I Often Get It Wrong

     I was thinking this morning about how many times I have misunderstood the nuance of what someone is saying to me.  I think all people do this.  I think neuro-atypical people undoubtedly do it more often. But it's something I work on, and as a result, it catches me by surprise when I've once again missed the nuance.  

    Interestingly, it happens in both directions.  What I mean is that there are times when I hear a "slight" in what someone has said to me that they did not intend.  This probably is a result of the "rejection sensitivity dysphoria" that I carry with me: people with rejection sensitivity dysphoria do tend to hear rejection or dismissal more than others do, even when it was not intended.  But there are also times when I hear something as a compliment that wasn't meant to be so.  This is much rarer, but it does happen.  And again, it's usually only afterwards, sometimes by a long time, when I finally catch up and realize that wasn't actually how their comment was meant.  

    Today I realized that when someone said to me at a memorial service where I officiated three years ago, "I really wish we'd been able to hear more from you in the service," that it wasn't meant as a compliment to what I might have said.  I explained at the time that the spouse of the person who had died was very clear that he did not want a homily or pastoral words during the service.  But still, I also said, "Thank you," since I heard it as "I wanted to hear more what you would have said."  And this morning I suddenly woke up realizing that it had nothing to do with me.  The man who said it wanted a homily.  That was all.  Didn't matter who it was who was officiating.  He was complaining about the lack of a pastoral message in the service.  He was not saying he liked what I had to say and wished I'd said more.  Huh.  

    Still, as I think about the times that I have mistakenly heard a comment as a compliment, I realize that it has never been a bad thing and has often led to a positive outcome even though I had mistaken the nuance.  For example, the time when someone said, "Wow you are really intense" and I laughed because indeed, I really am, rather than getting offended.  It changed the trajectory of the conversation from one that might have become defensive, to one that was amiable and positive.  In the situation I shared above, my saying "thank you" and again, hearing it as a compliment rather than as a complaint meant that I was able to explain the situation in a positive way, rather than a defensive one.  

    My point?  Personally, I want to do better at erring towards hearing things in a positive light since I don't find negative outcomes as a result of doing so.  In contrast, when I do become hurt or defensive in response to something someone has said, it never goes well.  So my point is also for all of us to try to work harder to see the good: to see the good in one another, to hear the good in what people say, to look for God (to put in theologically) in every interaction.  And then to respond in that way: to what is good, to what is kind, to what is God's leading, God's caring, God's light shining from the person in front of us.  I know, all too well, that this is not easy.  But it is a gift to all of us when we do that.

Meet the Scapegoat...

     In one of those annoying middle of the night brain attack sessions I woke up thinking about a situation that I experienced 21 years ago now.  At that point in time I had been ordained for almost four years, I was pregnant with my first child and I was working for two different congregations as "music minister".  One of the congregations had Sunday morning pretty traditional services and I was their organist and music director as well as parish associate.  The other church I was serving also had a morning traditional service, but I was hired to lead their evening praise service, so I played piano, directed their praise team and the music we sang and played was mostly Christian rock.  This evening service had been pretty successful, a service for younger adults, in their 20s and 30s, lead by a young charismatic preacher who had been a seminary colleague of mine.  But after I had been there about three years, 21 years ago, the charismatic young pastor had decided to resign and to begin his own congregation.  There were a number of reasons for this, but I think a lot of it had to do with conflict in the congregation.

    Without that pastor there, then, the conflict changed focus and took the form of deciding that they no longer wanted to have two services anymore, but wanted us to all join in for one service.  Two men from session met with myself and the organist/music director who played for the more traditional service with a plan of action.  They told us that their plan was that their organist would continue to be the organist and music director, but that they wanted to hire me as the assistant music director, which meant that I could come and "help" their regular music director, maybe bringing some of the praise music from the evening service to the morning services.  I explained that I had a job Sunday mornings as an organist/music director for another church.  It would not be possible for me to be at their church Sunday mornings.  But these two men (and the male organist) would not listen to me.  "Oh, it's fine!  You can just come to choir rehearsals and you can have Sunday's off from your other job to play for us occasionally!"  

    "No, I can't.  I get two Sundays a year off from my other job.  I cannot come over and play for you occasionally."

    "Oh, it's fine!  We'll just switch and our organist can go play for them while you play for us!"

    "No.  I have a contract with that other church that does not include bringing in substitutes on Sunday mornings.  They have hired ME, not this other person and you cannot assume they will be okay with me sending someone else to lead them."

    "Oh it's fine!  You will just be helping our organist anyway!  It's not a problem at all!"

    I finally just sat there quietly, saying nothing.  They weren't listening.  And several things were very, very obvious to me:

    1.  Their current organist/music director had absolutely no need for an assistant.

    2.  The only reason they were pushing this agenda is that they knew that if they fired me in order to unite the two services, probably all the young people they were hoping to have leave the evening service to join in the morning service would also leave the church.

    I could see the manipulation, but I didn't know what to do about it.  They had no intention of listening to me at all.  

    But about a week later, a young, female member of session who attended the evening services approached me and asked for my opinion on it.  I explained to her exactly what I had tried to explain to these three men: I have a Sunday morning job where I am the music director/organist.  I am also parish associate there which means I get to preach on occasion and am recognized for being an ordained pastor.  I cannot give up a job where I am valued and have meaningful work, a job I have had as long as this one, for a new job as an "assistant" to a man who doesn't need an assistant simply because it feels politically expedient to the session to retain me as an employee.

    Two weeks later at a public meeting discussing the future of the church, the congregation was told that any division in the church was my fault.  The woman speaking explained that I had told the three men (the two session members and the music director) one thing, while going behind their back to talk to another session member with another story all together.  It was MY fault if all the young people left the church because I was not willing to work with them.  I was an evil, destructive person for not doing their bidding, and staying on as assistant to the music director.

    I was shocked.  So shocked that I became speechless.  I was never good in confrontive situations with being able to speak my truth.  I never was.  And in this case, the shock of what they were saying left me absolutely speechless.

    Afterwards a special session meeting was called and I was "invited" to share my story.  I went to the meeting and tried to explain again that I had a Sunday morning job already, at which I was organist and parish associate.  I explained once again that I only got two weeks off from that job and that it was clear to me that I was not actually needed to be the assistant to the music director at this church.

    But my "persecutors" (as I came to think of them) were masters at turning the questions around and making it appear, once again, that I was the bad guy in this situation.  "So, you are unwilling to be an 'assistant'" one said.  "You feel you are too good to work under anyone else."

    "No!" I said.  "At the church where I work in the mornings, I am just parish associate.  That means I work under the pastors of the church.  At my last church I was an Associate Pastor.  I had no trouble working under someone else.  But you are asking me to quit a job I love where I am the music director, organist, and parish associate to start what is basically a new job as an unneeded assistant."

    "Yep! She thinks she is too good for us!"  the response came back.

    I was dumbfounded.  If I had been a man, no one would ever have questioned the choice to stay in a job where I had more responsibility, more consistency, was needed, was valued, to take a new position as an unneeded, unnecessary assistant to someone else!  No one would have questioned that.  But once again, their comments and attacks left me inarticulate, unable to speak my truth, unable to defend myself.   All I could do was say, "I'm sorry.  I cannot take this job."  

    As I woke in the middle of last night I found myself moving, though, from anger to compassion.  This little group of folk had just lost their pastor.  They were about to also lose most of the young people that that pastor had nurtured: a whole congregation of younger folk that had been brought together into a thriving community.  Without those young people, eventually the church would close, as it did a few years later.  They did not have the vision to make different choices.  And they needed someone to blame.  It no longer served them to blame the pastor who had left.  The decisions they were making now were their own to make.  I was an easy scape-goat.  I didn't know most of them and they didn't know me because none of these folk except the one female session member who had talked to me, had ever attended the evening service that I had played and directed the music for.  Self-reflection in this situation would simply have been too painful.  Thinking of solutions outside of the box was too much a stretch for them when they were stressed and grieving.  And they couldn't do these things.  

    These memories also led me to think about the many ways in which people manipulate truth.  As we've watched over the years, but especially in the fairly recent past, people believe what will most validate their already held beliefs.  They will even deny their senses, proclaiming things didn't happen that they saw with their own eyes if doing so will help them to uphold their old beliefs and values.  I was stunned to hear, the other day, that some people are now denying the attack on the capitol that happened in January.  But I shouldn't have been.  Despite the video coverage, despite the fact that it was caught live and we all saw it, when threatened with a truth that will make people have to re-evaluate their stance, many will choose to ignore their own senses and own experiences.  And again, it comes back to the reality that self-reflection for many folk is simply too painful.  It's just too hard for many people to have to change their ideas, their understandings, their beliefs.  They'd rather deny their senses than have to change ideas that have grounded them for so long.  

    None the less, I think the pursuit of truth is a valuable endeavor, even if it is painful, even if it is hard.  I don't want to live a lie, personally.  I don't believe it ultimately serves me to hang on to things that are not real, just so I can tell myself I was right in my former opinions.  Why are we here if not to grow?  And that growth requires looking deep, being willing to change, being open to learning that we were wrong and may have to evaluate situations differently.  

    I still strive for compassion for those who cannot see, who choose not to see.  I would wish for them something better.  But that is each person's decision to make.  For myself, I will take the reminder of what I experienced 21 years ago as a call to listen and a call to look with honesty.  I will take it as a gentle push to be willing to self-reflect and to not scape-goat others when I have fault in a situation that is hard or painful.  I will use it to remind myself that not one of us has the whole story, the whole truth.  There is always more to learn, more ways to grow, and more hope for bridging.  

Jesus Came For the Lost

 

John 12:20-33

Luke 18:31-19:10 

 

               Today we have three very packed stories back to back.  In the first, we hear Jesus’ final prediction about his death and resurrection, stating he will be rejected by the religious leadership, given over to human hands, and finally given to the political powers of the time who would kill him.  In the second section we hear about the healing of the blind man, and in the third we have the story of Zacchaeus.  And once again, while the stories are separate, are different, they are also related to one another and all center around the question of seeing, of blindness, and of the salvation that comes just from being open in our sight. 

               The religious authorities, as we know, were completely blind to the good that Jesus was bringing.  They feared him, they feared his sway over the people, they feared his radical ideas about inclusion and love of even those others despised.  They would reject him because he threatened the life that they were comfortable with, he threatened their way of doing things.  And because of all of this, they were blind.  The disciples, too, were blind.  Jesus talked to them again and again about what was going to happen and the fact that he would be killed.  But, as we are told throughout the gospels and here, once more, “But the Twelve understood none of these words. The meaning of this message was hidden from them and they didn’t grasp what he was saying.”  The people in the crowd were blind as Jesus passed through.  When the blind man was calling out for his help, the people in the crowd just kept trying to shush the blind man, failing to see that his care was Jesus’ concern, his well-being was Jesus’ well-being, and, indeed, theirs as well. 

               In the gospel reading from John we see a similar situation.  A voice from heaven calls down “I have glorified my name and I will do it again.”  And the people not only can’t see, they also don’t hear.  “it’s thunder.”  “An angel spoke to him.”  As Jesus said, the invitation to see, the invitation to hear, this is not for Jesus’ sake.  It is not for God’s sake.  It is for ours.  But seeing, hearing is difficult, especially if we don’t WANT to see or hear.  If we don’t like what is being said, seeing and hearing can just feel too hard. 

               In great irony and in great contrast to all of this we have the blind man, who, though he cannot see physically, understands who Jesus is and what he is capable of.  In his vision, then, and in his humility, he cries out to Jesus for help.  Jesus asks him what he wants done for him, and in this, too, the man has clear sight.  He wants to see.  He knows who Jesus is and he knows what he wants and needs.  In response to that sight, then, Jesus gives him what he asks for.

               Then we come to the story of Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, meaning he worked for the Roman system: an agent of the state, a Jew turned oppressor of his own people. People hated him, but probably would take his job if they could.  He had income, a job, was “rich”.   All tax collectors, by definition, at that time, were wealthy; they purchased the right to collect taxes and profit from what they charged above what people owed the empire. When some tax collectors asked John the Baptist, "Teacher, what should we do?" he said, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you" (3:12-13), which effectively put them out of business.  But somehow Zacchaeus had sight.  He knew that making a living wasn’t the same as making a life.  He had sight into that.  The story said he was of short stature.  It’s possible that this is literally true.  But some commentators suggest that the “short stature” was actually a metaphor, a way of saying that he was blocked from equal participation in the community because of his career. 

Either way, he was an outcast, he was not encouraged to have access to Jesus.  He was blocked, either because of his height or because of his career.  And yet, he, saw Jesus.  He climbed the tree to get sight, he made his own access to seeing Jesus.  Still, I’m certain he did not expect Jesus to call to him, did not expect Jesus to respond.  And then, here, is a very interesting part of the story.  The Common English Bible translates Zacchaeus’ words this way, ““Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much.”  Do you hear something different in this than you might have heard before?  This is not a future tense thing.  This is not a declaration about how he will change his behavior.  This is a statement about what he is doing now, what he HAS been doing.  In the face of this, those being confronted and asked to change their behavior are not the Zacchaeuses of the world.  It is those around him. 

As the Commentary Feasting on the Word said it, “If one takes seriously this reading of the text, …the issue is not Zacchaeus's conversion at all, but the unfair and harsh judgment of the observers, who see Zacchaeus as a sinner. In this light, then, Jesus' statement that Zacchaeus too is a "son of Abraham," that he is a good Jew, is a defense of Zacchaeus against those who judge him to be a sinner and therefore outside the faith. … Zacchaeus, … is outcast by reason of his occupation. Although he apparently has considerable wealth and, presumably, considerable power as chief tax collector, he too is treated as an outcast, a sinner, by the same religious leaders who condemn Jesus for healing a woman on the Sabbath and going home with a notorious tax collector.” – (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 4: Season After Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ).)

               Remember what we talked about last week: that Jesus actually talks more about money and possessions than anything else.  And here it is in a practical way.  This story shows us it is not enough to believe: a genuine encounter with the Christ we meet in scripture is life-changing.  It will change you.  It does change you.  Zacchaeus understands that.  Again, to quote from Feasting on the Word, “Luke's concern for the proper use of wealth is no mere indictment of rich people or an ascetic preference for poverty. It is a matter of distributive justice.  Before Jesus is born, his mother praises God for filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty-handed (1:53). Jesus' blessing of the poor with the promise that they will be rich has a corresponding woe to those who are wealthy, because they have already received their consolation (6:24). The parables of the Rich Fool (12:13-21), the Dishonest Manager (16:1-13), and the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31) all highlight the danger that personal wealth both easily becomes an idol and also can deprive others of what they need.  The story of the Sabbath banquet ends with Jesus' saying, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed" (14:12-14). God has designed wealth to be shared, something the ruler in 18:18-23 learned to his great sorrow. This is why Jesus says, "Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (18:25).

Again, Zacchaeus understands this.  And he is acting differently.  He is acting in a way that saves many people.  He is working for the empire, collecting taxes, in a way that does NOT harm the people.  But still they can’t see him accurately, they can’t see Jesus accurately, and so both Jesus and Zacchaeus are condemned by the people, by the legal experts, by the pharisees, because of their blindness.

               What helps us to see?  In today’s stories, people come to Jesus in different ways.  The blind man calls out to him.  Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see him and Jesus calls to him.  The ways in which people come to Christ differ: they are person dependent: they rely on God’s knowledge of each of us as the individuals we are.  But they all do have something in common.  On the part of those saved, what they have in common is humility.  In contrast to the religious experts and pharisees who think they got it all right, think they understand it all, think they have it all figured out, the blind man knows he needs help beyond himself.  And Zacchaeus, too, knows he needs to see Jesus: again that having a living and having a life are not the same things.

               Do we have this same humility?  Do we have trouble calling out to ask for what we need, what we want?  Do we even have trouble recognizing what it is that we truly need or want?  Do we have the humility to ask for help when it is there to be given? I think about Jesus asking the blind man what he wanted.  Jesus needed to know that the blind man could see what he needed in order for Jesus to be able to truly help him.  Can we see what we need?

               I found myself remembering the wonderful movie “Family Man”.  In this movie, Jack Campbell thinks he has it all.  He is the CEO of an exclusive company, he lives in a beautiful penthouse and is wealthy beyond imagining.  He is single but because he is good looking and wealthy, he can have any woman he wants and he does, on a regular basis.  When he goes out on Christmas Eve to pick up egg nog, though, he encounters a racist shopkeeper who will not honor a lottery ticket win because the person with the ticket is African American.  The African American man pulls out a gun and in anger tells the shop keeper to actually look at the ticket he’s rejecting before refusing to pay it.  Jack tries to step in to help and the African American man turns the gun on him, asking him if he wants to die.  Jack says “no”, offers to pay the man for the ticket, and helps everyone calm down and become centered.  As they leave the shop, Jack says to the black man, “What do you want to carry a gun around for anyway?  You’re just going to wind up doing something you’ll regret.  There must be programs out there and opportunities.”  The man responds, “You’re talking to the wrong person about regrets, Jack.” 

Jack goes on, “I’m not saying it wouldn’t take some hard work.  A lot of hard work, and maybe some medication…” But then the other man starts to laugh.  He says, “Wait a minute.  This is bananas.”  He turns his face to the sky and shouts, “This man thinks I need to be saved, yo!” 

Jack says, “Well, everybody needs something.” To which the man says, “And what do you need, Jack?”  Jack says, “Well, me?  I got everything I need!”  The man, laughing, says, “Wow, it must be great being you.”  And then he continues, “You know I’m going to really enjoy this.  You just remember that you did this, Jack.  You brought this on yourself.  Merry Christmas.”  And he walks away.

As the movie progresses, we learn that the African American man was actually an angel, and he gives Jack the gift of a “glimpse” – a sight into a life he might have had, had he made different choices.  The glimpse takes up most of the movie, but in the end, Jack realizes that what he thought he needed, what he thought he wanted, what he thought mattered to him, what he thought he valued, was not what would make him happy, whole, complete.  He came to see,  but not without a great deal of pain, struggle, and deep self-reflection.

               Jesus states that he came to save the lost.  But this is not a future tense saving.  This is a saving NOW: he saves the blind man from loss of sight.  He saves Zacchaeus and indeed many of the outcasts from their isolation, their condemnation, their exclusion.  He does this now.  And he lets his disciples know ahead of time so that they will understand that they are called to continue the work.  In the revised common lectionary for this week, we hear from the gospel of John that unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed.  But if it dies, it bears much fruit…. Whoever serves me must follow me.”  It is in the growing of his community, in the spreading of the seed of truth, of love, that salvation comes to all of us.  But again, that is for NOW.  We are not called to wait to end suffering for people.  We are called to follow Jesus and end it now. 

And that starts with our own humility.  Our own ability to cry out,  “Have mercy on us!”  To remember that, on our own, we rarely see the grace of God.  But then we also have to remember that when we really see Jesus, we will be changed.  Jesus was in Jericho when all of these stories occurred.  He was in every way, tumbling down the walls of Jericho once again: breaking the barriers that put the tax collector on the outside, breaking the walls that said the blind man would always be stuck in his blindness, tearing down the beliefs that the religious experts and pharisees were the ones who understood while these outcasts didn’t; flipping that on its head so all would see it was the outcasts who got it, and those humble enough to learn from them.  Choosing to see Jesus, choosing to SEE, will not be easy, it will not be painless, and it will mean that we have to change, something that is not comfortable for any of us. 

Still, the gifts are amazing.  Zacchaeus walked away with incredible joy, a man maybe less rich in money, but filled with the elation of his faith and love of Christ.  The Gospels are about serious commitment to God, but also about joy.  Reminder that “Eucharist” means thanksgiving, the meal that we take is a meal of deep joy, deep connection, deep gratitude.  May we have that same ability to put aside our “sure knowing” and be open to actually seeing, hearing and meeting the risen Christ anew.  For in doing so, we will be “saved”, we will be found.  We will be healed.  And we will find joy.

Transfiguration: of US

Mark 8:27-9:8

Who are you?  Who are you REALLY?  If you describe yourself to someone else, who would you say you were?  Would it change depending on the person you were speaking to?  How do you describe yourself to yourself? 

Now a deeper question, perhaps - How would GOD describe you?

Are you always the same person?  Yes and no, right?  At our core, probably.  But on the edges, in our behavior, we have good days and bad days; days of light and days of dark; days that we could have/should have/would have done better and days when we were able to live out and act out our lives beyond our own expectations, when we rose beyond others expectations as well.

Sometimes we think we know people, we have relationships with other people and we believe we know and understand them, but then they do something that catches us off-guard.  They surprise us, for good or for bad, and we have to look at them again, and re-evaluate who we thought they were.  We have to reevaluate our relationships with them, we have to reevaluate our understanding of them, we have to reassess who they are in our minds and hearts.  We all know stories like this, right?  Some of us have lived through stories like this, where a person we thought we knew intimately shows us that they are someone else altogether, that they have parts of themselves we never knew about, or whole areas of their lives that we knew nothing about, or activities that completely blind-sided us.  Other times we hear about heroic behaviors from people we just saw as regular folk, people, just like us, just living each day as it comes.  We can be surprised by people.  

Sometimes we surprise ourselves as well.  We are put in situations that call from us more than we thought we had, more than we thought we could be, and we rise to the occasion. … or we don’t, and maybe that surprises us too.  And the thing is that it’s not usually that people suddenly become something they are not.  It’s more true that people are complex, multi-faceted, and we didn’t see parts of ourselves or parts of other people.  We didn’t and don’t, ever, I would say, know someone else, or even ourselves, completely.  Other people are always more than we believe them to be.  We, ourselves, are always more – more complex, more multifaceted, than we think we are.  We don’t always know what we would do in a specific situation until we find ourselves in that situation.  For example, will we have the courage to stand up against wrong, even if that means losing our friends?  Will we have the courage to stand up against wrong even if it means losing our jobs?  Will we have the courage to stand up against wrong even if it means losing our lives?  We don’t always know, we don’t really know, until we are in that situation.  It is easy, for example, for people to say they would not have been part of the crowd asking for Jesus’ crucifixion.  But some of those same people found themselves in Nazi Germany supporting the Nazis not because they believed them to be right, but because they did not have the courage to stand up to them.  We have the same situations again and again.  And we don’t know how we will respond until we are put in a situation in which we have the opportunity to stand up to what is wrong and we see what we will do.

In the story of the Transfiguration, Jesus was seen in a new light.  He was seen in a way that he had not been seen before.  It’s not that he changed.  Jesus was always Jesus.  But, while he was clearly a leader and a strong man of integrity, faith, power, at the same time he looked like a normal, every day person, which was ALSO who he was.  Christian theology says that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.  That doesn’t mean he was part human and part Divine.  Fully both.  The disciples for the most part tended to see, I believe, the humanity of Jesus.  But in this moment of the transfiguration, they saw the Divinity of Jesus as he stood with Moses and Elijah with face shining and a voice declaring who he is.  They saw him for a moment in this other aspect, and it terrified them.  My guess is that it would terrify us, too.  We like to see people the way we like to see them.  And no matter how much we want someone to be better, bigger, more wonderful, more able to save us than we think they are, when it comes down to it, seeing Jesus appear in such a way before us would probably terrify us.  

And yet, stories such as this one call us to see.  We are called to see the transfiguration – to see more than we saw before – to go deeper than we knew with each person.  Yes, with Jesus, but also with one another, and to see God in those around us.  We are also called to allow ourselves, too, to be transfigured and transformed, to see God within ourselves as well, and to invite God to live in and through us, to shine in us and to live in us.  

In the story of Don Quixote (in the musical, Man of La Mancha), we hear about his love for the barmaid Aldonza.  She is not a lady, she is poor, she is unrefined.  But Don Quixote sees in her the lovely lady Dulcinea.  At first she argues with him about that designation, saying that she is not who Don Quixote sees.  She declares herself to be a simple barmaid and says to him, “take the cloud from your eyes and see me as I really am!” But when Don Quixote is on his deathbed, Aldonza realizes that because of Don Quixote’s love and vision into who she is, she has, indeed, become the Lady Dulcinea.  Her vision and understanding of herself was altered because of what Don Quixote saw.  And then who she was itself changed because one man’s insight into who she was in her heart, in the depth of her being.  

There is a Hans Christian Andersen story about a teapot that I would like to share with you:  https://fairytalez.com/the-teapot/

Again, the vision and understanding of those around the teapot greatly influenced not only what the teapot saw of itself, but the very essence of who the teapot really was.  

Kintsukuroi is a Japanese practice in which broken pots are glued and mended together with gold to form new amazing works of art.  It is said they are much more beautiful for having been broken.  But I think it is also the case that the artist sees in their brokenness possibility: the artist sees what has not yet been made manifest and creates something even more beautiful.

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.  One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.  For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.  Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. 'I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.' 

The old woman smiled, 'Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?  That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

What helps us to be the best we can be?  Often times it is as simple as other people’s love and care.  Other people’s reflection back to us that they see something beautiful in us.  Sometimes that love and care includes gentle correction.  Not comfortable, right?  And sometimes that can help us to be the best we can be.  But I think that just as positive reinforcement is much better with our pets and our children than any kind of punishment in terms of changing behavior, the love we receive and the reflection of good that others show us help us to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be.

There is a scene in the movie Two Weeks Notice in which Sandra Bullocks character is being asked to fight for and stand up for people who have no voice.  She says she isn’t going to the planned event where this is supposed to take place.  Her father says to her, “Hey, we didn’t raise you to sit on the side lines! Ever since you were a little girl, you fought for what you believed in!” 

She responds, “What’s the point?  They aren’t going to listen to me!” 

 “Then you change your tactic, you change your argument.  You don’t give up.  We didn’t give up on civil rights, or equality for women, or fair housing.  As long as people can change, the world can change.”

“Well what if people can’t change?”

Her father, who is struggling with high cholesterol and who has been told not to eat whole milk or cream sweets anymore, takes a bite of his Tofutti- cheesecake and says, “Well, let me put it this way.  I’m sitting here eating a piece of cheesecake made entirely of soy.  And I hate it.  But I’m eating it.”

One of the greatest gifts of God in our lives is that God sees us for all of who we are, and that includes who we can be at our very best, our most whole selves, our full-potential.  God can and does envision the God-spark in you oxygenated to become the bright flame that you are meant to be.  We all have moments when that God spark hides, and we all have moments when it shines brighter.  It is not easy to live into the vision of who we can be, but we are called to try.  As many of you know, I strive to meet evil with goodness, cruelty with kindness, rage with patience and compassion.  But I can’t always do this.  Just this week I had to deal with a service center about my Fast Trak and the person on the phone was rude, snippy, crabby.  And rather than responding with compassion and kindness, I became snippy in return.  That is not who or what I choose to be.  But I know that this is a growing edge: one worth every ounce of energy I can summon.

So then, In all of this I think we are called to two things – first, to strive to see the best in the other.  This does two things – it helps others reach their potential and be the best they can be, simply by seeing in one another the person that they could be: the best that they could be.  The other thing it is is a gift to us.  We get to see God in those around us and that is an amazing gift to us: to see God working, moving, loving in and through others.  Peter, James and John were given that gift – a moment of sight in which they were able to see Jesus more fully, see more deeply into who Jesus was.  That vision, beyond their understanding and beyond their experience, scared them, but it was a gift, too.  We can have those gifts as well, of really being able to see other people, and ourselves.  We just have to keep our eyes open.  

The other thing we are called to do is to try to see that God-spark in ourselves and to strive to live into God’s vision of the best of ourselves that we can be.  I know this is not always easy.  

We are given the vision of the transfiguration: an image of Jesus seen for the best and most whole version of himself.  That image calls us to see those possibilities in ourselves and in others: of being the best and most whole we can be and are.  It’s all that easy, and all that hard.  Amen.

Women Prophets

Deborah, Miriam, Anna, etc.
           For those of you who were not here last week, during this Lenten season we will be looking at the prophets.  Last week I shared with you that there are 3 major books named after prophets and 12 minor books in the bible named after prophets.  I shared also that they generally have two major messages: do not worship idols and do whatever you can to bring justice (care for those suffering) for the people.  What I did not point out, but what I think is so very important is that these are the same two mandates Jesus gives us.  He says that all the law and the prophets can be summed up into two commandments.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart strength and mind (ie, no idols: put nothing before God), and love your neighbor as yourself (ie make sure that all people are treated with kindness and justice and that all have enough). 
           Today is going to be a little different in that we will be hearing about and “from” prophets that do not have books written in their name.  Listen now to the voices of our women prophets:

 “Who are you?” you ask.  And well you should!  I am a prophet.  I am more than a prophet.  I am many prophets, recognized thinly by scripture.  I am given the respect by my people afforded to prophets, I am recognized as one of those called.  And yet the question remains, “Who are you?”   -because the recordings of me are scant.  My name, a few phrases from my histories, my title of prophetess are all mentioned in scripture.  But little beyond that is named.  Little beyond that is said.  The scriptures focus on the men.  The scriptures focus on the male prophets, their words, their deeds, their callings from God.  What is known of me is little.  What is remembered of me is slight.  Even when the parts I play are important to the life and history of God’s people, my name is rarely known and the parts I played are given little credit.  Still, today I am here to give you a glimpse, a vision, a picture into the many unnamed prophetesses who have been a part of creating the history that has made you who you are, as people of faith, as God’s people.

             I am Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses.  I have led the Israelite women, God’s women, in dancing and praise singing, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously: horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”  (Exodus 15:20-21)  I am a prophet, yet still I am human.  Aaron and I made a mistake, chastising Moses for marrying outside of our community, marrying a Cushite.  As a result of this error I became leprous for a time.  Aaron remained unpunished, but I took on this punishment for the both of us.  Still, my people stayed by me.  They still valued my prophesy and I was healed and reunited with my people.  I heard God’s voice of correction and I changed.  I made mistakes, but I was not stubborn in them.  I heard God, spoke God’s words, and changed my behavior. (Numbers 12:1-15). I died in the wilderness of Zin.(Numbers 20:1)  And this is all there is in the Bible about me.  Still, there is much to be heard, much to be learned, even in these few short verses of scripture.  Listen below the words, hear my story and learn.

          I am Deborah. I was not only a prophet but also a judge of Israel before there were kings to rule God’s people.  I announced to Barak that he was to take on the army of Jabin with Sisera in the lead.  But Barak knew he could not do this without me.  And so I arose as a mother of Israel and led the people of Israel in this battle, knowing that another woman, Jael, would be the one to ultimately defeat Sisera for the people of God.  Jael and I, together, were the strength of the people Israel on this day and we led the Israelite army to defeat those who were oppressing God’s people.  We were its leaders and we did what no man did.  Then together I sang with Barak, “Hear O kings; give ear, O princes; to the Lord I will sing, I will make melody to the Lord, the God of Israel.”  I sang, “perish all your enemies, O Lord!  But may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might.”  I sang of Jael, I sang of the people of Israel, God’s people.  I sang, and while I also led and defeated enemies of God’s people, this, too is all that you will hear of me.  This is all that is known of my prophesy and my care for the people of Israel – for God’s people. (Judges 4-5)

            I am Anna, the widowed, who lived in the temple and spent all of my time speaking to God, fasting and praying constantly on behalf of God’s people.  I was in the temple when Jesus was brought in as a baby.  And I knew him instantly.  I was blessed to meet the infant Christ, and to proclaim him to be such to all who came near. 

          I am all the unnamed women prophets, or the ones whose names are mentioned with no details.  I am the women throughout history who have had a piece in the story but have been nameless, or faceless – their histories seen as trivial and unimportant, their contributions minimized or denied.  I am your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your wives – not written into the history because it has been “his story” written by and about the men of faith.  Yet even so, my stories cannot be completely ignored.  I sneak into you’re his-stories, I sneak into your leadership because without me there is no you.  My part is minimized, yet here I remain, prophets, judges, leaders, - and while my story is not often told, it continues to shape you and it continues to determine the journey of God’s people.

            Still, it is okay with me to receive such little notice.  It is okay because I did not prophesy for the sake of fame.  I did not prophesy for the sake of recognition and remembrance.  I came, I spoke, I prophesied because God called me to do this. 

          You, too are called.  Whether male or female, your part in the history of God’s people is important.  Listen to your call.  Answer God with a “yes” and go – speak God’s words of justice, of truth, of love.  Remember Miriam, Deborah, Anna and all the unnamed prophets who have led and pushed and challenged and taught.  Remember our courage.  And go and do likewise.

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            Today is “Celebrating the Gifts of Women” Sunday in the Presbyterian Church, USA.  Many of us, understandably, probably wonder why we still have this Sunday.  After all, when we look at the PCUSA as a whole, 66% of our members are women.  Our percentage of ruling elders (session members) is currently 52% women.  And our percentages of women pastors, while not equal yet to men is about one third female pastors to 2/3 male pastors.  Our seminary students are predominantly women at this point.  Women’s voices in the church are on the rise, so why do we need a day to focus solely on women in the church?  In this congregation especially, where you have a history of female pastors and elders and all but one of your deacons is female.  Not that we don’t have male leadership – Currently 2/3 of the session and of the trustees are male.  But do we really need a day to focus on the gifts of women in the church?  And if so, why?
          One of the reasons why this day continues to be important was shared with us by our Women Prophet representatives today.  It is important that we make sure to spend some time recognizing women of faith, recognizing women’s contributions to the church and to our faith lives because women are so under-represented in scripture.  We know that they were an important part of the faith stories and faith lives because their names do make it in to the stories occasionally even though women were not the writers, readers, or interpreters of these biblical passages.  Women were not valued in the same way that they are today, they were not given the same opportunities that men had, and they were not really seen as fully human.  Still, many of their stories, while abbreviated, do make it into scripture and that fact in itself is a strong testimonial to the importance of women to our faith story and more importantly, to God.
            While specifically on this day, then, we are called to take seriously the female contribution to our relationships with God and our understanding of God, at the same time I think there is a deeper message here for us to hear and understand.  We are called to look around us and see where God is, to see God’s face, to see God’s presence when it comes to us.  This is not always an easy thing to do, but it is made much harder by our preconceived ideas about where God is not to be found.  If we think that God is not found in the homeless, or in those we don’t like, or, as in the case of some of the biblical writers, in women, then we limit how God can speak to us, where God speaks to us and when.  We limit our connection and our relationships with God if we fail to look in the places where we might otherwise least expect to see God.
              I have shared with you before scenes from the TV series Joan of Arcadia.  At the very beginning of the series when the teenage girl Joan first has an encounter with God, Joan is not happy about it.  Joan argues with God, first denying that the person in front of her is God, but then finally coming to terms with it.  “I don’t look like this.  I don’t look like anything you’d recognize.  You can’t see me.  I don’t sound like anything you’d recognize.  I am beyond your experience.”  
           Joan, who is still really not understanding responds with, “So, do you just go around appearing to people?”  
           To which the God-character responds, “Minor Correction: I am not appearing to you.  You are perceiving me.”  I think there is great wisdom in that.  God is all around us.  But our sacred moments, our moments when we are touched by the Divine happen when we have the vision to perceive God.  Again, we see the miracles, we hear God’s voice, we see God’s presence only when we are open to perceiving it.
            I think we have a hard time perceiving pretty much anything.  We are mostly made of space, our atoms are mostly space, but that’s not what we see when we look at one another.  White light is light made of all the colors, but we don’t see all the colors.  Frankly, we see very little.  The visible light spectrum is the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can see.  Our eyes can detect wavelengths from 380 to 700 nanometers.  But that means that in fact we just perceive a very small portion of the wavelengths that are out there.  Even within this spectrum, our sight is limited.  For example, we see three primary colors.  This has to do with our cones and what our eyes can detect.  The Mantis Shrimp, in contrast, has 16 primary colors and all of its variations.
           Then when we are asked to perceive where God is, well, perhaps given how hard it is to see what is right in front of our eyes, seeing the origin of things and God’s presence in what happens around us can become even harder.  Seeing beneath what is in front of our eyes is a different kind of challenge.  Seeing and hearing God can be extremely challenging.  But God is always there. 
           Dwight Nelson told a story that he said was true about the pastor of his church. He had a kitten that climbed up a tree in his backyard and then was afraid to come down. The pastor coaxed, offered warm milk, etc.
           The kitty would not come down. The tree was not sturdy enough to climb, so the pastor decided that if he tied a rope to his car and pulled it until the tree bent down, he could then reach up and get the kitten.
            That's what he did, all the while checking his progress in the car. He then figured if he went just a little bit further, the tree would be bent sufficiently for him to reach the kitten. But as he moved the car a little further forward, the rope broke.
            The tree went 'boing!' and the kitten instantly sailed through the air - out of sight.
            The pastor felt terrible. He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they'd seen a little kitten. No. Nobody had seen a stray kitten.
             So he prayed, 'Lord, I just commit this kitten to your keeping,' and went on about his business.
             A few days later he was at the grocery store, and met one of his church members. He happened to look into her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food.
             This woman was a cat hater and everyone knew it, so he asked her, 'Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much?' She replied, 'You won't believe this,' and then told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing.
            Then a few days before, the child had begged again, so the Mom finally told her little girl, 'Well, if God gives you a cat, I'll let you keep it.'
            She told the pastor, 'I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask God for a cat. And really, Pastor, you won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. A kitten suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws outspread, and landed right in front of her.'
            God moments.
            For those of you who attended or participated in the concert fundraiser for the victims of the Camp Fire up in Paradise, you heard the pastor share his story of losing everything; his home, his belongings, and just barely escaping, through the flames as he drove, with his life.  He shared with us that as he returned to look at the damage, there was only one thing that he found at the house intact.  Just one.  His daughter had died a few years previously and they had hung on to a nightlight of Jesus holding a lamb.  They’d hung on to it because it was a connection to their daughter whom they had lost to death.  And when they went back to the house to find everything, everything destroyed after the Camp fire, the one thing that had somehow survived the flames was this plastic Jesus nightlight holding a lamb: their connection to their daughter, and to faith all wrapped in one.  A visual sign and reminder that even in the dark, they were held like a lamb held by Jesus. 
             I’ve shared with you before many of my own times of perceiving God: times when I received comforting or reassuring emails at just the right moment, songs that have come on the radio just when I needed to hear them, strangers making comments at just the right time.  These happen for me often.  Just this last week, when I went spinning down that path of struggling with trust, a series of songs came on the radio, three in a row that were all songs that connected me deeply to those people I was fearful about, songs that reminded me of the good in them, songs that reconnected me to what is real about the here and now.  I heard those for the God messages they were. 
            What is even more humbling perhaps is those times when we are invited to be God’s face for someone else.  I shared with you this story in a newsletter article, but felt it would be appropriate for today as well:
            When Youngest was two, I used to take her to "get used to water" swim lesson at the Hayward Plunge - a lesson she loved so much she would cry when it was time to get out of the pool.  I sat on the side lines with a woman I'd been befriending who had twins in Youngest's class. Unusual to this lesson, there were also two other women sitting in front of us in the "observation" benches: they had brochures in their hands about the classes being offered and seemed to be checking out the adult water aerobics class to see if they wanted to sign up. Half way into the lesson one of the two women in front of me excused herself and left. My new friend also had to leave at that point because her twins needed a trip to the bathroom. As soon as both the other women left, the woman sitting in front of me suddenly burst into tears. She turned towards me and said, "the woman I was sitting with has just made me very sad." I was surprised, but also immediately jumped into "pastoral counselor" mode and put my hand on her back and asked what had happened. She sort of melted into my touch and sobbed out that she had just gotten out of the hospital where she'd had to have two blood transfusions. These transfusions had saved her life and she was doing really well now, though in need of some light exercise. Apparently, though, the women she'd been sitting with had just told her that getting blood transfusions was a really bad thing and that she would probably die from the diseases carried in the new blood. Unbelievable!  I told her that there used to be problems, occasionally, with people passing on diseases in this way, but that because of those problems the blood that now gets passed on in transfusions is really very thoroughly tested. Obviously she had needed the transfusions and the very fact that she was doing better should show her that the new blood had not made her ill at all! I said that I believed the other woman to be greatly misinformed and apparently not very helpful either. I then just listened as she poured out more information about her life - the joys and struggles, but at the end she said she was feeling much better. Within a minute of her telling me she was better and after getting herself together, drying her eyes and sitting up with a smile once more, my friend with her twins returned to the bench.
            As the lesson ended and we all made our way out of the Plunge, the distressed woman came up and said she really felt I had been a God-send that day - that she usually doesn't dump on total strangers and she just thanked God I had been there when I was. The cynical part of me wondered (to myself) if God could send people hither and yon why She/He hadn't sent the unhelpful, misinformed woman somewhere else this morning. But I did think it was interesting that at just the moment the distressed woman needed some personal care that everyone else in the area left.
            My personal belief is that God doesn't take away our free will: God doesn't control everything. At the same time, I think God can and does work through people and situations that are open to God's guidance, wisdom, love and hope. In this case, it seemed to work out - maybe not just for the distressed woman, but for myself as well who was in need of a little reassurance of God's presence, love and care that morning as well.
             But, as in the Joan of Arcadia series, the bottom line is the same.  Those moments when we are suddenly deeply aware of God sending us messages of love and support and care are not times when God suddenly appears.  Those moments when you become aware of God’s messages of love and support are not times when God suddenly appears.  Because God is always there.  Instead, these are times when we are suddenly graced with the perception of the God who is always with us.   
           A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing.  She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work.  As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.  The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.”  The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.”  Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”  I think God looks like many things: nature, other people, sunshine, rainbows; moments of presence, moments of peace, moments of connection.  The question is will we see God?  We are too often guilty of seeing what we know rather than knowing what we see.
           But as Albert Einstein said, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
           Today we are called to celebrate the gifts of women.  But for me, this is a day when we are called to something even deeper.  We are called to look at those people whom we might otherwise fail to see as messengers of God’s love.  We are called to seek out those moments where God’s message and light come through people and nature and our lives in unexpected ways.  We are called to celebrate the gifts of those who are often unseen, minimized or ignored.  We are called to open ourselves to seeing God in new ways.

If there is anything worthy of praise, Live in the Joy.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Philippians 4:1-13

Luke 3:7-18

            The Advent candle that we light for today is the candle of joy.  As we read today’s passages, each one of them touches on the subject of joy in different ways.

            Starting with the passage from Zephaniah, we see a community of people that have experienced deepest darkness.  They have been taken from their homes and sent into exile, they have lost everything they valued and no longer have a home, a center, a temple.  It seems that God has abandoned them, left them, forsaken them.  And the reason God gives for this is that they have been acting unjustly.  They have oppressed their poor, their widows, those already in pain and grief they have injured more.  According to the prophet it is their own behavior that has led them to this place, this place of exile and alienation from God.  They are at rock bottom, and there is nothing more to lose, nothing more to grieve.  All is gone.

Still, it is from that bottom, from that place of despair and absolute loss that the light begins to shine.  There was nowhere to go but up, and when the Israelites hit that bottom, only then was there room to finally make the changes they needed to be able to return home, to reclaim their lives, to begin again and to live into joy.  Only then could they look at their own oppressive, hurtful actions.  Only from that place of themselves experiencing some of the pain they had inflicted on others could they begin to change. Only then could they really look and see the way that they held power and wealth at the expense of those who had little.  Only then could they choose to be faithful to God’s call for their lives, and in that faithfulness be answered by God with the promise of return to new life.  It is after the weeping, after the exile, after the horribleness, after the dark night that Israel is able to repent, to change and find herself then with the promise of restoration, light in the darkness, and new life.  That recommitment to God, that recommitment to living the Godly life, to answering the call for justice and compassion, that look towards what God is doing, towards the light that God is shining, only that will bring the joy that God promises, that will bring the joy of new life. 

Next we heard the passage today from Philippians.  This passage contains the direction, the admonition, to “rejoice in the Lord always.”  ALWAYS.  But committing ourselves to joy, fully, and at all times is frankly not an easy task.  When we reflect on our own lives we know this, but also as we reflect on the Biblical stories, like the one from Zephaniah we know this to be true.  We all go through struggles, we all go through times when we feel God’s absence, when it feels that there is little or nothing to rejoice about.  Our challenge is to remember in those times that joy is not the same thing as happiness.  Also, joy comes to us as grace from God.  It is a God-given gift.  We still have the responsibility to claim it or reject it, but it is a gift from God, not something we can create in ourselves or by ourselves.  My friend and colleague, pastor James Lumsden, said it this way, “I start to realize that while God continually offers me the gift of joy, I have to make room for it – if there’s no room in the inn of my heart for Christ’s blessings – then the Spirit of Jesus is going to be born someplace else and I’ll be the poorer for it.”  JOY takes practice, and it takes discipline.  It is a gift of grace – God offers us this joy, but unlike the “happiness” that comes with Christmas, Advent joy, the preparing for Christ’s coming joy, requires effort on our part, it requires us to make room for that joy.  And that takes work.  It does take looking at our lives, repenting our lives, striking out in a new direction and choosing to follow God’s call.  That makes room for joy.

Fr. Richard Rohr speaks of this commitment to joy in this way.  He says, “I have committed myself to JOY. I have come to realize that those who make space for JOY, those who prefer nothing to JOY, those who desire the utter reality of JOY, will most assuredly have it. We must not be afraid to announce it to refugees, slum dwellers, saddened prisoners, angry prophets: now and then we must even announce it to ourselves. For in the prison of now - in this cynical and sophisticated are - someone must believe in JOY.”

What does that mean practically?  It goes back both to the Zephaniah text, but also to the passage we read today from Luke.  We cannot claim joy, real joy, unless we are doing God’s work, are part of ushering in the kingdom to earth, are part of making the valleys rise and the hills lower.  We do this, as John tells us today, by giving our second coat to the one who has none, by sharing our food with those who do not have.  These aren’t really choices for Christians.  John says we MUST share our coat if we have more than one.  We MUST share our food if we have more than enough.  That is following our call, and that is how we claim the joy of God.  Sister Joan Chittister says, joy is  the deep-down awareness of what it means to live well, to live productively and to live righteously (that is for justice and compassion).  In other words, Joy is God- centered, not us centered.  Joy requires looking beyond ourselves, and looking beyond the moment of our own pain or struggles or thoughts, even beyond our own happiness.  Instead, Joy is centered in doing God’s will, doing God’s work, seeing beyond pain and death and into the awe and wonder and amazing gift that is God.

In Ben Mikaelsen's book, Touching Spirit Bear, a 15 year old juvenile delinquent named Cole has been given the opportunity to change his life, change his path, change his future by spending a year on an island by himself rather than the rest of his life in jail.  At first he is not ready to change, but he, too, hits “bottom,” like the Israelites, when he is attacked by a bear and faces the real possibility of his own death.  He then comes to a place where he really is ready to repent, to change, but there is much he has to learn in order to do that.  He goes back to the island after his physical recovery from the bear attack, accompanied by two men, Garvey and Edwin, Native American men who try to help him see his world differently.  They tell him that his first step that evening is to cook them dinner.  This is what follows.

“What would you guys do if I refused to cook anything?” Cole asked with a wry smile, as he sharpened a sapling for a hot-dog stick.

Garvey crouched beside the fire and reached his palms toward the flames to warm up.  “First, we’d get hungry.  Then we’d take you back to Minneapolis (and to jail).”

“What’s the big deal if I fix a hot dog or not?”  Cole asked.  “It’s not the end of the world.”

“The whole world is a hot dog,” Garvey said.

“What does that mean?”

“Go ahead, eat a hot dog and I’ll show you.”

Cole poked a raw hot dog onto the stick and held it over the fire.  He hadn’t realized how hungry he was, so he held the hot dog in the flames to cook faster.  All the while, Edwin and Garvey stared patiently.  When the hot dog was charred, Cole placed it on a bun.  “Now what?” he asked.

“Eat it.”

Cole squirted on a glob of ketchup, then devoured the hot dog.  Edwin and Garvey kept watching.  “There,” Cole said, finishing.  “I ate the hot dog.  Now what?”

“How was it?” Garvey asked.

Cole shrugged.  “Okay, I guess.  Why?”

“That hot dog did exactly what you asked it to do.  You asked it to feed you, and it fed you.  No more, no less.”  Garvey held out his hand.  “Pass me a hot dog.”

Cole pulled another one from the cooler and handed it across the flames.  Garvey took the hot dog carefully in his hands and examined it.  “This is a fine hot dog,” he said.  “The finest I’ve seen all day.”  Carefully he slid it onto the stick.  He started humming.  Soon Edwin hummed along.  For ten minutes they hummed the melody over and over.  All the while Garvey patiently turned the hot dog over the coals, careful not to burn it.  Finally, when the hot dog was a glistening, crispy brown, Garvey drew the stick back from the fire.  “The song we hummed is a song of friendship,” he explained.

“What are the words?” Cole asked.

“There are no words because each person makes up his own.  That’s how friendship is.”  As Garvey spoke, he rummaged through the cooler, pulling out salt and pepper, cheese, a plate, cups and a tomato.  He leaned a bun against a rock near the coals to let it toast lightly, then wrapped it around the hot dog.

“You going to eat that thing, or play with it all day?”  Cole asked.

Garvey smiled and kept working.  He cut the hot dog into three pieces on a plate and lightly shook on salt and pepper.  Next he cut slices of cheese and tomato and put them on top.  With a flair, he added a small circle of ketchup to each.  Last he poured three glasses of water.  He handed one to Cole and one to Edwin.  “This is a toast to friendship,” he said, raising his glass.

After taking a drink, he handed Cole and Edwin each a piece of the hot dog he had prepared.

“That’s your hot dog,” said Cole.

“Yes, it is, and I choose to share it,” said Garvey.  He began eating, savoring each bite.  “Eat slowly,” he said, raising his cup again to toast.  “Here’s to the future.”  After each bite, he raised his cup for a different toast.  “Here’s to good health.”  “Here’s to the sun and the rain.”  “Here’s to the earth and the sky.”

When everybody had finished eating, Garvey turned to Cole.  “How was my hot dog different from yours?”

Cole shrugged.  “You shared yours and acted like it was a big deal.”

Garvey nodded.  “Yes, it was a big deal.  It was a party.  It was a feast.  It was a sharing and a celebration.  All because that is what I made it.  Yours was simply food, because that is all you chose for it to be.  All of life is a hot dog.  Make of it what you will.  I suggest you make your time here on the island a celebration.”

Cole scuffed at the dirt with his shoe.  “What is there to celebrate?”  he asked.

“Discover yourself,” Edwin said.  “Celebrate being alive!” (2001: New York. Harper Collins. p145)

Celebrating being alive is choosing joy.  Looking at things not with eyes of every day cynicism or pain, but with eyes to see where God is moving, where God is acting, where God is calling us to be, that is choosing joy.  It sometimes takes hitting bottom, going into and through the darkness to come to the place where we are ready to repent enough to be open to God’s joy.  But when we do that, when we can take our experiences as launching places into new life, then we become ready to do the work of repentance and opening ourselves to God’s joy.  Thanks be to God that the gift of that joy, the grace of that joy is offered in every day and in every moment!  Amen.