Rev. Larry Wimmer

Through the looking glass

2012-01-30T15:39:00.000-05:00

As you probably know by now, I am a lover of good so-called children’s literature. In fact this column takes its name from the book of the same name that accompanies Alice in Wonderland and is a classic of very serious nonsense. There is a verse from Tweedledee (of Tweedledee and Tweedledum fame) that comes up every now and then in the continuing conversation of the world or more precisely, in our case, of the church, and even more precisely to be exact, our church. It goes like this:

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

‘To talk of many things:

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—

Of cabbages—and kings—

And why the sea is boiling hot—

And whether pigs have wings.’

And so it is that we face the challenge of being the church in the world in these days. There are many things to consider, no doubt, and much has changed and is changing, yet some things, the things that matter, remain the same. What remains the same is the God of love revealed to us in Jesus is calling us in from the world and gathering us into community (the church) in order to be sent forth enlightened and in peace to the world. What also remains the same is how we love each other and how we love the church. Make no mistake, without the love of God and the love with which we love each other and our church, we really do have nothing as St. Paul knew from the very beginning.

What has changed, and is changing, is the world and the place of the church in the world and the expectations of people about the church and the world. The challenge is to pay attention to what is happening and to understand what we are dealing with in order to do what God is calling us to do now. The challenge is discerning what matters and what needs to be done and how to do what needs to be done. We cannot just assume that business as usual will work and yet we know that the past informs the future and can never be completely lost either. As a community of the beloved we are, even now, in holy conversation about the life of our congregation and our witness to the world. We are challenged to be realistic and faithful. This will not always be easy but we are the church and we are standing on holy ground. We are not alone because the sum total of each one of us and our gifts united by the Spirit is more than we even know.

If you come into my study you may notice that I have a pig with wings hanging over my desk. It is a reminder to me that sometimes there is more to being faithful than just doing the same old thing and there is more to being faithful than I yet know or can even imagine. Because we are a people of faith what is possible is bigger than the usual expectations. And we are not stuck in ‘what is’ but are on our way to ‘what might be.’ You may recall in another part of this delightful and crazy little book that Alice declared she could not believe in impossible things and the Queen reminded her that she needed more practice. Our practice could do with some of that. Yes, the time as come again to talk of many things and not suppose that we can’t believe impossible things.

Bless your hearts, Larry

January 01, 2012

2011-12-29T15:04:00.002-05:00

Through the looking glass

Time, what is it? Is it real or imaginary? Are we created for time or time for us? Does it last forever or only a moment? Is there a past, a future, or only the present? Where does it begin, where does it end? Whatever it is or was or will be, it is the context for human life for one thing we do know is that we are limited by time in this life. We do have a beginning and an end. We are temporal beings and so naturally time is significant to us. Does it matter that in one room the clock says 2:07 and in the next room 2:12 or that when I awake on Monday morning it is already Monday night in Kazakhstan? Does it matter what time it is or is what matters that there is time, time for a life to be lived? A poem written by Thomas J. Carlyle entitled “Our Jeopardy” was published some years ago now in Theology Today, a journal of Princeton University, that still speaks to me about the value of time whether we can ever quite comprehend its ontological mysteries. It goes like this:

It is good to use

best china

treasured dishes

the most genuine goblets

or the oldest lace table cloth

there is a risk of course

every time we use anything

or anyone shares an inmost

mood or moment

or a fragile cup of revelation

but not to touch

not to handle

not employ the available

artifacts of being

a human being

that is the quiet crash

the deadly catastrophe

where nothing

is enjoyed or broken

or spoken or spilled

or stained or mended

where nothing is ever

lived

loved

pored over

laughed over

wept over

lost

or found.

Time is funny. Whether it exists or not, is imaginary or not, is meaningful or not, it cannot be captured, it can only be lived. One more time comes to us to use it. We are given one more time. Whatever it is, it is a gift. Dare we use it? Dare we use the most of our time for God’s sake? Dare we commit ourselves to live fully our time and use our resources to make a difference in this new year not just for ourselves but for our church and for our world, one more time, before it is all gone. The time in which we have our life on earth is by definition, temporary (temporary means ‘of time’) which underscores its value for now, the time we have now is our time. Margaret Farley described commitment as love’s way of being whole when it is not yet whole, love’s way of offering its incapacities as well as its power. No matter what you think of time, this new year is as good a time as any to recommit ourselves to the ministry of Christ in the church we love called Holy Trinity. We can be more and we have been given one more time to be.

Bless your hearts, Larry

Come adore Him, Christ the Lord...

2011-12-20T09:42:00.000-05:00

To the Church in Danvers called Holy Trinity United Methodist,

greetings beloved.
“So now it is Christmas.” Do you know this song by John Lennon?

The song wishes everyone a happy Christmas with the emphasis on everyone and it concludes with these words: ‘War is over (if you want it).’ It was not long after this hopeful and strangely sad song was recorded that John Lennon was shot down on the street of New York, felled by the violence he spent some time trying to overcome with music. Another of his titles, you may remember, is ‘Give Peace a Chance’ another simple plea for the improbable if not impossible given the world as we have known it so far. I mention this because it recalls for me what Christmas does. Christmas is about the improbable hope that there might be peace on earth (Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace. .); that the human condition is not a lost cause; that human hearts are free to love more and even to overcome a world bent on war and seemingly unlimited hatred and division. Christmas brings hope to the human heart again. We cannot really live without it. Even the hope for peace is precious where there is no peace. If there is hope there is the courage to live and work for peace, to be peacemakers, to do the little things that make peace where we are. Someone once said that the struggle for peace and justice in this world is the winning that is never won and the losing that is never lost. In other words we may never experience peace on earth but we never stop seeking peace anyway. There are victories and losses along the way but the way continues. Perhaps we have forgotten what peace is. It is not the enforced status quo of fear, it is the presence of love, vulnerable and open to the suffering of the world, all the world, every child, every man and woman. People laugh when I tell them my favorite carol is ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter’ but my favorite verse from the Bible is the one where soon after the birth of Jesus Mary ponders in her heart, among other things, what Simeon has told her (that a sword will pierce her soul too). In so many words telling almost immediately at the arrival of this glorious hope that suffering will also be involved here. Why is this important? Because the hope that is Christmas is not just the false hope of a fairy tale fantasy but the true hope of life; that is borne out of suffering and overcoming suffering. It is not a cheerful optimism based on nothing more than wishful thinking. It is the radical trust in love to overcome all things that gives us the courage to love the broken world and to seek peace where peace is nowhere to be found. Christmas even filled John Lennon’s heart and music with hope. Even my heart is full of hope this Christmas. Every year I wonder if it will work again and every year the story overcomes the despair and love is coming again to us.
Bless your hearts,
Larry

Through the looking glass ~ December 2011

2011-12-06T10:45:00.000-05:00

Last month I attempted to lay out the essential facts of our situation with regards to our resources going forward. I am grateful for your response so far. The pledges that have come in have been very encouraging. There are still some that have not come in yet but I am trusting that they will come and will provide us with the support we need to budget next year’s ministries with confidence. If you are one who has not yet pledged, I hope you will be able to do so before the next finance meeting on December 13 so that we can have as many facts as possible to make our plans for the new year. If you have misplaced your pledge card or never received one, please let us know. We have more in the office that we would be happy to share. Again, thank you for your support of the good work that your church is doing.

On another note, Christmas is coming and everyone is making plans. As you make your plans please note that the services on Christmas Eve this year are being planned for 4:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. The early service is the children telling the story again in a new way. Lisa and her crew are working hard to prepare a beautiful experience for all. The late service will be the traditional candlelight service. Please note that we will begin an hour earlier than last year. As Christmas day falls on Sunday this year, we will celebrate at our usual time of 9:30 a.m. May worship be a big part of our Christmas this year!

I love Christmas. I always have. The Christmas Eve Service is my favorite of the whole year. Of all the impossible things about Christmas perhaps the most impossible of all for me is the hope that just won't let go. Every year about this time the impossible hope that is the message of Christmas returns like a hum that turns into a song and I simply cannot resist the uplifting of my hope for the world because of this implausible story of how God enters the world with love to save us. Why would we resist hope anyway, you might wonder? Perhaps we resist hope because hope has let us down before. Is it too much to hope for that love really will save us all? This is the terrible temptation of Christmas that we might hope such an impossible thing again despite everything we know.

There are any number of ways God could have entered the world to change it but according to our story, God chose to send a child like one of us who would bear the condition of all humans, the suffering and even death to show us the way of love that is possible for us. The story is impossibly beautiful as it reveals the truth that love is both vulnerable and forever; that it cannot be held but only let go; that the more we give it away the more there is of it to give; that even death itself cannot hold it or end it; that the love that comes at Christmas is the love that will change everything; the hope that never stops singing.

Every time we hear the story again it calls to us to rise up and see anew what is possible for humankind, for this world, for every lost hope, for every broken heart, for every one of us. God has made a beautiful world and love is coming to us all. May this Christmas bless your heart and make it impossible for you not to hope again for what God can do and is doing even now

Grace and peace, Larry

Through the looking glass October 2011

2011-09-23T12:58:00.000-04:00

The last line in the John Updike story entitled, “Short Easter,’ is telling: Everything seemed still in place, yet something was immensely missing. The story begins and takes its’ title from the coincidence of Daylight Savings Time beginning on Easter Sunday. As the narrator is experiencing it, something is missing from the very beginning of the story. A chunk of the day, even this holy day, has been clipped, thus, a Short Easter. Of course, what is missing is not just time but what ever it is that even times comes from, the essential something of life that is life. I am reminded of another story. It is one that takes place at the heart of a book called interestingly, “The Never-Ending Story” by Michael Ende:

The nothing is spreading,’ groaned the first. ‘It’s growing and growing, there’s more of it every day, if it’s possible to speak of more nothing.’

‘Is it very painful?’ Atryu asked.

‘No,’ said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. ‘You don’t feel a thing. There’s just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won’t be anything left of us.’

I believe this is precisely what the narrator in the Updike story was experiencing, the nothing. Have you ever experienced the nothing, something just missing, you can’t even name it? I believe it is not uncommon for we human beings and I also believe it may be a sign of hope. It may be the voice of God calling for us to awaken to the SOMETHING that is missing in our lives, to go deeper, to take seriously the holiness of life, to embrace the presence of the holy in the midst of living.

Seek God where God may be found. Return to God and be glad. We may find something if we look. It may be in the moments of our everyday lives or it may be in stepping apart from the routine. This month I am anticipating sharing with you the practice of looking and listening for God. On Tuesday we will use literature, the stories of our own times (such as the Updike story mentioned above) to open windows on our own lives and living, to listen for God in the life of the world and our own life, to engage in holy conversation. On Wednesday nights from 630 to 7 a Vespers Service (Evening Prayers) will be offered inviting us to worship, to come intentionally into the presence of the holy in community.

It is written, Seek God while God may be found, call upon God while God is near. (Isaiah 55.6)

Bless your hearts, Larry

June 2011

2011-06-01T16:44:00.002-04:00

through the looking glass

Well, we have nearly come full circle in our first year together. It has been good for me to become acquainted with you. I am still learning names and more importantly learning the stories behind the names or, in other words, getting to know you. Already we have been to New Orleans together twice. We have weathered a brutal winter. We have celebrated the holy days of our holidays. We have tried some new things and kept some things we are used to doing.

I am grateful for the support I have received from the staff here at Holy Trinity. Without Ruthann, Lisa and Charles and Nancy I would have had a very difficult year but they have all made it easier for me to find my way. I am glad that I was able to have this year with Charles and Nancy who will be leaving the staff this summer to pursue other things. They are both generous and gifted and kind persons whose absence will be a great challenge for us in the new year that is coming. We wish them every blessing and rejoice that we will see them again.

I am grateful also for all those leaders who have served so faithfully in these transition years that are not easy for anyone. We have carried on. We have accomplished many things. We have some important challenges before us not the least of which is a solid base of financial support that will free us to focus on doing all the good we can. We will seek to follow the three simple rules of Wesley: Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God. We will discern together what our vision is in these days and what will our priorities be. Even now we are in the process of selecting new leaders for another year so that we go forward in strength and in peace.

We have celebrated many baptisms this year. This is a beautiful sign of hope for any church. Holy Communion has brought us together and heartens us for the journey. We are blessed with a congregation that spans the generations enriching us all. We have much to be and to do together, much to become, to increase, to deepen who we are, to seek and to find, to be open to each new day, to find happiness in this life with Christ in community.

In June we will honor our friends, Charles and Nancy for their gifts to us. We will celebrate our reconciling ministries. The Annual Conference gathers again and life goes on. Who knows what these days will bring. What I do know is that, by the grace of God, we are alive today and share a great calling to be the church of Jesus Christ in the world and together we will go where love takes us remembering, perhaps, the profound words of Eeyore, himself, who said: A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference (or something like that.)

Peace, Larry

upside-down February 20, 2011

2011-02-20T14:36:00.000-05:00

upside-down

February 20, 2011

I don’t know how to tell you what I want to tell you. What I have to tell you today is very difficult to communicate if not impossible to tell for it asks us to set aside everything we have come to believe is normal and expected, to be open to hearing a truth completely different than we have known in our own experience even though we have heard the words all our lives. No matter how often we have said the words and put them away in all those rational places that make sense of them so they won’t bother us too much. Yet, still, we need to break through what we have always known and been told, to hear again for the first time, the gospel message which still stubbornly counters everything the world has taught us to be. I daresay we are not even aware that our being Christian is any different than being an American or than being a human being in the world. What is different about being a Christian? We don’t want to be different. We have lost touch with the sacred and with the distinction between the ways of God and the ways of the world. It is all the same to us. The more found we think we are, the more lost we become.

The radical life-giving brilliance of the teachings of Jesus are completely ignored in part because what he says barely makes sense to us and Lord knows we have no time for nonsense. Yet it may well be that it is the nonsense of God that will save us from what we have come to think makes sense for us. Even as I speak these words I feel frustrated because I cannot really communicate the gap between where we are and where Christ is. We worry about the wrong things. If only we could really know the joy and freedom of the gospel, the possibilities and the presence of God even now we would not worry about whether our church will continue to exist but would celebrate our existence continually. We are here to celebrate and to share with the world the gospel, to share a joy that is no simple mindless cheerfulness but a joy that has come through the truth and the suffering to emerge firmly in the arms of grace.

Ours is the gospel of grace and it does not make sense to the ways of the world that demands that we get what we deserve for no one deserves grace and it is for everyone freely given. In a sermon written by a young pastor who had just learned that he had a particularly nasty form of cancer and had been treated and was able to return to his pulpit if only for a short while and his sermon on that first Sunday back began with this text from Romans: Yet while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly .He went on to say, I’m physically weak, but that’s not my main weakness, my most debilitating weakness. What the last half year has proved to me is that my weakness is more of the soul than of the body. This is what I’ve come to understand as I have dwelled on one question: How will I explain myself to my God? How can I ever claim to have been what he called me to be? And, of course, the scary truth is that I can’t. That’s the kind of weakness Paul is talking about. And that’s where (this) word comes in, while we were still enemies of God, we were reconciled with him through the death of his son. I find it unfathomable that God’s love propelled him to reach into our world with such scandalous grace, such a way out, such hope. No doubt God has done it, because there’s no hope anywhere else. I know, I’ve been looking. And I have come to see that the hope of the world lies only inside the cradle of God’s grace.

Part of the difficulty with us is that what we want to believe on the outside contradicts what we really believe on the inside. We say the words. We go through the motions but deep inside where we live we believe something else and sometimes we don’t even know of the contradiction within even our own selves. We do what makes sense at the time, what seems to be what everybody else is doing at the time, don’t rock the boat or upset the apple cart, don’t let anybody see I am different, don’t let anybody see my broken heart or my crazy impossible hope. What do we really know of this scandalous grace? How do we dare to speak the unspeakable, the gospel we can hardly believe ourselves? There is something wild and crazy about this gospel. Are these holy riddles (you must lose yourself to find yourself) or actual expectations of God for us?

In the upside down reality of the radical countering of the world’s values by the values of Christ, nonsense becomes a key word for understanding what is going on here. Nonsense makes sense and what makes sense is nonsense. What makes sense to us shapes who we are. How do we make sense of nonsense? The dead rise to life. To win you must lose. To be first you must be last. When you are struck on one cheek you are to turn your other cheek to be struck again. Love those who hate you. Pray for those who hurt you.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

‘To talk of many things:

Of shoes─and ships─and sealing wax─

Of cabbages─and kings─

And why the sea is boiling hot─

And whether pigs have wings.’

In my office hanging from the ceiling I have my own flying pig. The idea of a pig with wings comes from the expression ‘when pigs fly’ which basically means never. I have it there to remind me to never say never. Strange things happen. Life really is what happens when we have made other plans. Faith is just as crazy.

(On the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of the Congregational church in Rupert, Vermont Frederick was called upon to speak. This is part of what he said.) In the year 1831, it seems, this church was repaired and several new additions were made. One of them was a new steeple with a bell in it, and once it was set in place and painted, apparently, an extraordinary event took place. “When the steeple was added,” Howard Mudgett writes in his history, “one agile Lyman Woodard stood on his head in the belfry with his feet toward heaven.” That’s the one and only thing I’ve been able to find out abut Lyman Woodard, whoever he was, but it is enough. I love him for doing what he did. It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of Ne England practicality and prudence. It stood the whole idea that you’re supposed to be nothing but solemn in church on its head just like Lyman himself standing upside down on his. And it was also a magical and magnificent and Mozartian thing to do. (In Christ) everything goes topsy-turvy. Losing becomes finding and crying becomes laughing. The last become first and the weak become strong. Instead of life being done in by death in the end as we always supposed, death is done in finally by life in the end.

How do we dare to believe any of it? We dare, if we go there at all, because that is where life is. It is found in the unknown, the unexpected, in the contradictions and often in what does not make sense until we go there.

Alice laughed, “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Side note: In a letter from Lewis Carrol to Mary MacDonald on May 23, 1864: If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the believing-muscles of your mind, and then you’ll be so weak that you won’t be able to believe the simplest true things. Only last week a friend of mine set to work to believe Jack-the-giant-killer. He managed to do it, but he was so exhausted by it that when I told him it was raining (which was true) he couldn’t believe it, but rushed out in to the street without his hat or umbrella, the consequence of which was his hair got seriously damp.

What do you know about this business?” the King aid to Alice.

“Nothing,” said Alice.

“Nothing whatever?” persisted the king.

“Nothing whatever,” said Alice.

“That’s very important,” the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: “Unimportant, you majesty means of course,” he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.

“Unimportant, of course, I meant,” the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, “important-unimportant-unimportant-important---“ as if he were trying which word sounded best.

So what’s it gonna be for us? Important, unimportant? How seriously crazy are we willing to step outside all the usual expectations for our lives, for our church? Jesus is a loser. He lost everything so we could find God and be found. How much are we willing to lose in order to win heaven? Are we willing to give up everything to receive everything? Are we ready to forgive, to be forgiven, to fall weak and flawed, loved and loving, into the cradle of grace.

Back at the church in Rupert Vermont Buechner concludes with these words: There is plenty of work to be done here, God knows. To struggle each day to walk the paths of righteousness is no pushover, and struggle we must because just as we are fed like sheep in green pastures, we must also feed his sheep, which are each other. Jesus, our Shepherd, tells us that. We must help bear each other’s burdens. We must pray for each other. We must nourish each other, weep with each other, rejoice with each other. Sometimes we must just learn to leave each other alone. In short, we must love each other. We must never forget that. But let us never forget Lyman Woodard either silhouetted up there against the blue Rupert sky. Let us join him in the belfry with our feet toward Heaven like his because Heaven is where we are heading. That is our faith and what better image of faith could there be? It is a little crazy.

Upside-down in the world we are one step closer to heaven. This, by any worldly standard, crazy Jesus says, to hold on, we must let go. The only love we get to keep is the love we give away. Let’s not kid ourselves. This is different. And when this starts making sense to us is when the lost will be found. Up will be down and down will be up and we will finally know what is really going on here.

‘The trouble with the world,’ said the wise old teacher with a sigh,

’is that human beings refuse to grow up.’

‘When can a person be said to have grown up?’ asked the seeker.

‘On the day that she or he does not need to be lied to about anything.’

‘How shall I be free?’ the seeker wanted to know.

‘Find out who has bound you,’ said the teacher.

The learner returned after a week and said, ‘No one has bound me.’

‘Then why ask to be set free?’

In that moment the seeker knew that she was as free as she dared to be.

Do All the Good You Can February 6, 2011

2011-02-06T14:29:00.002-05:00

Do All the Good You Can

February 6, 2011

Do all the good you can

To all the people you can
Whenever you can

Wherever you can

For as long as you can.

-John Wesley

Sometimes it really is that simple. Wesley had the gift occasionally to say things plainly. This is an excellent example. Do all the good you can. If we were wondering what to do, here it is. Do all the good you can.

Apparently, where we pick up the story in Isaiah, the congregation there is wondering what they have to do to get a blessing. They are actually complaining that their fasting on the Sabbath is having no affect. They are doing what they are supposed to do (according to them) and the payoff has been slow in coming. (Fasting was used as a form of prayer to petition God.) They had come to believe that the point of worship and prayer was to get their needs met. So far as they could see they were doing their part but the goods were not being delivered and thus the complaints. Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice? (Isa. 58.3) is their common lament. What is wrong with this picture? I am reminded of the word of Plotinus, the first of the so-called Neo-Platonists who wrote: If a man seeks the good life for any reason outside of itself, it is not the good life that he seeks. It seems that, perhaps, once again the wrong question is being asked. We are trying so hard to get it right. Why does God not bless us? Why, if we are doing as we are told, are we not reaping the benefit? Why do we continue to suffer and fail? What is wrong?

The response to this is revealing. While the people have gone through the motions of what they are supposed to be doing in fact they are not doing anything they are supposed to be doing. The very people who are praying are abusing each other and probably even using their religion to do it. Look you serve your own interest on your fast day . . .you fast only to quarrel and fight . . .(Isa. 58.3-4) I know. It sounds preposterous. How could people use their religion to hurt people? This is not what God wants. Come on! And the message is clear. This is the fast that God wants: don’t give me your phony prayers or your empty rituals unless you give yourselves to others. You cannot love God and hate your neighbor. (This is how prophets go on.) Do not talk the talk unless you walk the walk. (see vs. 6-7) Make your words and your customs consistent with your deeds. (It is amazing when one begins to do what one prays for how real those prayers become.) If you claim to be the people of the good God, then do all the good you can. Do all the good you can. Why not? What other reason is there to be God’s people. What better reason is there to be at all?

In his letter to the Corinthians Paul warns that the message of God is not just the words spoken, however brilliant or wise, but the demonstration of spirit and power. (1 Cor. 2.4) In other words, it is not enough to talk of God’s goodness if that goodness is not expressed by the real presence of God in us. And how does the real presence come to reside in us? It is first of all a gift but the gift comes to life in us when we begin to open our lives to others, when we commit ourselves to contributing to the welfare of all, when we remove our self-interest from the center of our existence and join the interest of all with God at the center drawing us all closer. As we all move toward God we also move closer to each other.

When we receive the gift of the presence of Christ at the Lord’s table, it abides in us when we live it out in our actions, actions that reflect the self-giving love of the One whose presence we seek and receive. We cannot hold on to God’s gift and keep it for our self. It lives in the giving of it. So it is that we receive by giving and the more we give, the more we receive. And so it goes. We do not come to this holy table just to receive God’s gift for ourselves but so that we will take the gift to the world and give it away. We come to the table to receive the life and grace we will need to serve others, to do all the good we can; not just to do what we are supposed to do, just like we have always done it, but because we really believe that Christ is present here and that Christ is good and that we are called to be good and do good in his name and we want to do good because we love Christ and what love can do. When Christ abides in us we do good not as an obligation or to receive our reward, in Christ doing good is like breathing. It is our life. It is who we are. In other words something real is happening here and it is not finished until what we receive is given away in service to others .We are gathered in and fed in order to be sent forth and do all the good we can.

Ah, but what is good? Is that not one of the philosophers favorite questions? Is what is good only subjective? I remember so well when I was a young pastor I was blessed to serve the Community Church of Madrid, Spain as pastor and part of my job was also to serve as chaplain and teacher of ethics at the King’s College, a British prep school for the international community. My first class of very young people had the notion that each person decides what is good for themselves and in fact there was really not any need for a class on ethics. I agreed with them and then announced that I was going to give all of them failing grades. Of course there was a great uproar and they began to cry that wasn’t fair or right and certainly not a good thing and I merely pointed out to them that they had just told me that we could each decide what is good so I decided that what is good for me is that they should all fail my course in ethics. Then the conversation could finally begin. Maybe what is good is a little more involved that just what any one of us thinks is good for us.

As the people of the Holy Spirit we actually have a very good description of how we can know what is good. In the letter to the early church in Galatians the fruits of the Holy Spirit are listed: they are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We can know that what we are doing is good if the fruits of the Spirit are present.

Another way to know what is good is the examples we find in the life around us and in the stories that inform us. On the cover of your bulletin today there is the artist’s rendition of the day Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends came to help Owl when his house was knocked down in the storm. If you look closely you will find that Eeyore is not there. That is because he is out looking for a new house for Owl. The story describes the goodness of the community helping Owl in all the usual ways to recover as we can see in the picture but then it goes deeper. In Eeyore’s wish to help and do good he does find a new house for Owl. Unfortunately it is Piglet’s house.

“I have been told─the news has worked through to my corner of the Forest─the damp bit down on the right which nobody wants─that a certain Person is looking for a house. I have found one for them.”

And so they all go to see what Eeyore has found.

Just the house for Owl. Don’t you think so, little Piglet?”

“Yes, it’s just the house for Owl,” he said grandly. “And I hope he’ll be very happy in it.” And then he gulped twice, because he had been very happy in it himself.

“What do you think Christopher Robin?” asked Eeyore, a little anxiously, feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Christopher Robin had a question to ask first and he was wondering how to ask it.

“Well, he said at last, “it’s a very nice house, and if your own house is blown down you must go somewhere else, mustn’t you Piglet? What would you do if your house was blown down?

Before Piglet could think, Pooh answered for him.

“He’d come and live with me,” said Pooh, “wouldn’t you, Piglet?”

Piglet squeezed his paw.

“Thank you Pooh,” he said, “I should love to.”

Some of you Pooh scholars will know that, ironically, a similar thing had happened to Eeyore earlier when Pooh and Piglet built him a house but unknowingly tore down his old house to do it. Sometimes when we try to do good we cause unplanned harm but goodness just goes on giving. It is the generosity of it that makes the healing possible and it is generosity of spirit and much love and gentleness that will heal us and our world, too. By the grace of God may we do all the good we can to all the people we can whenever we can wherever we can for as long as we can. Thanks be to God.

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Sunday Sermon

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Sunday Sermon

2010-12-19T05:27:00.000-05:00

Joy Is Where We Come From

2010-12-12T13:06:00.004-05:00

12 December 2010

Isaiah 35:1-10

Joy Is Where We Come From

A wise old sage who was asked by a novice what it had felt like to be come enlightened. The answer the old man had given at the time was, “A darn fool.” When the young man asked why, he replied, “Well,” he said, “ it was like going to great pains to break into a house by climbing a ladder and smashing a window and realizing later that the front door was open all the time.”

The images of Isaiah’s vision are of impossibilities. It is impossible for flower gardens to suddenly burst forth from the desert wilderness. As far as I know, flowers can’t sing either. There are no streams in the desert. The desert wilderness is a desert wilderness because there is no water there.

Having said that of course there will be someone who will say that there are flowers in the desert. There is even some water out there if you know where to look. Kathleen Norris wrote in her book Dakota: Once, when I was describing to a friend from Syracuse, New York, a place on the plains that I love, ridge above a glacial moraine with a view of almost fifty miles, she asked, “But what is there to see?” The answer, of course, is nothing.

But of course the answer could just as well have been everything depending on what you are looking for. Deserts are like that too. Some will see nothing, others will see everything there. Never mind. This is not about deserts anyway. Isaiah is a prophet but Isaiah is also a poet. The desert is a metaphor for us, of course. Isaiah doesn’t care whether the desert becomes a flower garden or not. Isaiah doesn’t care if there are streams in the desert. Isaiah wants to see human despair transformed into joy. What words can describe it?

F. Buechner says that joy is what we belong to, it is where we come from in the first place and what we long for until we find it again or more likely it finds us.

He tells of an experience where he was surprised by joy. He and his wife and daughter who was 20 at the time went to Sea World of all places in Orlando Florida. He describes the main attraction and what happened:

The way the show began was that at a given signal they released into the tank five or six killer whales, as we call them (it would be interesting to know what they call us), and no creatures under heaven could have looked less killerlike as they went racing around and around in circles. What with the dazzle of sky and sun, the beautiful young people on the platform, the soft southern air, and the crowds all around us watching the performance with a delight matched only by what seemed the delight of the performing whales, it was if the whole creation – men and women and beasts and sun and water and earth and sky and, for all I know, God himself- was caught up in one great jubilant dance of unimaginable beauty. And then, tight in the midst of it, I was astonished to find that my eyes were filled with tears. When the show was over and I turned to my wife and daughter beside me to tell them what had happened, Their answer was to say that there had been tears also in their eyes.

This might not seem like such a big deal but years later as Buechner tells it, he was at a Preacher’s Conference in Washington where the Dean of Salisbury Cathedral in

England

asked him to take a look at part of a sermon he had just preached a few weeks earlier. The sermon was about how he, the Dean of Salisbury, had gone to Sea World, had watched this extraordinary spectacle in the midst of which he had suddenly discovered tears in his eyes. Buechner had never spoken of his own experience.

Buechner explained it this way: I believe there is no mystery about why we shed tears. We shed tears because we had caught a glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom, and it had almost broken our hearts. For a few moments we had seen Eden and been part of the great dance that goes on at the heart of creation. We shed tears because we were given a glimpse of the way life was created to be and is not. We had seen why it was that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” when the world was first made, as the book of Job describes it, and of what it was that made Saint Paul write, even when he was in prison and on his way to execution. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice.” Buechner goes on: The world is full of darkness, but what I think we caught sight of in that tourist trap in Orlando, Florida, of all places, was that at the heart of darkness – whoever would have believed it? – there is joy unimaginable. The world does bad thing to us all, and we do bad things to the world and to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, but in the dazzle of bright water as the glittering whales hurled themselves into the sun, I believe what we saw was that joy is what we belong to. Joy is home . . .

Joy is where we belong but more often than not we are somewhere else. A few years ago, I went to the place where the story tells it joy came to the world at Christmas. It is a place called Bethlehem. It seemed a very sad place. The joy apparently had come and gone. Joy is under arrest in Bethlehem. There is no peace there in Bethlehem. People are imprisoned in their own homes. The whole town is controlled by heavily armed checkpoints. There is much despair. So much that one hardly dare to even think of joy as a possibility yet this is precisely what Isaiah declares. God will transform the sadness into gladness. All the broken dreams will be made whole again and life will be more than just possible. It will be life again. It will be joy. How so?

When the people of Israel and the people of Palestine (and any other people who are at war with each other for that matter) understand that they need each other and that until they love each other they will never have peace. And when they realize that every time they hurt each other they hurt themselves. Peace will not come by violence, by might or fear. It will only come by love, not only the love that we do to one another but the surprising realization that we really do love each other and we didn’t know it yet. We didn’t know it because we were blinded by everything else that got in the way and made us hate each other. You have heard that an eye for an eye just leaves everyone blind. Still love is more real than hate. Impossible? Ridiculous? I don’t know but if peace is impossible in Bethlehem then Isaiah doesn’t know what he is talking about. And if love is not possible then nothing is possible but death of course which is always possible, more than possible, is, in fact, just always. How does love overcome hate? How does life overcome death? I do not know the whole answer but I know part of it. Love overcomes hatred every time somebody loves somebody, every time somebody does an act of kindness, every time somebody speaks the truth to the lies, every time somebody admits they were wrong and seeks to make it right, every time somebody gives up his own way and listens to another way, every time somebody keeps hoping and working for something better. Every time that fear is overcome and love is offered and everything is risked again and again. Every time we awake to the eternal love and joy that holds the universe, we rise from death. The poet e.e. cummings put in words that only a poet could:

i thank You God for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any─lifted from the no

of all nothing─human merely being

doubt unimaginable you?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Joy is a gift that is at home in our tears as in our laughter. Sometimes we don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Joy, unlike happiness, does not depend on circumstances. Joy comes in the least expected places. It is striking that Paul rejoices in prison waiting for execution and Jesus wants his disciples to know the joy that is in him as he waits in the upper room for the soldiers to come and take him to his terrible death. It could be that somebody is trying to tell us something. (This is more than the words ‘don’t worry, be happy’ could tell us. This is all our happiness and all our sadness together. This is life itself, the life that does not die, the life of eternity, untellable light, lighting the very light, joy. ) Joy is present when our heart is broken and when our heart is healed. Joy is present in the ordinary time of everyday, perhaps the least expected place of all. Joy overwhelms fear and sees what is good and what is possible and what is real. Joy sees what the eye cannot see and hears what the ear cannot hear. Even in Bethlehem where the horror is very real there is another reality. It is the love that was born there and is there and will always be there as long as there is a there there. Joy sustains us through the worst of times. It is a surprising confidence in the midst of tragedy that all is not lost after all that there is an abiding presence that holds us whether we live or whether we die and it is a presence that is love but a love that cannot be described with the overused word love. It is like coming home to a place we had forgotten if we ever knew it yet is instantly recognized for what it is when we find it or more likely it finds us.

It is ironic perhaps that I mention two tourist destinations this morning, one representing the experience of despair and the other an experience of joy. It is a further irony that the experience could easily be reversed. It is not unheard of to experience despair in Orlando or joy in Bethlehem. Between and encompassing them both stretches a great desert wilderness. It is the desert of the human soul crying out for meaning and for salvation. How is it that we have become a world of such sadness and horror? Where is the way back? Where have all the flowers gone? Could Isaiah be right? There is joy for us. The desert will blossom and sing. Maybe the desert was the Garden of Eden all along we just couldn’t see it and maybe the flowers can sing, we just can’t hear them. Maybe there is hope for us when we don’t give up hoping. Maybe love is still possible when we are willing to go on loving. Maybe there really will be peace on earth when we continue to work for peace on earth. Maybe there will be justice when we are just. Maybe there will be forgiveness when we forgive. Maybe the impossible will be possible after all.

Lucy says to Charlie Brown: “Merry Christmas! At this time of year I think we should put aside all our differences and try to be kind.

Charlie Brown asks her, “Why does it have to be for just this time of year? Why can’t it be all year round?

To which, Lucy replies, “What are you, some kind of fanatic or something?

Relax, Lucy. We don’t have to be fanatics. The world has enough of those already. Joy will surprise us wherever we are whether we are successful and highly effective human being or a bumbling failure without a clue about what we are doing here, whether we are doing everything right or can’t seem to get anything right, whether we are feeling good or bad, happy or sad, whether we are cheerful or grouchy, strong or weak, and one day or night when we least expect it a tear will come to our eyes and before we can stop ourselves the joy will come and we will know it and we will know who we are. (Hey, it could happen.)

There is joy at the heart of God and it is where we are from and where we are going. It is where we belong. The front door is always open. Even the flowers of the desert are singing for joy. Can you hear them?

The Song that never stops singing

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The Song that never stops singing isaiah 11.1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12 Advent 2 )A) 2010

We hear it in Isaiah: The wolf shall live with the lamb . . .

We hear it in Romans: May the God of hope fill you with joy . . .

We even hear it in the angry words of John the Baptiser: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

It is the song that never stops singing. The words change, even slip away, but the song goes on not unlike the humming of a certain bear. You know you must be near the truth of something when TS Eliot and Winnie the Pooh intersect.

Words, the poet says, strain,

crack, and sometime break, under the burden,

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

Will not stay still.

Tra-la-la, tra-la-la

Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,

Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum,

Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,

Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um. says Pooh Bear.

In a more coherent moment, it was also Pooh Bear who said, Humms are not something you get they are something that gets you. Or something like that. I sometimes wonder if hope is like that though this business of hope is more complicated and probably more simple than one might think at first.

The rest of the famous poem by Emily Dickinson says:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so may warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land.

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Is it something that we create or is it something that creates us? Is it something we get or is it something that gets us? What is the source of our hope? Is this our song or is it simply the song that we sing; cannot help but sing? And what happens when hope is gone if it is ever gone? Is it not like breath itself? How do we go on living without at least the barest, minimal, unrecognized hope? What does it ask of us?

In Isaiah the hope is fantastic: they will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain, says the Lord. It asks us to dream.

In Matthew it is more basic: the hope is that we can change; that the kingdom is near; despite the bad news, God is always near and we can always change. Repent simply means change your ways and saying it out loud might mean that it can be done. It asks us to change. It asks us to believe that we can change.

For Isaiah's vision to be completed, Matthew's hope must also be true for there will have to be a whole lot of changing going on before we do not hurt or destroy or learn war anymore.

Is this something that just happens or do we make it happen? I think it is fair to say that we will have to be responsible for changing ourselves but it may also be true that something other than ourselves may have to convince us to change ourselves and we may have to wait for the world to change even if we are changed. And even if the world is not changed by our efforts we are changed and, being changed, we may be surprised how things will change.

So what is our hope? One thing it might be is the simple revelation that things do change. I saw the beautiful tribute to George Harrison on public television this week. The song, "All things Must Pass Away", struck me oddly enough this time as an expression of hope. In the sadness of George's absence there was also the joy of his presence in the music and among his friends and family and fans. Nothing is permanent on this planet, in history, in our lives. At first we might think this is sad because what is good and beautiful passes away but then it occurs to me that what is evil and cruel and mean also passes away. There was another learning as I noticed George's son Danny playing guitar with the others. He looks just like his father did when he (and I more or less) were Danny's age now nearly 40 years ago. It was one of those times when the passing of time hit me right between the eyes. It made me sad because life as we know it ends and it made me glad because life goes on. George died but the music goes on and not just the songs he wrote and performed but the hope created in people coming together to dream and to celebrate love and the spirit that cannot be named that brings us together and connects us beyond our isolated circumstances binding the living in the hopes and dreams of every soul for something more than any words can say. My Sweet Lord, I really want to know you . . . Give me hope, help me cope, give me peace on earth . . .

Another thing that our hope might be is that if we can dream of something there might be something to it not so much that it will come true but that it could and that whether it does or not it is in fact true. The dream is true because we can dream it. The truth Buechner once wrote, is what sets us wishing for it. (Wishful Thinking)

But hope is more than the simple fact that things change and more than the fantastic dreams of peace on God's holy mountain. Hope is the air we breathe while we sleep that allows us to rise for another day. It may be as simple as the hope that on this day we will enjoy a cup of coffee or conversation with a friend, that we might have something to make us glad, that we might feel something that reminds us we are alive. It might as unsimple as the hope that this very day peace and justice will break out all over the world and people everywhere will finally recognize themselves in each other and there will be love and harmony on God's holy mountain. Hope is what keeps us alive, looking forward, reaching out, doing our best. It is what keeps us going. It may not add up to a long list of great accomplishments or successes that anyone would notice but it may be enough just knowing that we are showing up again and refusing to give in to bitterness or despair or cynicism and taking another step forward with all that is glad in us and with all that is sad in us, doing what we can do to bring the peaceable kingdom, the dream of God's prophets, the hope of humankind; to bring God's new creation into being one sweet note at a time. This may not sound like much given all that is before us and if we do not take actions based on our hopes it may well be less than not much. Hope cannot replace what we fail to do but it will give us a reason to keep on failing until we get it right. Hope is like the struggle for justice - it is the winning that is never won and the losing that is never lost. The struggle itself, the hope that it matters, is itself a victory of the human spirit. It has been said that one of our primary tasks as a church is to keep hope alive (apologies to Jesse Jackson) but in fact it is really the other way around, it is hope that keeps us alive.

The song that never stops singing will carry us. It will not let us stop either. How does it go?

Tra-la-la, tra-la-la

Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,

Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum,

Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,

Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um.

Bless your hearts. I will not ask you to hope for you can no more stop hoping than you can stop breathing if for nothing else than that this sermon will end. We are always looking forward to what is next, to who we will meet, to what will happen, to all the love that may surprise us with how it has grown when we meet again, to what might really be possible when our dreams come true, when everything we hoped for we also live for; when justice is not just something we hope for but something we do everyday. Hope is not just what we want or wish for but who we are. The song that never stops singing is the hum of God enlivening God's people with the will and the heart to change a world that never changes, to make right what is wrong, to bring peace where peace is not, and to never stop at all.

Hope is what is best in the human spirit. It wants to engage the adventure, to live fully the life God has given us to live.

What Will Be That Is Not Yet

2010-11-28T11:53:00.003-05:00

What Will Be That Is Not Yet

November 28, 2010

Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

The words of the prophet Isaiah are a vision, a word seen by the prophet, an act of the imagination that looks beyond the present reality through the eyes of God, to see what will be that is not yet. What will be that is not yet.

This word, a vision of the greatness of Jerusalem as the place where the world comes together to make all things right again would have been surprising for those who heard it first for Jerusalem at that time was marginal and vulnerable and at the mercy of more powerful states around them at the time. They were not a great city in any sense except of course in their own minds. Their influence in the affairs of the world was non-existent. They were marginal at best in the affairs of the world and vulnerable to the whims of those around them. In other words, what the prophet imagines is in sharp contrast to what actually existed on the ground. The prophet imagines a Jerusalem where the rest of the world will come but not because the Jerusalem of the moment, a Jerusalem of nationalistic fervor and self-serving religion, a culture of arrogance really, the worst kind of arrogance, based on false pretenses, has finally been triumphant but rather because Jerusalem repents and returns to God and perhaps even more to the point, God returns to Jerusalem. When God’s presence is back in the house, the nations will come not because it is Jerusalem but because of the presence of God and not just to worship God but to fulfill God’s purpose of radical peace, not just the end of violence and war, but the creation of something completely different, of a peacetime economy where weapons are not simply destroyed and unused but are remade into plowshares and other useful tools for the transformation of battlegrounds to fertile gardens. This is powerful imagery, the transformation of the weapons of destruction for the tools of cultivation, of destruction to construction, a vision that promises what seems unlikely but which is also not outside what the human imagination can describe. Why not? Why not a world of peace and prosperity for all? Why not, indeed?

Most people whether they live now or 2500 years ago don’t like to hear this but the way of peace begins with our own repentance. That is to say that peace can only happen when we change our attitudes and our actions from the well established patterns of division and violence and revenge to a new way of relating to each other, a way restrained by the obligations of love and God’s justice and mercy, the way of peace. Repentance means turning away from that which destroys and separates and seeks only its own interests against all others and turning toward God who calls all peoples to come together and find ways to live where there is mutual concern, for every created living thing of God is sacred and holy. The way of peace is the way of humility and sacrifice and forgiveness. It is not the easy way or even the natural way. The way of peace must be learned and courage and sacrifice will be needed to go there and to abide there. In the vision of the prophet it is what will be that is not yet. Shalom, a vision where people seek ways to reconcile their differences and benefit each other with a deep and mutual concern.

The prophets vision is from God who comes to make things right again. It is the message of Advent that God is coming and what is not yet realized will one day be. And while we wait we are to live into the promise. Advent calls us to wait for what is coming but the waiting is not passive. There are things to be done, preparations to be made. We are to stay awake. We are to watch and be ready.

This reading in Matthew today seems at first hearing to contradict the words that say that God is always merciful and kind but it seems to me that this description not so much about what God will do but what we will do. This is a description of the world without peace, a world where random violence picks off some and leaves others unharmed. There is seemingly no justice, no reasonable explanation for anything important. To stay awake it seems to me, could be a way of calling us to practice peace where there is no peace. We don’t know how this will end and this is one of two things in this passage that are important to hear. No one knows what will happen in the end and whatever happens will be a surprise. This is important because it guards against arrogance and manipulation. The point is not that the end is coming but that there is an end and we are not there yet and in the meantime, the time of now, and what we are about now is what matters most. To be awake is to be intentional about practicing peace, to already be what is not yet. The vision of what will be that is not yet is a call to bring the not yet to be by living it out even in the context of something completely other. This is how vision enables faith. There is a vision of shalom, of an entire peace, not a forced peace but a peace of the heart that actually desires the well being of all others at least as much as one’s own well being and this vision which is not yet fulfilled can be practiced even now.

A couple of years ago the Masssachusetts Council of Churches came out with a practical list of ways we can practice peace even if there is no peace. I really believe that we become what we practice. In any case, here is what they came up with:

Lift up common values. Can we look into the face of our enemies and see ourselves?

Do not demonize the Other. Naming those who oppose us as evil is the best way to end any hope of the conversation that might led to understanding. It is also much easier to commit violent and horrific acts against those we have dehumanized.

Avoid prejudicial stereotyping. Only the truth will set us free. Prejudice and stereotyping keep us enslaved in ignorance and lies.

Pray for enemies. God’s people, the people of the vision, of the not yet, seek not to destroy but to heal and reconcile.

Promote justice. Justice is the restoration of right relationships both with God and with one another whether it be personal, religious, political, or economic. Remember God comes to make things right. There is no peace, no shalom without a deep and abiding and lasting justice.

Resist revenge. Revenge is not justice. Justice is not revenge.

Affirm that just ends are reached by just means. The practice of peace is the way to peace. Missiles are not peacekeepers no matter what we call them and torture is an abomination, an affront to God for it harms not only the victim but the perpetrator. Doing good at any level requires also doing no harm.

Adhere to moral principles. We must insist that those in power tell us the truth, the first and most basic moral principle of all, and that we be not afraid to speak the truth to power.

Support critical self-reflection. Truth passes through confession first. Humility puts us in the right place before God. Humility is the truth. “The root of all disturbance, if one will go to its source, is that no one will blame himself.” (Dorotheus of Gaza, 6^th century)

This one is crucial. Even committed peacemakers can become too full of themselves.

Protect the innocent. Crimes against humanity do not justify crimes against humanity.

Avoid double standards. How can we as a people expect others not to have nuclear weapons if we have them ourselves? How can we expect the world to disarm if we are producing and selling the arms? Do not expect anyone to do what you won’t doyourself.

Stay grounded in the peace of God. The peace that se seek is not the peace that the world gives but the peace that only God can give. It is not the peace of the democrats or the republicans or the green party but the peace of God, the ‘what will be that is not yet’ but when it is ‘what will be’ will be more than any one part but will include the whole. Shalom.

Affirm that peacemaking is a process, a way of being and not just a final goal. We become what we practice. A wise man was once asked what is the way to peace and his answer was simply, “Peace is the way.”

Be active in the pursuit of peace. Peace is not the absence of struggle but the presence of love. Love is something we do. Love is self-giving. The practice of peace will challenge us to make sacrifices. Poverty is a major impediment to peace. How can our lifestyle benefit or harm the world’s poor? Peace is not just what we want but what we do, how we live. It is also true that we will need to be brave, peacemakers are vulnerable and peacemaking is dangerous. We should not be naïve. Peace and love will always be resisted by those who profit form their absence. Sin is alive and well in our world and in our hearts. We know it is true. Often it is what we have left undone as much as what we have done that separates us from the purpose of God to heal and reconcile the world. Sometimes we don’t know what to do or who to believe and it is good that we test and examine everything and not fall into the trap of arrogance that always claims to be right whether we know what we are talking about or not. This vision is not happening quickly from our point of view. The not yet is a long time. So long that we have been known to ask, how long, O Lord?

I am reminded of the time Christopher Robin organized an expedition to find the North Pole. No one knew where it was or even what it was they were looking for and there was much confusion and chaos along the way but when Pooh found it they all knew it (except Pooh himself of course which is perfect) because Pooh found a long pole that he used to save little Roo from drowning and whatever it was they thought it would be or wherever they thought they would find it, they knew that it was what saved them. Our journey in the not yet is not so unlike that. Sometimes in the name of peace we who want peace hurt each other and we don’t really know what it looks like or where it is but we will know when we see it because it will save us. God will save us from ourselves. What will be that is not yet is coming nonetheless and we have only to practice peace while we wait being careful to get ourselves out of the way of what love can do if whatever we do, we do for love. The vision of the prophet is clear. It is what will be that is not yet: they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. This is the Word of God. So be it. What Will Be That Is Not Yet . . . Is Coming. SHALOM. Peace be with you in this Advent.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

2010-11-21T17:12:00.001-05:00

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

It has happened to me. I have this memory of Liz and I on her motorcycle when we were students in Spain riding slowly along in an early morning fog in the mountains south of Castilla on our way to Andalucia and Morocco when suddenly, without warning, we rode out of the fog into the brightest, clearest, blue-sky, sunshine morning since the creation. Wow! My memories of the details have faded, but my memory of the moment of clarity, when the fog was so gone it was as if it had never been, and the light was so brilliant it seemed to me to come from within my very soul to light the whole universe. Or, perhaps, it was the light of the whole universe that had entered my soul for that one moment in time or, perhaps it was a moment out of time, a glimpse of the reality that time is only a very crude attempt to make sense of. Who can say? But there it was. A clear day. A beautiful day in time. A wild, joyous sense of the presence of life and its possibilities or of something that there are no words to describe. Have you ever driven out of a fog into brilliant sunlight? That is what this word in Paul’s letter to the Philippians is like for me. Out of the dense fog of Paul’s heavy theology comes this bright and shining and simple word of light and joy: “Don’t worry, be happy.”

Don’t worry, be happy. Sounds like a good name for a song but how serious can it be for life in the world we have made for ourselves. And how is it that Paul who was in prison when he wrote these words could know anything about joy in the midst of his own very real suffering and after all that he had given up. He was a man you may know who enjoyed much prestige and privilege and power n his time before Jesus came into his life. He gave it all up for this joy he talks about . Rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always. Don’t worry, be happy.

Don’t worry, be happy. He had seen it. He had seen what the woman without a name in the story by Patricia Hampl had, the thing, if she had the words, she would tell, but which she tells anyway with her eyes that look right at you and with her smile which is described in the story this way: It was such a complete smile, so entire, it startled me every time, as if I’d heard my name called out on the street of a foreign city. As if I had heard my name called out on the street of a foreign city. Think about that for a moment. Don’t let that word get away without hearing it. As if I heard my name called out on the street of a foreign city. Oh yes. What did Paul say? The Lord is near. Just when we thought we were all alone in the universe and there was no one who knows where we are, who knows our name, we catch a glimpse of the truth─that there is one from who we are never unknown or forgotten or overlooked, one who holds us through it all, one who could make us think if only for a moment that there really is nothing to worry about after all. This is serious stuff. It is not delusionary or escapism but something substantial that changes how we see things like the man in hospice care who also had it and while people all around him were afraid and even angry to see their bodies failing and death coming he had that smile and peace that you can see and when asked about it he said that for him it was not so much that he was losing his physical self but that as he was being emptied of his physical life he was being filled with the light of eternity. He had a glimpse of what was coming. This glimpse is the something that gave the woman in the story and Paul in prison the joy the overcomes anything and everything, that wells up inside of us until we cannot help but smile, rejoice, cry out at the beauty of it all as if we suddenly were to come out of the fog and see the light that we knew was there but were seeing it for the first time for what it most truly is.

Frederick Buechner who has spent a lifetime writing the truth so that we can all understand it wrote the truth about us when he said that asking someone to stop worrying was like telling a woman with a head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. In other words, it is not so easy. It almost feels like we couldn’t stop worrying even if we knew how. Is it really even possible to stop worrying? Lord knows there is enough to worry about. Bad things happen and often without any warning or anyway to predict or control, random and cruel. Those of us who have suffered such pain already know how bad it can be and assume that if it happened once it will happen again and those of us who have been relatively lucky so far think that our turn is coming as if there were an unspoken reality that says it is only a matter of time before the other shoe falls and suffering befalls us as well. We know too much. We re wired into the world that never stops telling us all the horrors that are happening every day relentlessly reminding us of all that could and probably will go wrong.. Why wouldn’t we worry?

It was no accident that Jesus’ suffering preceded his resurrection or that Buddhism posits the first of the four great truths that all life is suffering. Sorrow, loss, pain, death await us all and those we love. Paul knew this as well as anybody. As Buechner put it one time, Paul has good reason to be anxious about everything.” And yet it is he who says do not be anxious about anything. He does not promise that there will not be a reason to worry or that there will not be suffering or that the worst things that could happen will not happen to us. No, he has something else to say and that is that there is something else somehow more powerful than the worst that can happen and it is something called the peace of God which as far as words go is about all you can say for how can we speak the unspeakable. The best we can do is the woman in the story and Paul in prison and the man in hospice and what they had that they would tell, would sing if they had any words for the light in their eyes and heart.

Jesus called it the bread of life. Paul tried to tell us how to receive it. He tells us to stop thinking of the worst and start thinking of the best. And do these things: Live and speak the truth. Be just and fair. Be gentle and kind. Desire what is good. Celebrate what is excellent. Praise what is beautiful. Instead of lamenting what we do not have, give thanks for what we do have. Do we need to be told these things? Have we already forgotten what we could not yet have even known? Paul’s is a cry to steadfast courage. Yes, it requires courage to be happy and a radical faith in the promises of God. To be happy is an act of bravery in the real world. Had we considered that? To be happy is a radical resisting of the blows of the universe that wear us all down until we just give up but we will not give up because we believe (when they asked Jesus what they had to do he simply told them to believe the one God has sent to tell us and if we think that believing such a thing will be easy we will discover that with each passing day there is nothing easy about this) but we will not give up because we believe that God is present and where God is present there is joy. There is joy. It is real. It is the light of every new day. It is joy that Paul wishes for us. We let things get in the way but the joy is here for us too when we open our eyes and our hearts to see it, when we believe the one God sent to save us. Unlike the so-called Christianity that seems to draw its life from the fear that someone somewhere might be having a good time, Paul’s bright and shiny and surprising word is that a good time is exactly what life in Christ is to be and a good time is only a small approximation of what it is.

Do you remember when Pooh and Piglet went hunting woozles? It was a snowy day and Pooh was walking aimlessly around a group of trees and when he had gone full circle he noticed that there were tracks in the snow and he decided to follow them where Piglet found him and he explained to Piglet that he was hunting woozles and piglet went along of course and before you know it there were more tracks and some of them were different, possibly wizzles, and after awhile they both were getting more and more worried and eventually talked themselves into being scared that woozles and or wizzles may have Hostile Intent and who knows where this might have led if Christopher Robin had not come along and pointed out to them that they were following their own silly tracks around and around and around again.

This is great example of what gets in the way of the gifts of God to the people of God, the joy of being alive together, living faithfully in a challenging world. When we spend our time hunting woozles we are creating problems that don’t need to be at all and are distracting us from the real problems which are plenty enough but which are themselves no match for those who don’t shrink from the real suffering of life in this world and who also believe that Christ’s life redeems all suffering now and forever and that when we walk in his way we, like him, shall overcome the world and every woe. Don’t worry, be happy is a confession of faith and a reminder that we don’t have to let life get us down, we could in fact give thanks for every breath of life we have received because in the practice of gratefulness we may well be given a glimpse of that joy which is the truest expression of the reality that trumps every other reality, the love of God for this wonderful world and for this beautiful people that you truly are.

Remember that ancient word out of Deuteronomy that speaks not just of history but of the poetry of the human journey through God’s creation from the beginning unto this very day: The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm . . . we are a people who are being saved. There is light shining. May it shine in us and through us. It’s Ok to be happy and not worry so much. And even if we are not there yet, don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. And don’t be so hard on yourself, either, or on each other. God is near, as near as the next breath you take, as near as the next time you open your eyes and see the light shining.

Learning to Trust

2010-11-14T08:52:00.003-05:00

Learning to Trust

Isaiah 65: 17-25, Luke 21:5-19

I don't like the way things are going in the world today but I am learning to trust God. Admittedly, I am learning to trust God the hard way. Who knew that trust could grow from despair? I am, quite frankly, losing hope that human beings can live in peace and create a world that is safe and blessed for everyone. As my despair for human achievement grows my trust in God grows even more. Oddly enough this does not mean that I would turn away from the world but rather that I am given new courage to face the world as it is and to understand that my part is not to save the world but to be faithful to the One who is saving the world. With so much sadness and fear, disharmony and untruth, violence and hatred about, it is tempting to just give up and forget about it but there is another way to cope, to live, to be faithful.

One of the desert fathers told this story to a young brother who was so behind in his work and prayers that he despaired of ever catching up and considered just quitting altogether. This is how the story goes:

A man had a plot of land that had become a wilderness of thistles and thorns. He decided to cultivate it and said to his son: "Go and clear the land." But when the son went to clear it, he saw that the thistles and thorns had multiplied. He thought, "How much time shall I need to clear and weed all this?" and lay on the ground instead, and went to sleep. He did this day after day. When his father found him doing nothing, the son explained his discouragement. The father replied, "Son, if you had cleared each day the area on which you lay down, your work would have advanced slowly and you would not have lost heart." The son did what his father said, and in a short time the plot was cultivated.

I am learning to trust God. I suppose some would think that trust is based on something tangible, something proven but this trust that is growing in me is nothing more than a promise, an outrageous promise at that. When the prophetic voice recorded in Isaiah 65 states joyously that God will create a new heaven and new earth and that there will be peace and love everywhere and no one will harm anyone else on God's holy mountain it was a voice that was speaking to people who knew little of joy. They were the ones who some fifty years before returned from exile to rebuild Jerusalem but still Jerusalem was nothing like it was in the glory days. Life was hard and there were powerful, sad memories. Infant mortality and premature death, war and the destruction of homes, possessions lost after a lifetime of work, the very things that the prophet now claims will be no more.

It would be easy to dismiss these words as just wishful thinking, a way to cope with a terrible time by simply pretending that it will all be worth it one day for somebody if not oneself but that would be to miss the point entirely of what it means to trust God and the joy that resonates in the words of this prophetic voice for now and not just someday. For this voice speaks of the belief that God (despite the evidence) is in charge and that all things will ultimately be shaped by God's loving will and in the meantime God is with us for the journey to the promised land.

So why is it taking so long? I don't know. All I know is that as I am slowly relieved of everything I have depended upon; that a powerful trust in God is growing in me; and that the less I can depend upon myself the more I can trust God. I think it must not be unlike what Chesterton said about why angels can fly: Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. I read somewhere that baby eagles learn to fly by being dropped in mid-air and there is nothing left to hold them or to hang on to. They discover their wings and fly.

It is God who gives us wings to fly. I know that's crazy (we don’t have wings and we never will) but sometimes it is my experience anyway that metaphors are more real than facts. And we will need those wings for even though it is in God that we place our trust it is in our own lives that God will create the peaceable kingdom. It is not our part to see or to build the whole thing but it is our part to do and be our part. It is tempting to think that the little things will mean nothing before the systemic problems of humankind but the truth is, I believe, that even though the little things can be done without seeing big changes, no big changes will happen without the little things. It is not for us to clear the earth in one mighty swath but rather it is for us to clear the ground we walk on, one act of kindness, of justice, of peace at a time. And we are encouraged not discouraged by the overwhelming sense of disaster all around us because we know in our hearts that God is the future and that God is good and that nothing good is ever lost to God. How can it be otherwise? Either we believe that God made all that is and loves what has been made; was there at the beginning and will therefore be there at the end or we don't believe it. Someone once said to me what seemed a reasonable enough question one time. The question was: How can you believe in God? My answer was also, I think, reasonable (and a revelation to me), though it was in the form of a question as well. I said, How can you not believe in God?

I am learning to trust God. It is, I believe, the truest way of the human spirit because as we learn to trust God we are also learning about who we really are and what our hope and joy really is. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Swarz collaborated on a word that expresses this human spirit infused by a growing trust in God. They wrote

when the thunder rumbles

Now the Age of God is dead

And the dreams we've clung to dying to stay young

Have left us parched and old instead

when my spirit falters on decaying alters

And my illusions fail,

O go on right then

I go on again.

I go on to say

I will celebrate again another day

I go on

If tomorrow tumbles

and everything I love is gone

I will face regret

All my days, and yet

I will still go on . . .on

To say that human life on earth is a challenge is not sufficient. It is an on-going struggle simply to go on living with something to hope for. What I am learning is that all the things I hoped for were illusions. Even love (which for me is at the heart of the meaning of life itself) is suspect. Do you remember that beautiful song by Joni Mitchell?

I've looked at love from both sides now,

From give and take, and still somehow,

It's love's illusions I recall

I really don't know love at all.

Even TS Eliot's words begin to make sense to me:

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope

For hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. (East Coker, Four Quartets)

It turns out that trusting God is the only thing that is real. It is hope and love that is more than hope and love. It is the hope that still remains in hopelessness, the song that never stops singing whether we still hear it or not, the love that is present when we have lost everything we love. It is waiting. It is an expectation. It is endurance. By your endurance, Jesus said, you will gain your souls. (Lk 21.19) Of course you can't just take my word for it because trusting God is not something you can do until you do it yourself. And I am not even sure that I can even do that until I simply can no longer not do it. As long as there was something else I could hope for or love or depend upon I could turn away from this waiting for God but I can no longer turn away from the waiting. I am learning to trust God.

I wanted to change the world but now I only want to know the God who is changing the world even now, creating a new heaven and new earth a peaceable kingdom in my heart and in the world that I cannot begin to see and can only just barely believe. The wars and earthquakes and famines and plagues will have their time on earth but then they will be gone and God will remain. There will be a day when there will not be a brick left of this beautiful Church in which we stand this day but there will never be a day when God is not present and standing with us. Our own lives and the lives of those we love will come and they will go and in the coming and in the going God will be there. We may never know what God can and will do but if we learn to trust God we might just be a part of what God is already doing.

I am learning to trust God. I am learning to trust what I cannot see; what I dare not hope for; what I may never know. Thus saith the Lord: Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain. (Isaiah 65.24,25) Therefore be not afraid or discouraged but let us live faithfully our part in God's future that is already present in the hearts of those who are learning to trust God.

October31

2010-10-31T11:22:00.003-04:00

Whose Unworthiness is Most Worthy? (only love can break your heart)

2010-10-24T15:14:00.001-04:00

Whose Unworthiness is Most Worthy? (only love can break your heart)

Luke 18:9-14; Joel 2:23-29

There is the story of two holy men who fall to their knees in the front of the church crying out to God, saying, “I have sinned. I am unworthy. I am unworthy.” Just then a man who had come in off the street looking for a handout saw them and observing their display of piety joined them in their refrain: “I have sinned. I am not worthy. I am not worthy,” he cried. To which one of the holy men turns to the other and sneers, “Now look who thinks he’s unworthy!”

It reminds me of the great truth and paradox of humility. As soon as you think you are humble you aren’t humble anymore. Why is this important? We don’t think much about humility in our self-absorbed culture but in fact for those of us who want to know the heart of God humility is essential. We won’t get there without it. It was the first of the beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To reverse this saying we could say that those who are not humble will not know the kingdom of heaven. It is that important. What is humility? From the Wisdom of the Desert, the little book by Thomas Merton, Abbot Pastor is quoted as saying: “A man must breathe humility and the fear of God just as ceaselessly as he inhales and exhales the air.”

We learn how to breathe by breathing. Likewise we learn humility by practicing humility. Humility begins with what the Bible calls the fear of God which simply means a profound and serious respect for the God who created life and made relationship possible and who holds life in the mysterious embrace that passes all of our understanding. In short it begins with the belief or even the hope that God is real and we need to seek God to know what is real and who we are. In the presence of God humility is generous, merciful, non-judgmental, open, and not defensive. In Thomas Merton’s Wisdom of the Desert one of the elders was asked what is humility, and he said: If you forgive a brother who has injured you before he himself asks pardon. Humility is real when it becomes like breathing, unconsciously who we are, a state of mercy and love that rises in our heart as naturally as the sun rising on the new day.

Knowing ourselves, truly knowing ourselves, by that I mean knowing our condition as the finite, temporary, vulnerable and unperfected beings we are, we know how much we need mercy and forgiveness. We also know that love is possible because we are born longing for love. It is to know what we are not, as well, that we are not God and that we do not know what God knows nor do we have the wisdom to judge others as God in mercy and grace will do. (This may be, by the way, the most compelling reason for the existence of God – someone who knows what we do not know implying that we, you and I and every other human on earth since the beginning of time and forever, does not and will not know what we need to know without God.) (Do I need to remind you of the damage human arrogance has done in the history of the world and ironically and most tragically the human arrogance that claims even to know the mind of God?) In short it is the knowledge that we need God, the God who is, not the God we invent for ourselves when we tire of not having all the answers easily before us. (I am reminded of the experience of Annie Dillard when she wrote: It was as if God had said, “I am here, but not as you have known me.” The fear of God includes not being so quick to assume that we know who God is. Humility is also the knowing of who we are in relationship to everybody and everything else God has made. It is the realization that we are no better and no worse than any other person carrying within us the desire to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Knowing our need for mercy, we are ourselves, merciful to others. We no longer see each other as unequal adversaries or threats but as fellow travelers, flawed, and in need of God as much as everyone else. Not only do we need God but we need each other. We stop keeping score. Humility does not keep score.

I don’t know if it is what Jesus intended but there may be some irony in his simple little test of humility in the gospel reading for today. After all we still take the bait when Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector at prayer. It is one of those stories designed to make us choose who we are in the story. Are we the Pharisee or the tax collector? Some of us have been around a while and we have heard this story before and we are sophisticated enough to know that the Pharisee is often the illustration of what it means to be a hypocrite, to have the form and appearance of religion down but to have misplaced the essential heart of religion, the grace and mercy and humility, and replaced them with a new game where those with the highest score are the most righteous and therefore the most worthy.

Those of us in the know are also well aware that the Tax Collector is the despised and corrupt, pathetic creature who cheats his own people and sells out to the oppressors in doing so. Furthermore we know enough about the Jesus sayings to know that Jesus often chooses the most despised as the example for what is truly righteous shattering the common wisdom’s rules of engagement and scorekeeping every time. For what is Jesus saying if he is not saying that in this case it is not the worthy Pharisee who is most worthy but the unworthy Tax Collector who is most worthy and he is most worthy because he is aware of his unworthiness. This is what the Pharisees have missed somehow, their own unworthiness, because in the game that keeps score they are the winners not the losers.

But I wonder. Is it so simple? Could it also not be true that the Pharisees are well aware of their unworthiness, so aware in fact that they have buried it deep, so deep that they may have forgotten their whole game is founded on fear, the unhealthy fear that they are unworthy and need the assurance that they are worthy just like everybody else but have found a way to assure themselves that they are worthy, more worthy than others because surely if there is someone who is less worthy, we are then more worthy by simple logic. You can just do the math.

And the tax collector, who may escape our scrutiny because he is so pathetic and does seem genuinely sorry for what he has done, did you notice that there is no indication in this story that he going to actually change his ways after this heartfelt confession. Remember Zaccheus? He was a tax collector, too. He actually made reparations. There is no reason to believe that is what is going to happen here. It would not be easy for the tax collector to change because he is getting rich as a tax collector. It may be his only chance to get rich. If he is not the tax collector someone else will do it and he will be the one getting cheated rather than doing the cheating.

I am reminded of that other brilliant word from Jesus, the one where Jesus asks is it better to say you will do the right thing and then not do it or to refuse to do the right then and then do it after all?

Maybe there is more to this than just choosing between the Pharisees who make excellent church members by the way because they do what they are supposed to do - they tithe, they attend worship, they pray whether they mean it or not or even know what it means, they play by the rules, (unfortunately sometimes, in keeping score, hurting each other, but we are used to that in church by now, aren’t we?) or choosing the tax collector who has done all the wrong things, who has hurt many by his actions, who stays away from the worshiping community for any number of reasons, who cannot be trusted, and is now sorry. Indeed his heart is broken. Perhaps there is more hope for him but who knows? Perhaps the choice is a choice between a heart as hard as stone or one that has been shattered into pieces. And what kind of choice is that?

Or maybe Jesus had a bigger and deeper message than a simple choice. Maybe this is about the fact that no matter how we each act it out we are all victims of the felt need to justify our existence, to prove our worth. We fear our unworthiness which we suspect is a deal breaker. Having read many papers of those coming for ordination who are trying to convince me of their worthiness, I can tell you that it is rare when someone writes of their unworthiness which is understandable given the situation, but when they do, I take notice, because it seems to me, after all these years, that until we know our unworthiness we can never know our true worth and we don’t usually go there until we can trust God enough to love us as we really are in all our glorious unworthiness. Only love can break our hearts. Only when we know we are loved will we dare to let our hearts be broken so that they can finally be healed. It is one thing to claim and pretend worthiness by our own games. It is quite another to experience the worthiness of God’s gracious and merciful love. Only then are we really free to love one another, perhaps because only then do we know what love is.

Humility is to know who we are, yes, our flaws and failures fully revealed, but it also to know that who we are is loved by God and always has been and always will be. Love is what makes the unworthy worthy. Whose unworthiness is most worthy then?

They whose unworthiness is most worthy are those who trust that they are loved for who they are and are now ready to become who they will be. In short all those who have surrendered their good works and their misdeeds, all their perceived worthiness and unworthiness, all their success and failure, all their gains and losses, to God’s love and grace and seek nothing more than to love God and God’s creation in each new day come what may.

Whether we come full of ourselves like the Pharisee in this story and need to be emptied or empty like the tax collector and need to be filled we are met where we are in the story and offered new life in the grace of God. Whether we are the Pharisee who is afraid to face his unworthiness or the tax collector who is afraid not to, there is healing for those who will let such love as this break our hearts and set us free.

Trust God to love you and loving you to make you worthy of the life that you have been given to live, free from comparisons to others, free from keeping score, a unique and beautiful gift to the hope of the world.

May we practice humility with grateful hearts, gentle and merciful in all our ways until we become the humble people who love God and all that God has made with each breath we take, the most worthy unworthy, forgiven and free, let loose on the world for the purpose of love. Amen.

Wings to fly

2010-10-03T15:13:00.005-04:00

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-6

Be like the bird, pausing in his flight

On limb too slight,

Feels it give way, yet sings,

Knowing he has wings to fly.

-Victor Hugo

Oh yeah. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what faith is like except we are not birds. We are human beings and our wings are not so obvious or natural. The great prophet and pastor of the twentieth century, William Sloane Coffin put it well though (and you will note the difference between us and the birds): “First you leap and then you grow wings.”

In Tigger’s case (see chapter 4 “In Which it is shown that Tiggers Don’t Climb Trees) he didn’t leap so much as fall and he didn’t grow wings at all but he fell on Eeyore and his friends who broke his fall. Sometimes faith is like that, too, the part where we get in the way enough to break the fall of the falling. When they were discussing what to do about Tigger while he was still up in the tree it did come up the idea that Eeyore could get hurt and Pooh asks Eeyore if it could hurt and Eeyore’s words are also a statement about the experience of faith and of courage when he said: That’s what would be so interesting, Pooh. Not being quite sure till afterwards.

The part about the limb giving way is a feeling we can understand. The bird can sing because he knows that he can fly but how will we keep singing when the limb gives under us, when things fall apart, when the world we had such hopes for never gets better. How long, O Lord?! It will not do to resort to denial. Even the Psalms cry out of the violence that rules the human heart and savages the human community. The very people of God themselves declare that they will bash the little ones of Babylon’s heads upon the stones. I think most of us know that Babylon still exists only we call it

Iraq

now. Yes it is the same place, the same piece of earth it has always been. How does it make us feel to know that the little ones of Babylon are still suffering, the violence and hatred continues on all sides with no end in sight despite what the politicians and the Generals tell us. Psalm 137 should be enough to remind us that this Bible is not a prescription but a description, a description of the human heart, a heart capable of violent murder and profound faith and love. It’s all here in the book.

Have any of you read Annie Dillard? She writes that crash helmets should be standard issue when we come to church. She says we have no idea what we are getting into, what posers we evoke, when we open this book of books called the Bible.

This Bible, she writes, this ubiquitous black chunk of a bestseller, is a chink – often the only chink – through which winds howl. It is a singularity, a black hole into which our rich and multiple world strays and vanishes. We rack open its pages at our peril. Many educated, urbane, and flourishing experts in every aspect of business, culture, and science have felt pulled by this anachronistic, semibarbaric mass of antique laws and fabulous tales from far away; they entered its queer, strait gates and were lost.”

What is she on to, do you suppose? If anything, she is seeking with her words, the truth, a truth that holds within itself both horror and incredible hope, the truth about us and the truth about God and the truth about the Bible which tells the story, unmasks the demons, reveals the salvation that is at least as possible as the perishing of the world.

We do not celebrate today a reconciled world, a world where love rules and hatred has finally been overcome. We do not celebrate peace on earth. What we Christians, united or not, are celebrating on this World Communion Sunday is that we are sharing Holy Communion around the world whether we agree or not on what following Jesus asks us to do and be; whether or not we even agree on what Holy Communion is or means. We gather our broken body in the broken body of Christ and, if only for a moment, we are one, despite ourselves, we are one. And in that moment of surrender we are vulnerable to being changed forever for no matter our own personal motivation for being here and participating in this rite, giving ourselves to this mystery, adding our story to the story of stories, the symbol of the ritual holds within it the reality that it symbolizes and that reality always has the power to break our hearts, hearts unknowingly hardened by fear and despair and anger and boredom, and bring us back to the sanity of life in Christ who embodies not only what love is but what peace is, in the words of the writer to Timothy, “the good treasure”, This grace given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but is now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Faith in this simple but “impossible” truth is our wings to fly. When Jesus is asked to “increase their faith his answer is revealing. IF you even have a little faith you could fly, the implication being that it is not about increasing faith but having any faith at all. Even the tiniest amount of faith is enough to save us, is enough to see us through the night, is enough to give us the courage we will need to live in a world such as ours and not give up. I cannot remember now where I read this and the words have become my own over time as I forgot where I read them but cannot forget what they mean to me: The struggle for justice is the struggle that is never won and the struggle that is never lost. Do you hear that? It is a struggle that goes on and the good news is that it isn’t over despite the condition of the world in our day and the good news is that it is worth the struggle to carry on whether we even know what winning or losing is anymore because this old world has been this way for a while and will be this way for as long as we have left to be.

When the old prophet cried out, How long O Lord? He spoke for us all forever and before long it was the same voice that lifts the response of those who have wings to fly:

We will stand at the watchposts

and station ourselves on the rampart;

we will keep watch to see what God will say to us

and what God’s answer will be to our cries.

Like faith that is not about being increased but about being at all, faithfulness is not about saving the world but carrying on until the world is saved. It is about living abundantly, to keep on giving when there is nothing left to give, to keep on hoping when all hope is gone, to keep caring when no one cares anymore, to keep loving life and the world and all that God has given us in the time we have left to love even when all the evidence seems to declare that love has finally abandoned us for good. This faith is fragile because we are fragile but it is also indestructible because it comes from God. Jesus seems to be saying that we don’t need to increase it. We need, first, to embrace it and it will carry us. It will give us wings to fly.

Today is World Communion in a world at war. People are being hurt. Lives are being lost, hopes and dreams shattered. And everywhere, love is still possible. When we break the bread and lift the cup we are not kidding around. We are proclaiming the grace and love of God to the world and we are surrendering ourselves to the faith that will not give up on this world or on ourselves because our God will never give up on us. As the prophet said, the people of God will live by faith. We will endure. We will love where love is absent. We will rise up in the ruins of the world and declare a new day. We will overcome what is evil with what is good. When all is lost we shall declare that the lost shall be found. We will use our wings to fly and, like Eeyore, we will put ourselves in the way to catch those who have no wings to fly and who just keep falling for we are people of God and we will live in this broken world by faith with courage and love and mercy and, at this holy table, share as one with all the world the undying hope for a new day.

The Basics

2010-09-26T16:02:00.005-04:00

The Basics September 26, 2010

Jeremiah32:1-3a, 6-15; I Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

As I watch the beautiful children who are coming to Jack and Jill in the morning from my office window, I think of how they are just getting started on this grand adventure of life, meeting new people, seeing new places, getting along with others, learning new things, getting the basics and it made me think about how important the basics are. Our faith also has some basics that perhaps it would be good to review from time to time. The readings for today give us an opportunity to do just that so here we go.

First Basic: Trust God. Jeremiah has just, as usual, had bad news for his people. He knows that the near future is pretty bad. The big bad Babylonians are coming and they are going to throw everybody out of their homes and off their land. The worst has happened. The people will be displaced. They will not have a place to be. They will live the life of exile, strangers in a strange land. This is disheartening because it really feels like more than losing your place, it feels like losing your future. But what does Jeremiah do? His actions illustrate as well as any other story I can remember what it means to trust God. He bought a plot of land even though he knew that it was about to be run over and taken away. He buys a plot of land because he trusts that one day justice will prevail and he will return to that very piece of land and it will provide life for him. In short, even though the present and the near future are doomed he believes in the future, that there is a future, there is hope, because he trusts that God is just and loving and will make things right for those who wait and who never stop believing in a future with God. It is one thing to trust God when all is going well. It is quite another to continue to trust God when it feels more like God has abandoned us, when things fall apart, when everything we thought we could count on is suddenly like so much dust in the wind.

Second Basic: Know what enough is. The writer of 1 Timothy is very clear. Having stuff is dangerous. Always wanting more can consume us. A wise person once said that if we want to know peace, we should stop having what we want and start wanting what we have. Of course, the challenge for us who have so much and so many choices is to be able to discern what enough is. From the Christian Century this week: John C Bogle tells how Joseph Heller responded when someone pointed out that his billionaire party host made more money in a single day of hedge fund trading than Heller had ever earned from his book Catch-22. Heller replied: “ Yes, but I have something that he will never have: enough.” To know what is enough is wisdom and sometimes it has to be learned the hard way. One possible clue is what having and wanting more is doing to us and to others. The irony of a life that is forever consuming is that in the end it is one’s life that is consumed. The poor rich man in the gospel reading for this day is a perfect example. There is another way, however. The problem is not just having more than enough but what do we do with the abundance?

Third Basic: Share the abundance. It is amazing how many voices are unanimous on this one. George McGovern (one of my sad heros from the past) said that “Every religion in the world instructs us to feed the hungry.” That is pretty basic. Our own John Wesley said that we should make as much money as we could make but then share the wealth with those in need. Even the Koran (can you imagine?) has this word: They shall question thee concerning what they should expend. Say: “The abundance.” Of course every religion and every other attempt to end poverty has failed even though there is enough for everybody. How ironic is it that in some parts of the world people are dying because they eat too much and in other parts of the world they are dying from not having enough to eat? There are lots of reasons for this and it is complicated but it is also simple or at least it was in the case of the rich man in our gospel story this morning. In his case it seems that it is not so much what he has done but what he has not done even perhaps what he has failed to notice needed to be done. The saddest thing of all is that he could have easily done what needed to be done. He just didn’t. After arriving in Hades, the story goes, the rich man, seeing Abraham far away across a great divide standing with the man he had repeatedly stepped over on his own doorstep, he wanted to know why nobody ever told him before it was too late that his lifestyle was not what God wanted. He hadn’t meant to harm anyone. He just hadn’t noticed that others were suffering. He somehow overlooked poor Lazarus everyday until finally the days ran out for both of them and Lazarus is in paradise and the rich man is beyond helping. How could he have known that he would ever need help, he who had never needed help from anyone? This is one of the dangers of being rich. Not knowing our own need we do not understand or even see the need of others. That is something we can do something about however. We can pay attention. We can examine our lives more closely and see what is enough and what is needed and we can make choices that will make things better.

If only the rich man had known the golden rule. You talk about basic. This is another idea that is present in all the great religions.

Hinduism: Do not to others what ye do not wish done to yourself . . .This is the whole Dharma. Heed it well.

Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary; go learn it.

Zoroastrianism: Human nature is good only when it does not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.

Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.

Confucianism: Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.

Islam: No one of you is a believer until you desire for another that which you desire for yourself.

Bahai: Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not. This is my command unto thee, do thou observe it.

And, of course, Jesus, in Matthew 7.12 saying, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” The genius of this word is that we know what to do because it is what we want done to us. This is nice because we can understand it but on the other hand it provides us no cover. It brings to mind that other word from Deuteronomy that the rich man should have known: Surely this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you; nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven; that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

In other words, there is no place to hide. There are no excuses. We trust God, we share the abundance, we help those in need, we treat others with the respect and kindness that we want for ourselves, or we just don’t.

This is basic. This is also why it is still important to hear the Word of God and ponder its meaning for us. Here is light and guidance for complicated and overwhelming times. If we practice every day with every person we meet this basic understanding to love one another as we love ourselves, we will change the world and we, too, will be changed, for there is a peace that only God can give. 1 Timothy has an important clue to finding it: As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

And that is what we want, isn’t it? The life that really is life. There are other basics to this faith journey, this grand adventure of life we all share from the little ones just starting off to those of us who watch them with breaking hearts because we know what they must find out, that life is hard sometimes and sometimes it hurts and things change and anything can happen and we are all afraid but it is beautiful, too, this life, and love is always possible, and that is basic, too. There are many things to learn and Jesus has promised that the Holy Spirit will teach us those things. One such moment is captured in a poem I just read that I must share with you this morning because it is a reflection of one of those ordinary moments where the life that is really life is revealed:

Put the words close enough.

Closer than that, even closer

so that one breath

will make the other turn

and the other turn

and say

and the wind break this leaf

from its stem, not the other

and make a cup for the dew

in the shade where the sun

won’t dry it

where the bird stops to drink

as your son waits, pointing

“birdie, birdie” and

you snap the picture, the one

where his smile is like

the first time anyone ever smiled

and its place in the frame on your desk

makes you wonder why

you don’t write poetry about this.

-Marcia Rae Johnson

The smile that is like the first time that anyone ever smiled is basic to why we live. May God teach us the basics through these holy words and with the Holy Spirit and may we come to see what is holy in every living thing and live with each other in the world as if it were the first time anyone ever lived.

Generous to a Fault

2010-09-19T09:30:00.005-04:00

Generous to a Fault

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-8a

September 19, 2010

Oddly enough I believe it harder for us who live in the midst of plenty to be grateful because we have so much we just assume that it was always ours anyway. We miss the giftedness of something we have never been without but it is gratefulness that will open our hearts to the blessings of God. We may have to learn how to be grateful. The best way to learn gratefulness is to practice it. I am learning. When I was younger I was disappointed because I didn’t understand yet that the gifts of life were not just the ones I wanted, what I worked to have and expected to receive. I am learning to give thanks for the gift of life as it comes to me receiving whatever comes as a gift. I try not to guess what is coming so that the gift continually surprises me. It is amazing how many gifts come if you are not expecting them.

Today’s word is about generosity. The message is a surprising gift. There is a direct link between generosity and gratefulness. In fact I believe generosity is dependent on being grateful. The more grateful we are, the more generous we will be. And the more generous we are, the more generous life is to us. As Jesus himself said, “ give and it will be given unto you . . .” (Luke 6:38)

Generosity is a lifestyle rooted in and dependent on a grateful heart. It is a generosity of things but also of spirit, of mercy, of forgiveness and kindness. It is a generosity of hopefulness. It is a generosity of faith that looks at a sad and broken world (and I am putting it mildly) and continues nevertheless to be generous., hopeful, and doing all the good we can, doing as little harm as possible, in short, staying in love with God.

A few years ago I was blessed with a renewal leave and in my reading came across a word that helped me move toward wholeness as I make choices about what I will do in the world in the days left to me. It is a word that is strangely encouraging though you might have to carry it around in your heart for a while before it speaks to you. It speaks to me. It makes everything and anything possible. It encourages me not to give up on the world. It liberates me from saving the world. It gives me back my life and every life as a valuable gift to the world. It is this word from Gandhi that you have as your word for contemplation: “Whatever you do will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it”. Over the years I have observed that it is often the word of paradox or, if not quite paradox, the word that seems to contradict itself that is the word that is closest to the truth.

This is a little embarrassing but one of my favorite illustrations of generosity is the time Eeyore had a birthday. I hate to keep doing this to you but this example, not only as a study of generosity, but also, perhaps, of insignificance, must be shared.

You really must read chapter six, entitled , In which Eeyore has a birthday and gets two presents yourself to get the full beauty of the story but I will summarize it for you with just the facts: Eeyore has a birthday and is very sad because nobody seems to notice and then Pooh happens by and finds out eventually that it is indeed Eeyore’s birthday and he has no presents or cakes or anybody taking any notice of him at all so he hurries off to do something about it. He meets up with Piglet who also wants to do something about it and what Pooh comes up with is an extremely generous idea - to give one of his precious honey pots full of honey to Eeyore for his birthday. Piglet wonders if he could go in on the present too but Pooh says no and Piglet decides to give him a balloon that he had because how can you go wrong with a balloon on your birthday. Unfortunately both Pooh and Piglet have some difficulty delivering their gifts to Eeyore due to certain flaws in their characters which we could characterize as the reality of the human condition if they were actually human which in a way they are as they clearly represent us and our most human condition.. Anyway. In the case of Piglet, he wanted to be the first to give Eeyore a present so he took his balloon and ran off as fast as he could to get to Eeyore before Pooh with his present and of course he was going so fast that he fell down and popped the balloon. To his credit he did continue and took the broken ballon to Eeyore anyway. Meanwhile, he need not of hurried because Pooh on his way with his gift began to have certain feelings that could not be denied and sat down and ate all the honey that was in the jar he was going to give to Eeyore. He, too, however, continued on with the empty jar to bring his gift to Eeyore though he took a slight detour to visit Owl so that he could write happy birthday for him and stick it on the jar so that the jar would be a useful jar and worthy gift after all.

And here is where it really gets interesting. Piglet did arrive first and rather pathetically offers Eeyore the burst balloon for his birthday.

“Thank you, Piglet”, said Eeyore. “You don’t mind my asking,” he went on, “but what colour was this balloon when it – when it was a balloon?”

“Red.”

“I just wondered . . . .Red”, he murmured to himself, “My favorite colour . . .How big was it?”

“About as big as me.”

“I just wondered . . .About as big as Piglet,” he said to himself sadly, “My favorite size. Well, well.”

It was at this time that Pooh finally arrives with his empty but useful pot and hence we have the surprising climax to our little story and a great insight into the nature of generosity:

When Eeyore saw the pot, he became quite excited.

“Why!” He said. “I believe my Balloon will just go into that Pot!”

“Oh no, Eeyore,” said Pooh. “Balloons are much too big to go into Pots. What you do with a balloon is, you hold the balloon . . .”

“Not mine,” said Eeyore proudly. “Look Piglet!” And as Piglet looked sorrowfully round, Eeyore picked the balloon up with his teeth, and placed it carefully in the pot; picked it out and put it on the ground; and then picked it up again and put it carefully back.

“So it does!” Said Pooh. “It goes in!”

“So it does!” Said Piglet. “And it comes out!”

“Doesn’t it?” Said Eeyore. “It goes in and out like anything.”

“I’m very glad,” said Pooh happily, “that I thought of giving you a Useful Pot to put things in.”

“I’m very glad,” said Piglet happily, “that I thought of giving you Something to put in a Useful Pot.”

But Eeyore wasn’t listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting it back again, as happy as could be.

So, though it was a generous idea that Pooh and Piglet had, in the end it was Eeyore who was most generous in his surprising gratitude for what he was given and his generosity made everybody happy. This is important but perhaps even more important is this: Anybody can be generous at any time.

The gospel this morning seems to be saying that it doesn’t even matter why. We are often taught that motivations are as important or more important than actions but in this strange parable we hear that it is the act itself that matters and this is especially true when it comes to generosity. Anybody can be generous for any reason.

The steward’s generosity seems to be about saving himself which seems odd, too, when you think about how Jesus seemed to be teaching something quite different in other places. Who could forget his word that those who try to save themselves are lost but never mind, if anything, the complexity of these matters only gives them more depths to explore. We are not sure what exactly the steward was being generous with. Was it his masters possessions or was it his own share of the profits, we don’t know, but a funny thing happens along the way. By reducing what the debtors owe by a lot, he made them happy and they in turn being grateful to their generous master made the master happy who was also happy with his steward’s shrewdness in how he handled the whole thing. (And once again generosity makes everybody happy! Are you hearing this?!) And Jesus who is telling this story, what is he saying? Well maybe it is as simple as knowing what to do with what we have in our possession. Do with what you have so as to gain an eternal future. It is not how much debt was forgiven or wasted or lost however you look at it but how relationships were strengthened. In short, it is not what we have that secures our life, it is who we love and who loves us, it is our connection to each other and to God that matters. In the end it is not what we have that matters but what has us. Once again it is all about the love. Literally this parable could be saying that love is what is left when everything else is gone. And one day everything else will be gone. Everything.

Poor Jeremiah thinks it is already gone. The great prophet wonders how we will be saved. His people, not unlike us, the people of God today, turn away from God relentlessly. If this continues and there is no evidence to suggest that it will not, how will we be saved? Perhaps the steward has the answer or at least an answer. The steward in Jesus’ story recognizes that salvation will come from generosity not power or wealth and love is what will save us in the end. He may have technically been dishonest but he was also enlightened. With his “dishonest wealth” (what some would call mammon – Luke, by the way seems to imply that all money and possessions are mammon) the steward was generous to a fault, so generous that his dishonesty turned out to be a blessing not only for those whose debts were lessened but for the master who was loved for his mercy. (I have always said that Jesus is not a moralist like so many of his followers. No, he is on to something much bigger – something we call grace.) The steward was so dishonest that he wasn’t dishonest anymore.- another example of a great Biblical truth- good is stronger than evil. No good dishonesty can remain dishonest. Good will transforms its bearer. If we do good we will know goodness. No matter how far we go from God, God is generous to us because God is good and more than that, God’s love will not let us go. God’s goodness is our judge. Our generosity comes directly from God as a gift and the more we practice generosity ourselves the closer to God’s heart we become. So even this broken and sinful world, all those who turn away from God, all of us may be generous and see what happens. It is a wild and wonderful circle of blessing. Generosity blesses the give and the receiver. Generosity is not a cliché. Nor is it a fantasy. It can happen anywhere, anytime with anybody. Even you and me.

I will leave to the writer of the first letter to Timothy to have the last word: First of all, it says, first of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone for kings and those in high positions so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life . . .This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (Compare this attitude high positions to our times. There is so much anger. What if we pray for our leaders instead of attack them?) Everyone is included in the circle of the blessings of generosity. We are to pray for those who hate us and those who love us. We can pray for those who agree with us and those who don’t. We are to pray for the honest and the dishonest alike, to be generous to a fault. We are to be generous with our possessions and our judgments and, in so doing, know the eternal generosity of God not because we have earned our way in but because it is where we are already and where we live everyday.

Finding our way home while being found Luke 15:1-10 Sunday 9/12/2010

2010-09-12T08:40:00.000-04:00

Finding our way home while being found

Luke 15:1-10

September 12, 2010

All of us can probably tell at least one story about being lost. Perhaps even more likely we all have story about having lost something. I remember one time when I lived in Puerto Rico and had lost my watch. I searched and searched but couldn’t find it anywhere. Just as I was giving up the search I had something else to worry about, a massive hurricane was headed right for us. It was our first hurricane on the island and so we did everything that you are told to do to get ready which actually probably does more damage to your stuff than a direct hit. However in the chaos and upheaval of getting the apartment ready for the storm other things were lost but I found my watch. Usually it is the other way around. You lose things in the chaos. In this case, I found something. In this case the chaos turned up my watch. This is one way to find something that is lost though I don’t necessarily recommend it. There is another way described in the classic little Nasrudin story from the Sufi tradition: (Sufi (ism) is the mystical tradition of Islam. There are many Nasrudin stories which are more like riddles meant to awaken and enlighten the mind and heart and soul of the hearer.)

One day Nasrudin was searching in his neighbors back garden for something.

“What have you lost, Mulla”? His neighbor asked.

“My key,” said Nasrudin.

After a few minutes of searching, the neighbor said, “where did you drop it?”

“At home”, said Nasrudin.

After a brief pause the neighbor asked Nasrudin:“Then why for heavens sake are you looking here?”

And Nasrudin’s reply: “Because there is more light here.”

Of course.

And who could forget the beautiful moment when Rabbit, Pooh, and Piglet tried to lose Tigger in the forest because he needed to be unbounced and end up getting lost themselves instead. At the end of that story is another way of finding your way home when you are lost. Our heros, under the leadership of Rabbit, have been walking in circles and always ending up in the same place (a sand pit) and Rabbit can’t understand why no one is thanking him for the favor of leading them on such a splendid walk when Pooh has an idea.

How would it be, “ said Pooh slowly, “if, as soon as we’re out of sight of this pit, we try to find it again?”

“What’s the good of that?” said Rabbit.

“Well,” said Pooh, “we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we’d be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.

“I don’t see much sense in that,” said Rabbit.

Of course.

And Pooh actually agreed because, after all Rabbit is smarter than anybody but then Rabbit insisted that if he walked away from the Pit of course he could walk right back to it and find it again so to prove his point he did walk away and Pooh and Piglet said they would wait there and they never saw Rabbit again that day which turned out to be Ok because without Rabbit’s noise Pooh was able to hear his honey calling to him and they, well, they just got up and went home.

For those who think these are just silly stories I need to tell you there is here a profound insight into the spiritual life. Seeking God can be like finding our way home again and sometimes we try so hard to find God and coming back to the same place because we are lost, really, and, in the wisdom of Pooh, what we really need is to find something we weren’t looking for which could very well be God looking for us. In other words we have to be open to what we had not expected or assumed about where we are going even while we are going there. This drives us crazy because we want to be in control of our own lives at least, and know what is coming next, and who God is, and where we might find God, the very things that we have the least control of.

This may be why faith is so important to us if we really want to find our way home. Pooh is one, by the way, who is a prime example of faith. A perfect example of faith is the time he and Piglet are walking on a windy day, a very windy day, and Piglet, being the anxious sort is wondering out loud “what if one of these trees falls on us? And Pooh speaks this great word of faith: “What if they don’t?”

Do you see how our state of mind can change everything? Who is the happier, Pooh, who assumes the trees will not fall on him, or Piglet, who assumes they will? I believe the purpose of the Gospel this morning is to teach us about such faith, the faith that will give us peace and make us happy. We may feel that being lost and finding things is all so random yet in this little story Jesus tells it is not accidental that the lost sheep is found or that the lost coin is found. This is the Gospel: the lost will be found because God is looking for what is lost, seeking the lost, gathering all the beautiful and broken creation for the purpose of reconciling and redeeming all that has been lost. Faith is the gift of knowing that God is with us even when we don’t know where we are.

And let’s not kid ourselves. Much has been lost. Our world is broken. There seems to be no end or limit to the stupidity and the hatred that the people on earth are capable of doing and to each other. (I am not even going to begin to try and list examples from just this week. You pick one.) Why is this? Why so much trouble? Why are we screaming at each other? Haven’t you ever wondered why we can’t just get along? Well here is one possibility: we humans have lost our way. We are all lost. The whole world is lost. This is the plot of the Biblical narrative. God created life and people and people went their own way and are lost and God is seeking all the lost children of earth even those who do not know they are lost for this is the worst kind of lost. To be like Rabbit and to be so sure about everything, so sure that he knew everything, that he knew what to do, that he knew nothing at all, not even that he needed to know something.

This is a danger that we ourselves face. We become complacent in our comfort zone but each of us may suspect that whatever peace we have created for ourselves is fragile at best though we don’t want to face it until we have to. People get sick and die. Catastrophes happen. Trees fall down. On the very day that Piglet was worrying, sure enough the tree they were in, Owl’s home as a matter of act, came crashing down with them inside. Does this mean that Pooh was wrong about faith? Not really because trees falling or not he carries on peacefully and happily doing what needs to be done. Faith does not mean the trees won’t fall down on us only that if they do we will carry on anyway with good will and courage and peace and love believing in the goodness of God and that even the trees falling cannot separate us from the love that endures all things.

Faith is seeking and finding God but it is more than that. It is also God seeking and finding us and God finds us when we are most open to being found, when we are humble, grateful, unafraid of not knowing, of not controlling outcomes, liberated from making sure we get our own way all the time, letting go, even if just a little, and letting God, even if just a little closer, into our busy anxious lives. Maybe Nasrudin wasn’t so crazy to be looking where the light was better even if he knew that what he had lost was not there because it is in the light where we can be found and even if what we are looking for is not there we can see better.

We gather this morning to be the church. Let us be the church of faith, the church that is open to the gifts of this day and grateful for everything that comes, the church that offers itself to a broken world with love even it takes us where we had not planned to go.

We are alive in the world today (don’t take this for granted) and we have been given each other to find and to be found. May the good God opens the eyes of our hearts to see what we weren’t even looking for and recognize that it is what we always wanted but didn’t even know. (Maybe there is more to this God thing that we have yet imagined.) Finding our way home while being found, we may even catch a glimpse of that joy in heaven that Jesus is talking about when he ate with sinners and told them the good news.

This is the HTUMC Danvers Sermon Blog

2010-04-11T12:26:00.001-04:00

This blog will post & archive Rev. Wimmer's weekly sermons.

Holy Trinity United Methodist Church

16 Sylvan Street (Directly across from Danvers Public Library)

Danvers MA 01923

Church Office Phone 978-777-7408

http://www.holytrinitydanvers.org/