Arguing with God

Exodus 33:vs. 3 and 12-23

Jonah 3:10-4:11

Mark 7:24-30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For a while, furious.”

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

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

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

Amen.

The Spiritual Gift of Simplicity

Matthew 19:16-22

Luke 12:13-22

                During lent this year, we will be focusing on Spiritual Disciplines. I want to start by clarifying that discipline does not mean something painful or harsh or unpleasant.  Instead they are called spiritual “disciplines” because they are ways of organizing, committing to and structuring our dedication to a behavior or way of being.  Spiritual disciplines are activities that bring us closer to God.  The purpose of the disciplines is to help us focus on our relationship with God for a specific period of time, and to invite us to ask, with our behavior, Where is God in our experience?  How do we discern God’s presence?  And what is God doing anew in our lives?  The disciplines are for the purpose of relationship with God.  Therefore it is very important that they be about relationship and not about being rigid or stuck in a behavior.  Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, who is known as an expert on spiritual disciplines put it this way, “The way to death is to turn spiritual disciplines into laws.”  They are meant for our good, and they are meant to enhance our faith and relationships with God. 

                There are 12 spiritual disciplines that Foster identifies.  Four are considered inner disciplines and those include prayer, fasting, meditation and reading or study.  Then there are four outward disciplines: simplicity, solitude, submission and service.  Finally there are four disciplines that are considered communal: confession, worship, guidance and celebration.  Some of these - prayer, reading, confession, service and worship, in particular, we practice regularly in the church.  Others you might do on your own – meditation, for example, or seeking guidance.  But others we are less familiar with. 

                Of those twelve disciplines, fasting, or the giving up of something intentionally, is the one we most often focus on during lent.  But I would invite us to try to add or to focus on any of these spiritual disciplines during lent as a way to intentionally deepen and focus our relationship with God.  There are twelve, and yet we tend to focus on the one of fasting from something in particular.  But I would like to  encourage all of us to expand our way of thinking about these disciplines, and instead of thinking of giving something up, think of adding a practice into your faith commitments.

                Each week I will focus on one of the spiritual disciplines in particular as well, and today I would like to start our Lenten focus by talking about simplicity.  The idea behind simplicity is that we become enslaved to the complicated things in our life, in particular the “things”, the possessions that clutter our lives.  Most of our fear in this world seems to be directly tied to anxiety about losing our stuff, our possessions and therefore the things that we think make us secure.  And as a people, we are controlled by that fear.  It enslaves us.  Therefore, the spiritual discipline of simplicity calls us to let go of the fear, that bondage and enslavement to our stuff.  To trust instead that we can survive, truly, with nothing but God.  Our fear, and our desire to protect ourselves with possessions, separates us from God.  Our desire to hold on to our things separates us from truly relying on and trusting God.  The spiritual discipline of simplicity calls us to be intentional about letting go of those things that build a wall between ourselves and God, that separate us from God.

I have mentioned before that there have been a number of studies that show that the richest people in the United States give a shockingly small percentage of their incomes to charities, while the poorest people in our nations give a huge percentage.  An article came out in a few years ago in Forbes Magazine that looked at giving and indicated that this trend is on the increase: the poor are giving more and more of their resources and the rich are giving less and less. I’ve shared with you before the joke about the poor man who begged God for money with the promise that he would give 10% of everything he earned.  After finding 10$, he faithfully gave one back.  Then he found $100 and faithfully gave back $10.  He soon found a job and was making $10,000, and faithfully returning $1000 of it.  But when he got to the place where he was making $100,000 and had to give $10K of that back, or later when he made $1,000,000 and had to give back $100,000 to keep his promise, he began to feel very uneasy.  He went to the local priest to ask how he could get out of his deal with God.  The priest responded, “Well, I don’t think you can get out of the deal.  But I’m sure God would be happy to return you to making only $100 or so, if you’d be more comfortable only giving $10.

It is clear that it should not be the case that the poor give so much more than the rich. And the reality is that we could go a long way towards ending suffering if the rich were to give even a small percentage more than they currently give.  We could easily end world hunger.  We could fix the water problems around the world.  But the reality is that the more we have, the more fearful we seem to become about losing what we have.  So fearful, as I said, that we hold on tighter and tighter to what we believe is “ours” forgetting completely that nothing we have is ours – all of it belongs to God.  We are stewards of God’s resources, and as such, are called to use the resources entrusted to us for the good of all people, not the good of ourselves alone. I am reminded of the parable Jesus told of the servants who were given the talents of differing amounts.  Do we bury the resources we are given?  Do we SPEND the resources we are given on ourselves?  Or do we share them, grow them, use them for God’s good which is the good of God’s creation? 

                Simplicity, learning to live with less stuff, learning to depend less on our things and more on God teaches us that God really is all we need and that forming idols from our things does not make us happy, healthy or whole.

                If we decide to take this on, then, as a spiritual discipline, where do we start?

There are specific things we can do towards the goal of simplicity:

a.        Buy things for their usefulness rather than simply because they are pretty or because we like them.

b.       Reject addictive things

c.       Get used to giving things away

d.       Refuse to be propagandized

e.       Enjoy things without owning them (library books, videos, skates, etc.)

f.        Appreciate creation

g.       Pay for things now, not later – incurring debt is not conducive to simplicity

h.       Use simple speech: in other words, don’t use big words when simple ones will do.  Don’t feel the need to say in a paragraph what can be said in a single sentence.  Don’t repeat yourself.

i.         Reject things that oppress others – this includes ideas as well as things that put some people in an oppressive position: women, people of color, hierarchies of relationships.  This includes being aware of the chain of events that leads to each product that you buy, and make care to buy from places and from people and specific objects that do not hurt people in order for you to obtain them: don’t buy things made with child labor or slave labor.  Buy things that are purchased fairly and that pay the actual workers fairly.  Don’t buy products that harm the environment or that are made by harming the environment.  Be aware of where you buy things and how things come to be on your shopping list.

j.         Shun things that distract you from God: social media, TV, or anything that takes you away from God.

                None of these things are easy.  But as a Lenten discipline, I think the intentional choosing of simplicity is an act that can have a radical effect on how a person relates to God. 

                Rev. Mark Scandrette said this in the study, "Animate", “Shortly after I began working as a pastor, I had a moment of crisis. One Sunday morning I was standing in the pulpit preaching and as I looked out on the congregation, I saw people falling asleep and fidgeting in their seats anxious to get home to watch the game or to get to the restaurant before the noonday rush. I knew that no matter what I said people would come through the line after the service, dutifully shake my hand and say, “good message pastor” or maybe make a comment about a funny story I’d told.  The possibility that I might spend a life time of Sundays reenacting this script made me want to scream, “Is anybody listening?!  This should really make a difference in how we live our lives!”  And then I thought about myself that I could preach a sermon about love and then go home and be crabby with my family.  Or talk about God’s heart for justice knowing that I wasn’t in relationship with anybody in poverty or struggle myself.  This was all going through my mind while I was speaking and I wondered, is anyone actually listening to what I’m saying? Is what we are doing here making a difference for any of us?  Do I really know what I’m speaking about from lived experience with God?  Or am I just regurgitating what I’ve read?  Maybe we’ve forgotten that Christianity isn’t just something to believe, but it’s a way of life that we are being invited to practice.  It seemed to me that we were being invited not just to (rehash) the Christian story but to become part of it, joining what our maker is doing to bring healing, restoration and hope to our world.  It’s what Jesus described as the kingdom of God or what I call Jesus’ revolution of love. I realize that many of the ways I’ve learned to be religious didn’t naturally move me towards transformation for the good of the world.  It was easy to get stuck in my head. There was a huge gap between how I wanted to live and how I actually lived.  My practices tended to be individualistic, information driven and disconnected from the gritty details of life.  Slowly I began to realize that if I was going to be part of the revolution of love that  Jesus embodied and promised, that I would need to be more honest, more active and more connected with other people. …  We won’t learn how to practice the way of Jesus without taking tangible steps to walk in his way.  The promise of the gospel is that we can learn a whole new way to be human, to live without worry, fear, greed, lust or anger.  To live a life animated and empowered by love.  This is the kind of life Jesus lived and invites us to experience. ….” 

                Mark Scandrette talked about a number of things his congregation did and does as a way of following Jesus.  One of them had to do with the Lenten discipline of simplicity and that was the “have two, give one away”, which simply means if you have two of something, give the second one away.  The congregants met weekly for two months, talking through the stuff that they had, what they really needed, and what could be given away or sold to help those who have less.  In the process of selling and slimming down and giving away, they raised thousands of dollars to help overcome poverty.  But as Mark realized, the practice probably did not make a big dent in the world’s poverty.  Instead, it changed those who engaged this practice of simplifying.  They came to really look at their stuff in a different way: as resources, lent to them by God for the use of all of God’s people, as objects that could be used for God’s glory, or could be simply selfishly held on to for one’s own pleasure. 

My last congregation tried a similar project.  We worked together and supported one another in going through our things and collecting objects for a huge rummage sale with the idea that we would not be selling these objects to one another, but really getting rid of things that were no longer useful, had no purpose other than self-gratification, were cluttering and complicating our lives in a time when we were called to simplify and cut back. All of the money we raised then went towards hunger issues. I would encourage you all to consider doing the same.  Go through your things this winter and spring.  Really look hard at what you have that you don’t use or don’t need, see what you have two of that you only need one of.  Again, this is for OUR benefit.  We may not change the world by it, but we can start to change ourselves as we strive to be closer to God and more active in our following of Jesus.  This is just one way, but I find that the de-cluttering of our lives, the simplifying of our lives is an amazing step towards overcoming fear and greed in particular.  It is an invitation to rely more fully on God.  It is an invitation to trust.  It is a call to be more fully present with God.  And that is a gift indeed.  Amen.

Healing the Demons

                                    Isaiah 40:21-31

                                    Mark 1:29-39

                                     

As you reflect on the New Testament passage for today, what things stand out for you?  The part that always strikes me is summed in the last sentence of the New Testament passage, “And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” Jesus sees two aspects to his ministry.  First, he is proclaiming the message – and what is that message?  According to Mark it is “the good news of God, that the kingdom of God is near” - (Mark 1:14-15).  This was once again in direct contrast to the message of the Pharisees and Scribes who were insisting that God and God’s kingdom were far away, holy and separate and required strict obedience to the law.  Instead, Jesus is saying that God is close – God is ABBA, which literally means “Daddy” – not a distant father figure, not someone who stands in judgment and concern about following rules, but a close Daddy, a loving, close parent.  The kingdom of God is not inaccessible, but present, here, standing in front of them.  Proclaiming that is Jesus’ first job. 

The second part of that passage says that he was doing what?  Casting out demons.  In other words, he was making that kingdom of God present for the people in his community at that time who were isolated, who were ill, who were rejected and outcast and who were unable to be the whole people God created them to be. 

These are the two things that made up Jesus’ ministry during his life: proclaiming that God’s reign was here, and bringing God’s realm to earth, just as we pray every week in the Lord’s prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”  This is what Jesus did and he mostly did this in the form of healing – at all levels – those around him.

Today I want to focus on that second part of Jesus’ job; the part about casting out demons. This is language which is different from what we are used to. We don’t usually talk about demons or demon possession. But it is not really that we are afflicted differently from the people of Jesus’ time. It is, rather, that we don’t use the same name for those things that USED to be believed to be demons.  To put it another way, we still experience things that prevent us from being the best versions of ourselves, the most effective, most fulfilled, most giving, most serving, most present, most whole, most holy versions of ourselves.  For example, it used to be believed that schizophrenia and other mental illnesses were demon possession. They certainly can prevent people from being the best God-servants, or the most whole that they can be.  Addictions are also "demons" in this sense.   If it is an addiction to drugs or alcohol, these can also prevent people from being active, contributing, helpful members of society.  They cause us to act badly towards other people, to be irresponsible.  Other addictions can injure or possess us in other ways that maybe only affect us internally, but still do not allow us to be the fullest, best, most whole people God calls us to be in our bodies as well as in our minds and spirits.  We can often see these kinds of demons from a long way off, we recognize these problems or issues that others have and we know they need to get them under control or exorcised or "fixed" in order for people to reach their greatest potential.  Jesus, in his ministry, cast out these demons. 

There are other obvious burdens or handicaps that also make life hard for people to thrive in this world: poverty, lack of education, a lack of resources and the knowledge of how to “work the system” leave many people in places where they cannot be the best they were created to be.

But, using this same language of demons, I think there are many other kinds of "demons" that are harder to see - or that are so common that we forget how limiting and problematic they really are. Fear is at the top of this list. Fear stops us from being generous or caring for others ("if we give what we have, there might not be enough for us!").  Fear stops us from reaching out to those most in need ("I can't go into that neighborhood - I'll be hurt!" and "Those people are just going to take advantage of me!"). In an extreme amount fear stops people from loving ("I might be hurt: might be rejected") and we know that phobias prevent people from living.

There are other demons as well: low self-esteem keeps some people from being able to respond to opportunities, or stops people from being allowed, at times, to really be of use to other people. Guilt, shame, regret: these can be useful in small amounts - helping us to see where we need to change, what we need to do to grow. But in large amounts these too can be debilitating, stopping us from taking the risks needed to be whole people, preventing us from living in joy and love and hope. Depression, loneliness, anxiety, jealousy, even grief - all of these can be debilitating, limiting and can feel like we are carrying unwanted demons around with us.

How do we, in today’s society, overcome these challenges? Counseling, groups, education, in some cases medicine. But I believe that we would be better able to overcome these if we also recognized the spiritual aspect of each of these problems, or in a sense, returned at some level to seeing them as "demons:" demons that need to be sent out and away, demons that we no longer wish to carry within us, but hope to ban from our beings, demons that need to be spiritually treated as well as physically, emotionally, mentally. I can't help but wonder if the rituals that used to exorcise demons didn't help people to overcome them in a way that we have lost. If we were to use ALL the resources at our disposal in order to overcome these trials - counseling, groups, education, medicine, friends, AND the spiritual rituals that call on God's help in a community of people all praying and surrounding the one hurting with those prayers, and that commitment to asking God for help, we would undoubtedly have more success. 

Most of us in our churches are comfortable with prayer.  But there are other spiritual gifts, spiritual disciplines, spiritual practices that we engage less, or that feel uncomfortable to some of us. Asking others to pray for us can be uncomfortable, but God gives us this community to help us. Meeting in faith based groups to ask specifically for the purpose of healing is not as common but can be a very helpful spiritual tool.  Bible reading: especially praying some of the psalms of anger and lament can be spiritually healing.  We often feel it isn’t “polite” to cry out in anger or frustration to God, but many of our psalms are prayers which do exactly that and give us both the models for how to do that as well as permission to express our feelings, all of our feelings to God. Fasting, Meditation, the laying on of hands, and speaking the truth.  All of these are tools that we have with us all the time. 
            Jesus’ ministry was in large part about casting out these demons.  I realize that Jesus isn’t walking among us and I believe that God does send us the counselors and doctors and others who help us with these problems today.  Also, it can be problematic if we rely solely on prayer, and don’t use the other tools God has given us for healing.  For example, you’ve all heard of faith healers who, when they aren’t able to heal someone, accuse that person of not having enough faith.  That is hugely problematic, especially since, as Paul tells us, faith is a gift from God, not something someone can “muster” or increase on their own.  I’m not suggesting that we ignore the gifts of healing that surround us in our medical fields.

But failing to turn to serious prayer, to the power of the community of the faithful to surrounding a person, to the spiritual guides and practices and gifts that God gives us to help us with these problems is failing to recognize that half of Jesus’ ministry was about moving people out of their pain, isolation, the depth of their sorrow and into healing.

I think the power of 12 step programs is that they bring back into the struggle with addictions, a spiritual connection, prayer and spiritual disciplines.  The 12 steps of looking at yourself, giving up your attempts to control what is really God’s to control, facing those things that you can control and that you have done: offering amends, asking forgiveness, learning to forgive yourself and others – these are all spiritual disciplines.  These are all ways of releasing the things that block our relationships with God.  These are all ways of re-connecting with God, whatever God is for you, and recommitting to that relationship with God.

Frederick Buechner says this about healing in his book “Wishful Thinking” :

The Gospels depict Jesus as having spent a surprising amount of time healing people… 

This is entirely compatible, of course, with the Hebrew view of man as a psychosomatic unity, an individual amalgam of body and soul whereby if either goes wrong, the other is affected.  It is significant also that the Greek verb sozo was used in Jesus’ day to mean both to save and to heal, and soter could signify either savior or physician. 

Ever since the time of Jesus, healing has been part of the Christian tradition.  In this century it has usually been associated with religious quackery or the lunatic fringe, but as the psychosomatic dimension of disease has come to be taken more and more seriously by medical science it has regained some of its former respectability.  How nice for God to have this support at last.

Jesus is reported to have made the blind see and the lame walk, and over the centuries countless miraculous healings have been claimed in his name…  You can always give it a try.  Pray for healing.  If it’s somebody else’s healing you’re praying for, you can try at the same time laying your hands on him as Jesus sometimes did.  If his sickness involves his body as well as his soul, then God may be able to use your inept hands as well as your inept faith to heal him.  If you feel like a fool as you are doing this, don’t let it throw you.  You are a fool of course, only not a damned fool for a change….If God doesn’t seem to be giving you what you ask, maybe he’s giving you something else.”

            Jesus was a healer.  He cast out demons of all kinds.  And he invites us to help him in the recovery, in the healing, in the movement towards wholeness of all we encounter.  That has to start with our faith.  From that place of faith we can help people find the ways to heal physically, emotionally, mentally, and especially spiritually.  We are called to see others as the whole people they are, and to address them with every tool God has given us.  Thanks be to God that Jesus was the master physician, that the Christ continues to be the master healer, and that God calls us to follow suit, proclaiming the good news and casting out demons, in all that we do.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Prayer and Instruction

2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5

Psalm 119:97-104

Luke 18:1-8

10/16/16

A High-School English teacher was well known for being a fair, but hard, grader. One day Tim received a B minus on a theme paper. In hopes of bettering his grade and in the spirit of the valentine season, he sent her an extravagant heart-shaped box of chocolates with the pre-printed inscription: "Be Mine."  The following day, he received in return a valentine from the teacher. It read: "Thank you, but it's still Be Mine-Us."

               Instruction and persistent prayer.  Those are the focuses of today’s scriptures.  We need to follow God’s instructions.  And we need to be persistent in our praying.  But the question that all of this raises is simply, “why”?  Why do we need to follow God’s instruction?  And why do we need to be persistent in our praying?  Is it because God wants us to prove that we are faithful?  Is it because God needs to test our faith by seeing how often we are willing to think about, and engage God by following the Bible or by praying?  Is it because the instructions God gives are simply the right thing to do? 

               The psalm passage we read for today tells us that it is through following God’s instructions, doing what we learn to be right from scripture and study, that we come to know God, to understand God, who God is and God’s ways.  Reading scripture brings us into spending time with God, learning what God asks us to do and making an effort to follow that path, leads us closer to understanding God, praying opens our hearts and souls to hearing God and being led by God in new ways. 

               In 12-step programs people are encouraged to pray good things for those who have hurt them.  It is a hard practice, to pray everything good for someone who has hurt you, angered you, betrayed you.  A friend of mine, whom I will call Jane, grew up in an abusive household.  After several years in a 12-step group, she decided to undertake the very hard task of praying good things for her abusive mother in particular.  She found it so hard to do at first that she set herself the task to pray for 30 seconds a day for her mom good things.  At first, she did not feel the prayers she was praying.  She prayed for health for her mother and found anger rising within herself about her mother’s failure to care for Jane physically.  She prayed for her mother’s happiness, and found herself internally raging at her mother for making her childhood a living hell.  But she kept at it.  Within a week she found she could extend her prayer time for her mom to a minute, though she still didn’t really feel the prayers she was offering.  Within a month, she extended the prayer time to 10 minutes a day and actually began to genuinely wish good things for her mom.  By the end of six months, she found herself able to forgive her, to let go of her anger and pain, and even to find compassion within herself for what her mom had suffered that had caused her to be a less than ideal mother.

Jane found herself changed.  Changed enough that she was able to volunteer helping out with other abused children, not from a place of anger, but from a place of compassion and strength.  Her prayers changed her.  Taking time with God daily gave her the strength to deal with her pain with her mother, it gave her the courage to heal and face her childhood.  It gave her the power to do something about a situation dear to her heart, to be part of the solution for other children suffering abuse and neglect in their homes.  She has become God’s hands in a small corner of the world, affecting and caring for God’s children - because of her prayers and the commitment she made to spend that daily time with God.  C.S. Lewis says, “I do not pray so that I may change God.  I pray that God may change me.”

If we are serious about our prayers, about our study time with God, and about following God’s instruction, we have to allow those prayers, that study and that instruction to change us, to move us into action, to move us deeper into understanding to relating more fully to God.  I saw this bumper sticker once that said, “Nothing fails like prayer.”  And I found myself reflecting on it a great deal.  I believe prayers work for many, many reasons.  I believe that God does answer and respond to our prayers, though maybe not in the way we expect.  But I also think that if prayer for us is just one-directional talking to God and then waiting around for God to do what we ask, then we are not using prayer the way God calls us to.  God, after all, is not Santa Claus, there simply to fulfill our wishes if we are good.  If, on the other hand, we take seriously that praying, studying scripture, and following in God’s ways are all steps towards being in relationship with God, if we are open to allowing our study, our faithful devotion to God’s ways, and our prayers to change us and make us active agents for the changes in the world, then nothing succeeds like prayer.  As the psalmist tells us, it is through following in God’s ways, doing what God asks us to do, that we come to understand, relate to and see God. 

               Today’s passages all unite in this way.  The Psalms passage tells us that in following God’s instructions, we come to know God, to understand God.  The Timothy passage tells us that the lessons we learn from scripture equip us for doing God’s work.  And the Luke passage tells us that when we are in relationship with God, when we are persistent in our prayers, God will answer us because God loves us. 

               The bottom line in each of these is that God wants relationship with us.  Taking the time to read scripture, to work to follow God brings us into deeper relationship with God.  Taking time to pray, daily, to God takes us into deeper relationship with God.

The most important reasons to pray and to follow instruction have to do with our personal connection with God.  God does not just want for you to be in awe of God.  God does not just want for you to be treating God, again, like a big Santa Claus.  God does not just want you to be grateful and faithful and caring.  God does want you to be grateful, faithful and caring.  But not just that.  God wants to be in relationship with you.  Every relationship requires time together, requires communication, requires sharing.  God wants to know how you are, from you, in your words, with your intention of speaking with God.  God wants to hear from you your pain, your joys, your hopes, your fears and your thoughts.  God also wants to talk or communicate with you.  When our minds are filled with the noise and business of daily life, it can be hard to hear God’s voice.  Prayer and Bible study, reflection and spending time working to follow God’s instruction gives us time to talk, to be, to reflect.  It gives us time to listen.  It gives us time with God, focused on God and God’s will for our lives.

               A minister, responsible for the religious education in a school once visited one of the classes, to check out the education level. He asked the students: "Please tell me, who destroyed the walls of Jericho?"

One of the students stood up and said: "It was not me, Sir!"

The minister thought the kids were making fun of him, so he turned to the teacher and asked: "Is this the way students normally behave here?"

The teacher was puzzled and answered: "I think this student is very honest and I really don't believe he could do such a thing".

Confused, the minister went to his assistant and explained to him what had happened. The assistant replied: "I know this guy very well, as well as his teacher, so I am absolutely sure none of them is guilty of destroying that wall".

When the minister heard this, he made a formal complaint before the Christian Education Commission. The answer he received from them was the following:

"Dear Sir, let us not make a big issue out of this. We will pay for the damages caused, accounting for them as current school repairs. Whatever the losses are, our insurance will cover them."

               Do we know the stories?  Do we know who God is?  Do we know what God asks of us and do we make efforts to follow in God’s ways?  Do we pray and engage God in relationship?  Those are the things that matter.  Those are the actions that make life worthwhile.  Those are the choices that will fill us with understanding and connection to the Divine Being, and will lead us to LIFE, here and evermore.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Balancing Priorities

Luke 10:38-42

               Simplicity, or focusing on what is important and cutting back on all that is not, is an important spiritual discipline and one that is exemplified by today’s story of Mary and Martha.  Martha here is “worried about many things”.  Mary sits and listens.  Martha is doing everything that is not simple and clear and full of purpose (though it feels important at the time - and the importance of that cannot be underestimated) while Mary is paying attention to what Jesus has to say.  We can see that listening to Jesus was more important.  We can honor what she chose to do.

And yet the reality is that Martha’s behavior made sense.  It went back to the cultural expectations of men and women at the time.  Women were not supposed to sit with the men to listen and learn.  They were supposed to be serving.  They had their own sphere of existence – a very specific sphere, out of which they were not supposed to travel.  To do so would be shameful, would be “unrighteous”, would be “sinful”, would be wrong.  Martha is upset not only because Mary is not helping Martha do what they have been told all their lives they are supposed to be doing, but also because Mary is breaking the rules by sitting and listening and learning at Jesus’ feet. Mary does not have a place in that society to sit at Jesus’ feet.  Her job is to be behind the scenes, as is Martha’s.  Martha is doing what she is ‘supposed’ to do.  She is trying hard to do right, to do good, to serve God as she knows she is supposed to.  That work is not unimportant work.  Someone needs to care for the men and children.  Someone needs to be feeding and serving and providing for folk.  Someone needs to offer hospitality to those who are gathered.  What she is doing is worthwhile work.

But Jesus challenges her, as he challenges many of the notions of the time about what was “proper”.  First and foremost, he doesn’t uphold the rules about where women were supposed to be when men are talking.  He doesn’t support the idea that women aren’t to learn and sit and listen.  Second, he also doesn’t praise Martha’s service or her busyness, even as she was busy in order to serve Jesus and those men gathered there listening to Jesus.  Instead, he praises Mary’s choice to step out of the norm, step out of what was expected, to take the time to do what will feed her soul most – listening and learning from Jesus.  He praises her choice to be with him and to be forming deeper relationships with God and with Jesus, despite what other people would say about that, despite the fact that she was going against the cultural rules of the time.  He encourages her in her non-service and non-busyness in that time and place.  His encouragement was radical, again, not just because he was saying, “there are times and places to be busy and this is not one of them” but because he was going against everything the culture said was supposed to happen in this scenario.  He was challenging the most deeply engrained norms of the day.

           While we don’t have those same expectations of the roles of men vs. women anymore, this is still a radical and challenging story for us as well.  We, too, have ideas that tell us what we are supposed to be doing with our time.  We, too, have thoughts about what makes us good and right and proper.  And specifically we, too, are supposed to be busy, active, “doing” as much as possible.  Like Martha we, too, are “worried and upset” about many things.  Our jobs, our children, our health, our families, our bills, our vacations, our cars, our houses, our gardens, our friends, our church.  But beyond these things as well, if we pay attention to the news, there is much to be done and much to worry about.  There is hatred, and fear, and anger and killing.  There is violence within our culture but also in France, in Turkey, in Syria.  There are wars and people are dying. As people who are called to care, to bring about justice, to lift up the oppressed, there is so much that we need to be about.  We need to find out what we can do.  We need to do it.  There is much to be done and much to worry about.  And, like Martha, when we are told to just settle down, to sit, to listen, to take time off of worrying, to refrain from running around doing the things that need to be done, we can become even more upset!  I mean, if we don’t do what needs to be done now, it isn’t as if those jobs, those things that must be done, will just go away or take care of themselves.  In our personal lives, we will have more to do later because we have not done today’s work.  In the greater society, what we do not heal today, what we do not change now, what we fail to confront that is unjust and unkind and uncaring – all of that continues another day when we do not attend to it.  Doesn’t God call us to do this work?  And if we are not busy doing it, then, aren’t we failing in our call to love and serve God and God’s people? 

Even for people of faith, we struggle with time dedicated to praying and listening to God.  I will admit, that even as a pastor, I fear being “caught” praying when I am supposed to be “working”.  There is ingrained in all of us the “protestant work ethic” or that strong feeling that we supposed to be doing rather than being: running around and planning and working all the time? 

               But the truth of it is different, as it usually is with God, than what we seem to imagine our time and our world to be.

As one popular story has pointed out, if you pick up a glass of water you can feel that it is pretty light.  It does not take much to lift it.  Almost all of us would have the strength to do so.  However, if we are asked to continue to hold up the glass for a period of time, the actual weight becomes unimportant.  If I were to hold it up for more than a few minutes, my arm and hand would begin to become tired.  If I held it up longer, my arm and hand would start to ache.  Eventually, I simply would not be able to do it.  The longer I hold something up, the heavier it becomes. If we pick it up and put it down, we can carry around any number of things of this weight for any period of time.  But holding something up for a long time will wear us out quickly and completely.

               Our lives are the same way.  When we are “upset and worried about many things,” we are, in essence, holding the glass of our worries and concerns up for extended periods of time.  The result of doing this?  We will be less and less effective and eventually we will be unable to continue.  Putting it down, turning it over to God, taking a step back is crucial for us to be effective in our work.  More than that, when we take time out to re-center on God, we regain a vision for the purpose of what we are doing, for the priorities in our work, for the deeper meaning behind it all. 

I don’t know about you, but there are days when the weight of the world is simply too much.  It can make the simple task of starting the days’ work hard.  In those moments, everything distracts me from what I really need to be doing.  But it is most especially in those times that I have found that if I meditate, pray, take time to talk and listen to God, that I can become refocused, and much more able to do what needs to be done.  Martin Luther said it this way: “I have so much to do that I shall have to spend the first three hours in prayer.”

We don’t really have time NOT to be in our relationship with God.  We don’t have time to NOT work on that.  We don’t have time to avoid being present with God if we want our lives to be meaningful and effective.  It is that grounding in our faith that gives us the strength and focus and energy and purpose behind what we do.  Without that grounding, we are rats in a maze, running and busy but without doing what will bring us and others into true life, true living, true meaning.  We may think that Sunday morning provides us with enough of that, but it doesn’t.  This is something we need to do every day, and when opportunities arise, that is when it is most important to take a breath and be present with what God is showing us.

I read a sermon in Mitch Albom’s book, Have a little Faith  (Hyperion, New York, 2009. p59) in which a little girl came home from school with a drawing she’d made in class.  She came into the kitchen where her mom was making dinner.  “Mom, guess what?!”  she said as she danced around waving the picture.  Her mother continued her work and said “What?” 

“Guess what?”  The girl asked again, waving her drawing.

“What?”  the mom said again, tending to the dishes.

“Mom, you’re not listening.”

“Yes, I am sweetheart!”

“Mom,” the child said, “you’re not listening with your eyes.”

I love that story because it points out to us that half attention is not attention.  Martha may have thought that being present in the house with Jesus while she tended to the business of service was enough.  But Mary knew differently.

               As I said above, it is not just our lives that keep us busy.  Our faith calls us to tasks as well – caring for the sick, visiting the lonely, feeding the hungry, lifting up those who are suffering. In the face of the hatred and anger and fear we see in the world right now, there is more to do than we can imagine, and we are called to bring the Good News of life and justice and to raise up those who are oppressed. We have much to do, and not acting justly is not an option.  From the Talmud – “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work.  But neither are you free to abandon it.”

               But none of that can be done, none of it, without grounding in why we are doing it, what it is about, how and why God calls us to do what we are about.  When we look at Jesus’ life, it was a back and forth story.  He would go into the world and teach and heal.  Then he would retreat to pray.  Then he would go back into the world to teach and heal.  The gospels show us this pattern again and again.  That prayer time, that time away, was essential for Jesus.  How much more so for us.  We need that to ground us.  That retreat time centers us.  That time with God renews us so that we can do the work we are called to do.

               The title of my sermon was balancing priorities. But perhaps a better title would be “becoming aware of priorities”.  The priority, in order for everything else we do to have meaning, is to stay grounded in our relationship to the Divine.  We are worried and upset over many things.  But now is the time to ground in God so that we can more clearly see what we need to do in the world and in our living.  Amen.

Wednesday's Sermon: Invisible and Unexpected Gifts

Matthew 1:18-23
Joseph discovered Mary pregnant and wanted to call off their engagement.  Maybe the specifics of this are hard for us to understand these days. But I do think that there are times when someone does something that we just can’t accept.  We can’t accept what they have done and we then have to make a decision…do we end the relationship all together, or do we figure out a way to accept, live with and grow from our experience of disappointment, or humiliation, or hurt?
The thing is, people will always disappoint us.   I was talking with someone this week who was sharing with me about their daughter who has become a born-again Christian and how difficult it is to be in relationship with someone who is constantly telling him that he is going to hell.  Still, he chooses the relationship, though it appears the daughter may stop after awhile.  We hear of stories of people who discover they have a child who is gay or lesbian and they have a hard time handling it.  What are some of the things you have a hard time handling?  Personally, I have a really hard time handling lying.  And yet, everyone exaggerates on occasion, or stretches the truth or tells a white lie.  What lie is too big?  What lie is too much?
I’m reminded of Fiddler on the Roof.  Reb Tevye is faced with the challenge of choosing between deeply held values and his relationships with his daughters.  His first daughter wants to marry a man within the tradition, but one whom she has picked out for herself, challenging the tradition of the use of the yenta.  The second daughter decides who she will marry and her fiancé does not even ask for Tevye’s permission.  This, too, he accepts.  For the first two of his children he chooses his daughters, letting go, though it is ever so painful for him, of needing them to follow, agree and support his beliefs and values.  But for the third one he cannot do the same.  When the third daughter elopes with a man who is not Jewish, he cuts her off.  The challenge to his beliefs and values pushes him too far.  And in the face of his choice between those beliefs and values and even his daughter, he chooses his values.
For us, too, we may come to a point where we feel pushed too far.  What values do we hold that go beyond the possibility of reconciliation, healing, and even the possibility of loving the other?
We all have these.  We all have “conditions” on our love, on our commitment to our relationships.  And yet, that is not the way of God, it is not the way of Christ.  We are called to choose love again and again, despite our hurts, despite our anger, despite our disappointments.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences for actions, but it does mean that we still have to choose to do what is most loving, for everyone involved, in the face of our values, our decisions, and our experiences.
I think about Joseph in today’s story.  He had strong values.  We are told he was a “righteous” man.  Because of those values he almost chose to dismiss Mary from their engagement.  We know that his judgment, his thinking about leaving Mary was based on a misunderstanding, but I’m not sure it matters too much.  He had values, and it appeared that she did not meet those values.  He had a tough decision to make in the light of that.
But he was also a man who was open to listening, hearing and responding to the Spirit.  And the Spirit had a different word for him.  An angel came to him in a dream and told him that he did not understand the situation, and that he was called to do something different than would usually be done.   He was called to put aside his usual understandings, his usual vision, the obvious vision, and to take a different path.  As a result he chose a path that did not leave Mary destitute, did not leave him without a wife, allowed him to father Jesus, opened a path for him that without the listening and following he would never have known.
We are constantly invited into gifts that are not what we expect, not what we could imagine for ourselves or for others.   And as always, the goal, the gift, the challenge, is to keep our eyes open for God’s coming among us through those gifts.  That is especially true during Advent when we are called to wait and to watch.  Wait and watch.  Wait for God’s coming.  Watch where God will come to you today.  Where is God today?  Where is God showing up in your life today?  In whom do you see God’s face this evening as you look around?  What gifts surround you, even in the challenges, even in the struggles, that God is giving you?
A friend sent me a song this week that I want to play for you.  I don’t usually like rap music, and I apologize that it is, in part, a rap song, but I invite you to listen to the words.

When we open our hearts with gratitude, we open our eyes to see.  Let us give thanks this day and everyday for God’s coming to be with us.  Amen.