Welcoming in a New Year

                I wrote the above title, “welcoming in a new year” and then found the sarcastic, cynical part of me (and yes, that is a reality inside this head of mine, though I try to keep it there… we all have voices we don’t usually share and this one is mine) declaring, “yeah, right.”  After all, we know that January first it is not going to suddenly be brighter and shinier than what we have known this last year.  There isn’t some magic about the first of the year that says, “Okay, great!  Now we can start over.  Now we can start again,” though I think we’d really like to believe that there is.  Many of us wish we could somehow do a “redo” of the year, a “do-over” of this last year.  Many people have lost loved ones to COVID, we’ve been isolated and alienated, kept from being together with those who really matter to us, kept from visiting the places that have meaning for us, kept from watching grandchildren and other young ones do the growing up that they were meant to do this year.  I’ve watched this last year the disturbing trend of my kids becoming more distant from their friends, more absorbed in the computer for homework and then for entertainment, less interested in the real work, less engaged with real people.  And again, January 1^st will not mark some miraculous change in this.  As I sat down to write this, I received an email from the local school district saying that while they had planned on re-opening January 11^th, that is no longer in the cards. 100% distance learning will continue for the foreseeable future.   My eldest daughter’s college has yet to make those decisions, but my guess is they will choose the same.  This hasn’t been the year we expected.  Or wanted.  Or hoped for.  And my guess is that the New Year will pretty much start the same way.

               I’ve been thinking about my own approach during this time.  When we first went into “stay at home” I was okay with that.  I liked having my family around me constantly and I was incredibly grateful for this time with them - a time that is not usually given to parents of teenage kids.  Our teens are usually in school, and then activities, and much more focused on their friends.  So, to have this time with them, and especially with my eldest who should have been far away at college, was a gift.  I enjoyed the greater flexibility of being able to sleep in a little and stay up later to work.  I have found other gifts as well: as I’ve called folk, I’ve been able to connect in many ways more deeply with people than I had just seeing them on Sunday mornings or in committee meetings. I’ve enjoyed the quieter neighborhoods with less traffic and the increased sound and sights of nature, the cleaner air of a less car-polluted area.  I’ve enjoyed working in my garden, and dreaming about my house being fixed. I meditated more, walked more, read more.  And I saw that all of this as good; gifts in the midst of the struggles.

               But sometime this fall, the focus on the good in this time left for me.  Maybe it was in part because my kids now each separate into their own rooms to do their school work, and David is in our room, leaving me alone in the family room to do my work for most of the day.  Maybe it’s because work ramped up to such a degree that walking wasn’t happening as much and getting out became harder first because of the smoke and then because of the cold.  Maybe it’s just that this has gone on long enough: what was an interesting and different challenge is now just an experience of loneliness, hard-work with less of the rewards of time and interaction with people.  Maybe it’s the continual unknown of when this will end, and the stressors of making hard decisions when health and lives are at stake.  But the time became different for me also because we now known people who’ve had Covid and even a couple who have died from it.  David has a very close friend in Ohio who is very ill with Covid, as is his wife.  We don’t know if they will survive it.  We also now know people who have lost their jobs and who are deeply struggling financially.  More personally (but less seriously) I’m looking at this next year: my eldest will turn 21, my son will turn 18 and my youngest will turn 16.  The trifecta of big birthdays.  And since all of their birthdays are in the spring, it is probable that we will not be able to truly celebrate them with even our families, let alone friends.  My son is missing his entire senior year of high school, my eldest missing her junior year of college, right after she’d finally come to a place of enjoying that space.  I haven’t seen my family (my father excepted) in nine months now.  I’ve also been sick this whole time, and only yesterday learned I am allergic to cats among other things (that’s a nice challenge for us as a family to have to face!).  When things become personal, when they start affecting our lives in more personal ways, it is harder to stay in the positives.

               But…

               Our faith still calls us to have different eyes to see.  It’s not that we ignore the bad.  But we are called to look deeper, and we are called to dive into the places where God is manifesting.  And in that, in that is the hope.  Because we know that where there is pain and suffering, God is there.  Where there is hardship, God is there.  Where there is a sense of insecurity, of the unknown, God is there, too.  With us, among us, around us, God is there: loving us, pushing for the better, always bringing new life out of death and hope out of despair. That’s what God does.  And our call in all of this is to choose to see, to listen, to open our hearts to where God is, even now, even in this, even when we are hurting. 

               And so, my call for all of us is not to “look to the new year” because the new year is just a new day, another day, another passage of time in a time that goes on always.  Instead, my call is for us to look to God – in this moment, in this place, in this now.  Christmas is a reminder that God is with us.  And Christmas calls us to look in the unexpected, extraordinary places for where God is manifesting.  But this is not something we look for on a specific day, after all Christmas is something that, as Christians, we celebrate every day. So, too, we cannot determine that 2021 must be better than 2020.  Instead, we are called to look for the new year, the new beginning everywhere and in every time.  It is something that comes every day for people of faith looking to see how God is doing a new thing THIS day in THIS place.

               So, whether you are reading this in December or January or august of 2037, I invite you into a New Year of God’s presence among us, with us and around us NOW and HERE.  Amen.

Allowing the unpleasant to have free rent in our heads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friending, Unfriending, the complexities of relationships...

         I've been thinking about friends and relationships and vulnerability lately, in particular as we've heard back from folk we've invited to our wedding.  Several wonderful, deeply joyous "yesses" have come in from people we didn't expect to come (because of distance and therefore the cost of getting out here) but who have decided to make the trip for our special day. Those have been truly uplifting, affirming, deeply meaningful and very exciting for us.
         On the other hand, there have also been a handful of folk we really hoped would come, people we have loved and do love dearly who have responded with "no".  Some of those have been very painful for David, or for me, or in some cases for both of us.  We have, whether right or wrong, taken those "nos" as an indication that we are not valued to the same depth with which we value the other, and that has hurt. With a couple of folk, it has actually caused me to pause, consider the nature of our friendships, and wonder if I needed to take another distancing step... "unfriend" from Facebook, for example; or at least move the friend into the "acquaintance" category of those who see less of my posts, and those whose posts I no longer see regularly.  Of course in many ways that is a very childish response on my part.  I see it as such.  I know that if I cared less, I would react with less extremism, and that the fact I even consider a distancing act is a sign of how much I really do care. Therefore any such action on my part is more likely to hurt me than the other person anyway. I recognize the impulse for what it is: a desire to strike out at someone who has hurt me. And I see that the one who would ultimately be hurt by that striking out is myself. So I let my revenge fantasies fly for a few minutes, and then I breathe, take a step back, acknowledge the pain for a moment and then make the decision to behave better.
          Still, I'm left with the realization that inviting people to something this important to us is an act of deep vulnerability.  It is so deeply vulnerable that I have thought, more than once, that we probably just should have eloped and avoided the entire big production.  And yet I know that if we had made that choice, other people would be hurt instead.  Also, the decision to celebrate what has been five years in the making is an opportunity to spend time with folk we don't regularly get to see, and to honor that our relationship does not exist in a bubble.  I believe in the collective connections of our relationships and our community.  We would not be where we are without the family and friends that have surrounded and supported us, that continue (in most cases) to surround and support us.  And so, the wedding is a celebration not only of our coming together, but for me, of all the relationships that have made ours a possibility and a blossoming reality.
          I know some of you will say that our reaction to the "nos" are just over-sensitivity on our parts. So let me just clarify, that not every "no" produces this response in us.  It is just a few very specific folk with specific ways of saying "no" that are causing the pain.  At the same time, there is no doubt that both David and I carry some scars that make us much more likely to jump into feeling rejected than might be warranted.  Still, acts of vulnerability, such as inviting loved ones to a wedding, are risky because they do sometimes bring clarity about where people stand and how deeply people value their relationships to you.  Other times the assumptions we make based on peoples' behavior are inaccurate. But regardless, I think events like this can change relationships, either by making clear what they really are, or by creating assumptions about what others feel that have consequences.  In the bravest folk, perhaps these hurts are invitations for deeper conversations about what a person values and how deeply a person cares about another.  But after the initial hurt, it is hard to take that next step into even greater risk.
         The point?  Relationships are hard.  They are complex.  They are, by nature, risky; and the choice to be in relationships creates a vulnerability that sometimes leaves us wounded.  I wish it were otherwise. I know I have done my share of wounding as well as being hurt.  And for that I'm sorry.  But still I choose to step into that vulnerability. I choose it and pray for the grace of gratitude and joy in the face of the unexpected depths and gifts; as well as for healing and wisdom in the face of the disappointments.

Blessings

(For those actually in service yesterday, you will notice that I really didn't preach this... but here is a part of what I intended to say...edited so it is slightly closer to what I actually preached.  (sigh).  The challenges of not reading a manuscript...)

Luke 6:20-26  

Luke 18: 9-14

               Life is a circle, we have times that are full of joys and times that are full of pain.  Which of these are the blessings?

               I want to read to you an article that I found that I think says it better than I could:  (Scott Dannemiller article).

               I say the same thing pretty regularly – that our challenges are also blessings, though this can be hard to recognize. 

               But I also want to say what I have said many times before and that is that this doesn’t mean that I think God intentionally causes us hurt.  I think hurt happens in this world and God wants to bring the highest growth and highest good out of that.  But I don’t experience God as Santa Claus rewarding the good and punishing the bad. I also don’t believe God is just a mean school teacher, testing us, and sitting up there somewhere saying, “Oh, you thought you could handle that?  Well let’s see how you handle this!”  though I’ll admit sometimes it sure has FELT that way to me.  And while I think the beatitudes are an accurate description of what happens to us in life – those who are in pain will find comfort, those who are comfortable will find pain – I don’t believe this is because God is wielding out punishments and rewards.  I think, instead, that it is an accurate description of life. 

               But God in this is about teaching, healing, growing us into the most whole people we can be, if we are open to that.

               Frankly, it is really bad theology that describes God as a kind of Santa Claus, rewarding the good and punishing the bad.  And scripture shows us something very different.  We have the beatitudes, which do not discuss deserving and people getting what they deserve, but rather describes that those who are in pain will feel joy, and the reverse.  We have the story of Job, who, despite his righteousness, lost everything that mattered to him.  We have Jesus reminding us that the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous.  We also have passages such as Mark 10:17-31: As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”  “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”  Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.  Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”  The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!  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.”  The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”  Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”  This shows that it is not God rewarding us with riches.  Those riches come, and will be taken away.  They impede our ability to connect with God.  They themselves are not blessings from God.

               The reality is that we who are comfortable have a hard time feeling, knowing, experiencing our real dependence on God.  It is often only through the struggles, through the times of difficulty, the times of loss, that we learn to experience God fully and to depend on God for everything.  But it is hard for us to feel blessed by those hard times.  I understand this.  It is tough.

               We celebrate the good things, calling them our blessings.  But when it comes to the hard times, we complain and feel life is unfair.  We focus on the pain and forget to be grateful for the challenges or to seek out the possible gifts or learning or growing that we can do through the pain.

It is hard for us to rejoice in, learn from, or really self-reflect and grow into the challenges.  But that is the call.

               So we can take the beatitudes as a message of fear: only if you really suffer will you then find “blessings” by which we mean good things, riches, comforts, luxuries.  Or we can take them as a description of life, reminding us that God is with us whether we are focused on the joys or focused on the pains. We can take them as a reminder that often it is through the gift of the hard and painful times that we remember to turn to God and to really come to trust God and the deeper gifts of community, support, and help that are available.  We can remember that in being in solidarity with others who are struggling, as well as through helping to empower others and improve the lives of others, that we come to know and experience God at deeper levels. We can learn to let go and to truly depend on God.  But we also learn that blessings can come in many forms and that we are surrounded by them every single day, just as in every moment we are surrounded by God’s love. 

               Those blessings we experience in this way, in times of great need, are often the ones that we also learn most deeply to share with others.  There was a social experiment done a few years back in which a man went around asking strangers for hugs.  “Normal” people would not hug strangers.  But when the homeless were asked, none said “no”.  They gave to others, probably from that place of knowing their own lacking, experiencing their own rejection, knowing what it was to not “have” what many of us take for granted.  From that place, then, they were able to bless others.

               Henri Nouwen also tells the story of coming to understand blessings differently when he began to serve as a chaplain for a community of people with intellectual disabilities.  He talks about a woman, Janet, who was struggling and came to him asking for a blessing.  He tried to make the sign of the cross on her forehead, but she wouldn’t accept it and said, “I want a real blessing!”  He didn’t know what to do but that evening at their prayer service, he told the community that Janet had asked for a special blessing and he invited her to come forward.  She came forward and wrapped her arms around him, giving him a tight hug.  He was surprised but hugged her back and said to her, “Janet, I want you to know that you are God’s beloved daughter.  You are precious in God’s eyes.  Your beautiful smile, your kindness to the people in your house, and all the good things you do show us what a beautiful human being you are.  I know you feel a little low these days and that there is some sadness in your heart, but I want you to remember who you are: a very special person, deeply loved by God and all the people who are here with you.”  Janet left with a huge, satisfied smile. Afterwards the other members of the community all raised their hands asking for a “blessing” too.  That giving of love; that giving of time, and care, and attention; that seeing of one another; that appreciating one another – those are the blessings that God has given to us and that we can pass on to others.

               Going back to the first article.  I don’t believe it is wrong to say, “I have been blessed” or “I am having a blessed day.”  When I am challenging here is the idea that “blessings” are only the good things we experience and have in life.  In many ways, as the scriptures we have read today and the stories I have shared point out, the greatest blessings we can have and experience are the challenges we face in life.  I remember a wise woman once saying to me, “A blessing is something that brings you closer to God.  It is not something that brings you closer to fulfilling American cultural values.”  Material wealth is not a blessing, your car and your house – these are not your blessings, your gifts from God.  What are your blessings your gifts from God, are the times you have with God, the opportunities to grow, the gifts of love, faith, appreciation, gratitude, peace, hope, compassion, grace, trust.  These are the blessings that God gives so freely.   

Unexpected struggles

      I've been thinking about expectations again.  I shared in a post a while ago about my friend who told me that white Americans are unhappy in large part because we expect things to be easy, to go well, to be smooth.  We have these expectations of a happy life, a successful life, a life of increasing ease and luxury; so when things go wrong, it throws us into despair and upset and trauma.  And when things go well, we don't celebrate that because that's what we expected.  She told me that in other countries and cultures there just simply isn't any such expectation.  People expect things to be hard, to be difficult, to be challenging.  As a result, when things go well, there is great joy and celebration at the unexpected positive events.  When things go badly, it rolls off the backs of those who experienced it because that was what was expected.
       Youngest and I have been reading the Narnia series.  In one book there is a character, Puddleglum, who is a really negative character. He is constantly saying things like, "well, I expect it will all go wrong, but we must try despite the fact that it will all end badly." As you get to know him, you find that he just has these low expectations. He anticipates disaster at every turn, and is, therefore, thrilled and pleased and happy when things go well. His low expectations don't prevent him from trying, from being brave, from doing what must be done.  He expects the worst, but he still goes forward with strength and conviction. Still, being around someone who is expressing that negativity, those low expectations, is hard, discouraging, exhausting, and often depressing.
      So I find myself wondering, how can we live the way my friend suggested, expecting the challenges and being thrilled by the unexpected successes, and not be a negative presence at the same time?  Is there a way to internalize the lower expectations and to find ways to rejoice in the good without being a downer in our language and in our approach to problems?
       My own life is rarely easy and never without drama.  I think we each have life lessons, challenges that we face again and again until we get them "right" or figure out a way to navigate them.  One of my life challenges is how to continue when things go wrong, how to step forward with joy, patience, and love despite the pull to become bitter, cynical, negative and faithless in reaction to the things life has handed me.  I've found myself reflecting on a quote from the Life of Pi, "When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling." This is a truth for me.  My daughter has a small disappointment and I find myself brought to inconsolable tears over it: she shouldn't have to have small disappointments after what she has gone through, I think.  At the same time I am aware of how small it really is.  It is both trifling and unbearable.  At times I feel close to the edge and at times I want to simply give up, but I am also always aware that we have gone through the worst we probably will, at least in this decade, and wonder why these small things can affect me so greatly when we walked through the big things without hesitation. I never considered giving up in those hardest of times; it just wasn't an option.  
        I think much of this comes back to gratitude, once again.  Gratitude calls us to focus at all times and in all places on what has gone well, on what is beautiful and right and good in our lives. Gratitude does not ask us to turn a blind eye to what is hard or negative. It also doesn't insist on a Pollyanna-ish attitude of expecting everything to be rosy or to end well. But gratitude does call us to see even the challenges as the gifts they are.  It calls us to look for those gifts: to see that we learn from the harder things, that we can grow in strength and forbearance through the tough times.  More, it encourages us to look around and see that almost always there are gifts even in the hardest moments. We are still breathing - that is something to be thankful for.  We have had love in our lives and that is something to appreciate.  Chances are that those who read this have enough to eat, a place to sleep, sunshine and rain and flowers and trees, family and friends, music, art, transportation, education, moments to relax, moments of laughter, public parks, places to walk and run and dance, work, community, libraries that can lend us books, vacation days, etc.  We may not have all of this all the time, but we have many of these things much of the time.  When we can remember this, when we can focus on those gifts that fill our lives, when we can take ten minutes each day to be grateful, then the hard things are easier to bear.
       Perhaps that sounds simplistic.  I don't want to push away the reality that life is hard.  I know there are traumas that must be worked through, losses that must be grieved, problems that need our attention and focus.  But taking a few minutes in the hardest times: a few minutes a day, or even each hour when things are really tough, to remember the gifts, the good - that can empower, strengthen and support us as we face the more difficult challenges.  It can also give us the courage to try again, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to take the risk of reaching for what we want as it reminds us that no matter what happens, there will always be things to be grateful for, there will always be gifts and blessings to look for and to see.  The pains that come our way are part of life and call for our attention.  But the gifts that come our way also deserve our focus.  And our choice to focus on those good things may enable us to walk with a little more energy, a little less anxiety, and a bit more hope.

Sunday's Sermon - Continuing Matthew 25: visiting the sick

John 9:1-7

Luke 9:1-6

Matthew 25:31-46

Today we continue our study of Matthew 25, focusing on caring for or visiting the sick.  We, as a community, are very good at this. Through our Deacons and through others do a wonderful job of visiting the sick.  Others in our congregation are constant care-givers for family, for friends.  Others volunteer and work in care-giving professions.  We visit people at home, we visit people in the hospital, we visit people going through rehab.  And we do more than visit.  We pray with people, we care for people, we spend time with them, we give them rides, we listen.  We genuinely care about our people who are struggling, and we offer our presence and anything else we know how to offer.  As much as if not more than any of the other things on Matthew’s list, we do this caring for the sick and we do it well.  That is something you should feel really proud of.  Even if you can’t or don’t do this as an individual, as a community we are amazing in our care for others. 

But we know that others don’t always do this well: I’ve shared this story before, but think it is especially relevant for today: At one of the churches where I served, the congregants were intimately involved with a program that served the homeless.  Through our work and through our time with the homeless people in our community, we developed a very close relationship with one homeless man in particular.  This man was very loving, very giving, very caring.  He began attending our church and when he did so, he offered to run our sound system, he helped with the gardening, and he was always on hand to help us in any way.  He was not unintelligent, but he was a severe alcoholic who could not seem to get through the disease to a place where he could give up drinking.  He would give it up for a week or two and then something would happen and he would be drinking again.  We saw him fight for his life against this disease and we saw him losing the battle.  At one point in our relationship with George, his drinking led him to fall and to hit his head very seriously on the street.  The police found him hours later and took him to the local hospital.  His injuries, especially to his brain, were very serious and he was admitted for long term hospitalization and rehabilitation.  However, when the nurses and doctors at the hospital came to understand that he was a homeless, income-less, resource-less man, they gave up caring for him.  He remained at the hospital for quite a while, because he was unable to walk a straight line, he could not speak clearly and had very little control over his movements.  But in large part he was at the hospital for so long because they would not provide the care to get him to a place where they could discharge him.  The only time that George really received any attention – the only time he would be brought his meals even – was when one of us was there to insist on it.  This was a “Christian” hospital, and the doctors and nurses who were hired to work there were, we were told, people of faith.  But they did not see the contradiction in their faith when they served their charges according to their resources, rather than according to their needs. 

This is NOT how Jesus acted.  And it is not what Jesus calls us to do.  Despite the reaction of those around him, including his disciples, Jesus found time to be present with “the least of these” every time.  He gave of his healing, of his energy, of his attention, even to those who didn’t somehow “rank” or “deserve” it. 

We brought George food.  We sat with him.  We fought for him with the medical personnel.  We cared for him.   Five years ago I learned that he had died.  He was in his 50s, and while he remained a homeless man struggling with alcohol addiction until the end, his funeral was well attended by those of that congregation who had loved him, visited him, provided care for him.  And again, while he did not heal from his struggle with alcoholism, we were helped in our service towards him.

I think the hardest sick people to visit with, using this understanding of “sickness” as simply people who are hurting, broken, injured in body, spirit, mind or soul, are those who are struggling with mental illness or with any other kind of emotional pain.  When people are in emotional pain, we often try to fix it and if we can’t, we struggle to be around it. We don’t know what to say to people in emotional pain.  We want it to go away.  I hope this is improving, but I remember all too well going to the memorial service for a friend whose husband had just died and having another friend say to me, “Well, we need to just tell her to get over it.  Maybe we should ignore it and try to set her up with someone else right away.”  This not only showed a total lack of understanding about grief, I think more importantly, it showed the speaker’s discomfort with another person’s pain when he couldn’t fix it. 

I’m reminded of a Joan of Arcadia episode in which a young man who had been paralyzed through a car accident was being protected by his parents from having to discuss what he had been through.  They kept shielding him from ever needing to talk about it.  At one point he came in on them in a heated discussion about the accident.  They immediately grew quiet and said, ““Kevin, you shouldn’t have to go through this again.”

His response though was wise, brilliant and insightful for all of us.  He said, “But I have to.  Don’t take this away from me.” 

Going through healing is necessary for all of us, whether we are struggling with physical problems, with emotional issues, with a crisis, with whatever it is that we face.  Standing with others going through those experiences, visiting those who are sick or struggling or in pain, just being with others in their hard times… these do not only bring healing for the ones we stand with, these actions bring us healing as well.

This morning I found myself reflecting on a conversation I had had with a member of my previous congregation.  It was over the question of whether or not God ever gives us more than we can handle.  I don’t think God hands us the tragedies and traumas of life.  And I do think that LIFE does sometimes give us more than we can handle.  We know this by the rate of suicides in this country.  But also, we’ve all meant shell people – people who are so bitter, so worn down by life that there is no compassion left within them.  These are the people we are most called to care for, to try to be God’s hands and feet, moving them through and beyond their pain.  But in this particular conversation, I said, “wounds always heal with scars.” To which my parishioner responded, “yes, but scar sites are much stronger than the flesh around them”.  Okay, if healing is done well this is true.  Bones heal much stronger, scars on our skin are made of tougher material.  But when they don’t heal correctly, when scabs are picked at and allowed to fester, healing does not happen.  Again, we have a call to help one another through those times of bad injuries to our body, to our soul.  But we are also called to remember that it is we who are healed through the process of caring for one another.

But today I want to take this a little bit deeper:

Frederick Buechner says this about healing:

The Gospels depict Jesus as having spent a surprising amount of time healing people.  Although, like the author of Job before him, he specifically rejected the theory that sickness was God’s way of getting even with sinners, he nonetheless seems to have suggested a connection between sickness and sin, almost to have seen sin as a kind of sickness.  Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” he said.  “I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” … 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.”

So I want to take a slightly different look at it and instead spend some time focusing on the truth that the sick we care for, when we care for the sick, are, once again, ourselves.  We are the ones in need of healing, we are the ones in need of growth and healing, all of us, and the prescription that we are given for those challenges, for our scars and scabs that won’t heal on their own, for our human illness is to follow Jesus. 

               We see this clearly in today’s passage, but perhaps we see it even more clearly in other passages.  The passage we read from John that talks about Jesus healing the blind man ends with the following chastisement of the Pharisees:  Jesus said, “I have come into the world to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind.”  Some Pharisees who were with him heard what he said and asked, “Surely we aren’t blind, are we?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you wouldn’t have any sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

               A similar thing happens with the man Jesus heals who is deaf and mute.  In the book of Mark, Jesus cures this man and those around him prove themselves instead to be the ones who fail to really hear and fail to speak truth or wisdom.  We all know of people who won’t or can’t see.  Of course, they probably accuse us of the same thing.  And the reality is that because there are always layers and layers of truth, and because we always understand, interpret and see truth from our own perspectives, not one of us has the whole picture.  Not one.  All of us have areas of blindness, areas of deafness.  We all do.  Together we have a much better picture of the truth, but even then, people lie, people hide things.  There will always be areas of blindness.  But the problem is, those areas of blindness create illness within us, as a people, as well as as individuals.  We lose understanding and compassion for the other when we cannot see their perspective.  We lose unity and our ability to grow and work together when we cannot see from their point of view. It creates in our culture, in our world, illness, dis-ease.  But I would say that is true within us as individuals too.  When we are angry, it is we ourselves we are harming (remember – anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other to die).  We are injured and made ill by our refusal or inability to see or hear.

Who are the sick?  Who are the blind?  Who are the deaf?  It is shown again and again through scripture that the blind are often those who will not see.  The deaf are those who refuse to hear.  Our scriptures show us in these passages and others that the sick are often those who physically appear the healthiest, but who live lives that are not godly.  The passage from Matthew, as we read it today, gives us the cure, invites us into the health that Jesus offers.  We find that health by doing what Jesus asks – by caring for one another, by understanding at the deepest level that we are all connected, all one, all so intimately united by God’s love that we literally are healing ourselves and feeding ourselves and caring for ourselves when we care for others.  When we come to understand another person’s point of view, our blindness is listened.  When we can hear other people’s fears, hopes, thoughts and feelings, our deafness is lessened.  As a country we need to hear each other better and see each other more fully.  But this starts with individuals.  Can we hear and see one another?  Can we work on our own healing, by visiting others who are just as blind but who need to be heard, who need to be loved, through that blindness? 

Our challenge, then, is this: to remember we all have areas of blindness, we all are in need of healing.  Not one of us sees or hears with completeness.  Not one of us therefore are completely well.  And so when we care for each other, even those who may not appear to need our care, but need it just as much, we are also doing it for Jesus. 

My prayer for all of you is that as you care and love others, you feel God’s healing hand caring for you as well.  That you experience God’s touch on your heart as you touch the hands and minds of those who are sick.  That you know Jesus love for you, as a person struggling with the human illness, even as you offer love to those who struggle with human diseases around you.  In the name of the one who loves you into being and into wholeness and into healing we pray.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - When God Shows UP

Luke 8:26-39

1^st Kings 19:1-15a

            As you know, last Sunday morning there was another tragedy, another mass shouting, another attack of hatred and anger and fear, this time not at a school, not on a campus, not in an apartment complex or a mall, but in a gay bar. 49 people died, many others were injured. I would hope and trust that no matter what you believe about anything else, the loss of more lives in yet another act of hatred and anger would be upsetting, would be challenging, would be a cause of pause, for questioning, for looking at how we handle our anger, our fear, our hatred and how we might do all of that differently. When there is more and more violence and more and more hatred and anger and disagreement and political polarization we may find ourselves asking again and again, where is God?  When will God show up?

                        (from Chicken Soup for the Soul):     One cold evening during the holiday season, a little boy about six or seven was standing out in front of a store window.  The little child had no shoes and his clothes were mere rags.  A young woman hurrying by to get home to her own family was none the less caught by the needs of the little boy and the longing she read in his pale brown eyes.  She took the child by the hand and led him into the store.  There she bought him some new shoes and a complete suit of warm clothing.

            They came back outside into the street and the woman said to the child, “Now you can go home and have a very happy holiday.”

            The little boy looked up at her and asked, “Are you God, Ma’am?”

            She smiled down at him and answered, “No, son, I’m just one of God’s children.”

            The little boy then said, “I knew you had to be some relation.”

            --

Larry Green wrote: "When I go through a drive-thru the person taking my order says something like, "does that complete your order?" I always respond by saying, "unless you would like me to buy you something." Usually they will giggle and say they appreciate it, but decline. The young lady today asked, "are you serious?" I told her to add her meal to my order. When I got to the window, there was this young lady with tears streaming down her face. She thanked me profusely and began to tell me her story. Folks, you never know what others are going through. The people taking your order at the fast food place are often working 2-3 jobs just to get by. This young lady was working 3 jobs, pregnant, and was evicted from her apartment yesterday. She now lives in her car. All this info because I bought her a salad ... yes, she ordered herself a salad.”  Larry spent 45 minutes with her, giving her community resources, listening, feeding her in spirit as well as body.  And I am certain that in that time, Larry was God showing up for this woman.

So it seems it can be when God shows up: unexpected beauty in the midst of what can feel like chaos and confusion. Sometimes it can also feel like chaos and confusion in the midst of what has become “normal” for us as well, though.  For when God shows up, is it ever in the way we expect?  Is it ever with the message we expected or thought that we hoped to hear? 

Today we have two biblical stories.  Both of which show us God showing up in unexpected and unsought ways.

In the first story, Elijah is running away. And when he finally stops and faces God, he asks for God to end his life.   He says - “It is enough.  Now, O Lord, take away my life.”  But instead of God answering his death wish with a “yes” God tells him instead that he has a long, hard journey ahead of him. Just what Elijah wants to hear, I’m certain. But Elijah does what he is told - he eats to prepare for the journey and goes to the place where he is to meet God. And then we are told again, that God does not show up in the way we might expect. Do we expect God in the noise, in the rush, in the moving around? We are told God was not in the wind. Do we expect God in the big shakes, in the natural movements? We are told God was not in the earthquake. Do we expect God in the fire that guides us, giving us heat, energy, light, warmth, passion? We are told God was not in the fire. Where does God show up?  In the sheer and complete silence. In the stillness. In the calm after the storm. 

This story in 1^st Kings reminded me of C.S. Lewis’ book, “A Grief Observed.”  C.S. Lewis, as many of you know, was a remarkable Christian author who wrote both novels such as the Narnia series as well as theological conversations such as “The Four Loves” and “Surprised by Joy”.  In 1945 he experienced the death of a close friend.  About this death he said, “The experience of loss (the greatest I have yet known) was wholly unlike what I should have expected.  We now verified for ourselves what so many bereaved people have reported; the ubiquitous presence of a dead man, as if he had ceased to meet us in particular places in order to meet us everywhere...” he continued, “No event has so corroborated my faith in the next world as Williams did simply by dying.  When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death that was changed.” 

But 15 years later, in 1960, his wife of very few years, Joy, died. And that experience was also unexpected for him - but in the complete opposite way. As he said in the journal he kept following her death, “After the death of a friend...I had for some time a most vivid feeling of certainty about his continued life; even his enhanced life. I have begged to be given even one hundredth part of the same assurance about Joy. There is no answer. Only the locked door, the iron curtain, the vacuum, absolute zero.” And in contrast to the experience of the presence of his friend’s death changing his faith for the better, after the death of his wife, his faith was tested beyond measure.  As he continued, “go to (God) when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain and what do you find?  A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.  After that, silence.  You may as well turn away.  The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.  There are no lights in the windows.  It might be an empty house...not that I am in much danger of ceasing to believe in God.  The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.  The conclusion I dread is not, ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but, ‘So this is what God’s really like.  Deceive yourself no longer.” Deeply disturbing words of pain and despair from a deeply faithful man.  Have any of you ever felt that way?

God’s coming, or seeming lack of coming is very rarely what we expect. 

And so it was in the second scripture we read for today, of the Gerasene demoniac.  For the people around the healed man, God’s coming was nothing less than terrifying. They didn’t, perhaps they couldn’t, understand or know how to take the change that had come over the man healed of the demons. Before he had been naked, an outcast, sometimes so strong with his infirmity as to break the chains that people put on him to bind him, to confine him. While the people may have feared him before, at least they felt they understood him. They knew what to expect. They knew of his violent and odd behavior and they knew how to deal with it: bind him or let him live away from them among the tombs. But Jesus’ healing of the man threw all that they knew into confusion. The man seemed normal now. Would it last? The man was changed. Would Jesus change them as well? Not only was the man different, but a herd of pigs had gone crazy, and gone into the water and died. Scary things were happening, things they didn’t understand and they were afraid. 

And how much more so for the man himself, for the man possessed by the demons.  He had cried out to Jesus for Jesus to leave him alone. For the only thing he knew was his demons, how to live with them, how to survive with them. Never mind that his existence was miserable and that he went between being tied up with chains and being isolated and living naked without protection in the tombs. This was what he knew. But just as God did not agree to Elijah’s request for death, God did not agree to this man’s request to stay stuck with his demons. He healed him, and again, while we can only imagine and trust that the man’s life was better after that, just like for Elijah, this man was invited in his healing to enter a long hard journey. He wanted to go with Jesus after he was healed. But that would have been safe. He could have hidden his past, hidden his change behind Jesus’ loving protection.  But Jesus called for something else for this man, something more.   Instead, this prayer, too was turned down with a “no” and he was told he was to stay.  He was called to the hard, hard challenge of staying and telling his story and trying to live his life amongst those who had known him, starting again, starting anew. 

I think we can probably relate to the fear of having our demons healed.  For we all have demons.  Some are more serious than others - alcoholism, and other addictions, mental illness, these are the serious ones.  But there are others that aren’t as obvious, or don’t feel as serious. 

A “victim” complex, a struggle with low self-esteem, a struggle with food addictions or a bad relationship with spouse, child, sibling. As much as we may experience those demons as burdens, we also depend on them. What would it be like to live without them?  How would we reenter the world, changed, if they were suddenly lifted, suddenly gone?  How do we live without our crutches, without that which is most familiar?  But God comes.  And God comes unexpectedly.  And sometimes, we are asked to be different, to be healed, to live without the demons and situations we know.

If we are willing to live through the hard times, to accept the gifts of change that God brings, if we are willing to take the risk of healing and being new in God’s way, God’s coming is always better than we can imagine.

C. S. Lewis, too, got through his “dark night of the soul.”  He got through the confusion and struggles with his faith that he had after his wife’s death.  His faith was never the same: for it had entered a new level and reached a depth he never dreamt of before.  It had been tested, and it had come out new.  As he said, “I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted.  Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face?  The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs.  Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to heard.”  And from that place of reconnection he continued simply but powerfully, “I know the two great commandments, and I’d better get on with them.” 

So where is God when refugees like the Syrians are feeling their homes?  Where is God in the earthquakes that have rocked Japan and Ecuador? Where is God when people are beaten up or killed because of their skin color or their faith beliefs or their sexuality? And where was God last weekend? We have to look for God in the unexpected. With the escaping Syrians, God is with those families who have taken them in, who have offered care and love and home and support.  Where is God in Japan and Ecuador? Also with the people coming to help with their resources and their love and their thinking through how to make communities safer in the face of earthquakes.  And last weekend, God was with the communities that came together after the tragedy, hundreds of folk lining up to donate blood, to grieve together, to support each other, to plan, and to imagine the possibilities of a world that functions differently, without the violence of hate and anger and fear. Where is God? God is wherever love is. God is wherever that love becomes an active verb, working for the good of the other, sometimes at our own expense. God is wherever people are willing to take risks to care for those who are rejected by the larger world, just as Jesus cared for and loved the Syrophoenicians and the Samaritans and the women with bad reputations and the tax collectors. God is wherever we dare to love in that same way. We are called to follow Jesus and go out to love God and love one another. After each meeting with the unexpected God, we will enter life in a new way, but still with the call to love.  We, too, know the two great commandments.  And we, too had better get on with it. Where is God?  Where we are doing God’s work. That’s what it’s all about.  Amen.

Post Trauma and Personal Change

I've written before about a wonderful book by Paul Pearsall called The Beethoven Factor (Canada: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2003).  He shares that people have basically three ways to respond to trauma.  They can become victims and be forever made cynical, bitter or weakened (always acting a victim) in the face of what happened.  They can become survivors, who live through it and continue on.  Or they can become thrivers which means that they deepen, become more whole and live more fully as a result of what they have experienced.  He is quick to point out that being a thriver does not mean that you are always happy or always positive.  It means that you live life fully engaged and allow what you experienced to make you more you.  Thrivers cry, they laugh, they feel joy and deep sorrow but they do it all with depth, fully present in whatever it is that life brings at each step.  They do not allow themselves to become bitter or jaded, they don't exist in the past trauma or future fear but stay in the "now" moment and deal completely with whatever comes to them.

The book was recommended to me by my spiritual director when my family was going through our deep crisis five years ago because he said that he saw me as an absolute thriver, someone who was truly deepened and who grew through the crisis rather than being stunted by it or just surviving it.  I read an article that I re-posted on Facebook recently about a woman who went through a similar crisis to my own.  She wrote that she is a much better human being now because of what she went through. She talked about coming into her own, not depending on someone else for affirmation or a sense of self, being much deeper and more real with everyone.

Does this sound sunny and cheery and Polyannaish?  "It was horrible, but we survived it and are much better for the experience."  "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."  And my own, "God is there to bring resurrection out of every death and it can and will happen if we are open to the movement of the Spirit."

Well, it's true.  I am a much better and deeper person because of it.  I have more compassion.  I am more present with other folk and less trapped in my own being, my own thoughts, my own crises most of the time.  I am wiser and know that whatever is happening really will pass - I know this at a body level, not just in theory anymore.  I am calmer, more centered, more grounded.  All of that is true.

But, the truth is that there still are scars as well.  And there are negative changes in me, also.  Damage has been done.  It would be less than honest to fail to name that reality as well.

Many of you know the biggest one:  I struggle deeply with trust.  I am seeing a wonderful, amazing man right now. He is truly a good person, one of the best people I know in fact. He is kind, generous, loyal, affectionate, loving and present. My past does not scare him. My present does not overwhelm him. My commitments to full time church work, justice work, caring work and to three children who are also recovering and need a great deal of care do not leave him feeling abandoned or neglected. He takes on supporting me and helping to care for my kids (one of whom comes with extreme challenges) with commitment, dedication and deep love. But I hold him at arm's length in many ways. I could create a list of ways in which we are not as compatible as .... But the bottom line is that he is truly a good man, an extremely caring partner and a loving helper for my kids.  And the real issue under it all is that I have no idea how to trust again. I look at him and wonder what secrets I don't know that are lurking under the surface ready to throw my life and the children's lives overboard once again and into an ocean that requires us to struggle to simply float and not sink so far from shore. I am working on this. And I will continue to work on it. But this is a deep wound that will take a long time to heal.

Perhaps a more serious change is the anxiety that plagues me now concerning other people.  I've always been affected by how other people think/feel/act, always struggled with insecurity in particular.  And I had hoped that having survived all the attacks and humiliations and nastiness that came our way that my skin would have toughened and I would have realized that "names will never hurt me" in a real sense - that if we could survive that, what would it matter what people say or think or feel about us now?  But in fact, my experience has been the opposite.  I am more anxious than before.  The damage that was done to us by mis-information, by gossip, by mean-spirited people choosing to be spiteful was real. Yes, we survived it.  But our lives look very different than they did before.  So while in fact I have seen that nastiness does not kill us, I have also experienced that it can alter one's entire life, dramatically, radically, and in devastating ways. So new meanness carries a threat for me that is hard for me to put aside. I work on this, too. Meditation and centering excercises help, walking helps immensely: all of it brings me back to what is most important which is choosing love in the face of whatever comes - love of God, love of others and love of self.

My point here, though, is that I don't think people are one of the three things named by Paul Pearsall. I don't think we are victims, survivers or thrivers.  We may tend towards one of these more than others.  But the reality is that everything that happens to us affects us in a multitude of ways.  Each event has lessons for us, and each brings gifts and challenges. We aren't just made better by the traumas that come our way. We also carry scars. And we aren't just damaged by the life that comes our way, we are also gifted. We do have choices. Do we work through the hurts, working those sore and torn muscles towards healing?  Or do we allow them to stay torn and to atrophy?  Do we choose to walk forward with integrity and commitment towards growth or do we become bitter or frozen in a cynical weakened way?  Do we take our abuse and abuse others?  Do we take our pains and become victimized and weak?  Or do we grow and hopefully figure out ways to make things better for ourselves but also for those around us?

I write about this from a personal perspective, but I am thinking about the larger traumas that we have experienced recently in our country as well. When we choose to really feel the pain that comes and to walk through it we have a better chance of stepping forward with strength, with integrity and with the possibility of change.  We can make that choice.  But not without recognizing and taking time to honor, or respect, or recognize that damage has been done.  Genuinely.  Each person affected directly by these tragedies (or even indirectly) will need to take the time to grieve, to feel, to be angry and sad and scared and, and, and; and to work with and nurture those sore places so that they can heal.  That process will look different for everyone.  Some things won't heal right away.  Some things may not ever heal fully.  We still have choices about what to do with the pain.  But we are all victims, survivers and thrivers.  And we must be gentle with each other as well as with ourselves.

Sunday's Sermon - the Problem of Miracles.

1 Kings 17:8-24

Luke 7:11-17

Today we are shown two miracles of God saving children for the sake of their grieving mothers.  They are wonderful stories about God’s caring for the poor, for the widowed, for those grieving and suffering great loss. 

            But these miracles also raise questions.  What questions do you have when you hear about miracles, then or now?  What concerns do they raise for you?

           

I have a friend whose oldest son of seven kids contracted Spinal Meningitis.  The child had an especially bad and quick attack of the disease and the doctors told my friend that he should not expect his son to live.  But at the last moment the child recovered.  A couple years later, however, another friend of mine lost her only daughter to the same disease in a matter of hours.  My friend whose son survived the disease swears that God intervened to save his child.  But then I have to ask, why did God save his boy and not my other friend’s daughter?  That is the question and that is the problem with miracles.  While we rejoice in the miracle, the question always remains why some people are given miracles and others aren’t. 

About twenty years ago now, one of the big storms that so often hits the East coast blew through the Eastern Seaboard.  A prominent televangelist took a group of about 12 people down to the coast and they formed a tight prayer circle as the storm approached.  They prayed that the storm would not hit the coast where they were.  Sure enough, the storm went around them.  Instead, it hit the coast a few miles north of where they stood and killed over a thousand people.  This particular televangelist went on TV spouting his proof that prayer worked, and it surely seemed to for those 12 people.  But what about for those who were surely also praying further north?  And underneath this question is an even more profound question – why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do some suffer while others seem not to?  Why do the good seem to be hit hard at times when people who do evil things seem to thrive?  How do you answer these questions for yourselves?

A fellow pastor friend of mine shared with me that while he was a college student he and a couple friends went to visit a small Pentecostal church one Sunday.  Both my friend and his buddies were very committed Christians but they had not experienced this kind of church before.  They found themselves standing amidst people praying in tongues with their hands in the air, some having seizures of the Holy Spirit and all behaving in very un-Presbyterian fashion.  Finally at one point, the pastor, Brother Rutherford, brought forth a bucket of water.  He said that this bucket had been put on the back porch empty the night before and this morning he had found water in it, so he knew this water was holy water.  He then invited a child forward who had a clubbed foot.  The preacher declared that while there were medical cures for such a malady, the faithful parents of the child would not use these cures because they knew that God could heal the malady directly.  Brother Rutherford then put bandages into the “holy water” that had appeared in the bucket over night, wrapped those bandages around the child’s foot and prayed for healing.  He did this a couple times, each time praying with more conviction that his prayers would be answered, but each time with the same result that when they removed the bandages, the clubbed foot was found to be the same.  Finally, brother Rutherford climbed into the pulpit, pointed at the young college students at the back of the church and said – “you know why the Lord won’t give us a healing this morning.  It’s because we’ve permitted three devils into our midst!”  As the crowd in the church turned on these young adults angrily, you can imagine that the three college students hied it out of there very quickly, never to return to that church.  This church blamed the strangers, the visitors, for the failure of the miracle.

At revivals, if a person is not healed by the faith touch that they experience, they are blamed for their lack of faith. 

Other people have other ways of making things “fair”.   One way to do this is to blame karma – if you didn’t do something wrong in this life, it must have been in a past life.  The reason why some people suffer and others don’t, why some experience miracles and others don’t has to do with the amount of good each person has done or has failed to do throughout the history of the universe.

Sometimes we blame ourselves even when we have done nothing really wrong.  Or we try to figure out ways we could have done things differently so that such and such wouldn’t have happened.  But these also don’t really help us to ultimately know why miracles happen for some and seem to fail to happen for others. 

Our theologians also have many different ideas.  Frederick Buechner says this – “God is all-powerful.  God is all-good.  Terrible things happen.  You can reconcile any two of these propositions with each other, but you can’t reconcile all three.  The problem of evil is perhaps the greatest single problem for religious faith.  There have been numerous theological and philosophical attempts to solve it, but when it comes down to the reality of evil itself they are none of them worth much.  When a child is raped and murdered, the parents are not apt to take much comfort from the explanation (better than most) that since God wants people to love God, people must be free to love or not to love and thus free to rape and murder a child if he takes a notion to.  Christian science solves the problem of evil by saying that it does not exist except as an illusion of mortal mind.  Buddhism solves it in terms of reincarnation and an inexorable law of cause and effect whereby the raped child is merely reaping the consequences of evil deeds it committed in another life.  Christianity, on the other hand, ultimately offers no theoretical solution at all.  It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene – not even this – but that God can turn it to good.”

An anonymous person of faith wrote this:

“Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when He could do something about it.” 

“Well, why don’t you ask Him?”

“Because I’m afraid He would ask me the same question.” 

C.S. Lewis says that the miracles we seek are rare and come only when God intervenes in the natural order of life--Earthquakes are the natural order and sweep away millions.  Death is the natural order and eventually carry us all away.  Mudslides in Ecuador are a natural response to heavy rains and sweep cars off the road and down into deep Andean gullies.  C.S. Lewis then wrote that miracles are for God's youngest "children", and as we mature our trust in the Lord grows so that we need to increase our faith in God's presence without an outward, visible sign of His constant and true presence for Jesus will never leave us nor forsake us.  Hmm.  I have to admit that as time goes by I think less and less of this particular idea.  It seems that it is like the people who look at the success of people who do really bad things and say “yes, but those people aren’t really happy”.  It seems a justification – “well, I didn’t get my miracle because I’m more mature in my faith.”  I see people of all faith levels and all faith beliefs who receive miracles.  And I’ve seen people who were every bit as faithful who seemingly did not.

The reality is that some people get the miracles they pray for and some don’t.  Or what is more accurate – sometimes we are granted miracles in the way we would expect and want to see them, and other times we don’t see them because they come in unexpected ways or ways that are harder to notice.  In my own personal life, I see times when I have been blessed by multiple miracles, often things I didn’t ask for, usually involving people reaching out, offering care, offering their wisdom and faith at exactly the moment I needed it.  I have shared some of those with you – times when I’ve received a beautiful and much needed email at the exact right time.  Times when people have come into my life exactly as I needed them to.  Times when a person (often a child) has said exactly the thing I needed to hear at exactly the right time.  And there have been other times when I have prayed most fervently for miracles that appear to fail to come – or again, fail to come in the way that I wanted or could easily recognize.

And in the end, for me, it comes down to the quote I’ve shared with you before - Einstein said - “There are two ways to live life.  You can live it as if nothing is a miracle.  Or you can live it like everything is.” 

We may not get the miracles that we pray for.  But we are surrounded by miracles in every moment of every day.  It is a miracle that each of us is sitting here together in this wonderful community of faith.  It is a miracle that we breathe in God’s spirit with each breath we take and that we are given the rain to bring us water and food in abundance.  It is a miracle that we - all of us here today - walked into this room on our own two feet.  It is a miracle when a stranger gives us a smile for no reason whatsoever.  The birth of each child is an absolute miracle.  The love of our pets is a miracle.  The love we share with anyone or anything is a miracle.  Relationships that last 50 years – those are miracles.  Finding the wonderful friends we have – miracles.  Music – an absolute miracle.  And the list goes on.

Today we read two miracles about children being saved.  And these are amazing and wondrous.  But it is just as wondrous to me every day that all three of my children wake up, healthy, happy, and growing.  It is just as wondrous to me to see you nodding your heads and looking inward in thought as we all strive to listen to God in this place.  It is just as wondrous that God’s presence can be felt, and experienced, and shared in so very many ways.  It is just as wondrous that we have such a Lord and such a God who loves us beyond our imaginings.  We can live our lives as if everything is a miracle, because everything is.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - The gifts of suffering

John 16:12-15

Romans 5:1-5

            In J.K Rowling’s book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,( New York, NY : Arthur A. Levine Books, 2003.  p823) there is a conversation between Harry and Dumbledore that follows Harry’s great loss of his god-father.  Harry is suffering, he is struggling.  The conversation follows as such:

               “I know how you are feeling, Harry,” said Dumbledore very quietly.

               “No, you don’t,” said Harry, and his voice was suddenly loud and strong.  White-hot anger leapt inside him.  Dumbledore knew nothing about his feelings.

               “You see, Dumbledore?” said Phineas Nigellus slyly, “Never try to understand the students.  They hate it.  They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own –”

               “That’ enough, Phineas,” said Dumbledore.

               Harry turned his back on Dumbledore and stared determinedly out of the opposite window. …

               “There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,” said Dumbledore’s voice.  “On the contrary…the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.”

               Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words.

               “My greatest strength, is it?” said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. “You haven’t got a clue…You don’t know…”

               “What don’t I know?” asked Dumbledore calmly.

               It was too much.  Harry turned around, shaking with rage.

               “I don’t want to talk about how I feel, all right?”

               “Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man!  This pain is part of being human –”

               “THEN – I – DON’T – WANT – TO – BE- HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate silver instruments form the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room.  It shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, “Really!”

               “I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace.  “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE - ”

               He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that too.  It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.

               “You do care,” said Dumbledore.  He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office.  His expression was calm, almost detached.  “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”

--

            We all have times of suffering.  It is part of the human experience.  It is part of being alive.  None of us want to suffer.  None of us enjoy suffering.  And yet, the passage I just read tells us that suffering is our greatest strength.  That it IS what makes us the people we are.  Paul said it in today’s passage as well.  “suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

            But the truth is we have choices about how we react to the pain of suffering.  We have choices about what we will do with our suffering.  Paul Pearsall in his book, The Beethoven Factor (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2003) says we tend to react to trauma or suffering in one of three ways.  We can become victims, or become beaten, bitter, sorrowful because of what we have endured.  We can become survivors, which means we make it through but continue to wear the scars.  Or we can become thrivers.  Thrivers take what they have endured and create something new and beautiful out of it.  I believe that our faith can have a great deal to do with how we respond in the face of trauma.

             While I was in Ohio, I was part of a wonderful and amazing lectionary group - a group of 12 pastors who met together weekly to study scripture, pray together, eat together, sometimes sing together and sometimes play together.  We were brother and sister Christians on the journey towards a deeper understanding of Christ, of God, of the Spirit and of love.  But we were/are also friends - people I know I can call on and count on in crisis, people I do call on and count on in crisis. We were a "house church" in the truest sense of the word, a community offering care that is not just theoretical but practical as well.  I am so deeply grateful for every single person in that group, deeply thankful for their thoughtfulness and faith, their contributions to the community, their abiding friendships, the gifts they gave simply through their weekly presence. 

           One week when we gathered, our group members had much wisdom to offer on this passage from Paul in Romans 5:1-5.  At one point in the conversation we were particularly discussing verses 3-5.  To quote it once more, "And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

            I admit I had been very quiet that morning. It was a week of anniversaries - difficult, painful anniversaries and I am not unaffected by these.  I was even, I found, a little concerned that I might be bringing the group down with my sad energy.  But I found it more than a little interesting that the group was discussing how unhelpful it is when people tell each other that they are supposed to be grateful for their sufferings.  Comments like "everything happens for a reason" and "God never gives you more than you can handle" are not helpful. These comments minimize the pain we suffer, they discount our experiences in the moment.  Telling people they should be grateful for their suffering because it will produce endurance which produces character which produces hope is not and cannot be helpful.  I agree with all of this.  But then somehow it was either said or implied that people can't really be grateful for the deep traumas they endure.  And there I was, sitting in pain, sitting in grief, sitting in memories of the previous two years when my family had gone through an unbelievable time of loss and tragedy and scandal and humiliation and my life and the lives of my kids had radically changed as I became a single parent and sole provider for my family, for my household; a leader of a congregation without a partner to support me, sitting in memories of hurtful attacks aimed my way, sitting in regrets for things that should have been or could have been done differently, sitting in loss - and from that place, from that place of pain I heard myself saying, "I am grateful for the suffering that I have endured."  Huh?  Did I just say that?  "I have deepened - in my person, in my faith, in my compassion and empathy, in my ability to understand and forgive, in my commitment to see what really is and what is not, mostly in my connection to God.  I have deepened and become more the person I strive to be, the person God calls me to be, because of my struggles."  Silence.

"Okay," came the response finally, "but would you have said that two years ago when you were actually going through all of that?"

"No", I laughed.  And then, again to the surprise of myself more than anyone I added, "and yes."  During that incredibly difficult time for my family there came a period when I thought I might actually be broken by what was happening, when I felt that maybe I would not be able to hold it together.  The world was nothing like I thought it was.  My marriage, my life, my ministry, my views of other human beings, my understanding of the world - nothing was what I had thought it was.  And the things I prayed for were answered by "no" and "no" again.  Every morning I found myself just repeating the mantra, "Please, God.  Please, God!"  over and over and yet things were not getting better.  Every day brought more pain and new levels of hurt.  And yet...and yet, it was in the midst of that, in the midst of the deepest, darkest time ever in my life, that I felt God's presence so incredibly strongly.  I felt God's arms holding me, carrying me, speaking to me of companionship and love and care.  And it was not just with God directly.  I connected with people whom I never would have connected with at such deep levels, I made meaningful and enduring friendships (including with folk from that very group) who were amazing and supportive and wonderful and who continue to shine God's light for me.  I learned who was real and true and caring (most of the people I knew and connected with, actually!) and who could not walk with me through the crisis, and I came to understand that those who could not walk with me - that too was not out of meanness, but out of their own experiences and needs at that time. People shared with me their own sufferings at a much deeper level because they knew I would get it, and so it deepened my ministry as well.  And I developed a much, much stronger appreciation for the beauty around me in the midst of darkness.  I am more grateful now for the birds singing, the sun shining, the breeze blowing, for little gifts and kind words, open smiles and firm hugs, the presence of children in my life, play, dance, music.  I see blessings and feel blessed where I did not see them or know them or love them before.

            Did I want the difficult tragedies to happen?  Of course not.  In my wildest, deepest, most awful nightmares I never saw this coming and never could have imagined the pain and suffering that I or my kids would have experienced.  But it would be inaccurate to say that I am ungrateful for it.  Because God did bring gifts, God did bring life, God brought presence in a way I had never experienced before and it came to me THROUGH the experiences.  And while I am still a person who makes mistakes, big and little, who "sins", who hurts others, I see that I am becoming more fully the person God calls me to be because I have deepened through the suffering.  How could I not be grateful?

Paul starts this passage with the words, “we boast in our sufferings”.  I would not say that I "boast" in my suffering.  I would not say that I "take pride" (different translation) in my problems.  In truth, I find that problematic.  When we become “martyrs” for a cause we can lose sight of the real meaning – of serving and loving God and one another.  We can become too focused on a single issue and forget to see the forest for the single tree.  It becomes at some level about us and about our ability to withstand, to have integrity, to be strong.  Again, our call is to be about love – loving God, self and each other.  Boasting in our suffering is not about loving.  But while that part of the passage does NOT speak to me in this way, I would say that God has been present for me through all of the pain we endured, that I am different because of it, and that, yes, I am grateful for the struggles. 

I pray the same for all of you.  I don't wish pain on you, but pain will come.  And so my prayer is that when it does, that you, too, would thrive through adversity, grow through the struggles, deepen and find gratitude in the midst of it all.