A Little Piece of Heaven.

     Today I did the hikes I had wanted to do yesterday: in particular to St. Columba’s Bay, over towards the quarry and then back around and up to Port Ban.  Incredible, all of it!  I will try to upload a video from the Bay for you below… again, with the pictures issue that I’m having, I’m not positive I can make that work, but I will try. Today’s hike was a bit over eight miles.  Yesterday I walked ten miles, though the obvious difference was the terrain.  Yesterday was gentle hills on paved or gravel roads, today was hills, rocky terrain, on paths that were many times barely discernible. The other, more profound difference was how the hike to St. Columba’s Bay felt, and seeing/touching the water of the bay in particular.  Both days I walked alone. While David is here on Iona with me, he is not a hiker.  Additionally, his work has required that he has to still manage to get in 40 hours of work during the three weeks he will be with me in Europe, so he is taking the unscheduled, quiet days on Iona to try to get some of those hours in.  I was actually looking forward to having the quiet, meditative and reflective as well as prayerful time to walk by myself.  None the less, the solitary walk to the North of Iona yesterday was stressful for me: or it produced anxiety for me.  I didn’t see anyone, and I felt nervous about that.  While Iona is pretty safe, I carry with me the reality from home that 50% of women in the United States will be assaulted during their life times, many of those more than once. Walking by oneself as a female is generally not considered wise or safe. If someone had approached me, there would be no one else around to call to for help.  I couldn’t shake it.  I kept trying to just breathe and be in the present, but was unable to do so.

    On today’s hike I also saw no one until I was almost all the way back from St. Columba’s Bay.  But it felt different.  There was no anxiety.  There was instead a calm but strong sense of being where I needed to be in the moment.  I was searching for the trail much of the time, as well as trying to hold my phone with its trail app to make sure I was at least in the right vicinity while at the same time using my poles in the hope that the extra support would prevent my knee acting up. The wind today was still quite strong, and at one point the clouds let loose and I ended up quite soaked.  And yet, despite all this, I kept being astounded by the beauty at every turn, the wildlife and the joys of hearing the sheep and birds talk to one another and occasionally even to me.  It was incredible.  Not a “destination” but really the point of being here: the hard journey which was rewarded at every turn by something beautiful and unexpected. 

    As I stood on the beach I felt tears pouring down my face in awe and wonder at what was before me, and found myself repeating, almost unconsciously the mantra “Thank you, God” over and over and over. The video I attach will not do it justice, and yet, it’s all I can do to try to share with you this little piece of heaven that was the gift of the day for me.

And a few photos: 

Anger and Hate

     Years ago I had someone come to me for pastoral care and counseling who was in a great deal of pain.  She told me that she had been the victim of a predator, someone who found her in a time and situation of crisis or trauma and, in the guise of offering care, took advantage of her.  When she finally found the strength to end the predatorial and abusive relationship, the predator sought revenge by turning others she cared about against her.  Because the predator was a charming and likeable person, no one even asked for her side of the story.  It seems people mistakenly believed that the one doing the talking must be the one telling the truth, when instead, he was doing the talking because he was trying to preemptively spread his lies before the truth could come out. She became a pariah as the people around her chose to believe the person they preferred without ever asking her side or seeking her truth in what had occurred.  She was thereby victimized twice by the predator: first by the initial relationship, and second by the damage to her other relationships. She told me that she had come to see the predator as evil, and she hated him with a white hot hate that did not seem to fade with time.  She told me she had never known hate before this event, but now it seemed to consume her and she did not know what to do.  

    She came to me seeking help.  As a pastor, couldn't I tell her how to let go of the anger?  The hate?  Couldn't I help her to figure out how to forgive so that the rage and abhorrence would no longer wrack her body and spirit in a way that seemed to poison everything in her life?  

    I passed along the tools that I had: Pray for the ones with whom you are angry the same good things you would want for yourself.  Talk to God.  Journal.  Distract from your anger by focusing on the beautiful things in this life.  Keep a gratitude journal.  Surround yourself with people who will care enough to talk to you when they have questions or are hearing gossip about you.  Choose friends who will be open with you and will believe what you say to them.  Surround yourself with people who understand about predatory relationships, the deep damage they do, the abuse they infict, and the ways they manifest. Meditate.  Exercise. Eat healthy foods. Practice self-affirmations. Reframe your experiences as growing and learning experiences. 

    I don't know if any of those tools helped her in the long run.  In the short run I believe they were inadequate.  She was truly consumed by her anger and hatred, and those feelings were damaging her to a greater degree even than the original predatorial damage.  What she had experienced as harm was real.  But the daily re-living of that damage did more to hurt her.  And while she knew this intellectually, she could not let go of that anger.  She knew she was allowing the predator to continue to victimize her through her feelings, but she could not let them go.

       As I look back, I realize that I had missed an important step with her.  I've said before that I am a firm believer that we have to go through our grief and pain to come out on the other side.  Stuffing feelings down means they usually manifest in unhelpful ways and they don't resolve.  What I had failed to name was that anger is a secondary emotion.  Hate is often a further step removed and is a tertiary emotion that follows anger.  Both ultimately mask grief and fear.  It feels more powerful to be angry or to hate, so we often move to those feelings when we don't want (or don't have the strength) to feel those more genuine but more vulnerable feelings of sadness and fear.  Until we deal, truly and honestly, with those deeper feelings, we will stay stuck in the anger.

     Personally, I don't want to be an angry or hateful person.  So I write this as a reminder to myself, as I reflect back on my parishioner's experience, that letting these feelings pass through us is essential for our own well-being and wholeness.  Not always easy, especially when you've been deeply harmed, but necessary.  When someone hurts us, it is often our own feelings that do more damage than the other person could ever do.  And while working through those feelings is not easy, it is life-giving to do so.

Peace I Leave You

 

John 14:25-31

               The passage that we heard from John today is part of Jesus’ speech on the night before he was killed.  Throughout his speech, throughout the evening, his disciples were asking questions about his “leaving” them.  First Peter, then Thomas, then Philip, then the other Judas (not Judas Iscariot)… all were worried, all were upset, and all were asking for clarity, for understanding about this upcoming death that Jesus told them would be coming.  They also bargained, denied, argued with Jesus about what was to come.  But Jesus was clear and firm.

               In the face of their concerns, their fears, their lack of understanding and their grief, then, Jesus’ response was repeatedly to tell them, in different ways, that they were not being abandoned.  He reassured them that he would remain with them through the Spirit, that his relationship with them, though different, would not be over.  He told them they did not need to be afraid, and he offered them his peace. 

               All of this caused me to think on our own experiences of loss and death.  When we know that someone we love and truly value is going to die, that someone is going to leave us, we, too, like the disciples feel fear, anxiety and pain.  As much as that person’s death is about them, and as much as we say we rejoice that they will no longer be in pain, that they are beyond suffering, or as much as we express concern for them at their dying, we also have our own fears, our own grief, and our own experiences and feelings that we must deal with.  Sometimes those can blind us to the pain of the person who is actually dying, actually leaving.  Sometimes it causes our focus to be very inward rather than outward.  Sometimes we even express those normal stages of grief; anger, denial, bargaining, as the disciples did with Jesus, before the event even happens.  And sometimes we require the person who is dying to do the comforting, as strange and as somehow backward as that must sound. 

               But this is very human, very normal.  None of the disciples comforted Jesus.  None of them even could stay awake with him when he needed them to be with him in his final hours of anxiety, grief and prayer.  No, instead, he was required to comfort them, to reassure them that his death was not the end of the relationship, that it would continue, though in a different way.  He would be with them through the Spirit’s presence, as he promised here.  And rather than focusing on his own feelings of loss, he was tasked with the job of comforting, reassuring, and holding those he loved in these his last moments with them.    

               But the peace that Jesus offers is much more than this.  This peace is not just absence of conflict.  It is also not a peace of simply having nothing to be upset about.  So what else does this peace entail?

First, It is a peace that includes forgiveness.  Just as, when we pass the peace in church, it is supposed to be a response to our prayer of confession and acceptance of God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, the peace that Jesus offers is one that is intended to relieve us from our shortcomings, from our failures, from our lack of wholeness.  It is, above all else, a peace of the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. 

I found myself reminded of something Craig Barnes wrote, “Complaining is usually a veiled lament about deeper issues of the soul. Since most people are unaccustomed to exploring the mystery of their own souls, they will often work out their spiritual anxieties by attempting to rearrange something external - like a church's music program. But it doesn't matter how many changes they make to the environment around them. They will never succeed in finding peace for the angst of their soul until they attend directly to it... (That is why) to be of service to the Holy Spirit, who is at work in human lives, the pastor can never reduce ministry to servicing parishioners' complaints about the church.”  So when Jesus offered peace, he was also offering a peace that called them to attend to their own issues of the soul.  These disciples, as we know, were very far from perfect.  They didn’t understand things, they weren’t always supportive.  And Jesus’ peace calls from them growth, calls them into a deeper understanding and commitment.  This is a peace that remembers our connection and that sends his disciples, therefore, out in mission, out to do the work of healing and caring for one another.

               That offer of peace, therefore, included his own offer to them of forgiveness as well, for their lack of support for him, for their lack of understanding, for anything they had failed to do and anything they had done that was less than loving, less than supportive.  His peace was a call on them to accept that forgiveness, and to strive to move into wholeness.  His peace, again, was a call towards their action of mission in the world, doing what they were called to do. 

               But peace is even more than this.  Bonhoeffer said it this way, “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.” 

               As my bible study discussed this last week, it’s deeply connected to what Archbishop Elias Chacour talks about when he translates the Beattitudes.  Jesus “peace” is deeply connected to the “blessing” that he speaks of when he speaks the beatitudes.  To quote Archbisop Chacour, “Knowing Aramaic, the language of Jesus, has greatly enriched my understanding of Jesus’ teachings.  Because the Bible as we know it is a translation of a translation, we sometimes get a wrong impression.  For example, we are accustomed to hearing the Beatitudes expressed passively: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

‘Blessed’ is the translation of the word makarioi used in the Greek New Testament.  However, when I look further back to Jesus’ Aramaic, I find that the original word was ashray from the verb yashar.  Ashray does not have this passive quality to it at all.  Instead, it means ‘to set yourself on the right way for the right goal; to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous’.

How could I go to a persecuted young man in a Palestinian refugee camp, for instance, and say, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted’, or ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’?  That man would revile me, saying neither I, nor my God understood his plight, and he would be right.

When I understand Jesus’ words in the Aramaic, I translate like this:

Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you who are hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied.

Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called children of God.

To me this reflects Jesus’ words and teachings much more accurately.  I can hear him saying, ‘Get your hands dirty to build a human society for human beings; otherwise, others will torture and murder the poor, the voiceless, and the powerless’.  Christianity is not passive but active, energetic, alive, going beyond despair.”

               With this understanding, some might not be as interested in this peace that Jesus offers as they might have been a minute ago. 

               I am reminded of the article I shared with you last week from reader’s digest, about the boy who stole a wallet being helped by bar owner to retrieve what was lost.  He also gave the kid a home with his family and a job.  The owner of the wallet also forgave the boy.   This is what peace for the bar owner looked like: it looked like taking action, working for the wholeness and healing not only of himself, but for all those around him. 

               The peace of Christ is not just being content with your life.  Jesus was offering comfort, yes, but peace is far beyond that.  It is not just comfort.  It involves healing.  Healing from fear, healing from grief, healing from the terrible things that happen and that people suffer in this world.  But more, that healing, that gift of peace that is given to you, to me, to all of us: that healing is not just for you.  We are called to be carriers of that peace, to pass it along in our actions, in our work, in our very attitudes in the world.  We are called to be bearers of that peace.  To heal, to mend rifts, to work towards wholeness, for individuals and for the world. 

 

Making One Out of Two

 Mark 6:30-44, Ephesians 2:11-22 

            Today we continue with our second week study of the book of Ephesians.  And while we didn’t focus very much on Ephesians last week, today we will spend a little more time with it.  Today we hear these words of unity, of reconciliation, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,… His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.”

            What is interesting is that, biblically speaking, we usually talk about God’s “peace” as something God creates between us and God, or something that we find within ourselves.  But the promise here in Ephesians is extraordinary.  The promise is that peace will be created between divergent and even fighting peoples, as it was between the Christian Jews and Gentiles of that time.  When I think about the many generations of racial strife and fighting in our country, when I think about the Israelis and Palestinians currently, when I think about the divisions along political lines in our own country, the words of not only disagreement, but frankly hatred that I have heard people speak for those who disagree… when I think of ALL of this, to hear these words from Ephesians which speak of Christ’s sacrifice, his death, as a bridge that will create PEACE and reconciliation between these different groups, it is truly almost beyond hope.  How big and different from what we know will God’s realm, God’s reign have to be for us all to be in it together in peace, for us to come together as diverse people to love and care and connect to one another, to be “one”?

            But this passage from Ephesians promises this.  It says that Christ’s cross has destroyed and will destroy three things: a barrier or wall, the law of commandments and decrees, and most importantly enmity.  According to Ephesians, by dying on the cross, God breaks down a wall that separated humanity from God.  This is not about atonement, according to the author of Ephesians.  This is about experiencing and living fully our humanity.  As the NIV commentator said it, “Humans are too trapped in the deadly effects of sin to return to God on their own – or even to notice the wall that is keeping God out?  People still need to be convinced of God’s unconditional love for them….  People have to be loved into forgiveness.”  And it is from that place of being convinced of God’s unconditional love, of God’s unimaginable forgiveness, that breaking down of the barrier between us and God that all barriers between humans, between dividing forces are also being broken down.

            So how is this possible?  And since the cross has already happened, if the cross unites us, why are we not united?  Why are we still so very divided, still separating ourselves into “us” and “them”, still estranging ourselves from people who think differently, rather than being one, being reconciled, working towards healing, wholeness and the living into the new and full humanity that the cross has created for us?

            The thing is, as I have said so many times before, what we do for ourselves affects greatly what we do for others.  If we cannot accept God’s unconditional love for us, if we cannot accept in forgiveness, or grace, how can we extend that to others?  We can’t.  Period.  We can’t. 

            But I want to say again, that I think culturally the cards are stacked against us stepping into that.  Which is why faith is countercultural.  Faith calls us into a very different way of being than we see modeled and even idolized in our culture.  Faith calls us into a different set of values than what we have presented in our culture.  The cross, and the reconciliation it offers calls us to be very, very different in this world than what we are told is the best and right way to be.

            One of my lectionary friends told us this story this week:  there was a congregation down the road from her own congregation: a predominantly African American congregation and they ran a food pantry for many years.  But there came a point at which they needed help.  So they called on my friends’ congregation and asked if they could partner together to keep the food pantry alive.  After one week of working together, my friend asked the folk in the originating congregation how the food pantry work was going.

            “Terrible!”  one woman said, while all the others nodded in agreement. 

            “Terrible?  Why?” my friend asked.

            “Well, the folk from your church show up, they quickly load up the bags, they put them into the cars of the guests who are coming, they clean up everything perfectly and then they leave.  The whole thing lasted from 8am-10am and then it was over.”

            My friend was stunned.  This sounded wonderful.    But she had enough wisdom to ask, “What did it look like before, when it was not terrible?”

            “Oh!” the woman said with joy as she remembered how the food pantry used to be run.  And then the whole group of them began to quickly talk over each other sharing their past experiences.  “We would gather between 7 and 8, we’d talk, we’d check in with one another, we would laugh and play around as we gathered together the things to put in each bag.  Sometimes we’d stop, pause, sit down and have a drink to talk together and cool down.  Then when people came to get their food, we would talk to them, sit with them, ask them how they were doing, laugh more, talk more, sit again and share a coke for a bit.  We’d spend the whole day at the food pantry, just being together.”

            Different values, yes.  But I think we miss something with our emphasis on efficiency.  I speak to myself here.  I am the queen of efficiency.  I was thinking about this this last week when I went to pick up a book from a parishioner.  When I stopped at her house, she invited me in to sit and talk for a while. After we had talked for some time, she said to me as I was getting up to go, “I needed to grab you while you were here picking up the book because I know you are just so very busy.”  And it hit me differently.  I hear all of you say this, often, to me.  “Oh, I know you are so busy!”  and at some level, I think, I’ve always heard that as a positive: you all know how much I work, how hard I work, and that answers my value of needing to work hard, do well, work harder, do better.  But is that really a godly value?  As I heard one of you speak to me this last week, I realized that it would be more valuable to slow down, to be with people for more time, to dig in more deeply with people.  For the first time I heard “you are so busy” as a critique – not because it was meant to be, not because it was spoken as such, but because I heard it with different ears this time.  I could hear God whispering to me through this parishioner that I had gotten lost, distracted about what really matters, and had forgotten about what I am really here to do.  My job as a child of God, as a follower of Christ, as a person on the way, is not to be rushing around “accomplishing things” or “getting things done.”  My job, as a disciple of Christ, as a person striving to be closer to God is to take the time to be with each person who is in front of me in any one moment.  I think about the comment, “If you’ve ever seen a chicken running around after its head has been cut off, you know that running around is NOT a sign of life.”  We are called to live fully.  But what we are doing by being so busy is not fully living and is certainly not fully living into our calling as children of God.

            I think about Tolstoy’s three questions:  “Who is most important?  What is most important?  When is the most important time?”  He answers it this way, “The one you are with at any moment is the most important one.  The most important thing to do is what is right in front of you that needs to be done.  And the most important time is this moment that you have now, for there is no other.”

            I am not alone in these struggles.  As I was telling my lectionary group, a group of pastors who have committed to meeting every single week for two hours and sometimes more to pray together, study scripture together, check in and support one another: I could not get such a group going here in the Bay Area.  All the pastors here who I know are “too busy”.  Again, we feel our “importance” by filling our time with programs and activities and work.  But that is not what God is calling us to do.

            What does all of this have to do with the Ephesians passage?  Crossing those bridges, building those relationships, reconciliation, the peace with our neighbors – the one that is offered through Christ: these things take time, take commitment, and take intentionality.  If we are too busy “doing” things to sit with people who disagree with us, to talk together, to be in relationship with one another, to do the work of reconciliation, then that peace of Christ, which is what is being offered through these relationships and through our faith – it will never be ours.  

            Our churches are failing in this, maybe even more so than in the bigger community.  Did you know that the most segregated hour of the week is 10am Sunday morning?  Our churches are the last bastion of segregation.  And that is not what God wants from us nor for us. 

            The cross is there, reminding us that God knows all of what we live, all of what we suffer, all of what we struggle against; and it is offering us reconciliation, not only with God, but with one another.  It is a profound promise.  A very deep and full promise.  But we have to step into that.  If we truly want reconciliation, we have to act like we believe the promise that it is available for us.  If we truly want unity and wholeness, we have to step forward in the faith that it is a gift offered to us that we have only to claim.  If we want the peace of Christ in our lives, we have to start by working to trust God’s unconditional and overwhelming love, and more, to trust that through God’s grace it is offered to each one of us.  It’s all that easy, and all that hard.  Amen.

Angry, forgiving, thriving

    I have written often about the choice to be a thriver rather than either a victim or a survivor.  I have also written often that part of choosing to be a thriver is about forgiving, both ourselves and those who have hurt us, for whatever we have lived through.  We are all humans, none of us is perfect, and when we can have compassion, even for those who have done hard and terrible things to us, we are the ones released from that pain.  Our own anger often prevents us from healing, from moving forward, from thriving.  

    I believe all of this, deeply.  And yet, it does not prevent me from having those nights when I can't sleep because of something that happened years ago, some cruelty I lived through, something that perhaps I should have handled differently.  And I'll tell you honestly that when that does happen, my thoughts do not usually tend towards compassion or forgiveness, for myself or for the other.  Usually I envision things I "should" have done differently that would either have been a better fit for who I choose to be, or would have felt more like "justice" towards whomever hurt me.  

    Last night was no exception.  I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of the person who had uninvited me to a party she was having at her house based on misinformation that she, none the less, chose not to ask me about directly.  At the time, like the man in "An American President", I felt that I should not have to defend myself or seek to clarify something to someone who was simply choosing to believe the one side she had heard without checking it out with me.  So my response at the time was just to be polite and accept the dis-invitation without expressing any feelings about it whatsoever.  But last night I woke up thinking about this, which meant that at 2am this morning I woke up angry: angry at this woman for never asking my side, never checking things out, angry that she chose not to give me the benefit of the doubt, angry that she chose the friendship of the one badmouthing me over her friendship with me who chose to keep a private altercation private, angry that charming charismatic males are so often accepted at their word just because people want to be around them, and socially-awkward women are easily discarded in the face of those men, angry that she felt it was okay to just uninvite me.  I was also angry at myself for not naming it for what it was, "So, you are uninviting me?  And can you tell me more about why that is the choice you are making?"  I was angry at myself for not defending myself.  I was angry at myself for not speaking my truth at the time.  To be honest, I'm angry still.  I miss that friendship.  And yet, it ended that afternoon despite the fact that at the time I simply said, "I understand" and continued to smile and be polite and engaged.

    Last night I was not able to get back to sleep.  So I'm writing this from a place of half-conscious thoughts.  But still, as the daylight slowly dawned this morning I found myself thinking about who I want to be in the face of these past hurts and slights.  I've been reading about compassionate communication, as well as how to talk to people about racism/race issues.  I've been thinking about the growing divide in our country along political and ideological lines.  We've been studying together (many of us in the congregation) the importance of not limiting our connections to those we agree with, those we connect well with.  The divides and struggles will continue if we cannot hear one another, cannot learn to be with others who are different.  And all of that has to begin with re-learning compassion, with hearing below the words that are said for the feelings of the other, the commonalities in experience and values, the deeper stories that connect us all.  

    So today, I'm trying to apply that as I seek both to forgive the other and to forgive myself.  I cannot check this out with the person who dis-invited me: we have no connection at this point and I would not know how to find one since we live in different parts of the world.  But I can still listen, listen to the past, listen beneath her words of the time, listen for where she was and what she was feeling and needing at the time.  I hear her desire to have this other friendship, to maintain those connections, at whatever cost.  I hear her trust that I am strong enough to handle the dis-invitation, and, frankly, that I will not reject her simply because she has rejected me.  I hear her desire to believe her other friend and to not have anything that would confront that trust placed in him.  I hear her anger at me for a story (not much of which I know since I don't actually know what she was told) that she has heard that places me in the role of "bad guy".  I hear her need for things to be clear, for there to be a clear "bad guy" and clear "good guy" in the situation.  I choose, then, to have compassion for those needs and concerns that she had, and to forgive her for living out those feelings in a way that hurt me and my family.  I choose it, which doesn't mean that I feel forgiveness or even that deep compassion at the moment, but that I'm working towards that.

    Similarly, I am listening beneath my own choices in the moment.  I did not want to be confrontive or angry at the moment because I did not know how that would play out or if I would be able to heal any breech that caused in the moment.  I did not want to share my own experiences and have them doubted or disbelieved.  I did not know how to speak my truth in the moment and I was afraid of speaking in a way that would have deeper consequences. I was going through huge changes at the time and I could not bear one more.   I also did not want to harm her friendship with this other person and have to carry that on my conscience.  For all these reasons I responded with an acceptance, which did show a strength in myself to withstand cruelty and to even have compassion for it.  And maybe that was a gift that I gave back at that moment.  I choose, therefore, to have compassion for my own decisions at that moment.  I also choose to explore with myself, in the future, whether there is something more I need to do with this situation to heal it for myself.  And I choose to forgive the choice that I made then, learning from it that I need to find compassionate and kind ways to ask more questions, to seek more information, and to step forward into my own truth more often in situations such as this.  Again, I may not be feeling this way right now, but these are the choices I make and that I will work hard to step into.  

    Finally, I am not unaware that there are reasons this scenario was the one that woke me this morning in the wee hours.  I am experiencing something similar with another person right now who is choosing to disconnect rather than to seek out information or healing.  I do not want this, too, to become a situation I wake up from in the middle of the night in three or five or ten years, unhealed, unaddressed.  So I hear in my morning musings a call to look at this situation square in the face as well.

    We "act as if" and then we become what we take on.  Therefore I choose who I will be in this moment.  And who I choose to be is a person listening, a person trying to hear more deeply and more fully, a person seeking for connection rather than broken hearts and broken relationships.

    You, too, get to choose who you will be.  Choose well, dear friends.

Allowing the unpleasant to have free rent in our heads.

        My spiritual director advised me to work against allowing unkind people to have free rent in my head.  I think we probably all struggle with this.  People who upset us, people who are cruel, people who do terrible things that affect us, those we love, or the world itself - these people are the ones we allow to wake us up in the night and prevent sleep from returning, these are the people we allow to cause us the stomach cramps that lead to ulcers, these are the ones we allow to cause us to move, or to quit jobs, to change careers, or to do something even worse.  

       But yes, I use the phrase "whom we allow..." with intention.  

        It doesn't feel that way, I know.  It feels like they have control in our brains, that their voices, their faces, their incomprehensible behaviors and their cruel choices prevent us from choosing anything other than being obsessed with what has been said, done, or is going to happen in the future.  How can we possibly do anything other than give them the free rent in our brains that their effects on our lives demand?  

       But I keep thinking about what I posted in September, 2015, and the reality that we are in so many ways closer to those we don't like or are struggling with or against than we are to our acquaintances and sometimes even those people we like or love.  If we are not working against this actively, if we are not choosing something different, our brains will focus, give time to, spend energy on the people with whom we are struggling much more than they will on the beautiful people in our lives, the gifts of the people in our lives, the kind and good things that have come and are coming our way daily.   And the question then is, how do we want to spend our time and energy?  On whom and on what do we want to dedicate our lives?  Do we want to spend the limited time we have here staying awake at night going over and over in our heads things we can do nothing about?  Do we want to allow our stomachs and bodies to be destroyed by the remembrances of cruelties and unkindnesses?  Or do we want to pass our time in gratitude and remembrances of the many wonderful good things that come our way each and every day?  Do we want to be awakened with thoughts of celebrations and warmth and good memories?

     I just downloaded through my Kindle Free Books a children's story called Some Days by Maria Wernicke.  It's a short picture book about a child who has lost her father and is grieving that.  She has moments when she feels the warmth of connection, of beauty with the world.  But other times she can't access those feelings and she is upset by that.  It's a story for children, but it, too, speaks to the truth for all of us that sometimes finding those peaceful places of remembrance are hard to do.  Perhaps it is harder for adults even than for kids.  Remembering that "this too shall pass" and that even in the dark times there are always sparks of light, gifts of caring, warm signs of a God who loves us more than we can imagine - remembering these things comes and goes, and when we are really struggling with something, these truths can be elusive.  Holding tight to the memories of the good and right in the world is hard.

    So, how do we do this?  How do we choose not to let the negative stay in our heads free of rent?  Having on hand a list of things for which we are grateful that we may choose to focus our attention on when the bad things come to mind is a start.  What blessings did I experience today?  For what am I grateful?  When the negative comes in at 2:00am, taking time to meditate or focus on the good can be very helpful.  If we still can't sleep, making a deliberate choice to get up, write a card of thanks, send an email, bake bread, sing a song: to create the good and focus on that creation of beauty instead.  These things take practice and intentionality, but I think they are important survival skills for all of us.

   I want to be clear that I am not advocating that we just let the world spin the way it will without taking action against injustices.  But I know for myself that if I am not centered, if I cannot find those gifts of peace and grace and gratitude daily, the actions I would normally take to fight injustice lack power, strength, grounding, conviction, and faith.  If I cannot remember the good, the efforts to work for justice for others also lack conviction - after all, if there is no good, what is the point in fighting for something better or different?  If I am unhealthy because of lack of sleep or a stomach tied in cramps, I become physically unable to do the work that must be done.  Remembering that we must put on our own oxygen masks in order to help those around us means doing the things necessary to sit in love, grace, and peace.  Remembering the joy, delighting in the good, even when things are hard, allows us the space to walk with truth and compassion.

    The goal then is to get to a place where we choose what takes up space in our minds and bodies, to intentionally decide what we will focus on at what time, to start with the good, and then move from a place of strength and love into facing the bad.  That's my work for today.  I offer it to you in the hopes that you also are working towards making good choices for yourselves as well.  Be at peace, friends.

Peace Talk for Brentwood Inspired Living Center

First of all, I want to thank Amy for inviting me to speak to you all today.  It is a real joy and privilege to be asked to talk about something that I think is so important for us, always, but perhaps especially in today’s world.  “Peace” is very elusive, especially during this time.  People are stressed because of the pandemic, social unrest, the weather, the smoke – days moved to weeks moved to months and now we’ve had a half year of “shelter in place” and “social distancing” and people are beginning to act out.  

I think about the post a friend of mine made on FB where he detailed waking up to find an intruder in his home.  The intruder grabbed a couple things and left.  No one was hurt, my friend was able to replace the missing items with fairly little trauma.  It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t scarring either.  Still, the responses that he received on FB were things like “You should have shot and killed that guy!  That would have taught him!”  And “Too bad you weren’t able to beat him up with a bat and permanently ruin his life!”  I was shocked by these responses, but probably shouldn’t have been.  We live in a culture where violence tends to escalate, and where people react with such intense anger that nothing short of death satisfies some people as the appropriate consequence for a stolen watch.  This is the world in which we dare to breathe words such as “peace”.  And that action of looking for and seeking peace is an act of courage in such a world.

The other day I was walking in a parking lot with my daughter at the grocery store (both of us with our masks on) and we were just about to get to the car to put in the groceries, when some rage-filled person started cursing and screaming at us.  I have no idea why.  I assumed at the time that it was because they wanted us to move more quickly to get our groceries in the car so they could have my spot, but, putting aside the fact that there were other open spaces, that just didn’t explain the rage that this person (who I had never seen before) was expressing.   Of course, the temptation for me then, as it often is for many of us I think, is to respond to that kind of anger with anger in return.  The temptation was to turn and yell back, to sarcastically critique his lack of vocabulary or to do something else that would have hurt him as much as he was upsetting me and my daughter.    

But in that moment, I found Martin Luther King Jr.’s comment rattling in my head when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”  The reality is we cannot get to peace, true peace, through anger, rage, hate or violence.  Those angry attacking responses leave people hurting, damaged, and that damage and hurt festers, and usually builds resentment and pain.  While violence may lead to a time of non-violence, there is a difference between peace and non-violence.  Peace is when people are okay within themselves and within their world.  Peace is when people see each other for the deeply connected siblings that we all are.  Peace is when we remember our deep connections to and within all creation.  Peace is when each person and each part of creation has enough, has what they need to live, to breathe, to survive.  That peace can never be full, real or profound when even one person is hurting.  

But responding to anger, violence or hatred with peace is hard.  So in that moment in the parking lot, I also found myself thinking about a Star Trek Next Generation episode in which all these different species are fighting to get this “thing” first, pieces of which have been planted into the different DNAs of different species across the galaxies.  Some species think what they will find when they solve the puzzle by putting all these pieces from their DNA together will be extreme wealth.  Others think it is massive power.  Some specifically think it is a powerful weapon.  All think that they better get it first and they are willing to kill one another to get it. They need each other’s piece of the puzzle to find whatever it is however, so they are all at the final place together; all gathered with their weapons out, preparing to fight to get it and claim it first for their people, their world, their community.  When they finally gather everything together, what they have been given is a message about how important it is to work together and find peace together in order for all to live.  The hologram that is produced by their DNA puzzle pieces gives the message that within each of them is a piece of one another, that they are literally within as well as among one another, and that it is only together they are whole.  But once they hear the message of peace and deep connection to one another, they respond by still trying to fight each other.  “We cannot possibly have anything in common,” one declares in rage, and “I would have killed her if she were alive” another says in response to the Hologram’s message.  They are so caught up in their anger that they cannot hear or see, and peace remains a distant, elusive dream for them all.  

     In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Gandalf said, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check.  But that is not what I have found.  I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.  Small acts of kindness and love.” 

     As we seek to be people of peace, we have to start with the small, with the ordinary, with the opportunities we have to meet hatred and anger with kindness, compassion, and peace.    I thought about one of my heroes in life, Rev. Ben Weir.  He was a Presbyterian pastor who was working in Lebanon when he was kidnapped and held hostage.  He was held for 16 months as a hostage.  But after his experience, he did not come home seeking revenge, seeking the destruction of those who had kidnapped him.  Instead, he remained a voice for peace, for non-violent resolutions to problems.  I personally knew the man and he was, until the end, the most compassionate, sweetest man I have ever met.   

     There is a wonderful book titled “Tattoos of the Heart” written by Father Gregory Boyle.  He is a priest who works with gangs in LA, giving them work, jobs, a sense of belonging to something and to people who do not require violence or aggression as part of their membership rituals.  He writes about his experiences with these boys, these men, these families.  But his book begins with these words, “If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.  William Blake wrote, ‘We are put on earth for a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.’ Turns out this is what we all have in common, gang member and nongang member alike: we’re just trying to learn how to bear the beams of love.” (pxiii).

     The idea of Ubuntu is that “a person becomes a person through other people” – we are deeply and completely connected to one another.  When I am injuring you, it is me, myself who is damaged in the process.  And when I am kind to you, I am offering that kindness to myself as well.  

     These ideas are the foundation of peace: the recognition of our interdependence, our interconnection, with all people, but more, with all of life.  

     All of these examples and thoughts flashed through my head in response to the man screaming at me at the parking lot.  And I made the decision in that moment to do other than I wanted to do.  I chose then to wave, to smile (though I’m sure he could not see that behind my mask), and to quickly get my groceries into the car so that he could have the spot.  Fortunately, the space across from me was empty so I pulled forward and out of the spot.  I saw that he did not take the spot, but continued to shriek at me and even follow me out of the parking lot.  I still have not one clue about why.  I asked my daughter who was with me if she could see why he was so angry, but she said "no", and finally we were able to pull away from the man and to drive home.  I acted the way I wanted to act.  I did not give him power to change my behavior from the peace I wanted to communicate and exude.  I did not give him the ability to make me angry or hateful or destructive.  I acted with the peace and compassion I choose to demonstrate.  But I have to admit, I did not feel peace after that interaction.  I was shaking with fear, with anger, with visions of yelling back, or calling the police or something else.  I felt torn up inside by a person I don't know, will never meet, who was just... ANGRY.  It didn't make me feel better to act with kindness.  It did not make me feel better to be kind in the face of that kind of anger/hate.  But it didn't make me feel worse either.  If I'd acted in anger, I would have felt more angry.  If I'd chosen rage, I probably would have felt guilt on top of everything else, if only for giving that example to my daughter.  Instead, after a few minutes had passed, I felt a bit of triumph that I had not allowed myself to be controlled or changed by his behavior.  And my soul moved to a place of acceptance, wondering what that man was suffering with, and peace within myself much more quickly than it would have done if I had acted in any other way.  

     There is a saying in many 12 step programs which is "Act as If."  The theory behind it is that you act your way into being someone else.  Act as if you are a peaceful person and you will become one. Act as if you are no longer angry and you will stop being angry.  Act happy and calm and confident and those feelings and attributes will follow.  That is my choice for now.  I don't know that it will always work.  I don't know that I can always think of the kind way to respond in the face of anger or hate.  But I can try.   And perhaps in trying, I will become more the person of peace that I want to be.

I may not change the world.  I may make no difference at all in the scheme of things.  But I also will not let the world make me more angry, hateful or fearful.  I don't choose that, for myself or for those around me who are affected by my behavior.  For today, I hope that is enough.  

Peace is elusive in this time.  But it must start and end with each one of us choosing to be beacons, voices, examples of the peace we hope to find.  We create the world around us one word, one act, one choice at a time.  For today, let that choice be for peace.

Challenges of the times

        Thursday evening was my daughter's back to school night.  This was a different back to school night because it was all on-line.  It was set up so that every 15 minutes we were invited to "move" from one period of study to the next by closing a zoom group meeting that was hosted by the teacher for that particular period at school, and opening the next zoom meeting for the next period's teacher.  We were sent a list of the zoom links for each of our child's classes.  Unfortunately the links to the zoom rooms that the parents were sent all required passcodes, none of which were sent.  

      To say the least, then, it was an interesting evening.  We had been invited to start the evening with a zoom meeting with the principal.  That room was accessible and did not require passcodes.  So, as each parent discovered that they were unable to get into their child's zoom classrooms, they returned to this zoom room.  The principal's zoom room had all of us permanently muted.  So different parents were writing signs and holding them up for all of us to read.  The signs said things like, "This is what our kids are experiencing every day" and "This is why our kids need to actually be on campus".  Personally, I disagree with that second sign and I don't understand this perspective.  I would much rather have my child struggling to learn in a new way (after all, that is learning, too and isn't that what school is about?) than to risk my child being exposed to a deadly and highly contagious disease.  But I seem to be in the minority in this perspective.

       Of course, the school was on top of the problem fairly quickly.  And so we were able to connect to most of my daughter's classes.  The school immediately sent out emails to all the parents apologizing and begging for our compassion and patience.  That was not hard for me to give.  These are hard times, we are all struggling to make our way through new ways of doing things, new ways of connecting.  We are learning new technology and sometimes it doesn't work for us in the ways we expect or hope.  I know how to contact my child's teachers and if there is an issue, I can just reach out directly.  While I was unable then to hear a couple teacher presentations, I do not feel that I have missed vital information that will change the course of my daughter's future irrevocably for the worse.  This was a small inconvenience and the school dealt with it as quickly and as efficiently as could be expected.  Mistakes happen.  We all make them.

       But I have since heard that not all parents were as compassionate or as patient.  While this, too, baffles me at some level, I again have been made aware that this shouldn't surprise me at all since the anger, rage and attacks are happening in so many different situations and places.  We know that one of the real problems of social media is that people feel emboldened to say cruel and hateful things through social media that they would never dare to say to others in person.  People are not held accountable and they rant and rave on social media in ways that would be seen as extremely childish, unthoughtful, and simply inappropriate if it were done in person.  Relationships are permanently damaged then because of the things people feel free to type, things that they would be prevented from saying to a person's face because they would see the hurt, see the pain they were causing which would then push most people to find gentler and better ways to speak their truth if they chose to speak at all.  

       But now, we only have these distant ways of communicating.  We are no longer talking directly to people, no longer seeing the faces of those we are injuring in person, no longer forced to talk to those with whom we disagree because it is so much easier to just refuse to answer the phone, to choose to ignore the email, to pretend the other doesn't exist, or to choose to speak about others rather than TO others directly.  We could never do this if we were in the same places at the same time.  But we can and do do this now.  90% of communication is non-verbal.  But we no longer have these non-verbal cues to help us to be the sane, kind, compassionate adults we are called to be.  And as a result, people's daily behavior is deteriorating at a rapid rate.

       As always then, my question is where do we go from here?  I remind all of us to work a little harder for compassion.  Try to remember that we are all struggling, all finding our way.  Mistakes happen.  Work harder to forgive.  Additionally, reach out, especially to those it would be easier to avoid.  Our call is always towards reconciliation, bridge-building, healing relationships.  We do not and cannot do that by refusing to speak to each other, by gossiping, or by attacking each other rather than listening with compassion.  

      And, as I have also said often before, remember that we have a choice about how we walk through each day.  We have a choice about our perspective.  Do we see these times as struggles?  Or as opportunities to grow and learn?  Do we see these times as nothing but hardships with people who are simply difficult?  Or do we see this time as providing us the opportunity to be brave, to reach out to those with whom we disagree or are struggling and to find a new way to be in community together?  I know that these dualisms are not realistic always.  We will usually see both the bad and hopefully some of the good.  We will recognize that there are hardships and gifts in this time.  But I encourage all of us to focus on the good in our own lives so that we have the strength to deal with the challenges that we all face.  Listen for God's call to you today.  Listen to the ways in which we are being challenged to grow in our understanding of the connectionality, the interdependence of all things.  We need each other.  As we can remember this, it will help us to choose kindness.

       My prayers are with us all as we continue to navigate these troubling waters.  May you find a place to breathe, a space to be.  May you be held by your love for one another.  And may you be emboldened to speak from places of love, compassion and forgiveness rather than from places of rage and pain.

The Universal Language - Pentecost

Numbers 11:24-30

1 Corinthians 12:1-13

Acts 2:1-21

               Today we hear the Pentecost story as we do every year.  We also heard two other scriptures, both of which are focused on gifts of the spirit, and in particular, the recognition, naming and celebrating that those gifts are not just given to a few, but given to all people, for the common good.  Pentecost in many ways focuses on this as well.  The gifts of hearing and understanding, of crossing the lines of difference in culture and ethnicity and even religion: all of these, too, were gifts of the spirit and all of these, too, were given to the entire community of people.  I loved hearing our scripture this morning in all the different languages and our service parts led by different people because I felt blessed by those different voices, and the recognition of the different gifts that each of them have: in this case, the gift of languages and crossing divides of understanding with people who speak those different languages.  In today’s readings, they were “All filled with the Holy spirit” we are told.  So there are two messages here.  As Paul tells us in the Corinthians passage, “A demonstration of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good.”  So first, each person is given gifts.  And second, all these gifts are for everyone’s good, for the common good.

               But we struggle with both of these things, don’t we?  And, frankly, this is a human problem that has been in existence from the very beginning.  In this passage from Numbers, Joshua had trouble with the fact that other people besides Moses were given spiritual gifts, that they could prophesy too.  He wanted Moses to stop these other people, to prevent them using their gifts.  Of course, Moses was able to see a bigger vision, “Are you jealous for my sake?  If only all God’s people were prophets with the spirit on them!”  And this happens in the New Testament too.  In Mark 9 (and in Luke 9), we hear the story of the disciples getting upset with Jesus because someone other than them was throwing out demons in Jesus’ name.  The scripture reads, “John said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.’  Jesus replied, ‘Don’t stop him!  No one who does powerful acts in my name can quickly turn around and curse me.  Whoever isn’t against us is for us.’”

               But we have trouble with this, don’t we?  And I’d say our trouble with this is on both ends.  First, we don’t like others being able to do what we feel is for us to do alone.  Like in the PCUSA there was a huge debate about whether or not Commission Lay Preachers (so people who don’t have the same kind of theological training as our pastors) should be allowed to serve churches, to serve communion, to moderate session, to do baptisms.  Many pastors felt that they did not want to share what we ourselves have been trained to do.  On the other end of this, then, is people who feel they don’t have the rights and privileges of serving God in the same way or to the same degree as those of us who are ordained.  One of my pastor friends this week was sharing that he is struggling with his congregation because people are not stepping up to help.  They are all asking him, “What should we do?  Lead us!”  And he is burning out.  Their need for his leadership is understandable.  When things are different and difficult, when people are in grief and in pain, they want leadership.  They want answers.  They want someone to guide them and tell them what to do.  But what all of these stories show us is that, as we say in the Presbyterian church, “the ministers are all the people.”  Too often in our churches, people become used to being an audience rather than a participant.  And when that happens, they fail to see their own gifts, their own callings within the church.  We have different gifts.  Maybe you are not comfortable with public speaking, but you are comfortable with listening to someone.  Maybe you are not comfortable teaching, but you have gifts for seeing the big picture and looking down the road for what is best to be done.  Maybe you don’t have the gift of comforting others, but you are able to tell stories in such a way that people are touched and moved.  Maybe you don’t have the gift of seeing what is to come, but you are an artist of some kind: a musician, a painter, a dancer, or a storyteller who can tell deeper truths through your art.  We all have these gifts.  If you don’t know what your gift is, this is a wonderful time to take space to figure out what it is.  Try new things, explore the callings, the tuggings, the urgings of your heart and see what you can learn.  But each of us has gifts.  And it is not right for us to think that one gift is more important or more valuable than another gift.  As the Corinthians passage said, “Christ is just like the human body – a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many.”  In other places Paul says that the weakest parts of the body are to be honored the most.  And truthfully, we are only as strong as our weakest link.  That goes for our families, our churches, and also our country, and our world.  All of your gifts figure into the leadership of the church, not as watchers, not as people being entertained, but as participants in worship, in the life of the church, in service, and in the community.  The new language, then, of Pentecost, is a common language of everyone being touched by the flame of the Spirit in shared leadership within the church and without as well.

               The second part of this then, is that all of the gifts we are given are for the COMMON good.  They are not for you, they are not for one person or for one family.  They are all for the common good.  During this time, we look for a difference between social distancing and spiritual distancing.  And we find that we are being called to use a different language, or different languages within the church.  We are not, during this time, speaking in languages of being together in body, but we are learning to speak a new language in the church of being together on-line, and in prayer, and through bible study.  We are learning new languages of being together virtually as we figure out how to care for one another even from a distance and how to care for those most impacted by the virus whether that be because of disease, or lack of work and resources.  The languages of our activity are different now.  Our activity is more “home based.” But still, the language of Pentecost, the language of prayer, the language of faith, is a universal, communal language for all people, no matter how we are speaking it, no matter where we are speaking it, no matter in what way we are speaking it. 

               Without Pentecost, Easter is not participatory.  Without Pentecost, Easter itself is just something we see, that we watch, that we hear about.  But with Pentecost, the church is born.  And the church is community, it is action.  It is the speaking of a new language, a language of prayer, a language of singing, a language of caring for one another both within the church community and without, but in new ways.  The language of Pentecost is putting aside the individual in favor of the communal.  What is best for all people?  What is best for community? 

               I think about the times that we are in.  I read an article that was talking about how people were much more willing to shelter in place and be careful and protective when they thought that the people affected by the disease were people like them.  As soon as they came to see that the people being affected were different or other than them, people have moved to reopen, to not be afraid to risk the lives of “those people over there.”  You may have all seen on the news the sign held by someone at one of the protests against the shelter in place “sacrifice the weak: reopen.”   He didn’t see himself as part of “the weak” so he was willing for others to be sacrificed.  Or another one, “Sacrifice the elderly: reopen.” As we learn that people of color are being more deeply affected by this than white people, I have heard things much worse.  But as the church we are called to care for everyone.

               I saw a video this week.  A man was asked if he thought that it was okay if people died in order to reopen things.  He said he thought it was.  The interviewer asked him how many people he would think it would be okay to sacrifice in order to reopen the community.  The man said, “between 70 and 700.”  I don’t know where he came up with that number.  But the interview repeated back to him, “So, you feel it would be okay if 70 people died in order to reopen things around here?”  “Yes,” the man replied.  The interviewer then said, “well, we just happen to have 70 people.”  And around the corner came 70 people, in the front of the group was a child, about 5 years old.  And as they rounded the corner, the little girl starting running towards the man being interviewed.  He looked stunned and he said, “That’s my family!”  The little girl who’d started running towards him yelled “Daddy!” and threw herself in his arms.  At that point the interviewer asked him again, “how many people did you say could die in order to reopen this area?”  To which the sobbing man replied, “none!”

               Again, we may think this is hokey. And it was a bit: it had me sobbing by the end, which was the intention, I’m sure.  I also realize that things are much more complicated than this.  As businesses close, people are losing work, losing income.  They are struggling to put food on their tables and to care for their children.  These are real problems too and the answers to these problems are not as simple as “stay closed or re-open.”  It’s just not that easy.

               But in some cases, the situation is a lot more clear cut.  I am shocked by how many churches, church communities, for example, have decided to put what?  Their pastor’s needs?  Above the needs of the community.  Churches across the nation are becoming the hot spots of the virus: spreading disease not only among their members but then out into the larger communities because they are reopening too soon.  And why are they doing this?  What is the loss to the church if we learn how to stay connected through the internet, through phone, through the mail, through our prayers rather than gathering together in person?  But churches seem to have forgotten to love their neighbors as themselves.  We are called to be Christian first and foremost, called to love our neighbors as ourselves, and churches, of all places, must remember to love their neighbors, their members, those people their members interact with, and the needs of the larger community for healing, for some time and space to figure out cures and vaccines, for some time of social healing, as themselves. 

               I think about the story of Abraham confronting God when God wanted to wipe out the city of Sodom.  In Genesis 18, Abraham approached God and said, “Will you really sweep away the innocent with the guilty? What if there are fifty innocent people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not save the place for the sake of the fifty innocent people in it?  It’s not like you to do this, killing the innocent with the guilty as if there were no difference.  It’s not like you! Will the judge of all the earth not act justly?” The Lord said, “If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will save it because of them.” Abraham responded, “Since I’ve already decided to speak with my Lord, even though I’m just soil and ash,  what if there are five fewer innocent people than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city over just five?” The Lord said, “If I find forty-five there, I won’t destroy it.” Once again Abraham spoke, “What if forty are there?”  The Lord said, “For the sake of forty, I will do nothing.”  He said, “Don’t be angry with me, my Lord, but let me speak. What if thirty are there?” The Lord said, “I won’t do it if I find thirty there.”  Abraham said, “Since I’ve already decided to speak with my Lord, what if twenty are there?”  The Lord said, “I won’t do it, for the sake of twenty.”  Abraham said, “Don’t be angry with me, my Lord, but let me speak just once more. What if there are ten?”  And the Lord said, “I will not destroy it because of those ten.” When the Lord finished speaking with Abraham, he left; but Abraham stayed there in that place.

               We too, should spare the city, or the church, or the world, because there are at least ten folk among us who are vulnerable and do not deserve to be put at risk.

               We forget that God is in all places and in all situations.  We forget the spiritual truths that connect us, the spiritual practices of prayer, sabbath, study.  We forget that God is bigger than this time and that this time, too, will pass.  We forget the importance of healing to Jesus, and of times of sabbatical for all people.  This virus is calling us into these spiritual practices.  And calling us to learn new languages of connection through conversation which can be done on phone, mail and on-line.

               Our challenge is to be tree-planters, which we plant for other people: for our children’s children.  Olive trees take 100 years to bear fruit.  But people planted them for their children’s children.  We tend to be people of “now”.  We forget to think of others and we forget to think ahead.  But this time is calling us to remember. 

               The story of Pentecost is a story of understanding, of all people across all differences coming together and speaking and understanding a universal language.  That language is the language of the Spirit, the language of God.  That language is the language of Love.

Disagreements and Conflicts

5/10/20

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Mark 12:1-17

It is not easy being a person of faith in this time.  I would say this is the case in many different ways.  We hear about Christians being judgmental, we hear about Christians being really stupid.  We hear about Christians doing really dumb things, and personally, I find myself embarrassed by many of the other people of faith who call themselves Christians.  For example, you’ve probably all heard about the pastors in California who sued the governor for his “shelter in place” ruling because they feel this restricts their ability to worship together.  This kind of non-feeling, refusal to care for the people in their communities and the people around the world embarrasses me and makes me afraid to call myself a Christian in some places.  And this behavior is frankly just the least of the embarrassing things that people of faith have said, done, or proclaim in the name of a loving God that I find horrifying, unkind, and certainly unloving.

But the truth is that all of us, ALL of us who claim to follow Christ are in the process of becoming Christian.  What I mean is that none of us, not one, has perfectly learned yet to love God with all our hearts, soul and minds, let alone learned to love our neighbor as ourselves.  None of us has yet perfected healing one another with our listening, with our touch, with our love.  None of us remembers in every moment to thank God, and to be God’s completely faithful servant.  We are all learning to feed the hungry, love each other, see each other person as the brother or sister that they are, give beyond ourselves.  Becoming a Christian, having a relationship with God, going to church every week: no matter how far we are on our journey, none of these things makes us perfect - none of these things makes us as Christ-like as we strive to become, once and for all.  But they are all a start, a part of our journey as Christians.

We continue to strive and struggle to be loving, giving people.  As Jesus himself said, he did not come for those who are well, he came for those of us who are not yet there.  Church, faith, is not a haven for the righteous.  It is a place where people who know they are limited and that they have failings come together in mutual support, in love, in service to one another and to the greater community.  Throughout my life I have had many different people tell me that they don’t go to church because of the hypocrisy they find there.  When pushed on what that means, they tell me that the people they met in church were like everyone else.  They weren’t better than other people.  They made mistakes, did things wrong, did not always even see that they did things wrong.  Sometimes they were unkind, sometimes they were unloving.  As a result, people stopped attending church.  I have to admit, I find this responses very confusing.  Of course, we are not better than others, and you will find unkindness and lack of love everywhere.  We are here because we are on a journey, striving to love God and one another.  We will never reach that perfection, and, truthfully, neither will they.

This struggle to be whole, this struggle to be Christ-like, this struggle to love and be in relationship with one another is not anything new for Christians of any age.  The passage we read today from 1 Corinthians addresses that. While our struggle to become Christian takes many forms, in this passage Paul is talking about the challenges Christians had at the very beginning, and that we still have,  to be in loving relationships even within our Christian community.  We hear Paul admonishing a congregation for failing to get along with one another, for fighting with each other.  Paul’s solution is simply to tell them all to agree with one another. But we know that is not so easy. Even before Paul, we see in the gospel lessons for today people of faith who were struggling with Jesus.  And Jesus is telling us parables of conflict, of anger, among people who should have been loving to one another, should have seen their dependence and connection to one another, should have shared, and been kind and loving to those sent to collect for the master.  But they couldn’t.  They didn’t.  And the same remains true for us today.

I read an article this week by Karoline Lewis in which she wrote,

“We are no strangers to the kind of division in communities of which Paul speaks -- racial, denominational, and political. And our strategies for negotiating these divisions leave much to be desired. It often comes down to choosing sides, as if the spectrum between the two poles did not exist. It would be better if we only chose sides. Instead, we choose which side we are on and then, to make ourselves feel better or justified about our decision, we proceed to suspect, demonize, and tear down the other side. But as Elias Chacour (Father Chacour is the Archbishop Emeritus of the Melkite Catholic Church for Akko, Haifa, Nazareth, and all Galilee, an advocate for non-violence, working toward reconciliation between Arabs and Jews with whom our group had a chance to meet) says, “The one who is wrong is the one who says ‘I am right.’”

We are also no strangers to the kind of division that the gospel provokes. And sometimes we forget just how divisive the gospel can be. Choosing regard over rejection, respect over diminution, love over hate, peace over conflict is not as easy as we hope it could be, as we wish it would be. It seems like it should be easy -- and that’s the problem. Why is it that we find it so difficult to make what appears to be a rather obvious choice? A choice for love? What stands in our way? What is at stake for us that we are reluctant to admit or to say out loud?”

She went on to talk about a group that she is with of Palestinians and Israelis who’ve lost loved ones in the conflict and she said one of the fathers of those who had died said this: “No wall, not matter how high, can stop two kinds of people, one determined suicide bomber and the one determined peacemaker.”  http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4249

Paul and Jesus are both calling us to be the peacemakers who cannot be stopped.  But we know from personal experience that getting along with one another is hard.

Truthfully, even hearing one another accurately is not easy.  Most of you, no doubt are familiar with the childhood game, which we called “operator” when I was a kid.  A group sits in a circle and one person whispers a message to the person on their right.  That person then passes that message on to the person on his or her right.  The message passes all around the circle until the last person finally repeats the message out loud.  It has usually become something very different from what it was originally.  As this simple child-hood game shows us, even hearing clearly the words of one another can be challenging. 

               Hearing the message within our words is even harder.  I have found myself reflecting during this time when there is more quiet for reflection, on a relationship I’ve had with someone I’ve known now for 30 years.  This is someone who simply never understands what I say to him.  I will think I am telling him the sky is beautiful and he will become offended thinking I am telling him that he is not beautiful.  I keep trying to have conversations with him, but he is always offended by what I say, and always insistent that I am being uncaring with my words.  I don’t know why my words affect him like this.  I will probably never know.  But I know that communication is just hard.  Today is mother’s day, and we know that even within our families, it can be so hard to hear and understand one another.  Communication is challenging.  We are all watching this service today because we believe in a marvelous, amazing, wonderful God who has called us to be here, whatever that looks like for you, to be on our spiritual journeys, to be in a state of prayer and praise together.  But that wonder, that gift, that awe does not mean that it suddenly becomes easy for us to really communicate, to understand one another, or to then choose to be in relationship with one another.  Our churches have struggled with understanding one another and with divisions between us from the beginning.  That continues as we move through time.

I’m also not convinced that all disagreements are bad things.  When we can be in the place of hearing the different opinions, hopes, dreams of one another, we can grow from the experience.  Without those challenges, growth is not as forthcoming.  Hearing only our own thoughts and feelings, we can fail to see the amazing places God would show us and move us.  But getting to that place where we can hear those differences and share them is not easy. 

I have to admit, even for pastors, though part of my job is to love the entire congregation and to be able to listen, hear, and support every person in a congregation who seeks that support, there have been times when this has not always been easy.  It has not always been easy for me to be in a community of very differently minded people.  And it can be especially hard when those differently minded people are very vocal about those opinions, and sometimes are unkind in the expression of those opinions, as some people in our churches tend to be.  For a year, many years ago, I served as an interim music minister in a congregation that was in a difficult place: many parishioners were elderly and dying, the congregation was very diverse in ways that brought both gifts and, in their case, much conflict into the fellowship, they were a redevelopment church that wasn’t quite ready to make the radical changes necessary to keep it alive, and they had gone through a series of challenging relationships with previous pastors and music directors.  Because of all they had been through, they did not trust others easily and were especially suspicious of people they didn’t know, especially if they had been hand-picked by outsiders to the congregation, and had been “assigned,” as I was, to serve in that particular church.  When I was hired on there was, predictably, a lot of hostility thrown my direction.  One example that might illustrate the point -  I came on board about a month and a half before Easter.  At our first choir rehearsal, I brought out Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus to see if it was an Easter possibility and to get a sense of the abilities of the choir.  We ran through the piece one time, after which I began to make suggestions, as choir directors are supposed to do, on ways we might improve our performance.  But just as I got the first sentence out of my mouth, one of the choir members demanded of me “How old are you?”  Stunned by the interruption, I answered that I was 30, which at the time, I was.  She responded, “Well we’ve been singing this longer than you’ve been alive so we don’t need you telling us how to do it!”  A fine start to our friendly Christian community relationship.  As I said there was a great deal of hostility and it came from several corners.  It was not long before I could identify my self-appointed “assistant choir directors” and could count on their “suggestions” and other comments as one might count on the structure of any organized group.  But I also began to try to befriend the especially hostile members of the choir.  And, also predictably, their hostility lessened in almost direct proportion to how much time I took to hear them, how accurately I listened, and how deeply they felt I understood.  Unfortunately, there remained a couple women that would not let me in.  In the end, their continued hostility probably formed part of my decision to leave at the end of that first year, though I was an interim music director and at the time I told myself I was leaving because the interim work was finished.   I look back on that experience with sadness.  It was hard to get close to these women.  It was hard to want to get close to them in light of their hostility.  But I wish I had tried a little harder.  As their personal stories were revealed to me by others in the church, I learned that they were in a lot of pain, pain it was not easy for anyone, within or without of the church, to break through.  But in that painful place, these parishioners needed others to hear them, they needed friendly caring faces to acknowledge them, they needed someone to say, “even when you hurt me, I still love you, accept you as my sister and will stand with you.”   Instead, I allowed their anger and hostility to drive me out, and in so doing, I added, I learned later, another layer to their feelings of abandonment and pain.

 Even in Christian community there will be times when we cannot work through differences and find we have to worship and love God in separate places.  But we are called to love and to work at wholeness in all our relationships, no matter how they end, with everything we have. Perhaps if I had worked harder, if we had worked harder, even with my leaving, there might have been healing that happened for myself, these women and the community.  Perhaps, had we worked harder, we might have seen God’s action in this situation, God’s movement in each other, God’s face in one another. 

I don’t think that we are required to always agree with one another.  Sometimes being in relationship with each other looks like agreeing to disagree after we have heard and loved one another.  Sometimes being in Christian fellowship will mean we have to work, searching even harder for solutions that are acceptable to everyone involved, despite our differences.  But God is in the challenging people of this world and in their work, as much as God might be present in our own work.  God loves those we do not understand as much as God loves us.  And God calls us to love and to be in community with all of our neighbors, even those who make us see red, those who hurt us, those whom we feel we cannot agree with. Maybe God presents God-self most firmly in people we struggle to hear and know.  For in that struggle we grow in our patience, we grow in our ability to see God as bigger than we knew God to be before, we grow in our ability to love and therefore we grow in our process of becoming Christian.  It is part of our Christian call to sit in those uncomfortable places with those people who anger us and look for where God’s face and God’s words are even in their words, even in their messages. 

Brian Peterson said, “True love is not measured by how good it makes us feel: it would be better to say that the measure of love is its capacity for tension and disagreement without division.”

Psalm 27 ends with the words, “‘Seek God’s face!’  Your face, O God, I will seek.”  In the end this is our call.  When we seek God’s face in each other, even in those we struggle to love and understand, our struggles with one another will be different.  For in listening to each other, we open the space for God’s words to come in, for God’s face to shine, for God’s help in our journey to become Christian.  Amen.