Not Recognizing Him

Acts 3:12-19
Luke 24:36b-48

They thought they were seeing a ghost.  They did not recognize the truth of his presence with them.  They were terrified by this thing that was happening that they had no context for and nothing in their life could prepare them for.  Jesus’ words and stories throughout his life, though they were intended to prepare the disciples, did not prepare them, the scriptures that had been explained could not prepare them.  They couldn’t really believe what they had been told because they hadn’t seen anything like it before.  And as a result, they simply did not, could not recognize him.
And that’s very real, isn’t it?  We don’t see the things we don’t expect to see.  It is hard for us to recognize the things that are outside of our experiences. We have a hard time assimilating those things that are “other” than what we believe, know, and expect.  Mary at the tomb didn’t recognize Jesus at first, and in the story for today, the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost.  These are not to be wondered at.  I think we would all think and feel and see the same if someone we loved and knew had died suddenly appeared among us.  Because they had no context for believing in a resurrection, they simply did not, could not recognize him at first.
So then the question becomes, how do we recognize the Holy One in our midst?  If Jesus were resurrected or were to return among us today, how would we recognize him?  How would we know him?
Mary recognized Jesus when he called her name: that moment of intimacy, of knowing and recognizing and loving someone.  The disciples knew Christ through the familiar and loving behaviors and actions of the man they knew – eating with them, talking with them, sharing scripture with them.  They recognized him, in other words, by his love for them: by the love in his voice when he spoke Mary’s name, by the love he expressed by acting with his disciples as he always did – honestly, but with comfort, eating with them, sharing with them, serving them, being with them.
I’m reminded of a poem I shared once before:
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang.
But, the man did not hear.
So the man yelled, "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky.
But, the man did not listen.
The man looked around and said, "God let me see you." And a star shined brightly.
But the man did not see.
And, the man shouted, "God show me a miracle." And, a life was born.
But, the man did not notice.
So, the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are here."
Whereupon, God reached down and touched the man. But, the man brushed the butterfly away .
and walked on.
--
In the movie The Polar Express, the main character, the boy is struggling to believe in Santa Claus.  At one point he has a conversation with a “ghost” about believing.  Despite seeing, despite hearing, despite his experiences, he still isn’t sure and thinks it might all be a dream.  The ghost does not convince him otherwise.  He says to the boy, “But you don’t want to be bamboozled.  You don’t want to be led down the primrose path.  You don’t want to be conned, or Duped, to have the wool pulled over your eyes, hoodwinked.  You don’t want to be taken for a ride, railroaded.  Seeing is believing.  Am I right?”  And then he asks the boy if he believes in ghosts.  The boy shakes his head “no” to which the ghost simply responds, “interesting.”  And walks on, disappearing into the snow.. disintegrating into the snow.
We tell ourselves that seeing is believing, but we are so often guilty of seeing what we know rather than knowing what we see.  The truth is that while we tell ourselves seeing is believing, it is more often the case that believing is seeing.  And in no case is this more true than in the case of whether or not we see God.
We need to be careful, therefore, to not be so stuck in our images of what things are, in our expectations of what should be that we can’t actually see or hear what is around us.  We need to work hard to keep our minds open enough that we don’t miss seeing when God is right in front of us.
One of my very favorite lines in the very first episode of Joan of Arcadia occurs when Joan sees God and talks to God for the first time.  She wonders if there is something special about her that allows her to see God when others don’t.  She asks God, “Why are you appearing to me?”  To which God responds, “I am not appearing to you.  You are perceiving me.”  The truth of that hits me often.  God is all around.  God    is     all     around.  But do we perceive God?  Do we perceive God?
I shared with all of you in a newsletter article about a time when Eldest was really struggling.  My very intuitive “almost twelve year old” was struggling with a sense that her world was about to be irrevocably changed.  She was grieving her childhood and the naiveté of that childhood.  She was grieving the easy vision of life, the vision that everything could be fixed with a wave of a wand, and that we could all live happily ever after without scars or trauma.  She talked about her fears that a tornado would hit, that there would be a disaster, that all of her life would change in a second and everything that she counted on would be different.  And that tornado was about to hit for her, changing everything.  There was nothing she could do to control it, to change it, to prevent it.  This fear caused her to wonder about the very point of life.  But in the midst of all that pain and struggle, all that angst and fear and wondering, all of a sudden the most beautiful butterfly landed on the ground in front of us.  “Oh look!” she exclaimed with sudden and deep joy.  And I found myself saying, “God sent you a butterfly, Eldest.  There is your answer from God.  There is joy, there is beauty, even in the hard times.  And God is bringing that to you now.” Eldest turned and looked at me and suddenly she was sobbing in my arms, just sobbing and holding on, as if her life depended on it.  So we stood there on the sidewalk, Eldest crying, watching this beautiful butterfly and just being together.  God knows our pain – God suffered on the cross.  The disciples felt that pain too when Jesus died, when they felt their hopes crumbled, their lives irrevocably changed.  But God appeared for them and God appears for us and does bring the butterflies.  If we keep our eyes open, we will see them.  It is often in the hardest times that God is most near to us, touching us, offering us beauty and a deeper glimpse.
But we have to be open to seeing it.  We have to keep our eyes open.
It goes even deeper than that. Jesus was recognized by his love.  By his calling Mary’s name, by his eating and being present with the disciples.
We too, as Christians, are called to help others to see God, through our love. “They will know we are Christians by our love”.  Different groups of people were recognized by different behaviors and even by different appearances.  This is still the case.  We recognize the Amish by their appearance, Muslim women by the hijab they wear, priests by the collar.  We used to recognize Jews by the clothes they wore, the lack of cutting of side burns for men, etc.  That’s still the case with Orthodox Judaism. Others as well.  We as Christians are to be recognized by our love just as Jesus was recognized by his love.
We see God through our love.  We show God through our love.  My prayer then is that all of us may be given the eyes of love with which to see, and the hands of love with which to act.  Amen.

Sermon - legalism

                                             Jeremiah 1:4-10

                                             Luke 13:10-17

                                             

               To be people of faith should be to be people who are awed by the amazing things God has done: to see beauty and the presence of Love surrounding us in every moment, to be in wonder about the life we have been given and the many lives that we have touched, to search for and to find the Divine in everyone around us.  However, the reality is that people of faith often instead find themselves caught in a piety, in doctrine, in a religiosity.  To quote Rabbi Abraham Heschel, too often, “faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline and love by habit….religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion.”  In other words, we are a people who tend towards legalism, a following of rules and practices, despite the fact that scripture, and Jesus in particular, avidly opposes this practice.             

               Let me point this out again.  The scriptures, and Jesus in particular opposes legalism at every turn.  Today’s passage is just one more example when Jesus was breaking the religious laws, laws you can find in the Old Testament, in the name of love.  Jesus had them pick grain on the Sabbath - against the law.  He touched and allowed himself to be touched by those the laws declared unclean – against the law.  He confronted the Old Testament passage of “an eye for an eye” saying, “You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, But I say to you, do not resist an evil doer but when your cheek is slapped, turn also the other cheek.”  He stated again and again that all the law and prophets rests solely on two commandments – loving God and loving neighbor as self.  He also said that the laws were made for us, NOT us made for the laws when he said, “the Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.”

               And yet, how many people in the name of Christ continue to stand on laws that oppress and harm other people?  That are not loving?  That are not “Good News” but instead are judging, condemning, confining, and not inviting people to live in the radical freedom of the love of Christ?  I’m not saying there aren’t important reasons for the guidance given us in scriptures.  But we are called to follow the invitations to action that scripture gives us because God loves us enough to want wholeness for us. The rules in scripture are meant to give us life, freedom, meaning. That means, however, that when a law is NOT bringing wholeness, we are called to look at it differently, to re-envision it, to interpret it differently - for example, the law that denied healing on the Sabbath.  In today’s passage Jesus broke that rule.  He healed on the Sabbath.  And those who believed they were following God most closely by abiding rules such as this were outraged.  They couldn’t see that the health and well-being of the woman in front of Jesus, this child of God who was suffering and in pain, was more important than a rule about resting on the Sabbath.

To say it again, the Pharisees, the religious leaders of that day, were really upset that Jesus chose to heal the woman on the Sabbath.  And I think it is critical to our understanding of this passage to look at WHY Jesus did heal her that day.  The laws were strict about what could and couldn’t be done on the Sabbath.  And the reality is that surely Jesus could have waited one more day to heal this woman.  After all, she had been crippled for 18 years.  In the span of 18 years, what is one more day?  But Jesus did not wait a day, or even an hour.  He chose to heal her then, breaking the law to do so.  And it is important to understand why.

There are two answers to this.  First of all, Jesus stood by the second Old Testament understanding of Sabbath.  The first understanding of Sabbath comes from the first creation story in Genesis in which God rested on the final day.  In this understanding, we are to do the same – rest, completely, as God rested from the work of creation.  Exodus 20:8-11 backs this up “therefore the people of Israel shall not work on the Sabbath”.  However, there is another Old Testament understanding of Sabbath that comes from Deuteronomy 5:12-15.  In Deuteronomy 5:14, when Moses reiterates the Ten Commandments, he notes the second thing that we must remember on the Sabbath:  "remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD, your God brought you forth from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day".  In other words, Sabbath day is about remembering freedom and remembering that God brought about that freedom.  This was remembered through rest because in those times especially leisure or rest was confined to certain classes; slaves did not get days off.  Thus, by resting on the Sabbath, we are reminded that we are free, not slaves like they had been in Egypt. For today then, Sabbath frees us from our weekday concerns, from our deadlines and schedules and commitments.  During the week, we are slaves to our jobs, to our creditors, to our need to provide for ourselves; on Sabbath, we are freed from those worries in the same way the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt.

In this understanding of Sabbath, the Sabbath practice or observance is not just about resting – it is a day of doing a holy work, and especially a holy work that is all about freedom.  What could be more holy than healing, or freeing a person from their infirmity, from a crippling condition, from a life of estrangement, alienation and isolation from their communities (since they were considered “unclean” and could not be touched or enter many places, including the temple)?  What could be more holy than honoring God and God’s people by transforming them from the physical slavery of infirmity into life?  For Jesus this was absolutely vital, absolutely important that the healings he did BE done on the Sabbath, on that holy day, on the day when holy works and acts of freeing and freedom are to be done.  Yes, he could have waited one more day.  But Sabbath was the right day, the appropriate day, for him to do a holy work.  Just as the Israelites were freed from slavery, in remembering that, the woman was to be freed from her affliction.  As the animals of the Pharisees were freed, even on the Sabbath, to drink, this daughter of Abraham was freed in the kingdom of God to receive life.  Jesus transformed Sabbath, even as he transformed the woman.  Jesus focused on freedom, even as he freed the woman, over and above “rest”.

Additionally, after 18 years, for God, that one day mattered, that one hour mattered.  Laws be put aside, or as Jesus said it, “The Sabbath was made for humans, NOT humans for the Sabbath.”  Therefore, if the day of rest is not creating freedom and love and healing for all people, then it should not be observed in the way the Pharisees understood it needed to be.  God’s timing is not our timing.   God’s creative, transforming love comes every day because every day is holy for God.  God’s understanding of law is always to be surpassed by God’s commitment to love.  And on this particular holy day, Jesus would not and could not wait to heal this woman whom God loved.

               The Pharisees hated this for many reasons, one of which had to do with social control. 

The desire to control Sabbath observance is critical for maintaining another social order as well.  For example, when slavery was rampant, Frederick Douglass talked about how important it was that the slave holders not see the slaves praying or reading scripture or learning on the Sabbath.  They wanted to see the slaves “wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky” because if they were learning, reading, praying, that showed them to be intellectual, moral, and accountable beings, which was intolerable in keeping up an illusion of the slaves being inferior. They were told what they could do on the Sabbath, and were, therefore, forbidden from studying, praying, reading because it was very threatening to the social system.

While the South and Israel during Jesus time are not the same, the issues of power and control were present in both as rules were made and maintained concerning the Sabbath.  Both rules and insistence upon those rules helped to create a system where specific people had power and others did not.  In this case, if Jesus had followed the rule, it would have literally kept a woman crippled. 

                For the Pharisees, control of religious laws and rules was very important.  But God cannot be controlled.  God cannot be contained or by our rules and laws or even by our understanding of God’s rules, who God is or what God is about, who God can use, when God can use them and why.  God cannot be contained by any of this.  And none of this can be controlled, no matter how tightly we try to control it with rules, laws, “piety”.  I’m reminded of the quote from C.S. Lewis’ the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, in reference to Aslan who is the Jesus character, “He is not a TAME lion, you know.  He is very good, but he is not Tame.”  We want God to be tame – or rather contained.  We want to be able to understand, to expect certain things and to count on them.  But that is not who God is.  God is not TAME.  God can’t be controlled by our prayers, our thoughts, our wishes, our hopes, or even our ideas of who God really is.  And the truth is that ultimately I’m not sure we would want a God who could be because that God would not be big enough for all of who we are, all of our needs, all of our hopes, and all of our lives.  God’s dreams for us are bigger than our own, and that is VERY good news.  Just as the woman in today’s story could not look up, hunched over for 18 years, she could only see the dirt in front of her and could not imagine a life free from her infirmity, Jesus had bigger plans for her, bigger dreams for her. 

               From a favorite commentary, ‘Feasting on the Word,’  “We are like the woman bent over and unable to look up and see the sun. We know only the dust and dirt underneath our feet. We struggle to see the path before us by straining and twisting, because we cannot look straight ahead. To ask for healing helps us step into Jesus' invitation to mend our souls as we mend creation.”  We must seek freedom from all that binds us, whether it be physical, emotional, social, psychological or even political.  But again, we have to remember that God is not a tame lion – and therefore God’s plans for us and God’s timing for those plans will remain in God’s hands, even as we are called to seek healing and wholeness.  The good news is, though, again, that God’s dreams are bigger than our own.  And God’s call for us to find life is more insistent and immediate than we could even hope.  That is the good news.  The challenge then for us is two fold – one to take the Sabbath seriously as both a time for rest and a time to do a holy work towards the freedom of all God’s people.  And second, to trust that God is the force and power behind any transformation towards freedom.  But that God will use us, no matter what our condition, our age, our situation, if we are open to God’s calling. 

               I think the idea that the Sabbath is made for us, rather than us being made for the Sabbath or for the rules, or for the doctrines – this is a hard idea for us.  We want clarity, we want things cut and dried.  We want things spelled out.  We all want to know what we are to do, with absolute certainty.  And because of that, I think even the most “fluid” of us have certain scriptural passages that we see as absolute, beyond nuance, just as the Pharisees saw the Sabbath rule as beyond nuance.  I want to invite you to think about that.  What are the scriptures that get under your skin as unbreakable, as un-nuanceable, that even if it hurts someone else you would insist on it?

               I’ll tell you for myself, one that really gets under my skin is when Jesus said, “the one without sin cast the first stone.”  I stand on this and it gets so firmly into me that I feel that this is a firm and fast declaration from Jesus that has no bending.”  And that is where I, too, get into trouble.  Because what if what the person is doing that I’m saying we shouldn’t judge is, in fact, harming somebody else?  Then don’t we have a responsibility to judge it enough to prevent others being hurt?  The same with the “turn the other cheek” business.  I can become self-righteous about not choosing harm to others, even when they are harming us.  But what if, again, the person being harmed is a person without power?  Shouldn’t that person be defended? 

               What are some that you might be getting stuck in?

               Connie Schultz, a Cleveland columnist, said this – “I learned that those who are most secure in their faith feel no need to hammer others with their certainty.  The walk of faith begins and ends with the journey within, and that’s a path fraught with mystery and best guesses.  My own faith makes me neither right nor righteous because it demands so much of me that I am still trying to find.  Empathy, forgiveness, compassion – I never have enough.  Mom would say that’s okay.  She taught me that being a Christian meant fixing ourselves and helping others, not the other way around.”

               But I think all of this can actually be summed up best by scripture itself.  In Romans 4:16-17 Paul said this, “The Law brings about wrath. But when there isn’t any law, there isn’t any violation of the law. That’s why the inheritance comes through faith, so that it will be on the basis of God’s grace.”  

               Jesus showed that grace by breaking the law so he could heal the woman, not waiting one more day, but bringing her healing right then.  Grace brings love.  Grace brings hope.  Grace brings life. Grace should be what guides us and leads us to faith. To end where I started, it isn’t the laws that will bring us true faith.  They never will.  Instead, it is grace that creates that awe and joy within us.  Grace that is “amazing” and grace that will lead us home.

Sunday's Sermon - Risking it all for something better

Exodus 14:19-31

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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