The Ultimate Wild Thing

sermon by Carrie Eikler

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost

The world lost one of the great children’s storytellers and illustrators earlier this month.  Maurice Sendak was the author of dozens of books including In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and Bumble-Ardy published only nine months before he died.  But he is probably most famous for his 1963 book, Where the Wild Things Are.

Pamela Paul wrote on the back page essay of The New York Times book review shortly after his death that, “[Maurice] Sendak [along with] Shel Silverstein and Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, are so much a part of the childhood vernacular today that it’s hard to imagine their books were once considered to be wholly inappropriate for children. They brought a shock of subversion to the genre….  [These] books encouraged bad, or perhaps just human behavior”

And  I agree. It has always seemed to me that Sendak’s books and illustrations are simultaneously whimsical and imaginative while, being just the slightest bit disturbing.   There’s a lot about ingesting things…eating chicken soup with rice, a lion swallowing a boy named Pierre who only says “I don’t care.” Who can forget when the wild things say they love Max so much they’ll eat him up?  It is oddly humorous, if not a bit disconcerting.

In fact, after Sendak died, I was listening to some interviews replayed in his memory on the radio show “Fresh Air.”  Terry Gross, the host, asked him if had any favorite comments from readers over the years and he spoke about a letter from a little boy named Jim.  Jim had sent Sendak a card with a little drawing on it.  “I loved it.” said Sendak.  “I answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered over.  I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it.  I wrote ‘Dear Jim, I loved your card.’  Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’  Just like a real Wild Thing.

Sendak said that little Jim’s response of eating his drawing was one of the highest compliments he’d ever received.  The author said, “He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything.  He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

As I mentioned, just nine months before Sendak died, he published his final book Bumble-ardy about an orphaned pig who is turning nine years old.  Bumble-ardy has never had a birthday party so when he turns nine his Aunt Adeline (you can already catch on to the rhyming nature of this story) plans to give him a quiet party for two when she returns home from work.  But unable to wait until half past nine, Buble-ardy invites some swine, who come in for a party and dine. 

And mayhem ensues.  The wildness begins.  The story goes: “…the piggy swine/Broke down the door and guzzled brine/And hogged sweet cakes and oinked loud grunts/And pulled all kinds of dirty stunts”

[pause]

I kind of like to think of this as a Pentecost story. 

The followers of Jesus, those intrigued with Jesus, those looking for something more than they had ever experienced, gather for the Festival of the Pentecost, a harvest festival marking fifty days after the Passover.  Not only that, but it became a significant celebration marking the moment of the Ten Commandments given to Moses and the Hebrew people on Mount Sinai.

I do have to make one huge disclaimer and apology, although.  Comparing a story about swine to the festival of the Pentecost is somewhat inappropriate, because many of the party goes were Jewish and pork is not kosher food,  so please forgive me for that analogy, but I won’t dwell on the fact that these characters are pigs…

 I don’t know enough about Pentecost to know what the tone of the celebration might be---joyful, somber, reflective—but wonder,  for those gathered, if there wasn’t just a bit of  a bittersweet feel.  Because if you remember, last week Torin talked about the ascension— Jesus died, resurrected, walked among the disciples for a handful of days, and then was snatched away again, his physical body ascending into the clouds—he “ascended” hence “ascension”.  The hide and seek game of Jesus continues.

So I can imagine there was a range of feelings among the disciples and others gathered.   Maybe some were a bit perturbed: OK Jesus, make up your mind, stay with us or go.  Maybe others knew there would be something more: he’s surprised us once; who’s to say he’s really gone?  Either way, they gathered.  People from all over, who had made Jerusalem their home, had gathered.

It was a festival that no doubt had been celebrated before.  Maybe there was an order to the whole thing.  Maybe the people there knew what would happen.  Again, I’m not sure how it all would have gone down, but we do know one thing--before you know it the celebration takes an unexpected turn.  The party has an unexpected visitor and the wild rumpus of the Spirit begins.  It was so wild that indeed, people on the outside thought it was a drunken time, apostles and disciples swilling wine, but Peter says “nay, tis only nine”

And now, two thousand years later, Christianity still points to this event at Pentecost as sort of the birthday of Christ’s church.  Isn’t interesting that we say the birthday of the church comes not the birth of Jesus, or the death of Jesus, or even the resurrection of Jesus…but when the Holy Spirit came in all its wildness and chaos and confusion and joined the people in a power beyond understanding…while somehow, creating an experience where each person strangely—deeply—understood what was going on.

This wild thing.  It’s a hard thing for us, and me, to appreciate you know?   We aren’t prepared for the wild thing to be let loose…We are even suspicious, as Torin alluded to last week, about the nature of this Holy Spirit.  I mean, if we’re honest, the Spirit is probably the most vague member in this trinity.  We get God (or at least we can feel what we mean when we say God).  Jesus the Christ is super clear—we’ve got four gospels to help us see that he was someone who existed, who had words.  But the Spirit…the spirit is elusive, mystical.  The Spirit doesn’t speak itself…others speak in the spirit.  The Spirit moves.  The Spirit breathes. 

And you have probably heard me say before our separate English words for wind, and breath, and spirit all share the one same word in Hebrew: ruach.  Ruach was what blew over the empty vastness in creation. There are elements of this same spirit that go with the Hebrew people as the make their exodus from Egypt.  And just to make things even more unclear, the author of John’s gospel says the spirit/wind blows where it chooses.  We can’t control it.  We don’t know.  It is what it is.  Will do what it will do.

Try to build a solid faith on that.  It seems appealing and disturbing at the same time.  Something that can at once be a cooling, comforting presence can change and become a fiery presence, leading you to do things you didn’t think you would do, build things you never though you would create, begin something that [signal to congregation] two thousand years later [pause] still exists, waxing and waning, struggling to understand, failing, succeeding, confessing, reconciling, and all the while…coming and reuniting as a gathering of Christ.  The Church (with a big C), the church  (with a little c).  The church that incorporates all languages, all people, all matter of wildness.

The Pentecost story is one about the universality of God’s love.  The openness of Christ’s church.  The wildness that the Spirit can wield when we simply gather in worship.  It’s about transformation of people into a church and in turn a transformation of a church into a people…of Christ. 

And you’d probably agree we need to hear a Pentecost message again from time to time because it has lost its power. Like Maurice Sendak and Shel Silverstein and Doctor Seuss, it’s amazing that what was so subversive at one time has become so commonplace. Even this story, which comes around once a year, is unimpressive to us. 

But that’s exactly why this story comes around every year.  Because—forgive me for sounding, well…Pentecostal—but we need some Pentecost wildness in our lives, don’t we?  In our life, in my life, in your life.  We need it, but…if you’re like me, you don’t really want it.

There’s no room right now in my life for the unexpected, thank you very much.  How about yours?  Can you handle some unexpected surprises?  Some uninvited party guest?

In Bumble-ardy there are two disturbing lines, sort of like that “we’ll eat you up we love you so” uncomfortable humor. When Aunt Adeline returns home from work she is furious to see such wildness from Bumble-ardy and his party.  She says “OK smarty you’ve had your party, but never again” to which Bumble-ardy replies “I promise, I swear, I won’t ever turn 10.”

[pause]. 

Sendak said that those two lines, Aunt Adeline saying “never again” and young Bumble proclaiming “I won’t ever turn ten” were his favorite lines.  And he doesn’t know exactly why.  But he said that when he wrote book, he was intensely aware of death.  His friend and partner of 50-years, Eugene, was dying in their house when he wrote it and he said “I did Bumble-ardy to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live as any human being does... Bumble-ardy was a combination of the deepest pain and the wondrous feeling of coming into my own. [Yet writing it] took a long time.  A very long time”

A combination of deep pain and wonderment.  I bet that’s what was seasoning among those disciples that Pentecost.  Deep pain and wonderment…a perfect recipe for the unleashing of something amazing and unexpected.  Those gathered did not want what they experienced to die with Jesus.  In our lives, we do not want to be taken further down the dark road of depression or loneliness or aimlessness or pure...mundane life.  As a congregation, we do  not want to be drug down with what we think needs to be done because it is what always has been.  In life we don’t want to continue marching in lock step towards death.

What I want, and maybe you want, but certainly the church needs, is a reminder of the Spirit.  Remember what Sendak said about little Jim’s response to his Wild Thing picture? “He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything.  He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”  We won’t ever go back to the original church in Acts when tongues of fire came down.  Or the height of Christendom when people filled the pews because they had to. 

But we can be children of the Spirit, bringing out of ourselves our deepest fear and wonderment with our eyes lifted ever upward to receive the unexpected wildness of the Spirit,.  To see it.  To love .  And…maybe not eat it, but certainly consume into the depths of our being. 

And that begins with an openness to let this ultimate Wild Thing into the party of our lives.  Pain, wonderment, love, joy.  It’s the making of a wild and scary party. 

But most certainly…a good one.

Forsaken

sermon by Torin Eikler
Psalm 22

“My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”

If you recognize those words, it’s not surprising.  But if the rest of the reading sparked any memories, you are, in my experience, one of only a few people who are familiar with the 22^nd Psalm.  Mostly, Christians know that first line as one of few phrases that Jesus spoke while on the cross if they know it at all.  I probably wouldn’t even know that it was connected to a Psalm if I hadn’t had a reason to look it up when I was younger (seminary).

When I was in Jr. High, my parents Sunday school group had a get-together at my house.  A couple of my friends were there too, and we were all included in the fun.  The first of those “fun” activities was an ice-breaker where we all had snippets of the gospels taped on our backs and had to figure out what they were by asking questions of other people.  It helped that all the phrases were well-known quotes from Jesus … well they were supposed to be well-known anyway.

After about ten or fifteen minutes, everyone else had gotten theirs, but I was at a loss.  I had no idea what my card said, and I couldn’t think of even one more question to help.  Eventually, someone decided that things had gone far enough and took pity on me by offering the hint that it was one of the “seven last words of Jesus.”  (By the way, if you’re ever in the same situation, that is not a great hint to give to a 13-year-old.)

I tried, “It is finished,” “Father, forgive them…,” and “into your hands I commit my spirit,” and when none of them fit, I left the room quite embarrassed.  Though I would never have admitted it at the time, what I really wanted was for my mother to come in and hold me … to reassure me that no one was laughing at me … that I wasn’t stupid … that everything would be okay.

A couple of minutes later, our pastor came and found me with a bible (She must have gotten it from my parents because I wouldn’t have known where to find it), and told me to look up Psalm 22.  I read the first line, found my answer, and went back to the group.  Later that evening, I went back and read the whole thing through a couple of times, and it opened up the Psalms to me in an entirely new way.

J. Clinton McCann, Jr., calls the opening words of this Psalm haunting, and they certainly feel that way to me.  The psalmist complains of begin forsaken, yet still addresses God as ‘my God.’ … That points toward the “close personal attachment” she or he feels to the God who seems to be absent.  “Why me?” seems to be the question at the heart the psalmists lament.  “Why has this God that I know and love forsaken one of [her] own children.  Why am I left alone in my time of need?[1]

That’s exactly how I felt that night.  No dogs surrounding me.  No wild oxen.  Certainly no evildoers in that room.  But the emotions rang true, as I sure they have for all of us at one time or another.  I felt a bit like a worm, abandoned by my parents, scorned by others, mocked in my own mind for not knowing what I should have.

I know that’s small beans compared to what the Psalms talk about, but that’s the power of the Psalms.  They speak to us in the midst of the life we live.  They tell the stories of people who have been in lowest places, surrounded by enemies, and just about ready to throw in the towel, lie down, and die.  People who would probably have done so already except … except for their faith.

In the midst of the darkness that surrounds them, they call out in pain and desperation – sometimes in anger.  They beg.  They bargain.  They blame and scold God for letting it all happen.  They remind God of the promises that she has made – covenants that pledge support and love forever.  They find relief and hope in the stories of others who have been in tight spots and found a way through … with God’s help.  And, … they invite us in to share their experiences.

Psalm 22 is no exception.  We are each invited in to the experience of feeling surrounded by enemies with no support, an experience that we may remember all too well.  We feel our hope and energy abandon us as we lie down in the dust.  We stand on the verge of giving up and offer up our last prayer for salvation – for any path to the future.  And, along with the author, we discover with surprise and relief that God is still with us … that God suffers with us and cares for us.  No matter how bleak the outlook, there is hope and there is reason to offer thanksgiving and praise.

What does make this Psalm unusual, perhaps one of the reasons that Jesus quoted it, is that it is not just the lament of one person.  It speaks for the whole community as well.  Nearly from the beginning the psalmist calls upon the community’s experience of God’s mercy in the past to provide hope (however meager) for a renewed future, and as soon as God has heard and answered the plea for deliverance, the psalmist turns to the congregation, praising God and inviting everyone to participate.

Then he goes a step further.  He creates a community of the afflicted, the poor, and even those who are outside of the faith and invites them to come to the table of God’s grace to be satisfied.  Everyone, he says – everyone in the whole of creation will know the love and care of God.  We all will live and serve one another under the wings of God.[2]

Sometimes we write sermons with the hope of helping people experience a bit of what is going on in the scriptures in order to open doors for understanding.  I don’t think I need to do that today, though, … because I think this congregation already feels abandoned … at least a little bit.

When we came here, there was an average attendance of about 30 people with no little children, and people were tired….  Tired from the extra work of look for a new pastor.  Tired from keeping up with the work of the Board and the Commissions with so few people.  Tired of feeling small and worrying about the future.

After a while, things began to look a little better.  People were coming to share the life of our community.  Attendance was up.  There was … enough money.  And there were enough people to share the work more evenly.  We felt blessed.  We felt alive.

Then some of our friends had to leave, and in some ways it seems like we are back to where we were five years ago.  The sanctuary feels a bit empty sometimes.  It often seems like there is more work than there are people to do it.  And we are disheartened.  We feel as though we are “poured out like water” and all out of joint.  Sometimes, … sometimes we feel more than a little forsaken, but we have not lost faith.  Deep in our hearts we still dare to hope and dream.

So, this morning I invite you all to enter into fully into the Psalm – into the pain and despair of feeling forsaken so that we, too, may find hope and grace for the future.  I invite you to join the Psalmist in lament and praise (these are not quite her own words):

O God, our God, why have you forsaken us? 

Why are you so far from helping us, from our whimpers?
We cry out day after day, week after week, and you do not answer.

Yet you are holy, praised by your children everywhere.
In the past, we turned to you, and we found comfort.
We trusted in you, and we found hope.

But now, we feel like we are failing.
We have poured ourselves out like water.
We are so tired of this struggle that we feel like giving up.
We worry about what the future will bring (if there is a future for us)

O God, do not leave us alone.
Come dwell with us.
Deliver us from despair. 
Save us from the fears and worries that haunt us.
 
You pull us back from a place of hopelessness and regret,
     And we will tell stories of your mercy and grace together.
The power of your love brings songs of thanksgiving and praise to our lips.
     for your grace and care give us hope for a bright future.
They promise that everyone who hungers for you will have all that they need.
They remind us that we are never … will never be alone,
     for you are Lord of all the Earth.
            Wherever we may be, you are there with us – walking with us …
                        And we shall praise you.

We are not alone.  We have not been forsaken.  Look around you.  There may not be a hundred people sitting in these pews, but this is a strong community … filled with life and love.  We have so many children in the congregation that we are looking for new ways to care for them.  And we are growing as new people find us and make us their home.

It is a fact of life in this more and more mobile society (and in a University town especially) that people come and go.  But God is with us.  God will always be with us, sharing the sorrows that come, comforting and supporting us when we are filled with worry or feeling exhausted, holding our hand and leading us forward … into new life.

---

[1] J. Clinton McCann, Jr. in “Psalms” from The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. 762.

[2] J. Clinton McCann, Jr. in “Psalms” from The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. 765.

Live is Complicated. Love is Simple

sermon by Carrie Eikler

Acts8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21

May 6, 2012

Love.

I love you. 

I promise to love you forever.

I love you man!

Oh my gosh, I love this sweater.

Try it…you’ll love it.

Have you seen the new episode of “Glee”?  I loved it.

I love Thai food.

I love my children.

I love my new washing machine.

Love makes the world go round.

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Tough love.

Love hurts.

Beloved, let us love one another.

There seems to me a problem with either the English language itself, or our flippant and careless use of it when we can use the same word to describe the way we feel about our children, that we use to describe the excitement of a new appliance.  I love it! …Really? I love that high efficiency top loading horizontal axis Staber washing machine? 

Yes, I love my children…generally.  No, I know I don’t love our new washing machine.  But it doesn’t keep me from saying I do.  Our contemporary language is one in which free love is supreme.  Love abounds.  We throw love around like teenagers with low self-esteem.

So it makes sense that this verse may induce the yawn factor: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. Yawn.  Yeah right, let us love one another.  This verse doesn’t seem too radical, as far as words go.  We love lots of stuff, so why not each other?

Most of us know that when we say love, we don’t mean love, language is like that.  Maybe we’re just being “poetic” in our everyday parlance.   Maybe we’ll talk about that in Sunday School?!  But really, do you know what love is?  Can you define it, or do you just feel it?

 I mean, I know I love my husband.  I know I love my children, my family.  I know I’m supposed to love my neighbor, that I’m supposed to love you, as a community of faith, that I’m supposed to love God’s creation.  But I can’t put those things alongside the things that I know I love and see how my love for one thing should shape my love for something else, like my love for you, or my love for the earth.  

One of my favorite “feel good songs” is from the country-folky songwrite Iris Dement.  In her song Let the mystery be, she sings: 

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory and I ain't saying it ain't a fact.
But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory and I don't like the sound of that.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.

Every time I hear this song I do my own little silent, preach it sister.  It seems to capture the scripture, live in love.  But the more I think about it, if I were to take Iris Dement’s lyrics as gospel…I think I would still be confused. 

So I guess, to be fair, we know there are many different ways to love, I’m not trying to play ignorant here.  I’m just realizing that love isn’t something that can easily be identified, just as God…can’t. be. easily identified.   To link God with love is…well…lovely, but…what does it mean, especially when we see around us abuses of love, things that are done towards others—children, spouses,  those we label taboo—horrible things done to them under the claim that it is done in love. 

There are two stories that each of our two scriptures for today made me think of.  And let me say that I love that these scriptures come together in the lectionary for today because if 1 John, about beloveds loving one another, is sort of the theoretical seminar on love, this story in Acts is like the internship.  One scripture seems warm and fuzzy, if not a bit elusive, the other seems a bit more challenging…

We watched the movie 50/50 this last weekend.  It’s  based on the true story of Adam, a young man who is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer on his spine when he is 27.   His chances of survival are 50%.  He can’t understand how this happened: he’s young, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, his job as a radio journalist doesn’t expose him to toxins or harmful chemicals. 

As his disease progresses, and the treatments move him into new territories of real life and death questions,  we witness the multitude of love that surrounds him.

There is his mother, played by Angelica Houston: overbearing, worries too much, wants to move in with him and take care of him while she also cares for her husband with Alzheimer’s, who makes him green tea on the night she finds out he has cancer, because she heard it could reduce the possibility of cancer by 15%.  “But mom,” he says “I already have cancer.”

There is his girlfriend: he gives her an out, saying she doesn’t have to stick around to deal with this, but she says she won’t abandon him, she will take care of him…only to find it difficult to mix the world of his illness with the “real” world of her own life and ambitions and memories of how their relationship used to be.

And then there is the best friend, Kyle, played by Seth Rogan.  Now if any of you know the characters Seth Rogan plays, you will expect him to be nasty, crude, offensive.  And he is.  He tells Adam that his prognosis of 50% has better odds than most casino games.  He uses the cancer to try to get girls, firmly believing in the sympathy factor to land women into bed.

But he’s also the one who takes Adam to most of his treatments.  He’s the one who helps Adam shave his head when he starts chemotherapy.  And when some of his shenanigans almost pushes Adam to the point of questioning his friend’s commitment all together, he find’s a book in Kyle’s bathroom called “Facing Cancer Together”, dog-eared and highlighted.

Each of these people, mother, girlfriend,  best friend…loving in the only ways they know how, many times failing miserably.   And yet entering into a place of pain and uncertainty to offer themselves, warts and all.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

[pause]

Nadia Bolz Webber is a Lutheran pastor, but you really wouldn’t know it to look at her: cause she has an armful of sleeve tattoos and self-admittingly swears like a truck driver.  She lives in Denver, Colorado where I guess it must be ok for pastors to do that sort of thing.  Nadia shared about one Sunday a few years back, and an experience with a man named Stuart. 

Stuart was a gay man who usually wore a Grease Monkey jacket and dirty pants.  This day he was dressed in a button down shirt and slacks, because he was becoming the godparent to the child of some friends, a straight couple.

Following the baptism, there was a reception, and the parents of the child got everyone’s attention so they could say a few words about why they had chosen Stuart to be their child’s godparent.  And they said “We chose you Stuart, because for most of your life you have pursued Christ and Christ’s church even though, as a gay man, all you’ve heard from the church is that there is no love for you here.”  They were saying to him “You, Stuart, convert us again and again to this faith.”

Nadia, the pastor, reflected on this as she recalls the story of the Ethiopian eunuch.  She remembers that in her study Bible as a child, this text was called “The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch” and that the message was that “we should tell everyone we meet about Jesus because in doing so we might save them.  We might convert them.  We might change them into being us.”  But after this experience, she wasn’t so sure.

As Nadia points out, “if the eunuch was reading Isaiah as he returned from Jerusalem having gone there to worship, then I would bet he was also familiar with Deuteronomy, specifically 23:1—‘No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord” (otherwise known as the very best memory verse ever,)” says Nadia.

“The law strictly forbids a eunuch from entering the assembly of the Lord.  [Their gender differences] do not fit them into proper categories, made them profane by nature.  They do not fit.  But despite the fact that in all likelihood he would be turned away by the religious establishment, the Ethiopian Eunuch sought God anyway.”

“I wonder if” Nadia asks “when the Spirit guided Philip to that road in the desert, if she guided him […Philip] to his own conversion.  When Philip joined this person who sought to worship God despite his exclusion, was it perhaps Philip himself who was converted to the faith?   The only command came from God and the command was go and join.”

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows Go:  beloved since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another

Love is a complicated thing, no doubt.  And yet, it can be the simplest acts that can embody it.  It may be shaving the head of a friend at the scariest time in their lives, or it may just be holding their hand on a day like any other, a surprising, unexpected expression of connection.  It may be proclaiming a bold statement to a crowd that one who has been deemed unlovable by church or society has blessed you deeper into God’s love…or it may just be a note to someone telling them the same thing.

So we can’t define love, we can only feel it and express it.  We marvel how it can rise in us, unbidden.   And that is how we know it is not from us, with all our narrow and selfish ways.  We know it comes from God.  It came from God’s sending love to us, asking nothing of us but to receive that love, to go, and join. 

And undoubtedly we will fail along the way as we try to open ourselves up more fully to that love.  But like that couple who spoke of Stuart the godparent of their child, we will be converted again and again…saved again and again, by the surprising love…of others who will love us into God.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God: everyone who loves is born of God and knows God…beloved since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let this be our prayer.

What's in a Name?

sermon by Torin Eikler
1 John 3:16-24            Acts 4:5-10

Our family had a once-in-a-lifetime experience this past Thursday.  We went to the doctor’s office and watched – all together – as the ultrasound technician discovered that our new baby will be a boy!

 I’m quite sure the moment was lost on the boys who couldn’t understand the pictures they were seeing and who were, after an hour’s wait, feeling quite squirrelly.  But, to speak for myself, it was a very special experience.  It was almost as powerful as the first time I saw Sebastian on the monitor sitting comfortably with his fists up on either side of his head, and I will always treasure holding my first two children as I discovered that our family would soon be the mirror of the one I grew up with.

On a more practical note, this new information means that the work of choosing a name is now cut in half.  No little Rosemary or Claire is on the way.  So, now it’s down to Peter or Hugo or Patrick or any of the other dozens of names that we have considered (If you have any ideas …), and the real challenge has begun.

It may seem strange that this joyful task takes so much effort.  After all, a name is just a name, but, for us, it feels really important to choose the right name because names are important.  If they are too unusual – like mine – then a child might feel both unique and alone.  If they are too common, then the child might find themselves lumped in with all the other John Smiths they are bound to meet.  And there is always the issue of nasty nicknames, which seem to inevitable no matter how much care we might take.

Even beyond that, names hold meaning, and they grow more and more complex as we fill them with experiences – either our own or those we connect with others.  Names carry stories, and each story is as unique as the person who carries the name.

The story of my name, for instance, starts when my parents made it up.  They began with Thor (which is the name of the Norse god of thunder and warfare and seems an odd choice for pacifists), but my mother felt that was too harsh.  So they added the “in” on the end and dropped the “h” in the middle so as to any connection to the dwarf named Thorin in Tolkein’s book, The Hobbit….  A good story to begin with, but when they called my aunt and told her the name they had chosen, things got more … interesting.  Her response was, “That’s a wonderful name. We almost used it for Chad.  Are you spelling it with an ‘in’ or an ‘en?’  My mother, at a bit of a loss, responded, “in,” and wondered where my aunt had found the name.

For years I wondered about that too … and about what my name meant.  I knew the name was out there … somewhere, but I have yet to meet another Torin, and I have never been able to find a mug or a magnet or anything else with my name on it.  That may seem trivial, but it had an effect on me.  And it wasn’t until I finally discovered that Torin has come to mean “chieftain or leader” that I felt at home with my name.  I’ll never know how I would have felt if it had meant “mucker out of stalls,” but I think even such a humble meaning would have given me the sense of grounding that I had been looking for.

I will admit that my own history may color the importance I put on names … maybe just a teensy bit…, but in ancient times, names held even more importance than I attribute to them.  People understood names as an essential part of everyone’s personality.  They assumed that names would shape people from the very beginning, and that if you did happen to be named “mucker-out-of-stalls,” then that is what you would become.  Thus, the man we call Jesus was named ישׁוע (Yeshua) – “Yahweh Saves” – because he was to save the people from sin.

That names were important in another way is something we see in the story we heard from Acts.  When Peter and John were brought before the Sanhedrin to be tried for the healing of a crippled man (which we heard about last week), the first and only question they were asked was, “by … whose name did you do this?”  And after hearing Peter’s response, the council forbid the disciples “to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” because they were afraid that a name already made legendary by Jesus’ own teaching and healing would take on god-like power if it was linked to courageous men performing miracles after his death….  And they were right.  Such a name might become as rallying cry for rebellion.  It could even usurp their own sphere of power and take control of the remnants of the Jewish theocracy.

Sometime during the past couple of discussions, I remember someone commenting that in the West (and in the United States in particular) Christians seem to define themselves over and against one another.  We separate ourselves into denominations and more denominations based on the things that make us distinct from one another rather than holding onto the unity of beliefs that we hold in common. 

I wonder if that’s really helpful.  In some ways it points out significant differences in how we understand grace and mercy and the body of Christ and all manner of other theological questions, and it makes it a little bit easier to find communities where we can feel safe together as we worship.  It also puts a damper on important discussions – discussions that can be terribly painful but also hold the promise of growth and new understanding.  And it tends to create boundaries between us – boundaries that reinforced by stereotypes which often mislead us and can cause hurt and damage relationships between members of different denominations.

We have been talking for several weeks now about what it means to be Anabaptists.  The name itself means “re-baptizers” and carries its own stories of pain and fulfillment, but as we have discovered, it is not a lifeless object.  It is more than its history.  It has grown and changed over the centuries, and it crosses into the present with us.  All of our own experiences and beliefs have shaped its meaning, and to the extent that we have embraced the name as our own, it has bound us more closely to each other as a community of faith.  It has reassured us of certain beliefs we hold in common, and it has shaped our lives together.  But it also has the power to separate us from brothers and sisters who are part of the body of Christ.

There is a practice that has developed recently among those who work together across denominational lines that works toward healing some of that brokenness.  They call themselves Baptist Christians or Mennonite Christians or Catholic Christians as a way of recalling the power of our essential belief in Jesus Christ while still acknowledging their differences.  That seems more helpful to me, and it brings the question that we all struggle with back to the center of our lives….  What does it mean to claim the name Christian? 

Does it mean that claim Jesus Christ as our own personal Lord and Savior?  Does it mean that we should stand on the street corners and preach hope and love in the guise of judgment and fear as Peter did?  Does it mean, as John says in his letter, that we should follow Christ’s commandment to love on another?  What does it mean to be Christian?

During the year leading up to my baptism, I had several conversations about that.  Most of them centered on the question of whether or not Jesus is the only way to salvation (as Peter more than implied in his response to the Sanhedrin) or my willingness to claim Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.  But one conversation went a very different way.

I was talking with a friend as we walked back to our neighborhood when he asked me what it was that kept me from becoming a Christian.  Whether it was the way he asked the question or something else that was on my mind at the time, I didn’t respond with my usual review of control issues or my general feelings of being unprepared for the responsibility.  Instead, I surprised myself with a bit of tirade against the “Christianity” that I saw or heard about all around me.  I absolutely did not, I said, want people to think that I was like all those other hypocritical Christians who went around condemning others, supporting abuse and oppression, or claiming that their success proved God’s blessing.

My friend was kind enough to let me finish my rant, and then he pointed out that there were lots of Christians who weren’t like that.  There were probably many more people who tried their best to live out the teachings of Christ.  They didn’t just claim the name of Christian and stop there.  The worked at bringing the love of Christ into the world through their actions.

“As I see it,” he said, “you’ve got two choices.  You can choose not to be baptized, and you won’t have to worry about people thinking you are one of “those Christians.”  But then you have to stop complaining about them or you’ll be just as hypocritical as you think they are.  OR, you can commit to being a Christian and let your life help to change how people think.  I think you might find that it changes you too.

He was right, of course.  If I didn’t accept the name of Christian – if I didn’t claim it as my own, it would have no power over my life.  I would be free of the stereotypes I hated, but I would also be cut off from the good things that are a part of Christianity.  I might still hold the same beliefs, but I would lose the chance to grow and change along with brothers and sisters who sought to make their actions show a different truth – a different way of living out the love of God.

Names are important because they have the power to mold our character and shape our lives. 

That’s true of the ones we are given at birth, and perhaps even more true of the ones we choose for ourselves.  We have chosen to call ourselves Christians – followers of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God.  Let us live into the fullness of that name in truth and action.

Breathe Peace

sermon by Carrie Eikler

Acts 3:1-19, Luke 24:36-38

Can you recall your first memory? I think I can.

I remember being on a bike ride with my family, latched into the seat on the back of my dad’s bike. I feel like were outside of our little Illinois town, on some country road. And I remember being on the ground because somehow my dad skidded or lost control and we fell. Being in the early 80s, I’m sure I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I don’t remember falling, or the bike being out of control, I don’t remember much about after the accident. I just remembering laying sideways, still strapped in the seat crying.

So can you recall your first memory? Would you say it was a good or bad one? A delightful one or traumatic one? For most of us, memories are like pearls strung on a necklace. Life is one long string of small, forgettable moments, connecting the pearls which are the big memories we can recall. Of course, it’s the pearls, not the strings that get remembered for the most part. That space between the pearls is life as usual, nothing too remarkable.

But can you imagine what it would be like to remember everything that happened to you for the majority of your life. Jill Price can. Price is one of only six people in the world diagnosed with a condition called hyperthymesia. In her book, The Woman Who Can’t Forget, she shares what it is like to remember every single day of her life since she was fourteen.

She describes it as someone following her with a video camera and if you tell her a date, March 30th 1981 for example, she pulls down the video in her mind and can tell you: it was a Monday. I was wearing a red sweater. I was in the high school and a teacher told me President Regan was shot. Give her another date: My family and I were flying to Florida from New York for vacation. It was the one year anniversary of my mother finding out she had a brain tumor. “I remember I wasn’t much fun to be around” that day, she said.

She remembers small days too, those strings for most of that connect the pearls. What she wore. Who she hung out with. What they did. She can tell you the day of the week to the corresponding date. She has instant recall. She remembers everything. Every t.v. show. Every song she’s heard. Every joke that made her laugh.

She remembers every betrayal against her. Every lie she ever told.. Everytime she embarrassed herself or stuck her foot in her mouth. Every bad decision. People tell her she has a real gift. To Jill Price, it feels more like a burden. And the hardest thing, she admits about this gift or burden (depending on how you see it), is that she has a hard time forgiving herself for the things she can’t forget. Even little things she holds onto.

The burden of remembering. We’ve all experienced that to some degree. There are still things that come to my mind that seriously make me blush because I am so embarrassed that I said that or did this or did I actually write that in an email to someone? Memories, those misty water colored memories, as much as they can comfort us, bring us joy and security, can just as easily bring us shame. It can cause us to replay events and assign blame and start thinking of other possible outcomes.

Remember those books some of us read as kids? Those choose your own adventure books? If the hero should go down the tunnel with snakes go to page 80. If she should swing across the moat filled with crocodiles, go to page 93 in his story

We look back on life in retrospect with this sort of wonderment: If we just would have done this rather than that. If we never met so and so. If we went here instead of there, made this decision instead of that one.

This is sort of the biblical adventure story that seems to be playing out in today’s scripture in Acts. The crowds are amazed that Peter healed a crippled beggar, they’re clinging to him in the cool shade of the temple’s portico. And it seems like the sympathetic Peter we just saw, the Peter who healed a man, has a choice. He can continue practicing mercy, or he can choose to start assigning judgment, he could go to page 93 or to page 80.
He chooses judgment.

He reminds them that it is not he, but the power of the risen Christ who does these actions. Remember him? Jesus? The one you handed over, the one you rejected, the one you killed.

My dad likes to practice what he calls “selective memory” or especially “selective hearing”: he remembers or hears what he wants to remember or hear. It sure seems like Peter is doing a little selective memory here. Out of the twelve disciples, there were only two recorded that openly denied or betrayed Christ in his last days: Judas…and Peter. There seems to be a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black here, when he blames these people for the part in Jesus’ death.

Jesus, on the other hand, in the story read today gives a different invitation to remembrance. After appearing before his disciples, literally scaring the be-Jesus out of them, he says relax, don’t be scared, and by the way is there anything to eat in this joint? And he reminds them as he wipes the tasty bit of fish off the sides of his mouth: don’t you remember? I told you this before—many times in fact. It is written that this would happen, and it had to happen (or be fulfilled, as it says). The Messiah had to suffer, and to rise from the dead on the third day. I’m just doing my part of the bargain here.

And with these two scriptures we have one of the few…ok, probably one of the many…quandaries and inconsistencies that arise in Christian theology. I’ll put it to you straight from my own doubting Thomas lips:

if God intended for Jesus to die and rise again (first off, yes there is a problem with a heavenly Father wanting his son to die…sermon for another time), if it was supposed to happen this way, part of the plan that Jesus was to be tried and crucified so he could be resurrected, then weren’t all those implicated in Jesus’ death really just doing what needed to happen?
Weren’t they—from Herod to Pilate to the crowds calling crucify him, to Judas betraying him—weren’t they just unfortunate and grisly players in some cosmic drama? The necessary villains so the hero can save the day.

What do you think? Should we continue blaming the crowds for shouting hosanna on Palm Sunday and turning their backs on him and crying crucify him on Good Friday, and then balk at their audacity to praise Peter when they see the work of Christ being done?

Or should we be applauding them for handing Jesus over, for moving the crucifixion plot along so we could get to the dénouement of the resurrection? Saying, bravo, well done. Because of your violence, it is fulfilled.

I can’t say. It remains for me still a question for which I have no satisfactory answer. I struggle to understand why, and you probably do to and you know what? When we struggle to understand the meaning of these events, we’re doing theology together. Like those first disciples trying to figure out what happened, not believing or not knowing what to do.

But we miss something if the entire theology game is to stand with Peter and assign blame. Was it the Romans, or the masses, or the Jewish authorities responsible for Jesus’ death? We miss something when all our theological imagination spent wondering what sin it was in the beginning that we perpetuate that made Christ’s death necessary, or who gets the salvation because they’ve done or said the right things to make up for all the bad stuff.

And we miss something when we stand in the midst of our daily lives, like Peter, assigning blame: who’s to blame for the economy? Who’s to blame for the environment? Who’s to blame for your sadness? Who’s to blame for my misfortune?

You know what is so interesting about this whole “who did this to Jesus” thing? Is that Jesus never blames anybody. When we blame ourselves for our inner darkness, or blame others for their hurtful actions we can never forget… we are preaching like Peter, instead of claiming the Messiah.

As professor Amy Allen urges, instead of assigning blame, we must recognize that this risen Lord Jesus stands among the disciples, those who betrayed him to the core—who abandoned and denied him—and Jesus treats them neither as innocent or guilty, but as people in need of grace. Instead of looking out and shouting blame, he stands within them and breathes “Peace.”

Peace. The risen Christ stands within us, right next to the Peter within us with all our judgment and blame, and breathes peace.

I don’t know if there’s enough room in me for that Jesus. There are things in my life that I’m angry about, towards people who I think are responsible for all sorts of things. Things that will not let me go, no matter how much I want to forget.

So maybe for me, and maybe for you, this is the resurrection story that needs to find its way into our hearts this year.

[light peace lamp] – “While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

Life is ...?

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 1:1-5 Mark 16:1-8

When I was a child I was a big fan of “Life” – the board game, not the real thing…. (Well, I was a big fan of the real thing too, but I’m thinking of the game by Hasbro.) Anyway, I liked the game a lot, and my brothers and I used to play it almost as much as Monopoly. We certainly played it almost every time I went to visit my older cousins because it doesn’t really matter how old you are, you just spin a wheel and move a piece to play. For those of you who don’t know the game or haven’t seen it in a while, let me explain a little.

According to one website, the “rules are simple, whoever has the most money at the end wins,” but it is a little more complicated than that. The game is played on a board with a twisting, forking path that leads all around a spinner wheel – the wheel of life – at the center. You start with a car, spin the wheel, and move the number of spaces that come up. Then you follow the directions on the space where you landed. Along the way, you go to college … or not, you pick a career, you get married (everyone has to do that), you may or may not have children, you pay taxes (of course), and you end up in retiring – either at the Country Estates retirement home, Millionaire Acres, or in the Poor House.

Despite the obvious capitalist overtones, Life is a fun game that does teach you a little bit about how the choices you make can change the way your life goes. The one thing that has always made me wonder, though, is that there is no death in the game of Life. There are no spaces that talk about accidents or severe illness. Everyone ends the game in more or less comfortable retirement.

I’ve never asked anyone about this glaring omission – certainly not anyone who has a hand in the game’s design, but I suspect the reason is quite simple. Parents probably would not buy it for their children if death was such a big part of the game. It’s too morbid, too scary, … too real for a board game that can be played by ages 6 and up, and in the end, it is all about the money.

While I understand that thinking – and I even follow the same thinking with my boys, there is really no way to keep the truth from children. They know that things die – that people die, and they need to understand that because death is an inevitable part of life. It can be scary, but we all face it eventually. It’s just the nature of things, … or is it? Christ’s empty tomb would say otherwise.


I had an interesting conversation about death with one of my professors at seminary … (count on fingers vaguely) ... a while ago now. We were studying baptismal theology, and we somehow ended up talking about death. The link was Orthodox theology – and by that I mean the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church where they understand “Original Sin” a bit differently than we do.

Original sin is the same thing for them as it is for us. It is the first decision by Adam and Eve to disobey God’s instructions and eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The big difference is that while we have a vague sense that it’s linked to sex somehow, they do not believe that. In their theology, original sin is linked to death and there they are in agreement with Paul who says that “the wages of sin is death.” The original sin got us all kicked out of the Garden with its Tree of Life. So, if there had been no sin there would be no death, and we and all the people who have ever been born would all still be living in the Garden.

And that is where I get stuck. Trained as I am in Biology and Environmental Studies, I have trouble with the idea that life can exist on this planet just as it does but without death. Imagine it, if you even can, all the billions of people who have ever lived crowded all together with the animals and plants. Even just the ants would probably cover the entire surface of the planet not to mention the dinosaurs….

It boggles the mind, and my comment during class was that if there was no death, then there couldn’t be any new birth either. There just isn’t space. To which my professor replied, “We’ll never know what God intended. Maybe the “Garden” was big enough to hold us all.”
“But things don’t work that way,” I complained. “No planet could be big enough.”

“But God is.”
God is ….

God is big enough to hold all creation and to love every living thing no matter how big … no matter how small. God’s love is big enough.

That’s a mind-boggling thought, too. And, it’s more than a little scary because it makes it absolutely clear that God’s power is beyond our assumptions and understanding. So far beyond that death and life have no power to limit God. So far that raising someone from the dead is just the beginning.

That’s the power that Mary Magdalene, Mary Mother-of-James, and Salome faced when they arrived at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. Until then they had known Jesus as a powerful healer, a teacher, a friend, … and a man. But when they stepped into the cave, they came face to face with a different reality. There was no body – no man shrouded with cloth and smelling of the beginnings of decay. There was no death there and no life … not the way they knew it. There was only something unknown and unknowable – an angel and a power beyond life and death.

Is it any wonder that they left in fear? … that they didn’t tell anyone what they had seen? I don’t think so. I’m not sure I would have stayed even as long as they did, and I pretty sure that I wouldn’t have gone around telling anyone such an unbelievable story … at least not right away.

And that bring up an interesting point. Where are the stories of Jesus’ appearances? … of the blessing of the disciples? Where is the happy ending? Why did Mark end the story here when there is so much more to tell?
Some scholars say that this is a literary device that Mark used to keep the focus on the suffering service of Christ rather than on a final, glorious triumph over death or to remind us that the resurrection was special – that it was “not just another event in the sequence of events that we catalogue as history.” And that may be true, but I think there’s more to it as well.

Leaving the story unfinished invites us all into the tomb. For a few moments we stand there with the women … facing the unknown, trembling with fear. We hear the words of the angel, and all of us run back into the comfort of the light and warmth of the real world where people who die stay dead … except … they don’t. What is going on?! What happens now?!


We know the rest of the story. We know that this wasn’t the end. The disciples saw Jesus again, several times. Jesus blessed them with the Holy Spirit and sent them out to the world. They continued the story with their lives. Lives that followed the path set forth by Christ… lives of service and selflessness… of hope and courage that came from knowing that life was more than marriage and children and college and retirement at Millionaire Acres and death. Jesus’ resurrection showed them that life didn’t end with death. It was bigger than death. It went on.

And even now, even here outside the garden, Christ is whispering the same good news in our ears. Life is more than just years of getting stuff and doing things. Life is bigger than that … more than that, and even if we must experience death (unless the end days come in time), it is not the end of the story.

Christ is the light of world, and if we follow that light, we find … life. “Come into the tomb,” Christ whispers. “Come in and see the truth. Come in … and then … go out, and Life - life in all its servant fullness … in all its selfless joy … in the brightness of its eternal hop – Life in the wondrous love of God will be yours … forever.

Hallelujah! AMEN.

Word of Unburdening-Possessions

by Carrie Eikler
Mark 11:1-11
Palm Sunday:

During Lent we are trying to speak less and listen more.  Talk less and explore more.  Some of the items of unburdening we have addressed may be just what you needed to look at.  Others, less so. 

As I was talking with Torin this week about our Lenten series, I remarked on how hard it has been for me to give these shortened mediations, so we can listen more.  The challenge to me, is to not simply sound like some sort of self-help book, giving seven to nine minutes of platitudes and worn out clichés.  It’s been hard to try to get to the fast and furious to the heart of the spiritual longings that we fill with spending, or media, or food. 

or possessions…  Those thing we have that really end up possessing us (wow, isn’t that a cliché). 

No matter how far along on the “simplify my life” path I go, I will always have farther when it comes to possessions.  Today we threw clothes in the aisle, remembering that the people didn’t only welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with palms but with cloaks…their clothes.  For some, clothes are a big deal they need to address. an obvious place to start unburdening. 

For me, clothes as possessions aren’t really the issue. Let me just say… I’m glad they didn’t line the path into Jerusalem with books.  Not only would it hurt to throw them at Jesus, or each other, but it would be too painful to decide which ones to throw out.

And things like books are possessions we can feel good about.  Clothes, electronics, lots and lots of cars (if we had the luxury to worry about itsd).  These are things (sigh) “we know” we don’t need as many as we have.  But books, for me…don’t make me reduce those.  Not my fiction.  Not that 1999 college text book on demography.  Not one out of 30 (or more) cookbooks.  Not that book about McCarthyism that I have never read, nor ever will read, but really just like having on my bookshelf because I want to people to think I have it…oh no.  I can’t get rid of that. 

This type of book I should say is in a category all of its own.  I like to call them my “ego” books.  Books that I think say something about me that I want to convey.  That I am the sort of person who would read that sort of book.  Ego books span the genres. 

These ego books are plentiful and are a problem for me. Even the non-ego ones.  Because what I realized this week is that while I can rarely speak to what is in them, I expect them to say something about me to others.  I want the books to speak for me.  We want our clothes to speak of us.  Or the fact that we have very unique kitchen gadgets.  Or the newest, fastest i-phone, or i-pad, or i-don’t-know-what-else. 

I want the fact that I own something to basically convey who I am, what I’m interested in, the type of person I want to be in this world, and what I value.

Essentially, I want the things, rather than me, to speak about my life

There is an old Quaker saying: “Let your life speak.”  Let your life speak.  Let how you act, what you say, how you live (not what you live with) be the definition of who you are.

 The books on the shelf, the movies in the cupboard, the clothes in your closet, the technology…they are part of your life.  But who are you without them?  When we speak of idolatry of stuff, we can probably better see what our idols all, not by what we acquire, but by what we simply could not part with.

What is the difference--or is there--between saying “Yes, I want that” and “No, I can’t part with that, now that I have it.”

So, right, I still don’t think I’m getting to that nitty gritty spiritual truth of the issue.  Maybe I’m just speaking still in self-help book clichés…probably from a self-help book I still have somewhere on my bookshelf.  So I’ll call on the help of Michael Lindvall, whose article in the Christian Century has helped me see a new see spiritual nature to our material world.  The following is from his article

It ought to be clear that God doesn’t hate stuff. Witness the creation story. God—none other—invents stuff. At the end of each of the six days of creation, God engages in self-congratulation. In litany fashion, God pronounces … the stuff created by the Divine word that day: “Good!” ,,,and then, on the sixth, “Very good!’

The problem, I think, is not so much that we like stuff too much; rather it’s that we don’t like it enough. Before you cry heresy, let me explain. We acquire things, but then quickly tire of the things that seemed so important when first obtained. We replace rather than repair because we have such fickle and passing romances with our things. The real soul danger is not exactly in liking things too much, nor in owning them, nor in caring for them well.
The soul danger lies in the insatiable longing to acquire new things one after another, more and more things, as if the getting of them somehow proves our worth in comparison with others, as if the having of them can fill the emptiness. It’s this insatiable drive to acquire stuff rather than the stuff itself that’s the problem.

In Jesus Christ, God has definitively entered into that very good materiality to claim it, bless it and transform it.”

What is the stuff in your life that you hope speaks for you, and what would happen if you tried parting with it?  Why aren’t you letting your life speak, instead?