Sermon for September 27, 2015

The God of Exodus and Exile

“And now, Israel, listen carefully to these decrees and regulations that I am about to teach you. Obey them so that you may live, so you may enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. Do not add to or subtract from these commands I am giving you. Just obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you. You saw for yourself what the Lord did to you at Baal-peor. There the Lord your God destroyed everyone who had worshiped Baal, the god of Peor. But all of you who were faithful to the Lord your God are still alive today—every one of you.

“Look, I now teach you these decrees and regulations just as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may obey them in the land you are about to enter and occupy. Obey them completely, and you will display your wisdom and intelligence among the surrounding nations. When they hear all these decrees, they will exclaim, ‘How wise and prudent are the people of this great nation!’ For what great nation has a god as near to them as the Lord our God is near to us whenever we call on him? And what great nation has decrees and regulations as righteous and fair as this body of instructions that I am giving you today?

“But watch out! Be careful never to forget what you yourself have seen. Do not let these memories escape from your mind as long as you live! And be sure to pass them on to your children and grandchildren. Never forget the day when you stood before the Lord your God at Mount Sinai, where he told me, ‘Summon the people before me, and I will personally instruct them. Then they will learn to fear me as long as they live, and they will teach their children to fear me also.’ You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while flames from the mountain shot into the sky. The mountain was shrouded in black clouds and deep darkness. And the Lord spoke to you from the heart of the fire. You heard the sound of his words but didn’t see his form; there was only a voice. He proclaimed his covenant—the Ten Commandments—which he commanded you to keep, and which he wrote on two stone tablets. It was at that time that the Lord commanded me to teach you his decrees and regulations so you would obey them in the land you are about to enter and occupy.”
~ Deuteronomy 4:1-14 

On the walls of the Chambers of the U.S. Congress are 23 marble reliefs of famous lawgivers of history. Eleven profiles in the Eastern half of the chamber face to the left and eleven profiles in the western half of the chamber face to the right. They all look towards the full-face relief of the greatest lawgiver in history. When Pope Francis addressed Congress, he began by pointing to that central relief in the middle of the north wall – the image that all the others face – it’s the face of Moses. Pope Francis said, “The patriarch and lawgiver of the people of Israel symbolizes the need of peoples to keep alive their sense of unity by means of just legislation.” Moses reminds Congress to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face.

People have been pointing to Moses as a symbol of loving justice for millennia. Much as Pope Francis invoked Moses as a reminder of Congress’ sworn duties to protect the common good, I think the book of Deuteronomy was written for the same purpose.  While tradition says that Moses wrote Deuteronomy, it does not make sense when you read through the book. Last week I offered another scenario. Many centuries after the death of Moses, the people of Israel face conquest and demise by foreign armies. Let’s say somewhere between 800 to 500 BC, a group of wise teachers see that the people if Israel have not been distinctive in their faithfulness.  The political system is corrupt. The rich get wealthy at the expense of the poor. Worship of God has been forgotten. Israel is about to be expelled from the Promised Land, which will ignite an enormous refugee and prisoner crises. The wise teachers begin to write a sweeping history of Israel. They indict the current political and social order by pointing to Moses and using his story as a way to comment on current crises. Their history book calls a fractured nation to remember their past, to remember the promises of God, and to remember the promises Israel made. The writers say, “Like Israel of old, disobedience to God will bring calamity. The only way to find restoration is through obedience to God.”

The word “obey” is mentioned five times in today’s reading alone. Obeying God is a constant buzzword throughout the book of Deuteronomy. The basic message of Deuteronomy could be summed up in one sentence: “Listen carefully and obey so that you may live.” Listen and Obey. Obey and listen. The same message reverberates throughout the New Testament, like when Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Many of us get tense when we hear the word obedience. Maybe it’s because we tend to associate obedience with pressure, punishment, following rules, and even words like “shame” and “belittling.” In the American experience, obedience can mean a loss of liberty. Consider Thoreau, who said, ““Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” Obedience can go bad when people are asked to trust and obey without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills. So, it makes sense many of us struggle with obeying God.

When the Bible talks about obedience, it has a different flavor. We tend to think about obedience as following a person in order to make the other happy, or to win the approval of another. We obey because compliance means safety. I obey the law because I don’t want to go to jail. An element of compliance and threat certainly exists in biblical law. But, I think biblical obedience says, “We obey God not to be loved. We obey because God loves us.” We obey God because we trust that following God’s prophetic call to compassionate justice makes love abound. Obedience is a way to claim that we belong to God and want God’s love to be known in the ways we relate to one another.

Obey literally means “to hear.” The English words “obey” and “obedience” come from two Latin words that mean “to hear thoroughly.” Notice how the word hear or listen is mentioned 3 times in today’s text. Those who heard the text proclaimed would not have missed the connection between the Hebrew words for obey and hear. They have the same root letters and sounds.

The words obey and hear or listen are actually related in a lot of languages. Lorrie Anderson, a New Testament translator in Peru, searched for months to find a word for “believe” in the Candoshi language. No direct equivalent existed for that all-important term in Bible translation. What she finally discovered was that the word “hear” in that language also can mean “believe” and also “obey.” Anderson writes, “The question, ‘Don’t you hear [God’s] Word?’ in Candoshi means ‘Don’t you believe/obey [God’s] Word?’ In their way of thinking, if you ‘hear,’ you believe what you hear, and if you believe, you obey.”

The connection between obeying and hearing God’s law goes back to the people of Israel standing at Mount Sinai. Moses reminds people of their experience in our reading for today: You heard the sound of God’s words but didn’t see God’s form; there was only a voice. God proclaimed the covenant — the Ten Commandments — which he commanded you to keep, and which were written on two stone tablets.

The original story comes from the book of Exodus. In that version of the story, the people of Israel signal their acceptance of the law with the words “na’aseh v’nishma” (נעשה ונשמה)–“We will do and we will hear/understand,” or “we will obey and we will listen.” The word order is important. They did not listen first and then act. Action came first, then listening. That’s why Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described Judaism not so much as a leap of faith but as a “leap of action.” He was convinced that one should first obey all the commandments that are possible. The understanding and meaning come later.  As he put it, a person is asked to “do more than he [or she] understands in order to understand more than [she] or he does.”

Obey and listen carefully and you will live. If you were here in August and listened carefully to Bob Tiller preach, he talked about faithing – faith as a verb. He said faithing means trying to find God in the daily activities of life and to giving thanks for the love of God in our lives. Faithing means living each day by embracing the goodness and holiness of all creation. Faithing means pursuing peace, justice and love for all creation – and sensing God’s spirit joining us in that pursuit. Faithing means seeing God’s face and God’s presence in every person on the planet. In other words, if I may take liberties with his words, we act and we hear. We do and we believe. When we live out our most loving and generous understandings of the word of God, that’s when we truly hear it.

How will we obey and hear God in the world around us? Can we obey and hear God in the lives of our sisters and brothers across the globe in the global refugee crisis? Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.  An estimated 60 million people across the globe are displaced from their homes because of war and persecution. Those who flee violence in their homelands become targets for robbery, boat smuggling, human trafficking, and mistreatment from border guards. The stories of refugees invite us to find God through obedience and listening. Our path to obedience, as individuals, faith communities, and nations is the path of welcome; receiving others with gladness and delight. In order to do so we must recognize the face of God in all people. As Pope Francis reminded Congress, “We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation.”

Can we obey and hear God in the voice of the earth? As we honor Climate in the Pulpit Sunday, I wonder what Earth would say if Earth could speak?  Would she would groan loudly in pain? Would make people ask for forgiveness?  If we listened, we might hear Earth say, “I give you food and drink and I keep you warm. Why burn me down? For what do you blow me up? I've been dreaming of rest for centuries." If we listened, we might hear Earth say, "Enough of feuding! Our fate has bound us together forever."

Can we obey and hear God in our relationships at CCC? I like the dream that Sister Joan Chittister offers us – a human community in which everyone exists to support the others. She calls it “mutual obedience.” She says:
Mutual obedience--
the willingness to listened
to the needs
and the hopes,
the dreams and the ideas
of those around us
rather than promote our own
by ignoring
everyone else's--
is surely the foundation …

It is what we need
to be able to think newly
because we think
with the others
about their ideas
rather than simply
about our own.

It is the way we come to learn
respect and reverence,
for the insights of others
are meant to become
the foundation
of the next step
on our own path …

“Obedience to one another”
is the strength of community,
the brilliance of community,
the voice of community
in the midst of which
we can now hear
the voice of God.

Can we do it? Can we learn to obey and listen carefully, so that we may live?

Sources:
http://www.aoc.gov/capitol-hill/relief-portrait-plaques-lawgivers/about-relief-portrait-plaques-lawgivers
http://time.com/4048176/pope-francis-us-visit-congress-transcript/
http://www.betham.org/sermon/naaseh-vnishma-we-will-do-and-we-will-heed
Likrat Shabbat Prayerbook by Jack Reimer.
http://ourrabbijesus.com/articles/the-wisdom-of-hebrew-words/
http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2012/09/hearing-and-obeying/#sthash.gnpPnwHU.dpuf
Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language by John T Hamilton.
Deuteronomy by Deanna Thompson
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-dr-cari-jackson/syrian-refugee-crisis-our-chance-to-see-god-mark-930-37_b_8134156.html
“Oh, if the Earth could speak,” lyrics by Lyudmila Zykina
https://www.monasteriesoftheheart.org/blogs/mutual-obedience
http://www.cccsilverspring.org/sermons/sermon-for-august-23-2015

Sermon for September 20, 2015

The Summons
Deuteronomy 1:1-33

From where you are right now, if you could look back on the arc of your life and address your younger self, what advice would you give? I resonate with a blogger who says, “I would grab my younger self by the neck, and I'd say ‘listen to me carefully you fool:

1. Forget the fear of looking ridiculous when attempting something. Just do it! If it turns out well, you won. If not, nobody cares, just go on.
2. Some opportunities come only once in your life. Don't let them pass.
3. Failure is just one step closer to success. Just learn and do it better next time.
4. It's better to try and fail, than spending the rest of your life wondering, ‘What if...’
5.  The future never comes like you planned. Seize the day. Enjoy every minute.”

I would also add, “"When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind."

A 70 year old man said he would offer his younger self the following advice:
Keep a diary, organize your life, don't get into debt, don't assume you will ever have time to do anything you can't do now, don't involve yourself with people who intend to use you, don't use other people, learn to trust those who accept your trust, value people for their true worth, learn to talk to your parents, learn to believe in yourself, learn to be tolerant of others, learn to think before you speak, learn to think before you answer, learn to appreciate the moment, learn to share your thoughts, and learn to respond according to the situation.

What strikes me is that none of this advice is innovative or unusual. We’ve heard it all before. When it comes to living a good life, these lists are time-honored counsel. 

Now imagine another scene about giving advice. Moses, the greatest prophet in all of Jewish history, stands on the brink of entering the Promised Land with the people of Israel.  Moses, who led his people out of slavery, Moses who stood up to Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go,” Moses who talks with God and gave Israel God’s law, Moses who has forged and guided  his community for 40 years in the desert,  readies the people to enter the land of Canaan.  Did you hear me say 40 years? A journey from Egypt to Canaan that was supposed to take 11 days, two weeks tops, has lasted 40 years. All of the years of struggle and promise are about to be fulfilled. And Moses, now a timeworn man, knows he will not go with them; he is destined to die in the desert.  So he speaks. The entire book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell message. He’s going to remind them about why a two week journey took 40 years. He will tell the story of Pharaoh and the crossing of the Red Sea. He will repeat the 10 commandments and the important points of the law he received on Mount Sinai. Here, in the opening chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, THE central human character in all of Hebrew Scripture, speaks to the people about their past, present and future. Moses will leaving them with everything they need to become the people God wants them to be. Standing on the brink of the Promised Land, will Israel be faithful to the Lord and the Law? Will they live as a renewed humanity? The answer is up in the air – to be determined.

The word Deuteronomy actually means “Second Law.” Older Moses, knowing he will soon die, looks back on the arc of his life give some advice by remembering the past and imparting commandments. His words summons the people to faithful living. The summons comes with both kiss and commandment: that’s the pattern of how laws are given in the Bible. Remember the Ten Commandments? Before God thunders down the commandments from the mountain, God says, “I brought you out of Egypt. You were slaves, and I saved you.” Moses wants people to remember that kiss. Then comes the commandment, expectation that God’s people must be distinctive in their faithfulness.

I think one of the reasons the book of Deuteronomy was written was to help people hold kiss and commandment, grace and law together. Tradition says that Moses wrote Deuteronomy, but that tradition does not make sense when you read through the book. Imagine another scenario. Many centuries later, the people of Israel are looking at conquest and demise by foreign armies. They’ve been living in the Promised Land and have not been distinctive in their faithfulness to God. We estimate Moses lived around 1450 B.C. Let’s say somewhere between 800 to 500 BC, a group of wise teachers face a fractured political system in which the rich get wealthy at the expense of the poor, worship of God has been forgotten, and Israel is about to be evicted from the Promised Land.  The wise teachers begin to write a sweeping history of Israel, beginning with Moses in a book called Devarim, or “Words” – it’s called Deuteronomy in our Bibles. Their stories call on a fractured nation to remember their history, to remember the promises of God, to remember the promises Israel made, and to remember what God has done for them. That’s the kiss. And then these writers indict the current system by taking Moses, a hero from the past, and using his story as a way to comment on current crises. The writers are saying, “Like Israel of old, disobedience to God will bring calamity. The only way to find restoration is through the commandment.”

Kiss and commandment. Grace and obedience. Good religious people like us usually want one without the other. Some would say the kiss is enough, and nothing else is necessary. After all, the heart of the good news is that God cherishes us, particularly in our own divided and dangerous world. So why not bask in God’s eternal mercy and do whatever we want?

I’ll never forget that fateful day, as a fifth-grader, when I closed my bedroom door and blurted out a few cuss words. I thought I’d try it out, see how it sounded coming from my mouth. I got away with that awful crime, and felt good that I got away with it. In fact, I felt so free that when my father told me to clean my room a few days later, a few of those words rolled right off my tongue. I was exiled to spend the rest of that evening in that very same messy room. Never a quick learner, I tried out my newfound freedom again at Scout Camp. I remember trying to console my bunk mate who had been yelled at by the scoutmaster. I said ,”Yeah, the scoutmaster is such a ________” (fill in your favorite expletive). As I spoke, I saw a shadow looming over me. There stood my scoutmaster who heard every word I said. I took me a few embarrassing moments like that to realize that freedom comes with some tremendous consequences.

On the other hand, you probably know someone who keeps all the commandments and ignores the kiss. “All that gushy grace?” they say. “It’s a distraction from our duty.” For some people, duty is what life is all about: do the right thing, live the right way, walk and talk in truth. Living within those boundaries can be a great comfort. I can understand that. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. Legalism is the most comforting religion of all. It makes life certain and clear.

In Judaism, there is a well-known teaching about commandments and freedom. It is written: “Greater is the one who is commanded and does it, than one who is not commanded and still does it.” In other words, "It is better to do something under command than by choice." This seems counter intuitive. We might think it is better to do good willingly and voluntarily, out of the pure intentions of our hearts. Jewish sages talked about the yoke of the commandment. Like a beast of burden, we need to feel the weight of the commandments on our shoulders, and carry them because God has expectations of us.

You would think that personal initiative to do good would be most honorable. What’s going on here? The sages said that humans have an inclination we can’t shake. We have a desire to resist external demands. We want to act independently – nobody is going to tell us what to do. The challenge is that we decide to do good – to help another, serve another, and forge just communities – but our decision may be wrapped up in a personal agenda. Our desire to do good may have some ego-centric motivation. For the Sages, it was better to act out of obedience. That way, we can set aside own personal agenda and own self-interests and do good with the pure intent of serving God.

This all causes me wonder.
I wonder if we have lost some of the pure intent of serving God.
I wonder if we get distracted by our own sense of goodness.
I wonder if we are living in divisive times, standing on the brink of a promised future, needing voice of wisdom to remind us of who we are and what we are called to do.
I wonder if it is time for us to review and remember our covenants and hear God’s summons to obedience.

• The summons to seek a deeper relationship with God through prayer, study and service;
• The summons to honor our cherished traditions as life-giving witnesses to us and to future generations;
• The summons to encourage hospitality, extending a generous welcome to all our members, friends, and visitors;
• The summons to grow a church family that embraces diversity within a safe, positive, and nurturing environment;
• The summons to move beyond simple tolerance toward genuine understanding – to listen attentively, to seek others’ opinions, and to understand that differing values do exist within our church family;
• The summons to deal with disagreements constructively, communicating with others in a direct, caring, and responsible manner;
• The summons to recognize that children and youth are a vital part of our church family and to welcome them into all aspects of church life;
• The summons to extend God’s love, through service and outreach, to those in the community and the world, as best as we are able.

In other words, a summons to be a distinctive people, a faith community that provides a healing, transforming alternative to what we see in the world around us.

Sources:
Deuteronomy by Deanna Thompson (WJKP, 2014)
http://www.reformjudaism.org/commanded-ness
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/eichah-where-are-we-now/
http://www.divreinavon.com/pdf/YishuvHaAretz_GadolHaMetzeveh.pdf
https://www.quora.com/What-would-you-like-to-do-in-your-life-1

Sermon for July 19, 2015

Recognition and Response

The apostles returned to Jesus from their ministry tour and told him all they had done and taught. Then Jesus said, “Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.” He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat. So they left by boat for a quiet place, where they could be alone. But many people recognized them and saw them leaving, and people from many towns ran ahead along the shore and got there ahead of them. Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things …

After they had crossed the lake, they landed at Gennesaret. They brought the boat to shore and climbed out. The people recognized Jesus at once, and they ran throughout the whole area, carrying sick people on mats to wherever they heard he was. Wherever he went—in villages, cities, or the countryside—they brought the sick out to the marketplaces. They begged him to let the sick touch at least the fringe of his robe, and all who touched him were healed. Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Did you know that somewhere in America, it is illegal to feed the homeless in public?  It can’t be true can it? It is true in Fort Lauderdale, Florida after passage of an ordinance by the city council.  The scary part is that Fort Lauderdale is not alone in taking this anti-compassionate stance. Why would any city want to stop the feeding of the homeless in public? The City of Fort Lauderdale claims that they don’t want hungry and homeless people fed in public because they claim it will only keep them from trying to get out of the cycle of homelessness. “It’s a pubic safety issue. It’s a public health issue,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler rationalizes. “The experts have all said that if you’re going to feed them to get them from breakfast to lunch to dinner, all you’re doing is enabling that cycle of homelessness.” Not only that, the city has arrested and jailed people who have decided to break the law and feed the homeless on the streets. It seems that Fort Lauderdale would rather punish the poor and the people trying to help them rather than attempt to help solve some of the problems that lead people into the streets.

Imagine a similar situation in Jesus’ day. Grinding poverty. Immoderate taxes. Oppressive laws. A widening gap between the haves and have-nots -- a time when those in power use excessive fear and force to dominate, all in the name of peace. Imagine hungry crowds of people with nothing. Imagine Jesus, who orchestrates a miraculous mass feeding of thousands of hungry people. The story that we call “The Feeding of the 5000” is the context of the scriptures we just heard.  By feeding hungry crowds of people, Jesus criticizes a political economy that becomes rich on the suffering of others. He indicts a political economy in which the shepherds have failed to feed the sheep. He has compassion on his people. And they run to him. With all of their needs, with their hopes for the future, with their thirst for justice, they run to him. The hungry sheep who have been ignored by their shepherds will do anything to be in the presence of Jesus.

If that was you, to what lengths would you go to be with Jesus? I really love the closing lines of today’s reading: Wherever he went—in villages, cities, or the countryside—they brought the sick out to the marketplaces. They begged him to let the sick touch at least the fringe of his robe, and all who touched him were healed. The Greek word translated as “touch” can also mean “to fasten.” The idea is not that people casually touch Jesus as he passes by, and they are healed. They fasten themselves to him. It is a kind of touch that transforms everyone.

We need that kind of healing transformation, don’t we? As we mark the one-year anniversary of Eric Garner being choked to death by NYC police, I’ve been thinking about how we still live in time if oppressive poverty, immoderate taxation, oppressive laws and a widening gap between the haves and have-nots – a time when those in power use fear and force to dominate, all in the name of peace. Just this week, two black women, 18-year-old Kindra Chapman and 28-year-old Sandra Bland, were found hanged in jail cells under suspicious circumstances. Video shows Sandra beaten by police for what was supposed to be a routine traffic stop. Saturday morning, almost a year to the day that Garner was killed, Jonathan Sanders was buried. The Stonewall, Miss., man was unarmed when he was allegedly choked to death by a white police officer, and according to relatives, the 39-year-old father gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

Some people, in a flash of insight, will see the troubles of the world, will see systems of oppression and injustice, and choose to respond. Ask people. Ask them, “What did you do once you knew? What did you do once your soul was opened to the cruelty around us?”

For some people, the answer will be, “Nothing. I didn’t do anything” People who are content with the world as it is don’t think they need a shepherd who liberates sheep from hunger and oppression. People who benefit from normalcy, people who are successful under current conditions, have no reason to believe that God desires a different social order.

Some people will look at the current order and want to take us back to the Golden Age when everything was better. They will want to re-establish paradise on earth. It’s a form of retreat, really. It a way of saying, “Let’s go back to how things used to be. We were happier then.” The challenge with retreat is that it abandons our participation in actual struggles for justice.

If we choose to either ignore problems or retreat from them, we are being passive. Jesus never taught passivity in the face of evil.

“What did you do once your soul was opened to the cruelty around us?” Some people will look at the current order and lead us to a future end-time at which God will restore justice and punish the wicked and unrighteous. Some people teach that God is waiting for just the right moment to break in and make everything right again. The challenge with this worldview is that justice is often replaced with a divine vengeance that results in human slaughter. I am firm in by belief that Jesus abhorred violence. He offered a way by which evil can be opposed without being mirrored, a way by which the oppressor can be resisted without being emulated; a way by which enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed.

“What did you do once your soul was opened to the cruelty around us?” I want to propose another way. It’s a way that’s been taught and practiced by many others – the way of non-violent love.  It has to do with running to Jesus and fastening ourselves to his love. Our primary calling in life is to receive and trust justice-making and compassionate love, and to live it into the world. We refuse to accept injustice by living in nonviolent protest against a violent world. Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan puts it this way:

"If enough people ... lived in nonviolent protest against systemic evil, against the normalcies of this world's discrimination, exploitation and oppression - the result would be a new world we could hardly imagine.”

The idea that human beings could actually create such a just, peaceful world by fastening ourselves to non-violent love is almost unbelievable. When we try, we can’t seem to sustain it. This land is replete with profoundly caring human beings, motivated not only by self-interest but also by infinite wellsprings of compassion and by desire for justice and goodness. And yet everyday life, a “good life” in the United States, entails consumption, production, and acquisition that threaten Earth’s capacity to sustain life as we know it, and exploits vast numbers of people worldwide, some even unto death. 

We need to be careful here. The critique of non-violence is that white people have a distorted conception of the meaning of violence itself. We like to think of violence as breaking the laws of society or creating disorder or disharmony. That is a very narrow understanding of reality. There is a much more deadly form of violence, and it is camouflaged in such slogans as “law and order,” “freedom and democracy,” and “the American way of life.” Our society has whole a social structure that appears outwardly to be ordered and respectable but is ridden by racism and hatred inwardly. Violence is embedded in American law, and it is blessed by the keepers of moral sanctity. If we take seriously the idea of human dignity, then we know that the annihilation of Indians, the enslavement of Africans, and the making of heroes out of slaveholders were America’s first crimes against humankind.

Change is in the air. Turn to God’s non-violent will, and God’s non-violent will circle back to you.  Nonviolence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Turning, conversion, change – these are all ways of stepping out of the way we’ve always done it, so we can live into God’s promise of redemption and release.

What can we do? What did we do when our souls were opened to the cruelty around us? I’d like to say we ran. We ran away from our fears of inadequacy and ran to Jesus. We fastened ourselves to non-violent love. We fastened ourselves to the kind of love that confronts violence and injustice wherever we find it. We fastened ourselves to the kind of love that challenges prejudicial jokes or remarks. We fastened ourselves to the kind of love that challenges the purveyors and sponsors of violence. We fastened ourselves to the kind of love that that steps up against gun violence. We fastened ourselves to the kind of love that explores new frontiers of equality, whether it be transgender rights in the workplace, food security for those who are hungry, or immigration reform on our borders, or Black Lives Matter in our own backyards. We fastened ourselves to the kind of love that puts into practices the words and example of Dr. King:

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late...Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘too late.’... Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful —struggle for a new world.”

Sources:
http://whosoever.org/v3i6/amanda.html
https://www.ualberta.ca/~cbidwell/DCAS/third.htm
http://moltmanniac.com/james-cones-critique-nonviolence/
http://jonathanturley.org/2014/11/09/why-is-it-illegal-to-feed-the-homeless/
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/07/one_year_anniversary_of_eric_garner_s_death.2.html

Sermon for June 28, 2015

The Healing or the Cure?

Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake, where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, pleading fervently with him. “My little daughter is dying,” he said. “Please come and lay your hands on her; heal her so she can live.” Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him. A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”

His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.” Mark 5:21 ff.

In a documentary about the death penalty, produced about 10 years ago now, a camera crew was present in the home of a woman whose son was to be executed that day. At the time the state carried out the death penalty, the mother burst out of her front door and fell to the ground screaming and crying. Friends and family followed her outside and tried to help her up, as if her being on the ground was the problem. However, whenever people would try to touch her, she would scream at them with fury to keep away. Her behavior was similar to that of a wounded animal, scaring others away because her pain was so great. There was no tangible threat to her personal health or safety. But there was no doubt, this woman was overwhelmed with agony.

Researchers watching this documentary realized that not only was this mother in the throes of grief, she had also been excluded from many of her social connections.  Knowing that she would be rejected, excluded, and ignored by her community, knowing that those around her were not likely to be safe or stable sources of support,  feeling like she might actually be in harm herself, this mother’s reaction demonstrated a way that people protect themselves when feeling threatened. It’s the old fight, flight, freeze reaction, right? Without meaningful social support, people react to protect themselves physical threat and emotional threats. In this case, the mother scared others away out of fear and pain. I wonder if her friends and family came back. I hope so. I hope they did not take her fury personally. We can easily imagine a scenario where someone says, “If she rejects my help, then I’ll just let her be alone until she asks for me. Anyway, she should have known he was no good.” Talk like this is a way of blaming and shaming others.

How often have we witnessed victims of abuse get blamed for their pain? Ever heard this: “She should not have been in that situation/known that person/lived in that neighborhood/walked down that street/gone to that bar or dressed in those clothes”? “People of certain races/ages/classes/backgrounds are just more prone to violent behavior”? “People of certain races/ages/classes/backgrounds just act ‘that way’”? The victim’s parents should have taught him the warning signs”? Why in the world must we blame victims to get distance from them?

Maybe it’s because human experience is defined not by empathy and outreach, but by fear and rivalry. At least that’s what a French literary critic and philosopher named René Girard says. Rivalry and violence are visible at the beginning of all human culture.  To overcome these twin problems, early societies turned to sacrificial violence.  An individual or group was deemed guilty of starting the rivalry. The larger group, the majority, united to sacrifice the ones supposedly guilty of stirring up the original conflict.  After the sacrifice, anxiety decreased for a while. Eventually, though, conflict arose again and the sacrifice needed to be repeated. Someone must be blamed. Atonement must be made. Society unites around an individual or group it can blame for all its problems. Frightened people who want to protect their power over limited resources produce scapegoats. An effective scapegoat has to be someone weaker, someone more vulnerable.

Here’s the important catch: The scapegoat is an outsider, but still lives inside the border of society. The victim belongs to the community but has traits that send her or him to the edges of the community. Those in the majority are brilliant at creating outsiders: the difficult person; the odd-one out; the member with the "wrong" skin color or sexual orientation; the incorrect gender or unfitting religion; too smart, or too rich or too poor. It's difficult to be the one who stops the scapegoating because if you speak up, you can easily become the next victim in a cyclical human activity of destroying those who symbolize a challenge to the status quo.

I want to view today’ story from Mark through this lens. First, let’s look at this woman in the crowd who touches the hem of Jesus’ robe. She is the victim in this scenario. The translation is polite. We are told she has been bleeding for 12 years. Read between the lines, and realize that the woman is menstruating nonstop. According to Jewish purity maps at the time, she is unclean. Impure. No doubt, she’s been told that she’s sick for a reason. God is punishing her for some misdeed. It’s her fault. So, not only is she looked down upon as a woman, but she has been tossed aside as a sick sinner. Ignored. Disconnected. She has become unimportant to the covenant people, residing on the fringes of Jewish society. Anyone who comes into contact with her is also deemed as unclean.

I imagine this woman as a victim of trauma, living in survival mode. Oppression is a social trauma.  For targets of oppression (also known as underprivileged people), social trauma perpetuates itself through scapegoating -- through physical, emotional and spiritual violence, and through the withholding of basic resources necessary to survive and thrive. When people are targeted, discriminated against, or oppressed over a period of time, they may begin to internalize the biases that society communicates to them about their group. In other words, their self image may begin to conform to what the privileged group says about them. Internalized oppression affects many groups of people: women, people of color, poor and working class people, people with disabilities, young people, older adults, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and many others.

So, I imagine the woman in Mark’s story as a target of systemic, multi-generational, pervasive social trauma. She does whatever it takes to protect herself, even if it means taking the perilous risk of showing up in public and letting go of the remains of her well-being for the hope of healing. She is not just looking for physical healing. She needs to be restored to her community. She needs to be re-connected in order to survive.

We’ve been thinking about the targets of oppression. Let’s change tracks for a minute, and think about the role of the oppressor – the perpetrators of social domination. Agents of oppression may also show certain trauma symptoms as symptoms of dealing with taking part in dehumanizing practices and beliefs:
•    Denial,
•    emotional numbness,
•    obliviousness to harassment of target group members,
•    defensiveness,
•    attacking and blaming target group members,
•    refusal to take responsibility for repression,
•    self-absorption,
•    avoidance of oppressed people,

In other words, because of severed social connections, sometimes the perpetrators will fight, flight, or freeze rather than inhabit the wounds they have they have created.

I’m hoping you can see the parallel to today’s issues. Can you see this going on with the open, bloody, perpetual wound of racism in the country? And while I am thrilled about the Supreme Court decision to allow safe-sex couples to be married in all 50 states, the fact that there was an ideologically divided court is emblematic of the rift in opinion in our country. In the midst of the celebration, members of the LGBTQ community in our country still have to decide where and when it is safe to be out and accepted. There are whole groups of people who have to listen to the biases and misinformation that society communicates to them about their group. People simply can't fight effectively for themselves when they are told that the problem is their own fault or that something is inherently wrong with them.

There is only one hope of change and that’s the power of non-violent love. It’s the only way to confront our fears and end our dependence on fear and violence. It’s the only way to heal our scapegoating and defy the will to power of the privileged.

My hope begins with listening for brokenness. Can we offer good news to those who are broken, those who ache and grieve deeply? I’m talking about both the targets and the agents of oppression. All are broken. All are wounded. Speaking very personally – speaking just for me – I cannot inhabit the wounds until I do the difficult work of listening to my own brokenness in the events I wish to condemn. You see, I know something about myself. I know that when I see somebody else do something wrong, I self-righteously call on God for justice. But when I do something wrong, I self-righteously call on God for grace. How can I ask for justice and also be a grace-filled person? When it comes to awareness of discrimination, as a white person of privilege, the problem is not whether I love people who are different than me. The problem is whether I unknowingly participate in and benefit from systems of racism. I inherited a whole bunch of stereotypes and fears. When I allow myself to take part in an “us versus them” system, if I insist on justice for wrongdoers and forgiveness for myself, then I run the risk of denying my participation in brokenness. There can be no reconciliation within myself, forget about with other people. If I simply denounce violence instead of using it as a mirror to see inside of myself, I’m just projecting the problem onto a scapegoat.

If we want our communities to become more effective at securing better health care, good education, a safe environment, and adequate jobs, community members have to learn how to overcome the discouragement, confusion, and divisions that are a result of scapegoating and internalized oppression. I know many in this congregation, including me, want some concrete action items. So, here are some ideas – some broad brush strokes:

•    Become a close friend, ally, or mentor to individuals who are struggling with internalized oppression. Friendship and caring are more powerful than the message of oppression.

•    Take pride in and celebrate your culture. Our cultures often give us our values, our sense of ourselves in history, our humor, our identities, and our world views. We depend on our cultures to provide us with a reference point, a home, and a place to get our bearings and remember what is important to us. Our cultures help us to survive, to be resourceful, to have a sense of humor, and bounce back.

•    We can commit to learning about cultures that are different from ours. Reading and learning more about other cultures helps people gain perspective on how hard their ancestors fought for themselves, often in the face of great odds.  Attending cultural celebrations and rituals helps us understand how other people survive and show resilience.

•    I’ve noticed that in the wake of Charleston, some groups of white men are beginning to meet in order to get a handle on their abuse of privilege. They realize their part in the trauma of oppression. They take turns talking about how oppression has personally affected them while others listen. It can be helpful to meet in groups with people from similar backgrounds, to heal from the emotional hurts of internalized oppression.

•    Take action against injustice and oppression. The only way I know for victims to not be victimized or blamed is to claim their own agency. In the book The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, the author talks about the sense of pride that she felt when determined and committed Blacks joined together for the bus boycott.

"There was open respect and admiration in the eyes of many whites who had looked on before, dubious and amused. Even clerks in dime stores, all white, were more cordial. They were heard to add, after a purchase by a black customer, ‘Y'all come back and see us,’ which was a very unusual occurrence. The black customers held their heads higher. They felt reborn, important for the first time. A greater degree of race pride was exhibited. Many were themselves surprised at the response of the masses, and could not explain, if they had wanted to, what had changed them overnight into fearless, courageous, proud people, standing together for human dignity, civil rights, and, yes, self-respect! There was a stick-togetherness that drew them like a magnet. They showed a genuine fondness for one another. They were really free--free inside! They felt it! Acted It! Manifested it in their entire beings! They took great pride in being black.

Let us continue to build communities where people can be proud of who they are – communities where our stories and languages and cultures are valued, where our wounds are healed by deliberate listening and non-violent action. We strive to know and respect our differences and make possible the highest expectations for humanity. We do the work of liberating ourselves from hatred, beginning in the modest places of our longing souls and always reaching out with our words, our actions, our prayers, our love and our hands to all souls – to all souls. This is how we can be made whole again. This is how the world can be made whole again and all her people one.

Sources:
http://www.vanissar.com/blog/surviving-oppression-healing-oppression/
http://web.psych.utoronto.ca/gmacdonald/macdonald%20&%20leary,%202005a.pdf
https://www3.nd.edu/~jneyrey1/Purity-Mark.html
http://sojo.net/magazine/april-2006/house-all-peoples#sthash.4mqlkFUn.dpuf
http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/culture/cultural-competence/healing-from-interalized-oppression/main

Sermon for June 21, 2015

Passages

As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed). But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?”

When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!” ~ Mark 4:35-42

It is not a proud moment for the disciples. Mediterranean males in Jesus’ day are not supposed to show such open fear. Their panic reveals a serious loss of honor. Yet here they are, trembling with terror. Some translations of this passage, like the NRSV, say that at the end of this event the disciples are filled with awe. But that’s not quite what’s happening. The disciples are not inspired. They are frightened. The Greek indicates something closer to the New Living Translation. The disciples are absolutely terrified -- scared out of their wits. It’s not the fierce storm that scares them. It’s not the high waves. It’s not that the boat is about to capsize. Jesus challenges their faith. He confronts them with their lack of trust. That’s what scares them.

Let’s try to imagine the first audience who read Mark’s story. The Roman Empire had just tamped down a Jewish revolt. Rebels fled to Jerusalem to gain support. Rome cut off all avenues of escape, and slow starvation beleaguered those who were trapped in the city. Eventually, no one could resist the military might of Rome. The Roman army seized Jerusalem, burned the Jewish Temple to the ground, and looted it – the Jewish Temple that was supposed to exist eternally, just like heaven and earth. Soldiers plundered the city, killed the rebels, and crushed the rebellion. All of Israel was impacted profoundly. Rome pursued a scorched earth policy in order to teach the Jewish rebels a lesson. They spared those who offered full collaboration – mostly the Jewish aristocracy. The poor, as usual, suffered greatly, left defenseless before the wrath of Roman counter-insurgency. Peasants who were unable to flee where slaughtered or enslaved. Mark writes from this perspective – from the vantage point of the poor people of Galilee. To those who are deprived and suffering, Mark tells about a man of God named Jesus who equally disdains the Jewish aristocracy and the Roman occupation. Jesus comes to sow the seeds of a radical new order, pressed into the weary soil of the world. And he calls it Good News.

Now back to the wind and waves. Back to the absolute terror of the disciples. In the stories and myths of the time, the seas were seen as obstacles. Bodies of water were ruled by chaotic demons and destructive cosmic forces. The wind and waves are symbolic of the opposition and violence that threatens to drown Mark’s peasant community. And, here is an important part of the story. Jesus and the disciples cross the lake into Gentile territory. Jews and Gentiles don’t mix. Most Jews thought that associating with Gentiles violated the law and made them unclean. So, that evening on the lake is meant to be a journey – a passage from segregation to integration. Any evil that wants to keep segregation in place, any chaotic tempest that interrupts the journey to equality, is silenced by Jesus, who says, “Silence! Be Still!” The winds of opposition are calmed. And the disciples are terrified.

You see where I’m going with this? Some hurricanes are howling around us. Yet again we are confronted with systems of injustice and oppression that protect the power and wealth of a select few by subjugating entire groups of people. We are caught, tossed about in our own waves, wondering what we are going to do. How long are we going to watch what’s going on around us, trembling in fear, before we understand that the One we claim to follow, Jesus the Christ, has come to lead us from fear and oppression to a new shore? When will we be part of his Good News?

Some people are calling the events in Charleston Couth Carolina a tragedy. In my mind, this was no tragedy. I have to agree with John Stewart who opened his Daily Show by saying, if you call what happened in Charleston a tragedy, you’ve completely missing the point. “Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them, who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina and the roads are named for Confederate generals. And the white guy is the one who feels his country’s being taken away from him. We’re bringing it on ourselves.”

Did you see that the shooter’s racist manifesto was found online yesterday? The slaughter of nine African-American people in an historic African-American Church is not about gun ownership. And it’s not a war on Christians. Ascribing the shooting to mental illness is a smokescreen. This was a terrorist hate crime.

Most of us white folk will watch the news and read our Facebook feeds, weeping and wringing our hands, believing that there is nothing for us to do, nothing for us to say, nothing that can make a difference. We righteous progressives have all kinds of excuses for our silence: We don’t know what to say, we are afraid to say the wrong thing, we are overwhelmed by it or we just don’t understand. But truthfully, in a day or two, just as we did after Baltimore, and Ferguson, and Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown, and Travon Martin, most of us will move on to the next news cycle and the next drama in our lives and this will be just another one of those experiences that we file away as an annoyance. White folk can do that. We can move on to the next thing because this stuff does not happen to us as much. We do not face this kind of terror. We are not at risk for being assassinated because of our race. We can move on to the next news cycle while our brothers and sisters of color must sit back and watch us our denial and silence.

I think many white people choose not to face racism because we are afraid.  The great African-American preacher Otis Moss once preached a sermon called “Going from Grace to Dignity.” He said, “As long as we were struggling in the cotton fields of Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi with our cotton sacks across our shoulders and to our sides, picking cotton and having our fingers burning from stinging cotton worms that would hide under the cotton leaves; as long as we were barefoot, actually and symbolically, laughing when we were tickled … America was satisfied … But one day America saw us marching to the voting booth, sitting down at lunch counters, and all of America became afraid.”

Here’s what I want to know. Why is it that some people are trying so hard to make excuses for this Charleston killer? Was he just misguided and disturbed? Maybe. But what he did was an act of hatred. Hatred is a learned state of being. So is cowardice. So is ambivalence.

When white people say NOTHING about the abhorrent violence that occurs repeatedly in the Black community, when we don’t even acknowledge what happened, it leaves our African-American friends and family and co-workers in wonderment and sadness. No posts. No in-person conversation. No water cooler comments. That’s not okay. It’s okay to empathize. It’s okay to question. It’s okay to disagree. It’s NOT okay to act like nothing is happening.

I’m probably offending someone right now, so let me just direct this at myself for a moment. I’m really asking myself what I have done to change the culture that allows for events like Charleston to happen. What have I done to change an oppressive, scorched-earth status quo? What have I done to resist that self-centered, fear-motivated demand to protect my place in society by ignoring systemic conditions that privilege white over black, brown and a whole horde of other differences? What have I done to plant some of those seeds of justice and peace that Jesus came to press into the weary soil of the world? What am I doing to be part of his Good News?

I am going to do my part. I am going to take responsibility for getting white folk in our congregation and our community to have sacred conversations on race. I am going to create space in my ministry to keep talking about oppression, systemic racism, white privilege and white supremacy. I am going to demand of us white folk that we start taking responsibility for our own understanding of the history that brought us to this place. I’m going to stop asking my Black friends how we are going to fix this, and I’m going to start doing more reading and research and listening to those who are being the change we need to see. I am going to try to create a safe place for us to seek solutions to the oppressive systems and terrorizing conditions in which black and brown people live and are oppressed every day.

I ask you to join me. I ask you to be brave enough to not just move on when the news cycle shifts. I ask you to keep engaging when the conversation gets hard. I ask you not to change the subject when fear, denial and self-preservation try to scare us into inaction. 

Here is where I want to start. Wednesday night June 24, at 8 PM, I will be down by our Black Lives Matter Banner on Colesville Road. I’ll be there to talk, and sing, and pray outside, in public, in honor of those who were targeted and killed at their church Bible Study at mother Emmanuel: Cynthia Hurd, a 54-year-old branch manager for the Charleston County Library System; Susie Jackson, and 87-year-old longtime church member; Ethel Lance, a 70-year-old woman who worked at Emanuel AME Church for 30 years; Rev. DePayne Middleton, a 49-year-old doctor and admissions counselor of Southern Wesleyan University; 26-year-old Tywanza Sanders, who earned her business administration degree from Allen University; Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., a 74-year-old retired pastor; Rev. Sharonda Singleton, a 45-year-old track coach at Goose Creek High School; 59 year-old church member Myra Thompson; and The Honorable Rev. Clementa Pinckney, age 41, state senator and Senior Pastor of Emanuel AME Church.

I think we need to let the community know that we will not be afraid. I think we need to re-affirm that Black Lives Matter, and that we, at Christ Congregational Church, worship a God who stands on the side of those who are marginalized and oppressed. In the words of AME Minster Jennifer Bailey, our God is not docile. Our God is big enough to hold our anger, frustration and questions. Our God understands that narratives of reconciliation and peace are not what my community needs right now. What we need is truth-telling and accountability. We need those in positions of power to acknowledge that this was not simply a "single incident," but the latest in a 400-year history of violence against Black people in the United States. We need religious and community leaders to step up and speak out against acts of racial violence in their congregations. Please let me know if you can join me.

Sources:
Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus.
Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels.
Rolling in Sackcloth and Ashes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-bailey/rolling-in-sackcloth-and-ashes_b_7614210.html
I’m Done Praying. I’m Just Done… White People. http://sanctuaryucc.org/im-done-praying-im-just-done-white-people/

Sermon for May 31, 2015 / Trinity Sunday

Hineni

It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. They were calling out to each other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies!
The whole earth is filled with his glory!”
Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.

Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”

Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”

I said, “Here I am. Send me.” Isaiah 6:1-8

People often ask me how I got into ministry. How did I know? The question usually comes from new encounters at dinner parties. When guests find out I’m a minister, they start trying to figure it out – at least those who don’t avoid me. Being a minister is a familiar but uncommon occupation, after all. You’d think I’d have a pat answer by now, but the question still makes me stumble. How did I know? Well . . . I just knew. I’ve known since I was 12 years old. Picture a serious, 12-year old boy who hears the voice of God and begins ordering the complete set of John Calvin’s commentaries on the Bible so that he can get an early start on his clerical studies; a boy staying up late and reading theology by flashlight long after his parents have told him to turn out the lights and go to sleep; a boy so caught up in the bliss of biblical studies, he cannot focus on world geography and mathematics. Got the picture? Well, that wasn’t me. I was  loud-mouthed, 12-year-old who teased others relentlessly, watched Three’s Company and the Love Boat faithfully, listened to Toto sing Africa endlessly, and did not have much interest in reading anything. I was an average kid and an average student living in an average American household. That’s the kid God called into ministry. As I grew, I tried on different ideas for occupations.  By my college years, I talked myself into training to be a High School English teacher. But I could not shake the call to be a pastor.

I was ordained to ministry in 1997. It was a big worship service, concluding with me kneeling in front of the sanctuary as 15 or so ministers gathered around me. They were liberal and conservative; Black, White and Asian; male and female; younger and older. The ministers touched me head and shoulders, and prayed, and conferred the time-honored tradition of ordained ministry through the laying on of hands. Since then, I have enjoyed privileges and challenges that many others do not – I have baptized my children. I’ve been at bedsides as people take their final breaths. I have presided over funerals that have broken the heart of the community. I have more crazy wedding stories than I should. I have received death threats. I get to listen to people’s greatest joys and fears. Being a minister comes with a lot of enjoyment and a lot of heartache. It comes with the territory of partnering with people as we learn to become more compassionate, just, and peaceful. For me, it all began that first time I sensed God saying, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people?” – the first time I said, “Here am I. Send me”?

Do you remember the first time you sensed God calling you?  Because you are a minister too! In the United Church of Christ, we believe God calls each and every one of us to build a more compassionate, just, and peaceful world. It doesn’t take a seminary degree or an ordination service. Everyone gets to build God’s world. One of the responsibilities of a church member is to listen to and reflect on life's journeys in ways that help us understand how God prods us in a certain directions. Sometimes that process seems very clear and understandable. Sometimes it seems almost impossible to understand what God wants from us. But make no mistake, in some way or another, God calls each of us: “Whom shall I send?” When have you said, “Here am I. Send me.”

Those words of response actually come from the Hebrew Scriptures. In Hebrew it’s just one word: Hineni. We hear it a few times in the Bible. Like in the book of Genesis when God gets the attention of someone by calling out his name: “Abraham.” And Abraham says, “Hineni. I’m here. I’m ready.” On Abraham’s part, there is no surprise, no hesitation. God speaks, and Abraham responds as if the two of them were just sitting side by side, each fully present to the other.

We also hear the same phrase in the book Exodus. Remember the story of God speaking to Moses from a burning bush? The bush calls out, “Moses, Moses.” And Moses says “Hineni. I’m here. I’m ready.”  Just imagine what it must be like to hear God calling your name, and to be so familiar with God that it would not be unexpected. Imagine what it must feel like to be so open to the moment that not only are you assured that God exists, but that God knows you by name. Imagine what it must be like to be so at peace that when God’s calls you by name, your calm and comfortable response is, “Hineni. I’m here. I’m ready.”

Hineni. Each time this word is used, it is a pivotal moment. It’s as if God says. “Listen! Pay attention! Something important is about to happen! Something is about to change, but only if you can open yourself up.” If we are here in the moment, if we are open and receptive, then we can begin to see the hand of the Eternal all about us. “Hineni. Yes. God, I am here.” Our response opens us to the power of a sacred, imminent encounter with a new reality.

Hineni. We hear it in today’s reading from the Prophet Isaiah. We sometimes refer to this story as Isaiah’s commission. Isaiah is probably in the Jewish temple at prayer. In a mystical moment, the heavenly realm penetrates the earthy realm. The Temple is filled with God’s presence, complete with a retinue of angelic creatures who flank God and sing praises. Isaiah falls apart. He knows he is not holy or wholesome enough to see God in all of God’s glory and live to tell about it. One of the angelic creatures takes a hot coal off the Temple incense altar and touches it to Isaiah’s lips as a kind of cleansing ritual. Then God speaks. “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”

Isaiah has an instant response. Hineni. “Here I am. Send me.” In other words, “I’m fully present for you. I’m focused on you. I’m ready and willing to hear you, to receive you, to be present with you and for you, and to do your work in the world”

That’s really what it’s all about. Hineni means the ability to be present and receptive to the other. To say, “Here I am,” is one of the most important things we can say to God. It’s also one of the most important things we can say to each other. Too many of us are not really here for each other. I think we are losing the ability to be present and receptive to others. It’s getting worse in our society because of our electronic distractions—our smart phones, our tablets, our laptops, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. These things have us so plugged in that we are paradoxically tuning out. We are not there in the moment like we need to be. This is hard for me to admit, but I’ve noticed it in myself. Just one more e-mail and I’ll listen. Let me answer this text while we talk. I even find it hard to watch television without having some other device by my side. You know what I’m not doing as much? I’m not playing games with my kids to taking out my guitar and singing. I’m not talking to my wife about how our days went as much as I need to be. It is not what I hope for and expect from myself. I’m not as hineni as I need to be – not as fully present and receptive to others.

I can’t be alone in this. I know that far too many of us are telling ourselves we are multi-tasking, when the fact of the matter is, we are distracted, not paying enough attention to anything. We are becoming less present for others; less hineni.

Here is another problem. If we are less present for others, if we are not as ready to receive God, then we are probably less present to the Self as well. Remember, I said each of us has a call – each of us is a minister? We must listen to that which calls us to create a world in which each of us is secure enough to be unafraid to love and be loved. The world will not give us love. It will frighten, tease, confuse, seduce and dominate us. Hineni means we look at the condition of our personal lives and say, “Here am I. I am ready to love fully and be fully loved. I am focused, willing, receptive, and open.”

So how about it? What can you say "yes" to? Can you say Yes to God? To others? To your self? When have you be able to answer God's call with "Hineni. Here am I. I am ready. I am open. Send me”?

Listen closely, because God calls us by name. Listen, because it may be a still small voice. It may be a soft, steady heartbeat in the turmoil of daily events. It is there. When you hear it , know that you are experiencing a moment of grace. It may be God commissioning you to be part of our commitment to justice, freedom and love. God knows you.  God knows us. God calls us. Our response? Well, that’s our chance to be hineni – fully present to God and one another. Here we are. Send us.

Sermon for May 24, 2015 / Pentecost

Pentecost Doxology

All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For the Spirit that God has given you does not enslave you in fear; instead, through the Spirit, God has adopted you as children and by that Spirit we cry out, “Abba!” God’s Spirit joins with our spirit to declare that we are God’s children. And if we are God’s children, we are heirs as well and coheirs with Christ sharing in Christ’s suffering and sharing in Christ’s glory. Romans 8:14-17(Inclusive)

The Granby Gorge was one of the most dangerous places in town where I grew up. We all knew the stories about kids who dove into the gorge, broke their necks and never walked again. We heard the legends of heedless swimmers who jumped off the cliffs and were pulled into underground caves by the currents of the waterfall. I remembered the words of my father, who told me what he’d do to me if he ever caught me swimming at the Granby Gorge. Let’s just say that, it involved his foot connecting to my rear end, followed by weeks of hard labor on our family woodpile.

So, , there I stood, at the tender age of 16, toes curled over the edge of the rocks atop the Granby gorge, hands in the air, ready to perform a record-breaking cannonball to the cheers of my high school friends. One well-placed leap could put me in the fabled pantheon of gorge jumpers. I was about to have fame, respect, and girls who liked to go out with risk-taking daredevils like me. Yes, I was about to have it all in one 30-foot jump. No more feelings of abandonment. No more snubs. No more bullies. I would be unique and special, and people would finally appreciate the real me.

I took a deep breath and looked to the left. I loosened my neck as the underlings on the rocks below started to chant. “Jump! Jump! Jump!”  Then I took another breathe, looked to the right, and did a quick double take. There, watching the spectacle from the street, was my father in his Chevy Silverado half ton pickup. Let’s just say, I never jumped the Granby Gorge that day, but I learned a lot about splitting and piling wood.

I didn’t really want to jump the gorge. I really wanted to be popular, and liked, and accepted. I really wanted people to see something heroic, intense, and mysterious about me. I wanted to be like The Most Interesting Man in the World, like in those Dos Equis commercials: “He once won a staring contest with his own reflection. His business card simply says 'I'll Call You.’ Once he ran a marathon because it was ‘on the way.’ When he orders a salad, he gets the dressing right there on top of the salad, where it belongs . . . where there is no turning back. Dicing onions doesn’t make him cry . . . it only makes him stronger. He’s against cruelty to animals, but isn’t afraid to issue a stern warning. Who is this man of mystery? Matt Braddock!”

Much later I realized that those cheering at the base of the gorge were not cheering for me. They did not care about me. They just wanted to see me jump. My need to belong provided their entertainment. This happens a lot in my life. I misinterpret some people’s support for care. I forget that some people have veiled motives behind their behavior, just like I do sometimes. In the end I feel embarrassed. Used. Hurt. Betrayed. It is a kind of suffering -- a craving to be unique; a need to be needed; a desire to be desired. But life doesn’t always work that way.

Desire can be compared to fire. If we grasp at fire, what happens? Does it lead to happiness? If I say, “Look at this beautiful fire! Look at the stunning colors! I love red and orange, and the silvery greenish-blue in the flames; those are my favorite colors,” and then grab it, I would find a certain amount of suffering entering my body, right? If I thought about the cause of my pain, I would discover it was the result of having clutched that fire.

Now imagine that we don’t want to get burned, but we keep reaching for the fire. I know it will hurt. I know I will suffer. But I keep doing it anyway. It sounds crazy, but we do it all the time. Buddhists have a word for this kind of suffering. They call it attachment, or craving. Craving is like a fire that burns everything with which it comes into contact.

In the South of India, people used to catch monkeys in a very special way. Actually they let monkeys catch themselves. A hunter cut a small hole in a coconut, just large enough for a monkey to put its hand in. Next, the hunter tied the coconut to a tree and filled it with something sweet. The monkey smelled the sweetness, squeezed its hand into the coconut, grab the contents, and found that its clenched fist did not fit back through the hole. Here’s the trick. The last thing the monkey will think of is to let go of the sweet. The monkey holds itself prisoner. Desires . . . attachments . . . cravings . . . they catch us again and again. Trying to fulfill our desires is like reaching for an alluring treat and getting caught rather than letting go. It’s like reaching for the fire again. You get burned. This is life: full of suffering from self-made pain. We tend to long for what we do not have, or we wish for our lives to be different than they are; we often fail to fully appreciate how wonderful life actually is.

I think this is what’s happening in the Upper Room on Pentecost. Here cower the fearful followers of Jesus: afraid they will be found and persecuted, ridiculed, exposed, tortured, and killed; afraid they’ll be given the same treatment that the empire gave to Jesus. They are confused. They are powerless. They are attached to old behaviors and worn-out understandings. They are obsessed by the presence of Christ’s absence. They never really understood what Jesus was teaching them about a new kingdom. So they tremble in secret. Trapped, they live only for their safety, longing for the comfort of their old lives. And they suffer. They long for what they do not have: peace, harmony, safety, comfort, trust, belief, security.

In the reading from Romans, Paul writes about two ways to live. The difference between these two ways means everything. Earlier in the book of Romans, he talks about living, “according to the flesh.” To live according to the flesh is to live with ego at the center. My desire to be loved as an original man of mystery is a self-centered way of life. My impatient anger in the traffic jam is a self-centered thing. It is MY schedule that is supreme and MY destination that is most important. MY ego that needs attention. Everyone else should yield to MY needs. Paul thinks that this ego-driven way of living, this attachment to our obsessions, leads to suffering.

Paul says there is another way to live -- a way to overcome suffering. He calls it “living in the Spirit.” He means, simply, allowing the Spirit of God to lead us. We put God’s interests at the center of our lives. Instead of reaching into flames and getting burned again and again, we allow the fire of the Spirit to come upon us and control our lives. 

When we are captive to the suffering of the past, we turn inward, tempted to wallow in self-absorption. Injustice becomes the only measure of our attention. But the flame of God, the gift of the Spirit, turns us outward to the world, no longer alone. The Spirit is upon those who realize that craving does not make life better. They have a purpose beyond self-protection. They appreciate the world around them because it’s God’s world. They enjoy it without trying to cage it, control it, or own it. They seem to enjoy what many of us long for: peace, harmony, safety, comfort, trust, belief, and security.

I once read a story about a church deacon who decided she would serve God by taking the youth group to visit a retirement home. Once a month the youth group went to the retirement home and put on a little worship service for the people who lived there. One day, as the young people led worship, a resident rolled his chair over to where this deacon was standing, took hold of her hand and held it all during the service. The man did the same thing the next month, and the next month, and the next month, and the next month. Then they went one Sunday afternoon and the man wasn’t there. The deacon asked the nurse in charge, “What happened to that man?”

“Oh,” she said, “He’s near death. He’s just down the hall, the third room. Maybe you should go in and visit him. He’s unconscious, though.”

The deacon walked down the hall and entered the third room. She saw the gentleman in bed, close to death. She did not know what to do. Those moments can feel so awkward. Then, instinctively, led by the Spirit, she held his hand and said a prayer. And when she said “Amen,” the man squeezed her hand. The deacon was so moved by that squeeze, she began to weep. She needed to get out of the room.

As she was leaving, she bumped into a woman who was coming into the room. The visitor said, “He’s been waiting for you. He said he did not want to die until Jesus came and held his hand. I tried to tell him that after death he would have a chance to meet Jesus and talk to Jesus and hold Jesus’ hand. But he said, ‘No. Once a month Jesus comes and holds my hand and I don’t want to leave until I have a chance to hold the hand of Jesus once more.’”

There is something very important that God wants to do in you and through you. It might be just as simple as this: to go some place and to hold a hand and be Jesus for somebody. Our communities are waiting for us to be aware of our cravings, to learn how to stop living for ourselves and to be led by the Spirit of God. They are waiting for us to awaken them to the holiness and giftedness around us. In the Spirit we move away from the attachments that trap us. We move from isolation to unity. We go from oppression to liberation. We recognize failure and accept grace. We have shared in the suffering. Now it is time to live in the Spirit and allow God to transform the world by transforming us.

May the breath of God stream within you.
May the wind of renew you.
May the flame of God invigorate you.
May the Spirit of God embolden you to confidence into this day.
Let us go out in the power of that Spirit
to live lives like Jesus,
to cheer and restore  those are broken and forsaken.
The spirit is blowing. The future is waiting. Amen.