God in Charge??

         I've written on this before, but it has come up again, so here we are once more.  There are a few very basic and very different theologies that compete with one another around the topic of omnipotence, control or total power.  These theologies do not divide across denominational lines: Christians (and really people of every faith) of every denomination argue on both sides of this issue.  But it comes down to the same thing.  Frederick Buechner (Protestant), Richard Rohr (Catholic), Elie Weisel (Jewish)... they all basically say the same thing: that there are three statements that cannot be reconciled:
God is all-powerful.
God is all-good.
Terrible things happen.
         One of these has to go.
         If God is both all good and all powerful, then even things that we feel are terrible must, ultimately, not be.  But in order to believe this, you have to somehow convince yourself that rape, children being murdered and tortured and kidnapped, people destroying one another - somehow these are not actually bad things.  Somehow God "has a plan" and "has mandated it from the beginning" and "everything happens for a reason."  All I can say here is that if you actually believe that these things are not genuinely evil, and horribly wrong, then either you have never experienced genuine trauma, or your morality is completely different from my own.
          So maybe, instead, you decide that God must not be all good.  Well, this is the only option if God is in control of everything and terrible things really do happen.  What kind of monster-god would allow for children to be separated from their parents, tortured, left to die of dehydration and neglect?  What kind of monster-god would mandate that some people should be born with riches to fill the world while others cannot get enough to eat or drink?  What kind of god feels rape is acceptable?
        No, the above mentioned theologians, as well as many people across denominations and faiths who love God and spend time with God come to the conclusion instead that the "God is all-powerful" statement is the one that must be rejected.  Instead they point out that God wants genuine relationships with us.  And that means that we must be given free will, a free-will that allows people to make choices.  Sometimes that means people make terrible choices that in turn lead, at times, to terrible tragedies.  And because God is committed out of a deep, deep love for each of us, to letting us be who we choose to be: real people (not puppets, not dolls, not micromanaged robots) in real relationships, sometimes we do things that break God's heart.  OFTEN we do things that break God's heart.  And when that happens, God grieves with us as much as we ourselves grieve.  God cries with us, holds us, mourns for and with us.  But God still loves us too much to take away our ability to choose to be who we choose to be.  I believe the stance of not being all powerful is something God has chosen, for the sake of giving us genuine life, for the sake of choosing real relationship with us.
        Sometimes this makes me angry, just as it does for all of those who choose genuine, honest, real relationships with God.  Sometimes I become furious at God for not stepping in, stopping the wars, stopping the torture, stopping death and destruction.  But I also believe in a God who is big enough and loves me fully enough to be able to handle that anger.  Read the Psalms if you aren't sure.  They are full of words of anger at God, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!" the psalmist shouts as he invites us to likewise raise our voices honestly to God.  Jesus echos this from the cross as well, again, giving us permission (as we are called to follow in every way) to likewise express our pain and anger to God.  Does God want you to suppress your feelings?  Does God want you to lie about what you actually feel?  Of course not!  The God who loved us into being is big enough to be able to hear and see and love us for ALL that we are, with all our pain, all our anger, all our pride, and all our misunderstandings.  That is the God who chooses us, chooses relationship with us, chooses to love us, and to stay with us despite what we do, what we say, what we feel and what we grieve.
       Let me be clear that I do not believe that God therefore leaves us alone.  We have been sent the Spirit, the advocate, who offers counsel and guidance.  God is with us to talk to, to listen, to respond.  God works through people, through nature, through scripture, through other writings, to all who are open to God's love, guidance, compassion, movement, encouragement, and wisdom.  But God does not compel our choices in any way.
        My God is big, big enough to love all of us with all of our faults, our mistakes, our tragedies, and our flaws.  My God is all good, love beyond measure, hope beyond despair, and compassion beyond rage.  Terrible things still happen.  And God is not responsible for those terrible things.  They happen, and God cries as her children are crucified again and again.  God cries as his beloveds suffer.  God weeps as we stumble our way through life sometimes hurting one another in awful ways.  AND God laughs with us when we learn, delights in us when we triumph, celebrates with us as we grow and move and expand in our ability to love and care and share and be the people God hopes for us to be.  This is the God I love.  This is the God I know.  This is the God I can count on to love me exactly as who I am, with my anger, and my grief, as well as my gratitude and my joy and my growing.  And for all of that I am, indeed, grateful.

Christmas All Year

Luke 2:1-20

Every year we celebrate Christmas on December 25^th.  Does anyone know how we came to pick this date to celebrate Christmas?   It was not picked because people actually believed Jesus was born on December 25^th.  We don’t know when Jesus was actually born, but the historical guesses range from spring to late fall.  We do know that the birth of Jesus is an important event and worth our celebration.  And we know that Advent, too, is a time worth our attention, a time of focus, preparation and waiting.  But December 25^th is a random date, picked originally to compete with the Winter Solstice celebration, and later this date was emphasized as an important time for the stimulation of our economies.  Because there are these other reasons for the December date, when we do celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25^th, the celebration is often confused and complicated by other factors vying for our attention – buying gifts, decorating our houses, planning parties, putting up lights.  And we therefore miss the true and focused celebration of this incredible and miraculous event of God coming to be with us, incarnate among us as a helpless baby.

The truth is, Christmas is a celebration that can take place any time of the year.  We should be able to celebrate the wonder and miracle of God incarnate with us all year round.  Just as we celebrate the resurrection of our Christ, the overcoming of death, every Sunday of the year, any time is a good time to remember the wonder and gift in God coming to be with us as one of us, as a helpless baby, as a vulnerable human being who lived and loved and celebrated and suffered just as we do. 

Even so, even so, we don’t want to forget or miss the fact that God coming to be with us incarnate is amazing and surprising every single time.  The gift of the good, arriving in the midst of the darkness – the gift of God showing up in unexpected ways and with unexpected gifts for us in the midst of despair, depression, and night – this is just a part of what Jesus’ birth means for us, but it is what I would like to focus on today.

I’d like to start by asking you to remember a time when you received a wonderful and unexpected gift. I encourage you to think about something that might not have seemed like a gift at the time that none the less brought you wisdom, growth, new friendships, greater insight: a gift that at first was not a gift, but has become one in hindsight.

Gifts in the unexpected:

I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chatted all the way;

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she;

But oh! The things I learned from her,

When Sorrow walked with me.” – Robert Browning Hamilton

            Sometimes the greatest gifts we receive are things we don’t want, don’t like, don’t value at the time, but in hindsight they bring us the greatest learning, and the greatest growth.  They often bring other unexpected gifts too: friendships in unexpected ways, support in unexpected ways, insights into ourselves that we didn’t have before.  Jesus’ coming as a baby, to a poor and unwed mother in the middle of a time of chaos, the tax census, was such a gift.  Not looked for because all chaos was happening.  Not expected in this way because, well, we expect God to be among the mighty.  But within all of that this great gift came. 

The greatest gift of Christmas is the understanding that God loved us so much that God came to be with us, as one of us, walking with us, talking with us, taking time to be WITH us in this place, here and now.  That God loves us so much that this continues to be the case. 

From Tattoos on the Heart (Gregory Boyle. (New York: Free Press, 2010) p19)

“My touchstone image of God comes by way of my friend and spiritual director, Bill Cain, S.J.  Years ago he took a break from his own ministry to care for his father as he died of cancer.  His father had become a frail man, dependent on Bill to do everything for him.  Though he was physically not what he had been, and the disease was wasting him away, his mind remained alert and lively.  In the role reversal common to adult children who care for their dying parents, Bill would put his father to bed and then read him to sleep, exactly as his father had done for him in childhood.  Bill would read from some novel, and his father would lie there, staring at his son, smiling.  Bill was exhausted from the day’s care and work and would plead with his dad, ‘Look, here’s the idea.  I read to you, you fall asleep.’  Bill’s father would impishly apologize and dutifully close his eyes.  But his wouldn’t last long.  Soon enough, Bill’s father would pop one eye open and smile at his son.  Bill would catch him and whine, ‘Now, come on.’ The father would, again, oblige, until he couldn’t anymore, and the other eye would open to catch a glimpse of his son.  This went on and on, and after his father’s death, Bill knew that his evening ritual was really a story of a father who just couldn’t take his eyes off his kid.  How much more so God?  Anthony de Mello writes, “Behold the One beholding you, and smiling.’  God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval.  What’s true of Jesus is true for us, and so this voice breaks through the clouds and comes straight at us.  ‘You are my Beloved, in whom I am wonderfully pleased.’  There is not much ‘tiny’ in that.”

God cannot take God’s eyes off of us.  The greatest gift anyone could ever give us is time.  

And God gives that eternally, endlessly, always.  The friend, Ben, didn’t want his dad to stay awake: and yet, the gift of that memory: of being loved so deeply and so dearly, that is a gift indeed. 

Richard Rohr, “The Lord comes to us disguised as ourselves.”

That is Christmas.  Christmas began with a hardship  – an unwed pregnant girl, forced to travel in this last stage of her pregnancy, finally going into labor with no place to stay or give birth except a stable.  There in the darkness, there in the tragedy, there in the unimaginable, Jesus is born.  God comes, incarnate among us, where it is least expected.  We encounter the miracle of incarnation, the gift out of the dark, the presence of God fully and vulnerably among us and as one of us when we look with eyes open, when we stay open to the unexpected and amazing, when we keep a true Christmas spirit within us.  Amen.

What is Justice?

Amos 8:1-12, Luke 10:25-37

In light of these scriptures and in light of other scripture what is your idea of justice?  What do you believe or understand justice to be? 

We’ve all experienced injustice.  And I thought I would start today by reading you a letter I wrote to Eldest when she was almost three years old.  Before I read this I need to tell you that she was a very tiny child.  The doctors believed she would remain a “little person”.  When she hit 4’8” they said she was done growing.  She surprised us all by jumping another 6” that same year to hear gigantic height now of 5’2”.  But this was unexpected.  When she was little she was truly tiny.  That’s the context for this letter.

“My dearest Child,

Sunday was a hard day.  You were invited to the birthday party of your little friend, who was turning three.  The party was a great extravaganza of food, noise and play as lots of little almost-three and just-barely-three year olds took over the house, running, eating, laughing and playing, and mostly, you had a good time.  In one corner, your friend's mother had invited a friend to do face painting with the children.  You all stood in line, some more patiently than others, waiting your turns to be turned into a lion, a butterfly, or anything else your hearts desired.  You, my daughter, ended up at the very end of the line, but you patiently waited.  As we stood there, you excitedly watched your friends’ faces being painted and you told me over and over, “I want to be a tiger!  I’m going to be a tiger!”  Finally, you got to the front of the line.  The face painter turned to you and with a firm quickness proclaimed, “She’s too little, she’ll be too wiggly.” And she grabbed her paints and began to close them up. 

I was stunned.  So stunned that it took me a minute to respond.  “My child is the same age as these other children!” I proclaimed.  The woman took one look at you, my tiny, elf-faced daughter and brushed me off, “No, she’s not.  She won’t be able to hold still.”  And, with me arguing, begging and shouting protests as she packed up, she left.

It took me a minute to get the full effect of this.  But after reassuring you and offering to buy some face paints myself to make you into a tiger, the anger that moved inside of me made me cry.  As I stood there talking to you, my little daughter whom I love more than my own life, I realized that this was undoubtedly the first of many experiences you will have in your life where you experience discrimination because of your size. 

Yes, daughter, you are small.  On the growth charts you are somewhere under the second percentile, meaning that 98% of the children your age are taller and heavier than you are.  In addition, you are quiet and do not “show off” your speech, so strangers cannot judge your age by listening to you.  You are also smart.  Smart enough that you got the full effect of what happened.  For the last two days I have heard over and over from you, “The woman with the paint wouldn’t make me into a tiger because she said I was too small and would be too wiggly.  She painted Moira’s face.  She painted Lauren’s face.  She wouldn’t paint my face.”  Yes, you got it.  But you’re not yet wise enough to understand that it was not your fault.  You are not yet worldly enough to get that this was not really about you, but about a woman’s prejudice.  Not old enough to feel okay about this event. 

What can I say to you, my daughter, to ease the pain of this?  To make it okay that you are small?  To tell you that I know you are not wiggly and can hold still and that the woman was prejudice and blind?  You are so young.  I did not want you to experience this kind of thing at such a young age.  But this is the world we live in.  Welcome to the world, my daughter.  There is blindness and cruelty out there.  And you will not be immune from it, even at the young age of “almost-three.”

As I’ve reflected on this, I’ve had some time to think about what other people go through and I realize that we are lucky.  Yes, my daughter, you are small.  But you can learn to stand up for yourself; you will have to.  And when people realize you are older than you look, smarter than you look, I expect they will treat you more fairly. 

Not so with racial prejudice.  Not so with prejudice against the poor or the immigrant.  Not so with gender discrimination.  Not so for those with disabilities.  People suffer real discrimination, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, from the hands of fearful, prejudiced people.  Sometimes people are kept from work because of their appearance, sometimes they suffer cruelty beyond imagination because of their ethnicity, sometimes they die because people are afraid of them, don’t understand them, condemn them.  For some, they cannot afford to get upset every time they experience discrimination, fear or hatred because it is part of their everyday life.  We are lucky, my daughter.  We don’t experience much prejudice.  We do not know what it is to be judged everyday by our skin color or our accents when we talk.  I assume my privilege, which is why I have the luxury to become angry when someone mistreats you, daughter.  When something like this happens, it angers me.  It is also a reminder of just how fortunate and privileged our lives really are.

Where is God in this?  We know where God is: God is with Jesus, talking to the woman, offering the Samaritan water, touching the “unclean.”  God is also with us, inviting us to do as Jesus did, to postpone judgment, to walk unafraid.  God is inviting us to create a new world where these situations are rare for everyone, where everyone can stand up and be counted and treated as a child of God, worthy of respect and love.

So what can I tell you, my daughter?  Even these very early experiences are an opportunity to learn to stand up and say, “No, I will not be treated as less-than.”  But I also want you to learn from this how we should be towards others who may experience pain in the world.  It is not enough to say, “I will not let you do this to me.”  We must also say, “I will not do this myself.” And even, “I will not let you treat my brother or sister in this way.” 

Yes, my daughter, you were judged unfairly.  Remember this and choose to act differently.  There is another way to be in the world.  There is a God who created you beautiful and who loves you regardless of size, race, appearance.  God calls you to be part of recreating a world where all are treated fairly.  Jesus calls us to see and know and mostly, to love.  The Spirit gives us the strength to walk unafraid in the world, with openness and compassion. 

I love you, my daughter.  I am sorry you were treated unfairly.  And yet I hope for you it will help you know your God - a God who does know you, who does love you, and who does want all the best things for you - a God who would paint you a tiger, if that is what your heart so desired.”

It is from this place, of having experienced injustice, as all of us have at one time or another, that I call us now to look at the ways in which we are called to live lives of justice.

For Amos, like Micah and almost all the prophets, the profound call was and is for us to act with justice.  Amos states that our worship is meaningless, pointless, even hateful - if not accompanied by justice.  Amos tells us God is angry with injustice.

But again, what does it mean to do justice?

A few decades ago Princeton seminary decided to really test its ministerial candidates.  All of the candidates had to walk through a specific tunnel on their way to one of the class rooms.  On the day of the final exam for the class, the dean “put” an “injured” person in the tunnel whom all of the students would need to pass by on their way to their final.  The result?  What we would probably consider a shocking number of students - 70% of these ministerial students did not stop to help the man because they were worried about being late for their final. What would you have done?  Like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan, like the people Jesus and Amos condemned, sometimes like us, these people failed to do justice.  We can see that.  We can see what it is to miss the justice boat.

But still, in our every day living, it can be harder to see how to act with justice.  As I understand justice, there are several things that are required.

I’ve shared with you before about the incredible documentary, “The Color of Fear?”  This movie documents a group of men from different ethnicities and cultures who gathered together for a weekend to talk about racism. One white man who was present spent the most part of the weekend fighting hard against the idea that racism was real.  In the face of the stories of deep pain, isolation, limits on opportunities, and cruelty that the men of color around him were sharing, he kept saying to them, “Why do you have to see yourselves as different?  We’re all the same.  Why can’t you just be like me?  You’re imagining any oppression.  No one really cares what color you are.”  No matter what the other men in the room told him, he could not hear their real experience of racism, of invisibility, of abuse.  Finally one of the men said to him, “What would it mean to you if what we are telling you about our experience were true?”  The man looked startled for a moment.  Finally, he answered, “It would mean that the world isn’t as safe or beautiful as I had thought...And it would mean that I was part of the problem.”  With those words he began to cry. 

It hurts to see.  But I believe the first part of justice requires opening our eyes, being courageous enough to see the world’s injustices, to believe the pain that others experience, and even harder, to look honestly at our part in contributing to the injustice in the world.  In what way do we, in our own corners, in our relationships with the hurting neighbor that no one likes and therefore no one speaks to contribute to the pain and injustice in the world?  In what ways do we refuse to listen to or stand up for our children, for family and therefore become part of the injustice that they experience?  In the larger world, in what ways do we contribute to injustice, by the choices we make about the products we use, buying things without thought that were made by children paid a penny a day?  By the choices we make in the food we eat, in the choices about who we vote for - will this candidate lift people out of oppression and injustice, or will this candidate support the status quo and contribute to greater inequality in the world?  We are first called to see the pain in the world and own our part in its injustice.

At one church where I served,  we were part of a community of churches that provided food, showers, haircuts, community fellowship, resources for getting one’s life back together, clothing and a variety of other services and goods.  Through this 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, 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.  For awhile he lived on the church campus, but we, too set boundaries around his drinking behavior and when he could not live up to them, he could no longer stay on the church campus.  Still, he understood our need to protect the children and families who came to the church and so he continued to be an active member of our community, and we continued to provide care, love and support within the boundaries.  At one point however in our relationship with George, he had a seizure while walking along the street, fell and hit his head.  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, jobless, 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 people of the church loved George for the gentle caring soul that he was, and it broke all of our hearts to see our brother in faith, our brother in Christ, our neighbor, the neighbor Jesus calls us to care for, treated in this way.  But the only time that George received any attention – the only time he would be brought his meals even – was when one of us was there to insist on it.  We paid what we could to the hospital, but this church was mostly made of working class families and retired folk on fixed income, and we simply did not have the resources to pay for better medical care for our brother.  Still, we brought him food.  We sat with him.  We fought for him with the medical personnel.  We cared for him.

The second thing justice requires is , then, is loving and caring for those we can touch who cannot care for or speak for themselves- reaching out to those right in front of us who are in need, whether they be a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a community member, a homeless person, or a stranger on the street.  Like with the story of the Good Samaritan, whomever God places in front of us: that is the most important person at each moment: that is the one we are called to serve and love.  But justice doesn’t end there.

Doing justice also means taking the risk, stepping out of our comfort zones to confront and challenge the status quo.  It is hard, it is challenging.  And yet, we are required by our love of God, by our love of neighbor.  Mostly, we are called by God’s love for us to do nothing less.  Because we will never be whole until our brothers and sisters find justice.  We, too will be lessened, we too live in injustices as long as they exist.

I am reminded of a poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left

to speak out for me.

Justice is remembering that we are all connected.  This takes us back to the very first story that I told about my daughter.  We are called to live lives of justice out of love and gratitude.  We often find that love from a place of remembering our own pain.  Because justice is about living out our deep connections to all others, by knowing our pain and then by seeing the pain of our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, even our enemies and then by being willing to own our part in the worlds’ pain and being willing to change it.  Justice is acting with love and compassion for those in front of us.  Justice is standing up against the status quo even for those we will never meet.  Justice is knowing that while I do this out of love for you, in serving you, I serve myself because without your justice, there is no justice for me; without your peace, there is no peace for me; without your wholeness, I too am broken.

Amen.

A Healing Touch

2 Kings 5:1-14

Mark 1:40-45

Psalm 30

What do you think about these stories of physical healings?  Are they hard to accept?  Do you believe that while these physical miracles happened then that they don’t happen now?  What about the idea of the Laying on of Hands that brings about that healing?  Is that weird?  Strange? Incomprehensible?

About one quarter of the gospels are concerned with healings in Jesus’ ministry.  The gospels record 26 individual healing miracles and 14 healings of larger numbers of people.  There is more record of the healing ministry in the gospels than any other topic or experience.  All who came to Jesus for healing were healed.  He made no distinctions, turned no one away, and found no case, we are told, beyond his power to heal.  And John tells us in John 20:30 that the words of Jesus recorded in his gospel recorded only a few of those healings Jesus performed.

We also know that Jesus expected his followers to share in this healing ministry.  Matthew 10:1 says “Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits. To cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.”  In Matthew 10:7-8a Jesus commanded his followers to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers and cast out demons.”  In Luke it is said that the disciples “went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere (Luke 9:6).”  And the disciples said to Jesus in Luke 10:17b, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us.”

We are given examples throughout the gospels and even other parts of the Bible on ways in which this healing is to take place.  The first and more common way, though, was through touch.  This touch included breaking a lot of different rules, touching lepers and dead bodies, something that was expressly forbidden by Old Testament law.  Touch was an important part of Jesus’ ministry, but more an important part of his healing. 

In many churches across the nation and across the world now, healing ministries are resurfacing as we recognize that illness and injury are not just physical issues but that they have spiritual components as well.  More and more churches now hold services where prayers for healing are offered, usually accompanied by a laying on of hands for individuals and groups, other churches are developing teams that take on an even bigger approach to healing ministries, some churches even hiring “parish nurses” whose job it is to work towards healing at all levels –physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Still, in the face of all of this, many people remain uneasy when we talk about the idea of praying for healing, and especially of laying on hands for healing. 

When I searched through some of my books for stories about healing, I found almost none.  This was especially true of healing that came from touch.  Even the books that follow the lectionary passages (which therefore cannot avoid scriptures that talk about healing since a quarter of our gospel passages do), would carefully sidestep the issue altogether.  One exception to this was adult Christian Education curriculums focused specifically on healing.  One such curriculum (Ian Price, A Sensual Faith: Experiencing God through our Senses. (Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada: Wood Lake Boosk, 2000)) contained the following story:

It was Friday, the morning I was due to visit the geriatric ward of a large regional hospital where I was a minister.  I was anxious to get it over with as quickly as possible.  I found it difficult to talk with these elderly people.  There was a nurses’ aid at the hospital – a very practical person.  She was middle-aged, overworked, a gruff no-nonsense type of person.  Yet as she plodded around that ward on her tired feet, trembling arms were held out to her, faces turned towards her warm homely face, quavering voices called her by name.  And she, knowing the heart hunger, the loneliness of the old, was lavish with her touch.  She patted a cheek, pushed hair from a forehead, or sensing a really special need gave a hug.  As I watched her, I thought, if it works for her, perhaps it will work for me.  The response shook me to the soul.  Eyes that I thought dull as marbles kindled, wrinkled hands returned my clasp.  As I was leaving, I noticed an old German woman.  Her hand, brown-flecked, dry as a leaf, lay upon the chair.  I touched it.  It was cold.  She looked up in recognition with eyes I’d always thought of as vacant.   And in response to the deepest need in all of us, she said, “I’m lonely.  Hold my hand."

There are certain parts of our call, of our faith, with which we remain uneasy.  Healing can be one of those.  Believing in the healing power of prayer and touch feels superstitious somehow, or scary, or contrary to what we know about science.  But it is part of our call as Christians to reach out to one another, with our prayers, with our hands, with our voices, with our faith.  The stories of Jesus’ healings are not just stories to tell us about who Jesus was.  They are also stories that tell us about who we are called to be as followers of Jesus.  We are called to be people who offer healing to one another.  And we are called to be people who accept healing from each other, who believe in the power of other people to touch us emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.  But also, because we are not divided people, but people whose emotional, spiritual and mental well-being connect deeply with the physical, we are also called to accept that healing prayers and touch can affect us physically as well.

Of course, there is a dangerous side to all of this as well.  And we know this.  We’ve all heard of people who say if you didn’t heal it’s because you didn’t have enough faith.  We’ve all heard of people who say “If you don’t really believe, you won’t be healed.”  “If you have enough faith, you will be made well.”  “Just believe and accept the healing that is there for you.”  These are dangerous ideas. Instead of offering God’s grace and mercy, that thinking adds to the burdens of those in need of our healing prayers. 

I also think that one of the things that stops our acceptance of healing ministry is that we think the healing must be total, miraculous, above and beyond scientific explanation, if it has occurred as all, and I don’t think that is true or accurate.  Sometimes “healing” looks like making peace with where one is.  Sometimes healing looks like enough ease of pain to make living bearable.  Sometimes healing looks like letting go of expectations or hopes.  Sometimes healing is just a bit of comfort from someone who loves us in a time when we need that comfort.  Healing looks different for each person, but we are still called to be part of asking for healing, praying for healing, supporting each other in reaching out for healing at all levels.

It may help us to remember that even Jesus was resurrected with his wounds.  He was “healed” from death, but as the stories of his resurrection tell us, the scars of that experience continued.  And that, too, tells us that healing looks different for each person, at each time and in each place. 

We, in this place, within these walls, also offer some healing ministries.  We have had grief support groups, and I am always open to starting another one.  We have had care-giver support groups of various kinds.  Our women’s support group and even our Friday men’s group and our quilting groups are places of listening, places of healing.  When we hug each other, when we hold hands to pray, that care can provide healing.  When we visit and send cards and listen and love one another, we offer care which can give healing.  But I also know there is a fear here of something more.  In my last two congregations we would have, once a year, a service of healing prayer in which people would come with whatever was bothering them and we would hold their hands and offer individual prayers for each person.  But I know that this feels scary, and I think it’s because that idea of hands-on healing is so threatening. 

So I’d like to ask you if any of you have had the experience of experiencing healing through someone else’s touch?  Again, I’m not talking necessarily about freedom from illness or miraculous cures.  I’m talking about a sense of deep healing from the care and touch of another person. 

There is a There is a Thompson Twin's song called Lay Your Hands On Me.  While most pop songs that mention touch have a sexual connotation to that, I invite you to listen to these words in a very different way, not as sexualized but as truly about healing touch. 

 This old life seemed much too long

With little point in going on

I couldn't think of what to say

Words just vanished in the haze

I was feeling cold and tired

Yeah kinda sad and uninspired

But when it almost seemed too much

I see your face

And sense the grace

And feel the magic in your touch...

 Back and forth across the sea

I have chased so many dreams

But I have never felt the grace

That I have felt in your embrace

Oh I was tired and I was cold

Yeah with a hunger in my soul

When it almost seemed too much

I see your face

And sense the grace

And feel the magic in your touch

Probably the most powerful story we have in our gospels about healing touch is the story of the woman with the hemorrhage in Mark 5:25-34: "A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse— after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind him and touched his cloak. For she thought, 'If I just touch his garments, I will get well.' Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.  Immediately Jesus, perceiving in himself that the power proceeding from him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing in on you, and you say, "Who touched me?"' And he looked around to see the woman who had done this. But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.  And he said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.'"

Perhaps many of us find this story bizarre and unintelligible. For, as the disciples said, others were crowding around. How does a touch move energy in this way?  How is it possible for Jesus (for anyone) to feel a drain of his power from a touch? How can that be healing? I used to be one of those confused by this, although, as I reflect back there have been rare people who've reached out to hug me who have felt like, in doing so, they have literally been a drain on my energy.  I think the reason we are not aware of the power in touch is because we don't spend time being conscious of it or giving it any thought at all.  Most experiences of physical touch, especially platonic hugs in our culture, are very short, which does not allow for any kind of awareness of energy exchanged. In my own experience, most of the time hugs that are longer have also felt like mutual exchanges of affection or energy.  When it comes to hugging one's children, or kissing the wounds of one’s kids, I think there is an unconscious expectation that we are giving more in the hug, more energy, more care, than we are receiving because our children need that from us.  We don't think about it much, therefore. It is normal, natural, unconscious, but still a real exchange of power or energy, that can, at times leave us tired. But we aren't very conscious about power leaving one and going to another through touch. 

Our animals seem more aware of this than we are.  I know many of us have had the experience of being sick and finding our pets snuggled up next to us as if the warmth of their bodies and the healing in their touch could make us well.  They intuitively seem to understand this, much more than we do.

For myself, the only times I had even had even a small sense of this were the rare times when, in hugging someone who was at the bottom of their energy, I have left the exchange feeling drained afterwards; or those times when I've felt that my pets cuddles really were speeding along my recovery from illness.  But I had never before experienced healing touch personally... until I met David.  Again, no, this is not about sex.  But I will tell you, with a deep honesty, that I had never before felt the kind of hug, the kind of touch where my cells felt like they were being healed, nurtured, fed, rejuvenated before I had been held by David. His hugs do that to me.  Not every time.  And I can't tell you why or when they are different.  But there are times when the healing feels so deep, so real, that it moves me to tears.  I don't know if this is a gift he has, or if it is a gift he has for me. He has acknowledged that sometimes he, too, feels the "power drain from him" and it leaves him tired, though it has never stopped him from reaching out.  I wish I were not the occasional source of that drain on him, but at the same time, I am so very grateful that he has given me this healing touch that I obviously deeply needed.  I am grateful for the healing, but I am also grateful for the insight it has given me into the power of touch, the reality of healing touch, the need for that connection that can rejuvenate, rebuild, and restore us. 

I want to acknowledge that of course there is another side to this.  The worst damage that can be done to another involves touch as well: rape, assault, abuse can destroy not only bodies, but souls.  That, too, must be named.  Touch is powerful - for either good or evil, it is powerful.  Therefore we must touch with respect, with permission, with consent, ALWAYS.  Because it is so powerful, we must, must, must be especially aware and careful of how we touch one another.  But I believe this is true of all of our deepest gifts.  They are given to us to use for good.  But the amount of good they can do is only equaled by the amount of damage they can do if used for harm.

The power of touch is immense.  So, I’d like to end this time by inviting you, as you are comfortable, to touch a person near you – take their hand, touch their shoulder, again, as you are comfortable and I’d like us to take a moment to pray together:

“Loving, Healing God, may we be carriers of your healing presence and grace.  Make us channels of the love and wisdom of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  May we listen with your ears, may your wisdom guide our words and reveal to us that which we need to see.  May we bring your loving presence to all whom we touch, speak to, hear and care for. Right now we especially ask for your healing care for each of the people whom we are near or touching at this moment.  We ask for this healing in Christ’s name and according to your will.  Amen.”

Revenge

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Luke 9:51-62

We struggle with the idea of offering a forgiveness that goes all the way that Jesus asks us to take it.  It is hard for us to do, hard for us to imagine, and hard for us to even justify in our own lives.    While we are told that Christians will be known by their love (and that includes and is best manifest, perhaps, in our forgiveness), we don’t do forgiveness very well.  We don’t act loving in this way, we don’t live it and no more is this the case when it comes to forgiveness. 

We want life to be fair.  Of course, we do.  We all want life to be fair.  I am not the exception here.  I want life to be fair too.  And when we are personally impacted, or when people we love are personally impacted, the desire for revenge, rather than the impulse to forgive, can be great.

I think about some of the injustices that I’ve experienced that have really rankled within me.  One example: when I received my doctorate, my congregation at the time wanted to buy me a doctoral robe to honor that.  I went to a place that specializes in clergy robes.  I had picked out from their website when I wanted and went in with the measurements and exact specifications.  They rang it up, charged me the first installment of the robe and I went merrily on my way.  A month later they called and said they no longer made that robe, but they had one that was similar.  They informed me that it didn’t come in my size, it was not the style that I wanted, and I would have to take it to a tailor or seamstress to have it completely altered, taken in, changed.  Of course I said, “no way”.  I had paid for the robe I had ordered.  If I could not have that robe, I wanted a refund.  They refused the refund. 

Okay.  Breathe.

When we were in the process of selling our first house in San Leandro, we were in contract with a family who, at the last minute, 29 days into the 30 day pre-closing period, pulled out.  According to the contract, if they pulled out after a certain date, we were entitled to keep their “good faith” payment of $5000.  But they took us to small claims court and lied through their teeth about what we had failed to do for them concerning the house.  I was so caught off guard by the lies that I did not do a good job and defending myself or what we had done, so we lost the $5000.  The housing market crashed right after that and we were unable to sell our house for another 6 months, which meant carrying two mortgages for that time period.

Breathe again.

As many of you know, when we moved across the country to come to this church, the moving company lost much of our stuff including my daughter’s bed, some large and expensive yard tools, a wagon, a table that had been handbuilt for me by a friend, and to this day I am still finding things that we no longer have because of that move.  The company would not listen to our complaints and never found or paid us for the missing items.

Breathe once more. 

All of these things, from an outside perspective may seem small.  They may seem petty.  We survived carrying two mortgages.  We have been able to replace most of the lost items that the moving company lost.  I did eventually get a robe from a different company, which was a gift anyway and didn’t end up costing us very much.  I have a home and we are fine.  Those things that happened to us were small things in the big scheme of things.  And yet still, it was hard to let go of my desire for all of these people to experience what I experienced in the stress over money, the confusion over lies and unkindnesses, the loss of faith in humanity that I experienced.  Did any of these people EVER think of us again?  I’m certain they did not.  They took what they took and never thought about it again.  On the other hand, I thought of them daily for many months, and was filled with anger and the desire for them to experience what I had experienced each and every time. 

We want life to be fair.  And when people hurt us we want them to suffer as we are.  We want revenge, plain and simple. 

Of course, our faith calls us to something different.  “Vengeance is mine” saith the Lord.  Three times we find this in scripture.  Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the LORD.

Deuteronomy 32:35 It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."

Hebrews 10:30 For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The LORD will judge his people."

But we don’t trust that, do we?  We don’t trust it because we see people getting away with all kinds of stuff, all the time. 

But Jesus is clear, too.  Matthew 5: 38-47: You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’  But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.  And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.  If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.  Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

This is echoed in 1 Peter 3:9 : Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

And all of this is well and good.  Except we don’t take any of it with any kind of seriousness.  But Jesus lived by what he said and in today’s passage we see that. 

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.  And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him;  but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?”  But Jesus turned and rebuked them.  Then he and his disciples went to another village.

We see it again when he is being arrested and the soldiers come to take him away.  The disciple cuts off the soldier’s ear and Jesus, in contrast to his disciples, heals the ear.  He even declares forgiveness from the cross for those who have crucified him. 

And maybe, we say, well, that’s Jesus.  That’s not real for us.  I know most Christians feel this way.  It is people of faith who encouraged me to sue in each of the three cases I described earlier.  And I’ll tell you the truth, it wasn’t that I didn’t sue because of my faith, but rather because of a lack of time and resources to do so. 

But as Christians we are to be known by our love.  By our radical, different, outstanding and clear LOVE.  And that means responding to the injustices of this life with compassion.  And that means responding to hatred with love.  This means not seeking revenge, but responding to unkindness with forgiveness. 

There was a news story out about a year ago of a woman who was in a drive-in line at a McDonald’s buying lunch for her kids when the man in line behind her starting yelling racist slurs at her and her children.  He was awful in his language, and this was heard by the woman’s children and was upsetting to all of them.  But instead of responding with anger, she chose better.  She bought the man’s lunch and asked the cashier to give him a note that she wrote that said, “I am not the words that you threw at me or my children.  I forgive you.  Have a good lunch.” 

I’m certain you have all read in the news over the last couple years about congregations that have forgiven shooters.  In particular the African American congregation in Charleston forgave, in a very public way, at the trial of the shooter, the man who killed so many in their congregation.  As the News story wrote it,

“The relatives of people slain inside the historic African American church in Charleston, S.C., were able to speak directly to the accused gunman Friday at his first court appearance.

One by one, those who chose to speak at a bond hearing did not turn to anger. Instead, while he remained impassive, they offered him forgiveness and said they were praying for his soul, even as they described the pain of their losses.

“I forgive you,” Nadine Collier, the daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance, said at the hearing, her voice breaking with emotion. “You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.”

Last week I shared a story of Jesuit Priest Gregory Boyle wrote in the introduction his book, Tattoos on the Heart, about a woman who had lost two sons to gun violence praying for the life of the shooter when he was brought into the hospital, also as a result of gun violence.  Father Boyle said this, “If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.  William Blake wrote, ‘We are put on earth for a little peace that we might learn to bear the beams of love.’.. We’re just trying to learn how to bear the beams of love.” (p xiii).

We believe it is hard not to strike back at those who hit us.  We believe that it is only saints who do this.  Many others believe it is only weak people, or scared people, or foolish people who fail to seek revenge. 

But as Paul tells us, in 1^st Corinthians 4: 10, we are called to be Fools for Christ: living out what others see as impossible, as unlikely, as unpractical.

Father Elias Chacour shared in his book Blood Brothers (p177) about his work with a congregation in Israel/Palestine that was torn with internal strife and hatred.  He had tried to reconcile them again and again but was unable to do so.  Finally, on Palm Sunday, he chose to do something outrageous.  He locked the doors so that those in the church could not leave at the end of the worship service and he said to them. “You are a people divided.  You argue and hate each other – gossip and spread malicious lies.  What do (those who are not Christian) think when they see you?  Surely that your religion is false.  If you can’t love your brother than you see, how can you say you love God who is invisible?  You have allowed the body of Christ to be disgraced.”

He invited them to sit in silence, asking for God to bring healing and forgiveness to his congregation.  After he finished speaking, they all sat in silence for a long time.  Chacour continues, "No one flinched.  My breathing had become shallow and I swallowed hard.  Surely I've finished everything, I chastised myself, undone all these months of hard work with my... then a sudden movement caught my eye. Someone was standing... With his first words, I could scarcely believe that this was the same hard-bitten policeman who had treated me so brusquely.  "I am sorry, "he faltered.  All eyes were on him.  "I am the worst one of all.  I've hated my own brothers.  Hated them so much I wanted to kill them.  More than any of you I need forgiveness."  And then he turned to me, "Can you forgive me, too, Abuna?"  He continued by describing a community that not only forgave one another but went out to the larger community, door to door, asking for forgiveness, and offering it in kind.

These are humans, transformed by their choice to forgive, transformed by their commitment to follow Love all the way, to follow Christ all the way.

 It is easy for us to want and even act in revenge.  It is easy for us to respond with anger.  But, as with everything that God asks us to do, God asks us to forgive not for the other, but for ourselves.  Do you want to be houses of hate and anger?  Or do you want love to rule in your hearts?  When love rules you are more whole, healthier, freer.  The call to forgive is not easy.  But it is part of our call to love and cannot be separated out.  We are called to take seriously that vengeance is God’s and we are invited instead to step into the deep and full living, letting go of anger, and choosing joy and peace instead, that is ours.

A Personal Reflection on my book - insecurity, fear, and perhaps a bit of hope.

           My book came out.  You can buy it on Amazon. You can buy it from the publisher, Parson's Porch.  You can buy it directly from me.

         But this post is not actually a sale's pitch.  This is a more personal reflection on how hard it has been for me to step forward into this.  

         David Tullock from Parson's Porch Publishing found me through my blog and has been asking me to send him my stuff for publishing for about 4 years.  FOUR YEARS!  And every time he would send me an email, I would respond with "Oh yes!  I am interested!" but I could never move beyond that.  All I needed to do was to put the blog posts into a document.  This shouldn't have been hard.  I'd already done the writing.  I'd already done quite a bit of editing.  I'd actually already saved all of the blog posts in several documents (one for each year) because I'm just enough of a Luddite to not completely trust the internet to actually save my stuff for the duration.  So I had also saved them all already.  It was just a matter of doing some minor editing, pasting together several year's worth of posts and sending them off.  But I couldn't do it.  

         I'd think about it.  I'd talk to other people about it, all of whom would just look at me with puzzlement... I mean, why wouldn't I do this?  I didn't even have to FIND a publisher: I had one coming to ME!  I didn't have to worry about submitting and resubmitting and facing rejections.  I didn't have to try to figure out self-publishing.  I didn't have to ask for help.  Why on earth would I not do this? 

        Well, I'm busy.  I have kids.  I'm working full time.  I am still writing and that feels more important.  I have other projects.  My book about what our family went through should really take priority over blog posts.  I...

       I was full of excuses.  And none of them were true.  I had written a dissertation while working and having kids.  I had finished a doctoral program while working and raising kids.  I have experienced times when all I could dedicate was ten minutes a day to a project, but I know how to find that ten minutes in each day and I've done this before.  The most honest answer I could give to people was "I don't know why.  I just... can't."

       Marianne Williamson is quoted as saying,  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."  Was I afraid of success?  

       No, that didn't feel right.  It's not success that scares me.  It's being noticed at all.  And it's not being noticed in a good way, though perhaps that scares me too.  I worry more about being noticed and found lacking.  I fear being noticed and deemed "not good enough".  I am anxious about being seen and judged.  I worry some will feel I am "too big for my britches" and that I shouldn't think my book is worth reading.  I worry about being found to be a fake - someone who just plays at writing, pretends at ministry, acts as a person striving to follow Christ but somehow never quite makes it.  I am terrified of the haters and their ability to make me feel small, unvalued and unvaluable.  This is so much a problem for me that when my books showed up in the mail, instead of feeling happy or proud, I experienced a panic attack that made it hard to breathe.  My husband and children were thrilled for me.  A good friend offered to cater a book signing party for me.  Several people have spoken up at groups I'm in to proudly share the news of my book.  And, while I have been grateful for their care and their love, that wasn't the predominant feeling.  Each and every time someone shared about my book, I felt mostly embarrassment... or maybe even shame.  I wanted to crawl into a hole, run away, pretend it hadn't happened.  I wanted to "take it back" and tell the publisher I had made a mistake.  I had more panic attacks, and I wanted to apologize to everyone for wasting their time and money.

         Jesuit Priest Gregory Boyle wrote in his book, Tattoos on the Heart (New York: Free Press, 2010) that the prime issue of addicts or gang members or those who are extremely poor (or anyone living out their fear) is shame.  He says that while God finds us wholly acceptable, this is incredibly hard for those who have faced terror, violence or deep betrayal to accept.  He says that shame is the absence of self-love.  But, "it is precisely within the contour of one's shame that one is summoned to wholeness." (p44).  

        Isaiah 43:1 "I have called you by your name.  You are mine."  And, as Boyle said, "Out of the wreck of our disfigured, misshapen selves, so darkened by shame and disgrace, indeed the Lord comes to us disguised as ourselves." (p60).  This is not easy for me.  But I am stepping into the hope that maybe, just maybe, it is true for me, too, that God loves me beyond measure, as I so deeply believe it is true for all of those around me.  

        So for today, I will do my best to step out of the shame and into the wholeness of God's love.  For today, no matter what I experience or what others say or do, I will strive to embody the grace of a God who believes that all of us are, in fact, too small for our britches: we are loved beyond imagining, we are worth all that is.  And that means there are times when it is okay to step into our successes, and to celebrate the things we have done and the people that we are.  I hope you will consider buying my book.  And I will try to embrace the care it shows me when you do.

A Present Silence

1 Kings 19: 1-15
Luke 8: 26-39

God’s coming as we know is not where, when, or how people expect.  We know this.  And yet still, where do you think people look for God?  Where do you think most people expect to see God or claim to see God?  Natural disasters, natural actions.  When big things happen in our lives – if these things are good, we say, “God blessed me” and if things are bad, we tend to ask, “Why did God do this to me?” or “Why did God let this happen”…like the Holocaust or natural disasters, the big Jesus burning down.  This was true in Biblical times as well.  People looked for God in the big things, the big movements in the world or in their lives or in nature.  That is a big part of why we have this passage written the way it was in 1^st Kings.  It needed to be said that for Elijah, God wasn’t in the wind, the earthquake or the fire.  Where was God?  

In the NRSV the translation of this passage says that God was found “in the sound of Sheer Silence.”  In the NIV it says God was found in a “Gentle Whisper”.   In the Common English translation it is “ there was a sound.  Thin. Quiet.”   I love that.  A sound of thin quiet.  There is great power in God showing up in silence, or even in a gentle voice.      

Because what really gets us to listen?  Do we hear or understand a message in the earthquakes and disasters in our lives?  What kind of message is that?  Does it get us to stop and listen?  Not usually.  Instead, it causes us to talk back, to talk more, to lament and cry and yell and ask “why?!”  God’s voice is not to be heard in that.  We hear anger, we hear punishment, we hear revenge.  But do we hear God?  I don’t think so, not only because I don’t believe God is about punishment and revenge, but also because if God is wanting us to change, just telling us “bad!  Wrong!” usually is not going to help us know how to be different or what to do that is different.

We know this to be true.  Psychology studies are absolutely consistent in showing that when we yell at our kids or hurt them, our kids are actually incapable of hearing or understanding or incorporating into their being what it is we are saying.  They don’t learn the lesson when we deliver it in anger or violence.  They just plain don’t learn it.  Do we think that God doesn’t know this?  No.  God knows and God wants us to learn and grow.  Anger is a secondary emotion.  And there are two things that underlie anger.  Always.  The first is grief and sorrow.  But the more common emotion behind anger is fear.  God has no reason to be afraid or to act out of fear.  Therefore, God’s response to us is always one of love, one that is quiet, one that is compelling.  One that is unexpected.

               Barbara Brown Taylor wrote a wonderful book titled, Learning to Walk in the Dark.   In it she shares the value of finding God in the unexpected and unexplored and scary places.  Some of what she says, “Those of us who wish to draw near to God should not be surprised when our vision goes cloudy, for this is a sign that we are approaching the opaque splendor of God.”  This thing that we fear so much, the dark, is actually essential to our health.  We need real darkness to be able to sleep well and we need real sleep in order to think well, to function well, to be healthy in our lives.  Jesus died on the cross.  But we are so afraid of the dark that we don’t want to face the fact that it is only in our dying that we, too, truly live.  Only in facing that which is uncomfortable, hard, but true and deep that we find God.  She continued, “One of the central functions of the dark night” (used as a metaphor to mean those times when we go through difficult and painful things and cannot feel God’s presence) “is to convince those who grasp after things that God cannot be grasped.  God is not a thing.  And since God is not a thing, God cannot be held on to.  God can only be encountered as that which eclipses the reality of all other things.  …(our) images of and ideas about God are in fact obstacles between (us) and the Real Thing.” (p 138).  (p144 - ) “The dark night is God’s best gift to you, intended for your liberation.  It is about freeing you from your ideas about God, your fears about God, your attachment to all the benefits you have been promised for believing in God, your devotion to the spiritual practices that are supposed to make you feel closer to God, your dedication to doing and believing all the right things about God, your positive and negative evaluations of yourself as a believer in God, your tactics for manipulating God, and your sure cures for doubting God.  All of these are substitutes for God.”

               Thomas Merton says it this way: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (from  “Thoughts in Solitude”)

God is present in the silence – in the quiet.  Often we think of silence as an absence, but in this case it is a present silence.  It is a profound presence. 

God’s coming, or seeming lack of coming is very rarely what we expect.  And what we eventually learn is that God’s presence in the silence is much more profound that any voice that we could hear, especially when we are in a dark time.  When grief is strong there are no words of comfort that can help, that can fill the void that is left.  All words in profound grief are empty, meaningless dribble.  The only thing that is meaningful in that is presence.  Genuine presence.  “A Noise.  Thin.  Silent.”

God is always in the unexpected places and that is scary.  I’ve shared with you before about my favorite restaurant in San Leandro:   the Bella Italia Inn, which had no inn attached to it at all.  It was an Italian restaurant, though the owner/cook was Indian.  This was the first thing you would notice when you walked into the restaurant - the Indian cook behind the counter in the kitchen cooking the food.   In case you missed this, you would be reminded of it by the choice of music - Indian music playing over the speakers.  The waitress who worked there was from Central America, and spoke very little, if any, English, only Spanish.  The decor in the restaurant was an odd mix of quality and...lack of quality - the wood work in the restaurant was high quality, truly lovely stuff.  But the tables would rock back and forth on their uneven legs.  The rugs were beautiful, but filthy both with current grime and with deeply set stains.   Drinks that you would order would be brought to you in glasses that didn’t match.  The last time I went, my friend was given a beautiful large crystal wine glass out of which to drink her coke, and I was given a beautiful, small and differently designed plastic wine glass out of which to drink mine. There were beautiful glass oil and vinegar holders on each table right next to the cheap plastic salt and pepper shakers.  If you were able to order your food (if you were able to communicate with the Spanish speaking waitress) she would bring you hot food on cold plates, and cold food on hot plates.  If you asked to split your dessert, they would “split” your two layer piece of chocolate cake by cutting off the top layer, so that one of you gets all the frosting and the other all the filling.  The waitress wouldn’t bring you a spoon with your spaghetti nor a pen with the credit card slip if you pay by credit card.  If you ordered mineral water, they brought something that wasn’t carbonated.  One time when I went, I had to wait for an hour to be served, though it was obvious that there was only one other couple in the entire restaurant - “we’re understaffed tonight,” we were told.  But in the midst of this very chaotic and strange place, the food is fantastic.  The seasonings exquisite, everything cooked to perfection.   Truly wonderful Italian food cooked by this Indian man in these strange circumstances.  If you were put off by the circumstances, the décor, the incongruity of the place, you would miss out on one of the best Italian meals in the Bay Area.  God is like that.  The unexpected gifts in the chaos.

The story of the pigs.  Again, God in the unexpected.  It terrified the people.  But he healed the man.  Why was it so scary?  In part because it was so unexpected, and so uncontrollable.  We like the boundaries that define our world, that help us to walk through and navigate each day.  The physical rules and scientific facts give us comfort: we know x can happen, we know y can’t.  But then when y does happen?  It is terrifying.

We are complex.  We are found to be in many different moods, with many different challenges and gifts and reactions and ways of responding to our world and being in the world.  And we are made in the image of God.  So God, too, is complex and shows up in many, many ways.  When we limit the ways in which God can show up or the ways in which we see God, we limit God-self.  We make our God too small.

I think about the Joan Osborne song, “What if God was one of us”.  The words are:

If God had a name what would it be?

And would you call it to his face?

If you were faced with Him in all His glory

What would you ask if you had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great

Yeah, yeah, God is good

And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us?

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Tryin' to make his way home?

If God had a face what would it look like?

And would you want to see if, seeing meant

That you would have to believe in things like heaven

And in Jesus and the saints, and all the prophets?

People were offended by this song.  Why?  And yet, the message of Jesus is very clear: God IS one of us, with all that that means.  But we have a fear of God being present in what we don’t like, what we don’t know, what we don’t understand.

So our challenge then is to keep our eyes open, keep looking for God even in the places we don’t like.  God works in the world, is alive in the most unexpected places, is present in the silence.  The biblical stories remind us that God comes where we least expect to see God, the stories remind us of our need for the miracles of wholeness, of transformation, of change, of seeing God in the unexpected, even if that can make our lives uncomfortable.

               I just finished reading a wonderful book called Tattoos on the Heart, written by Jesuit Priest Gregory Boyle.  Father Boyle works with gangs in L.A. and has won the California peace prize for his work.  One of the many things that makes the book so compelling is when he talks about the unexpected places where he has met God.  He warns that if we only look for God where we expect to see God that our god can become very tiny, very limited, very boxed in by our beliefs, our experiences, our own thinking, and most especially our expectations.  (p.19)  He goes on to say that God IS compassion, compassion that we, too, are called on to embody.  One story I believe highlights that especially.  Father Boyle is sharing about a woman who had two of her sons killed by gang activity, both of whom had actually outgrown their own gang behavior, had moved on to reclaim their lives and were living with hope, integrity and movement, going to college, going to work.  But they happened to be in the wrong places at the wrong time and were shot and killed.  She is devastated by both of these losses and is struggling to live each day, which she must do because she has two other children who still need her.  But at one point she is taken to the hospital herself with an irregular heartbeat and chest pain.  Boyle continues,

“The doctors are tending to her with EKGs and the like when there is a rush of activity at the entrance.  With a flurry of bodies and medical staff moving into their proscribed roles, a teenage gang member is rushed to the vacant space right next to Soledad.  The kid is covered in blood from multiple gunshot wounds, and they begin cutting off his clothes.  The wounds are too serious to waste time pulling the curtain that separates Soledad from this kid fighting for his life.  People are pounding on his chest and inserting IVs.  Soledad turns and sees him.  She recognizes him as a kid from the gang that most certainly robber her of her sons. 

               ‘As I saw this kid,’ she tells me, ‘I just kept thinking of what my friends might say if they were here with me.  They’d say, ‘Pray that he dies.’” But she just looked at this tiny kid, struggling to sidestep the fate of her sons, as the doctors work and scream, ‘We’re losing him.  We’re losing him!’

               ‘And I began to cry as I have never cried before and started to pray the hardest I’ve ever prayed.  “Please… don’t… let him die.  I don’t want his mom to go through what I have.”’

               “And the kid lived.”

               That’s where God is.  God is in those unexpected moments of grace, of vision, of love, of compassion, and of silent presence.  Sometimes it is hard to see God there, but if we want to be close to God, we have to start looking in the unexpected places, to look not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in the presence.