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| Reverend Rita's Sermons (Jan - June 2004)...
Out
of Bounds - 06/20/04 Out
of Bounds 20 June 2004 The story of the Gerasene Demoniac is yet another example of brilliant storytelling in the gospels, so I want to start out by going over it in detail. First of all to set the scene: the Lectionary last week told the story about the sinful woman paying respect to Jesus, loving much because she had been forgiven much. That story is kind of foreshadowing of the Gerasene demoniac, and in between those two stories we have a couple of parables in which Jesus shows how the good news gets hidden or misunderstood: the parable of the sower; the teaching that “no one lights a lamp and hides it under a bushel; and the appearance of Jesus’ mother and brothers, prompting the famous saying, “Those who hear the word of God and do it are my mothers, brothers, and sisters.” Our Old Testament reading further illustrates the central issue here: “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name.” That sounds a lot like what the sower would say, or the person who wants the lamp put on a stand, rather than hidden under a bed. All of that sets the stage for what happens in this story with the Gerasene demoniac. Our story opens with Jesus getting into a boat and leaving Galilee, leaving the land of the Jews, and going to a foreign nation, Gerasene. There he is met by the man with the demons. Now we can certainly recognize that this fellow was nutters, but it is not as apparent to us modern Gentiles just how offensive this man was by Jewish standards. First of all, he wears no clothes. This is a big problem for a people who have so many body taboos. Secondly, he lives not in a house but among the tombs. This not only echoes the Isaiah reference to “those who sit inside tombs and spend the night in secret places,” but it is a further violation of Jewish taboo. Death and everything associated with it was unclean. A person became unclean when they touched a dead body, or if someone in their household died. Tombs, therefore, were very unclean, and to live among them would be to live in a perpetually unclean, outcast state. The demons also name themselves as “Legion.” I probably don’t have to tell you that the term “legion” also referred to a specific military unit in the Roman army. And finally, there is the fact that the demons ask to be released into a herd of swine –not only unclean, but further echoing Isaiah’s reference to “those who eat swine’s flesh.” And to top it all off, the swine end up killing themselves by running off a cliff – and suicide is yet another Jewish taboo. But what is going on here is about far more than just the breaking of taboos. Luke notes that the man was “kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.” This is very interesting, because it shows how the people around him tried literally to restrain him, that is, to bind him up and make him an acceptable part of society. Think about how societies define boundaries of clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable. In particular, think of how society places artificial, cruel, and unjust restraints on oppressed groups – those who need to be strictly controlled lest they threaten the existing power structure. So it is that slaves were not allowed to be taught to read, women were not allowed to hold property, and gays to this day are not allowed to marry. These constraints have nothing to do with justice. They are in fact chains, binding people in oppression. And time and again in the Bible, Jesus stands with those who are considered unclean and unacceptable. Time and again he breaks the chains that bind. Paul echoes this in his letter to the Galatians, “We were imprisoned and guarded under the law, until faith would be revealed…. [Now] there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Now there is no longer clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable, for Jesus has broken our bonds and loosed our chains. But this man was not perfectly fine living out there naked among the tombs. The situation here is not simply that he had chosen an alternative lifestyle. Rather, his unclean state of living was a consequence of his original rejection from society. In fact, the Bible doesn’t tell us what it was that got this man deemed an outcast in the first place, but because of his rejection, he is living an isolated, lonely, and even dangerous existence out in those tombs. Again, look at the social analogies: blacks and women viewed as ignorant, when they have been forbidden from getting an education in the first place. Gay people being forced to the margins of society, living in a metaphorical closet, precisely because they are not allowed to love in the open. Oppression warps and damages people, who can even end up possessed by their own hatred and anger. Think again of that name, “Legion.” This man’s mind was possessed by an invading army, every bit as much as Israel itself was overrun by conquerors. Society rejected this man because of who he was, and that very rejection possessed his mind and drove him into madness. So it is very important to notice how Jesus responds. The question we need to ask ourselves is: where is the truth found in this story? And the truth is found in the mouth of the possessed man. The demons alone recognized who and what Jesus was, whereas the local villagers feared and rejected him. In other words, the man himself is in the right. And Luke tells us that as soon as Jesus cast the demons out, the villagers found the man “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.” Now if the only issue here was that the man was unclean, then the people should have been happy to see him restored to sanity. But they’re not happy; they are afraid. This also tells us that the people had unjustly rejected the man himself. This again echoes the words of Isaiah, “a rebellious people…following their own devices; a people who provoke me to my face continually…, who say, ‘Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.’” In this case, they tell Jesus to leave town. But the man, though he has been healed, recognizes that the people still will reject him, and he begs Jesus to let him accompany him. But Jesus says, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Again, this reflects the experience of oppressed groups. There is always a movement among the oppressed to separate from the larger society: the return to Africa movement among African-Americans, women’s groups that excluded men, gays and lesbians who are perfectly willing to add on to their closet and just make it a larger, more pleasant closet. But Jesus issues a challenge. Just as society is harmed by excluding people unjustly, so also those who have been excluded cannot live separated from everyone else. We all need each other: Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female. Society will only be healed when we seek God where God is to be found, and when we proclaim the good that God has done. That is what it means for us to live in our right minds, to live in the mind of Christ that is within us. So where does that leave us today? Of course, we want to identify with the Gerasene demoniac. We all in various ways know what it is like to be oppressed and excluded, to be judged and found wanting. At the very least, all of us here in this church have experienced such exclusion from other Christians. We may have felt like people sought to put chains on us, and that we were driven by madness to live out among the tombs. Yet we have found healing here in this community. Here we have been restored to our right minds. But what do we do now? Do we, like the Gerasene man, want to flee our country and run away with Jesus? Do we seek to hide this light under a bed, rather than setting it on a lamp stand? How have we proclaimed the good news of what God has done to others? Are we not under a sacred obligation to do so? We keep saying in this church how we need to grow enough to survive, but sometimes I wonder if we’re really willing to back up our words with our deeds. In order to grow, in order to heal and restore, we must proclaim. I want us each to think about that. But I also want us to consider that it’s too easy for us to identify only with the Gerasene demoniac. Because of course we always want to identify with whomever Jesus shows favor upon. The truth, though, is that if we are the unjustly oppressed Gerasene man, we are also the oppressive villagers. Let’s be honest and ask ourselves, how have we passed judgment on others? Whom have we sought to bind with our own expectations? Whom have we driven mad by our self-righteousness? Because
God First Loved Us 13 June 2004 Today in our worship we will be celebrating the sacrament of baptism. This is always a joyous occasion, because it means we welcome a new person into our fellowship. In our tradition, that person is usually a baby, which brings its own kind of joy, but of course not all churches baptize infants or very young children. Some churches emphasize baptism as an act of repentance, a decision that a person must be old enough to make for him- or herself. In those traditions, baptism is not a decision that one person can make on behalf of another. But churches that baptize infants claim that none of us can really repent unless we’ve already been forgiven. We love, so says the Bible, because God first loved us. So baptism is primarily an act of God, not an act of the believer, and that is why we baptize infants. Both traditions have value, and they complement each other in important ways. But since we come out of the latter tradition, that’s the one I’m going to focus on in today’s sermon. We love, because God first loved us. We repent, because we have already been forgiven. And as Jesus further states in today’s gospel selection: because we have been forgiven much, we love much. These are truths that every parent knows. When that sweet, cherubic little baby throws up on your best suit, you’d better have already forgiven her. When that angelic child screams all night and keeps you up, you’d better already have a reserve of love built up for her. Before a child is old enough to repent, to say those magic words, “I’m sorry,” she will need to be forgiven many, many times. Many times. Many! And that advance forgiveness is crucial to a child’s development. Indeed, it is how she will learn right from wrong, how she will learn trust in others and confidence in herself, how she will learn safety and responsibility. Ed, Natalie – never will your capacity to forgive be so tested as when Charlie reaches the “past three” stage. I’m not talking about when Charlie is three years old. I’m talking about that ancient parenting tradition when a parent says, “You had better do such-and-such before I count to three, or else.” When you start out using it, it remains a vague, unspecified threat: “or else.” And it can remain unspecified and still work – up to a point. But sooner or later every child will reach the “past three” stage, [story] when they will deliberately push the envelop in order to see what happens when you get to “or else.” Parents fear the “past three” stage! They often only have a vague idea themselves of what will happen when the apocalyptic number is reached, and they sure don’t want to have to administer the “or else.” But the child will push, and the parent must keep that promise, and tears will flow like a might stream from all corners, but the “past three” phase is an important moment when we learn about responsibility and consequence. But here’s the secret: the “past three” stage will only work if the child in her heart already knows that her parents will forgive her, no matter what “or else” means. Without a preexisting forgiveness and love, then the whole “past three” stage breaks down. Without an apocalyptic number, in other words, if punishment is administered at any time, at the parent’s whim, then the situation becomes abusive. Without the reality of “or else,” in other words, if there are never any consequences, then it’s a situation of neglect. Children can’t thrive under either of those conditions, when there is no countdown and no “or else.” But when love and forgiveness have already happened, from before we are old enough to know right from wrong, then the “past three” phase becomes a crucial part of our growing up. Our Old Testament story today is an excellent example of the “past three” stage for a grown-up, because the learning continues throughout our lives. David has committed quite a few sins in his pursuit of Bathsheba. The prophet Nathan calls him to task for it with his parable of the man and his pet sheep. David, like any three-year-old, excels at recognizing when someone else has broken the rules, and he reacts with righteous indignation, promising vengeance upon the transgressor, until Nathan reaches three: “You are the man. You, David, are the one who did this.” Nathan enumerates the privileges that David has been granted, shows him what he did wrong, and tells him what will be the consequences of his actions. “The sword shall never depart from your house.” And indeed, it will not. David’s family will be plagued by abuse, treachery, even rape and murder. This isn’t a matter of punishment; it is the direct result of his own actions, the example he as a father, a husband, and a king, shows to his family and his people through his actions with Bathsheba. But David, like a well-loved three-year-old, repents. He realizes that there is nothing arbitrary in the situation. He has done wrong, and he must live with the consequences. He grows up a bit here, but his maturity comes from the fact that he has already experienced the love and the forgiveness of God. David makes a lot of mistakes in his life. He is not perfect by any means. But it wasn’t perfection or goodness that made him a paragon of faith in the Bible. It was his ability to repent and to accept the consequences of his actions. Indeed, because he was loved and forgiven, he in turn was able to love and forgive his own children even when the commit their own transgressions. So it is that this story is paired with a similar tale in Luke’s gospel. Jesus has been invited to dinner by a prominent Pharisee. But the man did not greet him or wash his feet or anoint him with perfume upon his arrival. Consider what this meant in an age before hot showers and deodorant. This Pharisee invited Jesus to his home along with many prominent guests, but he left him dirty from his travels. The equivalent today would be to invite someone to a party telling them to dress casually, while everyone else appears in evening attire. It puts the guest at a severe disadvantage, showing them in a bad light, giving others the chance to feel superior. A subtle, but unmistakable putdown, a humiliation. But a woman appears at the party as well – a great sinner, as Luke tells us. She washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, kisses him and anoints him with perfume. She shows him the honor and respect that the host should have shown him, but she does so in an extremely intimate and personal way. This is not mere courtesy or manners; this is love, deep and profound. Yet rather than be moved by her display, the host feels only scorn, thinking to himself, “If Jesus were a prophet, he’d know what kind of woman this is.” But Jesus does know. He tells the parable about the two men whose debts were forgiven. Like Nathan before him, Jesus calls the Pharisee to that “past three” stage. “She loves much because she has been forgiven much. But those who have been forgiven little, love little.” Once again, forgiveness precedes repentance. It even precedes love. We love, because God first loved us. And that is why we baptize even children who are too young to know what repentance and forgiveness and even love mean. Forgiveness is not a one-time deal that happens only at baptism and never again in our lives. It is certainly not something that we can ever ask for or even deserve. Even the youngest of babies already needs to be forgiven before being baptized, and we will need to keep being forgiven until our dying day. But baptism is a sign that shows us we are loved. Charlie will not remember this day. Some of us here remember our own day of baptism and others do not. But what we all know, what we recall again whenever we witness another’s baptism, is what is symbolized by this act: no matter what happens in our lives, no matter how many times we push the “past three” phase, God still loves us and has already forgiven us. Because of that, we know what love is. Thoughts on the Occasion of a Death June 6, 2004 Dealing with the death of my aunt has been a really intense experience. Not only because Geri was someone I loved very much, the person I’m most close to outside of my immediate family. But I’ve been through the death of a loved one before. I’m sure all of us in this room have. Yet no death I’ve ever been through was like this. I think it’s partly because of the suddenness of it, not being able to prepare for it at all. But also the sheer randomness of it – the "preventableness" of it. All the other deaths I’ve known have been of natural causes. Even diseases like cancer or AIDS, one can argue whether they are preventable. They are unfair and cruel, yes; nevertheless they are still natural causes. I’m learning that it’s just not the same as when someone gets hit by a truck – killed – a death by accident. Of course the truth is that all death is horrible and painful. We sometimes may be able to deceive ourselves about that fact. If the person is old, has lived a long and fulfilling life, and they die peacefully in their beds, we may call that a “good” death. But it is still painful to lose someone we love. If we did not love them, we wouldn’t miss them when they’re gone. There’s a horrible finality in death. We no longer have the chance to say the things we’d been waiting to say. We no longer can take back the things we wish we hadn’t said. We can’t go back and do it over again. We can’t buy an extra five minutes. We know the joke: only two things are certain, death and taxes. But people cheat at taxes all the time. We cannot, however, cheat death. Yet we can deceive ourselves about its meaning. We can think too much, say it was a good death, say it was for the best, make it somehow okay. I think that’s what it means when we “prepare” ourselves for death. It means we prepare our defenses, distance ourselves from what happened, have our excuses and interpretations ready. But a sudden violent death catches us unaware. My rational brain keeps trying to distance itself from what happened, but that deep, primal part of me claws its way through my gut to scream in grief. Any little thing can set me off, bursting through my defenses to say, “My God, Geri’s dead; she’s really dead.” I’m not used to being at the mercy of my emotions like this: to feel so vulnerable and irrational and out of control. And that’s the key: death is never in our control. We can deceive ourselves about that most of the time. Even my mother keeps trying to say that my aunt’s death was her fault, that she should have held Geri’s hand, that she shouldn’t have suggested they go out to eat that night. She’s attempting to get some sense of control over what happened. It seems unbelievable that it took only a half a second to snuff out a life. And that’s a terrifying thought. It makes us feel so very vulnerable, and we humans do not like to be out of control. It’s the same thing with 9/11: and as a nation, we are still in shock. These absurd airport regulations by which they confiscate toenail clippers: there’s nothing rational about that. It’s an attempt to make us feel in control, as if we can keep it from happening again. But it will happen again. Murderers will always find a way to commit murder. Likewise fatal accidents will happen, despite my wish that all cars be forever banned. There is always something that will cause sudden, unexpected death. But we don’t like to admit that, and it’s surprised me how many people have responded to the news by blaming the driver of the car. They’ve even said, “It feels better to have someone to blame.” But I didn’t want to blame the driver. The police did not find him at fault, and I doubt I would have felt better even if it had been his fault. Maybe these well wishers mean it’s better than blaming yourself. I don’t know. I think my mother would have blamed herself either way. She feels responsible because Geri was her little sister. My mom has always felt responsible for Geri, so why wouldn’t she still feel responsible even in her death? Ask yourself: what would it mean if my mother had simply shrugged and said, “Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway?” It may be true, but wouldn’t that seem callous? Just as our grief is a reflection of our love, so is our self-blame. Still, the grief is devastating, numbing. A sudden, violent death: I’m disturbed even to think about what happened to my aunt’s body. Such a grotesque, meaningless death. And that’s key, too, isn’t it? Meaningless. Such a death runs the risk of overpowering Geri’s life. I still can’t really get over that. Her death didn’t seem like a passing, it seemed more like a taking – like robbery – like, like DEATH. And that made me think of Jesus. He too suffered a violent, premature, and preventable death. He too was robbed of life. Think of Mary – for no parent should ever outlive his or her child. Think of Mary blaming herself, taking responsibility. Think of Peter berating himself, “If only I’d convinced him that going to Jerusalem was a bad idea.” And such a death! How could you prepare yourself for something like that? It was senseless, stupid, and the desire to blame someone was great. Even on the cross, Jesus himself cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” My mother at one point turned to me and asked, “So if I shouldn’t blame myself, should I blame God?” I know she asked me because I’m a minister. And I gave my ministerial opinion: “Yes!” I don’t know if I’ll get professional demerits for such an answer! I certainly don’t think God made the accident happen. God doesn’t pull the strings, he could no more have caused the driver to hit my aunt than he could have pulled my aunt out of harm’s way. God certainly didn’t “call Geri home.” Yet I cried out like Jesus on the cross, that primal cry of grief and pain, “Why? How could you have let this happen?” But if it’s true that our tendency to blame ourselves is a reflection of our sense of responsibility and love, then shouldn’t the same be true of God? If we can’t somehow blame God – if we can’t address that question of “Why?” to God – then what use does God have for us? The Bible gives us many examples of people demanding of God, “Why?” Not only Jesus, but also John, Jeremiah, Moses, and many others. When God finally appeared before Job, it wasn’t to berate him for his questions. Instead God turned on Job’s friends who had been making excuses for the tragedy Job suffered – the very people who had been defending God against Job’s accusations. Jews to this day argue about blaming God for the Holocaust. I took a class in seminary taught by a Rabbi and we Christian students kept saying the Holocaust was the result of human evil, that humans were to blame. But the Rabbi said we were letting God off the hook too easily. That’s a challenge – and ironically, it is a scary thing for us to blame God for death. But there is a story about some Jews in a concentration camp who decided to put God on trial for the crimes committed against them. After long debate and argument, hearing all sides, they found God guilty. But immediately after pronouncing the verdict, the Rabbi said, “Now come; it’s time for evening prayers.” And every one of God’s accusers joined in singing praise to the One whom they had just blamed. We can blame God, and maybe we should. Maybe it’s right to ask that primal question, “Why?” of God – but that doesn’t mean we’ll get an answer. And it doesn’t mean our relationship with God must end. It means we trust God to listen. It means we look to God to acknowledge our pain. But it’s about more than God sympathizing with us. It would have been so easy for the disciples to let the violence and unfairness of Jesus’ death overshadow his life. Such a gruesome death seems to negate the life that went before. Over these past two weeks I’ve thought a lot about those disciples gathered together after that Good Friday, the tears they shed, their grief and pain and feelings of blame and vulnerability. But in the end they did not forget Jesus’ life. In the end, they were able to overcome his death and resume his work. In the end, they found him to still be with them, though not in the way he was before. That means something to me. That means resurrection. It doesn’t mean my aunt didn’t die. It doesn’t mean I no longer grieve; far from it. But resurrection means the triumph of life over death. It means the triumph of Jesus’ life over his death. It means the triumph of Geri’s life over her death, the hope that my own life will triumph over my death when it someday comes. Come,
Holy Spirit, Come 30 May 2004 Today is Pentecost, one of the annual holy days of the church and yet one with which people are not very familiar. We hear the same story every year of the disciples receiving the gift of tongues, a good story, but not as long or as dramatic or important as stories of Christmas and Easter. Pentecost presents a certain challenge for the minister. So I began this sermon by doing research, reviewing my books from seminary about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was kind of a new thing for me in seminary. I did not grow up Unitarian, but in some ways I might as well have. We talked about God and Jesus quite a bit in my home church, but the Holy Spirit was something tacked onto the end of the doxology, which we sang after we collected the offering. I wasn't very familiar with the Holy Spirit other than as an addendum. But by the time I got to seminary, my vision of God, especially as God is talked about in Christianity, had expanded a bit, and I was really interested in this Holy Spirit, which I didn't have much of a concept of. And I must confess that even after taking a class in seminary just on the Holy Spirit, I still don't have a very firm grasp of it. This past week as I reviewed my books from class, I had to keep checking to make sure they were really written in English. Here's a sample: “What may be known and said about God's being may only be known and stated from God's being-for-us. God's being-for-us does not define God's being but certainly God in his being-for-us interprets his being. Interpretation lives from that which is to be interpreted. As relational being God's being-for-us is the reiteration of God's self-relatedness in his being as Father, as Son and as Holy Spirit. In reiteration that which is to be reiterated lets itself be known. In God's being-for-us God's being for himself makes itself known to us as being which grounds and makes possible God's being-for-us.” Did everybody get that? Do I need to repeat it? Tough, because it has nothing to do with my sermon. From an academic point of view, I can understand this, although it helps me if I draw pictures. But from the standpoint of faith, I'm left scratching my head. Not that academic theology is a bad thing -- far from it. But when it comes to preaching a sermon on Pentecost, it -- well, it sounds like a banging gong or clashing cymbal. It sounds like as much verbal gobbledygook as in the days of the Tower of Babel. It's like speaking in tongues with no one to interpret. You reach a point where it all seems made up, all this technical talk about God and the Trinity and the Holy Spirit. I believe in those things, I really do, and all that technical language makes a certain amount of logic in and of itself, but when you step outside of it, it looks rather absurd, like the medieval brain teaser, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (Answer: all of them, because angels have no corporeal existence.) But when the Bible talks about the Spirit, it is more clear and yet more vague, but at least it uses language we can understand. Spirit, in Hebrew ruach, means "a movement of air," wind, breath. Our mind can grasp those images in a way that we can't with the theological language. They are vivid images, yet ones that are still vague, which is no doubt why the language gets so convoluted. I mean, let's face it: we know what God is. Yes, yes, ultimately we can't say anything definite about God. Certainly we all mean different things when we talk about God, but we all know generally what we're talking about. We are able to have a conversation about God without having to define all the nuances of the term. And Jesus is easy. Not only do we all know whom we are talking about when we talk about Jesus, but we can all recognize a picture of him, even though no one really knows what he looked like. But we have no common conception of the Holy Spirit. We only have a series of images: a dove, wind, fire -- and these images don't even go together. The Holy Spirit is talked about in the Bible, but it is not a personified actor like God and Jesus. So it is hard for us to find language to discuss what we mean by Spirit, a feeling, an experience, a conviction, but not really a knowledge. And the more people try to talk about it, the more elusive that knowledge becomes, as when people talk too much about a metaphor. A metaphor is by definition not factual, not true. That isn't to say it's false or a lie. A metaphor is used to describe something by talking about something that it is not. It is illustrative rather than description. For example, Jesus said, "I am the door." We know he's not really a door, but we understand by analogy. In fact all our talk about God is a metaphor, but we still tend to have a concrete idea or vision in our mind that we think is real. But when we talk about the Spirit, the metaphor is obvious: a dove, the wind, fire. A metaphor breaks down, though, the more we try to capture it in words. Its power lies in its ability to trigger the imagination. A metaphor is elusive, slippery, and the harder we try to grab onto it, the more easily it slips from our grasp, but when we let that metaphor be, it tickles our minds. We start thinking by association, drawing connections and parallels. We seek new understanding by spiraling out. Metaphor is itself an excellent metaphor for God, particularly when we call God the Holy Spirit. Here then is a story. Picture what it was like before the universe was born. There is no mass, no light. There is no sound, because there is no mass through which sound can travel. There is no smell, because odor is a particle. Is everything black? There is no light to see the blackness with. Whatever was before the universe was inert. We remember the law of inertia: bodies that are at rest remain at rest. So there cannot be anything, because being requires movement: sound, smell, light, atoms -- they all require motion. There was nothing to be moving. Our story says, in the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. The movement stirred things up, and there were eddies and currents, and things bumped into each other and stuck together and pulled apart, and it was a Big Bang -- and nothing has stopped moving since. The Spirit is in creation and in the maintenance of life. There is another story about something that we cannot see. It has no weight or mass or volume. It has no taste or smell. It is strong. It can pull up trees by the root; it can blow down houses. Why, given enough time, it can carve out a canyon from solid rock, or it can move a mountain, wear it down until nothing is left. It is the wind, it is the power to caress and the power to mold. It is the breath of God. The Spirit is a mighty power, invisible to the eye. There is another story about a boy, the youngest of twelve brothers. He had everything go wrong to him that could possibly go wrong. He was attacked by his brothers, sold into slavery in a foreign land, framed and thrown into prison. But he had a light within him, a depth of understanding and compassion that he never lost, even in his darkest hour. That light inside him helped him understand people's dreams, their deepest fears, their hidden hopes. They say he had the gift of interpretation, but maybe it's just that he knew how to really listen to people -- with a compassionate heart and an open ear. The Spirit is wisdom and understanding. There is another story about a people who had lost their teacher. He was killed, but it didn't stop them. Even after his death they continue to gather together to study and celebrate and sing. Empowered by hope and a burning love, they reached out to everyone across lines of language, religion, culture, nationality. They discovered a new community, a new reality that spread like wildfire throughout the world. No amount of persecution or hatred could stop it. The Spirit is fire. We don't know exactly what it is. We hardly know how to talk about it. But we do know it. We know the stories. We have had these experiences ourselves. These images fill our minds and our hearts, the fire that cannot be extinguished, a wind that blows where it will, insight and wisdom that blossom from within, peace like a dove descending on gentle wings. A God who cannot be contained, a Spirit that we cannot grasp, yet which reaches out to touch us when we wait for it. Come, Holy Spirit, come. The
Incarnate Word 16 May 2004 The
lectionary this Easter season has been including sections from the
book of Revelation in a textbook example of pulling out the handful
of passages that make any sense while removing them from their baffling
context. So at first I decided to be clever and preach on the entire
book of Revelation. Every couple of years I get it into my head
to read Revelation, thinking that somehow I will finally crack the
code and decipher it. Needless to say, I failed yet again. Yet as
I was reading the book, my eyes caught on a particular verse that
ended up heading me off into a completely different direction. The
verse was 14:4, referring to the famous remnant of 144,000, and
it says, “It is these who have not defiled themselves with
women.” Can you guess what it was that caught my attention?
It is the fact that these 144,000 are men. Maybe I’ve just
never noticed it before, after all it is only a little phrase here
that makes the implication. Nevertheless it irked me. So are women
not included among the elect, the faithful remnant? Are women not
going to heaven? Do women just not count when it comes to divine
action? We adults can to some extent screen and filter what we read in the Bible. Pacifists manage to get past the instructions to slaughter every living thing, teetotalers manage to gloss over the wine of the Last Supper, but if our children get their innocent little hands on the Bible, I can guarantee they will come across stories to give them nightmares: Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, the plague killing the first born children of Egypt. We in this church are not, of course, fundamentalists. We do not even pretend to accept everything the Bible says at face value. In that sense we are at least more honest than the fundies, who most assuredly do not accept the entire Bible, no matter how much they claim to. All those “defense of marriage” people who claim a Biblical standard for monogamous marriage between one man and one woman obviously do not read the Bible very closely. You could probably count on one hand the number of Biblical marriages that would pass muster with Focus on the Family. Nevertheless, while we are not fundamentalists, we are stuck with the same dilemma. We may be more honest about the criteria we use for picking and choosing our definitive Bible texts, but as for the passages we don’t like, our choices are limited. Some people argue for throwing those stories out, but do we really want a bowdlerized Bible? We can’t rewrite those stories, and we can’t really even explain them, not in a way that will truly satisfy a modern audience. So we tend just to ignore those stories, letting them collect dust, until we unexpectedly stumble across a passage that once again renews our horror and disgust, and we secretly wonder whether we truly can be a part of such a tradition. So what does it mean to claim to be a Bible-centered church? I don’t pretend that I can solve this problem. Like it or not, Christianity is stuck with this dilemma, and always will be. But maybe we can consider a different way to think about the Bible, a different way to read it and study it and discuss it. It is worth remembering that the Bible started out as oral tradition. Even the Gospels were told as stories for decades before finally being compiled into a narrative and written down. Most of the Bible was not written in tablets of stone but was rather forged in the crucible of an oral tradition. We today, however, live in an entirely literate culture. We consider oral testimony to be very unreliable. We want everything “in writing,” implying permanence, immutability. You are no doubt familiar with the telephone game in which one person whispers a sentence in to another’s ear, who in turn repeats it to the next person, and on down the line, until “Hello, how are you?” becomes “The cat is in the dishwasher.” But in fact most of human history has been lived in an oral tradition. Trained storytellers can remember a story almost perfectly, at least as well as scribes can copy manuscripts. The Iliad and the Odyssey were preserved in the memory of bards for centuries before they were ever written down. Thousands of Muslims today know the entire Quran by heart. The mind is capable of remembering stories precisely. But stories that are preserved orally can also be more easily adapted and changed as their context and history change. A new insight is gained, or a contemporary event sheds new light on an old tradition, and these new elements are woven into the story in an ongoing dialogue with history. This was once the tradition of the Bible as well, and you can see numerous examples if you know what to look for. Just three examples: if you read the Bible straight through, rather than in bits and pieces as we usually do, you will find that periodically the Bible stops and recaps the story up to that point, beginning with, “Our father was a wandering Aramean, and continuing on up through the story of the Bible up to whatever point they are now at. The story is always retold at crucial points in the people’s history, in order to help them move faithfully into the future. Another example is the Passover Seder. There is no one correct Seder service. Rather each household is encouraged to write their own service so that the story of Exodus is not only retold, but applied to contemporary life. And finally there is the presence of four Gospels. None of the Gospels is identical to any other, yet all four are included in order to tell both overlapping and unique stories about Jesus, and each set of stories is put together in a different way in order to make different points to people in different contexts. It is difficult for us now to look at the Bible as anything but a written document because that is how it has been given to us. We perceive of the Word of God as unchanging, and never more so than when it is written down. But according to our tradition, according to the Bible itself, the Word of God is not a book, but is rather Christ himself! Christ, the Incarnate Word, that is, a word made flesh, not made cipher. Christ, the Word in John’s gospel, is analogous to God’s first word: bereshit – let it be! A word that God spoke, not wrote, an oral Word. This is vitally important, but a point which we easily lose sight of when our noses are buried in a book. So how can we look at this book, the Bible, which is full of written words striving to convey the truth of the Incarnate Word? Christianity does not really have such a tradition, but Judaism does. If you have ever seen a Jewish theological library, you would be astonished at the shelves and shelves of leather-bound volumes that accompany the Bible itself. These books, some of them oversized at two or three feet tall, are called the Mishnah or Talmud, and they represent a collection of oral tradition and commentary that parallels the Bible itself. The Mishnah is based on the view that an Oral Law was given to Moses at Mt. Sinai at the same time as the Written Law. It is therefore accorded divine authority, but it also includes hundreds of generations of commentary and interaction both the scripture itself, but the host of oral tradition and history that rose around it. Incidentally, Islam has something similar, an oral tradition of stories and sayings of Muhammad that were not included in the Quran. I don’t fully understand the Mishnah, but I have seen it in action. Basically it continues the stories told in the Bible, commenting on them, engaging in dialogue, even arguing and correcting. These additional stories and commentaries have in turn by commented on by still more Rabbis. It is not quite a theological free-for-all. In order to engage in the dialogue you must be familiar with the Bible and with all these commentaries. I’ll take just one example, the story of creation. As you know, there are two Biblical accounts. We can either ignore the fact that the two differ and are not compatible, or we can try to merge the two into one. But the Mishnah takes the liberty of filling in the gap. So in the first account you have the male and female being created at the same time, and in the second account Eve is made from Adam’s rib. Somewhere along the line a story developed about Adam’s first wife, Lillith, who because she was created equal with Adam, demanded equality with him. Adam complained about this to God, who banished Lillith, then put Adam to sleep and pulled the rib out in order to make the more obedient Eve. Lillith subsequently roams the world as a spirit, trying to snatch babies away as they are being born since she has no children of her own. You can here the folk tradition, even the folk medicine, woven into this story, which has been preserved in the Mishnah, and now in modern times has been recovered by feminists who laud Lillith for her independent spirit, and even made it into pop culture through the Lillith Fair, a touring rock concert organized by female performers who felt that the Lollapalooza tour excluded women. How’s that for theology! The story is based on the Bible, but we are invited into the story to struggle and wrestle with it, just as Jacob wrestled with the angel, earning himself the name Israel, “one who struggles with God.” So rather than saying there is only one meaning to the Bible, or looking always for the “correct interpretation,” the Mishnah breaks the word open. Each word has its origin in God, each word contains divinity, and so each word may be wrestled with in order to extract its blessing. They say that when ten Rabbis gather, there will be eleven interpretations among them. They don’t look for the one true interpretation. Rather, their discussion becomes something greater than the sum of its parts. Jewish theology can include word play, puns, even math, involving complex formulas whereby the letters in words, each having a numerical value, are added and subtracted from each other in order to gain theological insight. Stories are filled out, expanded, added on to. The possibilities are endless, and they are all divinely inspired. I took a class in seminary entitled Jewish Interpreters of the Bible, taught by a Christian and a Jew. In ten weeks we only got as far as the fifth chapter of Genesis. The teachers once spent an entire three-hour class on a phrase from one verse. It was impossible to take notes, and it was unbelievably exciting, because you never knew where the conversation would go. It was entirely unpredictable, and it was entirely blessed. In that class, the Word came alive in a way that it quite frankly never does for us Christians. We bite the bullet and try to be fundamentalist, accepting all the impossibilities, or we lobby for the Bible to be edited. But Judaism presents us with an alternative version that requires us to know our Bible but also to question it. The Bible becomes a springboard, a launching pad, rather than an anchor. It becomes a heart more than a center. The written word alone is like Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. It requires breath – the spoken word – to bring it to life, to add the vitality, which it requires in order to give us blessing. Throwing
It All Away 28 March 2004 All our scriptures today deal with the issue of rubbish or waste. Now if anyone knows about rubbish and waste, it’s us Americans, because we produce more of it than anyone else in the world. In fact, we probably produce more of it than the rest of the world combined. Rubbish and waste are similar, but they aren’t quite the same things. Rubbish implies something whose usefulness has been used up. Like Kleenex. It was very useful at the time it was needed, but after that it’s really not good for anything else! It becomes rubbish, worth only throwing away. Waste can mean the same thing, but it can also have a more particular sense of something being misused. Waste implies that we would have been better off if we had used that item in a different way. For example, I would have been better off if I’d actually read my heavy copy of “Les Miserables” rather than just using it as a doorstop. Or if I used some fancy, expensive Godiva chocolate to make s’mores. (Though it might make some very good s’mores!) Our scripture story today speaks of waste in terms of this latter meaning. Judas says that Mary wasted that nard by using it to anoint Jesus when she could have sold it and given it to the poor. Whether or not he was trying to skim some money off the top, Judas has a good point. Three hundred denarii was about a year’s worth of wages for a laborer, so let’s say $20-30,000. That’s no small sum of money to spend on a guy who has lived his life in a “preferential option for the poor.” Mary does indeed seem to have wasted that perfume. But let’s put this story in a bit of context. Remember, this is not Mary Magdalene, but the sister of Martha and Lazarus. In fact, immediately before this story is the story of the raising of Lazarus. They were a family living in Bethany near Jerusalem, and Jesus often stayed with them. He seems to have been very fond of all three of them, and he grieved deeply at Lazarus’s death. When Jesus arrived after Lazarus’s death, Mary rebuked him, saying, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She seemed confident that Jesus would have been able to cure Lazarus, but as far as she was concerned, Jesus had missed his chance – indeed, had wasted his time, for the gospel tells us that Jesus waited two days after receiving the news before he went to Bethany. Now she anoints Jesus with nard, as if anointing him for burial. The question is: why didn’t she use it to anoint her brother when he died? Or perhaps that is indeed why she had it. Perhaps she bought it originally to use on Lazarus, in which case, why did she buy so much? A pound of nard, costing $30,000 seems like a bit of excess. Who else did she expect to use it on? No wonder Judas accuses her of wasting it. This whole story sounds wasteful! But Jesus tells Judas not to rebuke her, that she is anointing him for his burial. Again, there is a contrast here. Mary has just seen her brother die, and seen Jesus raise him back to life again. Yet almost the next thing she does is anoint Jesus for his own burial – and he’s not even dead yet! Maybe Mary has learned something through all this. Maybe she has learned that sometimes in order to live, you first have to die. She questioned Jesus before, but now she gives him her blessing. The name “Christ,” which is Greek for “Messiah,” means “Anointed One.” Originally it did not refer to a spiritual savior, but to an earthly king. A king would be blessed and anointed at his coronation – and that is what Mary is doing here. She is anointing Jesus as her Lord, blessing his ministry – even though she knows it will lead to his death. Messiahs were a dime a dozen in Jesus’ day, and like Jesus, they invariably ended up crucified. Here is Jesus with this important message and mission, with the power of God on his side, yet he wastes it by riding into Jerusalem, provoking the rulers, and getting killed, just like all the other Messiahs. That seems like a waste, too. A waste of his life and mission and power. But Mary understands now. Sometimes in order to live, you first have to die. Jesus’ death, she says, will be no more of a waste -- a misuse – than her own act of anointing him with $30,000 worth of nard. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul also talks about waste and rubbish. He talks about his spiritual credentials, how he seemed to have everything than anyone could want: he had a spiritual lineage as a Jew, he went to the best schools as a Pharisee (indeed, the Passover Seder mentions one of his teachers, Rabbi Gamaliel.) He obeyed all the religious laws, and further showed his zeal by persecuting Christians. But now he counts it all as rubbish. (And in seminary we learned that he actually uses a very strong word there, not the kind of word you can usually get away with saying in church. I’ll leave you to figure it out.) Rubbish he says, trash worth throwing away. It’s served its usefulness and now means nothing, because of knowing Christ. What does Paul mean when he speaks of “knowing Christ?” Only he can say for sure. Each of us has to answer that question in our own way. To Mary, it meant she anointed him her Lord, preparing him for burial. To Paul, it means a spiritual value surpassing any earthly credentials. It means Christ crucified and resurrected. It means something that is worth throwing everything else away for. That which appeared to have value, turns out to have no value. And that which appeared to be worthless proves to have the greatest value of all. But there’s something more going on in these two stories. Both Mary and Paul have given so much in order to throw their lot in with Jesus, and both suffer for it. Mary will grieve for Jesus’ death. Paul himself gave up a secure career as a Pharisee in order to become an itinerate preacher. Where once he was throwing Christians in jail, now he is the one being thrown in jail. Mary and Paul indeed threw everything away, counting it as rubbish, in order to follow Jesus. They’re like the people in our psalm, “Those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.” The person singing the psalm is living in a time of trial and remembers when God restored Israel’s fortune in the past. Indeed, Israel knows perfectly well what it is to have everything and then to find it all taken away. They know what it’s like to have every blessing in the world wasted and counted as rubbish. But there is such a testimony in this psalm: those who sow in tears will reap in shouts of joy. While they are still grieving, they go out to sow. They don’t rest in their grief. Rather, they go forth to sow. Now plants take time to grow. Depending on what you’re growing, it will be months or maybe even years before you benefit from what you’ve sown. So to plant at all means to have hope for the future. But more importantly, it means investing your hope in the future by your actions today. The people have been deprived of everything. Perhaps they are wasting their time sowing when they could instead be trying to get food today. But that is not where their hope lies. Their hope lies in a future that is yet to come, yet a future that will never come unless we sow the seeds for it today. Are they wasting their time? Are they wasting their hope? Or will they one day reap with shouts of joy, as the psalm promises? “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King. Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” What is the rubbish in our lives? What have we wasted, and what are we willing to throw away in an extravagant gesture that will bring us never-ending life and blessing? We can be so practical-minded, but sometimes our frugality and practicality may end up standing in the way of something greater. Indeed, do we not perceive it? 21 March 2004 I remember the first time I got lost. I was about six years old. My mother took me and my younger sisters shopping at the mall. When we got ready to leave, though, my mother couldn't remember where she parked the car. Being the oldest daughter, and therefore bearing a certain sense of responsibility for the family I said, "I'll go look down this row for the car." I ran off, but did not find car. So I returned to the mall entrance -- only to find that my mother and sisters had disappeared. Many of you have probably had an experience like that. To this day, I can remember my panic and despair. I thought my mother had found the car, loaded up the two remaining kids, and just left without me. I had no idea how I would ever find her again. I didn't know my phone number or address. I feared that I would have to spend the rest of my life at the mall. You laugh now, but to a six-year-old, it's terrifying. A kind man offered to help me find my mother. Of course nowadays children are taught to fear strangers, but we weren't so paranoid back then. The stranger was very nice, but I was disconsolate to, crying hysterically, with my whole body the way children do. Then a miracle happened. My mother found me -- like God appearing out of the sky, arms outstretched, gathering me to her and holding me tightly, as if she'd never let me go. Remembering it even now, I get tears in my eyes. She found me. She came back for me. I'm not alone. I still have a home. I belong somewhere. My mother loves me. It's the best feeling in the world. We all know the story so well: the prodigal son, or more accurately, the lost son. What a powerful story it is, especially when we remember our own experiences of being lost and found. No doubt you parents also resonates strongly with the father who rejoices. I can't imagine my mother's fear when she lost me, and her relief and joy when she found me again. That fear of losing one's parent, losing one's child is probably one of the most primal fears of all. How powerful, then, that Jesus should choose this story to illustrate God's love for us. But not everyone sees the story that way. Several years ago I read an interview with renowned theologian Brad Pitt in Rolling Stone magazine. (Alas, I don't subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine anymore, thereby depriving myself of many a great sermon illustration.) Brad Pitt grew up in a very conservative religious home, and his reading of the story differs significantly from mine. He interprets the prodigal son as seeking to escape a controlling father, trying to live his life on his own terms, breaking away to freedom and self-determination. But when he couldn't make it on his own, he was forced to crawl back home again, debasing himself and accepting his father's harsh rules. Now it seems to me that Brad Pitt missed some crucial aspects of the story, yet his interpretation made me realize that there are some homes that are not a place of refuge, some families that are not loving. In other words, sometimes getting lost is the very best thing that can happen to a person. The truth is, we all leave home and get lost many times in our lives, sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose. We leave home to go to school or to work. We move to a new city. We find a life partner and start a family of our own. But sometimes when we leave home things don't work out. Sometimes we get lost along the way. Jobs don't work out. Relationships collapse. Sometimes, like the lost son in the story, we fall in with the wrong crowd and end up in a self-destructive mode: drugs, alcohol, or whatever our personal demon is. Life out there in the hard world -- or even, yes, at home with family -- can be unimaginably harsh. Betrayal, abuse, depression can plague us anywhere, at home and abroad. We may come to feel so lost that we fear we will never be found again. We think we might as well just die. But Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like this: "While he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion on him and ran and embraced him and kissed him, crying, 'My child who was dead is alive again; he was lost and is found.'" Brad Pitt is wrong: the father in the story imposed no harsh rules. He did not forbid his son to leave home. Rather he let him go, to learn on his own. Parents can hold onto their children forever. Sooner or later they have to let them go, to make their own mistakes, to discover life on their own. Leaving home, even just getting lost, can be an important away for us to learn. The second time I got lost, I was around 16 years old. My family was on vacation in another state, and we were visiting a museum. I became engrossed in an exhibit, and when I finally looked up, my family was gone. But this time I did not panic. By that age, I knew my phone number and address. I had also learned the basic code: when lost, and stay in place. But most importantly, by that time I knew they would come looking for me. Because of my previous experience, I knew of my parents' love and concern for me. That knowledge gave me the confidence to weather the difficulty of getting lost. Because I knew they would find me, I didn't have to fear being lost. And that experience led in turn to more boldness. I took my first solo trip at the age of 19 -- and to Israel/Palestine, a place that makes some people a little nervous. I have since traveled in many countries, often by myself. And on those trips I have gotten lost -- sometimes deliberately. In our lives we leave the comfort and safety of home many times. Those solo flights test our resources. We learn what we are capable of doing. I've learned that I can get stranded in a foreign country during a nationwide riot, for example, or that I can leave a well-paying job and start a new church from scratch. When we leave home and risk getting lost, we learn that we have amazing resources within us. We discover that the world can be exciting and fascinating, not just scary. We learn that I can find ourselves. But I doubt that I would have that same degree of confidence if not for that experience when I was six years old of getting lost and being found again. We need that experience of being welcomed home, like the lost son whose father accepted him back with exuberant joy -- and without condition. This is what God is like to Jesus. This is the basic nature of the universe: where they're always glad to see you when you go home. Where you will always be welcomed. Whether we get lost like the younger son, or stay at home like the elder, God is just glad to see us and know that we are safe. And that confidence, that knowledge, is what allows us to leave home and take flight. Now
all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to
him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying,
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So
he told them this parable: Fig
Trees 14 March 2004 This past week we’ve seen yet another example of the same kind of theological dilemma that the crowds present to Jesus in this story from Luke’s gospel, a dilemma that has existed from the beginning of time: when bad things happen to good people. The train bombing in Spain echoes the two tragedies Jesus speaks of: Pilate murdering hundreds of Galileans at worship, in an act of state-sponsored terrorism, or the randomness of the victims upon whom the tower of Siloam fell. The people asked Jesus about this because they were trying to make moral sense of a tragedy. Did these people somehow do something to have deserved this fate? The question may seem harsh. After all, who would argue that those Spanish commuters deserved their fate? But remember that there were people in our own country who in the wake of September 11 argued that we deserved this punishment. Even Jesus’ own response here is rather ambiguous: “Do you think they were worse than anyone else? No, they were not. But I tell you, unless you repent, you will perish like they did.” I can tell it’s going to be a tough sermon when Jesus’ lessons are as ambiguous as this! Jesus has a very frustrating way of answering a question by leaving you more questions that you started out with! So, no three-point sermon today. Instead, we’ll wander through the ambiguities that Jesus leaves us to wrestle with. One thing that he may be saying here is that we shouldn’t blame these victims, dismissing their tragic deaths as if they deserved it. But any such occasion of tragedy can be a time of self-examination. How did we get here? If we died right now, what would we be leaving behind? Would we be leaving behind the kind of legacy that we want to be remembered for? A legacy of kindness and love and generosity? Or would we leave behind an ambiguous legacy that would prompt people to say we deserved our fate? Maybe when a tragedy like this happens, what we’re really asking is, “Do WE deserve that fate?” So perhaps it’s very telling that Jesus follows up this discussion about bad things happening to good people, with this parable about the fig tree. The lesson of this parable is hardly clearer than the other, however. A man plants a fig tree in his garden but finds no fruit on it. He calls the gardener to chop it down for wasting the soil, but the gardener pleads, “Give it another year. Let me tend to it and give it what it needs. Then if a year from now it still bears no fruit, chop it down!” So the fig tree has won a reprieve, but if it doesn’t start producing, it still faces the ax! Does the fig tree deserve its fate more than any of these other victims? What lesson are we to take from this? When Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven, he favors these ambiguous parables. And they are almost always metaphors: “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Remember your grammar? A simile is a direct comparison, whereas a metaphor uses like or as. We run the risk of taking a simile literally, but a metaphor always leaves us that little reminder that the two things we are comparing are not the same thing. There’s room left, which means we need to interpret. The meaning is not clear-cut; we have to hunt for it. And the metaphor, however rich and apt, can never exhaust the full meaning of what we are trying to describe. It’s a very frustrating but fascinating way for Jesus to teach, because we always want easy answers, the meaning handed to us on a platter, but Jesus always keeps us on our toes. So if we are baffled by this parable, we might then go hunt through the Bible for other stories about fig trees, because there are many. Another fig tree story, often told during Lent, is the one where Jesus is riding toward Jerusalem and sees a fig tree. He’s hungry, so he approaches the tree but finds no fruit on it and curses the tree. But here’s the catch! The disciples complain about what Jesus has done, because it’s not the season for figs. It seems a terribly unfair thing for Jesus to do, and it probably doesn’t make us feel too good about this parable. But there are other fig tree stories, including this one from Jeremiah: “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us?’ …When they have rejected the word of the Lord, what wisdom is in them? …They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. They acted shamefully, they committed abomination…. When I wanted to gather them, says the Lord, there are no grapes on the fine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.” Jesus cursing the fig tree, like the man wanting to cut it down, is symbolic. It’s the message Jesus gave about the people who died in those tragedies: Unless you repent, you will perish in the same way. We are the fig tree; we should be producing good fruit. But when God comes to us looking for good fruit, will we have anything to offer? Will we have wasted our gifts? Will we have earned the ax? But the parable is not so simple. The gardener argues for clemency: give it another year. Let me give it the care it needs, and then we’ll see if it deserves fruit. There’s a long-standing tradition in the bible of people staving off God’s well-earned wrath by making just such an argument. Think of Abraham arguing on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah: “Lord, if only a hundred good people are to be found in the city, will you still destroy it? What if there are only fifty? Let’s say for the sake of argument that only ten good people can be found? Will you still destroy it?” And God relents. Yet still elsewhere in the Bible, we can find examples where God seems to be the gardener arguing for mercy instead. “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the water; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!” Paul argues in his letter to the Corinthians, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” But perhaps these parables, these metaphors of the kingdom of heaven, are like dreams. They say that every thing that appears in a dream is a symbol of ourselves. What if everything that appears in the parable, then, is a symbol of God? What if God is the vineyard owner who is looking for the tree to produce good fruit, who will pass judgment and deliver punishment upon the tree that fails to produce? What if God is also the gardener arguing for mercy, who promises to tend the tree for another year, digging around it, giving it manure, providing it with everything it needs so that it may pass the test and thrive? And what if God is also the tree? What if there is a holy tree in each of us, wanting to bear fruit, but needing care and nourishment to do so? What if we are the vineyard owner, threatening to tear out this tree when it hasn’t been properly cared for? Aren’t there people who say that: What use have I for God, when God has never done anything for me? There are people who curse God for not bearing fruit in their lives. But what if we are also the gardener, charged with the duty of caring for the tree and ensuring that it bears fruit? What if we are called to tend not only the tree within our own souls, but the tree within other people’s souls as well? What if we have a sacred calling to nurture all people, so that the holy tree within them can bear fruit? A Jewish friend of mine recently was telling me how important trees are in Jewish tradition. They even have a holiday in which they plant trees, Tu B’Shevat. It is a New Year for the tree, and it happens after the last of the winter rains in Israel, when the trees have been hibernating for months. When the festival of Tu B’Shevat takes place, the trees all appear dead. They have received the benefit of all that winter rain, but they are in fact still dormant. They will not bear fruit until many weeks later. One Rabbi writes, “On Tu B'Shevat, just the beginning of springtime, the tree's potential, the fruit, is yet to be seen. Still, we rejoice, faithful that in a few weeks' time the tree will bear fruit. There are times when one may be sliding downwards, either physically or spiritually. There is an "autumn" and an even colder "winter," but [we] should not despair! Just after the coldest part of the winter, when the fruits are still concealed, comes the metaphysical spring of [the human soul]. Surely [our] potential shall bear fruit like a nurtured garden!” Higher
Ground 7 March 2004 Today’s passages have a common theme about resolution – as Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “standing firm in the Lord.” Abraham is advised to stand firm in the promise that God has made, even though he sees no evidence that the promise can be fulfilled. In Luke’s gospel, the Pharisees, usually not on the best terms with Jesus, now come to him to warn him that Herod wants to kill him. Yet the gospel says he stood firm in his resolution to continue his course to Jerusalem, even though it meant risking his own death. Our Sunday School curriculum today has consequently chosen the theme of standing firm for today’s lesson. And so it seemed at first that I should do likewise. It’s a good lesson, after all, to stand firm in our convictions, to stand firm in the promises of God, to be constant and not waver. But the more deeply I thought about it, the more something began to bother me about that image. The problem is illustrated in an editorial that appeared in the Express-News this week. He was criticizing the move of several cities and municipalities to offer marriage licenses to same sex couples. How can marriage mean anything, he argues, if our standard for defining it keeps shifting? Heterosexuals have a standard that has existed for thousands of years – the standard as defined in Genesis: “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Same-sex couples have no such standard, he argues. The current move to redefine marriage leaves us without any standard of definition at all. So we must stand firm in the definition that was decreed in the Bible. Stand firm against shifting culture. Stand firm against the erosion of meaning. Stand firm in what God has decreed. You see the problem I’m finding here? The problem is: how do we know we’re standing firm in the right place? How do we know we’re not just standing firm in our own prejudices? Standing firm can also sound a lot like stubbornness. Anyone can make the argument that they are “standing firm” in the truth, in the right, on God’s side, and so on. After all, as one of my college professors put it, no one says, “This is what I believe, but God disagrees.” Standing firm seems like good advice, but it leaves no room for growth in understanding, for maturity, for change. What then are we to do? Must we remain stuck forever in one place? I pondered this quite seriously. The editorialist says we need to stand firm to the way things were set out “in the beginning” at creation. But I came to realize that that’s not the lesson the Bible gives us. Sure, God created the world and everything was set up in a good and orderly manner. But then Adam and Eve got kicked out, and an angel was set to guard the way into Eden, so that they could never return. What is the lesson of the Bible, then? Is it that we should try to return to Eden, to go back to the way it was in the beginning? Well, what is it that happens in the book of Revelation, the end of the story? Chapter 21 reads, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” This same image appears elsewhere in the Bible as well, as in this passage from Isaiah: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” The message here is not, “Go back to the old paradise; rather, go forward into the new creation.” So the editorialist seems to be facing the wrong way. Yet he is right to be concerned about standards. If we have to be wary about standing firm in our own prejudices, we also need to be wary about following every trend or fashion just because it’s new. But how do we discern the will of God? How can the Bible be useful to us in this day and age, when our scientific knowledge and our understanding have advanced so far beyond that culture? It seems to me that the Bible is like a compass. Now, you can stare at a compass until kingdom come, and it will always point north. But you aren’t ever going to get north until you start walking. Standing firm with a compass doesn’t really do you much good. In fact, it’s really only useful when you’re moving. You walk a ways and check the compass to find you’ve begun to drift to the west. So you correct your heading and continue walking, then check again down the line and see how much you’ve drifted again. Likewise, the Bible isn’t the truth. It’s a compass that points us to the truth. It’s the compass that points us toward that new heaven and new earth. Our objective, therefore, is not to go backward toward a paradise that we can never return to anyway. Nor is our objective to stand firm, not moving for fear that we’ll wander even farther away from that paradise than we’ve already gone. Rather, our objective is to move forward into a greater and deeper understanding of God’s promise, God’s will, God’s intention for us and for this world. The hymn we’re going to sing after the sermon gives us a different image. It suggests that we should press on toward higher ground. I really like that, because it suggests movement. It also suggests, by that relative term “higher,” that we always have a further distance to go. We follow our compass, we discern what God is saying to us, and we press on to higher ground. But when we’ve reached that new terrain, we will discover that there is still higher ground for us to strive for. Another way to put it is the way Pastor John Robinson said it to the Pilgrims as they left Holland for the new world: “The Lord has more light and truth yet to break forth from the holy word.” Another hymn states it very prophetically: “We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind, to notions of our day and place, crude, partial, and confined. No, let a new and better hope within our hearts be stirred: O God, grant yet more light and truth to break forth from your Word.” We can see this principle in the story of Abraham and Sarah. They did not remain in one place. They pressed on to higher ground, leaving behind their old home, traveling steadfastly despite their doubts and fears. They went where God led them, discerning a higher path along the way. We can see this principle in the story in Luke’s gospel, where the well-meaning Pharisees advice Jesus to go into hiding, to turn back from Jerusalem and stay safe. But Jesus pressed on to higher ground, refusing to let his life be governed by fear. He would continue on to Jerusalem to complete his mission, his ministry, and he would not let that old fox Herod stand in his way. And we can see this principle when it comes to same-sex marriage – and before it, to mixed-race marriage, to women’s suffrage, to the end of slavery, and any other social issue that caused controversy in it’s day, with people warning that we must “stand firm against the changing winds of relativism.” In each of these cases, our purpose is not to cling stubbornly to the old understanding because that’s the way it always was. At each juncture on this path, we must ask ourselves, “Which direction will take us to the higher ground? Which path will lead us closer to understanding God’s purpose?” How does the Bible serve as a compass pointing us toward the truth? To paraphrase Jesus, we were not made for the Bible; rather, the Bible was made for us. What, then, are the principles of truth that we find in the Bible? Is our greatest principle that God is love? Is our greatest principle that God created all human beings in God’s own sacred image? What other principles will instruct and guide us? These are the Bible lessons that we must learn, the ones that will help us discern our path by increasing the depth of our understanding. These are the lessons that call us ever to higher ground. Standing firm is important when we need to stop and get our bearings. But if all we ever do is stand, then we’ll get nowhere pretty darn fast. Our hymn says, “I want to scale the utmost height, and catch a gleam of glory bright. But still I’ll pray till heaven I’ve found: ‘God, lead me on to higher ground.’” So let’s lace up our hiking boots and get moving! Into
the Wilderness 29 February 2004 Every summer since 1975 my family has made a pilgrimage out to our reunion in Colorado. We’d load up in the car and spend a grand total of five days driving through some of the flattest, most boring and uninteresting territory in these United States. How many of you have driven across this state? Texas is a whole lot of nothing. Days of driving, and nothing to break the monotony of endless sky and grass. People from other parts of the US see the Great Plains as unimaginably boring, enough to drive them insane. But for me, it’s my spiritual home. There’s something about desolate, empty places that strip us bare. It’s no mistake that Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before beginning his ministry. It’s no mistake that the Hebrew slaves spent 40 years wandering the Sinai desert before entering the Promised Land. The fact is that we humans are pack animals. We run in packs. We don’t like to be on our own for too long. We need the distraction and noise of other people. And we’re pack animals in that we’re attached to our stuff. We like to surround ourselves with things, possessions. But deserts, wildernesses, desolate places – these leave us on our own. It’s a testing ground of solitude and nothingness that strips us down to our very being. All that wide-open emptiness makes us feel small and pretty useless. We humans like to be useful. We tend to inflate our own self-importance by being busy, filling our schedule with activities: work or play or education or exercise. However it’s spent, our time must be spent, used for some purpose. But these activities can clutter up our lives and distract us from ourselves. In all the hubbub, we fail to hear the inner longings of our own hearts, let alone God’s still, small voice. We abhor that emptiness because we fear it means we aren’t that important. We fear the silence because of what we might hear. |
