2 Corinthians 8: 7-15
Mark 5:21-43
The Rev. Ed Wynne offered his wisdom on joy on June 28. (Posted out of date order.)
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Monday, July 13, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Possessed of God?
Sheepscott Community Church July 12, 2009
2 Samuel 6: 1-5; 12b-19
Ephesians 1: 3-14
Mark 6: 14-29
Possessed of God?
The last line in this morning’s reading from Ephesians goes like this: “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession––to the praise of his glory.” How do you feel about that phrase “God’s possession”? Does it rankle or does it give comfort?
If you are not God’s possession, whose or what’s possession are you? As Americans, who traditionally value self-reliance and independence of thought and action, I expect most would draw themselves up as tall as they could and reply something like, “I am my own man,” or “I am my own woman, my own self, not the possession of any one or any thing. I’ve worked hard to get here.” Fair enough. But now, let me illustrate from today’s readings how we may be possessed by an ideology or spirit without our knowing it, without our thinking of it in that way.
I saw a remarkable contrast between the figures in today’s readings. In the reading from the Hebrew bible we once again meet King David, and the New Testament reading is a slice of the life of Herod Antipas, most famous for his ordering the beheading of John the Baptist.
Before I talk about the contrast between these two and how that contrast relates to being possessed, I want to briefly share with you something I learned about the family of Herod as I was preparing for today. I had not known there were so many Herods; nor had I even imagined the carryings-on that went on in that extended family, murder, mayhem and incest, for openers. Just as a thumbnail sketch, however, to enable you to better appreciate today’s gospel, Herod the Great, the paterfamilias, was responsible for the slaughter of the innocent male children under two years of age in Bethlehem, following the deception by the Wise Men. That Herod married five times. The first marriage was to Cleopatra of Jerusalem produced Philip the Tetrarch, who later married Salome. Marriages to Doris and Mariamne the Hasmonean produced three sons, all of whom their father murdered. The last son, Aristobulus left a daughter, the infamous Herodias. Herod the Great then married another Mariamne who gave birth to Herod Philip, who later married his half-sister Herodias, who became the mother of Salome. The fifth wife, Malthake had two sons, one of whom was Herod Antipas, today’s gospel’s antihero, who seduced that same Herodias from his half-brother Philip and married her. How’s that for a family tree? As if the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have a corner on the market of family dysfunction. How would you like to have Thanksgiving at their house?!
I hope now you have a better idea of who Herod Antipas of today’s gospel is. That in place, let’s return to the contrasts among the figures in today’s readings. Consider King David, accompanying the ark of the covenant from Balaah of Judah up toward Jerusalem. “David, wearing an ephod”––an embroidered linen apron worn in ancient Hebrew rites––”David danced before the Lord with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.” A few weeks ago I alluded to this dance of David’s before the Lord, comparing it to Farmer Hoggitt’s dance in the movie, Babe. Babe the pig, whom the farmer loved, was ailing. Farmer Hoggitt’s dance was the same type of ecstatic dance, appearing odd or extreme perhaps to an onlooker, but to the dancer, wrapt in the expression of love and caring for the one for whom he or she is dancing, there is no self-consciousness at all because the dance is for the beloved.
In the movie Billy Elliott, now a Tony-winning Broadway show, the eleven-year-old Billy tries to describe to the admissions panel at the London School of Ballet for which he is auditioning for admittance, what dance is to him, what it feels like. “It sort of feels good. [I’m] sort of stiff, but once I get going, I sort of forget everything and sort of disappear. Sort of disappear. I can feel a change in my whole body. I’m just there. Fire. Bird. Like electricity. Yeah, electricity.”
King David tries to describe the same feeling to Michal, his wife, daughter of Saul, who despised him in her heart when she saw him leaping and dancing before the Lord. In verses further on, she says to him, in a voice no doubt dripping with sarcasm, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants, as any vulgar fellow would do!”
He replied to her, “...I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes, but by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.” It was for God he danced, and he didn’t give a fig for what Michal thought about him and how she judged him.
The unselfconsciousness with which King David danced before the Lord was entirely different from the way Herodias’s daughter Salome danced before Herod and his important guests. If David danced with purity of intention to worship God, Salome, under her mother’s tutelage and direction, danced wth an agenda, with anything but purity of intention. In a moment of wine-soaked braggadocio following the dance, which pleased him and his guests mightily, Herod promised anything to Salome up to half his kingdom. Mother Herodias seized the moment and instructed her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist. Unlike King David, who didn’t think about or care what anyone thought of him as he poured out his love for God in the dance, Herod was completely conscious of his guests’ opinions about him and feared their judgment on him if he didn’t fulfill his promise to Salome. He feared their opinion more than he feared God and God’s messenger, John the Baptist.
It didn’t have to go that way. Herod liked John and was compelled by the truth of his message, even though John was indicting him for seducing and marrying his brother’s wife. Herod knew the Baptist to be a holy and just man and his appeal was, well, not quite irresistible. Herod’s fear of his guests’ judgment was greater than his love or respect for John’s teaching, and so he acquiesced to his lesser nature and had the prophet beheaded to fulfill his promise to his stepdaughter, in order not to be shamed before his guests.
In his sympathy for the Baptist and his fear of his guests’ opinions, Herod is an interesting mixture as a human being. In his London Diary, Boswell notes that even as he sat in church enjoying the worship of God, he was at the same time entertaining thoughts of picking up a prostitute on the streets of London that same night. Human beings are haunted by both sin and goodness, that fact harkening back to my opening question about whom or what you would rather be possessed by: God, or, fill in the blank. Herod could fear John and love him, could hate his message and yet not be able to free himself from its fascination. Herod was simply a human being, and we have to ask ourselves if we are finally so different from him.
As I pointed out when I was discussing Herod’s family tree and the dysfuctionality of that family, things don’t change much because people don’t change much. As Qoheleth says in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The contexts for, and consequently the expressions of human nature are different through the centuries, but human nature itself doesn’t change. Consider David’s exuberance in the dance, his wife’s bitterness and disgust at the sight of that dance, as she couldn’t understand what was motivating him. Consider Herod’s fear of what others thought about him, and his cowardice in using his powerful position against John the Baptist. Consider Salome, the seductive ingenue, who carries out her mother’s wishes. These are all true types through history, which is why we can still relate to the stories they tell.
Let’s consider John the Baptist and Jesus, at a bit more length, in relation to the idea of being possessed by God and whether that might be a desirable thing for us in our time. If we are not possessed by God, by whom or what are we possessed? The struggles apparent in Herod’s own family partly answer that question––his fear of his guests’ opinion of him, his wife Herodias’s vindictiveness toward John the Baptist and the high cost that could exact, and the seductive dance of Salome as the mediator between those two. As I pointed out, human beings are a mixture of sin and goodness, and as a life goes on, we make choices one by one, day by day. Each of those choices moves us in a given direction. If we find ourselves way down a road we don’t want to be on, we can halt our trajectory and can make a choice for life, if we have been making a choice against life up to that point. That halt in the trajectory can be called repentance.
That’s the opportunity Herod had with John the Baptist. I imagine him visiting the Baptist’s cell and listening to him, compelled as he was by what John said to him. But finally his fear of men was greater than his love for truth and he made his choice and silenced that source of truth for the moment. Herod could have repented. He was invited to repent, but he refused the invitation. There was too much at stake, as far as he was concerned––in other words, his reputation, with his pride at the root.
And really, who can blame him? Here’s this guy who comes in from years of living in the desert, dressed in a camel’s hide, having lived on locusts and honey for God knows how long––he must have been fairly emaciated looking––this is the guy who is declaiming against Herod’s flouting of the laws of decency, not to mention the law of God, which in Leviticus specifically legislated against a man marrying his brother’s wife. John cut a memorable figure on the landscape. His type was certainly not unknown––the prophet of God, abstemious, appearing mad with the truth, the spirit of God that possessed him.
How different was Jesus? In two of the gospels in the last month, Jesus has been named as out of his mind by his family, and then last week, as offensive to his neighbors in his presumption to the role of teacher. Who does he think he is? Again, the more things change, the more they stay the same because human nature does not change. And humans in their natures have to decide whom or what they will serve, by whom or what they will be possessed. Will it be this or will it be that? There is no middle ground in the matters of God. Recall the saying in the Book of Revelation 3: 16, attributed to the one John called “one like a son of man,” i.e., Jesus the Christ, whom he saw in vision: “So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” In earlier translations, “I will vomit [or spew] you out of my mouth.” Strong language.
Insofar as you are imaginatively able, I’d ask you to try to strip away the myth and creed and lore that have accumulated over the centuries around and about Jesus. Try to imagine what it was like to be a person of Jesus’s time hearing him, seeing him, watching those healings that he was doing in Galilee. And some of those who were watching would have been followers of John the Baptist and would have heard what he said about Jesus, identifying him, as the story goes, as the one who was to come after him, the strap of whose sandal he was not worthy to loose. He, Jesus, was the reason that John had come. What might you think about this? Would you be like Herod hearing John’s words and being convinced and compelled by them, and yet finally unable to overcome your own baser nature because you are a person of your time? Would you be like Michal watching with a judgment of annoyance and disgust as David danced before the Lord? Or would you be one of the common folk who flocked to John for a baptism of repentance? Who raised up arms in praise of God at the sight of the cure of the man born blind?
We are called to choose by whom or what we will be possessed. That’s a heavy-duty word, isn’t it? Possessed. It carries a lot of freight. We do want to be masters, mistresses of our own fate, and that is the desirable stance for the most part. We have to make our lives. But the foundations of those lives are built of, are constituted of that which we are possessed by. That is what informs our lives. We do the housebuilding, the lifebuilding from the ground level up, but what is beneath the ground keeps the house firm and steady––or not; that determines whether we will be able to weather the trials of this life––or whether we will succumb to external pressures that leave us at the mercy of every wind and wave of public opinion or fad, and will collapse the house into its foundation.
We have opportunities to choose God’s way or not in our everday life again and again, and we know each time what that way is. But at some unexpected moment in time, we have our last opportunity to decide, to choose one way over another. We may have gone so far down the road of our choices that we do not wish to choose something new––God’s way. And God honors that choice because we have free will. Mind you, it is not God, but we ourselves who make that free choice for or against a life with God, a life as possessed of God. Amen.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
A Fortress by Any Other Name
Sheepscott Community Church July 5, 2009
2 Samuel 5: 1-5; 9-10
Mark 6: 1-13
A Fortress by Any Other Name
Three things are on my mind this morning: the idea of “fortress” as it is recorded in this morning’s first reading from Second Samuel; how that idea of fortress figures in our life with Christ, especially as related to repentance, which the disciples were sent out to preach according to this morning’s gospel; and finally, after considering fortress, after considering repentance, how can the communion we will share this morning bring it all together on this holiday weekend.
So, let us first consider this morning’s reading about the anointing of David as king. He covenanted with the elders of Israel, then reigned over Judah in Hebron for 7-1/2 years and over all of Israel from Jerusalem for 33 years. That latter, wider reign came about when David wisely sought out a place for his capital that was in neither the northern nor southern kingdom per se. Instead he located the kingship in Jerusalem, choosing a neutral site right on the boundary of the northern and southern tribes. He thereby revealed his intention to elevate his throne above all tribal claims and jealousies. It was a strategic and consolidating move.
In order to capture Jerusalem and make this so-called Fortress of Zion his capital, David had to overcome the Jebusites, who were stunned when he and his men gained access to what the Jebusites thought was an impregnable fortress. How they did that was by climbing up and through the underground water shaft that supplied the city’s water. David was nothing if not a brilliant military strategist, but I must note that he never made a move without first seeking divine guidance. While he knew the political and military importance of securing that capital, that fortress, he knew that––as we sang in unison this morning––the “mighty fortress” is our God, was his God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That mighty fortress predated and would postdate Jerusalem forever. He had his ducks in order, his priorities straight. His faith was intact.
When the human fortress of the Philistine Goliath, whose story we heard again two weeks ago, when that man stood before David , he was no match for the faith that David had in his God, the mighty fortress. Five small stones and a slingshot, wielded by a faith-filled teenager dropped that fortress of a human being to the ground.
Consider the body as fortress, a fortress that can break down, whose walls can be breached at any point, but increasingly with advancing age. I suggest that we ourselves, following the example of David, take control over this fortress that is the body, where we have allowed that control to pass to the power of others, whether that be people or habits and do what we can under the guidance of the Spirit with our own good minds and self-discipline to ease the body’s burdens by simply taking care of ourselves insofar as we are able. I am not denying the reality of disease and debility but simply making a plea for good choices.
We don’t have to do this work on our own, but hand in hand with the Spirit of God in the Christ, Jesus, whose love is absolutely restorative; whose love can raise us up in ways we haven’t yet imagined. A promise from the Book of Joel, 2:25, that I have seen fulfilled in my life and others again and again: “I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten.” As I said, Christ’s love is absolutely restorative. Superman got in trouble when he tried to turn back time, but the Lord of time and space can do this. If you remember nothing else from this sermon today, remember “I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten.” Everything is possible with God. Is there a ticket for admission? I’m afraid so. We have to want restoration, resurrection and allow it. That famous picture of Jesus knocking at the door––there it is right there––speaks volumes about the sacredness of our own own lives and free wills. God never forces anything on us, but the invitation is always there, that knock on the castle door that can only be Christ’s, and we know it. We know it when we hear it.
To open or not to open? We’re all pretty comfortable in our inner chambers where we live out our perceptions of reality. Didn’t he see the Do Not Disturb sign on the door? We know if we let him in there’s going to be trouble. As I was just saying, restoration of the fortress of our bodies, of our lives comes with a price tag, and the price tag is surrender. Dang! Didn’t you know it? Okay, what’s the deal, you might be willing to ask.
What Jesus’s knock at the door represents is a radical call to respond. Radix, radicis, Latin for root. A radical change is a change at the root. We may be called to let go of things we look to as fortifiers of our fortresses, things that mediate our life experience, put the experience enough out of focus so that we don’t have to deal with the full impact of what a life is. Habits or addictions, or people, who can be both to us, family, church, material things for survival, creeds, all of these things, things that are good for the most part in and of themselves, can function as mediators or modifiers of direct experience that keep us in illusion and from the fullness of the lives that are our own to live, hidden but discoverable in God. Think of Jesus––in this morning’s gospel and in the gospel of two weeks ago––singularly separating himself from his family, refusing the neighborhood’s or his family’s definition of who he was. These are hard words to hear, I know. Radix, radicis––radical.
Why do I say that we sometimes use our habits or addictions to mediate rather than directly experience a focused life? Well, what follows is nothing you haven’t heard before, but it is most immediately in this morning’s gospel: “They––the apostles––went out and preached that people should repent.” Jesus sent them out to deliver that disturbing message, disturbing because repentance means a change of heart and a change of action. It is bound to hurt because it involves the bitter realization that the way we are following is wrong. It is bound to disturb because it can mean a radical, a complete reversal of life, which is precisely why so few people do repent, because the last thing they want is to be disturbed, to radically change.
Repentance is no sentimental feeling sorry; repentance is a revolutionary, a radical act, precipitated by the grace of God that leads to profound life changes, and that is why so few repent.
Before the apostles could go out and preach repentance, Jesus told them they should take nothing for the journey but a staff––no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; sandals but not an extra tunic. What Jesus is saying is that they must take no supplies for the road but must trust God––the mighty fortress––for everything.
That assignment of emptiness, perceived vulnerability and weakness in its dependence on others, reminds me of the story of a remarkable young woman named Maura O’Hallorhan, a Christian Zen monk who died in 1982 at the age of 27, having achieved enlightenment. Born of Irish parents in Boston and raised Catholic, Maura grew up with a concern for social justice and a strong attraction to the spiritual life. She studied Eastern religion and became convinced that its wisdom would amplify her own Catholic Christianity. She applied for admission to a traditional Buddhist monastery in Tokyo, one of only a few Western women ever to be admitted to the very male world of the Zen monastery.
As part of her training, she joined the other monks on an annual begging expedition in the North during the cold of winter. With her shaved head and monk’s robe, wearing only straw sandals in the snow and sleet, she would pass through the streets, holding out her bowl and begging for alms and donations of food. Not so different from Jesus’s disciples, and no less radical in character. She was dependent on others’ hospitality, as were the disciples, who could to a degree count on hospitality as a sacred duty in the Near East. When a stranger came to town at that time, it was not the stranger’s duty to search for hospitality, but the village’s duty to offer it. Which, in a way, is what we did for the busload of folks who came from Massachusetts to the W.W. & F. Railroad on Thursday.
As a post script, Maura O’Hallorhan finished her Dogen’s thousand-day training and left the monastery. She was killed in a bus accident in Thailand on her way home.
Will we be asked to deny ourselves at the level of the disciples, or of Maura O’Hallorhan? Probably not, but I wouldn’t discount it. I think our willingness is all. Our personal surrender in repentance, acceptance of our responsibility for the state of our spiritual life before God, as well as our bodies. In essence we deposit all of our valuables in God’s bank. Unlike valuables entrusted to Bernie Madoff, we can trust God with our valuables, our meaning, what matters to us––all of it is safe with our trustworthy God, with our mighty fortress. And God can draw on that principle of what we have deposited as God wills. Can we handle that? Can we acquiesce to that level of surrender? Of trust in God? God doesn’t make us, but we can choose it, although we don’t know the outcome of our choice, what it will look like, how it will translate into action in the world, whether we will appear as fools to others. Why would anyone in his or her right mind do that? Why leave the comfort zone of popular or social acceptability, illusion or not?
I have spoken before of levels of surrender in my own life––and it does seem to be a lifelong process, doesn’t it? When we think we’ve given it all over, wait six months, and see what surfaces next. As we let go of those habits, things, people, illusion of control over anything but our own life––and that in a measured way––when we, like Maura, are left with nothing, then do we have breakthrough. Then do we experience the simultaneous tears and laughter of enlightenment, which then only wants to play out in service to others.
You may not want that level of radical repentance involved in really taking responsibility for your life and what it is before God and in God, but you may be willing to think about it. Good. I don’t ask any more. I do guarantee––and this is the piece from experience––that God never fails. You will not be left high and dry. As psalm 48, which we read earlier says, “For this God is our God forever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end,” We are ever safe in the fortress of God’s body, knowable in the Christ, and that knowable in each other and most quickly, if you will, in the communion we share this morning.
We do become one in the sharing in some lovely and mysterious way. We are open and opened with each other because of the presence of the Spirit of the living God who makes us one. Because we have chosen to be here this morning, God is here this morning and will honor our choice by letting us taste the good life that He is, that we are for each other.
Let me add this of Paul’s from Romans: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And I would add: if we want it. We can begin to appropriate this promise in Paul that proceeds from a repentant heart by consciously praying the prayer of repentance before the communion this morning. Let us be conscious of each other when we do that, knowing that some of us are suffering from a profound sense of loneliness and isolation, and helplessness in overcoming that sense. Amen.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Neighborhood News
On July 2, 2009, Sheepscott Community Church hosted a tour bus that was stopping at the W., W., & F. Railroad site on the Cross Road in Alna.
Members of the church, under the leadership of Alex Wajer with the assistance of Cindy Leavitt and Joan Yeaton––aunt and grandmother–– served supper to the touring visitors at the Sheepscott Clubhouse. Just in case you might have been wondering what that bus was doing there!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Do You Still Have No Faith?
Sheepscott Community Church June 21, 2009
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1 Samuel 17: 1a, 4-11, 20-23, 32-49
2 Cor. 6: 1-13
Mark 4: 35-41
Do You Still Have No Faith?
As implied in the title, this morning I will talk about faith, the kind of faith that can sustain one in a little boat on a big sea, can meet the enemy nine feet tall with five small stones in our bag. The characters in my message this morning are all characters we have read and heard about before: Jesus and his apostles––oh, those weak in faith––and David and Goliath, two names that go together as surely as milk and cookies, mom and apple pie, firecrackers and the Fourth of July.
When this gospel comes around, I like to tell the story of my last meaningfully long sail with Jon on Penobscot Bay. On a fair day, with a following wind that enabled us to do an unbelievable 7 knots down Penobscot Bay from Rockland to Castine, Jon and I happily sailed, grabbing a mooring for the night in Castine harbor. I had an obligation the next day that meant we had to return, even though Jon was reluctant considering the overcast skies and the early fog. We left the mooring at about 10, and our trip down the bay began uneventfully and with the help of the motor because the wind had not yet risen.
As we approached the end of Islesboro, there was a sudden dramatic change in the weather and the sea, not unlike how one writer has described storms on the Sea of Galilee, which we heard about in today’s gospel. On that small sea or lake, notorious for its storms that seem to come out of nowhere with shattering force, the unnamed writer says, “It is not unusual to see terrible squalls hurl themselves, even when the sky is perfectly clear, upon these waters which are ordinarily so calm. The numerous ravines at the upper part of the lake operate as narrow gorges in which the winds from the heights are caught and compressed in such a way that rushing with tremendous force through a narrow space and then being suddenly released, they agitate the lake in the most frightful fashion.
Fast forward to Penobscot Bay. We watched the clouds suddenly building up overhead, in the most frightful fashion, if I may borrow that term. The water began to churn and the waves built, likewise in a most frightful fashion. Within minutes, the motor was rendered useless as it was lifted out of the water, its blades turning in air, as the boat pitched and rose, pitched and rose. Jon was reefing the sails and I was attempting to steer our 19-foot Cape Dory Typhoon through the 8-foot waves. Eight feet might not sound very high, but in a little boat like that, eight feet is very high. Shades of Sebastian Junger’s Perfect Storm, where the fishing boat, the Andrea Gail, was confronted with 100-foot waves, monstrous to imagine.
I was scared, and doubly so when Jon, braced against the seawater pouring over the bow with each dip and rise, turned and told me to get below. Yes, sir. Below I began to pray, thinking immediately of Jesus calming the wind and the waves with a word. Okay, I thought, and then spoke aloud, “In the name of Jesus be still! Settle down! Be quiet!” No change. I’ll try it again. “In the name of Jesus, be quiet!”
The wind and the waves did not quiet, but Jon did manage to continue down the bay and somehow angle us off into a little notch of a harbor on North Haven. Amazingly, the sun came out and we hung our clothes over the boom to dry. After catching our breath and decompressing, Jon thought we could try to cross the bay to Rockland in order to get me to my commitment, and so we pulled anchor and started off. We were barely back out into the bay when the same roiling clouds and turbulent waters drove us back. We were able to sail into Pulpit Harbor––appropriate, yes?––where we spent the night.
So what went wrong? Why didn’t those winds and waters settle down when I spoke to them in the name of Jesus? Was it my quavery voice that betrayed my little faith? Did the winds and waters have a mind of their own that was only amused by this pretender to the name and powers of Jesus? Incidentally, Jesus uses the same language to address the winds and waters, viz., “Be quiet! Be still!” as he uses when he addresses the demon in the possessed man recorded in Mark 1: 25: “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. I’m not going to elaborate on that coincidental language at this time, but I point it out as a matter of interest.
So, as I say, what went wrong with my command? After all, in John 14: 12, Jesus is quoted as saying, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.” Well, I repeat, what happened?
We can agree that Jon and I, thanks to his sailing skills, are here with you today, and that on that day, apparently that was how God chose to hear and answer that prayer. In praying for the winds and waters to be calm, I was really praying for safety, and that’s exactly what we got, My intention was honored, and w e made it safely to port, but on more natural rather than supernatural terms. Do you suppose that’s the way it is most of the time? Some of us tend to look for those moments that we will never forget instead of seeing God in Jesus folding the laundry and smoothing out the wrinkles right in front of us, which is to say, acting through and in the most ordinary actions and circumstances of our lives.
But, I am not ready to let go of this. I return to the quotation from Jesus in John about us who have faith in Jesus doing what he has done and doing even greater works than these because he has only recently in our liturgical calendar returned to the Father from whence he has sent his Spirit, a mere three weeks ago on Pentecost. And because of that Spirit, we are not just predisposed to imitate but to embody the Spirit and thereby the Christ himself. Why would we settle for less? Either he meant what he said or he did not?
I exhort you, I exhort us, with the concluding words of Paul in the reading from Second Corinthians this morning, “Open wide your hearts also.” Not just a crack to see what’s out there and evaluate it for weeks, months, years, a lifelong before allowing it entrance or not. Open wide your hearts also, to allow the Spirit of the living God in full force. We ask. God comes. But I think it may take years to fully believe that we deserve to have what we ask for, and that is why our prayers in faith have less effect than we would like them to have. And of course, we don’t deserve anything, except in Jesus. It’s all for God and out of God’s mercy that we have or don’t have. So let us pray to God to increase our faith––if we dare.
Think of the faith of David in this morning’s reading from First Samuel. Here’s this teenager with a slingshot and five stones he has picked up––but I would guess they were perfect stones for his purposes; in the smallest things, expertise out of practice counts––so here’s this teeneager and his stones and slingshot standing at the battleline ready to encounter Goliath the Philistine champion, all nine feet of him with bronze helmet on his head, with bronze armor on his body and legs, and a bronze javelin on his back. Whether or not Goliath the Philistine was truly nine feet tall, we do know that he was the tallest and biggest and strongest among all the Philistines and that is why he was their champion. The Philistines had placed their faith in the strength of a man, and that faith had been rewarded, at least up until now.
Enter David, and what does he say to Goliath? “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a god in Israel. All those gathered here will know it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
Now that’s big talk for a little guy. Its purpose was to put fear into the opponent, the way wrestlers grunt and grimace at each other or baseball players chatter on the diamond. Talk, talk, talk. But David’s talk also was of his champion, the champion of the Israelite people on whose behalf he would fight, full of confidence in the outcome because he was full of confidence in God and full of faith that shaped that confidence.
This was the god for whom he had composed music on his harp and to whom he had sung while tending his sheep. He loved God and he believed God’s love for him. He had no idea of what lay before him, that he would become the greatest king that Israel had ever known and that from his line would come the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ. All of that lay in the future. What stood in front of him now was a man big enough to block the sun. If David had any fear, he didn’t show it in the scriptural account, but he did have chutzpah that was built on his faith, and he pushed it to the limit.
David was in the moment, fully in the moment believing in God, not in this hulking mass of flesh that obscured the sun. His eye was on the prize, the love of God for his people being victorious. That’s what he believed in.
My faith on Penboscot Bay was nowhere near that level. I did see the towering water and waves, and I did believe as much as I could. And Jesus could use even that faith as part of bringing about a good end for me and Jon. I feel sure of that. That makes me think of David’s five small stones––not much to work with, but enough to give God the edge that was honed by faith. And those small stones in turn make me think of the apostles, with their little faith. Jesus, in spite of his frustration with them––”Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”––despite his frustration, he was able to make lemonade from those lemons, to make a silk purse from the sow’s ear they were because of the Spirit whom he sent on Pentecost.
David was filled with that Spirit of God, and King Saul, in an alternative reading for today from the Hebrew Bible, knew that and was jealous of it, largely because he knew the Spirit had departed from him. His own jealousy of David’s accomplishments had brought this about. I want to depart a bit further from our reading in First Samuel and read a section that those who choose the lectionary readings did not include in today’s reading. It is so reminiscent of last week’s gospel, when Jesus’ family had come to bring him home because they thought he was out of his mind. That gospel concludes with Jesus asking, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does God’s will is my mother and sister and brother.” When David first comes into the Israelites’ camp to bring his brothers some food, in obedience to his father Jesse, his oldest brother Eliab “burns with anger” the scripture says, and he asks, Why have you come down here? ... I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is. You came down only to watch the battle. What about those sheep you left in the field?
“Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” This sounds so much like family of our time, a family of Jesus’ time. Some things don’t change. As Jesus said, a prophet is never known in his own household and one’s enemies and foes are the members of one’s own household. In David’s case, his brothers were jealous of him, for they had been passed over by the prophet Samuel for the anointing, and they would make David pay for that in every way they could. But he was not undone. More important that he should be faithful to listen to God who knew his heart, and not to the voices of those around him who presumed to know him but were actaully speaking out of the judgments in their own small hearts, their own jealous and ungenerous minds.
David’s faith and acquiesence to God’s will made possible not only the defeat of the Goliath that infamous day but also the establishment of the kingdom of Judah over which King David ruled for many, many years of prosperity. Although he sinned in those years––we all know the story of Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba––he also always repented, remembering who he was before God, a good example for us.
I think David never lost his childlike faith and that enabled a greatness that glorified God. We can be inspired by his faith and accept the words of Jesus that greater works will we do than Jesus himself––yes, even calming the waters of Penobscot Bay––because he has given us his Spirit. Again, I exhort us with Paul, to “open wide our hearts also” that that Spirit might come in, might show us and tell us through our lives who we are in God. That we might be the small stones in the sling of David, apostles for this dispensation to bring about change, to move the world, yes, the world, in the direction of peace through our own mutual forgiveness and through our choice to love one another. Amen
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1 Samuel 17: 1a, 4-11, 20-23, 32-49
2 Cor. 6: 1-13
Mark 4: 35-41
Do You Still Have No Faith?
As implied in the title, this morning I will talk about faith, the kind of faith that can sustain one in a little boat on a big sea, can meet the enemy nine feet tall with five small stones in our bag. The characters in my message this morning are all characters we have read and heard about before: Jesus and his apostles––oh, those weak in faith––and David and Goliath, two names that go together as surely as milk and cookies, mom and apple pie, firecrackers and the Fourth of July.
When this gospel comes around, I like to tell the story of my last meaningfully long sail with Jon on Penobscot Bay. On a fair day, with a following wind that enabled us to do an unbelievable 7 knots down Penobscot Bay from Rockland to Castine, Jon and I happily sailed, grabbing a mooring for the night in Castine harbor. I had an obligation the next day that meant we had to return, even though Jon was reluctant considering the overcast skies and the early fog. We left the mooring at about 10, and our trip down the bay began uneventfully and with the help of the motor because the wind had not yet risen.
As we approached the end of Islesboro, there was a sudden dramatic change in the weather and the sea, not unlike how one writer has described storms on the Sea of Galilee, which we heard about in today’s gospel. On that small sea or lake, notorious for its storms that seem to come out of nowhere with shattering force, the unnamed writer says, “It is not unusual to see terrible squalls hurl themselves, even when the sky is perfectly clear, upon these waters which are ordinarily so calm. The numerous ravines at the upper part of the lake operate as narrow gorges in which the winds from the heights are caught and compressed in such a way that rushing with tremendous force through a narrow space and then being suddenly released, they agitate the lake in the most frightful fashion.
Fast forward to Penobscot Bay. We watched the clouds suddenly building up overhead, in the most frightful fashion, if I may borrow that term. The water began to churn and the waves built, likewise in a most frightful fashion. Within minutes, the motor was rendered useless as it was lifted out of the water, its blades turning in air, as the boat pitched and rose, pitched and rose. Jon was reefing the sails and I was attempting to steer our 19-foot Cape Dory Typhoon through the 8-foot waves. Eight feet might not sound very high, but in a little boat like that, eight feet is very high. Shades of Sebastian Junger’s Perfect Storm, where the fishing boat, the Andrea Gail, was confronted with 100-foot waves, monstrous to imagine.
I was scared, and doubly so when Jon, braced against the seawater pouring over the bow with each dip and rise, turned and told me to get below. Yes, sir. Below I began to pray, thinking immediately of Jesus calming the wind and the waves with a word. Okay, I thought, and then spoke aloud, “In the name of Jesus be still! Settle down! Be quiet!” No change. I’ll try it again. “In the name of Jesus, be quiet!”
The wind and the waves did not quiet, but Jon did manage to continue down the bay and somehow angle us off into a little notch of a harbor on North Haven. Amazingly, the sun came out and we hung our clothes over the boom to dry. After catching our breath and decompressing, Jon thought we could try to cross the bay to Rockland in order to get me to my commitment, and so we pulled anchor and started off. We were barely back out into the bay when the same roiling clouds and turbulent waters drove us back. We were able to sail into Pulpit Harbor––appropriate, yes?––where we spent the night.
So what went wrong? Why didn’t those winds and waters settle down when I spoke to them in the name of Jesus? Was it my quavery voice that betrayed my little faith? Did the winds and waters have a mind of their own that was only amused by this pretender to the name and powers of Jesus? Incidentally, Jesus uses the same language to address the winds and waters, viz., “Be quiet! Be still!” as he uses when he addresses the demon in the possessed man recorded in Mark 1: 25: “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. I’m not going to elaborate on that coincidental language at this time, but I point it out as a matter of interest.
So, as I say, what went wrong with my command? After all, in John 14: 12, Jesus is quoted as saying, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.” Well, I repeat, what happened?
We can agree that Jon and I, thanks to his sailing skills, are here with you today, and that on that day, apparently that was how God chose to hear and answer that prayer. In praying for the winds and waters to be calm, I was really praying for safety, and that’s exactly what we got, My intention was honored, and w e made it safely to port, but on more natural rather than supernatural terms. Do you suppose that’s the way it is most of the time? Some of us tend to look for those moments that we will never forget instead of seeing God in Jesus folding the laundry and smoothing out the wrinkles right in front of us, which is to say, acting through and in the most ordinary actions and circumstances of our lives.
But, I am not ready to let go of this. I return to the quotation from Jesus in John about us who have faith in Jesus doing what he has done and doing even greater works than these because he has only recently in our liturgical calendar returned to the Father from whence he has sent his Spirit, a mere three weeks ago on Pentecost. And because of that Spirit, we are not just predisposed to imitate but to embody the Spirit and thereby the Christ himself. Why would we settle for less? Either he meant what he said or he did not?
I exhort you, I exhort us, with the concluding words of Paul in the reading from Second Corinthians this morning, “Open wide your hearts also.” Not just a crack to see what’s out there and evaluate it for weeks, months, years, a lifelong before allowing it entrance or not. Open wide your hearts also, to allow the Spirit of the living God in full force. We ask. God comes. But I think it may take years to fully believe that we deserve to have what we ask for, and that is why our prayers in faith have less effect than we would like them to have. And of course, we don’t deserve anything, except in Jesus. It’s all for God and out of God’s mercy that we have or don’t have. So let us pray to God to increase our faith––if we dare.
Think of the faith of David in this morning’s reading from First Samuel. Here’s this teenager with a slingshot and five stones he has picked up––but I would guess they were perfect stones for his purposes; in the smallest things, expertise out of practice counts––so here’s this teeneager and his stones and slingshot standing at the battleline ready to encounter Goliath the Philistine champion, all nine feet of him with bronze helmet on his head, with bronze armor on his body and legs, and a bronze javelin on his back. Whether or not Goliath the Philistine was truly nine feet tall, we do know that he was the tallest and biggest and strongest among all the Philistines and that is why he was their champion. The Philistines had placed their faith in the strength of a man, and that faith had been rewarded, at least up until now.
Enter David, and what does he say to Goliath? “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a god in Israel. All those gathered here will know it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
Now that’s big talk for a little guy. Its purpose was to put fear into the opponent, the way wrestlers grunt and grimace at each other or baseball players chatter on the diamond. Talk, talk, talk. But David’s talk also was of his champion, the champion of the Israelite people on whose behalf he would fight, full of confidence in the outcome because he was full of confidence in God and full of faith that shaped that confidence.
This was the god for whom he had composed music on his harp and to whom he had sung while tending his sheep. He loved God and he believed God’s love for him. He had no idea of what lay before him, that he would become the greatest king that Israel had ever known and that from his line would come the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ. All of that lay in the future. What stood in front of him now was a man big enough to block the sun. If David had any fear, he didn’t show it in the scriptural account, but he did have chutzpah that was built on his faith, and he pushed it to the limit.
David was in the moment, fully in the moment believing in God, not in this hulking mass of flesh that obscured the sun. His eye was on the prize, the love of God for his people being victorious. That’s what he believed in.
My faith on Penboscot Bay was nowhere near that level. I did see the towering water and waves, and I did believe as much as I could. And Jesus could use even that faith as part of bringing about a good end for me and Jon. I feel sure of that. That makes me think of David’s five small stones––not much to work with, but enough to give God the edge that was honed by faith. And those small stones in turn make me think of the apostles, with their little faith. Jesus, in spite of his frustration with them––”Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”––despite his frustration, he was able to make lemonade from those lemons, to make a silk purse from the sow’s ear they were because of the Spirit whom he sent on Pentecost.
David was filled with that Spirit of God, and King Saul, in an alternative reading for today from the Hebrew Bible, knew that and was jealous of it, largely because he knew the Spirit had departed from him. His own jealousy of David’s accomplishments had brought this about. I want to depart a bit further from our reading in First Samuel and read a section that those who choose the lectionary readings did not include in today’s reading. It is so reminiscent of last week’s gospel, when Jesus’ family had come to bring him home because they thought he was out of his mind. That gospel concludes with Jesus asking, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does God’s will is my mother and sister and brother.” When David first comes into the Israelites’ camp to bring his brothers some food, in obedience to his father Jesse, his oldest brother Eliab “burns with anger” the scripture says, and he asks, Why have you come down here? ... I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is. You came down only to watch the battle. What about those sheep you left in the field?
“Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” This sounds so much like family of our time, a family of Jesus’ time. Some things don’t change. As Jesus said, a prophet is never known in his own household and one’s enemies and foes are the members of one’s own household. In David’s case, his brothers were jealous of him, for they had been passed over by the prophet Samuel for the anointing, and they would make David pay for that in every way they could. But he was not undone. More important that he should be faithful to listen to God who knew his heart, and not to the voices of those around him who presumed to know him but were actaully speaking out of the judgments in their own small hearts, their own jealous and ungenerous minds.
David’s faith and acquiesence to God’s will made possible not only the defeat of the Goliath that infamous day but also the establishment of the kingdom of Judah over which King David ruled for many, many years of prosperity. Although he sinned in those years––we all know the story of Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba––he also always repented, remembering who he was before God, a good example for us.
I think David never lost his childlike faith and that enabled a greatness that glorified God. We can be inspired by his faith and accept the words of Jesus that greater works will we do than Jesus himself––yes, even calming the waters of Penobscot Bay––because he has given us his Spirit. Again, I exhort us with Paul, to “open wide our hearts also” that that Spirit might come in, might show us and tell us through our lives who we are in God. That we might be the small stones in the sling of David, apostles for this dispensation to bring about change, to move the world, yes, the world, in the direction of peace through our own mutual forgiveness and through our choice to love one another. Amen
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Who Is My Mother? Who Are My Brothers?
Sheepscott Community Church June 14, 2009
1 Samuel 8: 4-20; 11: 14-15
Mark 3: 20-35
Who Is My Mother? Who Are My Brothers?
A few weeks ago friends were visiting us from out-of-state. At a point well into the evening, when the candles were burning low, the wife alluded to the couple’s children, saying somewhat wistfully that neither of their children––one of whom is about 40 and the other approaching 40––was practicing the religion in which they had been raised. Although she herself is not religious, she understood the value of a religious upbringing for establishing a sense of moral foundation and supported her husband’s raising their children in his faith. She was concerned about the next generation in a world that was not as solidly religiously based as the one we might have known.
“And what about your kids?” she asked me. “Are they practicing their religion?”I had to say no. Like our friends, we had raised our children in the Christian faith. They were baptized and confirmed Catholics and continued at church until their teen years. At, and after that time, they began to follow their own way, which is to say, not attending church on a regular basis.
How did I feel about that, she asked. My first answer was that I had never lost any sleep about them in that area because I knew them to be good and loving people––most of the time. I almost thought then and still do think and feel that they themselves are responsible before God for their actions. We trained them p in the way we thought they should go, and now it’s up to them.
When I read this morning’s reading from Samuel, however, in preparation for this message, I was thinking more about the undefined line between parental guidance in the area of another’s faith and when that becomes unwelcome interference, a kind of evangelization that does not honor the separateness of the other person before God––yes, even our own children as separate persons––and the inviolability of that sacred space between them and God. But is that just an excuse? Taking the easy way out?
What caught my attention in the reading from Samuel was verse 4, the elders of Israel saying to Samuel, “You are old and your sons do not walk in your ways.” These elders did not trust Samuel’s sons, whom he had appointed as judges in Israel to lead them after his death, and they wanted a king to lead them. The concern of the elders was well-placed, for as the scripture points out, Samuel’s sons “turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.”
In Samuel’s story, God does not seem to hold the prophet responsible for his sons’ actions, unlike the sons of Eli, who was the high priest when Samuel was first called by the Lord. In fact the first prophesy Samuel received when the Lord woke him from sleep focused on an indictment of Eli’s sons, who, as helpers in the temple, had been illegitimately taking the choice parts of the sacrifices away from God. As a result, God spoke this word of prophesy through Samuel to Eli, that the priesthood would pass away from Eli’s house, that God would judge Eli’s family forever because Eli’s sons had made themselves contemptible, and Eli did nothing to restrain them.
The only differentiation that I can distinguish between the two cases is that while Samuel’s sons also were guilty of sin, they were sinning in human matters of business and gain, whereas the sons of Eli were cheating God of his, God’s portion. In any case, the Samuel situation reminded me of the Eli situation because of the common denominator of wayward children, regardless of age, and how God might view culpability for that waywardness.
These questions bring us to Jesus’s question in this morning’s gospel, of those assembled in a house where he had gathered with his disciples. After he was told that his mother and brothers were outside and looking for him, he looked around at those seated there and asked, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” That was a very radical statement in that part of the world where family and tribal identification was everything. Think of Eli’s house, his family, descendants of Aaron, who had been named to the priesthood forever, before that privilege was withdrawn by God because of their abuse of the privilege. Their whole identification was with Aaron and the priesthood. Here in the West family and tribal identification is also very important, witness only one sit-down Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house. You get a clear picture of the connections and disconnections at such an event, but it’s all family. However, I believe that family in the Near East has different kinds and levels of political and social meaning from family in the West.
If we tolerate a few misguided Democrats in our Republican families or a few misguided Republicans in our predominantly Democratic families, in the Near East that tolerance of stepping away from the family tribe is probably considerably less, as we can observe in the enmity between the Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq. We get a sense of the competitiveness between these two pillars of Islam, acted out in family rivalries that translate into governing structures. Family loyalty to the point of death, and defending the family’s honor are everything. I only want to suggest to you why what Jesus is saying would be considered radical in that part of the world.
Let’s tease this apart a little bit more. Jesus doesn’t make that statement about mothers and brothers until the end of today’s gospel, which opens with the scene of a house so crowded with people who have come to see Jesus that he and the disciples can’t even eat some bread. When Jesus’s family hears about this, they go out to take charge of him, the gospel says, because “He is out of his mind.”
Why would they say that? Recall that the writer of Matthew has Jesus say, “A man’s foes, or enemies will be those of his own household,“ which is a quotation from the prophet Micah, chapter 7, verse 6. Two questions arise: Why would they think he was crazy? And what kind of an alternative model of family or kinship might Jesus be suggesting?
To answer the first question, they thought he was out of his mind because he had left home and family and probably a successful carpentry business in Nazareth for the life on the road of a wandering preacher. As William Barclay suggests in his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, “No sensible man... would throw up a business where the money came in every week to become a vagrant who had no place to lay his head.”
His family also knew that Jesus was provoking the religiously powerful men of his day, the scribes and pharisees, the experts in the law. Because of the power wielded by these men to make or break a person in the community, most people, if they had any common sense would try to stay on their good side. Not Jesus. He consistently called these men on their positions, challenging them by his inspired questions and deft arguing to really look at what they were saying and to consider the people whom their statements and judgments were affecting in their everyday lives. More than once he laid bare the hypocrisy that underlay their religious leadership.
So, he gave up a good job for life on the road, he was the antagonistic provocateur of the religiously and so, politically powerful men of his day, and, the third reason for his family thinking he had taken leave of his senses was that he had started hanging out with a really questionable crowd: some ignorant fishermen, a reformed tax collector for Rome and an ultra-nationalist fanatic were among them. You can’t really blame his family for wondering whether he was hitting on all cylinders.
However, from the point of view of a man bent on carrying out the will of God in his life as he discerned it through years of listening and sensing, of prayer and worship, it was clear that what most people used as the yardstick for judging a life meant little or nothing to Jesus. He had thrown away security when he left his job in Nazareth. He had also thrown away safety, choosing to follow a course of action that involved risk. And last, and possibly the most annoying to his family, was that he had shown himself indifferent to the verdict of society about him or his lifestyle, and how that might reflect on his family. He knew who he was––remember those days in the desert in preparation for his ministry. He had met himself in the forms of his particular temptations and he had resisted those temptations. He knew himself. He didn’t need his family or the neighbors to tell him who he was. If they made judgments about him, the judgments were on their own heads.
There’s a lovely story about the 17th-century Christian writer and preacher John Bunyan in prison. The author of The Pilgrim’s Progress was afraid that that imprisonment might end at the gallows and did not like the idea of being hanged. Who would? One day he felt ashamed of being afraid. To quote him: “Methought I was ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees for such a cause as this.” He came to a conclusion as he pictured himself climbing up the stairs to the scaffold. “Wherefore, thought I, I am for going on and venturing my eternal state with Christ whether I have comfort here or no; if God doth not come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell; Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do: if not, I will venture for thy name.” That is precisely what Jesus was willing to do. He ventured for God’s name. That was the essence of the life of Jesus, and that––not safety and security or reputation––should be the center of every Christian life.
What is Jesus is saying here about family in the context of his early public life? If his mother and brothers did not constitute his family in his new way of thinking, what is he suggesting could constitute a family?
The basis of true kinship can rest on several grounds other than blood. Common experience is one, especially if it is an experience where two or more people have really come through things together. I think of the choir in this church, very much like a family within a family. I think of all people in NYC, who experienced 9-11 as no one else in the country did, and the families of those who died at that time––they are another kind of family with a terrible and deep bond. As are those families who mourn for their loved ones lost on the Air France airbus from Rio to Paris two weeks ago. Support groups who meet to help each other stay sober, or stay away from any and all addictive substances––these are real kinship bonds, necessary to establish as a kind of family in such a mobile society where we are often far away or estranged from our families of origin.
Those examples overlap with the idea of common interest joining people in a kinship-like relationship. Christians can recognize that kind of kinship because they have a common interest in knowing, learning and experiencing more about Jesus, the basis for all denominational expressions of Christian religion.
Kinship can also derive from a shared common obedience, as in a platoon of soldiers from many different backgrounds who have the common bond of obedience to the commanding officer and beyond that to the Commander-in-Chief. They are part of a group that will stand for each other, and beyond their own interests, for a common goal, which is another characteristic of a kinship group.
Common experience, common interest, common obedience and common goal––only four ways of experiencing kinship that are not of the ordinary or expected family model, and Jesus with his troop of followers did choose a new model. If his family cared to come along for the ride––and who really knows how that all played out––I feel sure Jesus would have welcomed the company. Would have loved the company.
To arc back to the beginning of this message, what about our kids? In later life what can we do but love these members of our families and set the best example we can by being faithful to the principles we have lived by through life, modifying them when we see or understand something more clearly than we did before. It might help to make a few signs in our own minds that we hold up for reading when the occasion demands, such as: Bite your tongue: No unsolicited advice, please.
I remember when the kids were small and having to step outside the door from time to time to keep it together. It’s a good idea to do that, at least mentally, when we feel like we are going to lose it. So many doors slam shut permanently because of words spoken in anger or judgment that can not be taken back. There are some who will forgive such words, but there are others who will not, and when conversation ceases, so do opportunities for growth in relationship and expressions of love and concern.
opportunities for growth in relationship and expressions of love and concern.
Even with all that, I say clearly that when we see something that is egregiously wrong, where someone is in harm’s way verbally or physically or indeed spiritually, and whether that wrong is being acted out by our own children, by an acquaintance or friend, or by a stranger, we need to speak out and take the same risks that Jesus took. The tipping point, the telling point is whether our personal pride is involved or any sense of asserting our perceived power, that is where you, where we can tell if we are acting in God’s will, as part of that universal family of the divine parent.
If we have consecrated ourselves to God, which is to say surrendered our lives as best we can, we can count on the impetus, the push-to-shove from the Spirit of God that moves and leads us to speak out in such a case.
So, I’m telling you two things: Speak the truth as you best discern it when the occasion demands, whether it’s to your own kids or someone else. Do not speak when the urgency is based on anger or in a sense of the importance of your own point of view, the rightness of your position. Check in with God in such a case before wrongfully ruining a relationship in order to say what we might think is true––and may be––but doing that without the love of God informing what we say. Amen.
1 Samuel 8: 4-20; 11: 14-15
Mark 3: 20-35
Who Is My Mother? Who Are My Brothers?
A few weeks ago friends were visiting us from out-of-state. At a point well into the evening, when the candles were burning low, the wife alluded to the couple’s children, saying somewhat wistfully that neither of their children––one of whom is about 40 and the other approaching 40––was practicing the religion in which they had been raised. Although she herself is not religious, she understood the value of a religious upbringing for establishing a sense of moral foundation and supported her husband’s raising their children in his faith. She was concerned about the next generation in a world that was not as solidly religiously based as the one we might have known.
“And what about your kids?” she asked me. “Are they practicing their religion?”I had to say no. Like our friends, we had raised our children in the Christian faith. They were baptized and confirmed Catholics and continued at church until their teen years. At, and after that time, they began to follow their own way, which is to say, not attending church on a regular basis.
How did I feel about that, she asked. My first answer was that I had never lost any sleep about them in that area because I knew them to be good and loving people––most of the time. I almost thought then and still do think and feel that they themselves are responsible before God for their actions. We trained them p in the way we thought they should go, and now it’s up to them.
When I read this morning’s reading from Samuel, however, in preparation for this message, I was thinking more about the undefined line between parental guidance in the area of another’s faith and when that becomes unwelcome interference, a kind of evangelization that does not honor the separateness of the other person before God––yes, even our own children as separate persons––and the inviolability of that sacred space between them and God. But is that just an excuse? Taking the easy way out?
What caught my attention in the reading from Samuel was verse 4, the elders of Israel saying to Samuel, “You are old and your sons do not walk in your ways.” These elders did not trust Samuel’s sons, whom he had appointed as judges in Israel to lead them after his death, and they wanted a king to lead them. The concern of the elders was well-placed, for as the scripture points out, Samuel’s sons “turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.”
In Samuel’s story, God does not seem to hold the prophet responsible for his sons’ actions, unlike the sons of Eli, who was the high priest when Samuel was first called by the Lord. In fact the first prophesy Samuel received when the Lord woke him from sleep focused on an indictment of Eli’s sons, who, as helpers in the temple, had been illegitimately taking the choice parts of the sacrifices away from God. As a result, God spoke this word of prophesy through Samuel to Eli, that the priesthood would pass away from Eli’s house, that God would judge Eli’s family forever because Eli’s sons had made themselves contemptible, and Eli did nothing to restrain them.
The only differentiation that I can distinguish between the two cases is that while Samuel’s sons also were guilty of sin, they were sinning in human matters of business and gain, whereas the sons of Eli were cheating God of his, God’s portion. In any case, the Samuel situation reminded me of the Eli situation because of the common denominator of wayward children, regardless of age, and how God might view culpability for that waywardness.
These questions bring us to Jesus’s question in this morning’s gospel, of those assembled in a house where he had gathered with his disciples. After he was told that his mother and brothers were outside and looking for him, he looked around at those seated there and asked, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” That was a very radical statement in that part of the world where family and tribal identification was everything. Think of Eli’s house, his family, descendants of Aaron, who had been named to the priesthood forever, before that privilege was withdrawn by God because of their abuse of the privilege. Their whole identification was with Aaron and the priesthood. Here in the West family and tribal identification is also very important, witness only one sit-down Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house. You get a clear picture of the connections and disconnections at such an event, but it’s all family. However, I believe that family in the Near East has different kinds and levels of political and social meaning from family in the West.
If we tolerate a few misguided Democrats in our Republican families or a few misguided Republicans in our predominantly Democratic families, in the Near East that tolerance of stepping away from the family tribe is probably considerably less, as we can observe in the enmity between the Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq. We get a sense of the competitiveness between these two pillars of Islam, acted out in family rivalries that translate into governing structures. Family loyalty to the point of death, and defending the family’s honor are everything. I only want to suggest to you why what Jesus is saying would be considered radical in that part of the world.
Let’s tease this apart a little bit more. Jesus doesn’t make that statement about mothers and brothers until the end of today’s gospel, which opens with the scene of a house so crowded with people who have come to see Jesus that he and the disciples can’t even eat some bread. When Jesus’s family hears about this, they go out to take charge of him, the gospel says, because “He is out of his mind.”
Why would they say that? Recall that the writer of Matthew has Jesus say, “A man’s foes, or enemies will be those of his own household,“ which is a quotation from the prophet Micah, chapter 7, verse 6. Two questions arise: Why would they think he was crazy? And what kind of an alternative model of family or kinship might Jesus be suggesting?
To answer the first question, they thought he was out of his mind because he had left home and family and probably a successful carpentry business in Nazareth for the life on the road of a wandering preacher. As William Barclay suggests in his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, “No sensible man... would throw up a business where the money came in every week to become a vagrant who had no place to lay his head.”
His family also knew that Jesus was provoking the religiously powerful men of his day, the scribes and pharisees, the experts in the law. Because of the power wielded by these men to make or break a person in the community, most people, if they had any common sense would try to stay on their good side. Not Jesus. He consistently called these men on their positions, challenging them by his inspired questions and deft arguing to really look at what they were saying and to consider the people whom their statements and judgments were affecting in their everyday lives. More than once he laid bare the hypocrisy that underlay their religious leadership.
So, he gave up a good job for life on the road, he was the antagonistic provocateur of the religiously and so, politically powerful men of his day, and, the third reason for his family thinking he had taken leave of his senses was that he had started hanging out with a really questionable crowd: some ignorant fishermen, a reformed tax collector for Rome and an ultra-nationalist fanatic were among them. You can’t really blame his family for wondering whether he was hitting on all cylinders.
However, from the point of view of a man bent on carrying out the will of God in his life as he discerned it through years of listening and sensing, of prayer and worship, it was clear that what most people used as the yardstick for judging a life meant little or nothing to Jesus. He had thrown away security when he left his job in Nazareth. He had also thrown away safety, choosing to follow a course of action that involved risk. And last, and possibly the most annoying to his family, was that he had shown himself indifferent to the verdict of society about him or his lifestyle, and how that might reflect on his family. He knew who he was––remember those days in the desert in preparation for his ministry. He had met himself in the forms of his particular temptations and he had resisted those temptations. He knew himself. He didn’t need his family or the neighbors to tell him who he was. If they made judgments about him, the judgments were on their own heads.
There’s a lovely story about the 17th-century Christian writer and preacher John Bunyan in prison. The author of The Pilgrim’s Progress was afraid that that imprisonment might end at the gallows and did not like the idea of being hanged. Who would? One day he felt ashamed of being afraid. To quote him: “Methought I was ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees for such a cause as this.” He came to a conclusion as he pictured himself climbing up the stairs to the scaffold. “Wherefore, thought I, I am for going on and venturing my eternal state with Christ whether I have comfort here or no; if God doth not come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell; Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do: if not, I will venture for thy name.” That is precisely what Jesus was willing to do. He ventured for God’s name. That was the essence of the life of Jesus, and that––not safety and security or reputation––should be the center of every Christian life.
What is Jesus is saying here about family in the context of his early public life? If his mother and brothers did not constitute his family in his new way of thinking, what is he suggesting could constitute a family?
The basis of true kinship can rest on several grounds other than blood. Common experience is one, especially if it is an experience where two or more people have really come through things together. I think of the choir in this church, very much like a family within a family. I think of all people in NYC, who experienced 9-11 as no one else in the country did, and the families of those who died at that time––they are another kind of family with a terrible and deep bond. As are those families who mourn for their loved ones lost on the Air France airbus from Rio to Paris two weeks ago. Support groups who meet to help each other stay sober, or stay away from any and all addictive substances––these are real kinship bonds, necessary to establish as a kind of family in such a mobile society where we are often far away or estranged from our families of origin.
Those examples overlap with the idea of common interest joining people in a kinship-like relationship. Christians can recognize that kind of kinship because they have a common interest in knowing, learning and experiencing more about Jesus, the basis for all denominational expressions of Christian religion.
Kinship can also derive from a shared common obedience, as in a platoon of soldiers from many different backgrounds who have the common bond of obedience to the commanding officer and beyond that to the Commander-in-Chief. They are part of a group that will stand for each other, and beyond their own interests, for a common goal, which is another characteristic of a kinship group.
Common experience, common interest, common obedience and common goal––only four ways of experiencing kinship that are not of the ordinary or expected family model, and Jesus with his troop of followers did choose a new model. If his family cared to come along for the ride––and who really knows how that all played out––I feel sure Jesus would have welcomed the company. Would have loved the company.
To arc back to the beginning of this message, what about our kids? In later life what can we do but love these members of our families and set the best example we can by being faithful to the principles we have lived by through life, modifying them when we see or understand something more clearly than we did before. It might help to make a few signs in our own minds that we hold up for reading when the occasion demands, such as: Bite your tongue: No unsolicited advice, please.
I remember when the kids were small and having to step outside the door from time to time to keep it together. It’s a good idea to do that, at least mentally, when we feel like we are going to lose it. So many doors slam shut permanently because of words spoken in anger or judgment that can not be taken back. There are some who will forgive such words, but there are others who will not, and when conversation ceases, so do opportunities for growth in relationship and expressions of love and concern.
opportunities for growth in relationship and expressions of love and concern.
Even with all that, I say clearly that when we see something that is egregiously wrong, where someone is in harm’s way verbally or physically or indeed spiritually, and whether that wrong is being acted out by our own children, by an acquaintance or friend, or by a stranger, we need to speak out and take the same risks that Jesus took. The tipping point, the telling point is whether our personal pride is involved or any sense of asserting our perceived power, that is where you, where we can tell if we are acting in God’s will, as part of that universal family of the divine parent.
If we have consecrated ourselves to God, which is to say surrendered our lives as best we can, we can count on the impetus, the push-to-shove from the Spirit of God that moves and leads us to speak out in such a case.
So, I’m telling you two things: Speak the truth as you best discern it when the occasion demands, whether it’s to your own kids or someone else. Do not speak when the urgency is based on anger or in a sense of the importance of your own point of view, the rightness of your position. Check in with God in such a case before wrongfully ruining a relationship in order to say what we might think is true––and may be––but doing that without the love of God informing what we say. Amen.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
How Do You See God?
Sheepscott Community Church June 7, 2009
Isaiah 6: 1-8
John 3: 1-17
How Do You See God?
Most of us have to visualize God in some way in order to feel a relationship with the Creator. If we asked the prophet Isaiah how he saw God, he would probably get that faraway look in his eyes and tell us the story of his calling to the role of prophet in the year King Uzziah died. He would tell how he, a man of “unclean lips,” as he termed himself as a sinner, saw the Lord in his glory. It really is a magnificent scene that we heard Ted read this morning. Isaiah described it––the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filling the temple, with seraphs above him, who were calling to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
“At the sound of their voices,” the vision narrative continued, “the door posts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”
That’s when Isaiah exclaims about being a man of unclean lips being in the presence of the King, the Lord Almighty, figuring he was ruined because he was so out of place, so not where he deserved to be. But a seraph saves the day, touching his mouth with a hot coal from the altar, saying, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” It is God who has called, and so it is God who makes provision by way of the live coal for his sinfulness. It is God who cleanses for his purposes.
Isaiah saw God as a a royal figure on a throne, with the train of his robe filling the temple. That sounds very kingly, does it not? If Isaiah was not in fact a priest at the temple––and he may have been––scholars at least agree that he was a member of the privileged class of noble families, who seem to have had direct access to King Uzziah at the time preceding Isaiah’s call to the prophetic life. He was a man of the city, which accounts for his urban metaphors, and the city of his heart was Jerusalem, the seat of the Temple and of David’s throne. In fact the Temple was sometimes called the King’s chapel because it was right next door to the palace.
We can begin to see why Isaiah beheld God in vision in that context because it was his context, and one he would understand. And God knew that. The aspect of the majesty of God was very accessible to him because of the parallel earth-bound majesty of the King and his court, and the Temple and its priests, which may be said to mirror the divine court, and which parallels he had probably frequently beheld.
By contrast the prophet Micah was nurtured not in the court theology but in the Exodus tradition, which was kept alive in the rural areas of Judah. He is like the prophet Amos, in that sense, who describes himself as “... not a prophet/ Nor one of the sons of prophets; rather, I am a herdsman,/ and a dresser of sycamore trees./ However, Yahweh took me from behind the flock,/ and Yahweh said to me: Go! Prophesy to my people Israel. ”[7: 14, 15].
Amos’s agricultural references in his writings are unmistakable: “I will crush you as a cart crushes when loaded with grain” [2:13]; “the farmers will be summoned to weep and the mourners to wail./ There will be wailing in all the vineyards,/ for I will pass through your midst,’ says the Lord.” [5: 16b, 17]; ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman/ and the planter by the one treading grapes... ‘I will plant Israel in their own land/ never again to be uprooted/ from the land I have given them,’ says the Lord God.” [9: 13, 15]
The contrast between the contexts of the oracles of the three prophets is notable: Amos the shepherd, taken from tending his flocks, grounds his messages in agricultural metaphors. He understands the God of the countryside. Likewise Micah, the country prophet, who spoke for the poor farmers suffering at the hands of the powerful landlords. Isaiah by contrast, our prophet of today’s reading, understands the God of the city of Jerusalem, the God of the privileged ones, and it is from that base of understanding about the majestic God that he delivers his prophecies between the years from 740 until at least 700 BCE.
One way that Isaiah’s prophetic imagination can be expressed is in terms of concentric circles of institutional structure that had unified the diverse spheres of the royal court, the priesthood and commerce, all of which were ruptured by the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, the first wave of captivity of the Israelite people in Babylon.
What happened when that structure of kingship and Temple, and consequently commerce, fell apart, as it did? What Second Isaiah promised, prophesied to the people in captivity in Babylon answers that question, not only for the Israelite people then but for us now, who are looking at the collapse of General Motors; of Chrysler already gone through bankruptcy; at a still-polarized electorate, evidenced in the recent murder of Dr. Tiller, an abortion provider; of an emotionally charged debate only just beginning about the suitability of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.
What did Isaiah say about what happens when the established structure falls apart? The answer can be discovered only in relation to the Center, that is, the God who was present with the people before the introduction of either Temple or kingship, before the introduction of the presidency of any country, of any founding document, of any religious institution with its creeds or doctrines. Isaiah presents God as a dynamic, destiny-shaping presence in the midst of human history. All that exists in heaven and on earth, planets and humans, finds its being and purpose in relation to that Center.
In Paul Hanson’s words from his book Interpretation, Isaiah 40-66, “Once faith is sure of its grounding in the one true God, it is able to address every aspect of life boldly, freshly and courageously.” The exiles in Babylon learned that they could continue without a central sanctuary. They gathered together, which is the meaning of the word “synagogue,” remembered their tradition and their homeland, and they prayed.
We too, who have come to this other of our churches for the summer season, the other border of our homeland, and who are grounded in the one true God, we, like the exiles, know that although we are fond of and care for our sanctuaries, we could survive without them. We are the worshipping community, wherever we gather, and our annual migration, reminiscent of exile, is a useful reminder of that. We are the synagogue, the people gathered. This is really part of our epic as a community, this migration, isn’t it? It’s like an annual pilgrimage, that breaks us away from any complacency and heightens our awareness of God’s presence in our present situation, guided and enriched by our recognition of what our living Center is, of who our living Center is: No less than God himself, the God whom Isaiah beheld in vision in the Temple, and yet the God of Micah and Amos out in the countryside, among the farmers, plowing and harrowing, harvesting and gathering into barns.
I am reminded of the late Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest from India, who was a spiritual guide for many. He believed that Christian doctrines per se were simply a finger pointing to the moon; they were misunderstood if they became the final object of our attention. The Gospel, for de Mello, points us to the truth that lies behind words, concepts and images, to the God beyond the constructed god. He believed that Christ was not so much concerned with imparting doctrines to his listeners as in awakening them to new life and the offer of salvation that was in their midst.
All of these are different visions of God from different prophets of God. I started off with the question, How do you see God? However that is, you can be sure that it is in that way that God will probably speak to you, in you and through you to your family, to your worshipping community and to the world. As I noted, God speaks to us in our individual contexts, and can accommodate endless expressions of who that One is, myriad, and diverse, and yet absolutely One as God is.
My favorite attribute of this church is the glass windows. The message that God is more than what happens with us here in the sanctuary, and that the sanctuary is more than the building where we worship is abundantly clear in this space because of those windows. They will keep out the rain, but they do not keep out the light or prevent the view of trees, whichever way we look. We see that God is in Nature, perhaps is Nature. This being our communion Sunday, we will know once again the homely and sweetly available presence of God in this communion we share, in this nourishing form of matter Jesus chose to remind us of his ongoing presence in his church. Which presence was revitalized by the coming of the holy Spirit, whom we celebrated last Sunday on Pentecost.
Aren’t we lucky? Aren’t we blessed to have all of these avenues available to us to know God? Thank you God for being the dynamic, destiny-shaping presence you are in our midst.
Perhaps the most obvious way we know the presence of God is in each other. We can
also recognize the activity of God in the spawning of the alewives I spoke about last week, in all babies––who can forget William Skiff in the manger last Christmas––in Donna’s dog Spirit and in what he has done for her, and in all our animals whom we love. It’s not difficult to see God in all these manifestations. What may be more difficult for us as individuals is seeing God in our selves, believing that possible. May we love each other to life in that way, truly functioning thereby as a community, recognizing the Christ in each other when we share the bread and the cup in the communion this morning and calling each other forth into our fullest selves.
Why does God go to all this trouble with us? Why doesn’t God just sit back on that throne or in a tractor with a cab and a view out on the hillside and leave us to our own devices? The answer is in Isaiah 43, v.3: “Because you are precious in my sight,/ and honored, and I love you.” Amen.
Isaiah 6: 1-8
John 3: 1-17
How Do You See God?
Most of us have to visualize God in some way in order to feel a relationship with the Creator. If we asked the prophet Isaiah how he saw God, he would probably get that faraway look in his eyes and tell us the story of his calling to the role of prophet in the year King Uzziah died. He would tell how he, a man of “unclean lips,” as he termed himself as a sinner, saw the Lord in his glory. It really is a magnificent scene that we heard Ted read this morning. Isaiah described it––the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filling the temple, with seraphs above him, who were calling to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
“At the sound of their voices,” the vision narrative continued, “the door posts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”
That’s when Isaiah exclaims about being a man of unclean lips being in the presence of the King, the Lord Almighty, figuring he was ruined because he was so out of place, so not where he deserved to be. But a seraph saves the day, touching his mouth with a hot coal from the altar, saying, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” It is God who has called, and so it is God who makes provision by way of the live coal for his sinfulness. It is God who cleanses for his purposes.
Isaiah saw God as a a royal figure on a throne, with the train of his robe filling the temple. That sounds very kingly, does it not? If Isaiah was not in fact a priest at the temple––and he may have been––scholars at least agree that he was a member of the privileged class of noble families, who seem to have had direct access to King Uzziah at the time preceding Isaiah’s call to the prophetic life. He was a man of the city, which accounts for his urban metaphors, and the city of his heart was Jerusalem, the seat of the Temple and of David’s throne. In fact the Temple was sometimes called the King’s chapel because it was right next door to the palace.
We can begin to see why Isaiah beheld God in vision in that context because it was his context, and one he would understand. And God knew that. The aspect of the majesty of God was very accessible to him because of the parallel earth-bound majesty of the King and his court, and the Temple and its priests, which may be said to mirror the divine court, and which parallels he had probably frequently beheld.
By contrast the prophet Micah was nurtured not in the court theology but in the Exodus tradition, which was kept alive in the rural areas of Judah. He is like the prophet Amos, in that sense, who describes himself as “... not a prophet/ Nor one of the sons of prophets; rather, I am a herdsman,/ and a dresser of sycamore trees./ However, Yahweh took me from behind the flock,/ and Yahweh said to me: Go! Prophesy to my people Israel. ”[7: 14, 15].
Amos’s agricultural references in his writings are unmistakable: “I will crush you as a cart crushes when loaded with grain” [2:13]; “the farmers will be summoned to weep and the mourners to wail./ There will be wailing in all the vineyards,/ for I will pass through your midst,’ says the Lord.” [5: 16b, 17]; ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman/ and the planter by the one treading grapes... ‘I will plant Israel in their own land/ never again to be uprooted/ from the land I have given them,’ says the Lord God.” [9: 13, 15]
The contrast between the contexts of the oracles of the three prophets is notable: Amos the shepherd, taken from tending his flocks, grounds his messages in agricultural metaphors. He understands the God of the countryside. Likewise Micah, the country prophet, who spoke for the poor farmers suffering at the hands of the powerful landlords. Isaiah by contrast, our prophet of today’s reading, understands the God of the city of Jerusalem, the God of the privileged ones, and it is from that base of understanding about the majestic God that he delivers his prophecies between the years from 740 until at least 700 BCE.
One way that Isaiah’s prophetic imagination can be expressed is in terms of concentric circles of institutional structure that had unified the diverse spheres of the royal court, the priesthood and commerce, all of which were ruptured by the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, the first wave of captivity of the Israelite people in Babylon.
What happened when that structure of kingship and Temple, and consequently commerce, fell apart, as it did? What Second Isaiah promised, prophesied to the people in captivity in Babylon answers that question, not only for the Israelite people then but for us now, who are looking at the collapse of General Motors; of Chrysler already gone through bankruptcy; at a still-polarized electorate, evidenced in the recent murder of Dr. Tiller, an abortion provider; of an emotionally charged debate only just beginning about the suitability of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.
What did Isaiah say about what happens when the established structure falls apart? The answer can be discovered only in relation to the Center, that is, the God who was present with the people before the introduction of either Temple or kingship, before the introduction of the presidency of any country, of any founding document, of any religious institution with its creeds or doctrines. Isaiah presents God as a dynamic, destiny-shaping presence in the midst of human history. All that exists in heaven and on earth, planets and humans, finds its being and purpose in relation to that Center.
In Paul Hanson’s words from his book Interpretation, Isaiah 40-66, “Once faith is sure of its grounding in the one true God, it is able to address every aspect of life boldly, freshly and courageously.” The exiles in Babylon learned that they could continue without a central sanctuary. They gathered together, which is the meaning of the word “synagogue,” remembered their tradition and their homeland, and they prayed.
We too, who have come to this other of our churches for the summer season, the other border of our homeland, and who are grounded in the one true God, we, like the exiles, know that although we are fond of and care for our sanctuaries, we could survive without them. We are the worshipping community, wherever we gather, and our annual migration, reminiscent of exile, is a useful reminder of that. We are the synagogue, the people gathered. This is really part of our epic as a community, this migration, isn’t it? It’s like an annual pilgrimage, that breaks us away from any complacency and heightens our awareness of God’s presence in our present situation, guided and enriched by our recognition of what our living Center is, of who our living Center is: No less than God himself, the God whom Isaiah beheld in vision in the Temple, and yet the God of Micah and Amos out in the countryside, among the farmers, plowing and harrowing, harvesting and gathering into barns.
I am reminded of the late Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest from India, who was a spiritual guide for many. He believed that Christian doctrines per se were simply a finger pointing to the moon; they were misunderstood if they became the final object of our attention. The Gospel, for de Mello, points us to the truth that lies behind words, concepts and images, to the God beyond the constructed god. He believed that Christ was not so much concerned with imparting doctrines to his listeners as in awakening them to new life and the offer of salvation that was in their midst.
All of these are different visions of God from different prophets of God. I started off with the question, How do you see God? However that is, you can be sure that it is in that way that God will probably speak to you, in you and through you to your family, to your worshipping community and to the world. As I noted, God speaks to us in our individual contexts, and can accommodate endless expressions of who that One is, myriad, and diverse, and yet absolutely One as God is.
My favorite attribute of this church is the glass windows. The message that God is more than what happens with us here in the sanctuary, and that the sanctuary is more than the building where we worship is abundantly clear in this space because of those windows. They will keep out the rain, but they do not keep out the light or prevent the view of trees, whichever way we look. We see that God is in Nature, perhaps is Nature. This being our communion Sunday, we will know once again the homely and sweetly available presence of God in this communion we share, in this nourishing form of matter Jesus chose to remind us of his ongoing presence in his church. Which presence was revitalized by the coming of the holy Spirit, whom we celebrated last Sunday on Pentecost.
Aren’t we lucky? Aren’t we blessed to have all of these avenues available to us to know God? Thank you God for being the dynamic, destiny-shaping presence you are in our midst.
Perhaps the most obvious way we know the presence of God is in each other. We can
also recognize the activity of God in the spawning of the alewives I spoke about last week, in all babies––who can forget William Skiff in the manger last Christmas––in Donna’s dog Spirit and in what he has done for her, and in all our animals whom we love. It’s not difficult to see God in all these manifestations. What may be more difficult for us as individuals is seeing God in our selves, believing that possible. May we love each other to life in that way, truly functioning thereby as a community, recognizing the Christ in each other when we share the bread and the cup in the communion this morning and calling each other forth into our fullest selves.
Why does God go to all this trouble with us? Why doesn’t God just sit back on that throne or in a tractor with a cab and a view out on the hillside and leave us to our own devices? The answer is in Isaiah 43, v.3: “Because you are precious in my sight,/ and honored, and I love you.” Amen.
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