What Is Truth?

John 18:28-40

Psalm 145:10-13

3/27/22

 

Truth.  What is truth?  Today we are swamped with extreme stories in our news on both ends of the spectrum.  The tales become more and more wild, and what is real becomes harder and harder to determine.  As a result, people don’t know what to believe anymore.  We don’t know what is true, we don’t know what is TRUTH.  And it feels important, desperately important to know what is real, what is FACTUAL, what is historical, what is TRUE. 

As people try to navigate what is real, what is true, we are impacted by many who are actively trying to hide truth, thinking that truth will be damaging.  I think about what happened in our own Presbytery at Cameron house in San Francisco.  When the stories started to come out that the pastor who had led Cameron house for forty years had been molesting the boys he worked with the entire time he was there, the first response of the Presbytery was to hide it, to shut it down, believing that the truth would create more damage, would divide the church, would effectively stop important programs.  Of course, the opposite was true.  In trying to hide the truth, instead, they did much greater damage to those who had been harmed.  And this led to greater damage to the church because the stories did come out, despite the attempts at hiding them. The appearance of duplicity, the attempts to hide the stories are what made the church look bad and what drove people from it.  Truth matters, and the facts matter.  Telling the truth matters. 

But still, in a world where everyone sees things differently, what is truth?  What is it really? 

The “truths” that we are told, and our determinations of what is real, what is not, who to believe, who not to believe: these are tearing us apart as a country, as a people, as a nation.  And I would say that this is because under all the historical truths, under the facts, under the histories, we have forgotten the deeper meaning of what is really TRUE.  We have gotten so caught up in what is factual, what is historical, that we have forgotten what is true with a capital T. 

I realize that may sound complicated and confusing.  We come to know our world by what we believe to be true.  It determines our actions, it determines our friendships, it determines our lives.  But we also know that there is always more than one way to see any and every event.  Depending on where you stand, what preconceived understandings you already come with, and your core beliefs, you will see each event differently.  There are very few “facts” when it comes down to it.  Let me give you an example.  In front of you right now you see me, a solid.  You see me standing here as a solid person.  But when you dig a little deeper you find that we are all made of atoms and atoms are mostly space.  What you are seeing is not a solid, but mostly space at a core molecular level. 

Let me give you another example.  We see color all around us, but what is color?  To quote scientific Britannica: “color is simply the range of visible light that humans can see. Different colors, such as red and orange, and other invisible spectrums such as infrared light, move around in waves of electromagnetic energy. The human eye is capable of seeing only light with wavelengths between 380 and 750 nanometers. For example, the visible spectrum begins with the wavelengths that we call violet, between 380 and 450 nm, then moves on to blue, green, yellow, and orange, and ends with what we call red, between 590 and 750 nm. When you look at someone’s red shirt, for instance, that shirt will be absorbing or scattering wavelengths of light lower than 590 nm, so those waves will not reach your eyes. But a red shirt will be reflecting some wavelength between 590 and 750 nm, which your eyes process as red.” 

These two examples are just scientific examples.  But I could easily give you human examples too.  When we see other people’s behavior, we ascribe to each person motivations, “agendas” and feelings.  But if you ever think about why someone does something and then ask them why they did it, you will find that our ideas about people’s behaviors and their ideas about their own behaviors do not match.  And to be fair, people don’t see everything about themselves, let alone about other people.  Our motivations for every behavior are complex and are made up of our histories, our perceptions, and our values.  Each action builds on past actions, and our motivations for any one behavior will never be completely determined.

Even at a more basic level, interpreting what we hear and see others DO can be difficult.  I shared in a blog about a church where I had worked as organist/choir director during seminary.  After I graduated, the church hired another young woman to take my place.  One week that new young woman called me extremely upset and said that the pastor’s wife (who sang in the choir) was mean to her and didn’t like her at all.  I found this very hard to believe since the woman had been so kind and sweet to me.  But I listened and tried to encourage her to talk directly to the pastor’s wife.  A week later the pastor’s wife called me, explaining that she didn’t know what to do about the new choir director who misinterpreted everything she said.  She tried to joke with her and the director heard it as attacking.  She tried to offer care and the choir director heard it as telling her what to do.  Neither of them heard each other.  And neither of them could understand very well what was going on.

I remember watching a TV episode on sight.  They ran a bunch of tests on people on their sight, but it was also on their understandings.  One of the tests they ran was to have a group of 100 people watch a small video clip and then each of them wrote about what they saw.  None of what they wrote matched.  After sharing with the group each person’s memory of what had happened, they then had the same group rewatch the video.  And then had them once again write down what they saw.  And while each person’s vision of what had happened had changed a bit, each person had, at some level, incorporated what they heard the others had also seen into their descriptions, none the less, the descriptions still did not match.  What was fact here?  What was historical?  If all of this added up into what was “truth”, “truth” itself was more confusing and unclear than ever. 

In faith matters this becomes even more complex.  I can guarantee that if we were to spell out each one of our beliefs in this room, no two of us would agree 100%.  We are all worshiping in the same church, in the same denomination, in the same town and same building.  And yet even here, no two of us would be 100% in agreement in terms of faith beliefs.   If we define “truth” then in this way, we will find that no two of us can agree on what is true, what is real, or even what is factual. 

Bishop Michael Curry said it in his book, Love is the Way: page 221: “If you are only getting stories from people who look like you, you aren’t getting the truth.” And since Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week, our reach for “truth” needs some help.  When I talk to my brothers, sisters and siblings of color, for example, most of them have a depth of faith, an experience of God, that we can only imagine, that we can only hope to attain, hope to reach for.  And that should tell us something.  We, with our intellectualism and our cynicism and our skepticism are missing out on some very deep truths about God’s presence, God’s actions, and God’s movements.

Paul Kalanithi in his book, When Breath Becomes Air, said it this way, “In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture.  The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth.  Human knowledge is never contained in one person.  It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.  And Truth comes somewhere above all of them…”

But still, what is Truth?  One of my favorite movies is Second Hand Lions.  And there is a wonderful scene towards the end of the movie that I want to share with you.  The main character is a kid who has come to stay with his uncles over the summer.  His mother is horrible and has basically abandoned him to two old men she really doesn’t even know.  But these men tell the boy these huge, fantastic tales of their time as young men.  Truly the tales are outrageous, but at the same time, possibly true.  And at one point, the boy confronts one of the men with these words, “Those stories about Africa, about you, they are true aren’t they?”  The old uncle responds, “It doesn’t matter.” 

The boy continues, “It does too!  Around my mom all I hear is lies.  I don’t know what to believe.”

The man responds, “Son, if you want to believe in something, believe in it.  Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it.  …  Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a [person] needs to believe in the most.  That people are basically good.  That honor, courage and virtue are everything, that money and power are nothing.  That good always triumphs over evil and that love, and I want you to remember this, that true love never dies.  I want you to remember that, boy.  Remember that.  It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.  You see, a [person] should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”  C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series similarly said that it is better to believe in a lie that is wonderful than a “real” world that is hell.

William Faulkner has been quoted as saying, “Facts and Truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”

So what am I saying?  That “facts” don’t matter?  No.  What I’m saying is that we are part of creating what is real, and what is true.  And part of that start with our beliefs, with our visions and with our understandings of the world.  What is true is impacted by our faith.  A belief, for example, in love means that you will behave in ways that are loving, that you will trust your love and that will make a difference to all those you encounter.

Today we come to the story of Jesus’ trial before Pilate.  I wonder, when you think about Jesus, what you think his primary purpose here was?  We can think of many purposes.  A mirror into God, a model for how to live as faithful people, an example of what Love really looks like.  Many of our fundamentalist, evangelical, and even mainstream brothers and sisters would say Jesus’ purpose is death, or resurrection, or salvation from sins.  But this is not what Jesus himself says.  He doesn’t tell us his purpose is any of the theological reasons we might suppose.  No, instead, in this discussion with Pilate, he states very clearly and very simply that his purpose in coming is to testify to the truth.   Pilate then ends today’s readings with the simple question, “What is truth?”

And as we know, this “simple” question is anything but simple.

Frederick Buechner says this about Truth in his book Wishful Thinking: a theological ABC: “When Jesus says that he has come to bear witness to the truth, Pilate asks, ‘What is truth?’  Contrary to the traditional view that his question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat.  Instead of Truth, Pilate has only expedience.  His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient.  Pilate views [humanity] as alone in the universe with nothing but [our] own courage and ingenuity to see [us] through.  It is enough to choke up anybody.  Pilate asks What is truth?  And for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him.  The sound they make is like the sound of empty pails falling down the cellar stairs.  Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question.  He just stands there.  Stands, and stands there.”

Jesus stands there.  The one who has declared over and over “I am” stands there.  “I am” stands there.  And that is the truth that he presents.  His truth is that he is.  The truth to which he testifies is that God IS.

God is present in the heavens, and God is present in this person.  God is present in the very air we breathe, and, dare I say, God is present in YOU.  That is the truth that stands there.  That is the truth that Jesus presents by his very body, by his very being.  That is Truth.  And it is on that that we can base our faith, our determination, our lives.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

The Covenant on Our Hearts

 Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-31, Mark 4:26-34

               Today we continue our study of the book of Jeremiah.  To give the background of this passage, Jehoiakim was one of Josiah’s sons.  And while Josiah and Jeremiah were on the same page in terms of what God wanted and therefore how to lead the people, Jehoiakim, the King, did not agree with the prophet Jeremiah about how the country of Israel should be run.  Jeremiah was really clear about what God wanted: God wanted the lying the stop, God wanted justice for the poorest of the poor, God wanted kindness to the “least of these”.  But Jehoiakim was not listening and he resented everything that Jeremiah had to say about it.  He tried to arrest Jeremiah, unsuccessfully.  And then when Jeremiah continued to proclaim the message that the behavior of this king HAD to change, that he HAD to repent, that he had to stop the lying, the denying of the word of God as spoken through Jeremiah, Jeremiah said that if he did not change his behavior, his injustices, his acts of cruelty, that there would be consequences.  God was angry, and destruction would come if the behavior continued.  Jehoiakim’s reaction then was to destroy the words that Jeremiah had had Baruch write down.  His reaction was denial, was the ostrich putting its head in the sand, “If I just make these words go away, then the prophecy will end.”  His response was censorship.  But instead of succeeding in destroying the words, the words Jeremiah spoke on behalf of God moved from being conditional, “If you don’t stop this injustice and lying, you will be destroyed” to absolute, “You have gone past the point of no return and the consequences are coming.  You cannot turn back now.”  In addition, the words were expanded, including all that was said before and much, much more.  Unfortunately, the consequences for Jehoiakim’s actions extended beyond himself, too.  As a leader, his mis-steps were not only destroying himself, but would come down on all the people as well.  Jehoiakim’s reaction was not repentance, and it was not an offer to change.  He felt that if he just destroyed the words of God’s prophet, they would no longer have an affect.  But this is false.  We can deny the past all we want, but it still affects every single thing about the present.  Denying it, squashing it, trying to destroy the realities of what happened before, of our history, as ugly as it is, does not undo what has been done.  It does not change that past.  Instead, our denial of it cements the consequences that result from our past actions.  Rather than opening us up to change, to repentance, and therefore to healing and new life, both as individuals, but more importantly as communities, as countries, as nations, our denial of what has gone before simply ensures our doom, ensures we will not grow, ensures we will not change, ensures that we will continue to act with injustice and ensures that the consequences for those behaviors will take place.

               These are very hard words for us to hear.  VERY hard words for us to hear.  How many times have I heard people say, “I don’t like the God of the Old Testament because that God seems to very violent!”  But I want to be clear here.  This is not about punishment.  This is about consequences.  Our actions have consequences.  There isn’t any way to get around that.  There are consequences for our actions.  And, while it is especially hard to hear the words from Jeremiah today in which Jeremiah moves from the place of saying “you must repent” to, “there is no going back,”  there is truth that we must understand in which there comes a point when change is too late, when we cannot undo what we have done.  While I deeply believe that God is a God of second and third, fourth, fifth chances, at some point, there is no escaping the reality that the world has been built in such a way that there are consequences of our behaviors. 

            Many scientist are now saying, for example, that we have reached that point of no return in terms of the environment.  That we have crossed a line in terms of the rape and damage we have done to our world, to our environment.  The climate change that is a consequence of the destruction of our ozone, the build up of carbon in our atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect from which we cannot return.  As an article written in November on EcoWatch said it, “The only way to have prevented runaway climate change would have been to have stopped burning fossil fuels between 1960 and 1970, the model found, as USA TODAY reported. In order to stop temperatures and sea levels from rising now, we would have to remove at least 33 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year starting this one.” 

         The eight year drought that our damage has caused in the northern triangle: Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala is the single most cause of the influx of immigrants into this country.  The drought means the people can’t farm their own lands and they can’t feed their families.  This is driving folk here.  We are reaping the consequences of being the largest historic emitter of carbon. 

         UN did a study a few years back that said that there would be 100 million ecological refugees by 2100 in large part as a consequence of droughts in African pushing people towards Europe.  But more recently they have renewed the study taking into account the domino affects of conflict, war, and water scarcity.  The new estimate as a result is that  there will now be  two billion ecological refugees by year 2100.  Population closer to 10 billion by then.  That means 1/5 will be internally and externally displaced people.    Again, these are the consequences of choices we have made as nations.

      But we, too, like to deny truth, like to squish it in the hopes that it will just go away.  I think about the fact that Oklahoma has declared it will not include in its history the Tulsa riots, that others are proclaiming they will not change the history books to include the horrible things that we have done to African Americans, to Native peoples, to the Japanese and the Chinese in this country.  They will not include these historical facts.  Why?  It is just like Jehoiakim: if they don’t write it down they believe it can’t hurt them.  But burning the scrolls of life, the truths of our history does not change the central, scary and challenging message to “love your enemies”.  Instead, it cements our fate in horrible ways.  Perhaps if we had been honest about our history from the beginning we would not be experiencing the great racial strife that we face now.  But people fear the truth, they fear the stories and in doing so, they seal the fate of our country, of our people, of the world. 

               Howard Thurman in his book The Mood of Christmas wrote an essay called “The Great Incarnate Words” (P 111-118),

But the word would not be stilled:

               Let your motive be simple;

               Your words, yea, yea; naysay.

               Hypocrisy for self-defense—

               Is that the sinless sin?

               Does it degrade the soul at last

               And sweep the raft against the rocks?

               Deceive, and live for yet another day!

               Declare, and run the risk of sure destruction!

But why?

The Word knew:

               There is a point beyond which (humans) cannot go,

               Without yielding (their) right to try again.

               To play God false to save one’s skin,

               May jeopardize all there is that makes (humans, Human).

                              “What would a person give in exchange for (their) soul?”

               This is the great Decision!

               Even death becomes a little thing.

               To survive with inner cleanness;

To compromise where ground forsook can be retrieved;

               To stand unyielding when the moment comes;

This is the meaning of the Word!

 

Love. The word—LOVE.

Hate is the last great fortress of the weak.

The moving current of resentment flows through the channels

               of the heart,

When overarching wrong inflicts its bitter lash,

But this may pass.

                So then we come to the New Testament reading, the story of the mustard seed.  We know this story.  We here in CA also know mustard.  We know that we do nothing, not a thing, and every spring the mustard plants spring up all over the Bay Area with carpets of yellow.  They can’t be stopped, they can’t be controlled.  They are wild and they live on their own.  They grow tall and big and expansive and there is little to nothing that can be done to prevent it.  But this is a word of hope from God: mustard does not have to be planted, and mustard is not controlled.  So, too, is the word of God.  And so too, are the stories of truth. 

              Despite the attempts to block history, to confine history, to rewrite history, cell phones catching things like the murder of George Floyd can no longer be stopped.  People writing the history that is out there, in the underground sometimes, can no longer be stopped.  We think that we can control things in this way, but we can’t.  God’s work for truth, for justice, is unstoppable. 

               I think about the movie, “Two Weeks Notice”.  In the Movie, Sandra Bullock plays a character who has actively followed on “the way” as she understands it.  She has stood up for the oppressed, been a voice for the voiceless, fought against injustice at every level.  But there comes a moment at which she hits a place of despair.  She is done.  Her father is upset by her decision to no longer live a life of action.  And he confronts her saying, “we didn’t teach you to sit on the sidelines.”  She argues that what she does makes no difference.  To which he responds, “Then you change your tactics.  As long as people can change, the world can change.”  She says, “But what if people can’t change?” 

               The father in the movie I just quoted paused for a moment in consideration, “Let me put it this way.  I am eating a piece of cheesecake made entirely of soy.  I hate it.  But because of my health issues, I am doing it.”

               He didn’t like it.  But he did it, and that started with truth.  His change in behavior started with being unable to deny the truth about his health conditions, the truth about what he needed to do to stay well.  It did not stem from hiding from the realities of his situation.  It did not come about from burying his head, like an ostrich, in the sand.  He didn’t like it, but truth is powerful, it is unstoppable. 

               The word of God is like that.  It spreads despite what people try to do, despite what people try to hide, despite the lies.  It is like mustard that sprouts up regardless. 

               As the commentator David Jacobsen wrote, ““As I wrote these words, the court testimony of the sidewalk bystanders in the George Floyd killing seemed empty of hope. In their cell phone videos, you too can see them: the EMT, the youth, the martial arts expert, and the convenience store cashier lined up pleading with the white policeman kneeling on a Black man’s neck to stop and render assistance to George Floyd. As you watched their own videos, it seemed even to the bystanders themselves that all they could do from the sidewalk was to cry out and plead, but effect nothing.  One teenager on the sidewalk even testified in court how she apologizes over and over again to George Floyd at night. She asks herself whether she could have done more.  And why did her pleading or their yelling not suffice? Her haunting words make Jesus’ mysterious parable hard to hear. What about Mark’s seedy hope of an automatic Kingdom of God can survive her tearful testimony?  And then came the verdict on April 20. As many said, while justice did not come that day, accountability did. How did the lead prosecutor put it?: the bystanders were a “bouquet of humanity.” The very people who cried out from the sidewalk and made videos with smartphones were a surprise flowering of what it means to be human. The bystanders did not save George Floyd’s life, but they were a mysterious, living, testifying, bouquet of humanity. And in a moment, something of our view of Mark’s seed parable changes. What it offers now is a glimpse of change, a germination that flowers right there on a cracked sidewalk at 38th and Chicago.  Now that is mysterious and even a little revealing. Even so, there is one thing I now lay hold of. There may well be an arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice, but that modern view is for us both a promise and a goal. The famous quote from Parker and King and Obama uses the intransitive verb, “bend.” But there is no one who says that we can’t lay hold of that arc and in the name of the promise bend it a little bit ourselves with a little transitive joy. For we, thanks to Mark, are people who even now glimpse germinating seeds yielding bouquets of humanity: a surprising, sudden, fragile yield of the Kingdom’s mysterious grace and justice.” – Working Preacher, David Jacobsen.

               “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  The kingdom of God is a seed that grounds our hope that eventually things can change.  To remember that Mark’s gospel was written close to the time of the destruction of the temple in 70CE, that the context of that time was public chaos, control, confusion, oppression and pain.  And that it was in the midst of that that we hear the words of hope from today’s Gospel reading.  These are powerful stories of possibility.  And that possibility is in our midst as well.

               The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed: it is not planted, it is not sown.  And yet it takes off, it grows big and expansive and wild.  While we may hinder it for a while, we cannot stop it.  The word of Love, the word of hope, the word of healing and possibility: these are the words of God’s kingdom.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Truth Telling

(I apologize that the spacing, etc is so weird.  Blogger has changed things and I can't seem to edit some of the hidden codes in this to fix it). 

James 1:19-27, Matthew 18:15-22, Luke 11:2-4

            Today’s passage from Matthew is a familiar one.  It comes around every three years through the regular lectionary, as it has this week.  But it is also a familiar passage because I think we refer to it often in our congregations when we are talking about confrontation, problems, disagreements, and how to work them through.  We all know that people almost universally in our culture find it easier and more compelling to talk about one another than to talk to one another.  And we know that this is a serious problem in many communities, but perhaps especially in the church.  In professional settings behaviors such as gossip and talking behind backs tends to be more regulated and have more consequences.  But in volunteer communities, such as the church, people can behave in ways that are very destructive.  For example, the tendency towards gossip is strong everywhere, but in our congregations perhaps it is even more so.  It happens in every congregation.  But I think one of the number one signs of the health of a congregation is how much power that gossip is given within a church community.  Do people take what they hear through gossip, treat it as “truth” and pass it forward, anonymously?  Or do they insist that people speak only for themselves, telling their own stories only, not what “someone in the church has said”? 

         The congregation that I served in Ohio was, frankly, an incredibly healthy congregation.  And when someone tried to spread nasty gossip, or to attack others behind their backs, not only were those comments not treated as ‘truth”, not only were they not passed along, but the people who the gossips tried to attack were NEVER told, “someone in the church told me in confidence, but I think you should know…”  Or “I can’t tell you who said this, but x, y, z.”  These are unhealthy behaviors.  If someone has said something, we are told in Matthew, they need to speak it directly to the person, to claim it, to own it.  If they have to hide behind, “well, don’t tell anyone where you heard this,” or “don’t tell so-and-so that I said this” then it should NEVER be said in the first place.  If we cannot own the stories we are speaking, they should never be spoken.  And if it is someone else’s story, it is never ours to share.  The only anecdote to the poison of gossip is transparency.  I want to say that again: the ONLY anecdote to the poison of gossip is transparency.  That means owning what we are saying, not passing on things that are not ours to tell, making sure that everyone owns their own actions and own words. 

Why?  Well, this is important for a multitude of reasons. 

We all know the story of the game operator.  One person whispers a story to another.  That person doesn’t quite hear it the way it was said, or more often, the way it was intended and whispers it to the next person.  By the time it comes back to the original speaker again, it has changed into something unrecognizable.  Gossip recreates that game, usually in destructive ways.  This is not because people are intentionally unkind.  It’s just that we all like a good drama and so we tend, both in our hearing but also in our retelling of events, to build them up, just a little, which then is built up more by the next person, etc.  I think about the parishioner of one of my congregations who told me she was leaving the church because of something she had heard.  What she told me she had heard had maybe 5% truth in it.  But she believed it.  When asked who told her this, she hid behind “confidentiality” which meant that there was no possible way to do the truth telling that was needed in the community to dispel this particular rumor.  She left because she gave gossip power; the power to determine for her what was true.  She clung to the gossip, even when faced with the truth, and she left the church body because of it.  Her story is not unique.  This happens everywhere, and it is one of the many reasons Jesus wrote that when we are upset with someone or hurt by someone we are to go to them directly, speak to them directly.  Not talk ABOUT it, but talk TO the persons with whom we are having issues. 

There is another important reason why we should own our own stuff, not gossip, not speak for or about others.  And that is that when we choose to champion someone else’s problem for them, we believe we are doing something good, something heroic and kind even.  We are standing up for someone.  We are being their savior, defender.  But the truth is that what we are really doing is saying that that person is weak, incapable of defending themself, incapable of speaking their own truth.  We are not respecting or honoring someone by doing the work of speaking for them. 

My family watched Murdock Mysteries for a time.  This is a historical fiction murder mystery series that takes place in the early 1900’s.  At one point the woman coroner, Julia Ogden, is arguing with the chief of police.  She is holding her own, but she at one point turns to Murdock who is just watching the argument and not saying anything.  She expresses frustration that he is not defending her and stomps out of the police station.  Later she confronts him on it.  “Why didn’t you defend me!”  To which he replied, “you did not need me to do that for you!  I knew that you were a strong enough woman that you did not need to be ‘rescued’ or ‘saved’ by the big powerful man.   If I had jumped in, the police chief never would have come to respect YOUR strength and your ability to speak for yourself as a full human being.”  Julia was stunned, but also realized the truth of what Murdock had said.  If he had jumped in to “rescue” her, it would have been a strong statement of her inability to stand up for herself and be counted as a full adult to be respected and trusted for her own words and abilities.

We do and should stand up for children. But we also know that it is more important for us to empower them to speak for themselves. We should and do stand up for people who are oppressed by the larger system.  But in doing so, we are recognizing that they have limited power and that it is much, much better to empower their words than to speak for them.  When we choose to “stand up” for someone else, we are taking away from them the power they do have on their own: we are lessening their perceived strength if not, in fact, their actual strength.  We diminish them in so doing.  

A third reason we should not do this is that those who are victimized by our unkindness, by our gossiping, by our slander, by our love of drama and our failure to listen tend to be the people who have less privilege in the first place.  They have less privilege for a number of reasons: fewer social skills, less standing in the community: or in the larger world, less power because of being marginalized for one reason or another.  We are called to “check our privilege” and to not live that out or act that out.   

To take that a step further, a commentary written by Audrey West in the Working Preacher said it this way, “This passage (from Matthew on how to confront) can easily become dangerous and abusive if it is interpreted in the context of either individualism or legalism, both of which can result in the attempted control and manipulation of the offender due to a sense of victimization.”

The truth of this is obvious when we hear white people claiming to be victims of racism.  We are the people in power.  But when we abuse that privilege by claiming to be the victims ourselves, we control the situation in dangerous ways. Sometimes those with “lesser” power use these behaviors, gossip, victimization, to reclaim their own power.  But there is great danger in doing so.

In the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Toula was upset because her father had told her that she cannot go to college.  In his words, “women don’t need education.”  And Toula approached her mother in tears saying, “Dad is so stubborn.  And what he says goes.  ‘The man is the head of the house.’”  Her mother responded with, “Let me tell you something, Toula.  The man is the head of the house.  But the woman is the neck.  And she can turn the head any way she wants!”  At the time that I heard that, I was impressed with that thinking.  In Patriarchal cultures and families, then, there still is some power in the female of the couple.  But then I saw the way in which she claimed her power.  And it was through the victimization that we named before.  “Oh, so women don’t need education because we aren’t as smart?  You don’t think I’m as smart as you?”  It was manipulative, but also harmful to herself because it was lacking in honesty, it did not allow her to claim her power with authenticity or strength.

I think about the phrase I’ve heard so many people use, “Who wears the pants in the family?”  Usually what we mean by that is who appears to be in charge, the more dominant member of the household, the alpha dog as it were.  But I remember very clearly counseling a couple where the one who “wore the pants” by everyone else’s understanding really had no ultimate power because his wife again used the victimization behavior to get whatever she wanted.  If her husband would not listen to her “you’ve wronged me”, “you’ve mistreated me” statements that were made in response to any decision he made (whether it affected her or not) that she didn’t agree with, then she would take her complaint to the larger family group.  “He wronged me, he mistreated me!” until the husband was badgered, bullied and pressured into doing what she wanted.  People use victimization as a weapon, as much as others use dominance as a weapon.  They use gossip as a way to control others, to reclaim power.  But these methods of claiming power damage our own souls.  We know we are exaggerating the stories, we know that we are not being honest or truthful, we know that we are being manipulative.  And that lack of honest claiming of one’s own voice, one’s own truth harms no one more than it harms ourselves.  It obfuscates truth.  People think they are making choices based on reality, but they are not.  They are making choices based on falsehoods.  This happens at all levels: politically, personally, and in smaller communities as well.  (It takes keen perception to see where the power truly lies in any situation.  It is often not where we think it really is.)

This passage from Matthew addresses all of that.  By insisting that people stop the victimization, stop the gossiping, stop the excuse of “I was told not to say who said this but…”, all of these power plays, abuses of power and dishonest interactions are ended.  Relationships have a chance then of being restored based on honesty and truth and trust, rather than destroyed because of gossip and lies. 

I think it is vital to notice that what this passage emphasizes again and again is that true communication, healthy confrontation, a commitment to working out problems in community begins with listening.  Listening is mentioned here four times in the first three verses of this passage from Matthew.  James said it this way, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

But people really struggle to listen.  And what I find the most interesting is that it is often those who claim others aren’t listening who themselves listen the least.   Let me say that another way: it is often true that no one listens less than the person who is accusing others of not listening. 

Let me give you an example.  The Presbytery I used to be part of went through a long discernment process on whether or not they would vote to support the ordination of LGBTQ+ folk.  They had three separate presbytery meetings on the issue.  At the first one a well-known speaker in favor of the ordination came and presented for an hour followed by break out groups for discussion.  Not surprisingly, those against the ordination simply chose to not attend this meeting.  They simply did not come.  The next month we reversed it.  We had someone speak against the ordination for an hour, again followed by break out groups for discussion.  Interestingly, everyone turned out for this one, even our LGBTQ+ members for whom it was an extremely painful day.  At the third meeting then we took our vote.  And as a Presbytery we voted overwhelmingly in favor of the ordination of LGBTQ+ persons.  The response from those who disagreed?  “You didn’t listen!”  The clerk of the Presbytery meeting had the numbers.  She was able to point out that everyone had shown up to hear the person arguing against this stand, and that many of those who were angry with the decision, in contrast, had chosen not to listen or attend the meeting where the person in favor of the decision had spoken.  And yet still, the cry rallied long and hard, “You didn’t listen!” 

There is a strong difference between not listening and not agreeing.  It is very possible to listen and still not agree.  But while we know that is true from our own perspectives, do we give others that same benefit of the doubt? 

So, returning to the Matthew passage and his clarity around how we are to talk to one another, especially when there are problems, what does all of this really mean?  Several things:

1.        1. First and foremost, we are called to speak directly to others when we are upset or feel mistreated about something.  I gave reasons above why this is important.  To reiterate, speaking truth directly prevents the harm of growing misinformation, it empowers others to claim their own voice and speak for themselves, and it avoids the evil and damage of malicious gossip.   2. When someone does repeat gossip to us about someone else, we need to not give it power.  That means it is OUR responsibility to say, “it sounds like you need to go and speak to that person directly.”  If they are asking you to stand up for them, ask them to come along, tell them that you will use their name if you are being asked to repeat the information.  If you hear, “please say something but don’t tell them it came from me,” then I would first off be very suspicious about the truth of the story at all.  Why don’t they want to be associated with their own words?  We must encourage one another to grow in courage if people are afraid to speak their own truth.  This is supposed to be a trusted community where people can speak for themselves.  If it is not, then work must be done to fix that. 3.       Call them on it.  “Do not tell me things that you are not willing to own.”  If that means they stop gossiping to you?  That would be a good thing!  Maybe less interesting story and drama for you, but in the end, a healthier, safer community.  4.       Refuse to repeat gossip.  Again, if it is not your story to tell, don’t tell it.  Give others enough credit and respect to believe they have the strength to speak for themselves and do not need you to treat them as a child needing you to defend them.  They can speak directly about their own upsets and you should do the same.  Go directly to those who hurt you, not to other people trying to drum up their support for your cause.  5.       Choose transparency therefore.  Speak your truth and YOUR truth only.  Speak it directly. 6.       And finally, and what is most important in all of this: today’s passage from Matthew ends with forgiveness.  There is a reason that the passages on forgiving is part of this mandate to speak directly to people when you are harmed or upset.  Do your best to reconcile.  Speak your truth.  But beyond all of that, let it go and forgive.  Jesus says, “if they don’t listen then, treat them as a gentile or tax collector.”  How did Jesus treat the Gentiles and tax collectors?  He loved them, he forgave them repeatedly, he invited them into relationship.  In other words, if they don’t listen, love them anyway.  Let it go.  Forgive.  One of my colleagues in ministry said to our lectionary group this week, “the one thing Satan can’t tolerate is forgiveness”.  Yes.  Because evil thrives on our anger, on our hate, on our rage, on our inability to be open and compassionate, and grace-full and loving.  When we choose compassion and grace and forgiveness, we are freed.  As the Lord’s Prayer teaches us, God is OUR parent, Our father – this is communal.  We are stuck with one another.  And the question for us, then, is how do we live that out as people of faith?  As the Lord’s prayer tells us, but also as the passage in Matthew ends, we are to forgive one another again and again and again. 

    Gossip is not an act of reconciliation or forgiveness.  It is cruel, it is unkind and it is unacceptable.  Today’s passage begins with a call to go and speak directly to those who upset you.  And it ends with the call to forgiveness, not seven times, but seventy seven times.  This would have been understood at the time to mean “for good” or “completely”.  Seven was considered a number of completion.  Seven times Seventy meant “forever.”  Each week we say the Lord’s prayer and we say “forgive us our debts (or sins) as we forgive those who sin against us.”  We are praying not only for God to forgive us, but that we can forgive others.  Because the reality is that when we cannot forgive others, we cannot understand or accept the forgiveness of God into our own hearts.  It’s not because God doesn’t forgive us.  But accepting forgiveness in requires a peace that only comes from letting go of our anger towards others.  Anger is a taking a poison and expecting the other person to die.

We are not free from each other.  We are free in each other, when we can be in relationship with those who are different from ourselves and choose honest, open, transparent, forgiving, caring.

None of this is easy.  It is a growing edge for all of us.  But it is vital to a healthy and thriving community that we work on this with intention, with faith, and most of all with love.  Go and speak your truth, but do it with love, preparing always to forgive.  Amen.

Failure to see our own wrongs.

          I have said this before in a variety of ways, but I feel it must be said again, and this time perhaps more directly. 
           Whatever it is that bothers you most in other people is almost always a serious flaw within yourself.
          As our scriptures say it,  (Matthew 7:1-5): "Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. You’ll receive the same judgment you give. Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you.  Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother or sister, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when there’s a log in your eye?  You deceive yourself! First take the log out of your eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s or sister’s eye." 
          Scott Peck, in his book, People of the Lie, describes the truth of my statement above as the root of evil behavior.  He says that people project out onto others the parts of themselves that they cannot face, cannot see, cannot accept and then they actively work to destroy it in the other: that this is what leads to evil.
          It's so easy to see the truth of this in others, and to know that as a result, our choice to self-reflect is absolutely critical for the well-being of the world.  Yet, most people still do not do this.  And even those who understand the depth of this at a core level will find it so much easier to see in other people than in ourselves.  But perhaps we need to start there, with our observation of others, to enable us to apply it in our own lives.
        I think about the first time I really understood the seriousness or the truth of this.  As a child I knew someone who was constantly putting down another woman whom she felt chose to be a victim and more, chose to use that victimization to manipulate and control the people around her into doing what she wanted them to do.  The person complaining absolutely hated this other woman, and actively worked to discredit her with other people, constantly pointing out her victimization stance and the way she controlled her world with it.  But even as I child I could see with absolute clarity that the woman complaining was actually a master at the very same behavior she was criticizing in this other woman. 
        I see this constantly: the person who says everything comes down to a power play is the one for whom power plays are paramount.  The person who says people don't listen who, himself, does not listen.  The person who becomes enraged at someone else's bullying who is themself a bully.  The person who says gossip is an issue who uses that same gossip as their primary weapon.  We see this at a national level, too - the ones condemning LGBTQ folk who are so often LGBTQ folk themselves who cannot face it until they are caught in a same-gender liaison; the person who condemns others as liars who cannot himself say one word of truth; those who brag about their humility when they are narcissists in every sense of the word; the one shouting about not being valued or treated as a full human being who cannot see the ways in which she oppresses everyone who does not look like herself.  I could go on and on.
        On an almost daily basis I hear or see someone being critical of others for doing exactly what they embody as a human being.  And, like Scott Peck, I have come to believe that this behavior is itself causing an amazing amount of the damage in our world.  The call to self-reflect, to face our own flaws, to admit them: these are actions that lead to healing, not only for ourselves but for the world.  And yet, these are the hardest things to do.   
        My own worship committee has debated about the importance of the prayer of confession in our worship services.  They have felt that it does not raise us up, but slams down those who already have low self-esteem.  I understand this thinking.  But the truth is that we don't get to healing, we don't move to a place of being able to accept grace, accept a new beginning, start again; without naming those things that have hurt us the most.  And the thing that has hurt us the most, nine out of ten times, I am convinced, is our own refusal to face ourselves: our shadows, the parts of our own beings that we don't want to see.  If we can seriously take self-inventory (as our 12-step brothers and sisters do), then we can change, we can grow, and we can heal.  By facing ourselves, we begin to heal ourselves, which in turn begins the healing of our society.
        As a country we are being called to look at a flaw that many of us don't want to see, and that is our racism.  We don't want to be part of this problem, we don't want to see it, and so we deny it.  But it is real.  It is part of our culture, it is deep in our history, it is in the very fabric of our being.  You might say it is in our blood.  And we can see that those who deny it are the very ones who are acting it out most in this moment with violence, with aggression, with terror on our brothers and sisters of color.  I understand that it is hard to look at, but it is necessary to look, to name it, to be willing to take a deep and hard look at the messages that are part of our being, at the ways in which we live those out and act those out, at the ways in which we are damaging ourselves by allowing harm to happen to our brothers and sisters of color.  We are called in this moment to self-reflection of a very painful, but deep, important and true kind.
        How?
        Start with education: There are wonderful books out there to read on the subject.  Some of the ones I've read include Biased by Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, White Fragility by Robin J. DiAngelo, to name a few.  Join a book group that is reading these books so you have a place to discuss, to learn together, to face racism and our part in it, together.
        Move to action.  There are many groups that are taking action on this and if you would like to be hooked up with one, let me know.
        Most importantly, be willing to look at yourself.  I know it's hard.  I know this.  I comforted a very unhappy young woman yesterday who was lamenting her whiteness and feeling like she shouldn't exist in this world because of it.  But there is so much good we can do, as those with privilege, to support, empower, and challenge the system of oppression that denies power to our brothers and sisters.  I understand that self-reflection can lead at moments to despair, but without that intense inner look, there is no hope for movement out of destruction and into being helpers.  We are all on this journey.  All of us.  We need to take the steps together. 
        I started this post by pointing out that self-reflection is hard.  It is so easy to see the flaws of others and so hard to look at ourselves.  I include myself in this critique and I'm working with others to look at my own contribution to harm in this world.  I am grateful for the friends and community that allow me to do that work.  I encourage you to find the same.  We have to begin somewhere.  Being with those who love you enough to tell you the truth is the best place to start.  Thanks be to God for our communities of truth-telling. 

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.