Do We Need Any More Heroes?
This is the account of Terah’s family. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran was the father of Lot. But Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, the land of his birth, while his father, Terah, was still living. Meanwhile, Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. (Milcah and her sister Iscah were daughters of Nahor’s brother Haran.) But Sarai was unable to become pregnant and had no children. One day Terah took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai (his son Abram’s wife), and his grandson Lot (his son Haran’s child) and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans. He was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there. Terah lived for 205 years and died while still in Haran. The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram departed as the LORD had instructed, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Genesis 11:27-12:4
Ever since I was a child, I have loved the automated carwash. I don’t go there often, but I love it. Not those places that make you get out of the car, either. Or those places where you pull into a bay and the machine spits soap around the car one side at a time. It has to be the one where you pull up to the track, put your car in neutral, take your hands off the wheel, and get pulled through a tunnel of spraying foam, slapping spaghetti, whirring brushes, and air blowers. I think it’s exciting – an outside force pulling me closer to a clean car.
Pulled along and out of control. It’s fun in the carwash. Or if you are waterskiing. But not so much if you are a fish. For a fish, the experience of being pulled out of your control must be a different sensation. Imagine, you are a fish, minding your own business, living your prescribed life, searching for a bite to eat, when you see the tastiest looking worm in the world. You swim towards it. You take a quick, guarded nibble and swim away. All is well. You swim back to the worm, take another bite, and all of the sudden an irresistible force is yanking you to the surface with some kind of metal hook contraption in your lip. The more you struggle, the worse it gets. But struggle you must! Utterly beyond your control, the force of a fishing reel pulls you to the open air, not knowing what kind of adventure or horror awaits once you leave your aquatic home.
Have you ever felt like that? Can you remember times when life pulled you along and you could not stop it? Sometimes life just feels better with a safe and predictable routines: wake up, brush teeth, read the paper, work, eat, watch TV, go to bed. Some of us don’t like to admit that we live rather conventional lives. Some people decide they are bored. They find want to escape feeling trapped by a life that pulls them into a monotonous future. They try to break out of their ordinary routines, but not always in the healthiest ways. Consider the following accounts of couples who think their relationships are pulled along by life:
A man named Bob writes, “It depresses me to think that I’ll never have romance again. I’m happily married, but the romance is gone between us and sometimes I think about having an affair. Is this it? Love without romance for the rest of my life?”
Carla describes a similar concern. She says, “I Love my partner and we get along well. But sometimes I think, is this it? Most nights I get home from work first and fix dinner. Then she comes home, we eat, she gets the kids ready for bed while I clean up. We watch a little TV together and go to bed. Saturday we take care of chores. Sunday we do something as a family . . . I know we have a better relationship than a lot of our friends, but it’s all so routine. I keep feeling something’s wrong with me for wanting more. I’m bored. I love Sheila, but she’s like a comfortable shoe. Am I being childish to think there should be more than this?”
Some people feel that same way about their faith. In High School, I felt that the UCC congregation I grew up in was full of boring hypocrites. I looked around and asked, “Is this it?” Eventually, I wandered away from that church and worshipped with some fundamentalist Baptists. Their faith seemed more alive. Their services seemed to focus more on relationships than tradition. They had a worship band at worship and sang simple choruses with smiles on their faces. Of course, after a while I felt like they were in a rut, too. I asked, “Is this it?” and looked for another new faith family.
Sometimes we are restless wanderers, looking to find a home. We want more out of life. We want adventure and comfort, freshness and familiarity, and we want them all at once.
I wonder if Abraham and Sarah ever felt this way. In just a few lines of text from Genesis, I hear our story. When we first meet Abraham, or Abram as he is introduced to us, he lives his prescribed life. Like other nomads of the time, he takes a partner, he migrates from place to place, he buys and sells goods. But Abraham and Sarah are not really wanderers and they’re not really settled, either. They are the perpetual strangers in a strange land, the outsiders who longs to be the insiders, people of trust who yearn for God to soothe their monotonous lives.
One day, life changes. Maybe it started out like any other day for Abram. He and Sarai are childless, stuck near the city of Haran, watching sheep, bartering goods, and pulled along by life. One ordinary day after another. The same old, same old. Maybe his life wasn’t just dull – maybe it was worse. Maybe his life was oppressive, constrained, or hemmed in. Maybe he felt so confined that sometimes he couldn’t even breathe. Or perhaps his life was filled with yearning, with an ache for something more; another land, another way of being. Maybe he had that feeling we get of being full but still hungry, satisfied but still thirsty.
Abraham’s life is impotent. For a story that’s consumed with men, lineage, and power, Abraham looks helpless. He comes from line of wanderers who can trace their ancestry back to Noah, but he can’t father children of his own to carry on his lineage. He has lived nearly half his life, and nothing exciting or legacy-shaping has happened to him. Sounds like a recipe for mid-life crisis to me!
Abram is seventy-five years old when life changes. God has to offer. God needs someone who needs God – someone who will rise to lofty standards. God needs Abraham and Sarah. God summons them to adventure. Honestly, I’m surprised. They are not particularly righteous or special people. They aren’t godly people. Later in Genesis, we learn that Abraham and Sarah can be cheaters and liars. They are restless and unsure. Their life seems suspended with no child. In a story where God is obsessed with creation, Abraham and Sarah cannot reproduce. They exert no control over their own lives. They are so utterly human.
And maybe that’s the point.
When we read about the call of mythic heroes, they share some common elements. Usually, the hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. The hero encounters tremendous forces and wins a battle over them. They hero returns from this adventure and shares his newfound power with his fellow humans. Think about mortal Prometheus ascending to the heavens to steal fire from the gods, or Jason sailing through the Clashing Rocks, stealing the golden fleece, and taking the throne back from the usurper. Sometimes the mythic hero is a reject from society who overcomes a symbolic deficiency to fulfill a task from God. Think about the story of Exodus in which stuttering Moses scales Mount Sinai. As Moses climbs the mountain, flashes of lightening and peals of thunder shake the world. God bends the heavens, and moves the earth. In the midst of this holy storm, God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. Moses, in turn, gives them to the people of Israel.
Abraham is not that kind of hero. Abraham is not really a hero at all. Abraham, is the nomad who hears God and follows. God is the real hero of the story, not Abraham. Out of nowhere, God invites Abraham to relate to the world differently. God says, “Abraham, I choose you and Sarah to be the Parents of Blessing to the entire world.” Now Abraham has a choice. Live the same, mundane existence, or live into a new calling that reframes his ordinary life as a life of obedience to God.
There are going to be times when we are faced with the shear ordinariness of life. We want some excitement. We may say, “I like my life, but is this it?” We will be tempted to slake our thirst for adventure in poisoned streams. Have an affair . . . drown the boredom with booze . . . buy an overpriced sports car and relive the fantasy of our youth . . . over-focus on our careers at the expense of relationships . . . become withdrawn and self-sufficient and alienate our friends and family.
Looking at the tedium that lies ahead, we may choose to avoid it by consuming material pleasures. As I see it, the problem with slaking our thirst for adventure in these ways is that what seemed shiny and alluring can eventually become another part of the boring routine; except the new “normal” now includes a deeper rut of addictive behavior. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much life I waste. How many hours have a wasted watching “reality” TV, when real experiences were happening all around me? How much time have I squandered being angry at people who hurt me? How often have I brooded over the hypocrisy of others and done nothing to change the pretense in my own life? How many times have I followed unhealthy habits to distract myself from a wounded spirit?
Is this the adventure God wants for us?
Sarah and Abraham remind us that God seeks people who have the bravery and compassion to journey into the wilderness in their own lives.
One ways of defining faith is to say faith is a way of seeing the whole. The great American theologian H. Richard Neibuhr pointed out that there are three different ways to see the whole. One way to experience reality is to see the whole as gracious, as nourishing, as supportive of life -- to see reality as that which has brought us into existence, nourishes us. If we can see God and others as supportive, gracious and nourishing, then we have the possibility of responding to life in a posture of trust and gratitude. God invites us to THAT adventure, that journey of faith, in which we learn to trust God and learn to see life in a new way. If this is not what life is about, namely, growth and wonder and compassion, then I don’t know what life is about.
The story of Abraham and Sarah leads us to that marvelous question asked by the poet Mary Oliver: What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life? Are we going to remain in the world of the dull, the repetitive, the addictive, the same old same old? Or are we, like Abraham and Sarah, going to respond to invitation to leave our old way of being and enter a life beyond convention and our domestications of reality? The voice of invitation still speaks the promise to us: “I will show you a better way, a new country.”
Can we respond to the call that invites us enter a life of wholeness? We begin our search with God as our hero – a hero whose quest leads to ordinary, hearts like ours -- restless wanderers who find a way to listen, trust, and leap to God in faith.
Sources:
Stories paraphrased from We Love Each Other But . . . by Ellen Wachtel (New York: St. Martine, 1999), 187-188.
Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (New York: William Morrow, 2002), 21-24.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 30-37.
Marcus Borg, “Faith: A Journey of Trust,” http://www.explorefaith.org/faces/my_faith/borg/faith_by_marcus_borg.php
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Sermon for August 12, 2012
The Ark Builders
When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights. That very day Noah had gone into the boat with his wife and his sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and their wives. With them in the boat were pairs of every kind of animal—domestic and wild, large and small—along with birds of every kind. Two by two they came into the boat, representing every living thing that breathes. A male and female of each kind entered, just as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord closed the door behind them. For forty days the floodwaters grew deeper, covering the ground and lifting the boat high above the earth. As the waters rose higher and higher above the ground, the boat floated safely on the surface. Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, rising more than twenty-two feet[a] above the highest peaks. All the living things on earth died—birds, domestic animals, wild animals, small animals that scurry along the ground, and all the people. Everything that breathed and lived on dry land died. God wiped out every living thing on the earth—people, livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and the birds of the sky. All were destroyed. The only people who survived were Noah and those with him in the boat. And the floodwaters covered the earth for 150 days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede. The underground waters stopped flowing, and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped. So the floodwaters gradually receded from the earth. After 150 days, exactly five months from the time the flood began, the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Two and a half months later, as the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible. Genesis 7:11-8:5
You have never heard the story of Noah until you’ve heard it from biblically illiterate Middle School students. A few summers ago, I was running a Bible Summer Camp for 60 Middle School campers. We talked about the story of Noah’s Ark. Sure, we know about the flood and the rainbow. But when I asked the kids why God flooded the earth, one Jr. Higher told our group, “OK, so there were these evil men who built their house on some sand, and they wouldn’t listen to God so God sent a flood and everyone who built their house on the sand died but everyone who like built their house on the rocks lived, except the flood came over the whole earth, so they died too.” Bet you didn’t know that part! We don’t always pay attention to the details of the story.
The story begins with God. Embittered. Full of regret. Creation is a big mistake, so the earth will receive a cleansing destruction. But the cure seems as bad as the disease. God says to Noah, “Build an ark. Collect representatives from creation. Gather your family and you will be rescued. What’s not on the ark will be destroyed.” I wonder what God’s voice sounded like to Noah. Sad? Disappointed? Weary? Did Noah think about trying to change God’s mind? No matter. It wasn’t long before the hills and valleys became nothing but dark water. I wonder what Noah must have thought after the flood–when he looked back on the months of awesome and fearful events. Did Noah have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome? After watching the Lord God destroy the world, after spending never-ending months on a big boat, what happened to Noah afterwards? In the years after the flood, when dark clouds rolled in and the smell of rain filled the air, did the old feelings come rushing back to Noah? Was he was filled with memories of being saved from death; being given a new chance by a loving God to be his people.
We don’t know. We can’t really infer much from the story. But this much I know. It was nothing like the pleasant scenes we see painted on nursery walls and cartooned in children’s bibles. Once the flood waters recede, the Ark is not surrounded by verdant fields and harmoniously singing birds. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a flood? It’s not pretty. Remember the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina? On August 29, surge waters started quickly flooding homes at about 8 o’clock in the morning. Residents sought high ground on their roofs. Many had to claw through their ceilings with their hands just to get to safety. By the time people got up there, the roofs were blown away. They had to dive into the water, clinging to trees, or grabbing onto debris.
Six months after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, I took a team down to help rebuild homes. We talked to a woman named Paula. When the waters came, her house lifted off its piers and floated away. Paula survived by getting into a small boat that drifted by. She and her extended family spent the next 8 hours in the boat, clinging to the sides while they lived off candy bars floating in the surge. Paula owned 15 horses. Before the storm, she led them to roam in a large pasture. After Katrina, 8 were dead, caught up in trees or tangled in barbed wire. Paula’s house could not be rebuilt. She salvaged her house, board by board, so that the wood could be reused at her sister’s home.
If this is what a regional flood looks like, imagine the devastation in the aftermath of the mythical flood of Genesis.
Destruction and rebirth. Insecurity and Safety. These themes keep playing themselves out in our human story. We can see them today. Look and you may see the waters of destruction eddying all around us. It’s not a physical flood (although we are seeing more of that, too). I’m seeing a overflow of anxiety. I’m sensing a rising deluge of hopelessness among some people. A fear that this is as good as it gets – that the best times have come and gone and we are on the downside of the bell curve. The world can feel inundated with random violence and senseless retribution, as we saw again with the shootings in the Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
Some scientists have termed what’s going on as “societal regression.” It means that society is more or less anxious and orderly at different times in history. At certain times, there’s more anxiety in all people, which in turn raises chaos and irresponsibility in society. It even happens in non-human societies. One study at the National Institutes of Health noticed that when rat populations became overcrowded, there were instances of abnormal behavior. Mothers forgot how to make nests. Males gave up their nest guarding behavior and sat on the sidelines staring. The same forces affect human institutions. The more troubled society and its institutions become, the more anxiety its members react to. It is a brutal cycle. When we are under stress, it is hard to think clearly and to live according to principle-centered decisions that guide our behavior. We look for the quick fix that will bring some temporary relief to the stressors of life. We become focused on taking care of ourselves. For many, life becomes a matter of survival.
Think about the disasters that surround us on a daily basis. In these tough economic times, there are now 46.2 million Americans living in poverty. That’s about the entire population of Spain. During one of the endless Republican debates cycle, a CNN reporter asked one of the candidates what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of intensive care. The candidate replied, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.” The reporter pressed him again, asking whether “society should just let him die.” In the pause that followed, cheers and shouts of “Yeah!” came from the crowd. There has been a lot written and said about that moment, most of which is partisan. It was not really a Republican moment or a Tea Party moment, or even a political moment. It was a cultural moment. An American moment. A moment that exposes how comfortable we are with inequality, how low our concern is for our neighbor. People around us our suffering. They tread water as the floods refuse to recede. We’ve come to accept the hardship that surrounds us. We may not have been the one shouting “Yeah!” but do we condone it by our inaction?
That’s just one issue. We all know people are drowning in despair. Family members are fighting with one another. Children seem lost. Neighbors are isolated. People we know and love are broken, floating in a rising flood of anxiety, waiting for the next wave to crash upon them. Thinking about it gives me a headache and a heartache.
For Noah, God’s solution was build and ark – a vessel to bring life to a new generation. I believe God is calling us here at Christ Congregational Church to be ark builders for a new generation. Our job is to build a vessel of hope and promise. My question this morning is this: What kind of vessel are we building to bring the gospel to a hurting world?
Church buildings are a vessel, of sorts. In the past congregations said, “Come on board and listen to our beautiful music. Hear an inspiring sermon. Join a church board. Come to one of our classes. Become a church member. Come to us and you will find rest and peace.” It was good for a while, but it stopped working. That vessel does not fit the needs of upcoming generations.
Don’t get me wrong. I love church. I’m the biggest church advocate you will ever find. But I have a critique: at some point churches moved the prime focus away from the people around us who are in trouble. We got thinking that if people really wanted to get their lives together they would come to church. And when they get to church, they had better like the old hymns. They better like formality and liturgy because that’s the way we do it. Where has it gotten us? We live in a time when people are desperate for spiritual meaning, and mainline churches are leaking members by the tens of thousands every year. The truth is that you can come to church for years and your life can still be miserable. You can sit in these pews week after week and still feel like you are dying inside. You can sit in a crowded sanctuary and be the loneliest person on the planet. The challenge, as I see it, is that the church needs to cast off from the dock and get wet. Don’t expect people to just come here and get on board. It’s time to weigh anchor and take off into the watery chaos around us.
We are the ark builders, making a vessel that sail the storms of life. Our CCC ark helps everyone, everywhere to negotiate the storm by using whatever it takes -- whatever it takes -- to help people in trouble find peace.
I am proud of who we are becoming at CCC. In a time of fast-paced frenzy and overloaded schedules, we are building an Ark of Sabbath.
In a time of random violence and war, at home and abroad, we are building an Ark of Peace.
In a time when the LGBT community is the victim of bigotry, at a time when we see some political and religious leaders denying equal rights to all people, we are building an Ark of Inclusion.
In a time when the pain of racism still throbs in our communities, we are building an Ark of Equality.
In a time when we are moved to serve our communities with greater compassion and accountability, we are building an Ark of Transformation.
In a time when more and more people are coming off bus to the doors of this church looking for a financial help, or food, or just a cup of ice to keep cool on a broiling hot day, we are building an Ark of Care.
In a time when we wonder what kind of world our children will inherit, when we wonder what the earth will look like if these flood waters recede, we are building an Ark of Responsibility.
In a time when we need to come together and take the risk of sharing our vulnerabilities and pains, we are building an Ark of Community.
And for anyone who feels pulled under by the currents of life, we are building an Ark of Care, and Ark of Healing, and Ark of Wholeness. So come, all you who are strong and you who are tired; you who have resources to share and you who need to receive; you who are losing hope and you who see the future’s promise, you who are tired of the fight and you who are energized by optimism. Come as we build this Ark together, and reach out to others who need what we are building.
Sources:
Aqua Church by Leonard Sweet, pp.
God: A Biography by Jack Miles, pp.
Michael Williams, ed., The Story Tellers Companion: Genesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_%28graphical%29
http://sermons.pastorkeithanderson.net/tag/justice/
When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights. That very day Noah had gone into the boat with his wife and his sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and their wives. With them in the boat were pairs of every kind of animal—domestic and wild, large and small—along with birds of every kind. Two by two they came into the boat, representing every living thing that breathes. A male and female of each kind entered, just as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord closed the door behind them. For forty days the floodwaters grew deeper, covering the ground and lifting the boat high above the earth. As the waters rose higher and higher above the ground, the boat floated safely on the surface. Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, rising more than twenty-two feet[a] above the highest peaks. All the living things on earth died—birds, domestic animals, wild animals, small animals that scurry along the ground, and all the people. Everything that breathed and lived on dry land died. God wiped out every living thing on the earth—people, livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and the birds of the sky. All were destroyed. The only people who survived were Noah and those with him in the boat. And the floodwaters covered the earth for 150 days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede. The underground waters stopped flowing, and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped. So the floodwaters gradually receded from the earth. After 150 days, exactly five months from the time the flood began, the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Two and a half months later, as the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible. Genesis 7:11-8:5
You have never heard the story of Noah until you’ve heard it from biblically illiterate Middle School students. A few summers ago, I was running a Bible Summer Camp for 60 Middle School campers. We talked about the story of Noah’s Ark. Sure, we know about the flood and the rainbow. But when I asked the kids why God flooded the earth, one Jr. Higher told our group, “OK, so there were these evil men who built their house on some sand, and they wouldn’t listen to God so God sent a flood and everyone who built their house on the sand died but everyone who like built their house on the rocks lived, except the flood came over the whole earth, so they died too.” Bet you didn’t know that part! We don’t always pay attention to the details of the story.
The story begins with God. Embittered. Full of regret. Creation is a big mistake, so the earth will receive a cleansing destruction. But the cure seems as bad as the disease. God says to Noah, “Build an ark. Collect representatives from creation. Gather your family and you will be rescued. What’s not on the ark will be destroyed.” I wonder what God’s voice sounded like to Noah. Sad? Disappointed? Weary? Did Noah think about trying to change God’s mind? No matter. It wasn’t long before the hills and valleys became nothing but dark water. I wonder what Noah must have thought after the flood–when he looked back on the months of awesome and fearful events. Did Noah have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome? After watching the Lord God destroy the world, after spending never-ending months on a big boat, what happened to Noah afterwards? In the years after the flood, when dark clouds rolled in and the smell of rain filled the air, did the old feelings come rushing back to Noah? Was he was filled with memories of being saved from death; being given a new chance by a loving God to be his people.
We don’t know. We can’t really infer much from the story. But this much I know. It was nothing like the pleasant scenes we see painted on nursery walls and cartooned in children’s bibles. Once the flood waters recede, the Ark is not surrounded by verdant fields and harmoniously singing birds. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a flood? It’s not pretty. Remember the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina? On August 29, surge waters started quickly flooding homes at about 8 o’clock in the morning. Residents sought high ground on their roofs. Many had to claw through their ceilings with their hands just to get to safety. By the time people got up there, the roofs were blown away. They had to dive into the water, clinging to trees, or grabbing onto debris.
Six months after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, I took a team down to help rebuild homes. We talked to a woman named Paula. When the waters came, her house lifted off its piers and floated away. Paula survived by getting into a small boat that drifted by. She and her extended family spent the next 8 hours in the boat, clinging to the sides while they lived off candy bars floating in the surge. Paula owned 15 horses. Before the storm, she led them to roam in a large pasture. After Katrina, 8 were dead, caught up in trees or tangled in barbed wire. Paula’s house could not be rebuilt. She salvaged her house, board by board, so that the wood could be reused at her sister’s home.
If this is what a regional flood looks like, imagine the devastation in the aftermath of the mythical flood of Genesis.
Destruction and rebirth. Insecurity and Safety. These themes keep playing themselves out in our human story. We can see them today. Look and you may see the waters of destruction eddying all around us. It’s not a physical flood (although we are seeing more of that, too). I’m seeing a overflow of anxiety. I’m sensing a rising deluge of hopelessness among some people. A fear that this is as good as it gets – that the best times have come and gone and we are on the downside of the bell curve. The world can feel inundated with random violence and senseless retribution, as we saw again with the shootings in the Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
Some scientists have termed what’s going on as “societal regression.” It means that society is more or less anxious and orderly at different times in history. At certain times, there’s more anxiety in all people, which in turn raises chaos and irresponsibility in society. It even happens in non-human societies. One study at the National Institutes of Health noticed that when rat populations became overcrowded, there were instances of abnormal behavior. Mothers forgot how to make nests. Males gave up their nest guarding behavior and sat on the sidelines staring. The same forces affect human institutions. The more troubled society and its institutions become, the more anxiety its members react to. It is a brutal cycle. When we are under stress, it is hard to think clearly and to live according to principle-centered decisions that guide our behavior. We look for the quick fix that will bring some temporary relief to the stressors of life. We become focused on taking care of ourselves. For many, life becomes a matter of survival.
Think about the disasters that surround us on a daily basis. In these tough economic times, there are now 46.2 million Americans living in poverty. That’s about the entire population of Spain. During one of the endless Republican debates cycle, a CNN reporter asked one of the candidates what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of intensive care. The candidate replied, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.” The reporter pressed him again, asking whether “society should just let him die.” In the pause that followed, cheers and shouts of “Yeah!” came from the crowd. There has been a lot written and said about that moment, most of which is partisan. It was not really a Republican moment or a Tea Party moment, or even a political moment. It was a cultural moment. An American moment. A moment that exposes how comfortable we are with inequality, how low our concern is for our neighbor. People around us our suffering. They tread water as the floods refuse to recede. We’ve come to accept the hardship that surrounds us. We may not have been the one shouting “Yeah!” but do we condone it by our inaction?
That’s just one issue. We all know people are drowning in despair. Family members are fighting with one another. Children seem lost. Neighbors are isolated. People we know and love are broken, floating in a rising flood of anxiety, waiting for the next wave to crash upon them. Thinking about it gives me a headache and a heartache.
For Noah, God’s solution was build and ark – a vessel to bring life to a new generation. I believe God is calling us here at Christ Congregational Church to be ark builders for a new generation. Our job is to build a vessel of hope and promise. My question this morning is this: What kind of vessel are we building to bring the gospel to a hurting world?
Church buildings are a vessel, of sorts. In the past congregations said, “Come on board and listen to our beautiful music. Hear an inspiring sermon. Join a church board. Come to one of our classes. Become a church member. Come to us and you will find rest and peace.” It was good for a while, but it stopped working. That vessel does not fit the needs of upcoming generations.
Don’t get me wrong. I love church. I’m the biggest church advocate you will ever find. But I have a critique: at some point churches moved the prime focus away from the people around us who are in trouble. We got thinking that if people really wanted to get their lives together they would come to church. And when they get to church, they had better like the old hymns. They better like formality and liturgy because that’s the way we do it. Where has it gotten us? We live in a time when people are desperate for spiritual meaning, and mainline churches are leaking members by the tens of thousands every year. The truth is that you can come to church for years and your life can still be miserable. You can sit in these pews week after week and still feel like you are dying inside. You can sit in a crowded sanctuary and be the loneliest person on the planet. The challenge, as I see it, is that the church needs to cast off from the dock and get wet. Don’t expect people to just come here and get on board. It’s time to weigh anchor and take off into the watery chaos around us.
We are the ark builders, making a vessel that sail the storms of life. Our CCC ark helps everyone, everywhere to negotiate the storm by using whatever it takes -- whatever it takes -- to help people in trouble find peace.
I am proud of who we are becoming at CCC. In a time of fast-paced frenzy and overloaded schedules, we are building an Ark of Sabbath.
In a time of random violence and war, at home and abroad, we are building an Ark of Peace.
In a time when the LGBT community is the victim of bigotry, at a time when we see some political and religious leaders denying equal rights to all people, we are building an Ark of Inclusion.
In a time when the pain of racism still throbs in our communities, we are building an Ark of Equality.
In a time when we are moved to serve our communities with greater compassion and accountability, we are building an Ark of Transformation.
In a time when more and more people are coming off bus to the doors of this church looking for a financial help, or food, or just a cup of ice to keep cool on a broiling hot day, we are building an Ark of Care.
In a time when we wonder what kind of world our children will inherit, when we wonder what the earth will look like if these flood waters recede, we are building an Ark of Responsibility.
In a time when we need to come together and take the risk of sharing our vulnerabilities and pains, we are building an Ark of Community.
And for anyone who feels pulled under by the currents of life, we are building an Ark of Care, and Ark of Healing, and Ark of Wholeness. So come, all you who are strong and you who are tired; you who have resources to share and you who need to receive; you who are losing hope and you who see the future’s promise, you who are tired of the fight and you who are energized by optimism. Come as we build this Ark together, and reach out to others who need what we are building.
Sources:
Aqua Church by Leonard Sweet, pp.
God: A Biography by Jack Miles, pp.
Michael Williams, ed., The Story Tellers Companion: Genesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_%28graphical%29
http://sermons.pastorkeithanderson.net/tag/justice/
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Check it out . . .
The Englewood Review of Books put a review I wrote online:
Review of Abraham's Children, Kelly James Clark, ed.
--mbb
Review of Abraham's Children, Kelly James Clark, ed.
--mbb
Sermon for July 22, 2012
I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks -- kind of lazy about posting. --mbb
Crime
and Punishment
Now . . . Eve became pregnant. When she gave birth to Cain, she said, “With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!” Later she gave birth to his brother and named him Abel. When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd, while Cain cultivated the ground. When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift—the best of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected. “Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”
One day Cain
suggested to his brother, “Let’s go out into the fields.” And while they were
in the field, Cain attacked his brother, Abel, and killed him. Afterward the
Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother? Where is Abel?”
“I don’t know,”
Cain responded. “Am I my brother’s guardian?” But the Lord said, “What have you
done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! Now you are
cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother’s blood.
No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you
work! From now on you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.”
Cain replied to the
Lord, “My punishment is too great for me to bear! You have banished me from the land and from
your presence; you have made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will
kill me!” The Lord replied, “No, for I will give a sevenfold punishment to
anyone who kills you.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who
might try to kill him. 16 So Cain left the Lord’s presence and settled in the
land of Nod, east of Eden. Genesis 4:1-16
Was I in a melancholy mood
yesterday! I woke up, made a cup of coffee, and started in on the Saturday Washington Post. Of course, the ghastly
news from Aurora, Colorado dominated the paper. Our hearts sink with empathy
and despair once more as we try to understand the senseless, calculated,
deliberate killing of others. As I read the paper, one of my thoughts was,
“Here we go again – get ready for another round of arguments about gun control
and whether citizens should be able to own glocks and assault rifles. When we
are done debating, we will be in exactly the same place as when we started: Pro-gun
lobbying interests will win the day, we will have done nothing to address the issues,
and we will slowly make our way back to movie theaters again until the next
shooting happens. I know this is cynical. I told you I was in a melancholy
mood.
Just when I’m wondering if
we could ever hope for tolerance of one another (I’m not talking acceptance or
understanding – I’d be happy with mere tolerance and civility), The Post also reported on the escalating
shadow war between Israel and Iran, as well as the gory violence in Syria,
which make the crowd shooting in Colorado look like child’s play.
Well, I was already sad
when I put down the Post and read the
latest issued of Popular Science.
Leading its stories of environmental doomsday scenarios was an article on how
climate change scientists are being threatened and attacked for their calls to
global action to save our warming planet. Our beautiful home is being
destroyed, and as we watch it wilt in the heat the climate-deniers not only debate
but threaten the lives of climate scientists and their families. Pro-pollution
lobbying interests win the day. By noon, I was feeling a subterranean sense of
grief.
Author E.B. White once
said, “The more I stay here, the more anxious and boxed in I feel, and the more
I worry about whether I will do something, help people, or learn.” That’s all I
hope to say in what I do, and in how I act. I’m not planning on leaving for a
while, so I’m learning to adapt and make some sense of this world. And I’m
looking for some hope. Today it just seems too much: Too much violence,
too much fear; too much of demands and problems; too much of broken dreams and
broken lives; too much of wars and slums and dying; too much of greed and
squishy fatness and the sounds of people devouring each other and the earth;
too much of stale routines and quarrels, unpaid bills and dead ends; sometimes
the air seems scorched by threats and rejection and decay until there is
nothing but to inhale pain and exhale confusion; too much of darkness, Lord,
too much of cruelty and selfishness and indifference. It’s just too much; too
bloody, bruising, battered much.
The beginnings of human
violence begin simply enough. Our ancient stories tell us about how Adam and
Eve start a family. They have two sons. Cain, the big brother, becomes a
farmer. Abel, the little brother, becomes a shepherd. We are told nothing else
about Cain or Abel. They seem to be decent, hard-working sons. They are both
religious people, so they honor God by giving a sacrifice specific to each one’s
vocation. Each gives God the product of his work. Cain brings some produce from
his gardens and Abel brings some firstborn animals from his flocks.
For some reason, God like’s Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s. Why? Is Cain proud and self-willed? Is God trying to rub it in Cain’s face that he’s the Bad Seed? Is God anti-vegetarian? Was there something wrong with Cain’s crops? Maybe God really does like the little brother best. Maybe Cain’s devotion to God was lukewarm while Abel expressed enthusiastic piety.
For some reason, God likes Abel’s offering but not Cain’s. The only clue we have to why might be found in one small word in the text: “Some.” Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel makes an offering to God, too, which the storyteller describes in detail. Abel gives the best, and Cain only gives some and God rejects it. Cain is angry. And sad. And depressed. Cain will soon be guilty of something rather horrible--so terrible that it makes his lackluster offering look trivial by comparison. Seeing Cain’s simmering rage, God suggests that with some effort, Cain can wrestle temptation to the ground and become the master over it instead of the victim. Did Cain even try? Did wrestle with his frustrations and angers?
For some reason, God like’s Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s. Why? Is Cain proud and self-willed? Is God trying to rub it in Cain’s face that he’s the Bad Seed? Is God anti-vegetarian? Was there something wrong with Cain’s crops? Maybe God really does like the little brother best. Maybe Cain’s devotion to God was lukewarm while Abel expressed enthusiastic piety.
For some reason, God likes Abel’s offering but not Cain’s. The only clue we have to why might be found in one small word in the text: “Some.” Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel makes an offering to God, too, which the storyteller describes in detail. Abel gives the best, and Cain only gives some and God rejects it. Cain is angry. And sad. And depressed. Cain will soon be guilty of something rather horrible--so terrible that it makes his lackluster offering look trivial by comparison. Seeing Cain’s simmering rage, God suggests that with some effort, Cain can wrestle temptation to the ground and become the master over it instead of the victim. Did Cain even try? Did wrestle with his frustrations and angers?
Did you notice that Abel
never speaks? Able is not given any lines in the story. Abel doesn’t whisper a
sound until his blood cries out from the ground. The only words of Abel are the
cries of the innocent victim of violence and abuse. Abel’s cry pierces God’s
ears as God goes looking for Cain. God asks a question of Cain: “Where is your
brother Abel?” It reminds us of the question God asked Adam in the Garden after
Adam ate the fruit of the tree. “Where are you?” Cain lies. “I don’t know. Am I
my brother’s keeper? The word “keeper”
is the same word used when God created humans and tasked them to work and
guard, or “keep”, the Garden. Cain fails
to keep God’s creation. He’s done the opposite. He’s destroyed it.
God says to Cain, “Listen!
Don’t you hear the blood crying out!?” Apparently Cain did not. Neither do we
most of the time. Crime goes on. So does its punishment. After Cain spills his brother’s blood onto the
ground, the lands will no longer yield crops. Abundance cycles to scarcity. Cain,
the farmer, is up-rooted from the ground. He becomes a restless wanderer on the
earth, a nomad. It’s as if God gives Cain a living death in a land of
barrenness.
Do you know what amazes me
about this text? Cain lives. Previous to this, I get the feeling that the Lord
God is terrifying and capricious. But Cain will not suffer Abel’s fate. Humanity
chooses death but God insists on life. God knows that the cycle of violence
needs to be stopped. It’s bad enough that Abel’s blood screams in God’s ears.
God can’t bear to hear Cain's blood shout out, too. God chooses life in the
face of death. By the end of this short story, we are left with a pool of
Abel’s blood screaming into God’s ear. At the same moment, God bends down and
kisses Cain’s forehead, marking him for safety, insisting on life.
Screaming blood and kissing lips. Justified punishment and gracious salvation. Cain’s bloody hands and God’s mark of protection on Cain’s forehead. The images collide and bewilder. Why does God keep insisting on life? Why doesn’t the cry of Abel’s blood have the last word? Why? Because only God may have the last word, and that word is life.
Screaming blood and kissing lips. Justified punishment and gracious salvation. Cain’s bloody hands and God’s mark of protection on Cain’s forehead. The images collide and bewilder. Why does God keep insisting on life? Why doesn’t the cry of Abel’s blood have the last word? Why? Because only God may have the last word, and that word is life.
Cain chose death and can
never settle down again because of it. East of Eden there is only restlessness
and wandering. Cain set humanity up for a whole history of restless wandering—we
can see the Land of Nod everywhere, it seems. Meanwhile, in all our restless
searches for answers and identity, the shed blood of the innocent always speaks
to us. The cries from the blood-soaked
Colorado must send God reeling, but no less also the cries from the dust of Mexico,
the cities of Syria, the mountains of Afghanistan, the deserts of Iraq, the
soil of Somalia, and everywhere that people die as one group keeps trying to
gain immortality and mastery over another.
Today, I want to remember
the times when I have chosen death over life, even in small ways. Sadly, it
happens too easily. And it’s just too much. Or, it is too little: Too little of
compassion, too little of courage, of daring, of persistence; too little of
music and dance, and laughter, and celebration?
I also NEED to remember, death
does not get the last word. Even when the world chooses death, we are loved and
protected by God. God always chooses life. God, make of us some nourishment for
these starved times, some food for our sisters and brothers who are hungry for
hope.
Sources:
"Hearing
Abel, Raising Cain" by Scott Hoezee, http://www.calvincrc.org/sermons/topics/genesis/genesis4.html
Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle.
Jack Miles, God: A Biography, pp. 39-42.
Michael
Williams, ed., The Storytellers Companion
to the Bible: Genesis, pp. 42-47.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Sermon for July 15, 2012
Original Sin or Original Blessing?
The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the LORD God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”
“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’”
“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”
The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and the woman heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees. Then the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”
“Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
Then the LORD God asked the woman, “What have you done?”
“The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”
Then the LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this, you are cursed
more than all animals, domestic and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Then the LORD God said to the woman,
“I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
and in pain you will give birth.
And you will desire to control your husband,
but he will rule over you.”
And to the man God said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return. Genesis 3:1-20
So . . . my mother calls her tax accountant. The accountant is excited. She says to my mother, “Oh I’m glad you called. Your sister is sitting right in front of me. So is your brother and your mother.” Strange coincidences happen all the time right? This one’s not really that unusual. They all use the same accountant. They could all happen to show up at the same time and have a good laugh about it. Here’s what threw my mother off. My mother’s mother -- my grandmother -- has been dead for many years. So I asked my mother, how did grandma get to the accountant’s office? And of all the places for the spirits of the dead to visit, why would grandma choose the accountant’s office? It all started years ago when my uncle talked probate with the accountant. Mid sentence, the account suddenly froze and started to zone off and stare into the distance. And then her eyes rolled back in her head. My uncle thought she was having a seizure, and when he arose to get some help, she snapped out of it and said that my dead grandmother was now in the room with them. Since then, departed relatives visit regularly at tax appointments. My grandmother and grandfather have talked through the accountant, as well as other relations. I don’t know what to think. When I go to the accountant, I plan to talk about . . . well, taxes. I think this accountant is overstepping her professional boundaries a bit. It says even more about my family that they are willing to stay with this woman. I think they like the visitations from the spirit world. Plus, the woman is a wonder of an accountant.
I am unsure whether the accountant’s behavior is a blessing or a curse. Are her actions helpful or sinful? I can ask that about a lot of people’s behavior, including my own. In my relationships with people, do I bless them with my words and actions, or am I liability? How about our relationship with God? Were we created to be blessings, or do we carry the mark of original sin in us? Is it written into our genetic code that we will always say the wrong things, make the wrong decisions, and alienate ourselves from each other all before we even get out of bed in the morning?
The traditional way of thinking about sin comes from our understanding of the events in the Garden of Eden. God says, don’t eat the fruit of that tree. The snake tempts the woman, the woman tempts the man, the man and the woman eat some fruit, gain knowledge of good and evil and then God punishes the whole bundle of them in an explosion of fury. And their offspring. And all generations since. And each generation has been passing on the seeds of this rebellion in this fractured world. In Christian theology, we call it original sin – what the Reformer John Calvin called hereditary depravity. Here’s our question for today: do we enter a torn and sinful world as wanton, sin-stained blotches on existence or do we enter the world as good, beautiful, original blessings?
Last week, we took some time to listen to the Bible’s first account of creation. The Bible does not begin with a story of temptation and failure. Scripture opens with splendid, generous, abundant blessing. Each day God creates something and calls it beautiful. Humans are created with such great possibilities. We are fragile, radiant beings. So, how is it that we humans, the glory of God’s creation, are scarred by the infection of original sin?
If you grew up Catholic, or Evangelical Christian, or in a Calvinist tradition, the assumption of original sin is embedded in you. In these traditions, the evidence of original sin is losing control. Any passion is a loss of control. Lovemaking and any expressions of sexuality are seen as a loss of control. How many of you had to sit through scary religious lectures about the evils of your bodies and how you were all one bad decision away from burning in eternal torment? From the earliest days of Christendom, Christian theologians declared God has no passion. God never loses control. God never has to repent. Unlike us, God is unchangeable, even to the point where, in typical Trinitarian language, theologians declared God the Father did not suffer on the cross with God the son. God relates to corrupted humanity by removing God’s Self from it, sustaining us and judging us all at the same time. It’s called antipatripassionism. The doctrine, as I understand it, says: 1) Passion, the loss of control, causes pain, 2) God does not suffer pain, therefore, 3) God must not experience passion. Our congregational ancestors taught the same thing as they sailed for safety from what they saw as the decadent culture of the day, taming their wild passions while they tamed the wilderness of their new colony. But take out your Bible sometime and scrutinize the texts. The first humans are disobedient to God’s one and only rule – don’t eat the fruit of the tree. They do just the opposite and get the Lord God really, REALLY upset. In this scene, the Lord God is gratuitous in wrath as much as God was gratuitous in bounty in Genesis 1. However, the doctrine of original sin is not found in any writings of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is certainly not in the first three chapters of Genesis. Look closely at the basis of humanity. It’s not the curse, but the blessing.
The “original sin” is not so much a rebellion but rather laziness, passing the buck, blaming the snake, and not owning up to responsibility. In other words, we are originally blessed, but for some reason we can’t handle it. It seems that in the past 10,000 years humans learned something rather well, and it is not a reflection of our original blessing. We have times when human ugliness shows through, much to our embarrassment.
We still look at other people who are different than us with fear. We judge others. We protect ourselves from “them.” We talk about “those people” but fail to think about how we function in the system.
Instead of celebrating and being gentle to our bodies we are hard on them, working them long hours, depriving them of sleep, putting all kinds of foreign substances in them and otherwise wearing them out before their time.
Instead of emphasizing the healing of the whole people of God, the whole earth, we want our own personal salvation, and our own piece of the economic pie, and we want it now, even if two-thirds of the world must suffer to support our selfish standard of living
Our desire to experience ecstasy and the joy of sexuality turns on itself and we use the blessing of sexuality to sell cars, and boats, and cosmetics, and of course, Viagra.
The opening chapters of Genesis remind me that yes, we make mistakes, and yes, God has a different plan for the world. Original blessing is the basis what it means to be human.
What if we took this idea of original blessing seriously? What happens when we begin to understand ourselves as originally blessed, rather than originally cursed? How much better might we feel about ourselves?
What if instead of being suspicious about our bodies, we welcome our bodies and we treat each other with gentleness?
What if the word “humility” no longer mean despising of one’s self? The word humility and human come from the same root – hummus. It actually means dirt. Humility literally means to befriend one’s earthiness.
What if instead of trying to control and dominate our relationships, we become ready to experience and celebrate the ardor of life?
What if instead of regarding humans as sinners, we regard ourselves as those who can choose to create or destroy?
So, which is it? Are we originally blessed or originally cursed? Fred Craddock, a well known teacher and preacher, was driving through Tennessee some years ago. He stopped at a restaurant for a meal, and he was intrigued as one man went from table to table greeting everyone. When the man came to Craddock and learned he was a minister, the man insisted on telling a story. The man had been born in the mountains not far from where they sat. His mother was not married when he came into this world. In that time and culture, the mother and her son were scorned. The boy grew up feeling the love of his mother, but also the contempt of the townsfolk. At recess, his classmates would exclude him, and he learned to keep to himself in order to avoid getting teased. At age 12 the boy took up going to church on his own. A new minister had come to the church near his house. The boy would slip into the back row just as the services began, and leave before it was over so that no one would ask him, “What’s a boy like you doing here.”
However, one Sunday he so wrapped up in the service that he forgot to slip out. Before he could quietly exit, he felt the big hand of the minister on his shoulder, light and gentle. The preacher looked at him and asked, “Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?” The boy’s heart sank, and perhaps his pain showed on his face. But then the preacher answered, “Wait a minute. I know who you are. The family resemblance is unmistakable . . . You are a child of God.” With those words, he patted him on the back and added, “That’s quite an inheritance. Go, and claim it” The boy was now an old man greeting people in a restaurant. He told Craddock, “That one statement literally changed my whole life.” The man’s name was Ben Hooper and he elected the governor of Tennessee -- twice.
Do we hurt others, live by our compromises, and forget some of the important things?
Absolutely.
Do we take what God created as good, and manipulate it for our own gain?
Of course we do.
Do we suffer the consequences of the others' bad decisions?
Yes, we do.
Are we the bearers of hereditary depravity, cursed and rejected by God? All I can say is this, I know who we are. The family resemblance is unmistakable. We are the children of God. We bear the beautiful image of God. Our legacy, and our potential, is exceedingly good. Now go and claim it.
Sources:
“Original Sin or Original Blessing” by The Rev. Rod Frohman
Original Blessing, by Matthew Fox.
“Making Sense of Sin” by The Rev. Ricky Hoyt.
“An Original Theology: Creation and Matthew Fox” by Michael D. Obrien.
“Exceedingly Good” by Rev. Bruce Southworth.
“Original Sin” at Wikipedia.
“Puritans” at Wikepedia.
God: A Biography, by Jack Miles.
The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the LORD God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”
“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’”
“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”
The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and the woman heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees. Then the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”
“Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
Then the LORD God asked the woman, “What have you done?”
“The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”
Then the LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this, you are cursed
more than all animals, domestic and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Then the LORD God said to the woman,
“I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
and in pain you will give birth.
And you will desire to control your husband,
but he will rule over you.”
And to the man God said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return. Genesis 3:1-20
So . . . my mother calls her tax accountant. The accountant is excited. She says to my mother, “Oh I’m glad you called. Your sister is sitting right in front of me. So is your brother and your mother.” Strange coincidences happen all the time right? This one’s not really that unusual. They all use the same accountant. They could all happen to show up at the same time and have a good laugh about it. Here’s what threw my mother off. My mother’s mother -- my grandmother -- has been dead for many years. So I asked my mother, how did grandma get to the accountant’s office? And of all the places for the spirits of the dead to visit, why would grandma choose the accountant’s office? It all started years ago when my uncle talked probate with the accountant. Mid sentence, the account suddenly froze and started to zone off and stare into the distance. And then her eyes rolled back in her head. My uncle thought she was having a seizure, and when he arose to get some help, she snapped out of it and said that my dead grandmother was now in the room with them. Since then, departed relatives visit regularly at tax appointments. My grandmother and grandfather have talked through the accountant, as well as other relations. I don’t know what to think. When I go to the accountant, I plan to talk about . . . well, taxes. I think this accountant is overstepping her professional boundaries a bit. It says even more about my family that they are willing to stay with this woman. I think they like the visitations from the spirit world. Plus, the woman is a wonder of an accountant.
I am unsure whether the accountant’s behavior is a blessing or a curse. Are her actions helpful or sinful? I can ask that about a lot of people’s behavior, including my own. In my relationships with people, do I bless them with my words and actions, or am I liability? How about our relationship with God? Were we created to be blessings, or do we carry the mark of original sin in us? Is it written into our genetic code that we will always say the wrong things, make the wrong decisions, and alienate ourselves from each other all before we even get out of bed in the morning?
The traditional way of thinking about sin comes from our understanding of the events in the Garden of Eden. God says, don’t eat the fruit of that tree. The snake tempts the woman, the woman tempts the man, the man and the woman eat some fruit, gain knowledge of good and evil and then God punishes the whole bundle of them in an explosion of fury. And their offspring. And all generations since. And each generation has been passing on the seeds of this rebellion in this fractured world. In Christian theology, we call it original sin – what the Reformer John Calvin called hereditary depravity. Here’s our question for today: do we enter a torn and sinful world as wanton, sin-stained blotches on existence or do we enter the world as good, beautiful, original blessings?
Last week, we took some time to listen to the Bible’s first account of creation. The Bible does not begin with a story of temptation and failure. Scripture opens with splendid, generous, abundant blessing. Each day God creates something and calls it beautiful. Humans are created with such great possibilities. We are fragile, radiant beings. So, how is it that we humans, the glory of God’s creation, are scarred by the infection of original sin?
If you grew up Catholic, or Evangelical Christian, or in a Calvinist tradition, the assumption of original sin is embedded in you. In these traditions, the evidence of original sin is losing control. Any passion is a loss of control. Lovemaking and any expressions of sexuality are seen as a loss of control. How many of you had to sit through scary religious lectures about the evils of your bodies and how you were all one bad decision away from burning in eternal torment? From the earliest days of Christendom, Christian theologians declared God has no passion. God never loses control. God never has to repent. Unlike us, God is unchangeable, even to the point where, in typical Trinitarian language, theologians declared God the Father did not suffer on the cross with God the son. God relates to corrupted humanity by removing God’s Self from it, sustaining us and judging us all at the same time. It’s called antipatripassionism. The doctrine, as I understand it, says: 1) Passion, the loss of control, causes pain, 2) God does not suffer pain, therefore, 3) God must not experience passion. Our congregational ancestors taught the same thing as they sailed for safety from what they saw as the decadent culture of the day, taming their wild passions while they tamed the wilderness of their new colony. But take out your Bible sometime and scrutinize the texts. The first humans are disobedient to God’s one and only rule – don’t eat the fruit of the tree. They do just the opposite and get the Lord God really, REALLY upset. In this scene, the Lord God is gratuitous in wrath as much as God was gratuitous in bounty in Genesis 1. However, the doctrine of original sin is not found in any writings of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is certainly not in the first three chapters of Genesis. Look closely at the basis of humanity. It’s not the curse, but the blessing.
The “original sin” is not so much a rebellion but rather laziness, passing the buck, blaming the snake, and not owning up to responsibility. In other words, we are originally blessed, but for some reason we can’t handle it. It seems that in the past 10,000 years humans learned something rather well, and it is not a reflection of our original blessing. We have times when human ugliness shows through, much to our embarrassment.
We still look at other people who are different than us with fear. We judge others. We protect ourselves from “them.” We talk about “those people” but fail to think about how we function in the system.
Instead of celebrating and being gentle to our bodies we are hard on them, working them long hours, depriving them of sleep, putting all kinds of foreign substances in them and otherwise wearing them out before their time.
Instead of emphasizing the healing of the whole people of God, the whole earth, we want our own personal salvation, and our own piece of the economic pie, and we want it now, even if two-thirds of the world must suffer to support our selfish standard of living
Our desire to experience ecstasy and the joy of sexuality turns on itself and we use the blessing of sexuality to sell cars, and boats, and cosmetics, and of course, Viagra.
The opening chapters of Genesis remind me that yes, we make mistakes, and yes, God has a different plan for the world. Original blessing is the basis what it means to be human.
What if we took this idea of original blessing seriously? What happens when we begin to understand ourselves as originally blessed, rather than originally cursed? How much better might we feel about ourselves?
What if instead of being suspicious about our bodies, we welcome our bodies and we treat each other with gentleness?
What if the word “humility” no longer mean despising of one’s self? The word humility and human come from the same root – hummus. It actually means dirt. Humility literally means to befriend one’s earthiness.
What if instead of trying to control and dominate our relationships, we become ready to experience and celebrate the ardor of life?
What if instead of regarding humans as sinners, we regard ourselves as those who can choose to create or destroy?
So, which is it? Are we originally blessed or originally cursed? Fred Craddock, a well known teacher and preacher, was driving through Tennessee some years ago. He stopped at a restaurant for a meal, and he was intrigued as one man went from table to table greeting everyone. When the man came to Craddock and learned he was a minister, the man insisted on telling a story. The man had been born in the mountains not far from where they sat. His mother was not married when he came into this world. In that time and culture, the mother and her son were scorned. The boy grew up feeling the love of his mother, but also the contempt of the townsfolk. At recess, his classmates would exclude him, and he learned to keep to himself in order to avoid getting teased. At age 12 the boy took up going to church on his own. A new minister had come to the church near his house. The boy would slip into the back row just as the services began, and leave before it was over so that no one would ask him, “What’s a boy like you doing here.”
However, one Sunday he so wrapped up in the service that he forgot to slip out. Before he could quietly exit, he felt the big hand of the minister on his shoulder, light and gentle. The preacher looked at him and asked, “Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?” The boy’s heart sank, and perhaps his pain showed on his face. But then the preacher answered, “Wait a minute. I know who you are. The family resemblance is unmistakable . . . You are a child of God.” With those words, he patted him on the back and added, “That’s quite an inheritance. Go, and claim it” The boy was now an old man greeting people in a restaurant. He told Craddock, “That one statement literally changed my whole life.” The man’s name was Ben Hooper and he elected the governor of Tennessee -- twice.
Do we hurt others, live by our compromises, and forget some of the important things?
Absolutely.
Do we take what God created as good, and manipulate it for our own gain?
Of course we do.
Do we suffer the consequences of the others' bad decisions?
Yes, we do.
Are we the bearers of hereditary depravity, cursed and rejected by God? All I can say is this, I know who we are. The family resemblance is unmistakable. We are the children of God. We bear the beautiful image of God. Our legacy, and our potential, is exceedingly good. Now go and claim it.
Sources:
“Original Sin or Original Blessing” by The Rev. Rod Frohman
Original Blessing, by Matthew Fox.
“Making Sense of Sin” by The Rev. Ricky Hoyt.
“An Original Theology: Creation and Matthew Fox” by Michael D. Obrien.
“Exceedingly Good” by Rev. Bruce Southworth.
“Original Sin” at Wikipedia.
“Puritans” at Wikepedia.
God: A Biography, by Jack Miles.
Monday, July 9, 2012
The Rhythm of Spiritual Activism
Augustine draws on two biblical
characters to describe these two ways of life: The Apostles John and
Peter. Augustine says, “The
first life, the life of action, is personified by the Apostle Peter; the
contemplative life, by John. The first life is passed here on earth until the
end of time, when it reaches its completion; the second is not fulfilled until
the end of the world, but in the world to come it lasts forever.”
As illustrated by Peter, the first way of life is
the way of contemplative action. It is the verve and dash that responds
to the call of Christ to “follow me.” The life of action seeks to live into
God’s aims for the world by doing what God is doing and going where God is going.
Of course, one can only do what God is doing and go
where God is going by listening to God. For Augustine, this second way of life is
active contemplation, demonstrated by John. While Peter is the “do-er,” John
is the one who leans on Christ’s chest, listening to the divine breath, feeling
the heartbeat of God, and enjoying the reality of being God’s beloved.
We need both at CCC. Even in this Summer season, we
are an active group. We are already planning events to help us live into our
covenantal commitments in the Fall. We are preparing to pass Maryland’s
Marriage Equality referendum. We are planning anti-racism discussions and
events on Middle East peace. Summer has just started, and I’ve already met with
groups who are preparing Fall Sunday School and Youth Group calendars, New
Member events, the Capital Campaign, Gifts and Callings classes, and Senior
events. We are an active church. But I didn’t need to tell you that.
Go out there and act, CCC! I’m right there with
you. Let’s meet the needs of the world, preaching, teaching, nurturing,
feeding, singing, liberating, stewardship-ing, and following the living Christ.
And in the midst of our contemplative action, let’s not forget active
contemplation. Activism has a spiritual rhythm. We plan for the pauses. We act
together, and then we draw together to pray, dream, and listen for the breath
of the Divine Sprit. Only then do we engage the community again. We act and
then we listen. We engage and then we pause. We move and then we become still.
As we take part in this rhythm, we do not think ourselves into a new way
of living, but we live ourselves into a new way of thinking.
Blessings on you all this Summer season.
Pastor Matt
Sermon for July 8, 2012
Lessons from Creation
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Our Scripture reading is a paraphrase of the opening words of Genesis, pieced together by David Blementhal of Emory University from the commentaries of Rashbam, otherwise known as Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (1083-1174). Click on the link to read.
If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. Horrendous wildfires in Colorado. Oppressive heat waves, droughts and all-time heat records. One observer described our D.C. heat wave as “being in a giant wet mouth, except six degrees warmer.” And then there was that powerful freak wind-storm-for-the-ages that blew through last Friday. First there was the roaring wind --blowing dust, and debris and tumbleweeds -- followed by an explosive display of thunder and lightning that left hundreds of thousands of people without power.
As terrifying as that storm was, the aftermath reminded me of my younger days. The next morning, my street had no electricity, and therefore not as much of the noise that comes with power consumption. There were no whining generators, no a/c units, no humming of transformers. The chirping birds, singing in the morning heat and humidity brought me back to my childhood experiences on my family’s farm in Jerico Springs, Missouri, population 259. Many summers we would visit my great grandfather on the farm. Missouri summers are hot and steamy. Grandpa Hudson had a few antique desk fans to cool the kitchen – the kind that would lop off a limb if you got too close. My grandmother would set up shop in the kitchen frying hearty meals for family farm workers over the kitchen stove. She suffered through those visits to Jerico Springs. For her, a visit to Missouri meant a week of hard labor and sweat. As for me . . . I remember trying to sleep on the downstairs couch in the old farmhouse, waiting for a breeze as I checked in with the jar of fireflies I had caught and kept near my pillow.
The morning after our D.C. storm brought me back to Jerico Springs, MO. It also got me wondering what might happen if these weather events become a regular feature of modern life. These are, after all, the kinds of extremes scientists predicted will come with climate change. In the days following the wind and heat, I’ve heard more people wondering whether this is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level. As one scientist noted, "The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about." The head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn't listen. So it's I told-you-so time.
Last week, The Washington Post reported that just 18 percent of those polled name climate change as their top environmental concern. Maybe we hear about it so much, it’s becoming too easy to tune the message out. As one woman told the Post, “I really don’t give it a thought.” We don’t always think of ourselves as intertwined with our environment. It’s as if we humans are no longer part of creation. We stride the earth as gods, and the ground beneath our feet serves our desires. In the wake of yet another weather-related calamity, we face the same lesson once more: short-term advantages can be gained by exploiting the environment. But in the long term we pay for it. When we consume the natural world as a commodity, we alienate ourselves from the earth, from each other, and also from God. I don’t think this is the relationship God intended.
Martin Buber was a rabbi, philosopher and social activist. In 1923 he came out with a groundbreaking book called I and Thou. He talked about two different types of relationships. Some people have I-Thou or I-You relationships. An I-You relationship is a true dialogue. A person relates to another with mutuality, openness, and directness. There are also I-It relationships. In an I-It relationship, a person learns about another, and experiences another, but never enters into a relationship. I-It relationships are entirely objective. I have an I-It relationship with my doctor. We don’t get together and enter into one another’s profound hopes and fears. He doesn’t really know me. He looks me over and objectively compares my health to other males of my age.
Or, take the example of a tree. You see a tree in the middle of summer – a rigid green pillar in a flood of light. You can feel its movement and sense the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core. You can sense the sucking of the roots and the breathing of the leaves. You can name put the tree in a category– call it a maple, an oak, a birch. You can tell with some predictability how it will grow and when it will lose its leaves. But, up to this point the tree remains an object – an It. You have only experienced the tree.
But, it can also happen, when will and grace are joined, that as you contemplate the tree you are drawn into a relationship. The tree ceases to be an It. All of the sudden you notice the unique features of this tree. It is not just a maple. It has original features that make it different from other maples. It still has a predictable form, color, and chemistry. But now, it’s as if you are confronting this maple as an individual. As the breeze tickles its branches, the leaves shake and the limbs sway, and all of the sudden this tree is dancing with you. You are in a relationship. And relation is reciprocity.
Many of us have I-It relationships with creation. We think that if we have enough objective knowledge and experience and science and can pour it all into new technology, then we will be saved. Many of us feel stuck in a cheap and impotent synthetic world. Our ability to enjoy one another, and the rest of creation is dammed up by greed, corruption, fractured relationships, boredom, and injustice. But God’s creation will not be tamed. Leonard Bernstein reminds us of this in some words from his Mass:
I’m talking about I-You relationships with creation – transforming every experience into a unique connection. I-You relationships draw us closer to one another and to God. Nature’s abundance and beauty reveals God’s generosity and majesty. Creation’s healing, nourishing and life-giving properties reveal divine love.
The question is whether we can relate back to God. Martin Buber says, “Relation is reciprocity.” A new relationship with God and creation means being vulnerable to God’s Word-- the ongoing, creative energy of God. Our spiritual task is to get out of the way enough so that we might be filled and renewed with God’s Word so that we can go about our work of healing, celebrating, and co-creating.
What I’m really talking about today is the power of love. I’m asking us to love creation and to love one another, and to love God. The love I’m talking about involves some risk. Think of a two people who fall in love. In a moment of passion, one partner says, “I love you.” And the other partner says, “Wow, I love you too.” I see it in the movies all the time. One partner might say “I love you” and mean it with all of her soul. But she is only into experiencing the moment: the rush of excitement. A partner might say, “I Love you,” but he might really mean, “I love how you look,” or “I love how I feel right now.” If that’s the case, then what he calls love is really using the other person as an object to fulfill his so-called “needs” at that moment. How many people do you know who have heard the words “I love you,” and then left the relationship feeling cheap and used? We might call it love, but it’s not a relationship.
Think of what happens with another couple when they say “I love you.” They look, and listen, and touch one another, and they know that what they see, hear, and feel has been kissed by God. This is not just any person. This is not just MY Partner, MY wife, or MY husband, or MY lover. This person represents the kiss of God.
We can do the same with the natural world. We can say, “I love the earth,” but really mean, “I love how we can take what’s around us and make our lives comfortable.” But think of what happens when we feel the breeze and sense the kiss of the Divine Spirit, when we dig our hands into the dirt and realize that the elements that make up the topsoil are the same elements that compose human life. This is not just air, soil, and water – these are images of God.
There was once a traveling rabbi who had the ability to answer every question he was asked. One day he arrived at a town where thousands came to hear him. A little girl in the crowd raised her hand. "I have the question you can't answer," she said. "I have a bird in my hand. Is it alive or dead?" Whichever answer the rabbi chose, the girl knew she would prove him wrong. If the rabbi said the bird is alive, she would close her hand and kill it. But if he said the bird was dead, then she'd open her hand and let it live. The rabbi was well aware of the trick behind this question, yet still found himself stumped. Perhaps this truly was the question he couldn't answer. Then suddenly the answer hit him. Tears came streaming down his cheeks, even as his face broke into a smile. Looking at the girl in the midst of the huge crowd, he said, "My precious, precious child. You hold in your hand a bird and ask if the bird is alive or dead. I can only tell you one thing. The fate of this bird lies in your hands. You can let it live, or you can let it die."
We can let creation live or we can let it die. Her fate is in our hands, yours and mine. Sure, we can suck the life out of our earth, and its resources, and inhabitants until we are bloated and satisfied while others are tossed aside like second-hand remnants after they’ve served their purpose. There is another way.
We can approach one another, and the creation around us with reverence, realizing that that we see, and hear, and touch is a single unique being, interconnected yet unique. The very least we can do is look -- really look. And listen. And touch. And know that what we see, and hear, and feel, has been kissed by God.
Sources:
http://www.js.emory.edu/BLUMENTHAL/GenTradRashiRashbam.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/climate-change-us-heat-wave-wildfire-flooding_n_1645616.html?utm_hp_ref=green#slide=1172845
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/global-warming-no-longer-americans-top-environmental-concern-poll-finds/2012/07/02/gJQAs9IHJW_story.html
Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner, 1970), 56-58.
“The Call of Creation: God's Invitation and the Human Response,” http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/resource/GreenText.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/03/bill-mckibben-on-the-global-warming-hoax.html /
Some ideas in this sermon were freely lifted from Original Blessing by Matthew Fox (New York: Putnam, 1983).
Avraham Weiss, Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World. Kindle Edition.
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Our Scripture reading is a paraphrase of the opening words of Genesis, pieced together by David Blementhal of Emory University from the commentaries of Rashbam, otherwise known as Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (1083-1174). Click on the link to read.
If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. Horrendous wildfires in Colorado. Oppressive heat waves, droughts and all-time heat records. One observer described our D.C. heat wave as “being in a giant wet mouth, except six degrees warmer.” And then there was that powerful freak wind-storm-for-the-ages that blew through last Friday. First there was the roaring wind --blowing dust, and debris and tumbleweeds -- followed by an explosive display of thunder and lightning that left hundreds of thousands of people without power.
As terrifying as that storm was, the aftermath reminded me of my younger days. The next morning, my street had no electricity, and therefore not as much of the noise that comes with power consumption. There were no whining generators, no a/c units, no humming of transformers. The chirping birds, singing in the morning heat and humidity brought me back to my childhood experiences on my family’s farm in Jerico Springs, Missouri, population 259. Many summers we would visit my great grandfather on the farm. Missouri summers are hot and steamy. Grandpa Hudson had a few antique desk fans to cool the kitchen – the kind that would lop off a limb if you got too close. My grandmother would set up shop in the kitchen frying hearty meals for family farm workers over the kitchen stove. She suffered through those visits to Jerico Springs. For her, a visit to Missouri meant a week of hard labor and sweat. As for me . . . I remember trying to sleep on the downstairs couch in the old farmhouse, waiting for a breeze as I checked in with the jar of fireflies I had caught and kept near my pillow.
The morning after our D.C. storm brought me back to Jerico Springs, MO. It also got me wondering what might happen if these weather events become a regular feature of modern life. These are, after all, the kinds of extremes scientists predicted will come with climate change. In the days following the wind and heat, I’ve heard more people wondering whether this is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level. As one scientist noted, "The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about." The head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn't listen. So it's I told-you-so time.
Last week, The Washington Post reported that just 18 percent of those polled name climate change as their top environmental concern. Maybe we hear about it so much, it’s becoming too easy to tune the message out. As one woman told the Post, “I really don’t give it a thought.” We don’t always think of ourselves as intertwined with our environment. It’s as if we humans are no longer part of creation. We stride the earth as gods, and the ground beneath our feet serves our desires. In the wake of yet another weather-related calamity, we face the same lesson once more: short-term advantages can be gained by exploiting the environment. But in the long term we pay for it. When we consume the natural world as a commodity, we alienate ourselves from the earth, from each other, and also from God. I don’t think this is the relationship God intended.
Martin Buber was a rabbi, philosopher and social activist. In 1923 he came out with a groundbreaking book called I and Thou. He talked about two different types of relationships. Some people have I-Thou or I-You relationships. An I-You relationship is a true dialogue. A person relates to another with mutuality, openness, and directness. There are also I-It relationships. In an I-It relationship, a person learns about another, and experiences another, but never enters into a relationship. I-It relationships are entirely objective. I have an I-It relationship with my doctor. We don’t get together and enter into one another’s profound hopes and fears. He doesn’t really know me. He looks me over and objectively compares my health to other males of my age.
Or, take the example of a tree. You see a tree in the middle of summer – a rigid green pillar in a flood of light. You can feel its movement and sense the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core. You can sense the sucking of the roots and the breathing of the leaves. You can name put the tree in a category– call it a maple, an oak, a birch. You can tell with some predictability how it will grow and when it will lose its leaves. But, up to this point the tree remains an object – an It. You have only experienced the tree.
But, it can also happen, when will and grace are joined, that as you contemplate the tree you are drawn into a relationship. The tree ceases to be an It. All of the sudden you notice the unique features of this tree. It is not just a maple. It has original features that make it different from other maples. It still has a predictable form, color, and chemistry. But now, it’s as if you are confronting this maple as an individual. As the breeze tickles its branches, the leaves shake and the limbs sway, and all of the sudden this tree is dancing with you. You are in a relationship. And relation is reciprocity.
Many of us have I-It relationships with creation. We think that if we have enough objective knowledge and experience and science and can pour it all into new technology, then we will be saved. Many of us feel stuck in a cheap and impotent synthetic world. Our ability to enjoy one another, and the rest of creation is dammed up by greed, corruption, fractured relationships, boredom, and injustice. But God’s creation will not be tamed. Leonard Bernstein reminds us of this in some words from his Mass:
You can lock up the bold men,Buber plays on the words of the creation story and writes, “In the beginning is the relation.” This is one lesson of creation. If we want to recover health and harmony, our broken relationships need healing. The process begins when we can see the image of God around us. I’m not talking about pantheism here. Pantheism is when you look at a rock and think, that rock is a god. So is that tree. So are you and I. Pantheism states that everything is God and God is everything. But, the lesson I’m learning from creation is to add one word to this formula: God is in everything, and everything is in God. That includes you and me. Creation reveals God to us and allows us to experience God’s presence.
Go and lock up your bold men,
And hold men in tow.
You can stifle all adventure
For a century or so.
Smother hope before its risen.
Watch it wizen like a gourd.
But you cannot imprison
The Word of the Lord.
No, you cannot imprison
The Word of the Lord.
I’m talking about I-You relationships with creation – transforming every experience into a unique connection. I-You relationships draw us closer to one another and to God. Nature’s abundance and beauty reveals God’s generosity and majesty. Creation’s healing, nourishing and life-giving properties reveal divine love.
The question is whether we can relate back to God. Martin Buber says, “Relation is reciprocity.” A new relationship with God and creation means being vulnerable to God’s Word-- the ongoing, creative energy of God. Our spiritual task is to get out of the way enough so that we might be filled and renewed with God’s Word so that we can go about our work of healing, celebrating, and co-creating.
What I’m really talking about today is the power of love. I’m asking us to love creation and to love one another, and to love God. The love I’m talking about involves some risk. Think of a two people who fall in love. In a moment of passion, one partner says, “I love you.” And the other partner says, “Wow, I love you too.” I see it in the movies all the time. One partner might say “I love you” and mean it with all of her soul. But she is only into experiencing the moment: the rush of excitement. A partner might say, “I Love you,” but he might really mean, “I love how you look,” or “I love how I feel right now.” If that’s the case, then what he calls love is really using the other person as an object to fulfill his so-called “needs” at that moment. How many people do you know who have heard the words “I love you,” and then left the relationship feeling cheap and used? We might call it love, but it’s not a relationship.
Think of what happens with another couple when they say “I love you.” They look, and listen, and touch one another, and they know that what they see, hear, and feel has been kissed by God. This is not just any person. This is not just MY Partner, MY wife, or MY husband, or MY lover. This person represents the kiss of God.
We can do the same with the natural world. We can say, “I love the earth,” but really mean, “I love how we can take what’s around us and make our lives comfortable.” But think of what happens when we feel the breeze and sense the kiss of the Divine Spirit, when we dig our hands into the dirt and realize that the elements that make up the topsoil are the same elements that compose human life. This is not just air, soil, and water – these are images of God.
There was once a traveling rabbi who had the ability to answer every question he was asked. One day he arrived at a town where thousands came to hear him. A little girl in the crowd raised her hand. "I have the question you can't answer," she said. "I have a bird in my hand. Is it alive or dead?" Whichever answer the rabbi chose, the girl knew she would prove him wrong. If the rabbi said the bird is alive, she would close her hand and kill it. But if he said the bird was dead, then she'd open her hand and let it live. The rabbi was well aware of the trick behind this question, yet still found himself stumped. Perhaps this truly was the question he couldn't answer. Then suddenly the answer hit him. Tears came streaming down his cheeks, even as his face broke into a smile. Looking at the girl in the midst of the huge crowd, he said, "My precious, precious child. You hold in your hand a bird and ask if the bird is alive or dead. I can only tell you one thing. The fate of this bird lies in your hands. You can let it live, or you can let it die."
We can let creation live or we can let it die. Her fate is in our hands, yours and mine. Sure, we can suck the life out of our earth, and its resources, and inhabitants until we are bloated and satisfied while others are tossed aside like second-hand remnants after they’ve served their purpose. There is another way.
We can approach one another, and the creation around us with reverence, realizing that that we see, and hear, and touch is a single unique being, interconnected yet unique. The very least we can do is look -- really look. And listen. And touch. And know that what we see, and hear, and feel, has been kissed by God.
Sources:
http://www.js.emory.edu/BLUMENTHAL/GenTradRashiRashbam.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/climate-change-us-heat-wave-wildfire-flooding_n_1645616.html?utm_hp_ref=green#slide=1172845
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/global-warming-no-longer-americans-top-environmental-concern-poll-finds/2012/07/02/gJQAs9IHJW_story.html
Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner, 1970), 56-58.
“The Call of Creation: God's Invitation and the Human Response,” http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/resource/GreenText.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/03/bill-mckibben-on-the-global-warming-hoax.html /
Some ideas in this sermon were freely lifted from Original Blessing by Matthew Fox (New York: Putnam, 1983).
Avraham Weiss, Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World. Kindle Edition.
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