The Practical Theologians

Cracks

2012-02-05T14:46:00.000-05:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Mark 1:29-39

I’ve been a bit of a klutz recently. Actually, I’m generally klutzy, but usually I’m a klutz of no consequence: tripping over a rug, dropping my car keys in the dark abyss between the seats, having food fall off my fork into my lap. A bit embarrassing, but nothing too big. I mean, I’ve never misplaced my child…so that’s saying something.

But recently I’ve been a klutz with things that have had sentimental value. Last week I carelessly leaned a beloved fragile tea tray on the counter to dry in a way that wasn’t stable, I guess because... when I closed the cabinet beneath it, it caused some minute disruption (to my perception) but was apparently a magnitude 7 on the Richter scale for kitchen ware and it came tumbling down. Crash and crack.

And then again, in the kitchen this week, I was pulling down a plate for lunch and, distracted by Alistair’s excitement over the macaroni and cheese we were going to have, I accidently hit a small purple bowl we got in Japan and watched it in slow motion(I'm sure you know what I mean by this slow motion sequence), fall off the shelf,
bounce off the counter (at this point it is still in one piece),
towards the floor, bounce (it’s still in one piece),
bounce again and…crash and crack.

I have a box here of many of the other sentimental things we (probably I) have broken.
the teapot we got on our honeymoon in Dublin.
the cup a potter friend gave us our first year of marriage in Washington DC.
Two of the four other small bowls we bought in Japan, even before this most recent accident...all broken
A mug from my first ever contribution to a public radio station.
a bowl from France that had Sebastian’s name on it.

We keep these broken things and they just end up collecting dust in the corner, or getting in the way on top of the stove. I don’t know why we keep them. We’ve tried gluing them and it doesn’t really work. They’ve still got the cracks in them and really shouldn’t be used for anything practical. Maybe I’m keeping them because even though I don’t think they work the way they should, they remind me of something. The honeymoon, the trip, the person...

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” says singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen.

God may be a Potter, but Jesus... he sure knew how to show us the cracks that life can cause. The cracks caused by the bad decisions you’ve made. The cracks caused by the abuse others have put you through. The cracks caused by a life of struggle without reward, a life of loving without love returned. The cracks caused by disrespect either dished out or taken. The cracks caused by disease, or addiction, or failure. Or just sheer bad luck.

No matter how polished people look on the outside, I bet if you look closely, you’ll see…we’ve all got cracks somewhere.

We seem to have talked a lot about demons recently. Last month Charity invited us to have tea with our demons and Torin continued the examination of each of our demons that look less like horned little devils and more like real life struggles.

The book of Mark really likes talking about demons apparently because here we are again, a story about demons and sick people. People with a whole lot of broken places in their lives.

Jesus had just finished healing Simon’s mother-in-law--a tidy little story about healing, actually. He goes, takes her hand, lifts her up, and she’s healed. And then she gets right to work. No slow and painful convalescing. No kissing the feet of the man who healed her. Just goes on, business as usual. We don’t even know that if she saw Jesus in her house, if she would know it was he who healed her. Nice. Tidy. Smooth. To the point.

And then comes the sunset, when the new day starts in the Jewish tradition. And what a different day of healing it is. The floodgates open. No longer a tidy little scene of a tidy little miracle. This is like opening day of a free clinic at the beginning of flu season. Not to mention it wasn’t just people who were sick, but also people who were possessed. People who had… demons.

And here’s the perplexing part (I mean, we’re used to demons by now, so that’s not so perplexing). Jesus wouldn’t let the demons speak, it says. Why won’t he let them speak? Will they shout profanities? Will it begin a cosmic warfare between the spirits of the dark and the power of the Son of God almighty? Will they infect other people?

No.

He doesn’t let them speak, it says…because they know him.

Perplexing. Four times in Mark Jesus commands those he healed not to tell anyone. And we really don’t know why. He (or even the author of Mark) never says “Don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to get in trouble.” or “Don’t tell anyone because they must come to me on their own faith in order to be healed” or “Don’t tell anyone because I could really use a coffee break.”

We don’t know. And we don’t know how it is that demons knew him, when it took those following him years to even start grasping who it is they were following.

Some people who are really into the nature of evil spirits may say that Satan was involved and it was Satan who of course knew the power of God through Jesus’ work. Maybe. But there seems to be more than that to me.

But before going further...while we’ve been talking about demons this past month, I’ve been thinking not only about what our contemporary demons are, but also, who would have been considered sick, in need of healing, “possessed by demons” in Jesus’ time, that today, we would be ashamed to say was demonic.

In the book of Deuteronomy (Deu. 28:22-28),for example, it was predicted that mental illness was a punishment for the worship of idols. People who were punished for such sins might be punished with the demons...of madness. The medical and psychological fields have shed vast amounts of light on the area of mental illness. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, mental illness is simply medical conditions that disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning.

Many of the mental illnesses we know about today-- schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and more—were likely believed to be caused by demons in the culture of Jesus. We know that it is shameful that people would ever treat individuals with these conditions as demonic.

...Of course we have the benefit of 2,000 years of human experience to give us perhaps a more humane perspective, but, if we’re honest…
mental illness is not something most of reach out to embrace.

People with mental illness are not ones we quickly feel comfortable around.

We don’t really try to form relationships with people with intellectual disabilities and physical disabilities.

In that way, people with mental illness and other physical and developmental disabilities, disrupt our thinking, our feeling, our mood and ability to relate to them, and maybe ourselves. They tell us things we don’t see. They speak of the world in ways we might not understand.

And because of that, I’m sure…they see God in places we would never expect.

When a man named Jean Vanier began living with two men who had mental handicaps after his life as a British naval officer, and after he became trained as a philosopher, he probably didn’t know that he was beginning a counter cultural international movement. But he was...

He started a community called L’Arche (or French for “the ark”)…I know you’ve heard me speak about L’Arche before. There are over 120 L’Arche communities today, where core members with a variety of disabilities, live with the assistants who support and love them. They live together, work together, and worship together. They teach and learn from one another.

One person said of Jean Vanier that “he finds gifts where others see tragedy.” These tragedies we see--the demons that those around Jesus saw--are gifts in Jean Vanier’s eyes, and in the eyes of those at L’Arche. And it these gifts-- these people we might easily label worthless in a practical sense, and who make us uncomfortable—one gift of these people is that they see what we don’t see. They see a reality that we have masked with our own quest for power, and purpose, and functionality.

Vanier was speaking to a university group once and said in his soft, thoughtful voice: “I don't know whether around here you have some normal people, but I find them a very strange group. I remember…one of the characteristics of normal people is that they have problems. They have family problems, they have financial problems, they have professional problems, problems with politics, problems with church, problems all over the place. And I remember one very normal guy came to see me and he was telling me about all his problems. And there was a knock on the door, and entered Jean Claude. Jean Claude has Down Syndrome and I didn't even say, "Come in”…[when he] came in, and he shook my hand and laughed and he shook the hand of Mr. Normal and laughed and he walked out laughing. And Mr. Normal turned to me and he said, "Isn't it sad, [people] like that."

"He couldn't see that Jean Claude [had happiness]. It's a blindness, and it's an inner blindness which is the most difficult to heal. “

Those who see what we don’t, who know things beyond this material realm tht we don’tknow... We easily label them demonic. Or worthless. Or unaware of boundaries. Or simply sad. Or maybe, broken.

But then, that’s something we all share. All of us, broken in some way.

And why is it... that those who seem the most broken in most of the Jesus stories are the ones who see him? Who get it? Who let that Light in through the cracks…and send back out the openness to receive?

I have mentioned in the past Henri Nouwen, a priest and professor who left his academic life at Harvard to become a chaplain at a L’Arche community called Daybreak, in Canada. Nouwen wrote about his experience at Daybreak and about his relationship with one man in particular in his book Adam: God’s Beloved.

"I want to tell you Adam's story,” writes Nouwen. “After a month of working with Adam, something started to happen to me that had never happened before. This severely handicapped young man, whom outsiders sometimes describe with very hurtful words, started to become my dearest companion. As I carried him into his bath and made waves to let the water run fast around him and told him all sorts of stories, I knew that two friends were communicating far beyond the realm of thought.

"Before this, I had come to believe that what makes us human is our mind. But Adam keeps showing me that what makes us human is our heart, the center of our being where God has hidden trust, hope, and love. Whoever sees in Adam merely a burden to society misses the sacred mystery that Adam is fully capable of receiving and giving love. He is fully human—not half human, not nearly human, but fully, completely human because he is all heart. The longer I stay with Adam, the more clearly I see him as a gentle teacher, teaching me what no book or professor ever could.”

Why Jesus asked them not to share their knowledge of him, we don’t know. We struggle to wraps our minds around this healer, this Jesus, this son of God. And maybe that’s a reason why he didn’t want the demons to speak...

Because our minds will never understand. It’s our hearts, illuminated by the cracks in our lives, that will teach us.

“There’s a crack in everything. That’ s how the light gets in.” Amen, and amen.

My Brothers' (and Sisters') Keeper

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
1 Corinthians 8:1-13 Mark 1:21-28

At first glance, this passage from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is all about food and eating. It seems that there was some confusion among the believers there as to whether or not it was okay to eat the remnants from sacrificial ceremonies in the many temples that dominated the center of the city. Some felt that the meat was tainted and that eating it would defile a person. Others scoffed at that idea and happily scarfed down the left-overs from the Olympian feast.

Paul’s response was to seize the chance to do a little theological education. There’s really only one God, he says. Not everyone believes in or even knows about that God, but the “idols” they worship are nothing more than their own fantasies. So, there’s really no need to worry about spiritually contaminated food, he says, because every part of creation was made by God and was declared to be good.

But you can never take Paul at face value…. Or, rather, you can never leave Paul without looking deeper. The food issue is not his greatest worry, and after giving his thoughts on that particular issue – which are a relief to those of us who like to eat the rest of the communion bread after Love Feast – he goes on to a deeper concern: how the believers of Corinth have gone about having their disagreement.

As I implied earlier, those who had the “right” view on the food issue seem to have been more than a little insensitive to the newer members of their congregation. They were people who had just come out of a life of worshiping other gods, and they were understandably concerned that it would be wrong to continue the religious practices of their earlier lives. Paul is clear to say that “the ‘weak ones’ were not to be considered inadequate or inferior. They were merely at an earlier stage along the spiritual growth continuum that runs from more limited moral consciousness to a fuller awareness.” And the more “mature” believers who are ignoring the effects of their behavior are also ignoring their responsibility to care for, nurture, and build their brothers and sisters up in love.

Believers, he says, are not only responsible for themselves and their own actions. They are responsible for each other and the way their actions set examples for others. In other words … they are their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and they don’t seem to be doing a very good job caring for them. Instead of giving encouragement and nurture, they are offering judgment and contempt, and that, according to Paul, is the equivalent of sinning not only against weaker brothers and sisters, but also against the Christ who cherishes each one of them.

“All fine and good,” we think. “The Corinthians clearly needed to do a better job of caring for each other.” And it’s tempting to leave it at that – a study in historical scripture analysis. But Paul – at least the Paul we see in his letters - was nothing if not an insightful pastor, and I am sure that the deeper issues that he was addressing with the Corinthians are just as likely to crop up in congregations today. They may even be part of our lives together. They probably are, and we can feel bad about that. But Paul doesn’t seem to want to crush the Corinthian church with guilt. He wants them to change. He wants them to care for one another – to build each other up … with love.

I want to share with you a powerful story of how we can do that. It comes courtesy of John Sumwalt….

There was once a deeply troubled church that could not keep any pastor for more than a year or two. Eight pastors had come and gone in eleven years, all of them at the request of the congregation after controversy with one of the long-time leaders. The church blamed the Bishop for sending them inept pastors. The pastors blamed the congregation, saying that ministry was impossible with a people so intent on self-destruction. Many members left, and, in time, no pastor could be found who was willing to serve what everyone was calling "that difficult charge."

Finally, in exasperation, the Bishop called a special meeting which included several key leaders from the troubled congregation and forty lay and clergy members of her Annual Conference, chosen randomly. Leaders of the congregation described the difficulties they had experienced over the past several years. Then the District Superintendent was given an opportunity to tell the story from his point of view. When everyone had had a say, the Bishop addressed the whole gathering in her best preacher's voice, saying, "Brothers and sisters, what are we going to do? Whom shall we send to this tormented congregation to share with them the healing power of Jesus the Christ?"

Then the Bishop invited everyone to pray silently with her. The silence lasted for a long time and continued even after the Bishop concluded the prayer with a resolute "amen." At last one of the older pastors spoke out from the back of the room. "I'll go," she said.

There was a collective gasp, and then a sustained buzzing of voices that grew until it filled the room. Everyone knew that she had been on leave of absence for several years and that she had left her last church in the wake of a scandalous divorce. She had become an alcoholic, been twice convicted of drunk driving, had spent six months in prison and a month in a chemical dependency treatment center. The Bishop and the superintendents had hoped to place her with some small, quiet, caring congregation where she could serve her remaining years without stress.

"Are you sure, Deborah?" the Bishop asked. "This is a very difficult assignment."

"This is a congregation in pain," Deborah said. "I know something about pain. I think I should be the one to go." Heads could be seen nodding all around the room.

"There is one condition to my going, however," Deborah said to the Bishop. "You must give me a free hand to do whatever is necessary to bring about healing. I must know that I have your full support to do what is needed." The Bishop looked back at Deborah, and, without blinking an eye, said, "You have my full support to do whatever is needed."

Deborah and the District Superintendent met with the leaders of the troubled congregation after the meeting. They agreed to accept her as their pastor, although they expressed some surprise that a woman her age would want to take on such a difficult task. Near the end of the meeting, Deborah asked for the same unconditional support she had requested of the Bishop. They agreed to give her free reign to do whatever was needed to help heal the congregation, and, at Deborah's insistence, they solemnly promised to pray for her every day. Then she told them what she planned to do to begin the healing process. She said, "It is my intention to visit with every member of this congregation before I perform any other pastoral duties, including preaching. I will not lead worship or attend any meetings until that task is finished. The chairperson said, "I'll make the arrangements."

Deborah began her visitation the following day. She went from house to house, apartment to apartment, hospital bed to nursing home bed, introducing herself as the new pastor and asking each one, as she went, to respond to two questions: How did you come to love Jesus, and why have you chosen to serve him in this congregation? She visited morning, afternoon and evening for four-and-a-half weeks and was warmly received by every member of the congregation but one. Then she went home, called the lay leader, and told him she would be prepared to preach the following Sunday.

The sanctuary was packed that day. Almost every able member was present. They waited eagerly for the sermon to hear what Deborah would have to say. Her text was Mark 1:16-20, the calling of the disciples. She said, "I want to share two things with you today: How I came to love Jesus, and why I believe God has called me to serve him with you in this congregation." It was a stirring sermon. Many in the congregation were moved to tears. Then, just as Deborah was about to ask them to join with her in prayer, a man stood up in the back of the sanctuary and shouted out at her. It was Harry Wiersem, the man who had refused to see her when she called at his home. He was the long-time leader who had bedeviled so many pastors before her. Some had told Deborah that he had never recovered from the death of his wife many years before.

"Who do you think you are, sister?" he yelled. "We know all about you. You couldn't keep your husband and you are a drunk. You're the last thing we need in this church. We've got enough problems as it is!"

He stood glaring at her, his face red and his knuckles bulging white as his hands gripped the pew in front of him. Deborah looked back at him with sad eyes. She didn't speak for several seconds. It seemed like an eternity to the congregation. It was absolutely silent in the sanctuary. No one moved or seemed to breathe.

"I am a sinner, Harry," Deborah said in a soft, firm voice, still looking into his angry, red face. "A forgiven sinner. And I've come to serve with sinners: forgiven sinners." Then she stepped down from the pulpit and walked up the long center aisle to where Harry was still hanging on to the back of his pew. She put her arm around his shoulder, looked him in the eye and said, "I am sorry about Mildred. She must have been very dear to you." Harry let go of the pew, fell into her arms and began to sob like a baby. When he was finished, Deborah bid everyone to gather round. They joined hands and she led them in prayer. When she said "Amen," Deborah was aware of something around her that felt like a collective sigh of relief. The demons were gone. The congregation would be whole again.

Demons, idols, addictions … they aren’t really that different from each other when it comes down to it. They push a wedge between us and our brothers and sisters. They divide us from God. And they bedevil us all in some way or another. Sometimes they are personal – deeply personal things that we struggle with … too often by ourselves. Other times they take center stage in the midst of our communities and hurt those we love. At their worst, they suck others into storms of our own making, drawing us all farther from the wholeness that is our salvation.

When I read that story, I wrote back to the author and asked if it was a true story. He responded, “All my stories are true, and some of them really happened.” I took that to mean that it’s not so much the details that matter as it is the message. And it’s not the details of each person’s struggle that really matters – though they do make a difference. How we respond is what’s important because we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers … just as they are ours.

Do we ignore the pain and brokenness of our brothers and sisters, turning them away so that we don’t embarrass them?

Do we avoid the brokenness within ourselves, hoping that it will just go away somehow?

Or do we reach out our arms to share ourselves with one another, opening the floodgates of the healing love of God?

I say Jonah, you say…

2012-01-22T09:14:00.000-05:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Jonah 1-4
January 22, 2012

I love doing word association exercises. You know, where one person says a word and you say the first thing that comes to your mind? Like for example, if I say… “snow” the first thing you think is ____ (cold? white?).
How about, “good?”
soft?
Adam?
Jonah?

It’s pretty assured that if you mention Jonah to even the youngest of church or synagogue-goers they will say “whale,” or “big fish” as it is actually referred to in scripture. Same probably goes for…
Daniel? Lions!
Noah? Flood!
But Jonah and that big fish. Ask any child what happened to Jonah and I imagine the conversation would like something like this
So, tell me about Jonah
“well, he got swallowed by a fish”.
Yes, that’s right! Why did he get swallowed by a fish?
uh…cause he was in the ocean?
yes, that’s right, he was in the ocean. Why was he in the ocean?
uh…beeecause…
OK, OK, well what happened after he was in the belly of the fish?
ooo!!me!!
yes?
the fish puked him up!
Right, and then what?
uhh…
So children, what then is the moral of the Jonah story?
uhh…you better…learn to swim.

I’ll admit, before I went to seminary and spent three rather hilarious weeks looking at Jonah, I was that child. Whales, and fish puke. That’s what the Jonah story was to me. Maybe it’s like that to you, and be assured, you are in good company.

Whales and lions and floods have great sticking power. We remember the stories have those things in them. But we do tend to forget what they really were about, or how they are anything but spectacular stories.

Jonah is known as one of the “minor” prophets. There are the “major” prophets, the big wigs, the ones we know about and are pretty likely to stumble upon if we choose to open our bible somewhere in the middle-Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel…those guys.

And then there are the “minor prophets”, the prophets whose stories are much shorter. The ones you can spend five minutes leafing through the middle part of the bible searching for and if only 2 pages stick together you probably missed them, so you have to turn to the table of contents.

Jonah is considered “minor.” There are only four chapters. But what four chapters they are. Hopefully this morning you got the essence of the entire Jonah story, because we pretty much covered it: with the children we looked at the events leading up to the belly of the whale part…

God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and give them the divine word that something’s really gonna go down if they don’t change their ways. To which, you can almost hear Jonah snorting, “I don’t think so” and thinking he can outwit God, he gets on a boat headed… anywhere else.

Now first, let me say, Jonah is different than most prophetic books. This was written as an ancient form of satire. We don’t usually think of biblical writings like this, do we? But this was written to entertain the readers, while also delivering a message. It’s not biblical history, it’s like a comic book. So whatever struggles you may have about what God is doing in this story (and I know I certainly have some issues), we aren’t meant to ask the question “did this actually happen?” but more ask the question, after we stop laughing, “Does this sort of thing, in our own lives, perhaps less dramatically, actually happen? Do we turn away from God?

So he’s on the boat and God, the great trickster in this satire, throws a storm, the sailors freak out, crying to their own God, they throw everything overboard and realize the only thing left to throw out is the human cargo, and as humans are apt to do, they look for the scapegoat. And there’s Jonah, sleeping through the whole thing and they interrogate him like hardened immigration officials: who are you? where are you from? your papers? your God?

And Jonah says, throw me over and the sea will calm down.

Wow. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all. And then it happens.
The part we all know and love. The big fish. And isn’t it interesting to note that it was God who provided the fish for Jonah. The fish was safety for Jonah. As a child I didn’t remember that. I just thought Jonah was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Jonah knows it’s for his safety because he sings a beautiful song of thanksgiving:

I called to the Lord out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
You cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows passed over me.
Then I said, “I am driven away from your sight;
how shall I look again
upon your holy temple?...
As my life was ebbing away
I remembered the Lord;
and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple…
Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”
[pause]

…and then the fish pukes him up.

And then we pick up with the two chapters Linda read, a rather comic unfolding of Jonah going to Nineveh to proclaim God’s wrath, the Ninevites surprisingly listening and repenting, Jonah pouting like a four year old told he has to eat his brussel sprouts, saying I don’t like you God because you are too nice, too merciful, you made me look like a fool and a false prophet, and you care more about those sinners than you do about me who did what you asked [after I ran away and got stuck in the belly of a fish].

And then he’s covered by bush, and he’s happy. Then God causes the bush to die, and he’s petulant again. And we’re left with an abrupt ending and God gets the last word, “should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city…where there are [thousands of ignorant people] and also many animals?” End. of. story.

Whew. What a story. A bit of a big fish story if you ask me. And don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you “the moral” of the story. In fact, I think when we do that, we imply that there is one thing you should take away from the biblical stories and then they don’t become living anymore. They loose their power to speak new messages, make us laugh and cry because we see ourselves anew in it now, much differently than when we were children.

We just remember… it’s about a whale.

And even after today when I say Jonah, you still might say “whale”, but instead of that, let me continue with a question that seems to rise out of this story, this time, for me.

Who would you like to see fail?

Who would you, like Jonah, like to see God “smite” down?

Now, I know as good Christians, and especially as peace loving Anabaptists, we feel there is no one that we should like to see fail or to get punished. I think many of us here can say that there is no one, or group, we believe should be smoked out and killed, no matter what they have done.

But you know, if I’m honest, there are certain people who I wished were forcibly humbled, perhaps, humiliated-- just a bit. Or at least, as they say I wish they’d “get their come-uppance. To get put in their place. There are people who I roll my eyes at and believe they are so below me because of what they think.

No, we’re not declaring judgment on these people, but we do secretly wish them ill in some way. And if you have a hard time finding your Ninevites, think of who it is—either an individual or a group of people—who brings a sneer to your mouth, or a sigh to your breath, or causes you to roll your eyes, or who you find some smart aleck remark to demean them, (when you’re all by yourself).

Who are your Ninevites?

Are they Muslims? Evangelical Christians? Democrats? Tea Partiers? pro-life activists? gay rights activists? Latinos? The Chinese? The French?

Is it Congress? Wall Street? Your neighbor who disgusts you in some way? Your friend what can’t seem to get her priorities straight? Your in-laws who…well, no matter, whatever they do is going to annoy you?

Is it your spouse? Your child ? Is it yourself?

Get that person in your mind

Now call forth the feeling you get when you come across them on the street, or hear about them in the news, or see them in the grocery store…

Now, here’s is God’s question posed to Jonah… “Is it right for you to be angry?”
[pause]
Is it right for you to have such negative feelings towards these people?
[pause]
No, we know it’s not “right” of us. We know we shouldn’t feel this way. But, let me tell you God, it is justified.

And that’s the sticky point isn’t it? The people of Nineveh were Assyrians and Assyrians had attacked and destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel around 700BCE. These are Israel’s enemies and you better believe he was justified in wanting God’s vengeance on these people.

You bet we are justified in drawing those who have backward ideas as closed-minded bigots, or those who threaten the moral fabric of our nation as sinful heathens

I feel justified because I think I know how things are supposed to be. How people are supposed to be. Is it right of me to? Probably not. But it sure makes me feel better about myself.

But then, I find, that I really… don’t… feel better about myself. I just feel… bitter. I start to become a sulky, petulant Jonah, whining under my withered bush, sunburned, and somewhat…alone.

…

Oftentimes, the biggest barrier to showing the world God’s grace and mercy, is ourselves. Jonah is a story about repentance and redemption. Certainly about the Ninevites, but the way it ends, in it’s awkward abrupt question from God.

It turns the story towards the potential for Jonah’s repentance…and our redemption.

Jonah is left sulking and bitter. We don’t know how he will respond to God’s mercy and the truth…

…that God’s love has no boundaries, no matter how much we wish it did. It is not only for the righteous, it is not only for ourselves.

This story leaves us asking…what will happen to Jonah?

What will happen to Jonah, if he accepts that God will not keep LOVE from others, no matter how hard he…or we, try to.

What will happen to Jonah if he lets God’s boundless love turn his heart?

So take note this week. When a person, a group…your Ninevites, present themselves to you, note your reaction. And ask, no matter how justified I feel in my anger, or disgust, or righteousness, am I sitting alone…under my dead bush?

And if it seems you are, then take a step out from under it, proclaim a prophecy to yourself—not one of judgment—but a prophecy of God’s love. Proclaim a prophecy to yourself…and ask for mercy.

Because God’s eager to for you to receive it.

God With Us

2012-01-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
I Samuel 3:1-11, 19-21 Psalm 139:1-18 John 1:45-51

Let me start by saying “thank you” to you all for the freedom that you have provided us to take extended vacations. Not all pastors can do that, and we know that we are fortunate to be part of a congregation that not only allows us do so but that also has strong leadership so that we don’t need to worry while we are gone. Our times away do a lot to refresh and inspire us, and we’d love to talk with you more about the amazing things that we got to see and do while we were gone.

One wonderful thing about traveling, particularly traveling abroad, is that we get a break from our daily lives and everything that goes along with them. It is amazing, though, how quickly we fall back into our schedules when we get back home, and part of that, for me, is listening to the radio. It’s my connection with the world beyond my neighborhood and the people I see each day, and as I have been listening this week, I was surprised to find how completely I had been disconnected from the goings on here … and how little things had changed.

The big news, it seems, is still politics. The Republican primary race tops the list as people speculate about whether Mitt Romney will take out the rest of the competition by winning South Carolina. The struggle between the president and the congress is a close second. And the twists and turns of global struggles for power fill in most of the rest. There is, of course, still a little room for mentioning the ten records set during the Orange Bowl and a few other tidbits and human interest stories, but the bulk of the radio chatter is the really the same conversations I left behind three weeks ago.

But there is one interesting twist that I discovered listening to an interview with Ralph Nader the other day. The questions he was fielding had very little to do with policies or issues. Instead, the host was asking about the value of compromise in politics and, more pointedly, about whether anyone could succeed in that arena without “selling out.” Nader claimed that he would not compromise his own beliefs and that was why he had never been very successful in gaining office … the implication being that career politicians survive precisely because they do.

No real surprise there, but over the next couple of days I heard other interviews in the same vein with Tea Party advocates, Evangelical conservatives, progressive politicians, and Occupy Wall Street participants. Though some of them supported the idea of compromise, all of them seemed to stress the same theme – everyone else is “selling out” and that’s why we are in the mess we are in. One evangelical even lamented the lack of respect for God’s Word on the part of national leaders and the moral mess that we’re in because of it.

It sounded a lot like the situation Israel was in at the end of the age when judges led the people. “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Eli was the high priest, and he and his sons had strayed from the righteous path. They had begun to take the best parts of the offerings for themselves instead of burning them on the alter, and they were enriching themselves by taking money from the temples coffers. They had also given up on their role of calling the rich and powerful to task for abusing the poor and helpless. In short, they had “sold out,” and Israel was suffering because of it.

And then Samuel came on the scene.

Usually when we read this passage, we think about the way God calls each one of us. We reflect on how even the most unassuming person can do great things if she or he follows where God leads as both Samuel and the shepherd, David, who he anointed to be the first king of Israel illustrate. But the calling of Samuel is not just about one individual’s invitation to serve a higher purpose.

It hadn’t been all that long since the chosen people had entered the Promised Land and established their own country. Since then the Israelites had resisted several invasions thanks to inspired leadership and divine assistance. It had been an era when the people knew who they were and whose they were, and they had witnessed the fulfillment of God’s promise to protect and guide them often.

But that sense of God’s presence had faded, and the people were despairing. The religious leaders had become corrupt. The spiritual life of the people had grown anemic. More and more people were suffering because fewer and fewer people were following the law. And the country was on the verge of being conquered by the Philistines. Where was the pillar of fire? Where was the cloud full of angels to defeat the enemy? Where was the Voice demanding justice and mercy? Where was the God who had promised never to leave the people?

And God responds, “Here I am.” I have never left you though you haven’t heard me. I know your suffering. I know your fears and your despair. I hear your cries for justice and relief. Here I am, speaking with the mouth of this man. Listen to me and be comforted.

The abuses of the leaders among you shall come to an end. The injustice you endure will cease. Mercy will comfort your suffering, and my blessings will ease your worries and fears. The wolf at your doorstep shall be chased away with its tail between its legs. This… all this that you see around you will come to an end, for I am with you still and “I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.”

That’s what Samuel was to the people of Israel. He was the reassurance they needed. He was the voice of God comforting them. He was the reminder that God is always present with us. Present in the suffering. Present in the rejoicing. Present in the bright beginnings and in the shadowed endings. Present and shining a light of hope for what the future can still hold.

And he was more than that too.

The Israelites were not entirely innocent of all that Israel had become. They were a part of it just as we are a part of the injustice and suffering that we see in our own time. They stood by and watched it all happen … maybe even took part in it. Perhaps not everyone, but most of them must have stayed quiet or things couldn’t have gotten as bad as they did. So, the assurance of God’s presence that Samuel brought was an affirmation that despite everything God still loved them.

I can imagine the author of the Psalm we heard today living in the time of Samuel. Hearing the words of the prophet and seeing the covenant promise fulfilled once again. Writing the verses of that hymn of praise in awe and gratitude for an unwavering love.

Usually when I hear those words about God hemming us in I feel trapped. I don’t like to think about God knowing everything about me and how I live. But, there are times when it is comforting to know that I am known … and loved. And I think that is exactly what Israel needed to hear.

It must have felt wonderful to know that God was still there. To know that the One who knew everything about you … had always known everything about you … had been watching you from before you were born … to know that that God still loved you. To know that in spite of all the mistakes you had made, in spite of your sins and the way that people around you were selling out … God still saw the good in you and cared enough to speak to you, offering guidance and hope, wisdom and mercy. That was exactly the message that Israel needed to hear.

It’s a message that we need to hear too.

We Anabaptists tend focus a lot on what we need to do better, how we need to live better in order to answer our call as disciples. Especially at the beginning of each new year, we reflect on what has been, on who we have been, and we make resolutions about what we want to do differently. And that’s good. We should be striving to live more in keeping with God’s hopes for us. But … but we miss that mark so often that it seems a little bit like an exercise in futility.

God knows all of that. God is there each time we make mistakes and each time we get it right. God sees us casting our nets or sitting under our fig trees or turning away from others in need or yelling at the people we love. God watches us … not like a political pundit or an adversary waiting to pounce on every weakness or inconsistency in order to tear us down, but as a loving parent watches her children, hoping to see them succeed, waiting to guide and protect them, ready to pick them up when they stumble, prepared to become whatever they need to grow and learn and become something wonderful.

You are known.
Your strengths and the goodness within you are known.
Your struggles and weaknesses are known.

God understands you and what you need … perhaps better than you do yourselves. And no matter what you do or how many oceans you cross , God is waiting … calling … ready to be sacrifice and rabbi, savior and friend … ready to meet you where you are and be what you need because you are something wonderful –
a beloved child of God.

Meditations on Surprise

2011-12-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

Meditations by Torin Eikler

“Surprising Hope”
Isaiah 11:1-9

Ever since these words were spoken they have brought hope to those who heard them. And why not? Isaiah describes the perfect king. One who will come into power and make everything the way it should be. All injustice will be ended. The wicked – powerful and weak alike – will be punished. The righteous – both meek and bold – will be rewarded. And every person will have exactly what they need … no indecent wealth … no grinding poverty. No one will fall through the cracks.

It was good news to the people of Israel. From the golden age of David and Solomon, the country had fallen onto hard times. Conflict and infighting among the leaders had split the country into a northern and southern kingdom that had been to war more than once, calling into question the identity of the chosen people. The wealthy elite were not much concerned with injustices or the suffering of the rest of people, seeking instead to increase their own wealth and power in any way they could. On top of all that, the Assyrian Empire was at their doorstep.

And in the midst of all the turmoil, the fear, and the distress, Isaiah prophesied a surprisingly bright future. Despite all the evidence to the contrary – and there was very little chance that either kingdom could stand against the Assyrians … despite the sense of doom, God’s promise still held true. There would be a new king in Jerusalem – a king of David’s line, and not only would that king bring justice and wisdom to the throne, he would bring peace to the whole world. Surprising words that brought hope to a troubled people threatened with destruction.

Are things really so different for us today? There are still a very few people whose wealth and power are increasing while most of us are working very hard just to keep our heads above water. There are still many, many people who are suffering injustice and struggling to find a place to live or food to east.

And into our turmoil, our fear, and our distress, Jesus comes, bringing hope of a bright future. Despite what our eyes, our pocketbooks, and our newspapers tell us, God’s promise comes to us again. When true justice is done. When someone reaches out to help another in need or to encourage someone lost in despair. When people work together to build a better life for all of us instead of tearing things down to raise themselves up. In those moments, we can see the coming of the day when wickedness and injustice will cease to be, when the wolves of suffering and vipers of fear will no longer threaten us, when everyone will have what she or he needs and no one will hurt or destroy anywhere on the earth that God has made holy.

Each year, at Christmas, we look for perfect king that was born in Bethlehem, lived with us for a time, and died for our sakes. But Jesus comes to us – to the world – every day, speaking over and over Isaiah’s promise … a surprising future is coming. A future that comes tomorrow. A future that comes the next day … and the next … and the next. A future that comes, little by little, whenever the Christ enters our hearts and leads us, step by step, into hope.

“Surprising Peace”
Isaiah 52:7-9

Peace…. Peace …. What is peace?

Is it the lack of war … or of violence? Is it the quiet that falls deep in the woods or in the living room with the children are finally asleep? Is it the sense of freedom and calm that comes from accepting the world as it is?

It seems to me that peace is all of those things … and more.

The Hebrew word for peace is “shalom.” It was the word used to greet people and to bid them farewell. It still is in some places because it expresses a wish for the well-being of someone…. Shalom is much more … much deeper than a simple lack of violence. It is wholeness. It points to a world where all of society is in harmony … where every person is healthy, safe, and fulfilled.

As Bible scholar Cornelius Plantinga describes it, it is:
The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight…. [It] means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.

It’s a wonderful and inspiring vision. It’s a peace that’s almost beyond understanding and seems entirely beyond our reach. And yet God chose to make it ours … not by reaching out an all-powerful hand and changing the world, but by coming among us in the weakest and most helpless form we can imagine. A baby … with tiny, beautiful feet to carry the good news of peace to all who will listen.

“Surprising Joy”
Luke 1:26-35 Matthew 1:18-24

There is a simple joy in watching children play. As they discover their own bodies and the world around them … as they delight in the new and explore the smallest details, they take us with them. They take us back to our own childhood, and as we see things through their eyes, hear things through their ears, and learn through their experiences, we rediscover wonder and awe.

That sense of wonder and joy is multiplied many times over when we watch a child being born. If you haven’t had the experience yourself, just ask someone who has and watch as their face changes. The cares and worries of their lives melt away and are replaced by smiles that reach all the way down to their toes and transform their entire being. Each birth is different, of course, and sometimes memories are colored by worries or sorrows that came later, but the moment of watching new life born into the world has a power that cannot be denied.

I imagine that the experience was multiplied even beyond our experiences for Mary and Joseph. For nine months … nine long months … from the moment when the angel came to them and announced the coming of Jesus, they would have been filled with tension and anxiety. It’s not an easy time … even for people who have a lot of support, and to be young and pregnant before marrying would have added the pressure of society’s disapproval to the mix.

Then they were forced to travel far from the comforts of home just when it was time for the baby to come. And to top it all off, they couldn’t even find a comfortable room to stay in. A stable… a stable and a pile of hay surrounded by the noise and the smells of animals was the only space left.

I imagine that when the birth started, they were more than a little scared. No clean cloths. No hot water. No midwife to offer support and wisdom. No way to know what was normal or that everything was okay. No family to hold their hands or give them support as they struggled through it all for the first time.

And then Jesus arrived. On the tide of one final push, he found his way into Joseph’s arms, and Joseph watched him … heard his first cries … looked into his eyes as they opened for the first time. And I imagine that he was lost in the moment … at least until Mary’s anxious voice brought him back, asking if everything was alright, begging without words to see the baby. And Joseph carried Jesus to her and set him in her arms, and they both reveled in the wonder of the moment. Their first child … their son … later their Messiah … right now their son – a tiny new life with wrinkled fingers and toes. And as they cleaned him up and wrapped him cloths to keep him warm … JOY.

God offers us … invites us … to enter into that joy. Look inside yourself. Set aside your own fears and worries. Set aside your own feelings of frustration and your need to make everything just right for tomorrow morning. Look into your mind, into your heart and watch the baby Jesus being born. Cradle him in your arms and wonder, again, at the miracle of Immanuel – of God come to be with us. Wonder and joy.

“Surprising Love”
Luke 2:8-20

And God so loved the world that he sent an only son….

They expected a King who would come and change the world. Wrapped in majesty and power, he would overthrow the Roman Empire and free the chosen people. He would rule with wisdom and understanding and justice and mercy would govern the lives of a people who lived in peace. But that’s not what happened.

The shepherds sitting on the hill that night got to see it. They were no different from any of the others. They expected a Mighty Messiah to come … if any came at all. It would be someone who would make their lives better, but they would probably never get to see him since they were on the edge of what society found acceptable. They certainly wouldn’t get to see him up close.

And then the world changed.

As they sat around their little fire, watching their sheep and talking as the stars followed their familiar patterns across the sky, that sky seemed to split open. Something … an angel maybe … stood before them and told them of the birth of the Messiah. Told them. Not some powerful or holy person. Not a prophet or a priest or a leader of the people. But simple, poor, everyday shepherds.

It was so amazing that they left their sheep behind to go and see if it was true. And they found the baby just as the angel said they would. And they left the manger to share the news. The Messiah had come.

Not a king resplendent in find clothing with an army and heralds to announce his coming. Only a baby lying in a stable with dirty clothes to wrap him, with livestock as a court, and with shepherd to announce his coming.

Only a baby came. Only God born in a stable … only love become flesh …

and the world would never, could never be the same.

Hallelujah! “Glory to God in the highest heaven!”

Reality Check”

2011-12-18T09:12:00.001-05:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Luke 1:26-38, 46b-55
Advent 4
December 18, 2011

Last month I referenced a CBS reality show called Undercover Boss. Now I’m not a huge fan of reality shows, but there is one yet to air that has captured my attention, and you should be curious about it too. “Buck Wild,” which will air in a few months, was filmed here in West Virginia. An MTV press release says the program will “follow the colorful antics of a group of friends just out of high school in rural West Virginia.” And while West Virginia welcomed the production to come to the state and film it, they weren’t so accommodating when it came to giving the production a break on the taxes they had to pay to the state.

Apparently, WV can award up to $10 million in tax credits annually to film and TV productions that apply on a first come first serve basis. But there is a list of criteria that crews have to adhere to such as, they have to spend a minimum of $25,000 in the state, it can’t be a game show, and other things.

But apparently Buck Wild didn’t meet the criteria. Specifics haven’t been given why the tax credits weren’t awarded, but there are three criteria that automatically disqualify it: pornography, sexual situations involving minors, and the portrayal of West Virginia in a derogatory manner. Which if I was a bettin’ woman as they say, that last one—about portraying WV in a derogatory manner—was probably high up on the list.

Former Marshall University football player Ashley McNeely was one of the people the show followed. And he isn’t convinced of how good this show will make WV look. He said “They showed me as the most hickish, redneck they could. How they edited the show made me the dumbest…person there was. All these reality shows are about drama, getting drunk and partying. I don’t see how in any way shape or form [this] could have a good spin on West Virginia.”

The “reality” in “reality TV” is a funny adjective if you ask me. The “reality” they create is, as McNeely said, what is edited out and what is kept in. Just ask the Italian American communities in New Jersey how they feel about the reality show “Jersey Shore” and how it really portrays the lives of Italian Americans. Fighting Italians and redneck West Virginians aren’t reality. They’re stereotypes.

The truth can’t be captured in highly edited 30-minutes. The reality of West Virginia’s story is complex. It’s a story of great natural beauty and great devastation. It’s a story of highly educated persons as well as one of the top most illiterate states. It’s a story of rich resources and grinding poverty. In such a “reality” the truth behind the edited reality show is much more complex.

Mary would probably agree. The reality behind who she was as a woman, a mother, a wife can’t be captured in the six short snapshots we have of her in scripture. Did you know she’s only mentioned six times?: in the birth and infancy story, of course; then at the temple for Jesus’ circumcision; again at the temple in Jerusalem when Jesus runs away from their Passover plans to sit with the rabbis, much to her chagrin; the ultimate party planner at the wedding of Cana; a mother worried about her son being ostracized by a crowd; and then, a place no mother or father pray they will never see, at the feet of her dying child, when Jesus turns her over into the care of John, the disciple Jesus loved.

She’s seen six times. In only less than half of these she speaks. And in today’s scripture is the most she speaks at one time, and probably has had the greatest affect in defining who she is as a woman than any other act or words than scripture gives us. The truth of her feelings about the severe inconvenience a pre-marital pregnancy brings can’t be captured in the poetic and beautiful words of her song of praise, known as Mary’s Magnificat. The reality behind the reality poem was probably much more complex.

There are lots of holes in the Mary reality show. Which makes those of us who grew up Anabaptist or Protestant a bit curious about how other traditions such as Catholics could have created such a theology around Mary. (Here’s your brief Church History moment). Well, we know there are many early writings about Jesus that did not get into the Bible as we have it today. Humans, people, men (to be specific) chose which writings should go into the Bible and which should be left out. Which were valid and which weren’t. To be fair, I do believe that the movement of the Holy Spirit was among them to guide them, but I can’t dismiss that a lot of other “realities” were part of it as well. Wouldn’t that be an interesting reality show? “The Council of Treat: What makes the Cut, and what gets left out”

Among those that were left out we now call the “Infancy Gospels” which give more information about Jesus’ childhood than the final book of scripture contains. Some of the information about Mary that we see other traditions revering probably came from these infancy gospels, as well as other lesser known sources, and these were not chosen to go into the canon, or the finished work. Traditions about Mary spring up after the creation of our canon as well, so…

For a variety of reasons, there's not much information about Mary in our Bible, and Protestants have tended not to trust non-canonical texts and church traditions that sought to fill in the gaps. Needless to say, we have not had much of Mary in our church life, except, of course, at Advent…when we marvel at what sort of woman would willingly accept this tremendous, terrible, honor. (OK church history moment over.)

Elizabeth Soto Albrecht is an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church in Colombia and also the moderator-elect of Mennonite Church USA. Elizabeth grew up Catholic in her home country of Colombia. In the most recent edition of The Mennonite she reflected on how Mary has been, and continues to be, important in her spiritual journey. She observes that there is little room for appreciating Mary in the Mennonite church today (and to be fair, we should say the Church of the Brethren).

“We have thrown out the basin with the bathwater,” she says. “We have kept Jesus, but not the womb that bore him, the woman who created with God.”

I like to imagine Mary talking to an interviewer about the Mary Reality Show. Would she say “They portrayed me as the meekest, most mild mannered mother that ever was. Don’t they know I could have been executed for being pregnant and not married? Didn’t they see me hyperventilating on my way to Elizabeth’s, or weeping to Joseph? Hives! Look at these hives! ”

We have the impression of Mary as a demure receptacle of the holy. When she says “let it be with me as according to your word” we picture a submissive vessel, willing to be impregnated by the divine. But let’s not forget, the power of the Magnificat: the powers that be falling, the economic realities turned its head, beauty replacing devastation, a culture of peace replacing a culture of exploitation—this doesn’t sound meek. This sounds like anarchy to any power loving Roman that read it and this. …this will be the one who bears the Messiah? Not so demure, perhaps, after all.

When Ashley McNeely reflected on the negative impression Buck Wild painted him in, he said “Even after it all, I’m still glad I did it.” No doubt a nice check helped him feel ok about it. But I’d like to think—I hope—that Mary would say the same thing. No matter how the story shaped her into a holy mother, or a despised icon, even though she saw her son die, even if she felt rejected by him (which I’m sure all mother’s do)…I hope she would say the same thing: I’m still glad I did it.

So you might be wondering why all this talk about Mary. Shouldn’t we be talking about Jesus, after all, Christmas is about his birth?

Well, how about for one week, as we approach the birth with tired feet, aching limbs, groaning breaths, and exhausted bodies…how about for one week we don’t throw out the basin with the bathwater.

Because here’s this week’s reality check…it’s not just Mary birthing Jesus.

You are the basin. You hold the Christ waiting to be born.

“Every day Christians are invited to live into Mary’s paradox of being the small place where the maker of all places can dwell,” says Henry J. Langknect. “ As members of the church of Jesus Christ, we have opened our lives up so that we can be the dwelling place for Jesus.”

So let’s hold onto that basin, if only for a week, and :
Every time you are hit with fear, make it a home for Christ.
Every time you overcome your fear, fill that home with a song.

Every time you create with God, by sewing acts of love, you open the door of your home to Christ.
Every time you stop and say “I am your servant,” you embrace Christ at the door

Every time you make someone jump for joy or hold them in their hives and fear, deck your home out for Christ.
Every time you labor, and groan under the pain of bringing to birth something new—something tremendous and terrible--welcome Christ into the messy reality of your life.

Because messy reality is what Jesus was born into, God knows.

And so does his mother.

Rejoice

2011-12-11T12:00:00.000-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 John 1:6-9, 19-28

When I first heard that Carrie and I were expecting a child (the first time around), I couldn’t keep the smile off of my face. I was giddy with excitement … so giddy that I skipped part of the way down the street to the Co-op where we worked to meet Carrie and rejoice together. (A few moments later, I got myself under control. People were watching after all.)

That feeling of joy continued for weeks – weeks in which I would find myself smiling foolishly or walking with an extra bounce in my step or humming one of the many lullabies that my mother had sung to me as a child. But as time wore on and the enormity of the change and the responsibility that was headed my way took on more and more immediacy, I was overtaken by a growing sense of worry, and I began sleeping poorly and eating more than I needed and bighting my nails … more than usual.

About six months into the pregnancy, my sense of anxiety had gotten so intense that I began to break out in hives. It started with a couple of little, itchy bumps along my waistline, and I made sure to check our cat for fleas. But there were none to be found. And over the course of a couple of weeks, I was getting them all over my legs, my belly, and my face. On one memorable day, Carrie called me from work, and after I had spoken the first words of greeting, she asked if I the hives had come back. Apparently, my lips were swollen enough to distort my voice.

(pause)

It still happens to me sometimes. Not the hives (thankfully), but getting so caught up in the worry and the responsibility that I lose touch with the joy of having young children … miss out on the surprise of new experiences and the wonder of living. So, I try to remind myself to slow down from time to time – to … slow … down … and revel in my children.

And it’s the same, for me, with the holiday season. I start out with a sense of joy and anticipation as I get together with family over Thanksgiving. Then we move into Advent, and I’m bouncing around, humming carols as we get out decorations and imagine what Christmas day will look like. And the closer we get, the more I begin to worry about the details: how will we manage the scheduling, what are we going to do for the Christmas Eve worship (and this year there’s Christmas Day to think about too), is it even possible to keep our boys from obsessing about gifts….

On top of that, we hear Isaiah and Mark and John the Baptist calling us to repentance and reminding us that the rough places must be made smooth, the valleys lifted up, and the mountains made low before the glory of the Lord is revealed. There is still so much inequity and injustice that we – that I – should be working to change, and I feel guilty as I pass people with worn clothing and weathered faces on my way to and from buying gifts or getting treats to fill stockings.

I need the reminder to slow down and pay attention to the coming of Christ as much as anyone else.

Slow down, we seem to say every year. Advent and Christmas are not about the hype and the parties. They are really not even about the time spent with family. They are about the amazing truth that God came among us – a reminder that the holy, the sacred, the sublime are not found in some far away place but in the mundane stables of our lives.
This week, I read a story by Kathleen Hirsch. She talked about this same struggle to slow down and simplify in order to make the Christmas season more “spirit-centered….”
“A few years ago,” she said, “I decided that our family Christmas season would be simple, insofar as that was possible with a toddler....” I reduced my to-do list by half and … turned off the television. There would be no Arthur or video versions of Winnie-the-Pooh this Advent.
Every morning…, we opened a door on the calendar and then, over our Cheerios, talked about whatever came up: the wise men on their trek, the guidance of stars, a mother on a donkey. After I picked up my son from a morning at day care, we’d share a quiet lunch and spend afternoons reading Christmas picture books, baking gingerbread men inside and making snowmen outdoors. Nothing was rushed….
Each afternoon was more peaceful than the one before. Surprisingly, the work of the season seemed to take care of itself…. On the Sunday before Christmas we put up the tree and added new paper chains. After dinner we would set up the crèche and arrange the stable animals in their places of honor, ready for the arrival of the baby Jesus.
I was potting the last of the jam when my son disappeared from the kitchen. I heard rummaging in the living room, then the metallic tinkle of ornaments on the lower boughs. Minutes later he was standing beside me, a solemn three-year-old holding a stuffed red heart that he’d taken from the tree.
“Mommy,” he announced. “Pretend that I am Gabriel.”
“Kneel down, Mommy,” he instructed me.
I obliged. Gabriel and I were face to face, inches apart, in front of the stove.
“Mary,” he addressed me. “You shall have a son. And this,” he extended the plush red heart toward my face. “This is your holy.”
“You must carry your holy with you always, Mommy – even around your neck – so that Jesus will know that he is holy too.”
Then, perhaps overcome by the force of his own inspiration, my Gabriel turned and fled back to the crèche to distribute more of the “holy” to the creatures assembled there.
Slowly I got to my feet. For a moment my son had seen heaven and had offered me a glimpse…. Without the holy, life – even simplified, even with terrific gingerbread and jam – is dust….
I looked at the heart again. My world doesn’t involve a lot of angel sightings, but as I reflected on what had just transpired, I realized that my world didn’t leave much room for wonder either. My son was far better attuned to the ways in which the sacred speaks. I comes to us on the wing; it grazed the heart. Only after long contemplation does it coalesce inot something that we can put words to.

We are a dedicated and caring people in this congregation, and we struggle with ourselves and with the world all the time. We work to make straight a way for the Lord’s coming. But whether we are focused on filling the pits of injustice in the world or smoothing out our own internal, spiritual disorder, or just trying to find a way through the wilderness of holiday preparations … we can easily get so absorbed in what we are doing that we miss out on the wonder of God’s presence. There is always something more to do, some new spiritual practice to try, and even when we are just trying to slow down and simplify things, we are often blinded to rejoicing by our sense of responsibility or guilt or worry.

(pause)

The good news is... it doesn’t have to be that way. We are not the Messiah. We are not even the Voice calling in the wilderness. The mountains and valleys of the wilderness have already been made straight and level. The glory of the Lord has already come… is coming … is here … in the power and presence of a baby who brings salvation to the world.

There is still good work that needs to be done. There are still hungry people to feed; despairing friends who need hope; lonely, homeless, suffering neighbors who would benefit from our care. There is still our own struggle to make a manger of our souls. And in the midst of it all – what we most need … what we most need to “do” … is to find peace - that special kind of peace that opens our eyes and hearts to the holy around us, within us, … within everyone.

After a few weeks of suffering those hives, I had a helpful conversation with a couple of friends – fathers that I respected. Both of them laughed a little when I shared my predicament, but then they began to talk. And as is the way with advice, it poured out with stories to illustrate. I can’t remember it all, but the gist of it was … it’s important to remember, they said, that what children really need the most is love and adults who are there for them whenever they need it. You can’t do everything, … and you don’t need to. Most of it just happens. So relax. Trust yourself and trust God. Just go with the flow, and try to connect with the wonder and the joy your children find in the world. Even if that’s all you can do, you’ll give them exactly what they need most, … and you’ll give yourself a gift too.

It was good advice – good enough to relieve my tension and send those annoying, itchy bumps packing. And so I offer it to you today. During this season of excitement and expectation relax. Don’t try to make yourself relax. Don’t schedule it into your life among shopping and cooking and everything else. Just relax. Trust yourself. Trust the God who brings good news to the oppressed and binds up the brokenhearted.

You are invited to witness the coming of God into the world – a gift of wonder and glory … of hope and promise. Rejoice.

An Unexpected Time

2011-12-04T09:38:00.002-05:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Advent 2
Isaiah 64:1-9, 2 Peter 3:8-15

I want you to think about time. Mainly, I want you to think about the word time. Now, think of a song that you know that has time in the title, or in the lyrics. What are some? Just call them out…[As Time Goes By, Time in a Bottle, etc. etc…]

When I thought of this, the first song that came to mind didn’t have time in the title, but is in the lyrics. It’s a Simon and Garfunkel song called Hazy Shade of Winter: “Time, time, time, look what’s become of me/ as I look around for my possibility/ I was so hard to please...” I asked Torin and he immediately said the line, “a simple prop to occupy my time” from the song This One Goes Out to the One I Love by REM. And then of course, since we were talking about REM, our mind went to the classic of our generation, “It’s the end of the world as we know it” which we realize didn’t have the word “ time” in it, but was certainly about time…then end of time.

Aside from love, it seems like time is the focus of many songs. It doesn’t need to have the word “time” in it, but there is something about time in most songs. That experience of getting through a specific time, waiting for some time when we will get what we want, often love. Not wanting to waste time, generally…with the one we love. Remembering a different time. Wishing for another time. Waiting for time to pass...

It might not be expressed explicitly, but the topic of time seems implicit when we sing, or speak about our lives. Unfortunately, it often seems like time is a faceless adversary, doesn’t it? Our invisible nemesis, something we have to contend with, to manage, to patiently deal with, to make the most out of it, to kill it yet somehow, not waste it. To get somewhere in the nick of it. As the sculptor and poet Henry Van Dyke explains: Time is/ Too slow for those who Wait/Too swift for those who Fear/ Too long for those who grieve/ Too short for those who Rejoice.”

Time is kind of like air, if you think about it. It surrounds us and yet we can’t see it. We can only see the movement of its passing: through greying hair, growing children, falling leaves, birthing, and dying.

That time was passing was a problem for Christians who were receiving this letter of Peter, our scripture for today. It wasn’t simply bemoaning how joints were aching, or how there was too few hours in a day, or how quickly it all passes. You see, many early Christians were just a bit peeved that, essentially, they were still here…on earth. Too much time had passed because they were believing, as the scripture we read last week Mark 13 vv. 24-37, implied “…this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” And you will remember, these things they were talking about: the sun darkening, the stars falling, the Son of Man coming in clouds with glory and power. The end of the world as they knew it.

All of this was supposed to happen. Christ was supposed to have returned by now. That generation Mark spoke of had probably been dead for a decade or two and these early Christians were starting to lose hope. Think…May 22, 2011. The day after Harold Camping said Christ would return. Think…the people who dissolved their 401(Ks), quit their jobs, withdrew from their families, prepared to be raptured. That kind of May 22nd disappointment…expect ongoing, day in and day out. Each sunset, another day Christ didn’t return.

The person writing this letter in the name of Peter—likely not the Simon Peter the disciple of Christ, as originally thought—is writing a letter of encouragement. We can assume these people were convicted of their righteousness in the face of judgment, because they seem to want it so badly—which honestly, is why I feel I would not be so eager of this to come, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for these folks. It’s the end of the world as they know it and they feel fine. At least…if it ever comes.

And the author of the letter says,don’t fear, it will happen. Maybe not in our time, but in God’s time. God works in a different time than we experience-- so when it doesn’t happen according to our clock and understanding, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Rest assured.

Which, if I’m honest, initially seems like a huge cop out to me. Like Harold Camping backpedaling and saying his calculations were wrong and that it will be another time, later in October. But unlike Harold Camping, the author of 2 Peter doesn’t give a solid date or time, or even predictions for what will pass before it comes. And in fact, he kind of takes away the focus on time, of the end of it all. He says it will happen when it will happen. What is important now is that you live as if it will happen any moment…

As most of you know, for close to a year now I have been running a small business: Mountain Baby Diapers, a cloth diaper service. Most people don’t understand why I would want to not only wash my own children’s diapers, but other people’s, and that’s a conversation for another time [not over a meal, where it always seems to come up]. But one thing I love about it is that it easily fits into my schedule, and is fairly flexible.

I pick up diapers from my clients homes on Wednesdays. Most Wednesdays I have the alarm on our cell phone set for 5:15 so I can be out the door by 5:30, cup of coffee in my hand, car filled with clean diapers, BBC on the radio. I see those early mornings as “my time.” I’m in a comfy little bubble as I drive around town, as far out as unpaved roads off Snake Hill Road on lanes that evoke prayer from me every time I take our little Focus wagon on them. I remember the morning by what news report is on at each client’s house. It’s a joyful, meaningful time for me, as the sun starts to rise on the new day and I’m home in time for our 7:30 breakfast of eggs and toast, kiss Sebastian off to the school bus and begin my day of washing, drying, parenting, and pastoring.

And while I’m usually up and out by 5:30, my clients know there is a 12 hour window when I might come: 5am-5pm. I did this so if—as they say—“life happens”, and I’m not there when I normally try to be-- a kids is sick, weather is bad--I can make it up later in the day. It gives me flexibility.

Which is what happened this Wednesday. On Tuesday night I was looking for the cord for our cell phone because it was low on batteries. I like to use the cell phone because it has a less jarring alarm that our digital alarm clock, but because we couldn’t find the cord to charge it—did we leave it at my parent’s? Did we leave it at the Olive Garden in Columbus?—I decided to set the alarm on our digital clock, which I don’t think I’ve ever done. AND I decided to go to bed listening to classical music, setting the clock to the sleep mode, so the radio would turn off after an hour.

We’ll I’m convinced the more I finagle with things, the less likely it is that it’s all going to work, so as you can guess, the next morning I wake up at it’s 6:30. An hour later than I hope. This is not how it is supposed to happen. Bounding out of bed I told Torin the alarm didn’t go off (as if it was the alarm’s fault), push on the coffeemaker, throw on my clothes, pour the coffee before it’s done, making a mess, worrying if I will get home in time for Sebastian to get to the bus and as I pull onto Willowdale Road the other unexpected complication—traffic. Traffic just started. There was no way my routine was going to happen like normal.

So I made the decision to alter my route. I would do some of the pickups before 7:30, go home and finish after breakfast. That way I could see Sebastian off to school, because as I realized in that moment, what seemed to be most distressing to me was that I might miss kissing him goodbye, and that I wouldn’t see him until he returned in the afternoon.

And as often happens, eating started grounding me back into clearer perspective. With the first bite of toast I was still fuming in my head: this all happened because my organized plan was disrupted. Someone lost the cord to the cell phone which meant I had to trust something else to wake me up, something other than what has always worked for me. When it comes down to it, when I’m in control, it all goes fine.

And after the first forkful of eggs I was working it out with Torin that what was really irking me was now my schedule was disrupted. I’d have to go out to Snake Hill Road—out in the boonies—when I wanted to spend the morning reading and studying in preparation for this sermon—and now my whole plan was all out of whack.

And during the first sip of coffee, Torin says “Well, I’m glad you give yourself a window of time so you don’t have to stress about when you pick up the diapers.” --I don’t know if he intended it or not, but I heard the irony in his comment. And the hard truth.

Because by the time I had finished my breakfast, and I was hugging Sebastian at the door, I realized I wasn’t freaking out about my schedule being messed up, or that I’d have to make a ten mile drive. I was angry that my attempt to control time had been thwarted.

I had been thinking that if everything went according to my plan, if I had been in charge of that phone cord, if I didn’t have to rely on an alarm clock to get me up, if things just happened the way I wanted and , let’s face it, knew best, things would be fine.

But isn’t that one of the ultimate illusions. Not that we have control over time—the first Christian communities, as we see today, were becoming painfully aware of that fact. But really, that we have control at all of anything in life. In her book Learning to Let Go Melanie Beattie reassures us that when we trade in a life that we try to control “we receive in return something better—a life that is manageable.”

Manageable, and yet more. In Greek there are at least two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners. Chronos is where the word chonology comes from which gives the illusion of an ordered progression of time. Chronos is ticking of the clock, counting of shopping days until Christmas, wondering why Christ hasn’t come yet because time has passed on the calendar…at least, by the living and dying of a generation. Chronos makes us angry at our bodies when they don’t heal as fast as we think they should. Chronos makes us anxious about our self worth when our hopes and dreams haven’t been accomplished by the age we thought they would.

And then there is the other word for time: kairos. Kairos is the time when you are lost in the beauty of a piece of music or the reverie of poetry. Kairos is the moment you hold someone in their pain and when you’ve laughed so hard for so long your side hurts. Kairos comes in moments of meditation of watching sleeping children, of falling in love. Kairos means “opportune moment” and is used when referring to a different type of time, a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. …a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. A time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled with Spirit

Kairos… gives the soul a space to deepen when the body slowly heals. [pause]
When our minds were set on certain lists of accomplishments that we thought we could control,
Kairos presents us space to explore new possibilities . [pause]
Kairos replaces counting down till Christmas with the patient waiting of Advent. [pause]
And we can’t control it.
No alarm clock will alert us to it, even when we end up finding the cord for the cell phone in our purses…like I did.

And in the midst of today’s scripture of end time hopes that we can’t quite seem to connect with, the author of Peter is calling us out of chronos and into Kairos. Out of the world’s time and into God’s time. Where living is not about what is to come on the clock and what we can control, but what is at work in our hearts and what we leave to the movement of Spirit.
--
And that’s probably what a lot of the songs about time have to say, too. While we want to control time, the painful reality is that we can’t. And if the author of 2 Peter was a country singer, he’d probably couldn’t say it better than Emmylou Harris who sings: “When we’re gone, long gone…the only thing that will have mattered, is the love that we shared, and the way that we cared. When we’re gone. Long gone.”
An

Finding God Among Us

2011-11-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37

In Indiana you can get a driving permit at the ripe old age of sixteen. If you do well enough in Driver’s Ed, you don’t even have to take a driving test. You just go down to the DMV with a parent, show them your grade card, get your picture taken, and you’re all set to wreak havoc on the traffic patterns of unsuspecting citizens.

Well, I was one of those lucky students. No nerve wracking trip down the road with a stranger and her clip-board in the passenger’s seat for me. No steering through orange cones. AND, no parallel parking test in the middle of rush hour traffic on Main Street. It was a little anti-climactic, but there’s no doubt that I felt a sense of freedom and pride when I got that first little piece of laminated plastic. I was finally an adult … despite the red flag behind that goofy smile on my face.

Later that year, with hours and hours of local driving and one family trip out west under my belt, my mom and brother and I set out one morning for Cincinatti. It was a 5-6 hour trip south from our house N. Manchester, and we needed to be there by noon to board the river boat for my aunt’s birthday party.

My mother is naturally a morning person. So she started out the drive at 5:00 with my brother and me asleep in the back of the van, but after a couple of hours, she needed a break and a nap herself. So, I was called upon to take up the driving. The sun was up by then, and I settled in for an hour or two on the interstate with soothing music on, the heater running, and the cruise set at 63 miles per hour (on my mother’s insistence, of course – I would never drive over the speed limit myself.)

You might guess what happened next. After about twenty minutes, I nodded off for a few seconds which was more than enough to send us off the road, down the embankment, and into a guard rail. All three of us walked away from the accident without so much as a bruise; though the van lost all four tires, a good portion of the back right fender, and the entire back hatch. Needless to say, we did not make it to the birthday party, but we did have plenty of time to calm our nerves while we waited for my father to come and pick us up.

I learned a few things that morning. The first was that if you don’t hit the brakes, the cruise will keep a car going … very fast … whether you are on the road or not. The second was that my mother’s thoughts about guardian angels may not be quite as silly as I once thought. And the third was exactly how far I can push myself when I am at the wheel.

Only once since that morning have I nodded off while driving (one time to many), and I was fortunate enough to have an alert passenger along with me to wake me before the car was out of control. But, there have been many times when I have “zoned out” on the road – when I have been driving without any real awareness of what I was doing. I come to my senses at a stop light or a turn in my route, and I realize that I can’t remember the last several miles of driving. I don’t know how I made it where I am. I don’t know what I missed seeing or hearing along the way. I only know that I must have covered the miles in my own lane, driving … safely? Strictly speaking, I stayed awake, but I certainly wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been.

Of course, that’s not the best way to get from one place to another … behind the wheel of a speeding car on autopilot, but I suspect that many of you have had the same experience. And, I think that most of us have passed through days or months or years of our lives in the same way. We go through the motions that keep everything running smoothly – more or less, and we arrive at some major event (a birthday or an anniversary or a crisis in our family) and we wonder where the time went. How can it be that Meredith is driving now? When, exactly, did Brent start looking down on me? Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were celebrating Easter? Where did the time go?

It’s part of human nature … letting time sort of slip past while we wait for the big, memorable moments to come. At least I hope it’s not just me. I think it’s not just me, and I’m pretty sure that it’s nothing really new because I think that’s what both of our scriptures are talking about.

“Beware, keep alert,” Jesus warns us. “Keep awake, … for neither the angels in heaven, nor the [Son of Man,] but only the father knows the day or the hour.” In other words, don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Don’t even let yourself zone out. Pay attention because you never know when God is going to show up, and it could go badly for you if you are not prepared.

As Carrie pointed out last week, that’s not exactly comforting. It put us on edge because it makes us think of a vengeful, judging God – a God who would throw the unenlightened or the unfaithful into an eternal fire. That’s not the God we like to think about.

It’s all well and good for Jesus to speak of doom because he is the one person who will never have to worry about whether or not he is a worthy. The rest of us are not so lucky, and it seems more than a little unrealistic to expect that we could stay alert all the time, be prepared all the time, produce fruit all the time. It’s a superhuman task, and I have trouble even understanding what it would look like to live that way.

But, I can connect with the sentiments expressed in the poetry of Isaiah. It’s a bit more human. Sure, it says … sure we have strayed from the path. We have not lived as well as we should have. We haven’t kept all the laws or done all that we could have to be perfect followers, but that’s not entirely our fault. But what do you expect? You used to come down and make the mountains shake. You used to tear open the heavens and speak to us in burning bushes. And we knew that you were here with us. And we knew what you wanted us to do. And we knew that you cared about us because you blessed us with your presence. Then you went away … or at least it feels like you went away because we stopped seeing the big things and hearing the VOICE speaking to us. And we had to start trying to figure things out ourselves. Don’t be angry, we’re doing our best … or at least we are trying.

Two very different voices there in the scriptures. Two very different points of view, but they are both clear about one thing. God’s presence in the world changes things. When God’s face shines on us, we notice, and we feel that strange mix of fear and love that we call awe. We are moved to live more righteous lives – to follow the rules and listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If you’ve ever felt that sense of awe move you, you know how powerful it can be to sense God’s presence around you, and I can only imagine how much more intense the feeling would have been when God walked among us as Jesus.

And here we are … at the beginning of Advent. We’re coming awake again to celebrate the incarnation – to celebrate the fact that God did come and walk among us. And it’s a wonderful and joyous time. But, the truth is that God is always walking among us. God has been among us – walking, working, moving, and shaping our lives and our world all this time. God has not hidden her face from us, we just haven’t been paying attention. We’ve been on autopilot … again, and who knows what beautiful moments we’ve missed along the way.

Just before our wedding, the pastor who married us gave us one last piece of advice. “Do your best to pay attention during the ceremony because if you don’t, you won’t remember anything.” We have gotten much the same advice from many people as we have raised our family. “Cherish this time. Pay attention so that you can enjoy all the wonderful moments because they pass you by so quickly.”

It’s good advice. I tried my best, but I don’t remember very much of what actually happened on my wedding day. I try my best to each stage of my children’s development and to cherish each moment, but I am still caught off guard when Sebastian tries to remind me of something that happened a year ago and I can’t remember it. Just the other day, he came home from school and asked if he could do his homework, and I found myself wondering where the little boy I knew had gone. I just don’t know how to pay attention well enough to notice everything.

So how do we pay attention? That seems to be the big question behind all of this. How do we stay alert and present to our family or to the needs of our neighbors or to the presence and activity of God among us?

Honestly … I don’t know. I am sure the answer is different for each of us, and I have yet to find my own way.

I don’t think that many people have ever found a way. There is nothing definite in the gospels or in any of the other scriptures that I know. Jesus and Paul, the prophets and the Psalm writers, they all call believers to stay alert. They all talk about what can happen when people get a little sleepy. But despite all their insistence on paying attention, they offer no specific guidance on how to do that.

There are lots of other suggestions out there in books written by people who have been struggling toward this goal just as we have. They talk about praying, serving, discerning God’s will, practicing compassion and active love and other practices that have talked about, and all of those things can help … do help. They point us in the right direction at least. But one of the most helpful things … for me … has been J. Phillip Newell’s reminder that “looking to God is not looking away from life but looking more deeply into it. They reveal to us that God is at the heart of creation – is the heartbeat of life…, enfolding the earth and all its people with love.”

Even though that’s not specific (or maybe because it’s not specific), that gives me hope. It tells me that whatever else I do – whatever practices I try, whatever different paths I walk for a time - if I look hard enough, I will find God … not far away, but right here among us.

There may not be one right way for all of us to stay alert or even for any one of us to pay attention. Perhaps we are only meant to try… to turn off the soothing music, turn down the heat, and turn off the cruise and give it our best effort so that we miss as little as possible. That’s my goal, at least, because “Once upon a time, a great big God was born as a little small child, and the world changed. The God is still changing everything – me and you and the world around us – in beautiful ways.

I don’t think we want to miss that. I’m not sure that we can afford to give up those chances to find ourselves awakened to awe at the presence of God: … the God who comes in spectacular ways - rending the heavens, shaking the mountains, lying in a manger, and rising from a tomb … and the God who walks with us every day, touching the world with vulnerability and love.

It comes easily in this season of anticipation – paying attention. We have a feeling of expectation. And the closer we get to Christmas … and the stronger that feeling gets, the more we notice the presence of God … the more aware we are to touch of the divine around us.

Maybe … if we pay attention this time around, we’ll learn how to stay awake – really awake.

Maybe we can carry that feeling … that awareness with us down the long stretches of our lives too.

And then when we look around, we’ll find God … right there among us.

Double Vision

2011-11-20T09:44:00.000-05:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Matthew 25:31-46, Ephesians 1:15-23

I have to say—the gospel readings for the past three weeks have been pretty… heavy. Bridesmaids who fall asleep late at night and bridesmaids who hoard their oil (the latter ones being commended); servants who are entrusted with their greedy master’s money, some are risky and some play it safe (the latter ones being chastised). And today. Those who see the suffering Christ and those who don’t quite see it yet (these last ones relegated to the position of goats and thrown into the metaphorical fire—at least we hope it’s metaphorical).

Now I don’t know about you, but these aren’t exactly the stories about Jesus and his teachings that I like to throw around, especially not to those new to Christianity, or critics of Christianity, or doubters in Christianity. Jesus sounds kind of harsh, and not very welcoming. And while I commend Torin for the job he did in helping us see these first two scriptures in a new light—to help us take them beyond face value—I have to say I’m still not comforted by them. And if I’m not comforted by the words of my Savior, can I claim to really be a follower?

I sometimes have difficultly seeing that.

To be honest, I have always liked the gospel scripture for today, about the sheep and goats. Not because I like sheep and goats, but because of the basic incarnational theology it presents. The idea that God is in everything, in everyone, in every situation…and our actions towards each thing, each person, each situation we encounter is an interaction, in some way, with the divine. And on the flip side, our lack of attention and engagement is, so it seems, an unconscious separation of ourselves from God.

It speaks to a basic Christian belief—and a cherished Anabaptist one—that faith is not private conviction, but it is also public practice.

Yet, as I have grown a little older, taking on more responsibilities, a family, a job, a small business, a yard and a garden and getting involved in my kids’ school—I have become more uncomfortable when I approach this scripture. It’s one thing to read this with the eyes of an idealistic, socially-conscious 20-year old with relatively few responsibilities, who sees the source of the social ills as caused by other people—older people—but now…You know they used to say “don’t trust anyone over 30…” because apparently something happens. Your priorities shift. Your life isn’t what you thought it might be. While you still might feel passionately about things, your motivation to act is…tempered somewhat.

So there is a part of me that feels like these gospel scriptures are a bit…unfair. I guess it’s because I’m now over 30. It gets us feeling a little bit down on ourselves and then today comes, when churches around the world are celebrating Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday before Advent begins, the Sunday when we proclaim Christ the head of the church, and we, his servant subjects. Christ reigns in glory and the whole world bows before him.

[pause]

Actually, this isn’t quite our cup of tea is it? I wonder how many of you actually knew it was called Christ the King Sunday… and if my little lectionary reflections hadn’t reminded me that today was indeed, Christ the King Sunday, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It feels a little—high church—for us lowly Brethren and Mennonites. Some people refer to this as "Reign of Christ" Sunday. I can swallow that cup of tea a little better.

So, whether it is Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, what is interesting is that lowly is what today’s gospel is all about. One article I read this week compared today’s gospel with the TV reality show Undercover Boss. “CBS describes the nature of the show: Each week, Undercover Boss follows a different executive as they leave the comfort of their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their companies. While working alongside their employees, they see the effects that their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organizations, and get an up-close look at both the good and the bad while discovering the unsung heroes who make their company run.

“It sounds a lot like the gospel text for Christ the King Sunday,” says Christine Chakoian. When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him. Then to everyone’s surprise,” Chakoian remarks, “he will reveal that he has been undercover among them for some time, observing them at work.”

Now, that isn’t the most comforting image either, in fact it is a bit anxiety producing, a bit like Big Brother. She goes on to admit this isn’t a perfect metaphor- it’s not that the primary purpose of God coming among us in Christ, and remaining with us in the Holy Spirit was so our cosmic Boss could see how the company was running--but this passage does asks us, how accurately are we anticipating the “CEO’s” priorities: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Now if you have been coming to this congregation for even a short length of time, you will know that we are a people who are concerned. We are a socially-conscious people. I don’t need to waste my breath with most of you, convincing you the need to be aware of the suffering of the world in some way, that we are a people called to serve, that we pray with our feet, and that, as St. Teresa of Avila said, Christ has no body on earth now but ours. I know it, and I believe you know it.

But here’s the rub, as I see it. Because I know it leaves me in a quandary, and I imagine it does for some of you too:

Should I put all my money towards relief agencies serving those affected by drought and famine in Somalia, or towards campaigns creating a new food culture in public school lunches? The thirsty or the hungry?

Should I put my time into working for just immigration policies or volunteering at Christian Help to provide business clothing for women who are looking for work, but don’t have the appropriate wardrobe? The stranger or the naked?

Should I spend much of my energy into organizing for policies which grant dignity for those who are mentally ill, or should I put it towards the campaign working to eliminate human trafficking and modern day slavery in the US? The sick or the prisoner?

I think I do a good job of seeing the world’s needs and the disenfranchised. Of seeing Christ dwelling in the least of these. It’s there. It comes in the mail as fliers, it comes from our denominational agencies as glossy brochure and special offering initiatives or special worship focus, it comes when I’m listening to the news while I’m cooking dinner, and in it’s in my head at night when I thank God for my health, my family, my home, my job and realize that these are luxuries that the majority of the world doesn’t have.

And then it seeps in. That uninvited visitor who I want to keep out, but always seem to leave the backdoor of my mind unlocked for: guilt.

When I make a choice, does that mean that I’m neglecting the other one? Am I seeing Christ in the thirsty, but not the prisoner, the naked but not the sick? Am I willingly turning my back to all the other needy people and situations? Am I too attuned to the needs of those far away, and not looking at the needs at my own door step?

Sometimes, though I am self-admittedly a feminist and a pacifist, my mind needs a good slap in the face, like those old black and white movies where a valiant man gives the hysterical woman a slap, not with the intent to hurt her, but to snap her out of whatever it is that is spiraling out of control.

So, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but I think many of us do feel so compelled to do something for our neighbor, but we just don’t know what is needed, or effective, or sustainable. And let’s face it, “loving our neighbor” throws a lot wider net now than it did 2,000 years ago. We see every part of the world, more needs, more prisoners, more hungry, more definition of what justice means. And it seems the more we know, the more likely we feel we might be herded up with goats because we aren’t able to do everything for everybody.

And then we either live in that guilt, or…we just become numb to it. We choose not to see it. Or we choose to see it with our physical eyes, but not to engage it with our inner eye, our spiritual eye. The one that takes what we see physically, and somehow translates it into the language of the spirit.

And I think that’s a bit of what Paul can teach us in his letter to the Ephesians this week. When we wonder what is ours to do, either for the environment of West Virginia, or the children of sexual abuse, or refugees in Afghanistan, or our neighbor who is suffering with cancer…if we can take Paul’s words to heart we won’t say “I can’t do anything” and we won’t say, “I can do it all”.

Instead, let’s stop, take a deep breath and say, or rather pray Paul’s words:
[deep breath]

I pray that God…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.

[pause]

Stanley Hauerwas said that “We can only act within a world we can see. Vision is the necessary prerequisite for ethics.” We’re called to see the interconnectedness of the world. That because Christ suffered on the cross he is deeply a part of the world’s suffering and when we see we are compelled to respond…it’s a question of ethics. It’s seeing Christ in the world.

But it also calls us to double vision. It’s also about seeing with the inner eye the wisdom of Christ. We might call it discerning. We might ask the very important, but simple question, what is mine to do?

And I’ m pretty sure the answer won’t be everything. And it probably won’t be nothing. It might be as simple an answer as to say a prayer. And if it takes you beyond that, then that’s when Paul’s prayer, not guilt, becomes your motivator.

It has been said many places that your calling is where the world’s greatest need and your greatest joy meet. A double axis. A double vision. With a global society and technology the world’s needs are laid before us daily. But our greatest joy? Our divine abilities? Our passion? I sure wish someone could tweet me what those are, or get instant updates on my Facebook status.

Because that’s a lot harder. And it is frustrating. And as you discern and grow in wisdom remember that Christ is with you as well. “It humbles me to know that Christ cared so much that he left the comfort of his corner office to hang around his staff” says Christine Chakoian. “I am strengthened because he rolled up his sleeves in the muck of the factory and field, the hospital and kitchen, the halls of power and the temple of worship. I am reassured that he has compassion nofr those of us who, out of exhaustion or discouragement, are tempted to cut corners or even walk away.”

There is wisdom, and revelation. There is seeing with your heart enlightened. And when we see with that double vision, maybe then we can live in the hope. The hope where the Divine One joins you.

Risky Business

2011-11-13T12:00:00.000-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 25:14-30 I Thessalonians 5:1-11

Do you believe that God has a plan for your life? Not just some big, vague hope but a specific, detailed plan?

That’s a big and complicated question. It brings up all sorts of theological questions. And it raises a host of doubts, fears, and insecurities in many of us. If God does have a plan for each of us and we all live according to that plan, then what do we make of free will? Are we just pawns in some universal game of chess? If God has no plan at all, does that mean that God is powerless? Or doesn’t care? Are we just playing our own little games with each other?

But, putting all that aside for another time, I’ll ask again … Do you believe that God has a plan for you?

Whether your answer is yes or no … or you have no idea, you are not alone. According to a recent Baylor Religion Survey, 41% of American’s strongly believe that God does have a plan for them. About 30% believe that there is no plan. And about 30% are somewhere in the middle, leaning one way or the other but not strongly.

One interesting thing about those figures is that a large portion of the people who said that they do believe (and especially those who believe strongly) also believe that part of that plan is granting them, personally, blessings of wealth and prosperity. And despite the current recession and the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, that number is growing, especially among those who are at the lowest income level.

That kind of magical thinking seems foreign and naïve to me, but the studies show that 2 out of every 10 of us believe that we will become millionaires in the next decade with the percentage growing the further down the economic ladder you move. And part of the reason for that may be the growing number and popularity of preachers who teach a "prosperity gospel" that promises wealth in return for sacrificial giving to support their ministries.

Those teachings are often justified by quoting the words of the parable we heard today with its promise that "to all those who have, more will be given, and they well have an abundance…" as well as older texts from Deuteronomy. Among other promises, those scriptures say that "God will … bless you and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, you grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock…. You shall be the most blessed of [people]."

But proof-texting – taking small pieces of scripture out of context and using them to support our own ideas - can be a risky business … especially when the scripture is a parable.

This story that we call the parable of the talents is not at all straight-forward. There are two major interpretations out there, and I have found the summary offered by Christina Berry helpful in my thinking:
Some [read] this parable in an upside-down kind of way, a parable not of the kingdom, but of how things really are ... with the master as an example of greed and acquisitiveness and the first and second slaves being opportunistic traders in mortgage-backed securities and derivatives– Wall Street executives, before the fall. They understand the third slave to be the faithful one, the one who refused empire, who refused to lend money at interest or to go for the quick buck.
But when the outer darkness descends and the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin, it’s hard to take that third slave as a new folk hero of the economy, some kind of first century 99-percenter, a participant in the “Occupy Jerusalem” movement. It’s hard to see anything heroic in the one who has nothing, who is not productive, who lives in fear of losing.

Others read this as unequivocal kingdom language. Jesus is … using oblique language to describe something hard to understand. It is something he wants the listener to understand on a gut level, not something you can write a book report about, not something you can make a chart or spread sheet about. Jesus is talking about trust and faithfulness, about using what we are given to bring about the kingdom.

Either way, the parable is not really about money. And it’s NOT about getting a good return on an investment. As Robert Farrar Capon tells us, “It [is] about a judgment rendered on faith-in-action, [but] not on the results of that faith.... It emphatically does not say that God is a bookkeeper looking for productive results…. The only bookkeeper in the parable is the servant who decided he had to fear a nonexistent audit and therefore hid his one talent in the ground….”

The judgment – the knashing of teach in the outer darkness - has nothing to do with which slave got a return on his investment and which didn’t. It has everything to do with who was willing to make use of the gift he was entrusted with and who wasn’t. All the Master asked of the slaves was that they do something … anything with his wealth so that it didn’t just sit idle while he was gone.

It is a risky business, this telling of stories. If we take this story literally, when it is not at all about what really happened, God ends up being characterized as a greedy old man, like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” capitalizing on the grief and the needs and the misery of the common folk or Mr. Potter in the Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.

A story like that can play into our deepest fears, and heighten our anxiety about money. It’s frightening enough to make us all bury a small fortune, to sock away fifteen years of income, in case something terrible is going to happen. It’s scary enough to make us focus on money and productivity above all things, working and saving to keep our anxiety at bay.

But if we read it differently – more like a parable should be read, then it asks even more of us. It asks us to risk more than money. It asks us to give up our fears about security and our self-made dreams about the future. It asks us to step out in faith on the path laid out for us by God – the Way to abundant life, trusting … trusting that God will be there to take care of us.

Imagine, for a moment, that some billionaire (Warren Buffet perhaps) gave you a gift of millions of dollars to care for while he was away. What would you do with that money? Give it away? Spend it on yourself? Spend it on others? Invest it? Save it?

Maybe you’d follow Warren Buffett’s advice: “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy,” and you’d risk it all in the high yield investment markets. Maybe you would simply do the best you could, trusting that the gift was meant for you, and that the one who gave it trusts you to use it to the best of your ability. Maybe you’d put the money into charitable organizations so that it would earn a different kind of interest. Maybe, at various times or places in your life, you’d do all three.

Now imagine that same scenario with something much more intangible – something much more precious: an overpowering grace and love, say, or an everlasting covenant, or a spring of living water, or the bread of life. Maybe you would feel lost or out-of your depth enough to risk your confident self-image, to risk admitting that you just don’t know what to do with such an amazing gift, to risk letting the Holy Spirit move into your place of not-knowing, and lead you into uncharted territory.

Maybe you would become greedy to multiply it by sharing it – just like the magic penny of our childhood songs. You would have an insatiable appetite for evangelism, for mission, for telling the good news, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless visiting the sick, welcoming children.

Maybe you’d risk everything you have, everything you are, for the sake of sharing the hope and promise you have found.

Maybe. Maybe not.

I do believe that God has a plan for each of us. I believe that we are each servants of a master who has shares with each of us the smallest portion of her unlimited supply of grace and love – a tiny portion that is still more than we could ever imagine – hoping that we will do something … anything with it.

Jesus showed us what that can look like. From the vantage point of our world, that can look like failure that will bring down the wrath of the Master. But in the Realm of God things work differently. God’s grace sets us free from that kind of tyranny so that we don’t have to act out of fear, hiding what we have. And we don’t have to save what God gives us because there is an infinite supply.

It’s a risky business … this discipleship, this sharing the good news of God’s grace, this throwing love around like it was only money. It’s risky … in the eyes of the world, but it’s the most secure investment that any of us who live in the Kingdom will ever make. And the abundant life that was already there … waiting for us to give birth to it – promises more riches and joy than we could ever come up with on our own.

I’d say it’s worth the risk.

Be Prepared ....

2011-11-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 25:1-13 I Thessalonians 5:1-11

We don’t watch television very much in our house. Well … that’s not, strictly speaking, true. We do watch a good bit of television, but it’s not traditional television – not cable or broadcast, I mean. We have been members of Netflix for a while, and so we “stream” television shows. That means that we can watch a much larger variety of shows … and that we are always at least a year behind the curve … no water cooler chatter for us … no water cooler at work either when it comes to that. Another benefit to streaming is that we don’t have to sit through all the commercials which is a pleasant change from the television I grew up with … and a life-saver when it comes to keeping our boys from pestering us for every new thing that they see!

But one side effect that I didn’t expect when we started up with Netflix is that when I do see commercials on someone else’s TV or some other internet service they get right into my head and take up residence there. It’s like I have lost my calluses or dropped some internal shield that used to help those ads slide right on past. Or maybe I’m just more aware of how the ads I do see affect me. Whichever one it is, I now have State Farm agents popping up with everything from sandwiches to hot tubs and a little baby in a walker zooming down four-lane highways in my head … in the left lane nonetheless … on the way to become a picture on a far-away, net-linked printer. And beyond replaying the silly hooks and the blatant consumerism, I have also noticed an increasing sense of impending doom after I watch commercial TV.

Personally, I blame Nationwide car insurance – you know, the accident forgiveness people. A few years back, they began a series of commercials that started with rainy nights and spinning cars filled with children in car seats and fairly minor car damage. “Are you prepared?” a deep, confidence-inspiring voice asked as they showed a mother holding her uninjured child and a talking with someone on the cell phone with a police car and a tow truck in the background. Are you prepared? If you have an accident, who will you call to get your car towed and repaired?

Since then, other companies have started to use the same theme, showing grieving families at funerals or people standing outside their homes and hugging each other as they stare at the tree that crashed through the roof. The scheme, of course, is to show you worst case scenarios that get your adrenaline going and to put them up against the comforting image of safe families gathered together in relief as they call whatever company will deal with the crisis for them. We, of course, want to have just such support to fall back on if such a disaster comes our way. And while I don’t think it’s really fair to use that kind of emotional manipulation to frighten people into buying some kind of insurance, I didn’t really feel like it had gotten completely out of hand until I received an automated phone call at the church that was trying to scare me into buying flood insurance … for a building that sits at least 400 feet above the river on top of a hill.

To be fair, the advertisers are not really at the heart of my stress. It started long before any of these commercials popped up. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have lived with it most of my life – the result of having parents who taught me to look to the future and save money for whatever might be coming up. That was excellent advice (and I hope to instill those thoughts in my children as well), but it planted a seed of worry in the back of my mind that thrives on the what-if scenarios that are all around us.

What if there is a double-dip recession or even a depression? What if Greece or Italy actually default on their loans and the Eurozone collapses? What if a 1,000-year earthquake hits near Morgantown? What if fuel costs, rising population, and global warming make food so expensive that we can’t afford to eat? What if those people who predicted the end of the world in May had been right? (Their back-up date was October 21st by the way. Guess we dodged another one there.) It’s getting quite apocalyptic out there with all these predictions of doom, and the message we’re getting from everyone is be prepared because you never know when something really big is coming down the pipe.

Both Paul’s letter and Matthew’s parable fit right in with that warning. All around the time of Jesus people were predicting a big change on the wind. The Roman Empire had been around for awhile, and there were signs that it was weakening. It was no longer growing as it had in the early years, and the borders were threatened in many places by people who wanted their land back with interest. Others inside the empire were dreaming of self-rule and a bigger share of the wealth that they saw all around them. Among the Jews, in particular, the prophesies of the Messiah were being studied, and the sense that he would arrive soon was growing.

The early church, of course, believed that the Messiah had already come – the first time. Looking back, they understood this story of the ten bridesmaids in a different light. Instead of a parable about the coming of the Messiah who would overthrow the Romans, it became a prophesy about Jesus’ return. The sense of immediacy was still there though because everyone believed that return could happen any time. And so Matthew tacked on a last little bit of encouragement and warning that may even have come from Paul’s letters: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” In other words, “prepare yourselves for the end is near.”

Down through the ages, people have responded to that warning in different ways. The early church took on a communal lifestyle where everyone contributed to the meeting the needs of all. When more money was needed, people sold their property or other goods to buy food and clothing. In the lead up to May 21st of this year, believers quit their jobs, got rid of many of their “treasures,” and took to the streets to warn us all that the Day of Judgment was coming. In the early days of the Anabaptists, there was even a group who took over the city of Munster by force. They instituted a communal sectarian government, renamed the city the “New Jerusalem,” installed one of their own as a new king in line of David, and prepared to take the rest of the world by storm – a grand conquest that lasted all of three years.

Obviously, I don’t think that was the way to go. I don’t think any of us can rush the second coming through anything we do, and I, for one, don’t think Jesus would be very pleased to return and find that his followers had taken over by force of arms. I also don’t think that dropping everything in order to stand on the street proclaiming “the end is near” is what Matthew or Paul meant when they said “keep awake.” And while I am drawn to the idea of living together in a supportive community where we work together to meet one another’s needs, I’m not sure that it worked for them or would work for us. As good an idea as it sounds, it doesn’t seem to be sustainable.

I wonder if that’s part of our struggle with “be prepared” scriptures like these. We respond to them as if there was something that we need to do – and do quickly – to get our house in order. It’s almost like those days before family or friends come to visit … when we are rushing around cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets, vacuuming, and dusting so that everything is neat and tidy and no one sees the truth about how we usually live.

I think these texts are talking about a different kind of preparedness. They seem to be about being ready all the time. And it’s more like changing our habits and our approach to life than it is about last minute cleaning. As Paul puts it, we need to live thoughtfully and act with care so that our lives reflect who we are as followers of Christ because we don’t know – can’t know – when the “Big Day” is coming or even what any day will bring. We need to keep our wicks trimmed and our lamps supplied with oil all the time so that we are ready.

In our ministry classes at seminary, one thing that they told us over and over again was that we needed to care for ourselves if we wanted care for others. And they were talking about every part of our lives – our physical health, our mental health, and our spiritual health. I heard it so much that I started to develop a bored little voice in my head that would say the words along with the professors: “if you don’t make time to take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of anyone else,” and it became a bit of a joke among the students.

But, they were right, of course. If I got depressed, I couldn’t take care of my children or work at the church – at least not very well. And if I’m sick, every visit, especially in a hospital or nursing home – comes with a real risk that I will pass on whatever bug has me under the weather.

Thankfully, I don’t often get really sick and I haven’t yet suffered from serious mental illness. So, those issues are not as much of a problem as they might be. But, I do find myself struggling with my spiritual life from time to time, and that makes it just as hard to be a good pastor. One of my problems is that when my faith feels vibrant and alive, I want to go out and do things – visit with people, teach Sunday School, be part of interfaith work in town, serve food to people at Circle of Friends. I don’t want to stay in and spend time in prayer or reading the Bible because it doesn’t feel like I need to.

And then my oil runs out. I am suddenly exhausted, and all those things that seemed so exciting and fulfilling start to feel a bit more challenging. At those times, I find it hard to take time for prayer or meditation or scripture study because I don’t feel like I have the space in my schedule or the energy it would take with everything else that needs to be done.

I have learned enough, over the past few years, to know that those are times when I need to set aside my to-do list and take a bit of a retreat in order to recharge my batteries. And I am beginning to really learn that I need to do a better job of taking time out when I am feeling energized as well. I suppose I am starting to recognize the ways that I am like the unprepared bridesmaids and beginning to understand how I could become more the other ones – the ones who are ready.

I think that’s what it’s all about really. It’s about thinking and living in the long-term. Last minute, “emergency measures” don’t seem to work all that well whether we’re talking about financial systems, natural disasters, or spiritual life. Sometimes they have to happen, but it’s better if we can be insured – if we can make a habit of making the time and space to refresh ourselves and keep our lamps filled.

However you do that – whether it be through prayer or walking in the woods, reading or taking naps, talking with friends or writing or taking hot baths – whatever works for you … put it on your schedule and do it. Do it to take care of yourself. Do it so that you can care for others. Do it so that your light can shine every day, whatever that day may bring.

A Different Kind of Love

2011-10-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 22:34-46 Deuteronomy 34:1-12

As I have been reading commentaries and listserves about “the greatest commandment” these past few weeks, I have found myself caught up in several different conversations about some pretty fascinating stuff … well … fascinating to those of us who are professional exegetes. We get into the scriptures and dig around in there and look for all the little contradictions or images or translation issues and make a really big deal about how they change “the whole interpretation of a text” because that’s what it means to be a professional exegete. We’re people who are paid to nit-pick about the details of scripture.

This time around, my colleagues and I have been talking about questions like: “Isn’t it interesting that the Pharisees asking for the one greatest commandment in the law and Jesus gives two commandments as an answer?” and “Why would the lawyer ask for the greatest commandment when everyone would have known the answer? What was the catch?” and “What was so hard about Jesus’ question? If David was speaking by the Spirit, wouldn’t the Pharisees have viewed his words as a prophesy and assume that they would be words spoken to a Messiah who was still a son of David sometime in the future?” … and the perpetual discussion of the three types of love: eros, philia, agape or intimate love, brotherly love, and unconditional or self-less love.

If you think those are long and confusing questions, you should “listen” on the conversations! They are a bit tedious at times, and since none of us really have the answers, things tend to degenerate after a while. But it is easy – for me – to get lost in the discussions and forget the more basic questions that can make these verses difficult to understand. Thankfully, I was brought back to earth by a question from our bible study. I think it was Rich Fleisher who said, “How can we love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all of our mind and still have room for anything else?”

Now there’s a question worth pondering.

A couple of years ago, Carrie told me a story. It was soon after Alistair was born, and we were struggling to figure out how to juggle the needs of two children. Personally, I think that’s the hardest transition to make. You go from having two adults to one child to having, quite often, two children and only one parent. (shake head in disbelief)
Anyway, Carrie had been talking with other mothers and passed on this modern folktale:
There was a young mother who was finding it hard to manage life with her new baby. She didn’t seem to be able to figure out what her child needed when he was crying, and she knew that she was supposed to be able to … perhaps through some kind of intuition. She was up all night, and with all the chores that needed to be done around the house, she didn’t get much sleep during the day. She was a wreck.
Then, one day, when she was walking her son past a local park, she saw a woman there with five children playing and a young baby in her arms. “How do you do it?!” she burst out, close to tears. “How do manage six kids?! I takes all my time with just one.”
The woman looked at the young mother and replied, “It doesn’t take any more time to raise six children than one.”

Love isn’t quite the same thing as time, though. Time comes in a fixed amount – here today and gone tomorrow. And it often feels like we don’t have enough time to get everything that we want or need to get done.

Love doesn’t march on. It doesn’t run out. It would make sense that if did. Then it would fit into our world of limited resources. But, that’s not the way of love. There always seems to be more of it. If you’re a parent … or a child, you know that instinctively. Do you love one parent more than another? One child? If a new person comes into your life, do they slowly take over space in your heart from somebody else? … Maybe the Grinch standing at the top of Mt. Strumpet would be a better image to describe the nature of love. Somehow, our hearts seem to grow and grow and grow to make space for more and more.

That makes it a little easier to answer Rich’s question. We can love God – at least with all our heart – and still have space to love others. But our heart is not all that God asks for, and when you add in those other two, it still feels a little intimidating. And here’s where those twisting conversations I can come in handy.

One of the good bits from this week’s trip through the listserve discussion is this. The word for “love” that Matthew uses in this text does not fit into that three tier system I mentioned above. It’s certainly not erotic love. But it’s not brotherly love or even completely self-less love as you might think (though agape comes the closest). In fact, there’s really not a Greek word that fits the situation. The Greek translators of two millennia ago just had to do their best with what they had.

“Love” in these verse isn’t even really a feeling in the way that we think of feelings, which may be what gave those translators so much trouble. This love is about commitment and dedication. In the Hebrew that Jesus was quoting, the word used is hesed which is translated in other places as “steadfast love,” and usually refers to God’s love for the chosen people. So, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” means to commit yourself to God in the same way God is committed to creation. And, “love your neighbor as yourself” means committing to yourself to your neighbors’ wellbeing (and to your own, by the way) in the same way that God is committed to the wellbeing of all humanity.

Now some of you, I’m sure, are thinking, “that doesn’t make it sound any easier. Now it’s not just love. It’s dedicating my whole self to God and then trying to find something left to others … not to mention myself.” (raise hand) You are not alone in that. Our spiritual history is filled with people who tried to balance these two commandments … tried and failed. King David, the disciples, Paul (at least in his early years), Jacob, Adam and Eve … from the very beginning, it seems, we have been struggling to find space in our hearts and our lives for God, ourselves, and our neighbors, and we tend to come down on one side of the equation or the other … usually ourselves.

And then there is Moses. For more than forty years he served God and the people with his whole heart, mind, and soul with only one or two lapses. He endured a lot of frustration and fear in the process, I imagine. He stood up to the greatest power of the time to demand the release of the slaves, after all. And, he led those same people through a barren land and took care of them despite their whining and complaining. He even stood face to face with God and argued for them when they had abandoned both God and him to worship gold.

I think, he must have found a good deal of joy in journey as well. How else would he have been able to keep it up for so long. He watched as the Hebrews grew up as a people of faith. He watched as his own family grew up on the journey. And, in the end, he got to see the promised land before he passed his work on.

Now, even the people who wrote his epitaph centuries later said that there has never been anyone else like Moses. The other great prophets and leaders don’t quite live up to his accomplishments. Some have signs and wonders nearly as impressive on their resumes. Some were granted visions of great power. Some worked tirelessly for the people. But none of them were able to put the whole package together. And that makes it hard to imagine that we normal folks would be able to come anywhere close.

On the surface of it, I think that’s right. But here’s another gem mentioned in passing in one of my conversations: “you cannot love God wholly without also loving your neighbor as yourself and vice versa.” What my colleague meant by that is that God’s deepest desire – God’s strongest commitment is to care for the well-being of all creation and especially humanity. If you dedicate yourself to God, you dedicate yourself to that over-riding purpose. And that means that you will be dedicated to your neighbors and yourself as well. On the flip side, if you commit your life to caring for your neighbors, you will be committed to following God’s will.

The hard part is making that commitment with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind because there really isn’t room for anything else. But, the is joy and fulfillment that comes from that decision reaches into every part of our lives.

Some of you, I’m sure, have heard me talk about getting baptized a year after I was married. It was a long time coming, and I was finally able to let go of my own need for control just long enough to go through with it at 29 years old. (I’m pretty sure that I’ve taken a firm grasp on that need for control again, but it’s not so bad as it used to be…. Two steps forward for one step back.)

When I went through the vows that I would be taking with pastor Alice, I realized that I needed to think about a few things … well just one thing actually. I was about to commit my life to God, but I had already made that same promise to my wife. I could not then – and I still can’t now – guarantee that living out that commitment would not take me away from her at some point. That’s not to say that it would break apart our marriage or threaten my love for her, but my vow to be there for her in every circumstance of our lives might have to be stretched if we were both truly called to different places for a time. Such things do happen when we strive to follow God’s will.

Ten years later, following God has led me to meaningful work and deepened my commitment to care for others. (I honestly don’t know if I would have made it this far as a parent if it weren’t for that extra something that keeps me from total breakdown in the midst of all the whining and everything else.) My life is richer and more joyful than I would have imagined.

I still wonder about that possibility, though. I still wonder if the day will come when one of us will be called across the country or across the globe. But, I also still remember the thought that the final bit of my worry. It was when I said that the God I believed in would only choose to separate us if there were no other way. The God I believe in would prefer to have loving couples stay together. It is better for them, and together – supporting each other – they can do more good than they could on their own. I still remember those words, and I still believe them.

It is not an easy thing to love God or to love others. But it does get easier when we stop trying to see them as two different things. Then, the struggle that we face is not in finding a balance. It is in making the decision to love … to love with a commitment care for the well-being of all humanity – to those closest to us and to those we only cross paths with for a moment. It is consecrating our lives to the service of God and neighbor each day, knowing that we will probably fall short, and then getting up the next day to try again.

It’s not easy, and it is all-consuming. But that is the path of discipleship, and if we follow … day after day after day, our lives are filled with a joy and a peace that come only to those who love.

Treasures in the Dark

2011-10-16T09:12:00.000-04:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
October 16
Psalm 139, Isaiah 45:1-9

When Sebastian was only about two months old, I went to our family physician for a routine physical. My whole body was weary: recovering from nine months of pregnancy, a first labor and delivery, lack of sleep. If you’ve ever gone through something like that you know that in that situation, you are acutely aware of your body, and somehow, completely numb to it at the same time. Everything feels rundown, pained, tired…but not at all your own

The physical was going normal until the doctor gently put his hands to my throat. And I noticed it. That thing you don’t want to see your doctors do. The furrowed brow. My stomach made itself known to me again. It flipped and tightened. He said, (and this is me reconstructing the conversation as best as I can, 5 years later) he said, “Ah. Yeah. I want you to get your thyroid checked out. It feels swollen.” Now the furrowed brow was mine. “So I want to get you in for an ultrasound. Now it could be hypo-thyroidism. And of course there is a chance that it could be cancer but thyroid cancer is very treatable…”

And by the time he said cancer, I was gone. Check. Me. Out of here. I thought, should I start writing my bucket list now, or talk to Torin about funeral arrangements? As I tried to shake these thoughts out of my head, my doctor said “Are you OK?”

Am I ok? Am I OK. You tell me I might have cancer, all be it apparently the best type of cancer to get if you’re gonna get it, and you ask me if I’m ok? No, thank you very much, I’m not ok.

Well, as reassuringly as he could be, he gently put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I don’t think it’s the worst. But we just want to rule it out.” I couldn’t tell if the lump in my throat had grown painful from the recently contrived cancer imposed on it, or from trying to hold back the tears and swallow the fear.

A week later, I found out it wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t even hyper- or hypo-thyroidism. I have multinodule goiters on my thyroid that enflame from time to time.

Strangely, I’m glad I had that experience. And I’m glad I had it because of what came to me in my moment of fear. I didn’t want the ultrasound . I didn’t want to know if it was the worst or if it was nothing because I was terrified that it was the worst.

But then somehow my rational self that seemed to be put on hold enlivened, or maybe it was the wisdom of my mother who has faced and beat cancer…something told me: it is what it is, and the truth will set you free.

If it was cancer, it was cancer whether or not I called it cancer. Somehow, in that moment, that realization was more powerful to me than whatever outcome was ahead of me. And somehow that knowledge--whether it was my rational mind or my mother’s wisdom-- whatever it was…it was of God.

So I get these things checked out annually, a routine process of “ruling out the worst.” Or perhaps, as I’ve tried to think of it, confirming the best-- that being, confirming it is nothing I need to worry about. But once a year as I lay in that darkened room, and they squeeze that goop on my throat—just to make sure it’s nothing—and I still lose a little bit of confidence.

That experience of discovering these goiters was a rather “dark moment,” you might say. We use a lot of that language in Judeo-Christian tradition, don’t we? Dark-light. Lightness permeating the dark. Dispelling the dark. Dark is bad. So you can imagine my surprise when I approached today’s scripture with that general understanding and see something counter to that idea. Isaiah says something that’s challenges our thoughts. And the Israelites were probably pretty surprised by it too.

To begin with God is proclaiming that he has anointed Cyrus--in fact the Hebrew word that is used is the word for “Messiah.” Wait, Jesus is Messiah right? Well here, God is saying Cyrus is chosen, anointed.

Cyrus. He isn’t really one of those guys that come to our minds when we think about characters in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was a conqueror of Babylon, and he sent back the exiles to their homeland. Hooray! Shout the Israelites.

Oh, and he was a pagan—not one of the chosen people. “Ohhh, “groan the Israelites . That is…unexpected.

Cyrus did not know YHWH, though somehow he was part of YHWH’s larger plan for the Israelite people. Now that’s a whole other sermon, and really that’s not what surprised me.

What surprised me was this: “I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places so you may now that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.”

I find that to be a powerful and beautiful image: treasures of darkness, riches hidden in secret places…in this way you will know it is God, the one who calls you by name. Not, “treasures when the light comes to you,” or “riches in the brightness shining of the glorious day.” It echoes the Psalmists amazement of God being part and within the darkness around him, talking about God working intricately in the minute and unknown and newly forming parts of life. The dark places.

I have to say, this verse sat with me in such a profound way these last few weeks, that much of the time, I had to just let it work its own meaning out for me, knitting itself together in my heart, making itself known to me in the dark. It was something that the writer Sarah Ban Breathnach says “is experienced, not understood.” I struggled to think about how to speak on this thing that I profoundly felt. And then I came across this sermon, written by Charles Spurgeon, a popular English pastor from the mid-19th century.

Now I’m not one to find a lot of relevant joy in the sermons of dead 19th century British men. But something he preached to his congregation struck me. He preached these words on the eve of a solar eclipse in 1848. He said,

“All are expecting to-morrow to witness one of the greatest sights in the universe—the annular eclipse of the sun. It is possible that many of us shall have gone the way of all flesh before such a sight shall again be seen in this country and we are therefore looking for it with some degree of expectation….I shall note this morning, in addressing you, that since the Lord creates darkness and well as light; first of all eclipses of every kind are part of God’s way of governing the world; in the second place, we shall notice that since God creates the darkness as well as the light, we may conclude beyond all doubt that he has a design in the eclipse—in the darkness as well as the light; and then, thirdly, we shall notice that as all things that God has created, whether they be light or whether they be dark, have a sermon for us—no doubt there are some sermons to be found in this.”

How do we see God in the dark moments of our lives--the eclipses of every kind in our life? That’s the spiritual question this scripture has planted in me. As we have been exploring Appreciative Inquiry in Sunday School, and as I have been doing my own work with cultivating gratitude, it has become apparent to me that gratitude is seeking the divine in all things. Not always seeing the divine, but seeking the divine. In all things. The darkness and the light. The messiah within the pagan. All are part of me, says God. That’s how you know I am God.

But this does not mean that we have to fall into theologies that tell us God brings us bad things and there is an ultimate plan in it all. Or to put our arms around a friend who is hurting and say “There, there. I’m sure God has a reason for all of this.”

As your pastor, I will never do that to you, even if you want to hear it…because we sometimes do want to hear that God has a reason for bringing darkness into our lives because at least, God is remembering us. At least, we are part of God’s plan.

But God has promised us more than being part of some scheme. Some “plan.” God has promised to know us intimately, and before you stop me and say “ah! You said two weeks ago that we couldn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus,” because I know I may be sounding contradictory, I’m not talking about us knowing Jesus in a way we know a friend. I’m talking about God knowing us when we can’t even see God, or trust God, or know God. God naming us, claiming us, wrapping us in divine love even in the darkness.

The Israelites were forced to shift their thinking. God was claiming that God used an outsider, a pagan as a divine instrument. That had to be pretty hard to swallow. Why couldn’t God use one of us? At least, use someone we can appreciate and be grateful for? Not this…outsider.

What if we shifted our minds? What if we didn’t see darkness and light as different struggles. Or that we have to move through difficult times in order to be in the good times. What if we recognize that God is in the total eclipse? The passing of the moon and the brightening of the sun. That God is to be found in the lump in the throat, not just present when the diagnoses is good.

[pause]
Somehow, the dark has something for us. A treasure. A moment of touching God. Something richer than we could never seen when we are blinded by the brightness of the sun. It can be a dark experience that comes at you unbidden, or the dark part of your soul that you have wrestled with for a lifetime. In that darkness there is a treasure. In that secret pain you don’t want anyone to know about, there is something rich.

And as the psalmist recognizes, is in the dark places where life, and new life, grows--getting ready to be born. The dark is a fertile place, a womb of new life created, knitted, fashioned, and we can’t escape it, or the God who is in it.

Charles Spurgeon must have preached what was about an hour sermon, by the length of the text. And he concluded with this image, as he spiritually prepared his congregation to face the physical eclipse with a spiritual openness.

“—And let the Christian recollect another sermon. Let him take his child out, and when he takes him outside the door, and he sees the sun begin to grow dark and all things fade away, and a strange colour coming over the landscape, the child will begin to cry and say “Father the sun is going out, he is dying; we shall never have any light again.” And as gradually as the moon creeps over the sun’s broad surface and there remains only a solitary streak of light, the tears run down the child’s eyes as he says, We shall have to live in darkness;” and he would begin to weep for sorrow of heart. You would touch your child on the head, and say, “No, my little child, the sun has not gone out; it is only the moon passing across its face; it will shine bright enough presently.” And your child would soon believe you; and as he saw the light returning, he would feel thankful, and would believe what you had said, that the sun was always the same. Now, you will be like a child to-morrow. When you get into trouble you will be saying, “God has changed.” Then let God’s Word speak to you as unto children, and let it say, “No, God has not changed; with him is no variableness, neither shadow of a turning.”

There are treasures for you in your darkness. Riches hidden in secret and unwanted places. When you find them, you will know God.

A Matter of Life and Death

2011-10-09T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 22:1-14 Isaiah 25:1-9

Death is a part of life … right? All the organisms on this earth – be they plants or animals (that’s us) or fungi live for a time. Then their bodies wear out, and they simply stop … like a battery that has run down. (That’s how I’ve tried to explain it to my 5-year old at least). It’s normal. It’s expected. It’s the natural order of things … or so I learned in all my biology classes from 3rd grade up through the end of college.

Then, I went to seminary, and I was introduced to Eastern Orthodox theology just enough to threaten that assumption. I’m not going to get into the particulars of the argument – mostly because I didn’t ever really understand it myself. But, the gist of it is that when the scriptures say, “the wages of sin is death,” they mean it literally. In other words, death is absolutely not a natural part of creation, and if things had gone as planned, everyone and everything that had ever been alive would still be alive.

It’s a fantastic idea, and I mean that in both senses - a wonderful thought and a fantasy. I can deal with the idea that all of us and even all living things can exist together in a spirit realm where space and resources are not a concern. But, how on earth could we all fit if we never died? For me, death will always be a part of life. But … that doesn’t mean that death has to limit life.

When screen writer, Will Reiser, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 25, he was devastasted and, as you might guess, he went into a profound depression. His life was over, and it had only just begun. So many of the things that he had dreamed of doing were still undone, and there was only about a 50/50 chance that he would make it through treatment to do them.

He went ahead with the treatment anyway – what else was there to do. And as he and his friend, Seth, talked about what he was going through, they found themselves retreating to the morbid humor that comes into life at its most absurd. Then, one day Seth made a joke about turning the whole experience into a movie – a comedy. Could it be done, they wondered. Could a young man’s struggle with cancer be treated with humor without demeaning the experience? The two of them took up the challenge though they were still unsure if Will would live to finish the project, and their movie “50/50” was recently released in theaters.

In a conversation on NPR, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – the actor who plays the lead in the film, spoke about the Will Reiser that he learned to know during filming. Throughout his many conversations with Will and Seth (Reiser survived by the way), he heard stories of the time before and the time after. Before his diagnosis, Gordon-Levitt said, Will seemed to a little shallow. He was kind of a whiny, wimpy guy who avoided problems and kind of ran away from difficult situations. But that’s not how I see him now. He is strong and confident, and he’s not at all afraid of the curves life throws him. It’s like before he was sick, he was living in fear of something – maybe of death, and now he’s not afraid anymore. He’s faced death and all those painful and embarrassing things he went through, and now he’s free to live without worrying about them.

There are other stories like that out there. Some of us know people who have lived through cancer and have seen those kinds of transformation ourselves. Sometimes it isn’t cancer that brings people to the point of overcoming the power of death, and sometimes people suffer through horrible things without ever finding the kind of new life that Reiser found. But, one truth that remains is that most of us who haven’t lived through a life and death experience still live with the weight of death sitting on our shoulders.

We get up each morning and get ready for the day, and as soon as we go out the door we start to limit ourselves out of a sense of fear. We go where we need to go and do what we need to do, but we are always on the lookout for threatening people or dangerous environments. We shy away from unfamiliar situations because they might not be safe, and who knows what we miss out on? Who knows what our lives would be like – what fascinating people we might meet, what good we could do in the world, or what new joys we might find – if we were free to live without the threat of pain or sorrow overshadowing our lives?

And yet, that’s the invitation we have received from God through Christ. We have been promised that death has no power over us – that “[God] will swallow up death forever, [and] wipe the tears from all faces.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that death won’t come to our bodies, but it does mean that death and suffering and pain and mourning no longer have the power to interrupt or limit the joy of our living if we don’t give them that power ourselves.

Another fantastic thought… because I know – we all know that it’s not as simple as just deciding to refuse death and suffering their due. At least it doesn’t feel that way … ever. But that is the promise that God has made. The banquet that Christ invites us to enjoy is the feast of freedom and joy laid out for us even in the shadow of our enemies … if we find the way to truly accept.

The parable Martin read us from the gospel of Matthew is full of people who declined the invitation (some even killing the messengers) to the banquet and people who accepted … and one who accepted but was thrown out of the feast for wearing the wrong clothes. Most of us understand instinctively that all that is an allegory – that the story and the people in the story represent something other than themselves. Many scholars connect it with the story of the chosen people who heard prophets call them to live according to God’s plan and still refused the invitation. So, the apostles were sent to others who accepted. But some of them came to God in name only, and they were ultimately thrown out of the party because their lives showed that they had not really accepted the invitation.

Books of sermons have been written on that poor soul who showed up to the party in the wrong clothes. They typically go something like:
Woe to those who have rejected the salvation of Christ for they will be destroyed. But it will be worse for those who pledge themselves to Jesus with their words but not in their hearts. On the day of judgment, they will be cast out into eternal suffering. Guard against that sin and keep your hearts pure, and you will be counted among the faithful who have truly accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and you will have a place at the King’s banquet in heaven.

Imagine an active member of some congregation – a grandmother – has just heard that sermon. The judgment she hears so loud and clear brings tears to her eyes. She has a son who was baptized as a youth and is now a self-proclaimed atheist. Her granddaughter has yet to be baptized. The wonderful woman who lives next to her and has been a good friend as they age together is Jewish. And her doctor – who may be the best listener she has ever known – is a practicing Hindu. She may on the list of heavenly guests, but all of these people – so many people she loves – are going to hell. How can she be happy in heaven without them?

As the service works towards its close she drifts in and out, thinking about her friends and, especially her granddaughter. She wonders if she could save them. She reaches back to remember when she accepted the invitation, and she can’t remember what moved her all those years ago. She does remember, though, the many recommitment services she has attended where she pledged to imitate Christ, and she wonders to herself as she stands for the closing hymn: “What would Jesus do if it was his friend, his doctor, his grandchild (or maybe his mother)?”

What would Jesus do?

I don’t know, and neither does that grandmother. But she remembers the way that Christ suffered and died for those he loved. And she decides in that moment that she would gladly give up her own life – be it this life or the next – so that her granddaughter would find a place in heaven. And, she thinks, for her son as well. And for her neighbor or even her doctor if it came to that.

I think that earnest grandmother has understood this parable better than many of us do most of the time. I don’t think that it’s all about the final judgment day and who has accepted claimed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There very well may that kind of a judgment day coming, but I have trouble picturing a merciful God and the loving Christ who died to save all people throwing people into enteral grief and darkness because they have don’t have the right clothing or because they have not said the right words. I believe that, ultimately, all humanity and all creation will be reconciled with God. But, there is still a salvation that can be ours now and here, not just in the great by and by.

I think that’s what Isaiah speaks so eloquently about. That’s the banquet we have been invited to. And that’s the invitation that both Will Reiser and our faithful sister have accepted. They have found joy and hope in the midst of the shadow of death. They have discovered, as the Apostle Paul puts it, that death no longer has any sting for those who put on Christ. Death has no power to weigh down our spirits or to limit our lives if have already chosen to serve God … to follow the path laid out for us by Christ … the path that leads to the banquet table of the Son.

Much has been made this week of the death of Steve Jobs who touched the lives of people all over the world in both profound and shallow ways. Toward the end of his life, as he struggled with pancreatic cancer, he spoke to a group of students at their graduation and he said:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

That’s a profound statement. It puts a practical twist on the “live each day as if it’s your last” platitude that we hear so often. Yet it is still not very far from something you might find in a self-help book.

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth – a leader of the Civil Right Movement – also passed away this week with much less notice. He was remembered for inspiring the marchers in Birmingham even after receiving several severe beatings and being imprisoned. In one letter to those who accused him of being a rabble-rousing outsider he wrote:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns: and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom far beyond my own hometown.

Another profound thought – one that is inspiring in the power of its commitment – a power that sustained and strengthened Rev. Shuttlesworth through the pain, suffering, and fear of his experiences in Birmingham.

If we put those two thoughts together, we might come up with our own way to sum up what Paul was trying to say in his letters. We might say each morning, “Today I am a follower of Christ. Whatever I am asked to do, I will do with joy. Wherever I am asked to go, I will go without fear. For I belong to Christ and death has no power over me.”

And I think we’d be amazed at what our lives would look like if said that … and really meant it.

Knowing Christ

2011-10-05T14:06:00.001-04:00

John 13:21-30, Philippians 3:4-14
World Communion Sunday

I have a friend, Karen, who is a dog trainer. Actually she prefers “canine behavior counselor”, or something along those lines. She spoke with us at Parents’ Place this week, the preschool here in this church, and her topic was on dog safety. Namely, how to prevent dog bites in little children.

I think she was sort of nervous to talk with us. She kind of rambled and after a brief introduction about what she was going to talk about she stopped and said, “So, now I’m going to tell you why you should listen to what I have to say” and she told us about her experience in dog training, all very impressive, I should add. And she concluded that part like she began: “So that’s why you want to listen to what I have to say.”

Now I know what she really was getting at was, “you might be wondering about me, about my credentials, my experience and education. Well let me tell you...” But in what seemed to be a bit of a stressful situation, she just put it out there: this is why you should listen to what I have to say.

Paul is kind of doing the same thing in his letter of the Philippians. He wants to remind they understand his credentials, why they should listen to what he has to say.

And it’s pretty impressive, at least, he wants it to appear impressive. He has done everything right. Every religious observation-check. The family connection-check. The right, go-get-em attitude-double check. In fact, zealous-check you might say. His experience of righteousness in the eyes of the spiritual elite-- impeccable. Knowledge about the law—stunning.

But it is all rubbish. Rubbish. Don’t be impressed, my dear Philippians (he might say) with all this experience, this great wealth of knowledge. Rather be impressed that that I know it is all worthless.

A couple of weeks ago, Donna Mast lead us in a study of Philippians, so you may remember from her sermon that it is believed that Paul was in prison when he wrote it. It’s hard for us to really relate to Paul in this condition. Many of us probably find it hard to relate to Paul anytime.

But in the midst of whatever turmoil he was in here in prison, there is something he says in this letter that I think many of us can relate to: I want to know Christ. I want to know Christ. Many of us are here because…we want to know Christ.

A few years ago I preached a sermon here, and then again at Waynesburg University, about that tricky question many of us have been asked, or asked others, sometime in our Christian walk: the question is “Are you saved?” Well, as I think about it now, I realize that’s not the common icebreaking question among well intentioned and curious Christians. What’s more common these days is the question “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”

I admit, I don’t like being asked that question, because I don’t really know what people mean by it. And there have been times when I’ve feigned spiritual stupidity and asked… “what exactly do you mean by that?” and then the situation has changed as if somehow I have then caused the awkward moment by my question. And by asking for clarification I don’t mean to act spiritually superior—for we know, it’s all rubbish anyhow, however great we think we are spiritually—but I really want to know! I want to know because this language is all over contemporary Christianity and because the Bible isn’t the most consistent when it comes to giving us concrete information on it.

John Suk, in his book “Not Sure: A Pastor’s Journey from Faith to Doubt” thinks that what people mean when they say personal relationship with Jesus is that they relate to Jesus very much like they relate to other people they know. And he wonders, is that really possible? Can we apply what we have known about our human relationships—about where we have tried and succeeded and failed in human relationships—can we compare that with our connection to Christ? Should we?

Now, Biblically-speaking, what scripture says about personal relationships is a mixed bag, really. There is strong evidence that God is person-like. God is the shepherd, the one who restores our soul. In Isaiah, God promises Israel that when it passes through waters or fire “I will be with you.” And as we Brethren and Mennonites love to remember, Matthew has Jesus saying where two are three are gathered, he is there. Like, another one of the gang.
[pause]

John Suk reminds us that in addition to these, the Bible also speaks about God’s distance, his absence in our lives. In the gospel of John, Jesus says “I am with you for only a short time, and then I go to the one who sent me. You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am you cannot come.” He says “Do not hold on to me, for I am going to my Father.” It sounds like Jesus is saying that we cannot have a personal relationship with him, or even his Holy Spirit whom he sent in his absence…we can’t have a relationship with him that is anything like what we know of relationships.

And yet, Paul wants to know Christ.

But I don’t think he was looking to know Christ in a best-friend, chummy-chummy sort of way. He wants to share with Christ, not his deepest secrets, but share with Christ in Christ’s sufferings. He wants to know Christ by walking in his sandals. He wants to know by understanding the power by which Christ willingly suffered and died. He wants to know by becoming like him. And becoming like Christ is more than simply having a relationship with him.

It is certainly not a formula for what we would call a healthy human relationship. In fact, if those we are in relationship with compelled us to do things we are called to do by Christ’s teaching, we’d hopefully see them as pretty messed up relationships. Give all we have, even the coats off our backs? Become vulnerable to the point of death? Accept the willing death of that other person as good for us, our souls? Thank goodness I don’t have personal relationships like that.

But I’m not Paul. I can’t say I’m eager to experience Christ’s sufferings the way he did on the cross. But then, Paul said while that might be his goal (all judgment from us aside), it’s not where he is. Whatever relationship he wants with Christ, it’s still in the making. In fact, when Paul says I want to know Christ, I hear more power in the word want than I hear in the word know.
I want to know Christ. And it’s that want that drives, that presses him, that strains him forward. It’s the wanting that strengthens faith. And faith—faith is a subject the Bible is consistent on.

[pause]

Maybe this knowing that Paul is speaking of, or at least, this wanting to know, doesn’t start with suffering, but with his service. May it doesn’t start at the cross. Maybe it starts at the table. I’ve heard that in many Latin American countries, one’s family is defined by who is sitting at your dinner table.

Maybe, if you want to know Christ, you should look at who is at his table. Who’s there that he called his family, and can you welcome them into your heart? And I’m not simply referring to prostitutes and tax collectors-they get called out enough.

But at his table is the one who betrays him. The one who denies him. The ones who hide from him, who lie about him, who do violence in his name, the one who would take his own life, the one who doubts him… essentially, the ones who had a personal relationship with him…but never really knew him, and somehow drastically failed him.

And the thing about this table, is he didn’t just let them come. He fed them. He washed their feet. He blessed them into knowing him. And they do. Eventually. Certainly not right away. Not even after having amazing, mind blowing, spiritual experiences with him. Was the rest of it all rubbish, as Paul says? I don’t know? Did their personal relationships help them really know Christ at the table? Did it take them to the cross with him?

I think when we strive for a personal relationship, we of course do it out of our desire to know Christ. Many times language of closeness and relationship are the only things that keep me striving, connecting. It is what I use in my prayers in my cries to God.

But I agree with that pastor, John Suk: if we’re not careful we will unknowingly replace striving for faith with an easier experience of applying our own standards of relationship onto Christ, whose relationship with us is defined like none other we can fathom, or replicate.

Can you come to the table if you do you have a personal relationship? Of course. Just don’t be disappointed once you know about what Christ is offering here.
Can you come to the table if you don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus? I’d say that’s the best place to be…
Ultimately, it is the place to be if you want.
It is the place to start if you want to know Christ.

Ambassadors for Christ

2011-09-11T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Psalm 25:1-5, 11-22, 20-21 2 Corinthians 5:16-20

Have you ever had to entreat someone? You know … have you had to try and convince someone to do something very important that they don’t want to do … with just your words?

Perhaps it was a child in the grocery store (as I do every week) who is picking up the candy as you wait to pay for your food. “No, no, no. Hands off. … Please, Alistair, put that back. Put it back.”

Or maybe it was an elderly parent. “You know that you need to take your medicine every day. We don’t want you to go back to the hospital. Please, just take the pills. It only takes a couple of minutes, and then you’re done.”

Or your spouse. “George, would you please take out the compost. You said you would do it yesterday, and there are fruit flies all over the kitchen.”

Or … “Ceclia you're breakin' my heart. You're shakin' my confidence daily. Oh Ceclia, I'm down on my knees. I'm beggin' you please to come home.”

I think we’ve all been there. And if you think about the way it felt to have to wheedle and coax and bully that certain someone – someone you cared about so much – to do whatever it was, you get an idea of how Paul must have been feeling when he wrote this letter. He was entreating – begging, imploring, and pleading with the Corinthians to live the way they know they should be living. He’s concerned because they are doing all kinds of things that they shouldn’t be doing – sexual immorality, playing favorites, and taking advantage of each other’s weaknesses. They have turned away from the teaching of Christ when they should be serving as ambassadors for Christ, and they need to be reconciled to God so that they can show the rest of the world what it means to be followers of the way.

Now, an ambassador in Paul’s day was pretty much the same thing that it is to us – except there was no internet to keep them connected and no airplanes to take them back and forth to the capital for updates and new instructions. Back then, an ambassador was a trusted elder statesman who was sent by a head of state to represent the nation state to another nation state. They were a bridge, representing the interests of their own kingdom to the leaders of the other, and while their feet were on foreign ground, their hearts were firmly planted back home.

Paul liked that image, though he didn’t use it all that often. He saw himself as an ambassador who carried the interests of the Kingdom of God into the world that did not yet know Christ. He lived and moved among the people of this world, and his task was to encourage everyone he met to be reconciled to God and become ambassadors of Christ in their own turn. His feet walked in this world, but his heart – his primary loyalty was to the Realm of God. And as an ambassador, he was entreating the Corinthians to return to the way he had shown them so that they could take up the role as ambassadors as well.

That’s an important message for us as well – especially in these years of increasing anxiety and division. To borrow a metaphor that Ervin Stutsman used at Mennonite Convention this summer, “our nation today is like a big bus careening down the road heading first for one ditch and then another ditch. We’ve got Mennonites and Brethren on both sides of the bus. There are people in this congregation on both sides of the bus.

The exciting thing about this bus is that if you get enough people on your side, you get to choose the driver. So depending on who’s driving, you’re on the left ditch and if somebody else comes along you’re in the right ditch and people get all excited about getting more people on their side of the bus. “Come on. Join our side of the bus. We’ll get out of this ditch were in.”

And some people are even trying to figure out which side Jesus would sit on. “Where would Jesus sit?” – that’s the question. So you pull up to the bus stop and Jesus is out there. So we quick ask him, “Jesus, which side of the bus would you sit on?”

And I think Jesus is saying, “Well, where you going?”

“We’re heading for the kingdom of God!”

And I think Jesus would say, “I believe you’re on the wrong bus.”

It doesn’t mean that we don’t have discussions about tough issues. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have strong opinions, or that we don’t engage in the decision making process. But what it does mean is that when differences on issues divide us from one another (or from other congregations … or even other denominations), when they keep us from talking to each other and respectfully agreeing and disagreeing in love, when they keep us from engaging things from the scriptures and they get our attention focused only on the issues, we sin just a little. Our hearts stray just a little from the Kingdom we are representing. We get just a little lost. And we need to be called back home so that we can get ourselves and our message back on track.

Ten years and three days ago, Carrie and I were married. Three days later, we were on the way to the airport to begin our honeymoon when we heard the news of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centers, and in the midst of all the confusion and the fear and the pain of those hours, we also had to change our plans. There was no way we were going to fly out of O’Hare that day – a small inconvenience in the face of everything that had happened.

In the end, we spent the week after September 11, 2001 driving around the Wisconsin and Michigan. It was a good week. We saw lots of fascinating places and met a few interesting people, and we spent a lot of down time in the car – hours that went by quickly as we listened to updates on the situation in New York and Washington, DC and Shenksville, Pennsylvania and followed the mood of the nation carried by the voices of talk show hosts and DJs.

What we witnessed that week was an amazing process of public discussion about what had happened and how we, as a country, should respond. Never before and never since have I heard so many voices from all different backgrounds offering their thoughts and opinions so openly – and there were so many ideas about how we should respond. Some thought we should just ignore the terrorists … that we should mourn the dead and honor the pain and the suffering of their family and friends but deny the perpetrators the attention they wanted as if they were children misbehaving. Others were for an all-out assault on every location we thought Osama bin Laden might be. Still others spoke of digging into the situation to try and understand what was behind the attack and address those issues in order to prevent future incidents. And there were more.

It was amazing … and sad because, in the end, the discussion collapsed under the weight of fear and anger. By the end of the week, there were only two voices left. One that clamored for our military to invade Afghanistan, root out the terrorists, and kill them all. Another that said invasion wouldn’t work … that it wouldn’t make us any safer or take away the pain … that it would only lead to more death and more fear. Two sides of a bus with all of us on one side or the other.

In many ways, we are still on that bus. Ten years, two wars, and thousands of dead later, we are still split down the middle: should we be fighting or not. And I suspect that if I were to ask you to raise your hands, there would be people from both sides of the argument sitting here in worship this morning. (pause) I won’t ask that question … not only because it would only make us all uncomfortable but because there is a more important question to ask. Is this the right bus?

We are Christ’s ambassadors … or we should be, and maybe it’s time to reacquaint ourselves with what that means. While I’m sure that part of it is advocating for peace, I think it goes deeper and farther than that as well. The Prince of Peace was also the Friend to the Friendless, the Voice calling for Justice, the Healer of the Broken, and the Reconciler of the Nations. As ambassadors of his Way, we are called to model a new way of living together, a new way of agreeing and disagreeing with one another … in love, a new way of compassion and forgiveness not just to those we know and love but to everyone … even those who mistreat us … even those who hate us … and even those who highjack planes and use them to kill.

It’s hard … standing here in this world as representatives of a different reality. It means seeking out those places where people are in conflict and helping them find harmony or at least respect for one another. It means letting go of our own prejudices and fears to reach out to those we have our own differences with and trying to find respect and appreciation and love for them. It means stepping out of our pride and our own self-centered perspective and really listening to the pain and frustration of others, stepping into their shoes as we seek to understand them, and making their needs and interests our own. It means inviting others – through no more than our words and our example – to join in the grand vision of a world where people live together with respect and love, joy and hope, and a profound sense of peace that comes from caring deeply for one another. (pause) And as ministers of reconciliation, ambassadors of Christ’s way, we are asked to do that in our own individual interactions as well as in our communal lives – here and now as well as across time and space.

It would be easier, I sometimes think, to live wholly in this world … to settle down, make my peace with the way things are, and get on with my life … to live and let live. But we are new creations in Christ. Our hearts dwell in the Kingdom of God wherever our feet may roam. And we have been called … we are being called to spread the hope and the joy and the peace that come through the healing power of God’s reconciling grace.

An intimidating prospect to be sure … some would say impossible. But there is a bus waiting for us … a bus full of people eager to welcome us and share the work … a bus whose driver knows where we’re going and how to get there.

Let’s get on board.

The Hard Lessons

2011-09-04T16:11:00.000-04:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
(For student/teacher recognition Sunday)
Matthew 19:13-15, 1 Timothy4:12
Romans 12:9-21
September 4, 2011

When Torin and I were taking pre-natal classes in preparation for Sebastian’s birth, we were probably the most anxious either of us had ever been before in our lives. Of course, all the pregnant moms were anxious about the unknowns of first labors and all the dads or other support people were anxious about helping their laboring loved ones.

We all had Hollywood version births in mind: screaming, swearing, lashing out all sorts of profanities with the belief that once it was all over we’d be laughing and crying and saying “I don’t know what came over me. I just wasn’t myself.”

The nurse teaching the class nipped that in the bud. She told us “In labor you think that you’ll act in ways that are totally not who you are. The reality is, you become more of who you really are than you’d like to admit.” And I discovered…it’s true.

All the demons, the insecurities, unloving, raging parts of you that lie under the surface-- they come out. As does the best strength, perseverance, and love that could find its home in you…it’s all put to work to bring forward this new life.

And those are hard lessons to learn. To be put to the test and find what’s really there. What you would rather not have other people know about you, what behaviors and actions you feel you are above.

Now, five years later give me a hot September night when I’m exhausted and trying to put two wiggly boys down to sleep and you can bet I see the worst in myself. And the boys are seeing it to.

I don’t like those lessons, what they reveal to me…about me. But I have to learn from them.

We like to believe that we grow in wisdom as we grow in years. That somehow, it coincides automatically. And to an extent, I believe it’s true. I do feel I am wiser now than I was ten years ago. And I certainly believe I am wiser now than people who are 10 years younger me, that’s for sure… (ha, ha.)

And we think when we are wise, or when we know we are smart, we think that we are the teachers. That we know. That others can learn from us. Sure, we know there is still more to learn, and we’ll get to that when time allows. And that’s the thing. We prefer to have control over how we learn and from whom we learn. We would like to choose the way in which wisdom comes to us.

We’d like wisdom to come to us from the wise and sagely advice a friend gives us over a cup of tea…
Or the brilliant scholar in invigorating classroom discussions…
Or in the quiet of a thoughtful book that gently opens our mind…

But, when Jesus called the little children to him…when he invited tax collectors and prostitutes to be his friends…when he submitted to the cross rather than any other fate, he taught us some hard lessons. And not in the ways we think we would prefer to learn

Lessons like, look to the wisdom and sage teachings of children (even when they are annoying you)
Lessons like…struggle with what it is you are so judgmental about to see how it keeps you from loving your neighbor.
Lessons like… it is in our suffering that we can see the redeeming work of God with such raw clarity that we can’t help but be resurrected.

These lessons aren’t taught to us in ways we’d prefer.

But we certainly learn from them. And we’d probably learn those lessons most deeply if we didn’t try to control just how life’s teachers bring us the lesson.

Last week, we looked at the scripture in Romans just before today’s, about not conforming to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. And I spoke about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work on mindfulness meditation and its effect on reducing stress. He and his wife, Myla, wrote a book called Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. And in it, they compare children to Little Zen Masters that we have invited into our lives.

Jon and Myla reflect on training in the Zen Buddhist tradition as, “arduous and demanding, intense and unpredictable, wild and crazy, and very loving and funny. It’s also very simple, and not so simple.” The teachers of Zen, the Zen masters (to which they are comparing children, remember), ‘don’t explain themselves. They just embody presence. They don’t get hung up in thinking, or lost in theoretical musings about this or that. They are not always consistent. [They give] us endless challenges that cannot be resolved through thinking [such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”].

Granted, we are not part of the Zen tradition, but we certainly can recognize the Zen-like masters in our lives. Those teachers of hard lessons. Children, unquestioningly are like that. That’s could be why Jesus used them in the way he did.

He’s may not only being using them as an example of how we should be, but he may just be revealing to the people what kind of messiah he was by honoring and blessing the children, and what they bring, how they see.

His whole approach was like a Zen master: not explaining, just embodying. By taking on and redeeming suffering (and we think “how could he do that? It doesn’t make sense”) By loving others in their brokenness, and welcoming them at the table (and we think, how could we do that? It seems impossible)

And this is the Jesus Paul believes in, too. Which is why it is probably easy for Paul to just fling out the list virtues that he does, our scripture lesson for today. It is basically restating what Jesus was about. The hard lessons that Jesus spent three years of his ministry embodying, Paul puts in a simple, but not so simple list. And Paul isn’t any better at explaining these to us either.

Now, if you are like me, you read this with somewhat of a blasé attitude. “Yes yes let love be genuine. Mmmhmm, love you enemies, that’s right. Yes, certainly…don’t be haughty. Of course, extend hospitality to strangers.”

When a big list like this is thrown at me, it is easy to disengage. Maybe I could commit it to memory and recite it like the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes, but what happens then? Well for me, it becomes just something to recite, nothing more. Good things to aim for but if I’m not willing to really work at them, then at least I can recite the list

Because really, while we can train ourselves to rattle off the list, we will struggle to really learn these hard lessons.

These things are their own little Zen masters. Not clear, or consistent. Some are obviously hard, like bless those who persecute you (we need to think, what does persecution look like? What does it mean to “bless” someone when I am hurt? How would I receive a blessing when I have hurt someone?)

And others seem easy but when you get right down to it, they do touch some of those little demons inside, like “rejoice with those who rejoice.” Even when you think they don’t deserve the good things they have received? Even if you start to feel jealous? Even when your own sadness seems to overcome…rejoice?

If we take them each, they are really hard lessons. Which is why in your hand, you are holding one, only one. Now I’m sure you’ve looked at it already, but look at it again. You are going to invite this one lesson into yourself.

Read it slowly…mutter the words out loud to yourself. How does it sound outside your head, when you put it “out there.” Read it over a few times.

Now close your eyes for a few moments and see the words in your mind.
Invite them into your soul…
Assume that this is not as easy or straight forward as you initially think.
Assume that this is not too hard or beyond your reach.
Assume that this will teach you something about yourself, about your God, and about your own transformation.

[pause]

You may open your eyes now if you like…
Now, believe that being mindful to this one thing will change you, just as the leaves outside are gradually changing.
Believe that the Holy Spirit strengthens you when you give serious intention to the transformation of your spirit. When you are willing to learn.

I hope you take this home. Tape it on your mirror. Put it on your fridge and make this one thing your discipleship invitation for the fall. Your Jesus-Paul-Zen master lesson.

We don’t choose the way we learn the hard lessons. But it is planted now within you. It will grow, and in time, you will be able to teach others, in wisdom and in truth.

Beyond the Text

2011-08-28T16:08:00.001-04:00

skit and sermon by Carrie Eikler
Romans 12:1-2

Skit-
Alice is staring at smartphone. Hugo sits next to her, Alice doesn’t realize it. Hugo looks at her. Looks around. Looks back at her. Alice is getting frustrated, not noticing Hugo is sitting there. Hugo starts to get frustrated/humored.

Alice (speaking her text): “Hugo. Where are you? You said you would text when you got close. BTW love the new profile pic on Facebook.

A bleeping comes from hugo’s pocket. He reads the text

Hugo: [scoffing]“Where am I?”

Hugo: (Texting/Speaking) “I’m here already. LOL.”

Alice phone bleeps, reads the text.

Alice: (texting) “No, you can’t be. You didn’t text me...

Hugo: (bleeps, texts) “No, I’m here. Next to you.”

Alice: (unaware and still texting/speaking) “Did you put that on FB?

Hugo: (text) No. I am here.

Alice: I’m going to look up his location on my GPS. (bleep. Bleep) What? it says he’s here. That can’t be right. (Looks up at him surprised) Oh, you’re here.

Hugo: (incredulous)Yeah, I told you I was here.

Alice: But you said you would text me.

Hugo: Does it matter? I’m right here.

Alice: But you said you would text…

Hugo: it doesn’t matter…

Alice: That’s really funny…I’m going to post that on Facebook.—just a minute. (turns from him and puts up finger to hold him).

Alice: OK, so you’re here. Now, what do you want to talk about?

Hugo: Well, I want to talk about… us.

Alice: Oh. Us…

Hugo: yes, well (clears throat). You know we’ve been getting closer these past few months and.. (Alice’s phone bleeps)

Alice: oh wait, just a minute. (checks phone…laughs.) Sorry. Sydney likes my Facebook post.

Hugo: Sydney?

Alice: Yeah, Sydney. She’s one of my Facebook friends. I met her last year on spring break. You know, I hate to brag, but I have 537 Facebook friends. (thoughtfully) Syndey has 650… (recovering) Isn’t it great how Facebook and Twitter bring people together from all parts of the world so we can share with each other the intimate parts of our lives? And when I get my new android, it will be so much faster. This “stupid” phone is a year old and I can’t get as many apps as I’d like. I really feel out of touch. Now, what were you saying?

Hugo: Oh, uh, well I wanted to say I really like being with you and, well…(bleep, Alice checks her phone and laughs). I mean, I think we are getting close and (Alice phone bleeps, she checks, scoffs)…(Hugo getting frustrated) Can you just turn that off?

Alice: What?

Hugo: I really want to talk to you.

Alice: So talk!

Hugo: I mean, just you…not you and whatever conversation is going on in your phone with Syndey or…

Alice: oh, that wasn’t Syndey it was…

Hugo: whatever, I mean. I just wanted to say, I want a relationship with you.

Alice: a relationship.

Hugo: (sighs) yes, a relationship.

Alice: (excitedly) I’d get to change my relationship status on Facebook from single to “in a relationship”!

Hugo: well, yeah., but…

Alice: (gasps) I hope people would click that they liked it!

Hugo: well, I don’t think that’s the point, really.

Alice: Wait, you mean like a relationship relationship? (tentatively) Like conversations, and dreams, and…stuff.

Hugo: Yes, all of that.

Alice: no word limit to what I say?

Hugo: no. no word limit.

Alice: But what if you don’t like it?

Hugo: Then I’ll say… I don’t like it?

Alice: like…with words? From your mouth? You wouldn’t [quoting with fingers] “unfriend” me?

Hugo: No, I won’t [quoting with fingers] “unfriend” you. And yes. Like words from my mouth. In a relationship, with you, and me and real talking and (taking phone and turning it off) attention to each other.

Alice: attention?

Hugo: yes.

Alice: to one thing? Like, to you?

Hugo: yes.

Alice: (puts phone down and takes a deep breath.) I don’t know if I can do it

Hugo: You can. It just will take some practice.

Alice: Geez. A real relationship, with real words, like…with someone.

Hugo: novel idea, I know.

Alice: [pauses] Um, let me think about it (glancing at phone). Um, you just sit there. I’ll text you when I have my answer. (typing on phone)…

Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the lingo about Facebook and friending and word limits, this skit may not have made any sense to you. But I bet, the experience that it was portraying is not…
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” So says Paul in his letter to the Romans.
What a great scripture…a great scripture. This is a great scripture because we can take it, and put in any popular social ill or personal cultural pet peeve and tell the faithful people to avoid that contemporary golden calf: this is that thing that we should not conform to.
And Mennonites and Brethren, who for so long have understood themselves to be a people who are “in the world but not of the world” have idealized, if not idolized, this scripture passage as well.
Take our traditional dress: plain, simple, no zippers (of course not). Neck ties…don’t even try it. Slacks for women (scandalous!). In my home Church of the Brethren, ages before I was born, disciplinarian action was taken against a family who installed in their home (wait for it) a bay window. That’s right. Too worldly for such a humble and modest and simple people.

Now, it is easy for me to laugh at that. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, because these are the same people who have shaped Brethren and Mennonites to critique the things of this world that I do feel need to be questioned:
Militarism. Materialism. Racism. Individualism to the point of isolationism. All those –isms that I believe we are right in doing our best not to conform to so yes!! I will happily slap down Paul’s words to the Romans and say be not conformed to that! Take the higher road that leads to God. Transform. Don’t Conform.
And while I have a certain zeal against these social ills just as my old Brethren of Illinois were zealous about that bay window, I know… that we can easily take Paul’s words so seriously, that we take them too lightly. Applying them to anything we don’t like. Loosely tossing around condemnation.
As my skit shows, I will be quick to urge others not conform to this technology-saturated society. It irritates me when I go out with friends and they are surfing the net or checking their Facebook status and our time together is shortchanged. But I have to realize that while there might be good reason behind my critique, it is mostly about me. After all, neither Jesus Christ nor Paul said anything about handheld wireless communication.

And I’m reminded of the English writer GK Chesterton who wrote “Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils.” Romans gives us the perfect opportunity to exorcise both out of ourselves.
These false gods and false devils. It seems to me that Paul’s equation is a bit like the chicken and the egg conundrum. We should not be part of this world but renew our minds so we can discern. But isn’t discernment an essential part of knowing how genuinely be in this world but not of it? To discern the false gods and the false devils, and hopefully avoid them both?
You know, no one ever accused Paul of being too simplistic or elementary, have they? And if people do think he is simple…I’d seriously question their reading of Paul.
Because he is anything but simple and clear. Passionate and wordy, yes. Inconsistent, you betcha. In some letters he is eager to give the laundry list of things to avoid (debauchery, licentiousness, etc etc), but this isn’t the predominant theme in Romans.
Paul appears positive, welcoming, encouraging. It wouldn’t fit his letter if he told the Romans what exactly they should not be conformed to (that is, what they should avoid), but gives ample suggestions of what to live into, what to take on. Next week we’ll explore more in depth some of these things that we can strive for. But this week…
This week, I think we might be seeing some of Paul’s insight into our real struggle…the human condition. And it is something that I believe we each know in our hearts. It’s one thing to tell us not to do something. It’s another to address what is at the heart of our desire to sin. What it is that is so seductive that we engage in the willing, though maybe unknowing, isolation of ourselves from our God, from each other, and from our own spirits.
Perhaps Paul can speak to our tendency to mindlessly fall into routines that have consequence for our lives, especially routines in which the consequences aren’t so apparent, or so immediate.
And really, it makes sense that hese mindless activities are the ones we are least aware of? Unless you are a sociopath, you know it is wrong to steal, or cheat, or kill, or hurt. You even know that cigarette will hurt you, or that it’s not such a good thing to wake up not remembering what you did last night, or that meaningless sexual exploits can leave you feeling more lonely than fulfilled. We recognize them, because they are pretty big. Pretty in-your-face. But it’s those things that seem inconsequential that can add up. The things we do without even thinking…our mindless actions.
Paul calls us to the renewing of our mind. When we think about the word “mind” we likely think brain that does the strenuous work of thinking and giving impulses to our body. But Paul was a Jew who lived in a Greek world 2,000 years ago. Our contemporary physiology and our view of mind and body were not available to him.
For Greeks, the mind was a function which was defined as the ability to realize fully “the true nature or essence of a thing, [beyond] its surface appearance.” the main function of the mind was to discover the ‘real’ world or the ‘real’ character of the world as a whole, in contrast to other erroneous beliefs of most human beings.”
Jewish thought saw the mind as the same thing as the inner spirit of the person.
So Paul, being a Jew who lived in Greek world, with its way of thinking, is not referring to our thinking caps. He is referring to our inner eye. That part within us that discerns, that sees beyond this world. Perhaps he is referring to what we might experience as our intuition.
Our Western world doesn’t have much of that language, but our world isn’t devoid of these ideas. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, in most, if not all of the Asian languages, the same word that is used for mind is also used for heart. If we are mindful, we are looking at the world and our experiences with our inner wisdom, and we are awake to dimensions beyond the obvious, below the surface.

Jon Kabat-Zinn knows a lot about mindfulness. He is a doctor and the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Mindfulness, according to Kabat-Zinn, is simply paying attention, it’s about a way of being, not a way of doing something. When we slow down our lives, examine the people and situations with appreciation and prayer, we are living mindfully: fully in our mind, meaning fully in our heart, fully in our spirit.
And we can cultivate mindfulness, it’s not just reserved for the monks and nuns and yogis and those who spend all their time meditating. It can happen by stopping and breathing before running onto the next thing. It can start by actually writing down every single thing you do in your day and see where your energy and time and heart went. It can happen by searching for the beautiful in everything that exists, no matter how horrible, how sinful, or how devastating.
Kabat-Zinn says “mindfulness has the potential to penetrate past surface appearances and behaviors and allow us to see [our lives] more clearly as they truly are, to look both inwardly and outwardly, and to act with some degree of wisdom and compassion on the basis of what we see.”
I wonder if Paul was seeing us in our hectic lives, how he would restate Romans 12. I certainly can’t say, but it might not be too far off to say: Please, please please slow down. Look at the world. Focus. Still the mind and you will be on the way to a new life.
So yes, I used the skit to poke fun at my personal pet peeve. We are so connected and wired that in many ways we have disengaged from the world around us. But if we’re honest, it isn’t a plight of those with Smartphones and Blackberries. Who hasn’t run out the door without kissing their child.
Gobbled down our food without taking pleasure in what we eat.
Or looked at God’s creation and focused only on the grass that needs mowing, rather than the habitat that flourishes.
Or thought, God could have gotten it better than good, but perfect, if God just created more hours in the day.
It’s not conforming to this world to recognize beauty, to delight in small earthly things. Rather, it’s the dominant story of this world that the small things aren’t worth noticing and that there is nothing underneath the surface of our lives. It’s the dominant story of this world that it is more productive to do more than one thing at a time. That our minds are organs for multitasking, rather than the minds giving us ability to uncover God, to discern what is good and what is harmful.
It’s these small things that reveal the real places of God, and the real working of destruction. And we must renew our minds, so we can see with the mind of Christ.
There is room for slowing down in each of our lives. My mind needs to see a new. I know I am missing so much goodness because I don’t really know how to see it. And Paul seems to know this too, and Paul seems to patiently commiserate: “what a shame.” he almost whispers through the text. “How much you are missing.” Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Living Sacrifice

2011-08-21T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 51:1-6 Romans 11:33-12:3

I have been thinking a lot about goats lately. I know that sounds strange, and it’s not some kind of obsession for me, I assure you. But, at Mennonite convention and at conference gathering, the scripture about the separation of the sheep and the goats came up. Then, at the county fair, we went to visit the animals (where, by the way the sheep and goats were not separate) and I watched Alistair reaching into the pens to pet the animals. He was scared of the sheep and the pigs a little because they were easily startled when he touched them. But the goats were different. They were “friendly.” They came up to the bars of the cage and stood still appreciatively while being scratched.

And then I was listening to the radio this week with half my attention and I heard a commentator talking about the current political or social climate in our society mention goats of a different kind. Scapegoats.

Scapegoats, he said, seem to be the order of the day. The US credit rating has been downgraded. And politicians and voters alike are blaming the other party or Congress in general and its childish behavior. The economy seems to be on the verge of another slump and economists and pundits lay that at the feet of greedy banks or negligent rating agencies or lazy regulators. Unemployment is still high and the president’s faulty immigration or fiscal policies seem to be the favorite target for that blame.

But there is one situation that has been very much on my mind as we approach the 10th anniversary of September 11th. I have been thinking about how we, as a country, have responded to the World Trade Center attacks and the global terrorism of the past decade.

For many … perhaps most people in the United States as well as a hefty number of those overseas, the forceful approach that has been taken is entirely appropriate and maybe the best possible response to Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden. And while as a pacifist I cannot approve of violent invasion, I do understand where they are coming from. Sometimes fear and pain can bring us to the point of attacking others so that we feel safe.

There are others, though, who believe that global terrorism in general, Osama bin Laden, and his followers have become a scapegoat. And I can see their point as well. The rise in terrorist attacks is, probably, linked to ongoing international policies that support and enforce Western ideals and maintain the dominance of the Europe and the United States at the expense of the people of other nations. Rather than facing that truth with the eyes of compassion and empathy which might require changing our approach, we have placed the entire weight of responsibility on Al Qaida and its leader. The continuation of the war on terror despite Osama bin Laden’s death, they say, is proof that we are ignoring some deep and problematic aspect of our culture. Of course, it could be said that Osama bin Laden made a scapegoat of the United States in the same way.

And now I’m wondering if you know what a scapegoat actually is. It’s a term that comes from the Bible, actually – from Leviticus – and it is a part of the celebration of Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement for the chosen people. On that day, observant Jews fast from all food and drink and spend the day reciting prayers of repentance. In ancient Israel, the high priest of the Temple would lay the sins of all the people on the head of the goat and release it into the wilderness. The goat would escape, an offering that took the sins with it, and the people would be allowed to start with a clean slate.

Thankfully, we don’t need that kind of a scapegoat anymore because as the author of Hebrews says, “Jesus offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins [and] has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” That’s a bit confusing, I know, but it basically says that the grace we have been given by Christ brings forgiveness without the need for sacrifice. And that grace and forgiveness never run out. We don’t need scapegoats anymore … but we still use them.

As someone recently noted, I don’t like to be wrong. I suppose I pride myself on knowing a lot of things, and I probably overestimate my sense of judgment. So, when it looks like I might have made a mistake or said something that’s not true, I get uptight and defensive. At times, in the past, I have made up “facts” or statistics to support my errors or even laid the blame for my failure on the head of another.

I know I’m not alone in this. Most of us, I think, have done that at one time or another. Probably, we have done it several times. It’s a way of protecting ourselves – of holding criticism at bay or holding on to the respect of others. Sometimes, it may even seem to be the only way to save our jobs or our relationships. And while it shields us to some degree, it makes those blameless others a scapegoat in the more modern sense. They take the blame for our mistakes and sometimes they are made to suffer in our place. In a way, we make them a sacrifice to save our pride or our insecurity or our fear.

To borrow the phrasing of The Wiggles – a singing group for kids that my family has fallen in love with … and not just the boys …. “There’s some really great news:” The Realm of God has drawn near. “There’s some sad news too:” we’ve lost our way and are not really living in the Kingdom. “But there’s some really wonderful news:” we can find our way back. Even without a scapegoat, we can return to the Realm of God with a clean slate because of the forgiveness and mercy Christ offers to everyone. And Paul tells us how.

“By the mercies of God, [present yourselves] as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”

All very nice, but what does it mean to be holy and acceptable to God? What does that look like to be un-conformed to this world? How do we live as a part of the Kingdom of God?

The easy … and hard answers – the ones we hear often in church – come from Jesus himself. You’re your enemies. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Visit the imprisoned. Care for the sick. Love your neighbor as yourself. You know them all, and they have become so mundane or are so big and undefined that we sometimes have trouble applying them to our everyday lives. Paul offers some further guidance, though, that can help us find our way.

Practice compassion and forgiveness. When others are in pain, don’t ignore them. Talk with them. Comfort them. Offer them support as their struggle through their pain or their grief or their depression and despair. When others are celebrating, don’t belittle their joy. Rejoice with them instead of begrudging them happiness. And forgive those who hurt you in big or little ways – even the people who seem to be out to get you. Let go of the anger and frustration you feel toward them so that, one day, you can call them friend and live together in harmony.

Let go of “judgmentalism.” That’s a hard one. As Carrie talked about earlier this year, it seems like it’s impossible to avoid judging people. Especially in this world of rights and wrongs, we notice when people do “bad” things or make “bad” decisions, and we can’t help but think that they are “bad people” or, at least, that they have bad judgment.

One way to deal with that is to become relativistic – to say that we can’t impose our own views on others and that our view of right and wrong only applies to us. Then, we can leave it up to God to sort out the sheep and the goats when the time comes. But that kind of tolerance doesn’t really get at the heart of our habit of judementalism. We still feel superior because we are sure we are the sheep and they are the goats.

It may be more helpful to work at seeing people and the things they do in the best possible light. Think about your own lives and the choices that you make. There are always lots of past experiences and current circumstances that stand behind every decision that we make and every thing that we do. Sometimes that means that we do or say things that other people might think are questionable or just plain wrong even though they seem to make sense to us. And that is true for everyone else too. If we make a practice of assuming that there must be a reason why people do what they do, then we may be seen as naïve, but we will be less likely to be judgmental.

Please others … not yourselves. That sounds like a recipe for self-destruction or at least co-dependence, but that’s not what Paul meant. He meant that we should put up with each other’s failings. Instead of complaining or taking advantage of those weaknesses, we should encourage each other and work at building one another up so that we are all able to grow stronger. We should make ourselves feel better or stronger or somehow “bigger” by building others up rather than by making them feel worse or weaker or “smaller.” In essence, we should not make scapegoats of our neighbors or friends or even our enemies. We should sacrifice our own immediate gain so that we can all grow into stronger, better people.

Practice compassion and forgiveness. Let go of judgmentalism. Please others … not yourselves.

Sisters and brothers, we are called to live in a way that is different from the world around us. We are called to give up “[thinking] of ourselves more highly than we ought to” so that we can do “what is good and acceptable and perfect” according to the judgment of God. We are called to be living sacrifices – to live sacrifice in a way that shows compassion for the last and the least, in a way that forgives and embraces our enemies and those who bring us suffering, in a way that puts the well-being of those around us on the same level of importance as our own well-being – that loves neighbor as it loves self.

This is the Kingdom which demands no sacrifice of blood but only a heart dedicated to the will of God. It is the welcome work of believers – of the disciples of Christ who seek to follow the path he laid out in his life among us. It is the way to of grace and mercy that are freely given for the joy and salvation of all – a gift that will never end though the heavens vanish like smoke and the earth wear out like a garment.

Let us turn again into that joy and hope.

Let us follow the way laid out for us by our Master and our Friend.

Let us come into the Kingdom that has been prepared for us – the eternal kingdom of love and peace.

Open Roof Community

2011-08-14T11:35:00.002-04:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Mark 2:1-12
Fourth in "Crafting Community" series

On Thursday as I was in the church office, I heard the faint tinkling of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” As strange and out of place as it was, the sound was immediately recognizable. An ice cream truck. For only the second time this summer an ice cream truck had made its way up Wiles Hill! And as I sat on the steps, drawn out by the pied piper call, I saw the back of the head’s of Torin and boys as they went in search of it. And I saw others coming out of their houses, looking around for the source of the sound, as they too, made their way into the streets, to find the cool deliciousness—even though it was only a high of 75 that day.

For Brethren and Mennonites, the call to serve others is kind of like that tinkling ice cream truck. It draws us out. It pulls at us. We know that if we just follow it we’re pretty sure we’ll find something good and sweet.

And if you asked us what is at the core of our faith as Anabaptists, you’d likely (hopefully) hear something along the line of “following Jesus Christ” as would most Christians. But if you pressed further, somewhere in those initial reflections, you would find a large amount of Brethren and Mennonites speaking about how our tradition teaches us that it is in service to others that we glorify Christ. That we are faithful disciples of Christ. We are not just believers in Christ, but we are followers of Christ. And serving our neighbors and the world has, over time, become an essential part of our tradition.

But of course, we didn’t come up with it. The prophet Micah answers the question “what is required of us?” with “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. The Apostle Paul said that followers of Christ were to care for the widows and orphans among us. Jesus said as you did to the least of these, you do to him.
It’s in our faith DNA, even if you have just come to the church. Caring for others through Christ’s love is more important that converting others by fear of his judgment.

I think that service is something that members of this congregation do very well. We are embodying what it means to be a missional church. We each go into our communities, and around the world, to uncover where God is dwelling and where we can be of service revealing the realm of God among us.

And we do this so well in our own lives, that I think there is a question lurking…a question I pose and don’t have a definitive answer to.

If we are doing service as individuals or families, is there a reason to serve as a congregation?
Have we gotten away from serving as a faith body, a community? If we are doing it on our own, why should the Morgantown Church of the Brethren members don work gloves or aprons or face masks or trash bags and do service…together?

It really is a question I have been asking myself, and asking of our congregation, as we face the realities of who we are: busy people, with families, living in different areas. We live in an era where so many non-profits are taking the roles that churches used to do, and thankfully others are getting involved. But is service, or in the words of a bygone era, “charity” work all about filling the needs of those who are served?

Are we missing something essential when we don’t do service work as a body? Because, if we are honest, we don’t do it that much. It is hard to get people to help out with Circle of Friends, the soup kitchen downtown. We’ve stopped trying to get a group together for Habitat for Humanity Building on Faith Week. And maybe I’m wrong, but think about the last year. Have you worked beside others in this congregation in the service of others (and not just ourselves, not just in cleaning the building or making buckwheat cakes)? Have you joined those around you, showing others who we are as a community that believes in service, rather than individuals whose community simply preaches about service?

As I was talking with Torin about the theme this week I was feeling a bit stuck with this question, and he helped me identify it perfectly. When talking about service, I feel it strongly that doing service work as a community—a congregation—strengthens the people in it. But I can’t say why. And Torin, in his infinite fatherly wisdom said, “It’s like if you told a two year old, that it’s important to do something and they ask ‘Why?’ and all you can think of to answer is ‘Because I said so.’”

Well, “because I said so” isn’t a good basis for a sermon. I can’t even express, “because I’ve felt it’s so”, which I have. So, I’ll ask you to help me here: to think back to a time when you did work with a group of people on something really important. Maybe it was a service project, or a work project, or even in the military. Maybe you were in a tough situation with others for a period of time. Like last weekend at Laurelville, we camped and it poured and even though we didn’t need to get in each other’s tents, there was a comraderie between us campers that weekend by virtue of our shared experience.

If you have served with others, how did it affect your relationship? Was it strengthened? Tried? Do you get to know each other better?

I think Mark’s scripture today is valuable for us as we think about this idea of serving. Most of the time, when people came for healing from Jesus, they did it by themselves, or one person came to intercede for them. Here, it is a group—it says “some people.” Of course, if the man was paralyzed he wouldn’t be able to come on his own, he’d need a lot more help. But there are other times with those in desperate situations couldn’t make it to Jesus, and someone came to him to ask him to come back. The Syrophonecian woman came for her daughter, the centurion came for his daughter, Mary coming on behalf of Lazarus. But those who came with the paralytic did it together, a group effort. Why didn’t they just send one person to beg mercy of Jesus?

We often refer to those who bring the paralyzed man his “friends,” but really, there is nothing to indicate that there is a special relationship, is there? It simply says “some people” and “they.” Nothing about friends. Friends or not, they know what needs to happen, they have perceived the need and test it. They act on faith. And Jesus begins to see their passion as he brushes the mud and debris out of his hair, as he sees the roof slowly cracking, then falling in chunks with the light bursting in. Then, as his eyes adjust to the brightness, he gets a glimpse one face, then two, then probably three, eager and probably unashamed at their brashness, unconcerned about property damage and home owners insurance…and the hole in the roof becomes the doorway to Jesus, an act of faith that probably couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be done by just one person.

“And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’” which Mark uses as a preface to the healing of the paralytic’s body. Not your faith, not his faith, but by their faith. The collective. The faith that carries the broken.

Well, if they weren’t his friends, before, they certainly were now. And it is clear to me that we are faithful when it comes to serving our friends. Those in this faith community. This is also an important aspect of service, but often we don’t think of it in that way. In my times here I’ve heard stories and witnessed families and individuals in need and you have supported them: financially, emotionally, and spiritually. Service is also about a welcoming hospitality, an openness to receive others, to bring others to the hole in the roof that can heal their brokenness. We don’t often think of bringing others into this loving community as an act of service. Can we begin to see it that way? Is this part of what it means to be a community with an open roof?

In her spiritual autobiography Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott reflects on the little congregation she came to find refuge in, as she was struggling with drug addiction and alcoholism, grief from an abortion and death of loved ones, spiraling downward into an abyss of nothingness. This congregation of about 30 people, in a shabby building, is what I think of when I think of a church with an open roof. From Traveling Mercies:

One of our newer members, a man named Ken Nelson, is dying of AIDS, disintegrating before our very eyes. He came a year ago with a Jewish woman who comes every week to be with us, although she does not believe in Jesus. Shortly after [Ken] started coming, his partner died of the disease. A few weeks later Ken told us that right after Brandon died, Jesus had slid into the hole in his heart that [was left by] Brandon’s loss, and [Jesus] had been there ever since. Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but when he smiles, he is radiant. He looks like God’s crazy nephew Phil. He says that he would gladly pay any price for what he has now, which is Jesus, and us.

There’s a woman in the choir name Ranola who is large and beautiful and jovial and black and as devout as can be, who has been a little standoffish toward Ken. She has always looked at him with confusion, when she looks at him at all. Or she looks at him sideways, as if she wouldn’t have to quite see him if she didn’t look at him head on. She was raised in the South by Baptists who taught her that his way of life—that he—was an abomination. It is hard for her to break through this. I think she and a few other women at church are, on the most visceral level, a little afraid of catching the disease. But Kenny has come to church almost every week for the last year and won almost everyone over. He finally missed a couple of Sundays when he got too weak, and then a month ago he was back, weighing almost no pounds, his face even more lopsided, as if he’d had a stroke. Still during the prayers of the people he talked joyously of this life and his decline, of grace and redemption, of how safe and happy he feels these days.

So on this one particular Sunday, for the first hymn the so-called Morning Hymn, we sang “Jacob’s Ladder,” which goes, “Every rung goes higher, higher,” while ironically Kenny couldn’t even stand up. But he sang away sitting down, with the hymnal in his lap. And then when it came time for the second hymn, the Fellowship Hymn, we were to sing “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” The pianist was playing and the whole congregation had risen—only Ken remained seated, holding the hymnal in his lap—and we began to sing, “Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?” And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up—lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang….

Then both Ken and Ranola began to cry. Tears were pouring down their faces, and their noses were running like rivers, but as she held him up, she suddenly lay her black weeping face against his feverish white one, put her face right up against his and let all those spooky fluids [of his] mingle with hers.

Communities—congregations—that serve are to be churches with open roofs. A place where, in our deepest fear, we mingle our lives by serving one another. And as the story in Mark presents to us—even the story of Ken and Ranola testifies--- it doesn’t stop with serving one another, or even welcoming those who come in their pain. It’s looking around us, perceiving needs, and helping bring others to that open roof, the place of their healing.

We may be like the blind leading the blind, the broken healing the broken, but that’s what Christ seems to have intended. Coming, to be broken, in complete service to humanity.

And I think that when we join with others, we’ll find that each of us, somehow, is lowered into Spirit’s arms, that our friends are holding us up to Christ’s grace…that in serving others, we are delivered more deeply into the home of God.

Handwashing Service
As a symbol of our call to serve, Brethren have performed footwashing on Love Feast, the symbolic recreation of the Last Supper. Today you are invited, again, to answer Christ’s call to serve. We won’t wash feet, but if you feel so moved, you are invited to come forward and wash one another’s hands. In doing so you are recommitting yourself to discipleship of Christ, to serve and be serve.

I will wash the hands of the first person to come forward, and then they will wash the hands of the next person, and so on and so forth. There are towels draped on the stools on either side of the worship space. As the water runs over your hands, may it serve as a reminder of your calling and symbol of God’s grace.

May your hands reach out with the power of the Holy Spirit to those in need.
May your fingers trace the pain and joy of God’s creation
May you join with others, as a community of faith, as we bring to the world’s
Christ’s message of healing and hope.

You are invited to come forward

Breaking Bread Together

2011-08-07T12:00:00.000-04:00

Sermon by Torin Eikler followed by
Communion Service (For All Who Minister Communion Service 4, adapted)
Isaiah 55:1-5 I Corinthians 11:17-22,27-29, 33

Some years ago, a study was done that looked at what was important to several North American denominations by examining their worships over time. In each case the authors were able to pull out one or two things that were. For Roman Catholics the central feature was communion. For Lutherans it was the sermon. For Mennonites and Brethren it was singing and sharing joys and concerns for prayer. These were the rituals that were always present and without which, it seemed, a gathering of believers would not be considered worship.

I think that the study was flawed because of a narrow definition of worship.

Brethren and Mennonites love to sing … and are good at it. And, after four years of planning both “traditional” and “unusual” worships here, I can say with certainty that Carrie and I only leave sharing prayer requests out with fear and trembling. But worship is more than all those things that we associate with Sunday morning. Worship is anything that takes us into the presence of God – anything that bring us into the Realm of God more fully. And there is something else that does that – something that has been part of the Christian community since its beginnings - something that we learned from the example of Jesus and that this church does very well. We eat. We love a good pot luck or picnicking together, and for some of us (raise hand sheepishly) those times around the table may well be more important than the sermon or the prayer or even the singing we do in church.

Surprising? … maybe, … but I don’t think so. Embarrassing? … perhaps, but it shouldn’t be. Sitting at the table with the people we love and care about has been a central practice in the lives of people for thousands of years. How many of us have happy memories of Sunday dinners or birthday meals or gathering with grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles around the table to celebrate Thanksgiving? For many people, that particular holiday is more significant than all the others put together and it crosses the boundaries that make Christmas, Hannukah, or Ramedan greetings so contentious.

Sitting down to eat together is a huge part of our national mythology, holding us together in the face of so many forces pulling us apart. And, it’s not just about eating. The table is a place where we feed the relationships that connect us. It’s a place where we open up to one another, tell the stories that make us who we are, and talk about what’s important in our lives.

In the last few decades we have lost some of that value. Three fourths families still report sitting down to eat together most of the time, but 70% of them have the TV on or regularly use phones to talk, text, or update Facebook pages. But that image of the family around the table is a big part of our cultural mythology. It’s in magazine and television ads. It’s in many of our books. And you’ll find peaple sitting down to dinner in many of our most popular movies (at least the ones that aren’t thrillers or adventure stories). One of my favorite examples is “Big Night” because it shows just how much power the table has for bringing people together across all sorts of boundaries.

The movie takes place in the 1950s – the same era as “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Donna Reid Show.” Two Italian brothers, Primo and Secundo, have set up a restaurant where they serve authentic and … unfortunately … unpopular Italian food. In a last bid to make the venture a success, they throw a banquet party which Jazz and Big Band star Louis Prima is invited. Their hope is that by impressing Prima they will get on the map, but it wouldn’t be very impressive to have an empty restaurant when the singer arrives.

So, the brothers invite all sorts of people: the owner of the successful Italian restaurant down the street, the neighborhood florist, the “booze guy,” their grocer, the barber, and even a car salesman that Secundo met walking around on the big day. As the evening approaches, the brothers work feverously to get the meal ready, pulling out all the stops. And it is a meal to remember: six courses (at least), including roast fish, pasta, risotto, a roasted suckling pig, and timpano (a secret family recipe filled with “everything that is good”).

The guests gather over drinks and appetizers, greeting the others they know while the music of Louis Prima plays in the background, but the singer doesn’t arrive. Eventually, they sit down and begin the feast without him, and in the midst of the eating and drinking, they get to know each other. Stories are traded over the food. People dance between courses. And by the end of the evening, Italians, Irish, and Americans; successful and struggling, older and younger – the guest leave, obviously reluctant to say goodbye to the sense of community they have built.

If there’s anything that sounds like the banquet table of the King, that’s it – a place where strangers become friends and friends become brothers and sisters as they share in the richness and the power of the grace and the mercy … and the love of Christ.

And yet, it doesn’t always work out that way. There are times when meals become times of sorrow and brokenness. When people bring their frustrations, their anger, or their hatred to the table and use them to dig trenches between themselves and others. Worse yet, they take advantage of the openness and vulnerability that is so often shown and strike out to wound – deeply and painfully wound – those who would offer them love.

That is what Paul was warning the Corinthians about in his letter. They were ignoring the needs of their sisters and brothers in their selfish indulgence. Eating whenever they felt like it. Drinking too much. Letting others go hungry to sate their own desires for more.
That kind of perversion of the communal table makes a joke of the Lord’s banquet and turns its blessings of unity into sins of cruelty and division. Those who eat and drink in that way turn away from the grace they have been offered. They eat and drink judgment against themselves.

That’s not us. When we sit down together we use the time to reconnect with one another. For some of us, it the only time we talk to our brothers and sisters which is a little bit sad. Still, when I look around at a potluck – in those rare moments when Sebastian and Alistair are occupied – I see people talking and laughing together with a real sense of community and joy. I see a holy space where people share their lives and themselves with each other, finding food for their spirits that is just as important as the food that sustains their bodies.

That is making of the table a place where grace and healing give birth to a deep and rich community of the Spirit and that is worship. That is living into being a part of the Realm of God. It’s just a hint of the richness that is to come … and we enjoy it every time we sit down together with this community of faith that has become of family.

That is what the church is called to be and to do. That is the community of the body of Christ living as sisters and brothers.

We do that … and in those moments, we are gifted with a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.
Hallelujah … AMEN!

Communion:
We will be singing each of the three verses of “Let us break bread together” at different times during communion this morning. And so I invite you to open your hymnals to #453 as we prepare to celebrate this meal made holy by the rich blessings of God’s love.

The ordinance of communion symbolizes our unity as the body of Christ. It unites each of us in a common bond with each other and with other believers around the world. Just as many grains of wheat and many grapes come together to form one loaf and one cup, so too the people of God, coming from many places and backgrounds, are made into one community in Christ.

Bread: a common, mundane part of everyday life. Yet, it was in the breaking of bread that the risen Christ often revealed himself. On the last night he spent with his followers, Jesus gave them a powerful symbol of his presence. He made special that which was commonplace and ordinary by taking bread, and, as he had done so often before, he blessed, broke, and gave it to them. Then he said, “Take and eat, for this is my body which is given for you.”

(Sing first verse of “let us break bread together” as the bread is distributed.)

Let us pray …
As we take this bread into our bodies, O God, may we take the bread of Christ’s healing and empowering presence into our own lives and extend it to those we meet each day. AMEN.

As we prepare to share in this symbol of unity, let us speak together the words printed in our bulletins - “The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ.”

Fruit of the vine: a standard beverage in ancient Israel. Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine at Cana, showed the abundance of God’s blessing. That last night, he once again turned something mundane into something holy as he took the cup, gave thanks, and announced to the disciples, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Drink from it, all of you.”

(Sing second verse of “let us break bread together” as the cups are distributed.)

Let us pray …
As we remember the new covenant you established through Christ, O God, may we be renewed in mind, body, and spirit in order to live out of the promise and power you give to all your disciples. AMEN.

As we prepare to share in this symbol of unity, let us speak together the words printed in our bulletins - “The cup which we bless is the communion of the blood of Christ.”

Drink the cup.

Will you pray with me ….
We give thanks, O God, for gathering us together around this holy meal. May the power and presence of Christ be revealed in the community we share just as it is in our thoughts, words, and deeds as we strive to serve both you and our neighbors. In the coming days, bring the example of Christ to life within us and fill us with your Holy Spirit, now and evermore. AMEN.

As we leave this space made holy by our sharing, let praise God for the gift of community born around the table, singing together the final verse of our communion hymn.

(Sing verse three of “Let us break bread together”)

Go in peace.

Suffering in Silence

2011-07-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
"Hymns that Shape Us" series:
Revival Camp Songs
Exodus 15: 19-23 James 5:13-18

When I was young–er, there was a song that it seemed we sang at every campfire or bible school. (Funny isn’t it how thinking about hymns tend to bring back memories of other songs we sang when we were young.) This one was called “horse and rider,” or at least that’s how we all referred to it when we called out for it to be sung again and again … and again.

“I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously – the horse and rider thrown into the sea. Yee haw!”

It started out slowly, and we got faster and faster until we couldn’t sing it anymore without the words getting garbled. Try it with me….

(slowly) “I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously – the horse and rider thrown into the sea. Yee haw!” [motion to keep going … speed up].

It’s fun isn’t it, even if it is a bit of tongue twister … especially “triumphed gloriously,” and every time we sang it we ended up laughing at ourselves and each other. I didn’t know that it was taken straight from Exodus or that it was a hymn celebrating the massacre of thousands of Egyptian troops. (pause) That came later. For me, for all of us, it was just pure fun … just one of those songs that everyone knew … an old favorite of kids and counselors alike.

The hymns we are singing today are like that. Maybe not as “fun” to sing but they are the old favorites that many of us know by heart because they cut across denominations, and we’ve sung them forever. Have you ever stopped to think what they are about, what we are saying to each other and to the world when we sing them?

Hymns from the revival era of the 19th century have a distinct feel to them. They often catch hold of our emotions in an attempt to get us to feel remorse for our sinfulness and call us back to a closer relationship with Jesus. Or, they sought to inspire people by reaching back to the early church, paint it with a sense of purity, and incite a certain amount of zeal in those who sang them. Those are not bad things. Nor is it surprising given that revivals were often filled with people who were already faithful church goers in need of a kind of “kick in the pants” to jump-start their Christian journeys of discipleship. Yet they offered a view of life that was more than a little simplistic….

“What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! … Have we trials and temptations? … Are we weak and heavy laden, ‘cumbered with a load of care? … Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer! In his arms he’ll take and shield thee – thou wilt find a solace there.”

That’s all true, … but the suggestion that all we need to feel better is to offer our struggles to God in prayer and all our problems will disappear – that “holy manna will be showered all around” to meet our needs, sooth our sorrows, and give us the strength to go and sin no more” just doesn’t bear out. In real life, we still struggle. We still suffer the pain of feeling despised and betrayed. We still ache with grief at the loss of loved ones. We still find ourselves to be imperfect people filled with guilt for the mistakes we make and the pain we cause others. The best that can be said is that we may find a sense of peace or encouragement or maybe even some much needed insight in the midst of it all if we step back for a moment, offer up our fears and struggles, and invite God to come in and help us.

The third theme, and one that is more troubling to me, is the strain of triumphalism that often comes out in so many of our hymns from this era. Triumphalism “stresses the victories … of the Christian life, the Christian church,” or (as we see it now) Christian nations. If we celebrate these triumphs as a source of personal or even community strength and encouragement, there isn’t really a problem with triumphalism. But more often, it seems, Christian participation in God's ultimate victory on earth takes on large scale, political overtones.

At the beginning of the Gulf War in 1990, I saw this taking root in my generation of Americans. I was 17 and caught up in the emotions that drive teenagers. So, I was quick to go to several marches against the war as the deadline for invasion approached. I carried signs proclaiming Christ’s call for peace … with clever phrasing, of course. None of them were quite as witty as “When Jesus said, “love you enemies,” I think he probably meant don’t kill them, but I thought they were pretty good at the time.

What surprised me, naïve as I was, were the number of people who gestured angrily as we walked or came up to us as we stood singing in front of the courthouse and shouted at us, each claiming in their own way that this was a holy war and that good Christians should be supporting the fight against Muslims. There was even one group who put together a spontaneous chorus of “We’re marching to Zion” (another good revival hymn). They didn’t know the verses, but they sang the refrain several times as proof, I assume, of divine support for their interpretation of God’s will in the matter. It’s worse now.

That kind of radical patriotism dressed up as faith saddens me more than anything else. It’s blind hatred seems to fly so directly in the face of Jesus’ teachings about loving others, and it has led to so much death and suffering laid at Christianity’s feet. I wish we could let it go. I wish that Christians in this country and elsewhere didn’t get the real story of Christ’s triumph through suffering and compassion so mixed up with our country’s efforts to change the world through force and violence. If we could get past that – if we could at least refuse to accept that what we do to other countries … other people in the name of our national security or their best interests is not always what God would have us do, then the world would surely be a better place. At least that’s what I believe…. And I think you probably believe that too.

Yet, even in this place and among people who share a commitment to peaceful discipleship, triumphalism has power. We love to sing “we’re marching to Zion.” We love the images of a world where God’s ultimate victory has been won and everyone lives in the Realm of God – for us a realm that is marked by peace and love and reconciliation. And while we don’t see that coming through the domination of others, we do claim our role in helping to bring it about.

That’s a good thing. You will never catch me saying that we should turn away from doing what we can to live the Kingdom into reality for all people. But, what does it do to people – to us - when we when we claim, without thinking about it, that all the suffering will go away as long as we offer it up in prayer and put it all in the service of seeking out an unrealistically pure church?

When I was interning as a chaplain during Seminary, I got to know a man who had only recently discovered that he suffered from diabetes. I’ll call him Frank. In the year before we met, things had gone from bad to worse for him. He became a Christian during that year and eventually asked his congregation to join their prayers for healing to his, certain that his faith and that of his brothers and sisters would save him just as it says in James. And yet, there he was in the hospital again, and this time, he was scheduled to have his right leg amputated from the knee down.

As we sat together over the course of a few days, Frank shared his fears and his sense of betrayal with me. He was afraid of what would happen after the surgery – about whether or not he would be able to adapt to having only one leg, about what he might lose the next time, about never being looked at as a whole person again. And he felt like God had abandoned him to his illness – that everything he had come to believe was a lie or that, maybe, God had it in for him in particular because of the life he had led before converting.

Those were all things that I expected to hear. They had trained us to respond to exactly that kind of spiritual crisis before they let us out onto the unsuspecting patients to practice. I used that training well – at least well enough that he felt reassured about God’s love for him. And just as I thought he had worked through most of his issues, Frank said, “I just feel so guilty.”

When I asked why, he told me that at one of the meetings with his prayer group the pastor had read the scripture from James that we heard today: “The prayer of faith will save the sick …. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” It had given him hope that day because the prayer warriors of the church were fighting against this evil for him, and he knew that their righteous zeal combined with his faith would be enough to raise him up out of his suffering. When that didn’t happen – when he got worse instead of better – the leader of the group told him that there must be a lack of faith on his part.

Frank was obviously nervous about sharing this. He was sure that he had failed in some way. He had prayed the prayer of faith as the church taught him, and nothing had happened. He had found no healing … no consolation … no rain to end his personal drought. Not even the sense of peace that his favorite hymns promised had come to him as a result. He was sure that he was unfit for the Kingdom of God because things like this didn’t happen to “good Christian soldiers” or, when they did, true faith and devotion simply accepted them as the will of God. And so he suffered in silence.

That’s the risk we take when we sing the good old hymns without thinking. When we forget to talk about what they are teaching us – about what they are saying about the life Christian discipleship, we not only set the stage for shallow, simplistic promises of comfort and overzealous calls for holy war, we might also push our brothers and sisters into a dark corner of guilt and shame.

The scriptures do promise healing to those who pray and comfort to those who suffer. They proclaim the ultimate power of God to bring victory and call us to share in the glory of that moment when the body of Christ will fulfill God’s vision. But those beautiful images and those promises stand right beside stories of suffering and disappointment. After the horse and rider were thrown into the sea, the people suffered terrible thirst in the wilderness. Before the rain came to answer Elijah’s prayer, there were three years of drought. Even in the midst of Jesus’ triumph over the sins of the humanity, there was suffering and pain.

Our lives are not so simple and pure as we would often like them to be.

Neither is the path to the Realm of God smooth and sure, lined with glowing triumphs and free from failures.

But God does walk with us through the hard times that we all experience.

There is forgiveness and comfort for all those who seek it.

And as we walk through Emmanuel’s ground, … together, …
we will find peace and joy in the love we share.

That NEW Song: When I survey the wondrous cross

2011-06-26T11:04:00.000-04:00

“That New Song: When I survey the wondrous cross”
Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Psalm 96
“Hymns that Shape Us” series Part 2: Watts and Wesley
June 26, 2011

Last week as Torin introduced our series on hymns that shape us, he gave you a few alternate versions of Amazing Grace. If you weren’t here, try putting the beloved hymn to the tune of Gilligan’s Island, for example. So to briefly ride on the Amazing Grace coattails Torin fashioned, let me tell you my most recent Amazing Grace story.

A few weekends ago Torin and I and our close friend Amy went to our first ever Mountain Stage performance. Mountain Stage is a National Public Radio music program that is recorded in front of a live audience here in West Virginia. If you ever are listening to West Virginia Public Radio between 8and 10pm on Saturday night or 3-5pm on Sunday afternoon, you’ll hear the host, Larry Groce booming: “Mountain Stage, live performance radio. from the Mountain STATE of West. Virginia.” They are usually recorded in Charleston, but about four times a year they come up here to Morgantown. For $15 you can hear five different musical acts for about two and half hours. It’s a good deal.

The headliners this time were the Grammy Award winning gospel singers, The Blind Boys of Alabama. The Blind Boys started singing together in 1939, with eight members. There are three of the original eight left. On this particular Sunday night at the WVU Creative Arts Center, the Blind Boys bassist started in in with the tune of House of the Rising Sun (there is a house in New Orleans, it’s called the Rising Sun…). But instead of a toast to New Orleans, the boys started in: “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found…” and the Blind Boys of Alabama aren’t called this only because they’re from Alabama. All of the original members are blind. There was almost a palpable, collective, fluttering of hearts in the audience—at least among the three of us (are they going to say it? Are they going to say it?): “was blind, but now, I see.” (they said it)

We heard that song in a very new way that night.

They say that your strongest musical preference is the music you were listening to between the ages of 15 and 18. It’s true. Nothing new today can beat the power of The Cranberries, Pearl Jam, and REM (for me). The psalmist says “sing a new song.” Now many of us don’t like that. We like our old songs, the goodies, the old-timies. Yes, even I have my preferences, even in church music.

But I don’t think I need to state the obvious, but I will. Even old songs, were new once. But it’s not that they are old that makes them special to many of you. It’s what you remember about them. It’s the memories that surround some of you when you hear Amazing Grace, or I walk through the garden alone. For some of us it’s the great Brethren hymn, Move in our Midst, or the adopted Brethren hymn, Brethren we have met to worship. It’s the majestic four part harmony of the “Old Hundredth” better known to newcomers to the Mennonites, Praise God from whom, #119.

So if you can’t quite get into the new songs, perhaps you can hear the eager whisper of the psalmist: at least…at least sing the old songs anew. Make them a new song to you. Meet them again, encounter them 20, 50, 70 years later not as children, but as adults who have seen what it means to struggle in life, who have faced death, who have lived with glimpses of resurrection. Meet these songs a new.

One of the church’s most beloved hymns consists of only 5 notes. 5. When I survey the wondrous cross was written in 1707 by Isaac Watts, an English hymnwriter. Lowell Mason put the words to tune we are familiar with in 1824 using an ancient Gregorian chant from the 6th century to shape his tune. So before it sounded the way we are used to hearing it, it was the poetry of one man’s heart.

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me most
I sacrifice them through his blood.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an off’ring far to small
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

(hold silence) How was that? Did you hear anything in it that you hadn’t before? A new image? A new stirring? A new connection between you and the writer, between you and Christ, between you…and God…something that gets lost when you sing what you’ve always sung, year in and year out? When you stop. Hearing. The. words.

Now, I invite you to take out your hymnals, turn to hymn 259 and see those words put to music.

So yes, poetry stirs us, but as we’ve been exploring, when you add the music, it takes us—maybe not to a deeper place, but a different place. And now, we’ve really heard the words…let us sing:

Sing 259 When I survey the wondrous cross

Like I said, even the old songs were once new, and what Watts and Wesley were writing were pretty radical for their time. They were frowned upon, questioned. Isaac Watts had written over 100 hymns by the time he was 23 years old. They were probably thinking “these young people and their music.” When Watts started writing his hymns, words such as “When I survey the wondrous cross…demands my soul, my life, my all”—such personal feelings—well, it was pretty controversial. Up to that time, much congregational singing was simply the repetitive chanting of the psalms.

In response to what he came to experience as droll repetition, Watts once commented that “The singing of God’s praise is the part of worship most closely related to heavem; but its performance among us is the worst on earth.” As Kenneth Osbeck reflects,“the unique thoughts presented by Watts in these lines certainly must have pointed the eighteenth century Christians to a view of the dying Savior in a vivid and memorable way that led them to a deeper worship experience.”

I appreciate the question that Osbeck’s reflection points us to: what leads us to “deeper worship experiences?” How do hymns disturb us into the depth of God’s love and challenge and awesomeness…and how do they simply comfort and console us. I wouldn’t say that one was necessarily better than the other, but what did the psalmist mean by sing a new song? For Watts and Wesley it was taking the chants that they felt were outside of human experience, the daily struggle, and writing hymns that put humanity alongside Christ, if only in our songs. It’s a good first step, isn’t it? To sing our way beside Jesus?

If you look in your hymnal to the second arrangement of When I survey the wondrous cross, #260, you’ll see the same words, to a different tune. The Hymnal Committee helps us sing this song anew…by placing the stirring words within an African tune.

The tune is a South African anti-apartheid protest song, originally written in Zulu, called Senzeni-Na. Senzeni-Na means “What have we done?” Meaning… “what have we done to deserve this? This apartheid. This oppression? Senzeni Na?” (click here for a youtube video of the song)

I wonder how Watts would feel about this. While he may have been radical for his time in writing about God in new, personal ways, he was a white, wealthy British man, part of an Empire mentality, shaped by an age of manifest destiny. So here, we are challenging Watt’s, if not directly, at least the age in which he lived, an age that shaped political and theological ideologies that supported slavery, expansionism, and the destruction of native cultures.

And we too, challenge ourselves when we sing When I survey the wondrous cross with the overtones of senzeni-na. We ask ourselves, what have we done to allow this sort of thing to happen in our world, as Americans in 2011. How have we crucified others alongside X.

We can start to accept the psalmists invitation. Sing a new song. As a confession. As a way of accepting God’s forgiveness.
[Choir-Senzeni-Na/when I survey]
[silence]

“O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.”
When we are comfortable in the songs we’ve always sung, and then we are disturbed by a new imagery and tunes…Christ is doing what Christ has always done…surprising us.

And When we are disturbed and surprised, not just in song, but when we are disturbed and surprised in our lives,
we will know what it means—

we have to sing a new song of the spirit.

Sing a new song, and let your life be the text, let your sorrows be the tunes, let your joys be the notes. Sing to the Lord a new song. Amen.

Costly Discipleship

2011-06-19T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
"Hymns that Shape Us" series:
Early Church Heritage Hymns
Luke 14:25-33 Psalm 1

Today we are beginning a series on Hymns that Shape Us. That might seem like a fairly tame subject, but hymns are powerful things. Last week, when I visited Alice in Sundale, the words I said and the touch of my hand holding hers seemed to go unnoticed. She remained unresponsive, and her face showed the lines of discomfort. But when I began to sing some of her favorite hymns, she opened her eyes a fraction and her face relaxed. There were even times when I felt sure that she was trying to join in. Those hymns provided comfort for her and encouragement, and they reminded her that she belonged to something greater than herself – that she was not alone. Somehow, setting the words to music helped them reach her in a way that they didn’t or couldn’t alone.

That may seem surprising, but it’s not really a new concept. Advertisers, activists, and church leaders alike have understood for years what some of us haven’t really thought about: music has the power to carry messages deep down within us. And if you have ever found yourself humming a tune as you wend your way through the day, you know how they can stick with you. Often, just listening to a few seconds of a hymn can take us into memories of the times and places we have heard them before.

Take “Amazing Grace”…. Whenever I hear the opening strains of the hymn, I am reminded of my time with the Orangeburg AME church where they sang it as a call and response … “Amazing grace, (said amazing grace,) how sweet the sound, (how sweet the sound,) that saved a wretch, (that saved a wretch,) like me, (that saved a wretch like me.)” And a fondness for a whole different style of worship filled with “bother-ation” and random input from the congregation.

But if you hear: (sing in traditional manner) “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” you will undoubtedly think of church services or funerals or both, and all the comfort of the Spirit’s healing presence will come to mind.

And if you hear: (sing to Gilligan’s Island) “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” you will have an entirely different experience.

But hymns don’t just comfort and encourage us. They don’t just remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves or recall to us moments from our past. They also challenge and shape us, molding our beliefs and our worldview in powerful ways that we may not even recognize. That makes them a powerful tool, and hymn writers, church leaders, and theologians throughout the centuries have used them with more or less care to influence and undergird the faith of the Christian community.

Three hundred and three years ago, Alexander Mack and his small group of Anabaptist Brethren did just that. Inspired by the scriptural accounts of Jesus’ challenging words, they defied the authorities in Germany to be re-baptized, singing (as legend has it) the hymn that we have just sung – “Count well the cost.” Knowing what they were risking, the words rang with the strength of their decision to risk “self, wealth, and reputation,” and that moment in the church’s memory, recalled whenever this hymn makes an appearance, has come to shape generations of believers… though not always as they would have expected.

Take a moment now and remember about what you thought when you read the bulletin and discovered that “Count well the cost” was part of the service. Or think back just a few minutes to what you felt when we were actually singing.

Somewhere in the midst of all the memories that came back to me, I found a bit of guilt and relief that run through them all. Guilt that I don’t really pay much of a cost for my faith. Relief that I do not face the persecution of those early Anabaptists who often lost everything or were imprisoned or even burned at the stake. And so the hymn takes on a sense of admonition for me, a mild rebuke for the life I live when I should be selling everything or challenging the Powers-That-Be in a more diligent way.

That’s not surprising given the story that goes with the hymn and the scripture that has so been often read just before I sing it. There we hear Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees for their pride. Specifically, he is responding to one man who proclaimed, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” with all the assurance of one who is sure of receiving the blessing himself.

Be careful, he says, of assuming that you will be at that table because you must concern yourself with the things of God if you wish to be welcomed. You must be willing to give up all your possessions … and even the family, friends, and reputation that you hold so dear if you are to receive that blessing. There is a heavy price to pay. If you are not willing to lay the foundation without assurance that the tower will be built … if you are not willing to step into the fray knowing that you are outnumbered two to one, then you will not find the way into the Kingdom.

And that’s the way that I hear it because I have always been taught to identify with the Pharisees … because I am really more of a Pharisee than I like to admit. I worry about having enough money to feel secure. I shy away from starting projects that I can’t finish or that I am pretty sure won’t work out. And I set more store than I should on having the respect of others. More often than I realize, I’m sure, I compromise or rationalize my way off the path to the Kingdom table for the sake of securing that respect or in the name of respecting the call of my family’s security.

Sound familiar?

Then again … I’m not sure that was all that Jesus was about with this speech. Corey introduced the scripture by telling us that Jesus was speaking to the crowd that had gathered, uninvited, in the courtyard of the Pharisee’s home to listen to the conversation and watch the drama. That was not uncommon at the time, and many of those watching may have been waiting for the left-overs that were sometimes shared out after a banquet. What was uncommon was for a guest of honor to speak with the crowd, and while I’m sure Jesus meant his words as a warning to those gathered at the table, I wonder how they would have been received by the people he spoke to directly.

Those people could not have been so very worried about their status among the social elites or they would never have come into the courtyard. There was simply too much stigma that came with being associated with that crowd. They may or may not have had very much money, but probably not. Most of Jesus’ followers, it seems, came from the lower classes of society who had to work in order to make ends meet. They were used to taking risks without knowing what the future would bring because their daily lives involved exactly that kind of risk.

Honestly, I have no idea how the words that Jesus spoke would have sounded to them, but I think that they would not have found them to hold rebuke … or at least not much. Instead, I think they might well of sounded … well … encouraging. They didn’t have money or stature. They weren’t able to maintain the purity that society held to be the only way to righteousness under the law. And yet, they could become disciples if they were only willing to accept the risk. They could find their way to the banquet table of the Kingdom is they were willing to face … what? … failure, ridicule, perhaps death (though a king going to war rarely risked death – only defeat). That was no so much to ask of people without so much to lose. It would certainly have been easier for them than for the Pharisees.

I think it was much the same for the early Anabaptists. They were not the wealthy or the powerful of their time. Scriptures like this one were not just warnings offering judgment; they were a source of hope and promise. There was a new creation that they could be part of – a community of peace and love that was ready to welcome them into a warm embrace if they were willing to risk

So where does that leave us. Most of us are not at the lower levels of society with nothing to lose. We do not have to risk our lives for our faith, and I don’t think any of us would want to. But we are not wholly lost either. We have made the commitment to follow Christ. We struggle with the habits of pride and consumption and our tendencies to feel holier-than-thou. And we have accepted the costs that come with choosing a faith community that still pushes the boundaries of society’s expectations.

We reluctant martyrs … we regretful Pharisees … we are somewhere in the middle. And so the words of our hymns and the words of scripture are a two-fold blessing. Standing as we do between the table and the crowd, we hear the soft reminder that the path laid out by Jesus is not an easy one, and we experience the resounding declaration of the promise of peace and love and that comes to those who take it. We hear and affirm the proclamation that costly discipleship brings hope and life to all who follow Christ.

Enflamed Weakness

2011-06-12T11:09:00.000-04:00

Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Pentecost – June 12, 2011
Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

A couple months ago I spoke about the concept of “don’t think about pink elephants” the joke being once someone tells you that, that’s exactly what you think of. Here’s another elephant allusion: the elephant in the room. This refers to a topic that is so big, so laden with anxiety, that no one wants to talk about it.

So I’m going to call out the elephant in the room when it comes to 1 Corinthians 12. The scripture about gifts. In service to God. In building up the community. You think I’m going to go on for 15 minutes about how you each have a gift and you just need to find that gift and then sign up for the appropriate ministry team, and by the way, would you like to be Leadership Team chair next year (Cindy’s smiling at that one)?

Whew! I named it. Now that’s out of the way, I’ve done my obligatory speech to the standard interpretation of the text. Now, elephant-be gone!

But even if I’m not going to guilt you into signing up for a ministry team ([whisper]which you should…you really should), this scripture has a common effect on most of its hearers. It gets us thinking about our gifts, and by gifts we mean talents, and by talents we mean what we’re good at.

Maybe this hit the Jesus people of Corinth in a powerful way, but really, our culture isn’t bereft of opportunities to explore and discover our talents. High School students often take tests to magically reveal to them their strongest attributes. Churches, like ours, do “gift inventories” to help us see what God has given us to work with. Even colleges and universities base their conversation in this light: major in what you’re good at so you can get the type of job you love (and will hopefully make you some money…at least to pay back your college debts).

We are a culture that loves to identify, compartmentalize, and capitalize on what we “can do.” Our talents-- our gifts--have just become one more commodity in an economy of trade. I’ll give you my gift, if you give me a paycheck. Wherever else I put these abilities to use are either “hobbies” or “diversions” or “extracurricular activities”, and usually they are the first things to go when stress goes up and time gets crunched.

I even think the church has been co-opted by such a consumer mentality of “gifts.” Too often I feel like when we talk about finding one’s vocation we are essentially asking “how will you use God’s gifts to help you make a living, and be a productive consumer in our economy?”

So no, as a culture, I don’t think we’re overly anxious about finding what we’re good at--which doesn’t mean we’re satisfied with our lives. Far from it.
(pause)
But this understanding of gifts isn’t what’s happening in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, by the way. It wasn’t even figuring out which one of those rowdy Corinthians should be on the “speaking in tongues commission” or the “wash the feet of the guests” ministry team.

And let me say before I go further, what I have learned about the church in Corinth…I have to say I’d really like to have met these people. Corinth was a city about 40 minutes south/south-west of Athens. And as cities sometimes do, they get a…reputation. You know, you associate a certain ethos with a city. Think: Las Vegas, Portland, New Orleans. Corinth also had a personality.

The reputation of Corinth was one of wealth without culture. Think: Nuevo-riche. Think: Beverly Hillbillies. They had the cash without the class. These seem to be things that should go together, like manicured hand in white glove. But not in Corinth.

Yet most of the people in the Corinth church were believed to be poor, with probably a few of these Beverly Hillbilly type folks thrown in—you can imagine the tension that could cause. They were banded together by Paul primarily based on his word and charisma. These were people who lived a generation before any of the gospels were written: no Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

Just imagine that for a moment, trying to fashion a church in the way of Jesus before they had the gospels that we feel are so indespinsable. These people, if they made any money, were simply doing what they could, or what the trade that was passed down to them. They didn’t need to hear about gifts so they could find job satisfaction.

They were hearing about gifts because they wanted to build the church. And certain people thought some gifts were better than others. And Paul says no. If you are building a church, it’s about God. All about God. All from God. All for the glory of God. This ain’t about you. What you do, you do for God.

Paul’s letter was to relieve anxiety. To tell those who didn’t speak in tongues that that’s OK. And to ask those who did speak in tongues, “why are you doing this?”
When it comes to gifts, we still have a lot of anxiety, and not, as I said, necessarily identifying what they are. What I experience and see around me is an anxiety born from unrealistic perfectionism of our gifts--preconceived notions that say what success means, what some who has true talents at X,Y, or Z should look like.

And if you think you’ve never felt this before, ask yourself:
Have you ever been jealous about the accomplishments of a colleague in the same field as you?
Have you ever thought a woman was a better mother than you, a man a better father?
Did you ever have a sports or school-nemesis (as Torin admitted to in a sermon recently) who’s focus for your rivalry was simply based on who could be better?

I’ll admit it. I have those. All three of those. And then some. And I would guess you have them to.

I think one part of struggling with gifts is facing the parts that don’t quite shine the brightest. Those parts that aren’t ablaze with the spirit. And it’s wrestling with those qualities we feel we need in order to be the best —whatever we are: parent, professor, musician, pastor, friend, spouse. It’s wrestling with the feeling that no matter how hard we try, we’ll just never be good enough.

[pause]

This year, Americans have been more exposed to British Royal life than we have been in a few decades. With the wedding of Prince William to Princess Kate we have gleefully immersed ourselves in the pageantry and the gossip, the splendor and decadency of a royal wedding.

This was a far cry from the humility and fear and anguish we were presented with earlier in the year. In the Academy Awared winning film, The King’s Speech, unaware generations (myself included) witnessed the vivid portrayal of King George the 6th in his unwilling rise to the British throne

Prince Albert, later to be crowned with the name King George the 6th, was Britain’s King during the turbulent years leading up to and during WWII. Albert’s brother, David, was the rightful heir, but because David wished to marry a divorced woman he stepped down from the throne, leaving it to his brother, Albert, or Bertie, as his family called him.
Bertie was a painfully shy man, with a dramatic stammer. He was deathly afraid of public speaking and on the occasion his father, King George V had him speak publicly, he was a dismal failure. The movie casts the coming of World War II as a confrontation involving public speaking: Hitler’s polished elocution is a dramatic contrast to the king’s quavering, high-pitched voice.

Bertie’s wife, Elizabeth, “slyly sets up a visit with Lionel Logue, the oddball, self-trained Australian speech therapist. With humor and wisdom [during the countless voice lessons in in Lionel’s dingy office--a place no respectable king would be caught dead in--Lionel] goads, cajoles, threatens and berates the king, gradually finding a way to intrude into [Bertie’s] personal life, enticing him to relive the pain of growing up with a blowhard father and a taunting brother. He put the king through a series of vocal calisthenics; he teaches him to curse and sing [even dance] in order to overcome his stammering.”

[pause]

One night, portrayed in the film, King George looks at his engagements for public speaking, something a King should be able to do, something that Kings have always been able to do—but on this night, King George breaks down crying in the arms of his wife under the mere stress, sobbing “I’m not a king. I’m not a king!”

On the eve of King George the 6th’s coronation, Lionel reflects with the anxious king about how he started helping people. Lionel recalls Australian soldiers coming home from WW1, shellshocked by what they had seen and experienced. They stammered. They couldn’t speak. Lionel reflected “My job was to give them faith in their own voice, and let them know that a friend was listening.”

[pause]
The two were a pair for the rest of King George’s life. Whenever the King made a public appearance or a radio broadcast Lionel was there. Lionel edited the King’s speeches in ways that would help a stammerer overcome the tripups, he would direct the King as if he was conducting an orchestra because a musical flow helped move him through the difficult parts. He knew what his friend needed in order to live into his weakness, so he could do the job before him. So he could live in the confidence in his other strengths.

The relationship between Logue and King George isn’t one of transcending difficulties in order to reach perfection. After years and years of training, no one would say King George was a magnificent orator.

No, I think this lesson by this master teacher, Paul included, is about boldly showing our non-gifts. This voice lesson is about opening our awareness up to what we do well, and, with a large measure of care and grace, to what we don’t do well. Because, as Paul points out, it’s all part of the work of God—not just the strengths, but all of who we are.

[pause]
The spirit will help you find your voice. Not by dramatic tongues of fire falling on you. But by guiding you, marking your scripts, moving you through the difficult dance steps—something we don’t rely on much when we’re working out of those places that come naturally, do we? Where we know we’re doing what we’re really good at. Spirit urges you to know that even in those things you are called to, joyfully or reluctantly, you won’t be perfect. Because it’s an economy like no other, a realm unlike any earthly kingdom.

But it requires the first step,
out of our high palaces of perfection
into the dingy room of a master teacher.

Mission Possible

2011-06-05T12:00:00.001-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 17:1-11 Acts 1:1-14

Summer is almost here. Just two weeks, one day, 13 hours, and ___ minutes left before the season officially turns over into the three months of light and heat. But with school out and the thermometer in the 90s this past week, I have resigned myself to sunscreen and sweat a few weeks early. For all practical purposes, summer is already here. And while it is not my favorite season, there is one thing that I always look forward to, one guilty pleasure that comes around each year at this time … the Summer Blockbuster Movies.

Some of you will remember when people attended summer movies, if they could, not so much because of what was showing but simply to escape the heat for a time. Before air conditioning was so common, that movie theatre was one of the only refuges from the sun, and for a reasonably affordable amount, one could enter the cool darkness from time to time and sit. Just sit in a comfortable chair and enjoy the distraction of whatever story happened to be playing out on the big screen in front of you.

Those days are largely gone. Most of us have turned our homes into that place of refuge. We have air conditioning. We have televisions with movies on demand, or if we haven’t gone that far (or maybe have skipped over that) we have VCRs or DVD players that can link directly to the internet and stream movies directly into our living rooms. This is becoming so common, in fact, that Roger Ebert recently acknowledged with more than a little sadness that cinemas themselves may be on the path to extinction. For many of us, it is just too much money and too much hassle to get everyone into the theatre when we can watch the same thing at home.

But, in my experience there are some movies that you just can’t watch on the TV if you want to get the full effect. To truly appreciate these “blockbusters,” we need the huge screen, the large space, and the echoing surround sound to pull us fully into the action and effects, and it’s strange and scary what that kind of technology can do. There are many movies, I’ll admit, that had sucked me in when I watched them in the theatre whether or not they had redeeming value, or good acting, or a strong story line. In fact, the “bad” ones were sometimes the ones that I enjoyed the most – sitting there for the adrenaline rush without having to think or feel anything. That is what I secretly love about them, and this summer promises several excellent examples.

One that I am particularly looking forward to is Mission Impossible 4 where rogue agent Ethan Hawke promises to get stuck in some inescapable situation only to worm his way out with the help of a few friends, a bit of luck, and innumerable techno-gadgets that will, of course, require quite elaborate stunts and special effects if they are to work at all. It’s brain candy, I know, but there’s something about beating impossible odds to pull off incredible heists that I just love.

I suppose a big part of my fascination comes from wishing that I could do all those things … at least in a smaller, less death-defying way. The thing is, I often feel like my life is full of impossible missions. Chief among them and most immediate is the challenge of raising two intelligent, sensitive, well-behaved, respectful, loving, good-hearted boys. If there is anything that I don’t feel prepared for it navigating that responsibility without inadvertently doing irreparable damage to them along the way. If anyone has a map or a guaranteed methodology to help me out, please let me know.

Beyond that, though, there are myriad others tasks that I feel more or less responsible for. Two big ones given everything in the news are working to protect the environment and struggling against the militarism that seems to have gotten a dose of steroids lately. Then there’s taking care of those less fortunate than I: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, and housing the homeless…. You know, all the things we preach about because we really do think they’re important.

Some of those things are beyond me because I don’t have the tools or the power or the wisdom or courage I would need to get the job done. They may not be action-packed or life-threatening (though I suppose they might be if I really committed to them), but they are in the same realm as the adventures of Ethan Hawke. Put me his position and there is no way I would be able to do what needed to be done let alone survive long enough to try.

Others seem impossible simply because they are so big or take so long. If you chip away at them you make some headway, but it’s hard to keep at it without becoming discourage no matter how important the ultimate goal. There are people, I know, who are passionate about such work … who get excited by the prospect of taking the first step down one of those proverbial thousand-mile journeys and have the perseverance to move mountains one stone at a time. I’m just not one of them … and I’m not alone in that. If I were, there would be an army of people hard at work on solving the problems of the global community instead of a few pockets of resistance here and there.

And, I suspect that my feelings of inadequacy are nothing compared to the way the first group of disciples felt when Jesus left them there on that mountain. As they turned and walked back down to Jerusalem, I think they probably came down off a once-in-a-lifetime high with each step they took. They had been there, after all, when Jesus reappeared. They had seen the prophesies fulfilled. Unbelievable though it was, they had talked to, eaten with, and learned from their Messiah even after he had died, and after a month of living in that new reality, I expect they had come to take for granted that Jesus would be with them forever – always there to show them the way.

Instead, he had left them, rising into the heavens in a blaze of glorious light … left them with a vague promise of help to come … and the all too real, all too impossible mission of continuing his work, of making disciples of all the nations.

A few weeks ago, I made a passing reference to what that phrase, “continuing Jesus’ work” really means for us – to what it means to make disciples of the nations, and I think this might be the time to explore that in more depth. The Great Commission, as we call it, is often thought to mean saving people for Christ – that is, proclaiming the good news that Jesus was and is the Messiah and that all who believe and are baptized will be saved from eternal suffering and ushered into eternal life through the gift of grace. But, I’m not sure we’ve gotten that entirely right. That’s definitely part of it – that inviting people to share in the redeeming grace of Christ, but if it true, as Gail O’Day claims, that “When Jesus commissioned the [community of his followers] to continue [his work, he meant that they were to make] God in Jesus known in the world.” And God as made known to us in Jesus was all about sharing the reality that the Kingdom was already present among humanity.

That means more than just baptizing people. It means proclaiming the new reality, describing it as clearly as possible, inviting people to step into the mystery of all that it might mean to be living in a world ruled by the one whose love led him to give his life for all of us. And it means more than that, too. It means modeling what a life lived in the midst of that reality looks like, being people of the Kingdom who act out of love and compassion so that everyone receives what she or he needs and no one is left alone. It means seeking healing – healing of bodies, healing of spirits, healing of the brokenness all around us.

That - all of that - is the task that Jesus left to the disciples. And I’m sure those men and women who were given that work were at a loss because if Jesus – if the Messiah himself with all his power and all his understanding was not able to do it, how on earth would they be able to? Even though they were a good sized community of people, I’m sure they felt lost and overwhelmed by the challenges that lay ahead.

I think we are in the same position. I feel like our congregation is on the brink of something, like potential and power and passion and energy are building toward some moment in the future – a moment when we will find ourselves in the midst of an explosion of new growth and a profound deepening of our spiritual life together as a community. But right now, in this moment, as I talk with you all and we look ahead at the challenges we face they often seems insurmountable.

Here we are with the very same mission received by those long-ago followers and handed down through the ages: continuing the work started by Jesus. Two thousand years later, the world’s need to hear and see and feel the presence of the Kingdom around them and the love of Christ within them still cries out to us. And we struggle with low attendance. We have trouble meeting our budget. Our ceiling leaks. And it is hard to get everything done because we all have such busy lives. Simply caring for our faith community is hard enough, picking up the mission left to by Christ ….

We are shy people – especially when it comes to sharing our faith. Our whole society is more than a little squeamish about it. We look at those who do share with distrust and distaste. That part of our lives, we have been taught, is personal, and the evangelists out there often wear the face of intolerance or carry the sword of judgment, and that doesn’t feel very Christ-like. We do not want to be like them. We don’t want to risk even the slightest chance that anyone might see us in that light, and so we go out of our way to avoid it.

I’m not singling any of you out here. I avoid it too … maybe even more than you do. It is hard to keep from being lumped in with “those people” when you are a pastor. We are all in the same boat here, and while we do a pretty good job of modeling and working for healing and reconciliation as a congregation, it seems like it might just take a miracle to get us out there describing the Kingdom, proclaiming the good news that it is here, or even sharing our own joy at having experience it here in this community of faith.

It took a miracle for the first Christians too. It took the coming of the Spirit to get them going, to remind them of Jesus’ promise that they were protected and unified by the power and the truth that he had shared with them. They had to wait for that miracle. Commissioned by Christ himself with their own mission impossible, they had to sit and hope that they would, somehow, be able to do what had been asked of them. They went and prayed that they would find a way to take even just the first step on that journey.

But, we don’t have to wait…. The miracle has happened. The promised presence of the Spirit has been fulfilled for us already, and the Sustainer lives within us offering us strength and encouragement … empowering us for the work that is ours to do as a community that has tasted the new reality of God’s Reign among us … giving us “shy people the strength and courage to do what needs to be done.”

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is no more and no less than continuing the work of making God in Jesus known to the world. It is to go out into the world and living out the love and compassion that marks the Children of God. It is working to heal pain and brokenness, relieve suffering, and offer hope in the midst of despair. It is proclaiming in a sure and confident voice the truth that, whatever it may look like out there, the Kingdom of God is here, and it offers new hope and new life to any who wish to enter.

It’s a big task, but it is possible.

Lost in the Dark?

2011-05-29T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 15:15-21 Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:8-20

When I was just nine years old, I learned the truth about what “darkness” means. That year, my family went on vacation in Kentucky which may not seem like a very exciting trip, but any trip was fun for my brothers and me at that point. And we got to camp out for nearly a week right near a field that we covered in grasshoppers – really big ones! That was great in and of itself, but the highlight of the trip for me was a visit to Mammoth Caves.

That system is one of the biggest known, easily accessible caves in the country, and it is something to see. There are rooms filled with sparkling stalactites and columns that seem to glow pink in the light of the lamps. There were ceilings filled with sleeping bats and the messy white floors that accompany them. There was a stone waterfall, and there was even a real waterfall when we visited, though I seem to remember that it sometimes disappears during dry spells. (I suspect it’s quite a torrent right now.) Yet, the most memorable part of our journey into the bowels of the earth was the two minutes that we spent in darkness – the two longest minutes of my life.

For those of you who have never had the experience of standing without lamps in a cave, the darkness there is not like the darkness we usually think of. It is absolute. … There is no starlight. There is no soft glow from reflected city lights. There is no light whatsoever, and as you stand there with your eyes wide open and the afterglow fades from your retinas, you do not feel like you have your eyes closed. You feel like you have lost the ability to see and even to remember what seeing was like.

There is no question that those moments in the cave were scary. I’m pretty sure I would have been lost to absolute terror if I wasn’t old enough to know that I wasn’t alone and that the lights would come on soon, old enough to have that knowing be a comfort to me. My younger brothers were not so lucky, but they were safely held in my parents’ arms. So, their crying didn’t start immediately, and it never took on the panicked tone of an abandoned child. And, even with the sure knowledge that the world was not actually gone, the feel of the stone under my feet, and the sounds of rustling and whispered conversations around me, I still felt lost and alone – isolated in the darkness with no sense of where I should or could go for help.

I was forcibly reminded of that childhood brush with terror last year when I heard the news that 33 Chilean miners had survived the Copiopo mine cave-in. The men, it seemed, were in reasonably good health and were gathered together in a survival pod some 2,300 feet underground. The news anchors assured us that the men had food and light and would probably be able to survive until rescuers got to them. But they also said that it would be at least two months until an exit shaft would reach them. The thought of that actually kept me awake that night and images of being trapped in the darkness haunted my dreams.

Over the course of the next sixty-some days, we got regular updates on the situation. Exploratory shafts made it down to the emergency shelter. Food and water were lowered down. A telephone line was put in so that the men could talk with their families. Movie equipment and books were sent in to fight cabin fever. And, as the rescue shaft approached completion, several sessions on media management and public relations sought to help the men prepare for their reentry into society and instant fame.

As a result of those sessions, there has not been a deluge of story-telling or competing interview tours as different miners vied for the spot light. There were a few sensational stories in the news in the first flush of excitement, and a few miners gave rather cursory interviews. By and large, though, the story has been saved for the “official” account that will be published on behalf of the whole group sometime in the next couple of years. But there was one rather extensive and unique conversation that I remember. I haven’t been able to find a record of it. So, I’ll have to share what I remember with apologies to all.

It was one of the older miners who, I think, had lost a son in an earlier accident at the mine. When he was asked about his memory of the cave-in, he responded by telling his story:
‘When I was down there in the dark and everything was shaking all around me, I took shelter under the nearest archway and waited there for the mountain to fall on me. Rocks started to fall around me, and the lights went out. When it stopped and I was still alive, I called out to see if anyone else was there, and nobody answered me. After a while I stopped yelling because I knew I was alone. That was the most afraid that I have ever been until now.
At first, I sat there … I just sat there. I was so scared that I wasn’t even thinking about anything. But then I began to feel around me to see how much space there was, and I started groping my way through the darkness in the direction I thought would take me back out. And as I began to move, I got less scared. I thought, “I must have survived for a reason,” and I had a sense of peace then because I knew I would see my family again. It was the closest I have ever been to God when I was down there in the darkness.’

Darkness has a way of doing that, of opening us up to sense the presence of God with us. We are such visual creatures, so attuned and accustomed to sorting and interacting with our world through what we see, that when we can’t see, we find ourselves lost, confused, afraid. First, we sit. Then we begin, slowly, to reach out with our other senses in the hope of finding something we know … something that comforts us – be it the touch of a loved one, or if we are alone, the hand of God reaching out to enfold our own groping fingers.

There are times, though, when the comforting presence of other people can actually blind us to the darkness around us and we wander about lost without knowing it. Sometimes it seems like most of the suffering in the world comes from those blind wanderings. Millions die of hunger and malnutrition that could be prevented if we woke up to the greed that clouds our vision. More suffer from diseases that could easily be cured if we focused our vision on the right path. Still others live with violence because we are lost in the illusion that our self-interests are not linked to the wellbeing of others. Every once in a while, we wake up to these realities and have the chance to take a new path, one that may lead us out of the darkness.

September 11th, 2001 was one such moment – a time when the whole world stopped and looked up to find that the way we had been doing things wasn’t working. For about a week, there were many voices calling for a change – many people groping for a new path that might lead us to a world with less violence, less hatred, less suffering. But it was not to be. Fear and anger stormed in to shroud our vision once more, and we have had ten years of violent conflict which started as a hunt for one man and has grown into a global war.

Osama bin Laden was killed on May 1st and yet the violence seems to be far from over. The War on Terror will never be over because violent force relies on the power of terror itself to succeed, and we end up in the same situation though we may be on the other side of the equation. As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it his book, Strength to Love, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,” Despite his words of wisdom and hope, despite the infinite possibilities for creative new ideas provided by a global community, it seems that we are still lost in the same darkness he tried to dispel nearly 50 years ago.

There are other kinds of darkness, too. Times when we wander into our very own caves and find that our feet have lost the path back to light and laughter, warmth and friendship. Grief, depression, addiction, or illness … all of them can steal into our lives and drive us deep into those unknowable places where we feel isolated and alone no matter how many people there happen to be around us. They take us to a place that is “The opposite of human vitality,” a place where we feel “ripped from what felt like [our lives.]” And we are “cast into the darkness.”

In those times, the words of Paul spoke to encourage the Athenians seem anything but a comfort. “From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live so that they would search for God and grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

To someone who find themselves feeling lost and alone in darkness, looking for someone or something to hold on to, there is no consolation the assurance that it is all part of some grand plan. There is little sense of relief in words that proclaim that God has put us exactly where we are and intends us to experience the pain we are feeling so that we will turn to seek him, groping through our suffering despair toward the port of our last resort. What little hope we may feel comes only from the hope that when we reach out toward God we will find that “he is not far from … us.” But that little hope and the truth it grows from are greater, truer, and more certain than we may think.

Back in that cave of my childhood, back in the bowels of the earth surrounded by the unknown, the thing that kept me quiet and calm toward the end had nothing to do with reason or courage. I reached out. When I could no longer stand it on my own, I reached out, groping with my hand toward the last place I had seen my father. And I found him there, not far from me. And as he took my hand in his and I sidled up to him, I was no longer alone or afraid. I felt safe and secure.

That’s the promise that God gives us – he will always be there. “[He] will not leave us orphaned, [but] will come to [us].” When we find ourselves lost and searching, whether it be all of us together or any one of us alone, Christ will come to us so that we can know without doubt that our lives are held in the hands of one who cares deeply for us, one who has promised us that he is not just near us, but within us … always … just as we live always within his love.

Comfort … grace … relief ... hope … is there just waiting for us. Whenever we wake up in the deep, lightless darkness and find ourselves groping for any little thing that will bring us back to ourselves,
back to light,
back to warmth we will find God there …
not far from us …
waiting to take our hands
and comfort us
and lead us into life.

Riddle Me This ....

2011-05-15T12:01:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 10:1-18 Acts 2:42-47 Psalm 23

“Riddle me this: what is it that is always coming, but never arrives?! … Tomorrow. For when it arrives, it is today.” That’s the earliest line that I remember from a television show. It’s the Riddler speaking to his henchmen in an episode of Batman that aired in 1978 when I was five years old, and it began my childhood fascination with riddles.

“What is black and white and red all over?” A newspaper … or a sunburned penguin.
“What belongs to you but is most used by others?” Your name.
“What can run but never walks,
has a mouth but never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
has a head but never weeps?” A river.

And my mother’s favorite: “What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?” …
Any idea? ….
A towel.

Riddles like these challenge the wits of young and old alike, and the harder ones have been fodder for legends and myths throughout history. Remember the riddle of the Sphinx that guarded Thebes:
“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

Or for those who weren’t forced to study Greek mythology in Jr. High, the riddle of the Sphinx blocking Harry Potter’s path to the Tri-Wizard cup:
First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.

Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?

And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.

Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?

The first answer is: a human. We crawl as babies, walk upright as adults, and use canes as we grow old. The second, a spider, is made up of three other answers: a spy, the letter “d,” and the sound, “eeerrr.”

It’s fun, isn’t it, teasing out the clues in the text to solve the riddles. At least it’s fun when we aren’t facing the Sphinx ourselves. It feels different when we think about the riddles that affect our lives yet remain a mystery despite our best efforts to unravel them. How is it, for example, that US special forces were able to get into Pakistan, carry out pitched battle near the capital, and then leave with captives in tow all without being detected by the nearby military base? (Or to put it in a more traditional form - riddle me this: when is a secret raid not a secret?) (pause) Or how is it that the United States continues to have 50 million people going hungry while we throw away 31 million tons of perfectly good food each year?

Those riddles can take us deep into feelings of fear and uncertainty, shame and guilt and compassion. If governments (ours included) are willing to actively deceive their people in order accomplish their own purposes, how can we trust anything they say or put our faith in their promises? How can we feel good about ourselves when we waste enough food to feed much of the world - not to mention the exorbitant amounts we eat?

Still, whether they are just for fun or they are truly troubling, riddles fascinate us? There’s just something about the mystery that lives at the core of their mis-directions that intrigues and engages us. It’s almost as if we are being compelled to wrestle with them.

Jesus knew that about people. That’s one reason he taught in parables – in riddles that beg to be explored. And today’s lesson is a perfect example … one that gives us hope in the midst of our struggles with the disturbing enigmas of our time. Riddle me this, he said, when is a gate not a gate? When it is a devoted shepherd.

Shepherds at the time brought the flocks into a common, guarded enclosure for the night on a typical day. But sometimes they had to go far afield to find enough food for their sheep, and they were forced to camp out in the wilderness. It was a common enough situation that shepherds built rock enclosures out in the countryside so that anyone caught out after dark would have a relatively safe place to put their flock for the night.

Those paddocks were nothing fancy. They didn’t even have gates. But they afforded some protection from predators and poachers, and they kept the animals from wandering off as long as the entrance was closed off. So, many shepherds would herd the sheep into the pen and then lie down in the gap, making themselves the gate and providing protection.

In a very real way, this represented a willingness of a good shepherd not only to lead his flock to food and water but even to risk his or her life for the safety of the sheep they tended. In the same way, Jesus said, he was not only the one who guided those who followed him to all that they needed for abundant life, he was the one who would lay down his life to save theirs.

It’s a comforting image – this metaphor of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and it’s not surprising that it’s a favorite among Christians everywhere – even where we no longer have shepherds in our midst. If Christ is our shepherd, than we need not worry about much. We listen to his voice, follow where he leads us, and we have all of our deepest needs met. We find ourselves in tranquil meadows filled with food, and we lay down to rest in safety beside the waters of life. Even when we walk in threatening shadows or stand in the presence of those who would do us harm, we have no cause for fear because there is someone who stands between us and them – who lay himself down in the gap for our protection.

It’s a wonderful way to portray the love of a caring God, and it provides immense comfort in a spiritual sense. It probably provided comfort in a more immediate way to those whose illnesses were healed or who received bread and fish on the mountain or who saw the storm’s rage subside, … but it doesn’t always feel so clear cut to us when we are in danger and there is no body to stand between us and the threat. Perhaps that’s why we continue to embrace violence and save our wealth against some unforeseen need.

So, what do we do – what should we do when we stand in need or when we see someone else lacking basic human needs? How do we bring comfort and a sense of security to those among us who are suffering or grieving or living with threat of violence and death? What are the sheep to do while the shepherd is gone?

The gathering of followers in Jerusalem had one answer in their time and for their situation. Many of them had walked the roads and the countryside with Jesus. Some of them had seen the risen Christ. All of them trusted the power of the Spirit to guide and sustain them through the easy times and in the valleys of the shadow. And they took Jesus’ final commission to Peter literally and metaphorically and continued the work of feeding Christ’s sheep in body and spirit.

They took hold of their own strength and ingenuity and set about meeting the needs of everyone in their community, sharing a common table and gathering daily to worship in the Temple. Each person gave what they had, not out of a legalistic sense of duty but out of a deep desire to care for each other, and in that way, they solved the challenge of Jesus’ physical absence with a riddle of their own: when are sheep no longer sheep? …. When they become the shepherds.

It is true, as Marion Soards says, that “[Acts] presents us with an idealized moment in early Christian history.” Even then it was not a perfect system. There were constantly new needs to be met and resources – both in terms of skills and money – were limited. (Sound a little familiar?) But people shared willingly out of a generous compassion for one another, and their common faith led them “to focus on what they had in common rather than what distinguished them from one another.”

Even though things changed in short order as the community grew and spread and wealthier people began to try and hold something back, the story is clear that the members of that first community accomplished great things. They met the needs of thousands of people and lived together with a level of harmony that brought awe to the whole of Jerusalem.

We are the sheep of the Good Shepherd, and we are called to be more than just sheep. In his last conversation with his followers, Jesus told them that he thought of them as friends - friends that would carry on his work of sharing the good news of the kingdom and of caring for those in need. The early church lived up to that trust admirably in their own way, and we can learn a lot from their example and their experience. We can learn from their faith in the Spirit and from their determination to step up and do some things themselves. It’s not so much the exact model of their life together that can guide us to the place that restores us, body and soul. It’s the way they lived it into reality.

So riddle me this: How do we solve the troubling problems of today? How do we meet the needs of those who desperately need the day to day care of a good and faithful shepherd? …

Or in words that echo down from one of our forbearers: are we our brothers’ keepers?

Look Me in the Eyes

2011-05-08T09:14:00.000-04:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Luke 24:13-35
Easter 3

Who here hasn’t ever wondered about the secret to happiness?
Is it income? Education? Upbringing?
A team of National Geographic researchers recently took on this question.
Where are the happiest people in the world, and how can we be like them?

Basing their research on the three most well respected studies of overall well-being, a group led by Dan Buettner set off to explore what he has called The Blue
Zones,
the places in the world where people live the longest—
and in a follow up study, he went to learn from the people who are considered the happiest.
In his book Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way he highlights four of the world’s happiest areas, Denmark, Singapore, Mexico, and…San Luis Obispo, California.

Now, I have to say…when I hear these four places, it is somewhat shocking to think about them as being overly happy (aside from California, which I guess I would assume is pretty happy).

When I think of Denmark, Singapore, and Mexico I think of, respectively, cold long dark nights, the caning of Michael Fay for vandalism in 1994, and drug cartels and political corruption.

But apparently regardless of weather, corporal punishment, rampant violence and poverty…people still have the ability to be pretty happy. Even be the happiest people on the planet.

The National Geographic team revealed their hypothesis that if we can make permanent changes in six areas of life, we are well on our way to being happier people. Here is a recap of these six areas, taken from a brief report on their findings.

1.Community: Surveys from 146 countries, representing most of the world’s population, show that the top factors promoting happiness are: economic freedom, low unemployment rate, tolerance, and quality of government. That is, the biggest determinant of our personal happiness is where we live.

2. Workplace: Most of us spend more than half our waking hours at work. Having a short commute, a job that engages our talents and a best friend at work are three of the biggest determinants of a happy work-life.

3. Social Life: The happiest Americans report 7-8 hours of social interaction a day–real-face time, not Facebook time. Joining a club that meets just once per month can have an effect on your happiness equivalent to doubling your salary.

4. Financial Life: You don’t have to keep telling people in Brethren and Mennonite congregations that money can’t buy happiness. We know it. Now whether or not we really believe it that’s another story. We need food, shelter, education, mobility and healthcare. But the happiest people, after they attain those things, spend their money on experiences, not material things, and on financial security.

5. Home: Setting up science-backed nudges can subtly lead us to behaviors that favor happiness. Adopting a dog, for example, will dependably lower stress hormones daily. The happiest people only watch a half hour of TV a day, and reducing the number of screens in your home will help you to watch less TV.
And finally

6. [The area of the] Self: People who can articulate their life purpose in one sentence are 20% happier than those who can’t. Taking time to know your values, strengths, talents, passions –and how to share those gifts – can raise your well-being.

These broad categories probably don’t surprise you. We certainly know that if we don’t like our job, if we don’t have a job, if our family relationships are stressed we will be unhappy. But isn’t it interesting how small some of the factors can be. Reduce the number of electronic screens in your house. Adopt a dog. Take time to put your life purpose in one sentence. Join a club.

And in the midst of all of this, as you probably can expect—though it doesn’t have its own category—happiness is part of the food we eat.

So sure, he had suggestions like, you’ll be happier if you eat oatmeal and walnuts for breakfast rather than greasy eggs and bacon. You’ll be happier if incorporate more beans in your diet. A glass of wine--and yes, in moderation-- has heart healthy effects.

But he said something about food that I think is not so familiar to most Americans. It’s not all about what you eat. But it’s about who you eat with. And to take that a bit further, it is also about how you eat when you’re with those people.

Denmark-- that very cold, very dark place-- is considered the happiest country on earth. People interact about seven hours a day. But they don’t get up to schedule seven hours of interaction, this connection is not primarily in meetings, or on Facebook or in Tweets. Rather, it happens around food and the rituals around eating.

Because of the long dark days, many people in Denmark intentionally gather with others, and not just their nuclear family.
A couple times a week—not just Sunday dinner, but two or three times a week—they meet with extended family…neighbors… friends, for a gathering called hougie.

At hougie, they gather around a small table with candlelight, have open-faced sandwiches called smorbrood, a plate of herring, pate, and cheese. There is an interactive nature to this meal as people are gathering, reaching, passing, filling their plates with a little of this and a little of that…

They also have a glass of wine, as you might expect. But the thing about wine at hougie, is that it’s not just a drink. Before they drink they don’t just clink their wine glasses, reflects National Geographic researcher Dan Buettner.

Before they drink, they look each other in the eye through and around the candlelight.
They connect with one another.
They make sure to see one another.
In the long, dark cold days of winter, people have discovered what is necessary to keep them from the abyss of spiritual darkness and coldness.
They look each other in the eye.

Can you look someone in the eye? How about looking someone in the eye in the darkest, coldest times in your life?

I doubt that road leading to and from Emmaus was a highway in the midst of a Blue Zone, even as close as it was to Jerusalem, that spiritually holy city. Happiness would not be the word of the day, and American’s obsession with the “pursuit of it” would certainly be a cultural oddity.

Three days after the crucifixion of Jesus had some people hiding, some people weeping, some people cheering, some people walking…just walking.
It was an especially electric time, you can imagine, with the news that his body had gone missing…some say resurrected.
Probably many, like we heard about Thomas last week, probably many weren’t sure if they could believe the talk, the stories.

But these two, on the road to Emmaus, were telling their own stories.
About the things that happened. About Jesus. And then Jesus sidles up to them, just another traveler on the road--being a bit nosy, really-- asking what they’re talking about.
And they give him the recap—who Jesus was, how he was convicted, how he died, and now,
“moreover” they say, as if it is the icing on the cake,
Moreover, as if all that other stuff wasn’t enough… some women of the group astounded them. Saying they saw angels who said Jesus was alive.
Some from the group went back to see if it was true—if Jesus was dead or alive—but they saw nothing.

Eventually… these two travelers did see him. Recognition. Eyes opened. They were now on the inside of the story. You can imagine the jealously of the others who weren’t so lucky…How did they see him?
Was it that he seemed so interested in their experience?
Was it in the familiar way he told the stories about the prophets and about Moses? Was it the way he lovingly chastised them for being a bit slow on the uptake to believe in what their own texts and stories have told them.
Are these the things that helped them recognize Jesus?
Maybe. Probably.

But apparently, no amount of reminding, or correction, or teaching were enough in and of themselves for recognition
It got their hearts burning, as they said.
But it didn’t get their eyes, or their hearts, seeing.
It was all just an experience that could have been left on the road…

Until they invited him in. Until…they stopped him from passing by.
Until they lit the candles, sat around a small table, broke bread, took wine, looked at each other in the eye and then...they recognize him.
And then…[poof]…he’s gone.

Mennonite pastor Ron Adams speaks to the simplicity of this moment, “A spoken word. A bit of bread. A sip of wine. Our texts insist there is a power here [in these simple things] that draws people to God and reveals the presence of Christ”.
[pause]
A spoken word. A bit of bread. A sip of wine. Looking in the eyes of another.
[pause]

In days like these when we’re lured into false confidence that we are safe because the death of one man—when there are celebrations, parties, couches burning in the streets—we know that we still need more light, more clarity, more of God’s word burning in our hearts.

And maybe we need more breaking of bread together and blessing of wine together. Looking one another in the eye.
And I think we know, deep down, that it’s not just symbolic.
Not just in the taking of communion on Sunday morning or even at Love Feast. Not even with those we see everyday when we wake up, who know us so well.

But with those who are vaguely familiar, but really strangers.
With neighbors who care about our community.
With church family who care about a spiritual journey.

Moreover…it is with the Christ that is hidden in each one of us, ready to be revealed those desperately seeking, but not seeing…as Gunilla Norris implies in her poem called Plenty…

Having shared our bread
We know that we are
No longer hungry. It is enough

That you see me for myself
That I see you for yourself
That we bless what we see

And do not borrow, do not use
One another. This is how we know
We are no longer hungry…

That the world is full of terror, full of beauty
And yet we are not afraid to find solace here.
To be bread for each other. To live.

Open your home, open your heart, sit down, eat together, look one another in the eye.

Granted, we won’t know if we will be any happier or not. I don’t even know how we can quantify that.
But if we try, I bet we will feel a bit more human.
More connected.
More burning knowledge with us and more
...simply more recognition of Christ in the world.

And we will be seen…
And we will see Christ.

Amen.

Believing is Seeing?

2011-05-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 20:19-31 Psalm 16

Well it has finally happened – we have reached the end of candy season. Easter brings the end a six month sugar rush that started way back on October 31st – with an appropriate break for Lent of course – and I can’t say how pleased I am that after a half dozen more chocolate eggs and several gummy candies we will honestly be able to tell our boys that there is no more artificially sweetened, tooth decay causing energy bombs in the house. After a few days of sugar withdrawal, our household will finally be back to normal (if there is such a thing).

But “candy season” – or the Holidays as we usually like to call it – is a nice time of year. Lights and decorations and laughter and gifts do make for a festive mood and, we generally have a lot of fun visiting with friends and relatives and just playing together. It is also a wonderful time for teaching children. They tend to be more open to sitting as we read stories or talk about the meaning of Christmas and Easter when their interest is peaked by the cultural obsessions all around them. The only draw back is that those same obsessions get in the way of what we are trying to teach, and it is not easy to brush them aside to get to the truth hidden under all the hype.

How do you get kids to think about the wonder of the incarnation, the amazing love that it took for Jesus to go to the cross, or the miraculous grace that is proven by the resurrection when Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny are sitting in front of the manger and the open grave? It would be hard enough to deal with those slippery concepts on their own, but when you add the concrete, tangible Santa in the Mall it seems like an impossible challenge. Add to that the instant gratification of gifts, stockings, and plastic eggs filled with candy, and it is nigh unto impossible to convince kids that Easter and Christmas are really about an otherworldly, selfless God coming to meet us where we are and not about the fulfillment of very concrete, self-centered pleasure.

But that struggle is nothing new to Christianity, and if you look farther back into the history of Judaism, you find it there as well. It has always been a struggle to convince people of the existence and the power of a God that cannot be seen and whose gifts do not come wrapped in aluminum foil or fancy paper with a bow. It was - and is - much easier for people to believe in a deity whose face was presented to them in stone … easier to understand a god who gave you an oracle or healing or whatever else you wanted (or thought you wanted) as long as you went through the proper steps to gain his or her favor. It seems to be an integral part of human nature to want proof … to trust only what our senses can present to us as true. “Seeing IS believing” after all … Right?

That’s the question that is at the heart of what has become one of our family’s favorite holiday films, “The Polar Express.” In that movie a boy of 8 years old struggles with his belief in Santa Claus. At first he finds his suspicions confirmed as he pretends to sleep and overhears his parents sneaking about the house to fill stockings and put presents under the tree, but after he falls asleep, the boy – you know we never learn his name … maybe that’s so that we can all see ourselves in him. Anyway, the boy wakes up to find a mystical train running through his front yard. He gets on board, and after several adventures he finds himself in the town square of North Pole City as Santa comes out to start his deliveries.

As he stands there, waiting for definitive proof that Santa exists, he finds that he can’t see because of the crowd of elves thronging the plaza. Even more puzzling, he can’t seem to hear the sound of the sleigh bells on the reindeer harnesses. One of those bells falls off and rolls to his feet where he picks it up and, shaking it by his ear, confirms that it makes no sound – at least not that he can hear.

At this point, I should give you all a spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen “The Polar Express,” and you want to experience the ending un-spoiled, put your fingers in your ears for the next minute or so.

(wait)

As the boy stands there (and we stand there with him), he remembers what the conductor on the train told him: “Seems to me you’ve got it backwards…. Believing is seeing.” He closes his eyes and repeats to himself over and over, “I believe. I believe. I believe,” as he continues to shake the bell. Finally, the sound of the bell ringing comes to him, drowning out everything else, and when he opens his eyes in wonder, he sees the reflection of Santa peering over his shoulder. The whole experience, it seems, was just what he needed to find his way to belief even without having seen.

(fingers out of ears gesture)

John, too, knew the value of vicarious experience. Faced with a new generation of people who never had the chance to meet Jesus, hear him teaching, or experience the power of his presence, he wrote a gospel unlike those written by the other evangelists. As Gail O’Day says in her commentary, his purpose was not really about informing people about the life of Jesus, though the facts are important. It was to tell a story … a really good story that drew the readers in so that they stood next to Mary at the entrance to the tomb, gathered in fear with the disciples in the locked room, and demanded, with Thomas, additional proof of the resurrection. He gave them … and us … exactly what we need to believe even without seeing.

And what does he want us to understand – to see through the power of the experience? It is more than just the fact that Jesus died or rose from the tomb. Those realities are just signs. The resurrection stories, as powerful and amazing as they are, are just markers pointing the direction to something even more profound. “The empty tomb [reveals that] Jesus’ victory over death and the ruler of this world [is absolute…. The appearance to Mary points to] Jesus’ continuing presence as the good shepherd, [caring for his sheep as their journey continues.] Jesus’ [first] appearance to the disciples points to the gift of the Spirit and the truth of [the promises he made in the upper room.] [And, when Jesus appears, providing Thomas with all that he asks,] Thomas saw through the physical miracle [and recognizes the deeper truth to which it points:] the full revelation of God in Jesus.”

In Thomas’ declaration, “My Lord and my God,” we hear the most profound affirmation of Jesus’ relationship with God that can be found in any of the gospels. And, brought to that room by John’s narrative, we experience the moment for ourselves. Standing there in front of the risen Christ, gazing at the wounds through Thomas’ eyes and feeling his wonder at the way Jesus offered himself up to meet our need for proof, we are summoned to believe not only in the resurrection but in all that it means: that Jesus is one with God, that all of Jesus promises to us were true, and that the Spirit Advocate has come to live with us.

What a gift that is. What a challenge. A blessing that is full of power, hope, forgiveness … and purpose, for the Spirit summons us … compels us to more than simply reveling in its presence. We understand that already … somewhere deep in our beings. Jesus told the disciples that he was sending them … sending us … as God had sent him – to forgive or retain sin, and he gave us the Spirit to empower that mission. Unfortunately, we have come to understand that through the lens of the Reformation and an understanding of sin as a moral or behavioral misstep that has led to a lot of grief and abuse at the hands of the church.

The way John uses “sin” here is much different. This sin is a blindness of sorts, an inability or unwillingness to see the revelation of God in Jesus. “When Jesus commissions the [community of his followers] to continue [his work, he means that we are to make] God in Jesus known in the world.” That’s the purpose of the Spirit - to guide, direct, and empower the work of making the graceful presence of God at work in the world through Christ, revealing the truth of what it means to be children of God living in God’s world.

What that looks like we can’t know, can’t see except as we watch for it. The call unfolds before us moment by moment. We believe and we watch. And our eyes are open to see the moments when we can become the voice and touch of the Spirit drawing others to the path of Life.

We have received everything we need – will be given everything we need – not only to believe but to fulfill our purpose: a story to guide us, the Spirit breathed out to encourage and empower, and the peace of Christ to make us fearless. This is the true gift of the holidays, sweeter than all the candy and more fulfilling than anything you might find under the tree. Jesus meets us in the midst of our fear and our doubt, offers himself as the path of new life, and passes on the joyous task of sharing the good news with the world.

Meeting the Risen Lord?

2011-04-25T14:55:00.000-04:00

Easter homily
by Carrie Eikler
John 10:1-18

Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. You don’t have to be a classical music buff to know it [pianist plays first eight notes "buh buh buh BUH. buh buh buh BUH!].

Even if you couldn’t put the name of the piece with those first notes, most of us recognize it. While Alistair and I were puttering around the house on Monday,
wishing it wasn’t raining outside so we could be doing things in the garden,
the radio program we were listening to was about to play Beethoven’s 5th..

The announcer gave this prelude:
“Those opening four notes. They're so familiar that they're almost a cliché.
How many times have we heard them and thought, oh, that again?
We've heard it so many times before.” (Peformance Today, NPR)
But he promised that we were about ready to hear a performance like none other by the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Paarvo Jarvi.

[pause]
And I had to wonder, would I really notice the difference?
I mean, I’m familiar with your basic classical music,
I could name Beethoven’s 5th if I heard those first four notes,
but unless they played it on the kazoo… I doubt I would be able to really tell the difference.

Not that I would say it would be a cliché.
But it probably wouldn’t move me terribly.
I might think “Oh, that again, that’s nice” and go on puttering with my rainy day.

[pause]
Mary went to the tomb on that first day of the week.
If it was raining, it didn't keep her away.
Nor did the dark
We don’t know exactly why she went
but in the Easter story told in both Luke and in Mark said the women were going to take spices to the grave.
They were going to do funeral rites.
Perhaps they were eager to finally be close to the body,
to help Jesus, even in death.
To tend to him, to simply do what needed to be done,
maybe it was routine but at least they could do something
…which was more than they could do for Jesus in his hour of need the day before.

Maybe Mary was going to do these things. Maybe she was simply going to weep.
This…this is what you did for the dead.
She probably did it other times before with others who have died,
at least witnessed other women doing it since she was a girl.
It was probably a familiar routine.
Perhaps, a bit… cliché… just the motions one went through.

But she could have also gone for another reason.
... Because his death was anything but cliché.
It’s not that it was uncommon. People were crucified. Capital punishment happened in the public eye.
But she really believed him to be the Messiah, and that sort of death for the Messiah…?
This was someone who had seen her.
Who affirmed her.
Who let her love him and experience love from him that was not just about the body,
but about the spirit.

So I wonder if she went with just a little bit of curiosity.
After all, didn’t he say that he would rise again?
He brought other people to life: the centurion’s daughter, Lazarus.
They were dead, and they lived.

Even if she suspected something might not be routine with Jesus’ death, she still was amazed he wasn’t there. She seems a bit flabbergasted, doesn’t she?
(quickly speaking)
She looked where he should have been
and then looked all around her
and [sigh] wasn’t it just like the men to run and hide leaving her to deal with
the crisis
and what are those angels doing there?
and who is this guy who is asking such ridiculous questions? and why does she have such a strange feeling about him,
(gasp) it’s probably because he stole Jesus!!! and…
…this is no routine sequence of events.

Because then the dead… calls her name. [pause] Mary.

And she has met the Risen Lord.

And 2,000 years later, the church, on this day like no other, asks that question.
Have you met the Risen Lord?
And I have to say, that question, like many other questions Christians often ask each other, starts to sound...
... a bit like Beethoven’s 5th.
A bit, cliché. Something overused. Even to me.
Because I don’t know what we mean by it.
I’ve heard it so many times that I can’t see through the popular worn out answers.

Obviously, we know we’re not talking about the physical, flesh and bone Jesus.
This is where most Christians are happy to throw around metaphors,
even for Christians who don’t think they like metaphors…
What do we mean we’ve seen the Risen Lord?
Our mind quickly tries to answer the question with more obvious questions…
Where have we seen something powerful that we believe God is behind it?
When have we had an experience that made us feel good, and loved, and saved?

But, as much as I love metaphors, I can’t quite then sift my way through the metaphor into the stuff of real life.

So I’m not going to ask you this morning the typical Easter question:
have you seen the risen Lord?
Because I think I would get a lot of blank stares, even from myself.
Something that was so radical, and political, and spiritual sadly, doesn’t reach us anymore.

And I wonder if it is because we are looking for our answers about Jesus in all the familiar places.

It’s easy to say we see God in people who have helped us along the way. And that’s true. I’m sure the Risen Lord is there.
We search for the places in our lives where that positive experience points us to the fact that Jesus rose—
when things go our way,
when circumstances work out for the best,
when the heart of Jesus message of compassion and peace and mercy are lived out.
It’s easy to see the Risen Lord then.

But what about the harder places.
Those places, where Jesus was also very present. in his life. In his life after death.
What about when we see a father weep for his son killed by artillery fire?
A woman suffering from sexual abuse.
What about when the powers that be, begin to consume us, crucifying us with
job loss, increase of food prices, and endless warfare.

I’d have to say the Risen Lord is there but not like we’d expect.
Not making things easy for us or giving us easy answers.
And, yet, in these hard moments, we meet him.
...unsuspecting
...a bit flaggergasted.
...proably still wondering "where is Jesus?!"
even though he is right in front of us.

The French composer Hector Berlioz took a friend to hear Beethoven’s 5th symphony in Paris.
At first a bit skeptical about this crazy new music by Beethoven, Berlioz’s friend had to leave the music hall during the performance.
Berlioz found him pacing madly outside muttering to himself , saying
“Let me get out, I must have some air. It’s amazing. I was so upset, so moved, so disturbed I came out to put on my hat and I couldn’t find my head.”

When we meet the risen Lord, I think it has been, is, will be like this.
We won’t see the empty tomb,
or the dirt under the nails of the man we think is the gardener,
or even hear our names clearly spoken.
I think when we meet the Risen Lord we’ll be so upset,
so moved,
so disturbed
that we won’t be able to find our heads.

When you meet the risen Lord, choose the living over the dead.
the next encounter over the familiar cliche,
Choose the freeing rather than the clinging....
each and every time he calls your name.

Questions, Questions, Questions

2011-04-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

Three meditations by Torin Eikler
Matthew 21:1-11 Matthew 26:69-75 John 18:33-38

Matthew 21:1-11 “Who is this Man?”
The story we are celebrating today – what we have come to call Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem – was a strange episode by any standards. Today we would find such a scene laughable, but even in ancient Israel I don’t think it would have been the norm. Here was a man riding into town astride both a donkey and a colt with no banner flapping and no guard of honor, and he received a hero’s welcome – the fore-runner perhaps of more recent ticker-tape parades. It was the sort of treatment reserved for war heroes or reluctantly given to the very important people of the occupying empire. And that, of course, is why it upset the Jewish authorities and why we call it the triumphal entry.

But what a scene to witness…. Imagine coming down the street to find a crowd of half-dressed people lining a dusty road on covered with the rest of their clothes with some branches from nearby trees thrown in for good measure. They’re shouting, chanting “Hosanna, [Praise] to the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” And when you look to see what all the fuss is about, to see who it is that deserves such praise as to verge on worship, you discover not a prince or a general but a ragtag bunch of men and women in dirty clothes led by a person who seems no different from anyone else. You wonder out loud, “who is this man?” Someone nearby tells you, “This is the prophet Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee.”

That is an answer to the question. I think it’s likely that some of them would recognize the name and would have heard the stories about him. Maybe they joined in once they realized who that was riding the colt. But most of the people who were up on the gossip of the day and were cheering for Jesus would have gotten the word ahead of time, I think. They were the ones who made up the crowds on the street. It was the rest of the city, the people who were thrown into turmoil by the spectacle of his entrance that were asking the question, and I think they meant it along the lines of, “What is so special about this man? Why is he receiving such adoration?” And the answer they got was not the answer they were looking for. “Yeah, … so he’s Jesus of Nazareth … So what?”

Now there’s a question that transcends time and culture, a question that theologians and apologists have been struggling to answer for century in defense of Christianity, a question that faces each of us if and when someone asks us what we believe. We believe in Jesus the Christ …. So what? Who is this Jesus Christ you worship? Who is this man whose life … and death you celebrate, whose example you ponder, whose teachings you seek to follow?
Maybe you’ve never been in that position. Maybe no one has ever challenged your faith or asked you to defend what you believe. I suppose that’s both a good and a sad thing – good if it’s because so many people have discovered their own truth about Christ … sad because facing those questions is a very effective way to explore our faith and what it means to us.

What would you say if you were in the crowd? What would your answer be if someone you knew asked you the same question? Who is this man to whom we shout hosanna … this rabbi and prophet from Nazareth … this Jesus Christ?

Matthew 26:69-75 “Do you know him?”
I’ve often thought that Peter gets a bit of a bad rap in the gospels. More than once, he is the one who speaks for the disciples, voicing the opinion or viewpoint they all share and sharing the answers that none of the others is willing to put out there, and so he becomes the butt of many of the lessons Jesus teaches them. Sometimes, like when he names Jesus the Messiah, the son of most high God, he gets things spectacularly right. Other times, he is way off base. On this night, we see him living up to our lowest expectations.

Standing there beside the fire he denies Jesus not once but three times. He stands there in the warm darkness … stands by and watches as his rabbi and friend is taken away by his enemies. He leaves Jesus to face brutality and trial cold and alone.

What made him do it? Why didn’t he acknowledge the one he had chosen to follow? He was afraid – afraid of discovery … afraid of what would happen if he too were arrested. Who wouldn’t be … standing in the bastion of power of those who had so easily arrested a man with powers he couldn’t aspire to. If they arrested Jesus what would they do to him, to the man who had cut off one of their ears?

Of course he was afraid, … but I wonder if there wasn’t something else that moved him to that vigil because Peter was a brave and faithful man too. Who else had named the messiah, the son of the most high God? Who else followed the soldiers to the courtyard that night? Who else had picked up a sword to defend Jesus against a whole squad of professional soldiers?

And so I wonder if Peter denied Jesus as much out of hope and faith as out of fear. How many other times had Jesus been in a tight spot only to find some way to confound his would-be accusers and win his freedom? Who, if not the man who had stilled a storm … who had broken even the hold of death … who else had the power to break the hold of any chains that bound him and walk away untouched?

I think, maybe, Peter was waiting so that someone would be there to greet Jesus once he had won his freedom. I think, maybe, he believed that worked his customary “magic” and his ministry would continue – more shining and triumphant than ever. And so he waited in that fearful place in the hope of a dawn that was not to be, buying time by denying Jesus and leaving only when he realized that he had fulfilled a prophesy that he had also denied – that he had done the one thing he thought he never would.

Why is it, then, that we judge him so harshly and with so much pity? I think it’s because we see ourselves in him. We, too, would be the ones to see the divinity in Christ. We, too, would drop everything to follow his lead. We would be the ones with the courage to run along behind the soldiers not knowing what would happen, but hoping that something or someone – maybe us – would change the plot. And, we, too, would stand there watching, waiting, denying, and running.

None of us are martyrs after all, though we may sometimes feel like it. None of us have ever been in Peter’s position. What would we do if it came to that? What would you do if you were faced with the decision to stand with Christ and die or turn away and live?

I don’t think I have it in me to make the stand as much as I wish I could claim that kind of courage and devotion. I think I would choose to live … here and now, and I don’t pretend that I could even do as well as Peter. One time would be enough for me, I think. One question and one denial – “I do not know this man,” and I would be off and running, my sense of guilt and failure growing with each step.

Even though my faith assures me that death is not the end of life, I would turn away.

John 18:33-38 “What is truth?”
“What is truth?” It seems a strange question to be part of a criminal trial. All the rest of the questions Pilote asked were right to the point. “What have you done [to be handed over to me for judgement]?” – the question of a judge trying to understand what’s going on, to figure out if there is really merit for the case being brought. “Are you the king of the Jews?” – anyone claiming that title would be usurping the role of Herod and challenging the authority of the empire. They would be a rabble rouser and could be punished by death. “So you are a king?” – let’s just be sure that we understand the situation before we pass sentence. But “what is truth?” …. That’s a question more fit for philosophical discussion or a church than a court room.

I suppose that Jesus answers were a little less than helpful. He was as evasive and mysterious as ever, which probably got Pilote out of his comfort zone. This was not what he was used to. The man before him was not trying to refute the charges against him. Neither was he some surly criminal or rebel. He was an enigma, a mystery that seemed to make even his accusers uneasy since they had handed him over for sentencing, demanding the death penalty without any evidence but their own dubious claims. Perhaps Pilote’s final question actually got right to the heart of the matter – went straight to the core of what was important … both for the decision he had to make and for the decisions we make every day of our lives.

What is the truth? Plato would have said that truth is an ideal … something we can never know or understand in its fullness, limited as we are by the bodies we inhabit and the world we see around us. That’s an idea that Pilote would have been quite familiar with. But the writer of the gospel of John had a different idea. The good news in this gospel is that Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” or the way to the true life depending on how you read the text.

For the people who cheered at his entrance to Jerusalem, that meant that he was a great prophet, a teacher who had the power to do signs and wonders in the name of God. For Peter and the other followers close to Jesus, that meant that he was the Messiah, the one who had come to bring freedom to the people of Israel. Many people since then have believed that Jesus was God come to earth to reconcile humanity with the Divine. And there are many more ways to understand who Jesus was and is, but none of them holds all the answers because Plato was right. We only see the truth dimly while we are here.

But it is important to ponder the truth that we do see. The truth, or rather, what we believe is the truth about the man Jesus who we call Christ and Lord?” is the central question we face in the life of faith, and the answer shapes how we live as we seek to join our faith and our daily living as seamlessly as possible.

Do you believe that Jesus was a great teacher or that he was the Messiah? Do you believe that he is the Christ, the Son of God who came to bring salvation to all humanity?

What do you believe?

What is truth … for you?

Fashioning New Life

2011-04-10T15:02:00.004-04:00

Sermon by Carrie Eikler
John 11:1-45, Ezekiel 37:1-14
Lent 5

[on the worship center, 29 stones are lined up, marking the 29 miners killed in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion]

Gary Quarles kneels on his living room carpet and unrolls the 4-foot-long map that he's studied so many times,
trying to understand why his son died in the Upper Big Branch mine…
On the map he sees where his 33-year-old son Gary Wayne Quarles was working with crewmates Grover Skeens and Joel Price, and their supervisor, Rick Lane.
They are identified on paper as Victims 9-12.
And they're not where they were supposed to be.

They were, Gary Quarles believes, running for their lives, trying to escape after something went wrong near the end of their 10 1/2-hour shift.

Gary Wayne was [Gary, Sr’s] best friend and his only child, conceived when Gary's wife, Patty, was just 15.

"He made us grow up really fast, and he turned us into who we are," she says.

Patty, a homemaker, still keeps an immaculate house. But she's just going through the motions.

She rocks slightly in a recliner, dark hair still wet from a shower she didn't bother getting until midafternoon,
and describes her life now: "You go to bed and you get up and you go back to bed."

Gary nods. He recalls the day a relative told him to pull himself together, to get out and have a little fun.
"There's no fun to be done now," he says, eyes filling with tears.
"It's like the life been sucked right out of me." [i]

This week the valley of dried bones are laid aside the mountains of Montcoal, WV where 29 miners lost their lives in an explosion one year ago.
Since I was reflecting on Ezekiel’s story of dry bones this week,
I experienced a certain chill added to the sadness:
29 white crosses with miner’s helmets balanced a loft, their lights beaming through the darkness.
Straight white crosses. Bone-like.

I wanted to see them fashioning themselves, clacking together, somehow causing a resurrection.

And what’s clear is that, like any tragedy, any death,
it is not just the dead who have been affected.
It is a transformation for those who remain, who loved them, who bore them and raised them.
They have the hard duty of living in the midst of death.
People going through the motions, having the life sucked out of them by grief and absence.

Living in a Martha-like agony
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
These are the painful, raw, words of Martha.
Martha, who did something.
Who ran out to meet Jesus in the dark of night while her sister Mary stayed home. Martha, who earlier, Jesus seems to have chastised for doing too much,
while favoring Mary’s quiet stillness.

Now, she does just the right thing.
She leaves Mary at home, and in Martha’s grief, her anger—
perhaps a bit of the righteous anger we saw when Mary didn’t help her host Jesus, she runs to Jesus, puts him to the test, asks him where he was.
He doesn’t rebuke her this time.
This time, he says ‘I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die will live” and Lazarus lives.

Thank God for Martha. We don’t often hear that, do we?

In the field of dry bones, the LORD asks Ezekiel a question.
A simple one. Perhaps rhetorical.
“Mortal, can this bones live?”
And can’t you almost hear the exasperation in Ezekiel’s voice:
“O Lord God, you know.”
And then it comes. Dem bones scene.
Clickity-clack, it’s almost humorous as we think of the ankle bone connecting to the leg bones.
But it’s not humorous. It’s horrific.

And if we take it on its own, like we often do, without regarding the rest of Ezekiel’s story, we don’t quite get the significance of it all.
We may be tempted to see it as merely a metaphor, a lesson.
It can seem a-- nice prelude to the Easter story which is only two weeks away.

David Garber reflects on this tendency to cut the dry bones story out of the rest of Ezekiel’s story.

He says, “Because we so often do not read the rest of the book leading up to this grand scene, we have a myopic view of the prophet's own desperation and the plight of the community to which this story attempts to give hope. We forget that Ezekiel himself was taken into exile…. that he heard reports of his religious institution being corrupted and that his status had been reduced from a prominent position as a future priest in Jerusalem to that of a temple-less priest in exile.
We forget the death of his wife and God's command for him not to mourn her as an example for the exilic community not to mourn the loss of the Temple (24:16-24).”

“More importantly,” he continues, “we forget the historical trauma that accompanied this exile. We forget that the Babylonians tortured the inhabitants of Jerusalem with siege warfare that lasted almost two years, leading to famine, disease, and despair (2 Kings 25:3).

We forget how they destroyed the city of Jerusalem, razed the temple to the ground, killed many of its inhabitants, and forced the rest to migrate to Babylon. Over and over again, in the texts we refuse to read from the book of Ezekiel, the prophet offers imagery that testifies to the multiple traumas that the community faced under the realities of ancient Near Eastern warfare.”[ii]

The reality of death.
So often we focus on the death, don’t we, and not the realities that cause death.

Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggeman talks about Ezeikiel, and I would say, the Lazarus story too, as texts that do not accept the reality as the final outcome.
The death is what is real. But it is not all there is.

It’s a great message of hope for people of faith.
It’s a wonderful concept for people moving through loss.
But how helpful it is, I wonder, for people in the throes of grief.
If you have ever grieved the death of a loved one, have these sorts of stories been helpful to you? Stories of bodily resurrection?

And as I gazed on a photo of a woman bending down at a loved one’s graveside in Raleigh county,
with the ravaged hills behind her,
I struggle to think how can we tell her—that there ARE stories of hope.
but...
His bones won’t be gathered up.
Jesus won’t be coming to raise his body.
[pause]
But I don’t know if that is what Ezekiel is saying. I don’t even know if that is what the Lazarus story is conveying.
And here is where we have to understand the Bible as stories not just of historical truth, but emotional ones.

Maybe the hope in this story for today doesn’t rest in the gathering up of the that miner’s bones,
but the gathering up of the one who bends over him in grief.
Maybe the hope in this story is in giving the slow steady breath of the spirit to Patty and Gary Quarles, who mourn the death of their son.

And as Garber said about Ezekiel, we forget what led us to this.
We forget the history of coal companies in West Virginia.
We forget about the struggle miners have in demanding establishing safe working conditions.
We forget that the tragedies we deplore are sadly, are connected to the luxuries we believe we cannot live without.

On Tuesday, when the memorials were taking place for the miners,
when politicians were saying these men did not die in vain and that things must change,
I admit, I felt something other than sadness.
I felt exhaustion. I felt cynicism.
I felt a bit of what has been coined “compassion fatigue.”

It was as if, the tragedy of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster held my compassion captive for the day
and then Wednesday came and it was Japan that called for my compassion because there was another earthquake.
And then when I turn on the radio on Thursday it was federal employees like my friend Barbara who may lose their jobs because of the threat of government shutdown.
And on Friday was for the eleven school children in Brazil who were part of mass school shooting.
And Saturday, oh right. Libya. My goodness-Libya.

Some may say we should just stop feeling connected to the world.
Others may say, just turn off your radio.
And I don’t know what to say back. It just feels wrong to me to think that way and yet,
All these valleys and mountains and plains of dry bones
and we don’t even need a dream where the Lord takes us there.
Just go on the internet, turn on the tv, open the paper and have your choice.
And that’ doesn’t even include the places in my own immediate life that pull at my grief,
my loved ones I feel desperately for, fear for…

And then things stop shocking me.
The horror of death becomes a simple song, like Ezekiel and dem bones
Our compassion is dried up.
We see, but we can’t quite feel anymore because what does all that feeling really do, anyway?
How are we to be responsive and help God breathe in the spirit when we know of all the pain and death around us?
And it wasn’t just a solo act by God, was it?
God used Ezekiel. Martha was an integral part of the raising of her brother.
We are called to help give hope and life, breathing in the spirit.

And yet, when we can’t think of how to breathe,
or if we don’t have enough breath to breathe in all the places of pain and death in the world, which really, none of us does,
God works in spite of our fatigue and cynicism.
It’s not too big for life to find its way.
As Paul Bellan-Boyer says, “God’s work does not stop when human beings have done their worst.”[iii]

[pause]

When we are too dry to go on, God’s breath will come.
And I don’t know how.
I can’t dissect it, or lay out the logical and systematic way it will happen.
I can just feel it.
In my bones. In my dried up, clicky-clackity bones.

[following the sermon we enter into silence/Waiting Worship, while the old coal miner's song "Dark as a Dungeon, sung by Kathy Mattea, is played. These are the words...

Oh come all you young fellers so young and so fine
Seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine
It'll form as a habit and seep in your soul
Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal

Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine

Well it's many a man that I've seen in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine

Where it's dark as a dungeon ....

And pray when I'm dead and my ages shall roll
That my body would blacken and turn into coal
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home
and pity the miner digging my bones

Where it's dark as a dungeon...

--
“Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, A Year Later: Family Can’t Move On” Huffington Post
David Garber, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=4/10/2011
Paul Bellan-Boyer

Blinded by the Light

2011-04-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 9:1-41 Psalm 23

The image of Christ as a shepherd is one that we are all familiar with. Psalm 23 was probably the first scripture some of us memorized – not surprising since it has imagery that is so easy for children to grasp hold of. And the image of a flock of sheep following behind a trusty caretaker continues to provide us reassurance as we our ability to understand the complex metaphors grows along with us. That’s one of the reasons that the Psalm is often read at sick beds and funerals. There is an undeniable sense of peace and comfort that comes with hearing that the Good Shepherd walks with us even through the darkest times of our lives.

Can you imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t have that reassurance? If you lived in a time and place where the common understanding was based on a scripture that claimed that the sins of the parents would be visited upon their children for seven generations? If your child was born blind and the blame for that fell on you? If you had lived in darkness for your whole life?

What would it mean for you to meet the Good Shepherd … the Light of the World? How would you respond to his touch on your life?

That’s the question faced by the characters in the story we just heard read. Jesus has performed an unquestionable miracle. Giving sight to someone blind from birth was much more profound than healing an illness in the worldview of the time – a much more challenging proclamation of otherworldly power. It was unheard of even among the greatest healers of Jewish tradition. In some ways, it was more threatening … or more inspiring than bringing the recently dead back to life.

As you might expect, the Pharisees were troubled by it, and I suppose that might be understandable. Not only did it threaten their authority to have a prophet of such power wondering around teaching and healing with neither their oversight nor their control, it challenged generations of teaching and theology about the nature of sin and punishment. It flew in the face of the doctrine that the priests had worked out from passages in Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and the Mosaic traditions.

They believed that the righteous were blessed and the unrighteous cursed. “There was no death without sin and no suffering without iniquity” (a word that refers to lesser disobedience to the law as opposed to inadvertent “transgressions” or willful “sins”). In their understanding, every person’s suffering was an indication of the measure of their guilt in the eyes of God. In addition to the assumption that punishment could carry on down the generations, it was also thought that a child could sin while in the womb or possibly even in the pre-existent state while the soul waited for a body to fill. So, even those whose suffering began at the moment of birth were suspect.

Jesus healing of the blind man along with the words that accompanied it threw all those teachings into question and put them in a bind. (Delicious isn’t it, how Jesus seems to be able to tie our assumptions in knots at will). If Jesus was right and the man’s blindness was not the result of sins, then his healing miracle was not all that threatening but the doctrine they had believed and taught for hundreds of years was wrong, implying that their entire theological system was flawed. If, on the other hand, the doctrine was correct, then Jesus was a prophet of unparalleled power with authority, even, to forgive sin which would make them somewhat … redundant to say the least.

To give them credit where credit is due, the Pharisees do at least research the situation before coming to their decision. When they hear about the confusion that has been caused by Jesus, they call in the healed man and ask him what happened. He confirms the troubling gossip they have heard, and they call in the parents to be certain that this isn’t all just some chicanery cooked up by a passing snake oil salesman. Once their questions have been answered, they can no longer avoid their quandary. A decision must be made: embrace the new possibilities illuminated by the Light of the World or turn a blind eye to the power and promise.

The blind man, of course, faces a similar choice … at least once he has been given his sight. We might think that it was an easy decision for him, but I wonder about that. None of us have been in his position, but there are stories about people who are given sight or hearing through new medical procedures after a lifetime of living with only four senses. They usually experience quite a difficult struggle. Sometimes the light or sound can cause pain, and they always have a sense of disorientation as they work at assimilating the new input. Essentially they have to relearn just about everything as they come to terms with a new dimension of the world around them.

In addition to the physical changes, the blind man also had to deal with a shift in position and a change in relationships. He was no longer a “sinner,” no longer restricted to the margins of society. He was a fully functioning human being and, in theory, he was allowed and expected to take part in the daily life of all the other “normal” people in his city. In reality, though, he would have had quite a struggle to overcome the habits of a lifetime. His neighbors would not have forgotten the past in the instant it took for his life to change. They questioned if he was really who they thought he was, and I suspect that their ongoing wondering and suspicion would have been hard for him to make friends and build a new social support system. The same thing is true for recovering addicts and reformed outcasts today after all.
On top of all that, he would have had to find a new way to support himself. I can’t help remembering one scene from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” when I think about that struggle. So bear with me …

In that movie, the life of the title character, Brian, seems to be following along in the wake of Jesus for better or worse (usually worse), and upon entering the city gates one day he is approached by a jaunty man who calls out, “Alms … alms for an old ex-leper?” Brian responds, “Did you say ‘ex-leper’?”, and the conversation goes back and forth ….
Ex-Leper: That's right, sir, 16 years behind a veil and proud of it, sir.
Brian: Well, what happened?
Ex-leper: Oh, cured, sir…. bloody miracle, sir. Bless you!
Brian: Who cured you?
Ex-leper: Jesus did, sir. I was hopping along, minding my own business,
all of a sudden, up he comes, cures me! One minute I'm a leper with
a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone…. Bloody do-gooder.
Brian: Well, why don't you go and tell him you want to be a leper
again?
Ex-leper: Uh, I could do that sir, yeah. Yeah, I could do that I suppose.
What I was thinking was I was going to ask him if he could make me a
bit lame in one leg during the middle of the week. You know,
something beggable, but not leprosy, which is a pain in the ass to
be blunt and excuse my French, sir.

The ex-blind man in our story was in a similar situation. He was no longer blind. He could no longer rely on the alms from passersby or support from the synagogue that had been his to expect under the law, and he probably had no marketable skills. That left him – and his parents – with one less source of income to cover their expenses.

With all of the painful struggles coming his way and the added weight of the disapproval and ill-will of the authorities, I would not be surprised if the healed man was less than completely happy – perhaps more than a little frustrated by the new life opening up before him. But, that doesn’t seem to be the case. He embraces fully the promise offered to him, and responds in faith with worship.

And so everything is wrapped up nice and neat with the paradox that the man who was blind sees the truth more clearly than those who have who have always had sight. Right?

But what about the other people in the story? What about the nameless witnesses – the neighbors and friends of the healed man? What about his parents?

We aren’t told anything about the general public other than their amazement at what they have seen. His parents are a different story. We would expect that they were happy for their son … and maybe relieved to have the burden of a blind dependent taken from their shoulders, though they may have understood the struggles lying ahead of their family better than the man himself. Yet their response seems to be more than a little ambivalent. They don’t throw a party to celebrate the miracle. They don’t go dancing in the streets. They don’t follow their son to find Jesus. They are not even willing to say more than a few words of confirmation about their son’s identity when they are asked by the Pharisees.

I wonder why? I wonder what held them back? Was it just concern about what the future would hold? Were they worried about angering the authorities or offending the community? Or was there something deeper at work? Was there some part of them that didn’t really want things to change, that was afraid of what it might mean to accept the truth illuminated by Jesus teachings and the power of his actions? Would they have been happier to live in the shadow of their son’s blindness and the family’s shame than to step into the light healing – of new life brought by some traveling prophet – new life threatening joy in the place of accustomed pain and offering new struggles to replace the old standbys?

A shepherd is not all powerful. He can lead the sheep to still waters and show them the way to green pastures. He can heal their hurts and protect them from danger. But only if they follow him … only if they stay near him … only if they listen and come when they hear him calling.

The Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, God’s Love Made flesh, can restore our souls. He can offer us the bread of life to feed and sustain us. He can lead us to the still waters of peace and lead us through the darkness to infinite joy in the light of God’s love.

Are we willing to follow him though doing so may take us beyond everything we know? Are we strong enough to open ourselves to his healing touch, molding and shaping us to his design even if it bring painful changes? Is our faith strong enough to answer his call and let him fill our spirits or will we turn away, blinded by the Light?

I wonder.

Borne by the Spirit

2011-03-20T12:00:00.001-04:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 3:1-17 Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

I have been thinking about Nicodemus a lot this week. He appears in the gospels three times. First, he comes as a Pharisee under cover of night to ask a question of Jesus. Later he speaks as an advocate for Jesus before the ruling council of the Sanhedrin who wants to condemn him without a trial. And finally, he stands with Joseph of Arimathea preparing Jesus body for burial. That’s quite a journey for anyone to make – moving from a member of the council whose authority Jesus was challenging to an intimately involved follower of Christ.

But, we are at the beginning of the journey, and I have been wondering what possessed Nicodemus to go to Jesus in the first place. I imagine him sitting with other members of the Sanhedrin in the council chambers and talking about Jesus and the new movement he seems to be starting. Back and forth they go, discussing what they’ve heard of his teaching, tossing around traditional teachings and bits of scripture about prophets, and wondering about the sign and miracles that are taking place. It seems that a lot of those present came down on the side of treating him as a false prophet since Nicodemus went to see him secretly. He, at least, was left with some nagging questions, and unfortunately … or maybe fortunately, he never got to ask them. Instead, he was given new teachings and a new question to dwell on: “What does it mean to be born anew?”

Last October found me having a similar discussion in Waynesburg. Four of us got together there for a Theology Talk on the topic of Pneumatology – theology involving the Holy Spirit, and I posed the question of how what it means to have “a personal relationship with Jesus.” The question stems from what just might be a pedantic observation on my part that I won’t bore you with this morning, but it did lead us onto very interesting ground. I learned a lot about more charismatic branches of the Christian family tree in that hour and a half and about the short-hand catch phrases that are used in those circles.

Some of those phrases – like having “a personal relationship with Jesus” - were familiar to me. Others I had heard of but really didn’t understand, and even this soon after our discussion, I can’t remember them let alone tell you what they meant. But, as we four great and learn-éd theologians sat around the table, tossing around scripture, experience, and French fries, one question came up again and again in my mind … the same question Nicodemus had: “What does it mean to be born again?”

I have my own answer to that question, but every time I bring up the phrase with someone else, I find that their answer is different from mine. I fully expect that if I sat down with each of you and we got deeper into the catch phrases that inevitably come first, we would find what … ___ different takes on what it means to be born again.

That’s more than a little strange to me. Even though we have similar cultural background and we all read the same scriptures, we don’t have a common understanding about this idea that has come to be central to Christianity in the United States. There are a couple of common assumptions, I think. Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior – there’s another one of those catch phrases - is one. Another one, at least in the world of believer’s baptism traditions, is getting baptized. But there must be more to it than just that.

One of the friends I made during my time in South Carolina was a Southern Baptist Pastor. Some time ago, I was talking with him about the altar call that was such a part of his tradition and not at all a part of my experience, and he told me that it was actually a frustrating thing for him.
“It is definitely important,” he said. “It’s important to offer a time for people who have felt moved to express their desire to come to Jesus publically and with a supportive group of people. But there are so many times when people start coming to church in Southern Baptist church, and they attend for a couple of months. Then, they come up to the altar call and get baptized a couple of months later, and we don’t ever see them again. They may say that they are born again, but I just don’t see it.”

That frustration struck a chord with me. One of my biggest problems with the whole “born again” culture is that it so often seems to be superficial. It seems to focus on what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace – “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.” Much of that frustration undoubtedly comes from being raised in Anabaptist circles where the truth of your confession of faith is traditionally judged by the manner of your living. But even when I talk with people who do not partake of Anabaptist heritage, there is the sense that being born again goes deeper than baptism or a statement of faith … or at least it should. Even the image of birth implies deeper change … transformative change … change on a level with coming suddenly into a whole new world and a wholly different way of being.
(pause)
That’s a hard thing to come to grips with. We do feel a little different – at least I hope we do, but in many ways, we don’t. It doesn’t feel like we’ve passed into a whole new world, that we’ve found a whole new way of being. Is it realistic or even possible to be so completely reborn?

Nicodemus struggled with some of the same questions; though to be fair, he had a little more confusion to deal with. The phrase that Jesus gave him was “no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born anōthen” which has more than one possible meaning. It can mean born again or born anew, but it can also mean born from above. I imagine him hearing that and thinking what on earth….

And, of course, Jesus responded with … you’re not getting it. It’s not about earth at all. It’s all about the Spirit. Those who believe … those who get it … are no longer entirely of this world. Their faith has transformed – made them more human through the touch of God’s immense love. They are borne on the winds of the Spirit, moving here and there as God directs them. And to everyone else, they seem aimless and rootless.

There is an image from the film “American Beauty” that has wafted its way into my brain. It’s actually from a movie made by one of the characters in the film who makes a habit of watching the world through the lens of his camcorder.

One day his imagination was caught by a plastic bag. The bag had been blown into a corner and was caught up in the eddies made there by the wind. For minutes, it floated up and down, spun around by the currents of air – a common piece of trash transformed into poetry in motion by the breath of the breeze that gave it life.

Are we like that? Are we in the world but not entirely of it? We are all born from the waters of humanity. Have we yet felt the transforming touch of God’s love? Has our faith made us poetry moving at the touch of the Spirit?

Most of us, I think, have experienced that some time in the course of our lives. I invite you now to turn to a brother or sister near you and share one of those experiences, ... one of the times you have become more than yourself, … one of the time when you have been borne by the Spirit. I will gather us back after a time for our sending hymn.

Shaped by Pain

2011-03-13T14:02:00.002-04:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Genesis 2:15-17, Psalm 32
March 13, 2011 (Lent 1)

One thing I like about this story, about this first fling in the garden, is the fact that it doesn’t hide anything from us. We get it.

We don’t quite understand God making a whole world, and calling it good. We can understand making a delicious apple pie and calling it good…but a world? That’s a little beyond our grasp.

So when Adam and Eve take a bite of that fruit…yeah. We get it. That yearning. That seductive temptation. And like the ice cream to top off that apple pie, one of the first human emotions in the bible is scooped out for us. Shame. Shame which comes from guilt which leads to embarrassment-- melting into the crevices of our lives. The author of Genesis doesn’t even have to label it as such, just paint us a picture of two nearly naked humans hiding from God because of what they did, and…we know. In fact, just mention the word naked, and it’s enough to make us flush a bit with embarrassment.

So of course, it’s a logical story to start Lent. Lent is the season of penance, of self-reflection, of shining a light in our dark corners and seeing what needs to be swept clean. For all the negative associations around Lent, it can actually be fairly joyful, welcomed. That is, if you just see it as a season.

When the darkness and the confrontation with our demons are confined to Lent. After all, it’s only 40 days.

I wish that was the case for everyone.

But it’s not. For some-- for many-- the struggle with demons is not confined to a season. It is an ongoing reality. A constant struggle with shame. Pain, anxiety, self-loathing, confusion.

For some, the garden is not just a story about shame. It embodies the nakedness, and vulnerability that comes when we feel we’ve been placed beyond God’s reach: by events in our lives, by illness, by pain. So I’m tempted to tread into Lent lightly because for some, it is not a mere 40 days from the shame of the Garden to the Alleluias of Easter. For some it is a daily companion of spiritual and emotional nakedness.

Clinical depression will affect one in ten Americans in their lifetime. And more dramatically, one in four women will suffer from it. That means someone in this sanctuary has probably battled with it. That means one of us, likely more than one, currently lives with depression everyday. And if it’s not you, then you likely have loved, and been loved by, someone with depression. It might be the one sitting next to you, a few rows back from you, the one holding your hand right now.

Depression is not something we talk about openly in church. And I’m not surprised because the Christian church hasn’t been helpful when it comes to the topic. The great church father Augustine, labeled the characteristics of depression as a disease of the soul, and as a mark of God’s disfavor. And while such a theology hasn’t persisted in our contemporary world, the stigma we have against depression is alive and well. So many suffer…in silence.

Which is bizarre, if you look at scripture. Can we gloss over the pain of Job? Can we discount the deep laments of the psalmist? And today’s scripture is a perfect example: while I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Now I am hesitant to transfer present-day medical or psychological labels on people of other times and cultures, but what comes to me as I read this is a deep sense of despair. The psalmist even talks about being in a pit of despair. It’s not “shame,” – it’s a desire for fullness,while not knowing why the body wastes away. A physical feeling of heaviness, an oppression of the spirit. The reality of suffering…in silence. While I kept silence, my body wasted away.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I don’t believe I have walked that lonesome road of depression, of clinical depression. I have walked with others who experienced it. I have felt ill-equipped and confused, not knowing what to do. So I won’t pretend I can speak about the experience of depression from within.

Recently I heard an interview of three well-known authors who live with depression.
Andrew Solomon is the author of the book Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Anita Barrows is a psychologist and poet, And Parker Palmer, is a Quaker author and educator.

And while I haven’t lived with depression I found their thoughts illuminating to the ways depression affects the soul. And if you think you don’t need to hear what it’s like because it’s not something you struggle with, then perhaps that is exactly why you need to hear it. Remember” One in ten people. One in four women. In some way it does affect you because it will affect someone who needs your love and support.

Andrew Solomon describes his experience with depression. He says “It’s an experience…of finding the most ordinary parts of life incredibly difficult: finding it difficult to eat, finding it difficult to get out of bed, finding it difficult and painful to go outside, being afraid all the time and being overwhelmed all the time. These are the essential qualities of [depression]. It isn’t, I think, primarily an experience of sadness, but experiencing [the opposite of human vitality].

Anita Barrows echoes this: “Suddenly, in depression you are ripped from what felt like your life, from what felt right and familiar and ordinary and ordered, and you’re just thrown into this place where you’re ravaged, where the wind rips the leaves from the tress, …your soul in depression.”

When we were in seminary, Parker Palmer came to campus to speak . Palmer is considered a Quaker “guru,” and being at a Quaker seminary, you could just imagine the energy humming in anticipation of his visit. Being the spiritual giant that many see him to be, I was surprised to discover he, too, has struggled with depression. And because he was so revered-- he was someone who “shouldn’t be depressed”-- he felt ashamed.

He said “On one level you think ‘this is the least spiritual thing I’ve ever done.’ And the soul is absent, God is absent, faith is absent. All of the faculties that I depended on before I went into depression were now utterly useless….people would say, “Gosh Parker why are you sitting in here being depressed …you’re so successful and you’ve written so well, you’ve helped so many people’ and that would leave me feeling more depressed because I would think, ‘I’ve just defrauded another person. [ If] they really knew what a schmuck I was, [they] would cast me into the darkness where I already am.”

The opposite of human vitality. Ripped from what felt like your life. Cast into the darkness. Maybe more than shame, this is the fear that’s taking place in the garden.

Now take a moment. Still yourself. What is your experience with depression? Have you ever glimpsed into that pit of despair? How have you felt it in your body…your soul? How have you witnessed it affecting those around you? Those you love? (hold silence)

When I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Then…then I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave [me].

Then… thank God for that “then.” That turning point, The place where it all shifts . Whether it is
then I confess my sin, or
then…I allowed someone to enter my pain or
then…I let go of pride and made my demons known to God.
Then… somehow, I stepped out of hiding to meet God in my nakedness—or maybe I didn’t even step out, but then God stepped into my silence.

It’s not just about sin and forgiveness, but about despair and redemption.

Then…“In a sense” says Andrew Solomon, “after you’ve been through a depression, it gives you a different relationship with the world.”

Then… ““I think depression sort of works on it the way you could work a piece of clay, so that it softens and it becomes more malleable” reflects Anita Barrows. It becomes wider. It becomes able to take in more. But that’s only afterward. In the fire, what you get is the fire.”

Then… Parker Palmer’s therapist offers him a thought, saying “Parker, you seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend pressing you down onto ground on which it is safe to stand?”

That is why we should talk about depression. Here. In the church. Where I pray we have cultivated a ground on which it is safe to stand. Because it is one of the things that makes us more human.

In our pain, unwelcomed or not, understood or not, we become more human.

And that is the humanity that God has, and continues to, step into.

---

Benediction – Rainer Maria Rilke
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
You have seen it growing
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power when you plucked the fruit,
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again are a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
and onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains
It is what you have.

Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under the sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Meeting God

2011-03-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 17:1-9 2 Peter 1:16-21

In the past couple of weeks, I have been thinking a lot about our church. Who are we? What is our vision? What do we do well? What should we be doing differently? How can we bring more people in?

We are a wonderful community of faith by any measure. We have meaningful worship experiences together. We are open and welcoming of a large variety of different people. We have an extraordinary music program for a church our size. We have a good program for Sunday School, and an energetic and endearing group of children who are involved in church life in meaningful ways. So … why aren’t we bigger?

And then Cindy read an excerpt from “Meant to be Missional,” an article in Bethany Seminary’s periodical at the start of our Leadership Team meeting, and it caught me up short. It reminded me of something that I used to know, that I thought I knew so deeply that I wouldn’t forget it: the life of faith is not about us. At least it’s not just about us. It’s really about God … and our relationship with God.

That’s easy to lose sight of. Our families, our friends, our jobs, our good works take just about all the time and energy we can manage to throw at them and beg for more – sometimes literally. They fill our minds with thoughts of schedules and worries about the future and questions about what’s next and how we will get there and what we need to do. We don’t look for God in the midst of all that. We don’t expect God to be there. And so we don’t notice God even though she’s right there in front of us… every day. Perhaps there are better questions to ask, questions that would help us find God. Who does God want us to be? What is God already doing around us? What will it take for us to see it and join in?

There are many answers to those questions: simple ones, complex ones, vague ones, so many different ones that they can be overwhelming. What we need in the end, what we want when we are at our strongest is a transfiguration of our own. To be there on the mountain top and see Jesus talking with Moses and Isaiah, glowing brighter and brighter until we bow our heads for the pain of looking. To feel the power of the experience change us in ways that we can only begin to understand.

For some people, those kinds of experiences seem to be common, but I have only ever had one … and it wasn’t on a mountain top. It was in a wet front yard on the side of National Road 40. I was walking out under the cloud wracked sky, doing a little head-clearing leg work as a break from working on a sermon for class. And, as I watched the clouds moving across the sky, I saw the sun send a beam of light shining on the grass a little ways away. I stopped and stared as the spotlight moved quickly across the ground and then disappeared, and I was caught up in the wonder of creation for a moment or a minute or five.

I don’t remember how long it was, but it was long enough to find myself on my knees when it was over. I got to my feet, brushing distractedly at the mud on my pants, and as I looked around to see if anyone had been watching (embarrassment is a powerful force); I noticed something on a nearby tree. It was a triangle made by three cicada shells which was surprising since it wasn’t really the season for them to be out in force. I picked up the shells and carried them carefully back our apartment, looked at them for a little while, and wondered (as seminarians will) if they were symbolic of something greater – a sign, maybe, or the “calling card” of a triune God.

It was not an epiphany. I didn’t hear voices. I didn’t feel any sense of guidance or clarity of thought. In fact, I ended up slapping that sermon together late at night because of all the time I spent looking for some esoteric meaning. When I talked about it with a couple of my closest friends, one of them shrugged and said, “I guess you just got to meet God.” I liked that phrase so much that I think of the whole thing as “The Day I Met God.” (hmm …. sounds like a good title for a movie or at least a book!)

I still don’t know what that moment was about, and I’m pretty sure I’m in good company there. I suspect there are others here who have had powerful experiences that left them wondering. Peter, James, and John didn’t seem to understand what was going on on their mountain top either. In Mark’s version of events, Peter doesn’t even know what to say when he sees Moses and Elijah standing with Jesus. Matthew is a little gentler, but it’s still pretty clear that Peter didn’t get it. He offered to build shelters for the glowing visitors who certainly wouldn’t need them. Even after the voice of God had spoken to them, they still didn’t understand. If anything they were more confused, and in the verses that follow the reading they peppered Jesus with questions.

In response to their confusion, Jesus tells them to hold onto the memory … to hold on and not to tell anyone (even the other disciples) about it until later. I’ve often wondered about that. It seems strange that he didn’t encourage them to talk it out amongst themselves or sit them down and explain like he did on so many other occasions.

We don’t know what his reasons were, but the opening to Peter’s second letter shows how he understood his words years later. Signs and wonders, he says, are not to be understood. They are indications of the mysterious presence of God. They can’t really be interpreted through the use of our own intellect and reasoning.

That kind of thing is difficult for me to come to terms with, usually. I’ll admit that I live much more in my head than in my heart or my spirit. Maybe that’s why I don’t often have ecstatic experiences that knock me to my knees. I’m sure that’s why I have wrestled so much with the one that I have had. But, you know, as time has gone by, I find that I am less worried about trying to figure out some particular message in it and more grateful for the way it has shown me that experiences with the divine really do happen, that we really can meet God.

In three days, the season of Lent will begin. It is a season for reflection in preparation for the coming of Easter. It is a time to clear out our lives a little so that we can spend some quality time examining the state of our relationship with God in the face of the suffering that Love will undergo on our behalves.

Usually, I have no problem doing that. I love the slow, considered pace of Lenten reflections. I love have the season uncluttered by frantic preparations. But I sense that it will be more difficult this time around. Lent is coming late and Spring is coming early. Gardens need to prepared, children need to be played with, meetings need to be planned. Busy-ness has already begun to take the place of quiet in the early dark of winter evenings. How am I going to be able to meditate? When will I find time for self-examination? Where is there space for quiet waiting with God? It makes my shoulders bunch up with tension and resentfulness just thinking about it!

Maybe I’m asking the wrong questions again – making it all about me and what I can do all by myself. If I learned anything from that day in Richmond, it was that it doesn’t take specially prepared spaces or quiet times to find God. God comes to us even in everyday moments and mundane places. Maybe I … maybe we just need to ask different questions. Questions that awaken us to the Shining Presence and the Misty Voice when they enter our lives. Questions that open us up to God’s touch. Where is God touching us? Where is God touching the world around us? What is God trying to say to us … to show us in those moments … through those signs? If we ask those questions and pay attention to the answers, we may find God crossing our path in the yard or on the street or over dinner with our families and friends.

For the next seven weeks, pay attention to the times when God crosses your path. You might find understanding or inspiration there before you. You might not. You might only find more questions, but when you open yourself to the presence of God, when you let it touch you, you will find yourself changed … transformed … transfigured in ways that you may never fully understand. And that’s okay. That’s how God works in us. That’s how God guides us toward what we are meant to be … as long as we are willing to open ourselves to that vision.

Are we? Are we prepared? Are we ready to meet God on the mountain or along the road or where ever God comes to us?

Are you?

[Waiting worship]

Confession/Reconciliation:
Would you please stand and join me in the words of confession and the sending hymn….

Our holy and present God, we recognize your power to transform our lives. We confess that we have not always listened to you as closely as we should. We have not always acknowledged your presence. We have not always followed your lead.

(Silence)

God, we know that your grace and mercy extends to us. May your grace cause us to listen more closely, and may your mercy guide us into your ways. AMEN.

Pink Elephants

2011-02-27T12:00:00.001-05:00

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Matthew 6:24-34 Isaiah 49:8-16

Dramatic reading of Matthew 6:24-34:

Carrie: Imagine you are present at the Sermon on the Mount and feel emboldened to interrupt Jesus as he attempts to teach. It goes something like this:

Martin: "You cannot serve God and wealth" (Mt. 6:24b).

Carrie: Why not?

Martin: "Because no one can serve two masters. A slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other" (6:24a).

Carrie: I don't know if I agree with that or not. It seems overstated.

Martin: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear."

Carrie: Seriously? Isn't your advice a little naïve? I do need to plan ahead and know where my next meal is coming from and make sure my family is clothed.

Martin: "Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

Carrie: Yes, when you put it that way, but . . .

Martin: "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (6:26)

Carrie: Yes, but . . .

Martin: "Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?" (6:27)

Carrie: No, I guess not, but . . .

Martin: And why do you worry about clothing?

Carrie: Well, because I need to be appropriately dressed for various occasions and at least try to be somewhat up to date. And all the people in church are looking at what I’m wearing and…

Martin: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these" (6:29).

Carrie: Why do you keep making these nature analogies? Those are flowers. I'm a person.

Martin: "If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith?" (6:30)
Carrie: It would be nice to think so, but don't you think worry serves a useful function sometimes?

Martin: "Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?'" (6:31)

Carrie: All right. I get that you're not going to budge on the worry issue. But tell me this: what am I to do with all that mental free time I used to spend worrying?

Martin: "Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (6:33).

Sermon:

It is clear to me that Jesus never came across the concept of “The Pink Elephant” theory. You probably know this one. The joke is of course, if someone tells you not to think of pink elephants, that is exactly what you are going to think of. In my experience, it is also known as “tell the two-year old not to touch something” challenge. Inevitably…he does. And I knew he would. Why did I think he wouldn’t?

And I think that Jesus isn’t acquainted with the pink elephant theory because of what happens on the Sermon on the Mount today. As we have progressed through the Sermon on the Mount the lessons have gotten a little harder for us, haven’t they? A bit more challenging. It’s nice to think about being blessed or blessing others in the beatitudes. Being salt and light…lovely images, that feels good. Love your enemies. Gulp. And now, the coup de grace – “No one can serve two masters…. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

And then…then he continues, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry…,” and I really don’t hear anything else because I’m already worrying if I’ve made the right decision on the first thing he said, about money. I’m now wondering if I make a master out of money. Don’t worry? He tells me I can’t serve God and money and I’m not supposed to worry?

Rhetorically, it’s like he is setting up a whole line of pink fluffy elephants, elephants that squeak, elephants that are banging cymbals and doing flips, and then telling me not to think of pink elephants. It’s like…putting a beautiful tree with delicious fruit in my garden, a garden where he said everything is good, and telling me not to eat it.

Jesus gives us something to worry about, and then tells us that we shouldn’t worry. Really…it’s not very fair. It throws me off balance and I’m forced with hard questions: what is my focus? What is at the core of my life?

These sayings of Jesus are known as some of his “impossible questions.” Alyce McKenzie notes, “If Jesus had stuck with rhetorical questions, questions with obvious answers that listeners like to answer, he might have lived longer. But Jesus was a subversive sage,” she continues, “undercutting the comfortable assumptions of his audiences. So Jesus isn’t expecting us to have an answer, at least an easy one. Jesus is expecting to create a pit in our stomach by confronting us with our loyalties between God and money and then deepens that pit, rather than filling it in with good things. He deepens it by telling us not to worry. Doesn’t that seem a bit…callous and insensitive?

But maybe it’s all part of it. Maybe Jesus gets us at our most vulnerable, gets us where it really hurts and then has us try this on for size. One more radical teaching. One more task that we are simply sure we cannot do, no human can, not on our own and maybe that’s when Jesus says “yes! You’ve got it! You can’t do it…on…your…own.” So maybe, just maybe, Jesus is very aware of the pink elephant theory.

To be honest, it’s not the God and wealth part that is so hard for me to swallow, it’s the worry part. Worry? I was born to worry. At least, I was born to seek security. From my parents. From my teachers. From airport security who never seem to take our fear level down below the color yellow.

For many years we are dependent on the security of others, and even Isaiah recognizes this, asking a rather rhetorical question: how can a nursing mother forget her child? And then he throws us off balance by giving us a very real, sad answer. Sadly, she can. We can. Bonds of trust fail. Between parents and children. Between friends and spouses. Between ourselves and our bodies when they go awry, housing diseases we never invited in. These informal contracts that we are to be secure in can dissolve at any moment. And the only response we can seem to muster is…worry.

As an activity in preparation for this sermon I decided to make a worry log. I was going to wake up in the morning and for one whole day I would write down when I worried, what I worried about, how long the worry lasted, and how I felt about it. Talk about pink elephants.

Well, it didn’t last long. But long enough for me to get a glimpse at the things I do indeed worry about on a daily basis. Without getting mired in the details of minutiae, and without writing off sweeping worries that I’m sure are universal like, I worry about the safety of my children, I worry about money, I tried to find a balance that was real and tangible. And this is what I came up with. On a daily basis I worry that

a)this decision I'm making or action I'm taking towards my sons is going to harm them in some way (am I being too permissive/too strict/too inconsistent, is this hour of TV going to do damage, am I not encouraging too much of "this" and letting too much of "that" happen)

b.) What impact will this particular action I am doing right now have on the environment and in perpetuating injustice in our global economy?

c) contracting a fatal disease and dying young. Or dying in a car accident. Or dying by an act of violence. OK, basically I’m scared of dying.

d). Am I a "fraud", or a hypocrite, or well-intentioned but lacking substance as a pastor, socially-conscious person--that is “does my walk not match my talk”

e). Am I doing a "good job" as a pastor? And please, I’m not fishing for compliments. It is probably similar to your worries about job performance and reviews. I daily worry about small numbers and unmet budgets which may lead me to job insecurity, which is, yes, I’ll admit, a worry about money.

Don’t get me wrong. I can, and do, worry about much more than that: about unrest in Libya and earthquakes in New Zealand and about the cocoa trade in Ivory Coast. But those five things I mentioned are the daily things. Every day, in a big or small way. The things that don’t just trouble my mind or my conscience, but they trouble my gut…my soul.

The word worry appears six times – in one form or another – in these nine verses, relating to the very basics of human life: food, drink, and clothing. And I don’t think Jesus is wanting us to ignore those things. In fact, the three items he mentioned - food, drink, and clothing - come around again when he talks about entering into the kingdom of heaven: did we give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked?

And I do recognize others have more desperate worries. How will I pay the mortgage this month? How will I feed our family on $50 these two weeks? How will I get to work if my tires go flat? What if my husband comes home drunk again? It probably does give us a glimpse at privilege if we can get a glimpse of people’s worries. But Jesus doesn’t tell us to judge our worries, whose are more legitimate, more justified. No matter what they are, worries are our masters.

And Matthew uses imagery to tell us what we already know, at least already experience. Worrying today only brings more worrying tomorrow. And isn’t that what worry is? An endless cycle of dividing one’s attention and energy between living life and fretful concern about life.

I think you probably know this. I don’t have to tell you worry begets worry. But do you know how it really affects you? What are your daily worries that divide your attention? That has you spending energy feeding fear, than living life?

When Elesha Coffman led some of us in yoga at our Women’s Spa day last week, she had us assume a balance position known as the table. You get down on your hands and knees; you raise your arm up, point it forward, and extend the opposite leg back. It’s challenging. You feel like you’re going to fall over and the more you worry that you’re going to fall over the more off balance you get and the more sure you are that you’re going to fall over and the more off balance you get…

And at about the time that it seemed like collapse was imminent, Elesha reminded us to focus on the core of our bodies, our center, that place where we gain balance. And she said, “You’ll notice that when your attention is focused on maintaining balance, focused on your core, you can’t think about much. There isn’t a lot of room in your head for much else…and that’s kind of nice.”

I doubt Jesus did much yoga…. Maybe he did, there are theories that he may have spent time in India in his young adulthood. But even if he didn’t, he certainly knew something about what it is that throws us off balance and what we need to do to help find it again. He knows about what is at our core. At least, what should be.

So probably, that’s what he’s doing here. He’s asking you, me: do you have at the center of your life something that is strong enough to keep you from collapsing? When the world throws at you what it will, what will bring you back into balance?

Jesus doesn’t test our faithfulness by whether or not we worry. But he does invite us to free ourselves, calling us back to our core. And if we respond, we will likely find that the life of the spirit is there. No matter how much we may try to crowd out God with our worries, Christ is there, holding all our pink elephants, telling us, “You don’t need all these.”

And I hope…I pray…that we will believe him.

[waiting worship]

Merciful God.
There is no denying it. We worry.
Some of our worries are true worries. Worries that tear us up. That create deep and painful pits in our stomachs and souls
And we know some of our worries are frivolous. Superficial worries. Worries where…we know better.
But we are familiar with our worries. We perceive them. While they somehow overwhelm us, we know what to do with them.
Maybe…you aren’t so familiar to us, God of mystery. Maybe we haven’t perceived your love.
Maybe we don’t know what to do with your inescapable, and yet incomprehensible presence.
We don’t want to worry, or to be anxious, or to live divided lives.
We want to be free in you, to see your promise.
We want to know, not just in our head, but in our gut, that your love is stronger than our fears and worries

But we confess, it is hard to do.
And we know it can’t happen with one prayer.
But we pray anyway that you will help us.
We pray that you will stick with us as we try.
Amen.

Enemy Mine

2011-02-20T12:00:00.001-05:00

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 5:38-48 Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article in the Christian Century or Sojourners or some other such magazine (I don’t remember which) that talked about the well-known teachings Martin just read for us. The author talked all about how Jesus wasn’t actually saying anything new. He was reaching back into Jewish scriptures and traditions and asking his audience to look at them with new eyes – eyes that would reinterpret them in a new light.

Those of you who have heard Carrie and I preach very many times before will recognize that this exegetical process is not particularly new either. Jesus teachings are strongly marked by a commitment to upholding the authority of the prophets and the law while questioning the established interpretations taught by the religious elites. He looked beyond the particularities of the text to the spirit in which it was written and applied that understanding to the time and place in which he lived, looking through the lens of his vision of the Kingdom of God.

It sounds like a complicated process, but it’s actually one we are all familiar with. It’s what Carrie and I do each week as we prepare for worship. It’s what we all do each time we pick up the Bible, read a passage of scripture, and try to apply it to our lives. If we only had Jesus’ understanding of God’s vision we could figure it all out. (You’ll let me know, won’t you, if it ever comes to you? Wouldn’t that be great?!)

Back to the text at hand…. All my life I have heard sayings like “let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no” and “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” – sayings that remind us of the admonitions in this part of the Sermon on the Mount. And, if there is one thing that a dye-in-the-wool Brethren grows up with, it is “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies!” I know it all by heart, but what struck me when I read that article was how mundane it seemed to me … and how little it connected with my life. And that made me a little sad, though it may seem strange to be unhappy that I don’t really run into Al Qaeda as I walk down the street.

This week, though, I heard Dr. Scott Atran speaking on an NPR program called “On Being.” He was talking about the violence and upheaval in Africa and the Middle East, and the interview got me thinking in a new way. Dr. Atran comes at the situation from a sociological background, and he begins by looking at what groups people form and why.

People form groups, he says, because they have a need to belong to something greater than themselves. Building that sense of kinship is an evolutionary urge that provides security, and it can give meaning to lives that might otherwise seem hollow. Ultimately, though, it’s an urge that grows out of our foundational experience of family that shows up in the way that “all political movements [or religious] or territorial movements or even transnational movements … consider themselves in terms of brotherhoods or sisterhoods or fatherlands or homelands or motherlands.” These movements use the sense of attachment and loyalty that grow from those terms to define who is “us” and who is “them,” who is “good” and who is “evil,” who is a “friend” and who is an “enemy.”

A colleague of mine offered this story for black history month….
One of our evening Sunday Schools, he said, recently had a guest speaker who had participated in the March for Voting Rights in 1965. He told us how he’d watched the television news with his fifth-grade daughter, and how she had said to him, “We have to do something!” He wanted to respond to her compassionate plea, but did not know how.

Shortly after that a friend of his called him and said, “We have to go to the march.” His first response was that he couldn’t possibly get away from his full schedule, but he thought better of that excuse in the end. And he went to Selma with his friend.

As he talked about the experience, he described a three hour argument between the police and the African-Americans they prevented from crossing into the white part of town. He went on to tell about some of the horrific things that were taking place. People were beaten by bystanders for no reason at all. Police rode their horses through and over crowds of people without regard for the lives they ended. The marchers were spit on, yelled at, and insulted.

Then, he told us about the training the demonstrators had received in preparation for the march. At first, he said, he resented the mandatory meeting. "We're marching,” he thought. “How much training do we need for that?" But as he listened, he began to realize that what they were about to do was something much different, much more challenging than the “march" he had pictured in his mind.

The marchers were instructed on the peaceful and non-violent method of resistance. They were told:
•to march together, and not to separate under any circumstances,

•not to return insult for insult, but to march peacefully, remembering their
purpose,

•to cover their heads if someone came at them with a club or a fist, but not to
fight back,

•to wipe it off when people spit on them or threw things on them, and to
keep marching.

The most difficult instruction by far - and one that brought tears to the man's eyes lo these many years later because he witnessed it - was the final directive:
•anyone standing near someone who fell to the ground or who was beaten to
the point of unconsciousness was to carefully nudge their way over and lay his/her body over the person. By doing this they were presenting their own body as a sacrifice to save another’s life.

I didn’t live through the years of that struggle. I don’t know what it was like to see or hear stories of everything that was happening. Some of you do. I can only imagine that if this story moved me, it must be even more powerful for you.

Most of the demonstrator survived those marches, but there were people gave their lives protecting others exactly as they had been taught. Instead of fighting back, they turned the other cheek. They loved their friends enough to give their lives, but did they love their enemies so well?

I don’t like to think of myself as having enemies, and I certainly have not experienced the kind of hatred and denigration Civil Rights activists lived through. But I have to admit that there are a few (well more than a few) people that I just don’t like. They rub me the wrong way. It may be because we disagree about something that’s important to me or I know they have talked badly about me behind my back or something about how they look or act sets my nerves on end. Whatever the reason, being around them makes me feel like I’m not safe and I have to be on my guard all the time.

One of those people was my seminary nemesis, I’ll call her Fran. I met Fran on the second day of classes. As we sat together in Old Testament, I grew frustrated by the frivolous comments she made and the way she interacted with the professor as if she was somehow special. Later that semester we had a conversation about holy war as presented in the historical books of the Old Testament. Things quickly devolved into an argument, but it was not because either of us supported war. It was because Fran thought it was just fine to throw out anything she didn’t like in the Bible. That was a perspective that I couldn’t understand and wasn’t prepared to accept, especially in another seminarian. And so began a long and torturous animosity … at least on my part.

For four years, I tried to avoid her, but in such a small community that was impossible. So, I sat in worship, at meetings, and in classes with Andrea, and every time I found it stressful. It was an exercise in self-control to avoid arguing with her or disparaging her comments just because she had made them. I even found it a struggle to be worshipful in her presence.

I suppose that Fran was less my enemy than I was hers, but finally, in my last year, we were assigned to be partners in a project. As we sat and worked together, I began to learn a bit more about her, and I discovered that my prejudices had blinded me to the truth of who she was. During those two weeks, I came to appreciate her insight and to understand the insecurities and experiences at the heart of her style of interaction. In the end, we never became close, but there is a part of me that wishes I had gotten to know her sooner rather than later. We might have made good friends instead of one-sided rivals.

How do we love our enemies?

The author of Leviticus gives us some basics for loving our enemies: take care to provide for them, do not bear false witness or take what should be theirs, and set aside vengeance. Jesus takes us farther down the road, saying: turn the other cheek, give to them if they beg from you, and pray for them. But he doesn’t stop there. He connects loving your enemies to treating them as you would a friend.

For me that means overlooking faults that might otherwise drive me mad. It means looking beyond the surface to see what pain they might be suffering or how they might need my help and support. It means opening myself up, being vulnerable to them, and forgiving them when they hurt me.

None of that is easy to do … even with friends. It is much harder to do with people that we don’t like – people we might even hate, but Jesus was quite clear that the road he invites us to travel is not an easy one. More than changing the world, it involves challenging ourselves to live more fully as God intends: to show compassion, to give forgiveness, and to recognize everyone as a child of God. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are meant to love one another as family.

Once, after receiving flak for speaking kindly of the Southern Rebels instead of trying to destroy them, Abraham Lincoln replied, “do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" I think that’s what Jesus was getting at … in his teaching and in his way of interacting with those around him. Whether or not others accept it, we are called to treat them as friends, to show compassion, to give forgiveness, and to accept them as family. Enemies or not, we are called to love them.

There’s a challenge in that. There’s work and love and peace and struggle, but there is peace in freeing ourselves from hate and retaliation, vengeance and fear. In the end, there is joy in loving even our enemies as friends.