The Blessing of Faith Together

Exodus 33:12-23

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Proper 24a

More and more I am convinced that we miss something vital to our faith relationships when we insist on approaching God one by one. Our individual relationships with God are very important, but in and of themselves, they do not make us the body of Christ. It is our life together that makes us Christ’s body, a mysterious organism that is much more than a collection of individuals who gather in the same place every week. When we come together to worship, we form a new being with a name and an address, which has its own life and reputation. We call this church - not the building but the people - this is a phenomenon that has been around much longer than any of us and much longer than this building where we gather. When we say we belong to this church, we are not pledging allegiance to 37 W Main street but we are saying that we belong to one another, we have a commitment to share in faith with one another.

Faith is one of those common Christian words that is often thrown around. But, you should not let me go any further without first saying what I mean when I say the word faith. You might hear a person say, Have a little faith and what they mean is things will work out. You also might hear a person say, Bessie is so faithful and what they mean is that Bessie is someone you can depend on. I believe faith is the stubbornly relentless belief that God is present with us and in us and is an acting presence in the world among us and through us. The book of Hebrews tells us that Faith is being sure of that which we might only dare to hope for. It goes on to paint us pictures of those who are giants in faith. Men and women who believed impossible things. I do not know about you but it can be intimidating to read their stories as we wonder to ourselves if our faith is even in the same stratosphere. Sometimes the prospect of having faith can cause us to feel like Alice in Wonderland staring at the White Queen in disbelief as she proclaims that there are times she has believed up to six impossible things before breakfast.

Have you ever experienced a time when you felt like Alice and everything seemed impossible and your faith felt very small? It doesn’t help when we look at people of faith and compare ourselves to them in a specific moment without considering the span of their life and faith.

This morning’s text offers a very different picture of Moses. This morning we meet up with Moses as he boldly makes requests of God - requests that take a great deal of faith. He tells God, that the Israelites need  God’s presence to go with them and God agrees. Then, he courageously asks to see God. It is a request that I might be hesitant to make of God. But not Moses, Show me your glory, he says. In one of the most amazing images in Old Testament scripture, God hides Moses in the cleft of the rock and covers him with His hand while He passes by. When it is safe, God allows Moses to view the backside of His Glory as it passes by.  Moses’s faith leads him to ask the question that you or I might never dare to ask. But, Moses did not start out in that place. Moses started out with his knees knocking together at the burning bush as he stuttered and sputtered excuses as quickly as they flew into his mind. This is not to say that Moses did not have any faith at all. Scripture tells us that his mother, Jochebed, taught him about the God of his people- the God of Abraham, the God’s love and life. When Moses’ faith felt small, God sent him Aaron and Miriam to him to believe along side him and remind him that he was not alone.

It is a strange thing to realize you are surrounded by those who support you in faith even while your faith seems small and you feel alone or adrift.

    One of my oldest friends is my friend Jessica from college. We met our first year of school and we lived together the next two years. We have seen one another through family deaths, job uncertainties, cross-country moves, boyfriends and break ups, and marriage. Her little girl was born the week after Josiah. We have shared many aspects of life together. My Junior year of college, Jessica struggled with depression especially after a terrible break up with the person she thought she might marry as well as quite a bit of relationship tension with her mother. Throughout the year, Jessi became more and more withdrawn. One night as we talked she told me that she struggled to see that God was present in her life. She knew she needed to have faith but she was not quite sure how to do that anymore. In a moment of what I can only call Holy Spirit inspiration, I told her, borrow my faith. Until you are able, I will have faith for you. I will have faith with you.

    I think that is what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Thessalonians. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, Paul says. When he says imitators, Paul is saying that they share faith with one another...they believe with each other and for each other. The people of this church were experiencing persecution and facing death. As they struggled to have faith in the face of persecution, I imagine they felt alone I imagine their faith felt small. I imagined they doubted whether they even had faith in the first place. If I were in their midst, I might look at the persistent persecution and wonder if my faith was lacking. Paul sends them encouragement in his letter. He reminds them that they are not alone in their persecution, they are not forgotten by God. He reminds them that he, Silvanus, and Timothy have faith with them. Paul’s message is that human beings can only experience the fullness of their humanity when they are in deep trusting relationship with one another. These relationships have depth when they are experienced along with God in community with God’s people. The imitation of one another, the sharing of faith, becomes an outgrowth of this strong community relationship.

    We often talk about our relationship with God as if it is a solo endeavor. We often talk about church as if it is a place where individuals come so that they can individually worship God with the company of familiar people who are also individually worshipping God. But, what if it is more. What if church isn’t just the place where we come to be fed and sheltered, but it is also where we come to stand firm with those who need the same things from us. What if, what makes us a church is the fact that we share in faith with one another. What if our worship is not only the songs we sing and the prayers we pray but what if our worship is our lives shared together as we encourage one another, believe alongside one another and even believe for one another. And maybe, what makes us the church is our decisions not to just believe alongside the person we sit next in coffee hour. Maybe what makes us the church is the decision to believe alongside the people we do not sit next to and are not always quite sure how to ask about what is going on in their lives. Maybe what makes us the church is our decision to believe alongside the chairs left empty because even though we do not see anyone sitting in them now, they represent people who need someone else to believe for them...they need others to be their church.

A Hard Blessing

Matthew 18:21-35

    As children, my sister and I got into the occasional quarrel. You know, over big things like who was looking at whom as we rode in the car, who crossed over into the pre-determined buffer zone in the back seat, who “borrowed” the other’s curling iron and did not return it. These disagreements were generally *not* characterized by respectful discussions where each person was heard, validated and a mutual decision was reached. There might have been a few instances when names were called, hair was pulled, and other shenanigans happened. On these occasions, the referee...ummm parent on duty would require apologies from one or both of us. These loving, heartfelt apologies (sarcasm)  were something to the effect of, sorry - without elaboration and as little eye contact as possible. One problem with these reconciliation meetings is that they usually occurred again and again. As in, “She always uses my stuff ….*insert litany of examples here* The problem was that forgiveness never really happened. Instead, we each lived with our own tally boards of wrongs the other committed.

    What does forgiveness mean to you? How do you forgive others? Does forgiveness require an apology where the person who has wronged us owns up to their slight? If that is the case, is forgiveness a passive response that is contingent upon the one in the wrong being the first to act?

    Today’s gospel reading invites us into a conversation between Peter and Jesus. You all know I love Peter, precisely because he’s not perfect. I look at Peter and think, phew there is a little room for me. Today is no exception. Peter sets up a conversation in which he expects to shine. He asks Jesus a question and has already figured out the perfect answer. He is sure this is a slam dunk move since Jesus has this habit of throwing questions back to the audience. So he asks, Jesus if a person sins against me, how often should I forgive?  

It is a pius question. How often should I forgive? When was the last time the necessary amount of forgiveness crossed your mind when you were in a position to do some forgiving? For most of us, the question is, Will I forgive you? Am I ready to forgive you? Our questions are rarely about how much or how often we should forgive.

    But Peter is ready with his answer. Should I forgive them 7 times? Doesn’t he sound good. Jesus, last week Andrew ate the very last brownie when he knew I was saving it for my dessert but I forgave him 7 times. Also, in this context, the audience would have known that 7 was a code number for completion. God created the world in 6 days and on the 7th, God rested. Yes, Peter, we see what you’ve done there. You threw in some snazzy theological knowledge to impress Jesus.

    What Peter did not see coming was that Jesus was not impressed. In fact he corrected Peter’s notion of forgiveness to expand it to 77 times. Nice try Petey, not seven times. You will forgive 77 times.

77? Is Jesus kidding? Is he having some fun with his good buddy Peter? How many of you are like me and secretly think 7 times is already overgenerous. Especially when there are times when forgiving once can seem too hard. 77 times? We do not just forgive to completion but we forgive beyond completion,  we forgive again and again and again. We forgive when we are wounded. We forgive when we are frustrated. We forgive when the person who has wronged us does not seem to realize or care that they have caused us harm in the first place.

    As I have pondered Jesus’ words for us this week...some of his most challenging, which is really saying something - I have found myself wondering how many of us have absorbed any of these beliefs about forgiveness:

• Forgiveness means excusing or overlooking the harm that has been done to us and saying that everything is okay.
• Forgiveness means allowing those who have hurt us to persist in their behavior
• Forgiveness requires forgetting what happened
• Forgiveness is something we can do at will, and always all at once

    If we have absorbed any of these distorted beliefs about forgiveness, it can come as both a shock and a relief to learn that such ideas were not what Jesus had in mind as he talked to Peter. Jesus expects us to forgive, that much is clear but Jesus does not lay upon us the burdens we lay upon ourselves - burdens that can render this exceedingly difficult Spiritual Practice impossible. The heart of forgiveness is not to be found in excusing harm or allowing it to go unchecked, It is to be found, rather, in choosing to say that although our wounds will change us, we will not allow them to forever define us.

    In the 1950’s six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrated an all-white school by herself, walking there every day with two federal escorts in front of her and two more behind her while an angry crowd of white adults hurled abuses on her little head as she passed by. Child psychiatrist Robert Coles, noticed her lips were moving as she walked, and asked her, in her home, what she was saying. She said she was praying, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Her parents hoped, by giving her that prayer, she could shield her mind and heart, and walk unscathed through her daily hell.

    Nelson Mandela, after 27 years in a South African prison, said, Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon. When asked about his jailers, he responded that forgiving them was a choice to set himself free. he could leave those guards there in the prison instead of remembering them always by nursing resentment. It was not long after his release, before his election, when he came to Boston and danced a little freedom dance for all of us to see.

    At the end of yoga one afternoon, my instructor offered this statement for consideration and meditation: Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past can be changed. Forgiveness does not ask us to forget the wrong done to us but instead to resist the ways it seeks to get its poisonous hooks in us. Forgiveness asks us to acknowledge and reckon with the damage so that we will not live forever in its grip.

    There are times when we find the grace to forgive quickly. Other times the grace to forgive takes a long time. And, so forgiveness requires practice. It takes choosing to work at it. And in real forgiveness, in true forgiveness, we might have to chip away at it again and again and again...maybe 77 times.

    The truth is that forgiveness might be the hardest blessing we will ever offer

It might be the hardest blessing we will ever receive.

As with any difficult practice, it is important to ask not only for the strength we will  need for it, but also for the grace: the grace that will, as we continue to practice, begin to shimmer through our wounds, drawing us toward the healing and freedom we could hardly have imagined at the outset.

As we consider forgiveness:

Is there some forgiveness you are being asked to practice?

Are there any ideas about forgiveness that you might need to release - or take on to enter this practice more fully?

What will it take to ask not only for the strength but also the grace you need to forgive another...or yourself?

Standing on the Banks of the Red Sea

Hi All,

This sermon is from 9/14. I am sorry I am tardy posting it on the blog.

Amy

Exodus 14:19-31

For my parent’s 20^th wedding anniversary, they went to Lake Louise. It was a trip my mother had always wanted to take. They stayed in the castle and had a wonderful time. While on this trip, my dad talked my mother into going on the Lake Louise sightseeing gondola. Apparently there are two options, The open air chair and the enclosed gondola. They chose the latter. This attraction is popular because it takes you from God’s green earth, 7000 feet up to the summit of Mt. Whitehorn. As both my dad and the internet have told me, the views are breathtaking. Truly, I am not certain what possessed my mother when she agreed to take this gondola trip up the mountain because she is afraid of heights. Terrified. This is not a deep, dark secret – it is a well known fact. This is also not they type of fear where heights make her uncomfortable, this is my mother sitting in the gondola with her eyes closed as tight as possible, gripping the edge of her chair hyperventilating all the way up the mountain. To this day, I have not idea how she got down the mountain.

            Fear is a reality we all must deal with in some way or another. A quick internet search will list out common and uncommon phobias. Of course there are the things we have all heart of like Arachnophobia, fear of spiders or Agoraphobia, fear of situations in which escape is difficult…crowded spaces. There are also fears that are just strange: Barophobia, the fear of gravity, and a few whose technical name I will not even attempt to pronounce, they include: a fear of colors, a fear of clocks, a fear of paper, a fear of the figure 8, or a fear of teenagers. (Perhaps that last one is not so strange – I should probably ask the parents of teenagers…)

            While some fears seem irrational, others stem from a perfectly rational place. During World War II people who were Jewish had a legitimate reason to fear for their lives. Those who live in war torn areas like Afghanistan surely experience a fear of what could happen with little or no warning. FDR famously remarked that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Rhetorically, his point served its purpose and has since been quoted endlessly, most of us know that there are things in the world that do cause fear in the hearts of human beings.[1]

            This morning’s lectionary text tells us the famous story of Israel’s final deliverance from their oppression in Egypt. It seems that no sooner had this multitude of people gathered up all their worldly possessions and waved goodbye to Egypt and slavery with a one way ticket to The Promised Land that Pharaoh and his army were in hot pursuit of them. Perhaps they hoped their significant head start would allow them to outrun Pharaoh and his whole army - until they reached the Red Sea, a large body of water which, apparently, did not have a bridge. Suddenly, they realized they were trapped. The Red Sea was the barrier in front of them and Pharaoh’s army was closing in. They were afraid, as you might imagine. What were they to do? How were they to escape? As they looked around, there simply was not a solution. So they turned to Moses, the brains of the operation, and cried out in frustration. Why did you bring us here to die? It was bad in Egypt but why did you promise us freedom, make us pack up everything and bring us here? Were there just not enough graves in Egypt?

            Like the children of Israel, sometimes our fears have merit. There are times when our fears are real and it seems that we are stuck with no solution as the thing we fear comes nearer and nearer. How, worries the single mother, will I provide for her children when I cannot find work? How, worries the elderly man, will I care for my wife as her health fails when I can barely care for myself? How, worries the little church, will we continue to keep our doors open when we struggle to pay our bills? When we are looking at what seems impossible, when the only solutions we can imagine seem to fall hopelessly short, it is natural to be afraid.

            Last week, a few of our community fears bubbled up to the surface. Hopefully, I have enough of your permission and trust to talk about them in this space this morning. It is difficult to be a small church community with an older building and meet financial obligations. It is frustrating to feel as if we are constantly working and still barely making it. It is terrifying to look into an unknown future and wonder what will our community be in 3 years, or 5 years, or 10 years. Will we even exist?

            Let me offer you a little perspective – The Christian Church is declining in the US. Every year 5,000 churches close their doors – this number includes long-term established churches as well as church plants. 4 years ago, before we came to this community, we met with a few people in the UCC and they told us about this community. You were described as a small congregation who struggles financially but who are incredibly and unfathomably tenacious. This community is known as ‘the little church who could’.  Peter told us that by cold hard statistics, the church probably should have closed its doors many years earlier. This community literally defies odds.

            As we are currently facing another difficult period in our history, please allow me to offer my thoughts…our thoughts about what makes this community different, special.

1)   We genuinely care about one another. My friends sometimes we struggle with one another. All the best families do. Seriously, show me a family who genuinely loves one another that does not have its share of differences. We have disagreements, we have conflicts, we have different understandings on how to function or proceed. These are normal. We will not always be in agreement. We will not always start from the same page. But, (And this is a large and very important but) this community has true care and affection for one another. You have no idea how rare, how special this truly is. We have been part of churches where there was truly disdain…hatred between different groups in the community. In those communities some actually rooted for the failure, or departure of those with whom they disagreed. Our disagreements are better characterized as family squabbles. When the chips are down, every person in this community care deeply about what happens to the others.

2)   Our congregation is fairly diverse in age. A while back, I was talking to several pastors whose jaws dropped when I talked about the diversity in age at Christian Union. Both of their churches were 95% comprised of people over the age of 70 who were either married or widowed. Think about the people who come. Our church is made up of people who are different ages and of different relationship statuses. We are not all the same. We are not all in the same life place. This is one of our strengths.

When I meet with other pastors, I brag on us. (I know bragging is bad) We are honestly a unique church family. We are our greatest strength.

But the question remains, what is our next step, what is the step after that and the one after that? How do we escape the thing we are afraid of? Are we destined for it to always be nipping at our heels?

            As the children of Israel stood on the banks of the Red Sea with the Egyptians closing in, they cried out to Moses in fear and desperation. And Moses said, “Do not be afraid, stand still and see the deliverance of the Lord.” Then he reiterated his point saying. It is the “Lord who will fight for you and you only have to be still.” (Exodus 14:13-14)

            As they stood, watching and waiting, God’s angel and the pillar of the cloud cut off the Egyptian’s advances and darkness came upon the sky. (Exodus 14:19-20) And, as the story goes, God parted the sea and the Israelites were able to cross to safety on dry ground. For the Israelites, their fearfulness of the Egyptians was relieved and replaced with a fear of the Lord. This fear is not one that trembles, cringes or cowers. In the fear of the Lord, they were awe-struck and overwhelmed by the sense of wonder at what God had done. 

            I understand if you are looking at me and thinking, “That was great for them, but, Amy, how often does the Red Sea part?” “What is a real answer for the real world?” When they stood at the Red Sea, the Israelites found salvation by a means they never expected and probably did not even imagine. Moses reminded them to have faith…to believe God had an answer that they could not see.

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that faith is being confident about things we scarcely dare to hope for. The writer of Hebrews reminds us just like the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, just like Moses, just like the judges and the prophets, and just like Jesus, we, too, live by faith. We are surrounded by the witness of those who gone before us who have also lived by faith and they say to us, keep going, keep believing, keep living by faith.

            That’s the thing about standing at the Red Sea. There just isn’t a visible bridge and the lack of a bridge can feel overwhelming and discouraging. Even though we have been here before, we cannot cross in exactly the same place as we did last time. All the things we have done in the past to survive, may not be what carries us into the future this time. But, we have each other. Our community is our greatest strength. As a community, God is present with us. As a community, God works through us. As a whole community we can accomplish great things. We stand at the Red Sea and look for the place to cross, but we look together. We pray together, we brainstorm for new ideas together. We listen to each other. We bear with one another. We forgive one another. We trust one another.  We each offer our ideas and our strengths because they are gifts from God and they have a place in this community. We pray and pray and pray some more. We listen to the Spirit of God who speaks to our hearts and speaks to us through one another. And, when we cross our Red Sea, we cross together.

---

[1] Geoff McElroy, Desert Scribblings

Jacob & Esau - Is reconciliation merely a pipe dream?

When we were growing up, if you had asked my mother if my sister and I would ever get along, she would have sighed and said, “Oh goodness, I hope so…but, that will be a miracle of God.” In many ways we were like day and night…and in other ways, we are annoyingly alike. But, oh we could argue for the sake of argument. I don’t think it really mattered what we argued about. We would just argue to disagreeing. It was our version of an Olympic sport. There were usually tears and my mother was often dragged into the middle of the arguments to serve as the referee.

During the summers, we would spend a month with my grandparents. Those were some of the best parts of summer. Grandparents are just good people. One afternoon, my grandfather took us to run errands and we stopped at King’s Ice Cream and Candy to get Root Beer Floats. This was a huge treat. No sooner had we sat down with our delicious floats then my grandfather spotted a friend. His friend came over to say hello. As they chatted we began to bicker… over important things like who was drinking their float faster. I’m not sure how long we bickered but when we got back into the car, my grandfather was very quiet for a long time, finally he said to us, “I have never been more embarrassed in my life.”  We were both ashamed.

Sibling conflict is the theme of the relationship between Jacob and Esau. While Rebekah was still pregnant, her children struggled with in her. As the text tells us, She had a vision from the Lord which told her that her sons would be two divided peoples and the younger would be more powerful than his brother. When it came time for them to be born, Esau was born first but as he was pulled from her, Jacob, his brother, was grasping his heel. The brothers fought for the position of honor in the family even though by custom, the higher position belonged to Esau since he was eldest. The boys struggled and their parents chose sides. Isaac sided with Esau and Rebekah sided with Jacob. Their attempts to best the other seemed ceaseless. Esau was impetuous and bombastic, he was a skilled hunter and possessed impressive physical strength. Jacob was the quiet plotter. He could not compete with his brother through strength so he sharpened his wit and used trickery and deceit to best Esau.

As the story goes, Esau came in from a long hunting trip and was famished to the point of death. All the while, Jacob had been cooking a delicious Lentil Stew. When Esau smelled the stew, he asked Jacob for a bowl. Instead of giving his brother a bowl of stew, Jacob offered to sell his brother a bowl of stew. For the low, low price of his birthright. Basically, Esau gave Jacob the status and position of the eldest child in exchange for dinner. In turn, Jacob flees his home and family to escape the wrath of his brother.

We shake our head at this seemingly meaningless family conflict. It could be easy to wonder why they could not just get along, why their parents didn’t give them the talking to that they needed to straighten out their foolishness. Yet, it almost seems as if these types of conflicts are encoded in our DNA. Just as these brothers, and perhaps many of us, experience conflict on the micro level, We need not look far to see larger versions of these same conflicts.

On Shabbat in June of 1998 a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews attacked a group of American Conservative Jews at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Both groups had gathered to pray. The first group objected to the fact that the second group was comprised of men and women who prayed together.

This June, our sister denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA met for their national meeting known as General Assembly. During this meeting they GA voted to allow pastors to perform and bless same sex unions at the discretion of the church leadership and congregations. As a result, churches inside the denomination who are unhappy with the decision are pursuing legal action to leave the denomination. The emotions and convictions of each side are so elevated that neither side is talking to the other.

These battles echo the struggle between Jacob and Esau within the womb…within life. Two factions who should be one are fighting one another for power and position. These people who are part of one another’s identity spend their time tearing one another down and seeking the destruction of the other in the name of faith, in the name of goodness, in the name of God and true belief.  John Calvin reminds us, “No one can be injurious to his brother without wounding God himself.”

These battles choke the life out of our spirits leaving us bloodied, bruised and looking for favor with our God who has born in himself the depths of the wounds we have inflicted on one another.

It can seem as if there is no conflict as bitter, as painful, or wounding as a family feud. The sting from these battles lingers. The memories haunt us in our quiet moments. It is amazing how closely related the emotions love and hate can be to one another. In these situations, what are to do? Do we stay and fight, stand our ground and try to convince the other? Is the solution to cut off contact? Is reconciliation merely a pipe dream? Will we always be left, pointing our gun at the other refusing to lay ours down until they lay down theirs?

Norman J Cohen suggests that reconciliation between Jacob and Esau was possible precisely because they were part of each other’s identity. They were like two halves of a whole, and each needed what the other had. Esau needed the patience and forethought of Jacob, while Jacob needed the position and strength of Esau. Each was identified by his relationship with the other. They could never escape the bond that connected them.

In Romans 8, Paul reminds us that it is not a belief in reconciliation is not a hopeless, pipe dream. He explains that the Good News is found in the fact that these battles and wars of the flesh cannot and will not have the last word if we walk in the Spirit of Christ. In Paul’s metaphor, if we put these family feuds into the category of failings of the flesh, then it is not a failing to which we are hopelessly bound. It is a failing that we are set free from by the Spirit of Christ. Paul says it this way, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who is alive inside of you.” (Romans 8:11) When Paul talks about the failing of the flesh, he is referring that capacity inside all of us toward strife and fractured relationships. We see this tendency in the story of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. We see it in the story of Jacob and Esau. We see it in our own lives and relationships. We even see it in our relationship with God. As our relationships fracture and as those fractures grow, we can feel helpless to repair them.  As the gulf grows wider and the relationship grows messier, our hope for a different outcome, our hope for reconciliation grows dimmer and dimmer. St Paul reminds us that there is hope: these relationship conflicts, these family feuds that crush the Spirit and leave gaping wounds can be healed. “The rule of the Spirit of Life is in Christ.” And that Spirit, will set us free from all that kills and destroys.

As Cohen suggests, it may just be in the flesh itself, in the interweaving identity among siblings, among the children of God, that the potential for being instruments of God’s grace resides. It is in our very being, created in God’s own image, to reflect the divine grace of God in our relationships. Christ offers us this freedom so that old injuries may be healed. Christ offers us the freedom to embrace our profound connectedness through relationship.

If you are thinking to yourself that this is not an easy road, you are correct. The road to reconciliation is painful. It asks you to humbly open your life instead of protecting your old scars and wounded pride. It invites you to try again and again as you relentlessly believe that change can happen. The Good News is that you are not alone on this difficult path, in fact it is on this path that you find you walk the road of Christ.

I See You -

The story of Sarah and Abraham and Hagar and Ishmael is on that fills me with great sadness. It is a complicated story fraught with human emotion that reminds us how our understandings of life and cultural expectations and faith can become knotted up and lead to unnatural, unhealthy, and devastating situations. I suspect that we often read this story and immediately identify characters in this way:

Abraham = the great patriarch of faith

Sarah = the great matriarch of faith

Hagar = the pesky other woman

It isn’t much of a leap for us to arrive at these definitions…especially those of us who have grown up steeped in the stories of our faith. After all, Abraham and Sarah are the parents of Isaac, the promised and longed for child.

As I read this tale, my heart reaches out to Hagar. I want to weep on behalf of her situation. You see, as much as we want to paint her as “the other woman,” “the mistress,” “the whore of pre-Babylon” she did not have much say about her situation. She was a slave in a culture that did not recognize our cultural understandings of marriage, partnership, and fidelity. She was their property and they could do with her what they liked.

As a result of decisions made on her behalf, Hagar finds herself and her child alone in the wilderness without water or food. How does she protect her child from wild animals? How does she look into his hungry eyes and tell him there is nothing to eat or drink? What does a woman do in the midst of loneliness and desperation as her heart breaks with in her?

There are simply no words.

So, Hagar, hides her son under a bush. Maybe she is protecting him from the dehydrating effects of the sun…maybe she simply cannot bear to watch him die. In the midst of her despair, she sits watch over her child as she weeps and prays.

But, God breaks into her weeping – God speaks into her silence, “I see you… I see you….I see you.”  Then, God takes Hagar over to her son, looks into her eyes and says, “Do not be afraid. Hold him tight.” As the mother holds her child, her eyes are opened in a new way and she sees a fountain of life giving water.

We do not know much more about the story of Hagar and Ishmael but we do know that God saw them and they lived.

I know a woman who grew up attending church. Zoey was involved in summer camps and mission trips and youth group. She and her boyfriend were leaders – others saw them as super Christians. But, as often happens with high school relationships, they broke up. The dissolution of a long term relationship is difficult for a couple and even more difficult when it seems as if a church community is taking sides, making judgments, and casting blame. (These types of situations make for the best sorts of gossip) Anyway, Zoey bore the brunt of the blame. She was shunned by the community of people she once knew as friends and suddenly had no place inside the only church family she had ever known. Whether the community would have recognized it or not, Zoey was heart broken, cast out, and left alone.

Like the story of Hagar, Zoey’s story breaks my heart.

For those of us who might have readily identified with Sarah, we must ask ourselves, “Who we are casting out?” We must consider how our own actions (intentional and unintentional), judgments, jealousies, and false piety can result in another being left for dead in the wilderness. While we often look at Sarah as the matriarch of our faith, in Hagar’s story she (and Abraham) is the one who casts out. In Hagar’s story, Sarah (and Abraham) is the villain. Do our own insecurities make us into the villain? Do they keep us from reaching out the hand of love? And that’s the challenge, isn’t it?

The other truth is, many of us have been to the wilderness. We have run out of water and sat alone feeling utterly hopeless. The greatest challenge is to follow the finger of God to the life giving water. It is truly more difficult than it sounds. When we feel desperate and helpless, it is natural to close our eyes and hearts to anything except what is dying in front of us. It is natural to wrap ourselves in grief and hold tightly to it because it seems that our grief is all that remains. Yet, if you dare to open your ears, you might be able to hear the voice of God through God’s messenger saying, “I see you. I see you. I see you.” No matter how we might feel, no one is invisible to God.

I do not have easy answers about loneliness and suffering.  I have lived on both sides – I have been both Sarah and Hagar. I have been the cause of the loneliness of others and I have felt the sting of loneliness myself. The reality is that it is not as simple as just drawing a line and standing on one side or the other. I have walked in the shoes of both women. What I do know is that whether we find ourselves in the situation of Sarah or Hagar, we have been seen by God. If we understand what it means when God says, “I see you – all of you,” then we have a taste of how important it is for us to be God’s messenger who turns to see others.   

Worry and Rest

True Confessions: I am a list maker. Yes, I am one of those people. In fact, I probably fit into the category of one of those “sick” list makers since I derive great pleasure from scratching things off my to-do list. I actually put easy tasks on my list just so I can check them off. Who else includes “eat breakfast,” “make coffee,”  “get dressed” or “make bed” on their to-do lists? Me. I feel like the day gets off to a great start when I can immediately check several things off my list. Making a list helps me to feel organized, it helps my day to run more smoothly, and it helps my sometimes-forgetful nature. Of course, there is a shadow side to these seemingly helpful lists. This darker side involves creating tasks to add to my list so I will feel busy and important. Everyone knows that the busier one is, the more important and valuable they are.

There are several problems with this line of thinking. If one gains value from their ability to stay busy and accomplish, what happens when they are no longer able to go and do and be and accomplish? What happens when a person becomes physically limited by age or a medical condition? Is the woman who tears a ligament in her ankle and finds her movement limited for months and months of less value than one who is not injured? Is the man who finds his strength has been slowly eroded by time of less value than those who are young and strong? What about the woman who spends weeks and weeks in bed due to pregnancy complications? Is she a less capable mother than the women who paint her child’s nursery, assembles their furniture, organize their clothes, work and attend aerobics classes until that child pops out? This line of thinking points to our own self-evaluations, our own self-perceptions, our own ability to love appreciate and accept ourselves, but also to a broader cultural dynamic and sickness that places “value” on humans based upon productivity/or the lack there of instead recognizing one another as created in the Divine image.

This morning, our lectionary kicks off the season of Ordinary Time by remind us of two important truths. 1) Our value is derived because we are created by God - in the image of God. 2) God rested.

Have you read the creation accounts lately? Take a moment and read the poetic account that beautifully personifies God’s presence in the midst of creation and serves as a reminder of God’s love and care for all humans: Genesis 1:1-2:4.

And God created Humankind in God’s own image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female, God created them.[1]  As people, our value is solely derived from the fact that we are Godbearers, as Christians, we are little Christs. This means that our living and being and moving is the light of God in the darkness, together as community we are the bread and the cup which makes up the Body of Christ. There is nothing apart from this that gives us greater value. We only have to accept this is where our value comes from and then live. If the living part seems daunting to you, do not worry, the Spirit of God lives in the world and helps us, reminds us, and empowers us. Hello Pentecost!

If our value is no longer derived from our accomplishments then we are free to let out the breath we have been holding. We are free to cease from our busyness and rest. We rest inside community when we gather to worship. We rest in our homes or in the nature that surrounds us, and when we can bring stillness to our minds, we rest inside our selves. We can put aside our lists and worries and exhale. We rest because we are not ultimately in charge, no matter what we say and despite our actions to the contrary, we do not possess ultimate control. That is God’s job. We must not confuse our role of Godbearers for actually being the Divine who creates and sustains.

The other night, I woke up at 3:07a. It might have been earlier than that but it was 3:07 when I finally looked at  the clock on my phone. As I lay in bed, my mind raced from subject to subject worrying and fretting and trying to find solutions and answers to problems that I cannot solve and questions I cannot answer. My grandfather always offered the reminder that one should pray during middle of the night worries but it is quite difficult to pray when one is busy trying to do God’s job.

As people of God we are quick to talk about the Sabbath. We are quick to remember the commandment about remembering the Sabbath and keeping it Holy. Most of our school-aged children can even tell you that on the 7^th day of Creation, God rested. When it comes down to it, we all have our own little ways in which we wrest control from God. In doing this we heap untenable burdens onto our own lives and will eventually buckle under their weight.

Perhaps this week, we can practice resting. Perhaps we can let go of our needs to be and do and control and we can even speak back to that annoying little voice that pushes us into that unhealthy way of living. It isn’t easy to rest, it isn’t easy to quiet our minds when we have spend years practicing a different pattern of living. This is why rest is considered a Spiritual Practice. We practice it a little every day. We practice it a little every week and over time we find that our practicing has strengthened our resting muscles. As our resting muscles strengthen we just might find that our ability to trust God has increased. For when we practice rest we are also practicing trust, we are saying “God’s got this covered, God’s got me covered, and that is more than enough.”

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[1] Genesis 1:27

A few thoughts on Trinity Sunday

Good Morning Friends,

This morning is Trinity Sunday. Some might say, it marks the ending of all that is fun and exciting in the Christian Calendar: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost. This Sunday ushers us into the period we call Ordinary Time and will carry us until the end of the Christian year. I will say more about  the beginning of Ordinary Time a little later today but stumbled across this passage written by NT Wright about Trinity Sunday and wanted to share it with you here. If you are interested, I have included a link below to the book from which this excerpt is taken.

Love and Peace,
Amy

“In the church’s year, Trinity Sunday is the day when we stand back from the extraordinary sequence of events that we’ve been celebrating for the previous five months—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost—and when we rub the sleep from our eyes and discover what the word ‘god’ might actually mean.  These events function as a sequence of well-aimed hammer-blows which knock at the clay jars of the gods we want, the gods who reinforce our own pride or prejudice, until they fall away and reveal instead a very different god, a dangerous god, a subversive god, a god who comes to us like a blind beggar with wounds in his hands, a god who comes to us in wind and fire, in bread and wine, in flesh and blood: a god who says to us, ‘You did not choose me; I chose you.’

You see, the doctrine of the Trinity, properly understood, is as much a way of saying ‘we don’t know’ as of saying ‘we do know.’ To say that the true God is Three and One is to recognize that if there is a God then of course we shouldn’t expect him to fit neatly into our little categories.  If he did, he wouldn’t be God at all, merely a god, a god we might perhaps have wanted.  The Trinity is not something that the clever theologian comes up with as a result of hours spent in the theological laboratory, after which he or she can return to announce that they’ve got God worked out now, the analysis is complete, and here is God neatly laid out on a slab.  The only time they laid God out on a slab he rose again three days afterwards. 

On the contrary: the doctrine of the Trinity is, if you like, a signpost pointing ahead into the dark, saying: ‘Trust me; follow me; my love will keep you safe.’ Or, perhaps better, the doctrine of the Trinity is a signpost pointing into a light which gets brighter and brighter until we are dazzled and blinded, but which says: ‘Come, and I will make you children of light.’  The doctrine of the Trinity affirms the rightness, the propriety, of speaking intelligently that the true God must always transcend our grasp of him, even our most intelligent grasp of him.”

~ N.T. Wright, in For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), p. 24. 

Pentecost Sunday

I did not grow up in a Christian tradition that made a big deal about Pentecost Sunday. In fact, my tradition did not even acknowledge Pentecost Sunday. Besides Christmas and Easter, the rest of the Christian calendar was largely forgotten. As an adult, I find this sad. For Christ followers, Pentecost is a HUGE holiday. We should throw parties and celebrate. In fact, it is one of our biggest holidays that has not been appropriated by culture. You see, on Christmas we celebrate Immanuel: God with us. On Pentecost, we celebrate the scorching tongue of fire, the Spirit: God in us. My friends, this is big news! God is not simply roaming among us and we are left to search for God’s presence, the Spirit of God is alive in each one us. For us, this arrive is amazing, wonderful, and terrible. Of course, I do not use terrible in the sense of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I mean terrible in the sense of its literal meaning: inciting awe or great.

            Take a moment to read through the Pentecost Story in the second chapter of Acts. If we did not know it before, surely we know it now the God who appears in these pages of scripture is neither docile nor tame. This God is not a safe, predictable deity we might imagine. “No, this is the God whose loving sometimes takes the form of scorching.”[1] This is the God whose appearance takes the form of divided tongues, as of fire… and these tongues to not appear to the disciples as some sort of hallucination that comes after eating too much stale Chinese food. No, these tongues of fire rested on those followers of Jesus who hid out in a house together.

Before Jesus left them, He promised the Spirit of God would come to them. Jesus described the Spirit as a Comforter or an Advocate. I can only imagine what the disciples must have been expecting at the appearance of the Spirit of God. If it were me, my first thought of a coming Comforter might have thought of a gentle breeze or a babbling brook. I would not have imagined the Comforter as a rushing wind or a blazing fire. But, perhaps that is the point.

In his book, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis writes a conversation between the children and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. In this scene, the Beavers are taking the children to meet the great Lion, Aslan. Naturally, the children are a bit concerned about this revelation because they are sensible children and know enough to know that of all the animals one might choose as a helper or a companion, the Lion is at not at the top of the list.

Aslan is a Lion – the Lion, the Great Lion [explained Mrs. Beaver].

Ooh  said Susan  I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.

Safe? Said Mr. Beaver haven’t you been listening to what Mrs. Beaver has been saying> Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.

When the long expected Comforter appears, we are reminded that comfort is not necessarily comfortable. Instead, the Comforter comes to makes itself know in our lives and communities…in the places where we face the most difficult, most raw, most searing challenges. In the presence of the Comforter we find the deepest blessings we could ever imagine or know.

I leave you with this blessing from the dear writer, painter and pastor, Jan Richardson. I pray that as we celebrate Pentecost with the colors of fire: reds and pinks and yellows and oranges, we will dare to allow our minds and hearts to be opened, that we will dare to redefine comfort and allow ourselves to be wholly changed by that which seems uncomfortable.

This Grace that Scorches Us: A Blessing for Pentecost

By Jan Richardson

Here’s one thing
you must understand
about this blessing:
it is not
for you alone.

It is stubborn
about this;
do not even try
to lay hold of it
if you are by yourself,
thinking you can carry it
on your own.

To bear this blessing,
you must first take yourself
to a place where everyone
does not look like you
or think like you,
a place where they do not
believe precisely as you believe,
where their thoughts
and ideas and gestures
are not exact echoes
of your own.

Bring your sorrow. Bring your grief.
Bring your fear. Bring your weariness,
your pain, your disgust at how broken
the world is, how fractured,
how fragmented
by its fighting, its wars,
its hungers, its penchant for power,
its ceaseless repetition
of the history it refuses
to rise above.

I will not tell you
this blessing will fix all that.

But in the place
where you have gathered,
wait.
Watch.
Listen.
Lay aside your inability
to be surprised,
your resistance to what you
do not understand.

See then whether this blessing
turns to flame on your tongue,
sets you to speaking
what you cannot fathom

or opens your ear
to a language
beyond your imagining
that comes as a knowing
in your bones
a clarity
in your heart
that tells you

this is the reason
we were made,
for this ache
that finally opens us,

for this struggle, this grace
that scorches us
toward one another
and into
the blazing day.

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[1] Jan Richardson, Painted Prayerbook: Pentecost, This Grace that Scorches us.