking God to be with us, following us in our journeys, and following God.
         Simeon has seen love incarnate.  He has seen it, recognized it, allowed it into his heart. He followed God in his call.  He had been given a task, and that task is seeing, recognizing and proclaiming who Jesus was.  Anna, too, had that task.  Their proclamations were about love, were about Jesus.  And having finished their work, they were ready to depart.  They found their calling.  They did it.  And as Simeon declared, he was then made ready to cross that bridge of love and to be dismissed in peace.
          How are you called to follow the way of Love?  How are you called to serve God with eyes of love rather than fear?  As we enter the New Year, my hope for us all would be to move more fully into a commitment to loving God and serving God with our whole beings.  It is the call, the meaning, the resolution that matters most.  Amen.