Sermon for August 15, 2010

What Baptism Did You Receive?

As we celebrate the baptism of London this morning, I wanted us to reflect a little more on what it means. Congregationalists have a long history of sprinkling water on babies. Other traditions do it differently. For instance, a young son of a Baptist minister was in church one morning when he saw for the first time baptism by immersion. He was greatly interested in it, and the next morning proceeded to baptize his three cats in the bathtub. The youngest kitten bore it very well, and so did the younger cat, but the old family tom cat rebelled. The old cat struggled with the boy, clawing and tearing his skin, until he finally got away. With considerable effort the boy caught the old cat again and proceeded with the “ceremony.” But the cat acted worse than ever, clawing, spitting, and scratching the boy’s face. Finally, after barely getting the cat splattered with water, he dropped him on the floor in disgust and said: “Fine! Be a Congregationalist if you want to!”

As we think to our own baptisms, let’s listen to the story of a baptism from the book of Acts.

While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions until he reached Ephesus, on the coast, where he found several believers.” Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them.
“No,” they replied, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
“Then what baptism did you experience?” he asked.
And they replied, “The baptism of John.”
Paul said, “John’s baptism called for repentance from sin. But John himself told the people to believe in the one who would come later, meaning Jesus.” As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all. (Acts 19:1-7)

Congregationalists also have a long tradition of fine preaching. Another story is told of a young preacher who had just announced to his congregation that he was leaving to accept a call at another church. He was standing at the door after the service and greeting people when one of the elderly saints approached him, her eyes swimming with tears. She sobbed, “Oh pastor. I’m so sorry you decided to leave. Things will never be the same again.” He took her hands in his and most graciously replied, “Bless you, dear lady, but I’m sure that God will send a pastor even better than I.” She choked back a sob and was heard to reply, “That’s what they all say, but they keep getting worse and worse.”

How do you handle it when you keep hoping for something better in your life but it never seems to come? How many times have we settled for something less than we really want or something less than we’ve been promised? I think the people in today’s reading may have felt the same way. Ephesus was a trade center for the Roman Empire. The people of the city had a spiritual core. The city was home to the temple of the goddess of nature, Diana, which ranked among the seven wonders of the ancient world. So, Ephesus was constantly filled with religious worshipers, tourists, and traders from all over the Empire. In this cosmopolitan center, Paul finds twelve followers of the teachings of John the Baptist. They have not heard about the death and resurrection of Jesus, nor have they heard about the giving of the Holy Spirit. Let’s recall the message of John the Baptist. He says, “I baptize you in water for repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not even fit to remove his sandals; for he himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Men and women flocked to John make a visible demonstration of their need for cleansing from sin. They carried with them the word of hope that the Messiah was coming to do more. Now we meet twelve disciples of John who had no knowledge that the Messiah had come. They were still hoping for something better in their lives. Paul noticed that something was missing in their experience with God. Their hearts had been prepared to receive Christ. They knew the promises, but they had not yet come to a place where they experienced the fullness of God.

Have you ever found yourself in the same situation? You know the message of God’s love. You’ve heard the promises over and over again. But something seems to be missing. I talk to a lot of people who feel that they have not found any real spiritual satisfaction. They say, “Whatever it is that has the power to satisfy me truly and deeply, I have not found it yet.” Maybe you are frustrated because you know that God has more abundant life for you than you are experiencing. Maybe you have experienced great tragedy in your life and need to know the fact that God’s promises of comfort are true. Perhaps you are standing broken and bewildered in life and you don’t know which way to turn. Maybe you are earnestly seeking God, but nothing seems to be happening.

THINK ABOUT THIS: Perhaps those gnawing feelings of unfulfilled faith are God’s way of getting our attention. Maybe those thoughts are pointing to something which we don’t yet know–something that lies beyond our reach but still draws us with the force of an invisible attraction. Suppose our longing for spiritual fulfillment points to a reality we have not yet discovered–something that really has the ability to turn our lives around.

Paul’s answer to the yearning of the twelve disciples of John is to announce that the promise is fulfilled. Then he baptizes them in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as Paul places his hands on them, the Holy Spirit falls upon them and they begin to show supernatural signs of the Spirit’s presence. On that day, twelve people did more than make a superficial commitment to Jesus. They experienced God’s power and were transformed. They encountered God, and the promises that they heard about in the past were finally answered in their own lives.

If you are just going through the motions, God is saying, “I am here, and I am ready to fulfill my promises in your life.” This new life takes commitment from us which says, “I have heard your message, Lord, and I believe it. I want to experience all you have promised and I am willing to commit myself to the next step in my spiritual life.” Saying this takes great openness and trust in what God wants to do in your life. We have the choice to invite the Holy Spirit to per part of our lives and transform us, or to shut the Spirit out.

A patient went to her doctor with a catalogue of complaints about her health. The doctor suspected the real problem was the patient’s negative outlook on life; the bitterness and resentment that kept the patient feeling ill. The doctor took the patient to the room in her office where she had a shelf filled with empty bottles. She said to her patient, “See those bottles? Notice they are all empty. I can take one of those bottles and fill it with poison–enough poison to kill a human being. Or I can fill it with enough medicine to bring down a fever, or ease a throbbing headache, or fight bacteria in the body. The important thing is I make the choice. I can fill it with whatever I choose.” The doctor then looked at the patient and said, “Each day God gives us is like one of those empty little bottles. We can choose to fill it with love and life-affirming attitudes, so we can fill it with destructive, poisonous thoughts. The choice is ours.”

In our spiritual lives, we have some choices to make. We can just go through life hoping to make the best of what we’ve got, trying to distract ourselves from the feeling that all is pointless. Or we can see life as a glorious gift which points to something even more wonderful which is yet to come.

I suspect the twelve people in Ephesus were faced with the same decision. John’s baptism was OK, but it was not all that God had promised. There was something even more wonderful to come. This phenomenal gift came through accepting Jesus the Messiah in faith and being filled with the Holy Spirit. The same offer is extended to us. It’s your choice to accept the Holy Spirit in your life or to ignore the Spirit’s presence. It’s your choice to live with enthusiasm or to just fumble along, always wanting but never getting what you hoped for. Christ died and rose again so that we could enjoy a relationship with God. The Spirit is here to fill us and transforms us. Don’t be satisfied with anything less.

Luke tells us that the twelve were baptized in the Spirit. The Greek word from which we get the verb baptize literally means “to submerge.” In other words, the twelve men were totally flooded by the power of God’s presence. It engulfed them. It consumed them. For us to experience God to the fullest, we need to be baptized with the Spirit–submerged in our relationship with God. I talk a lot about having an intimate relationship with God from this pulpit. I do this because I’m convinced that without it we are spinning our spiritual wheels in the mud. I speak only from personal experience. I don’t know how I would be able to keep going in this life if I could not call God my friend. The Gospel is this: we are all God’s friends, claimed in baptism and submerged in his Spirit. No longer do we have to wonder when God is going to act. No longer to we have to hopelessly wait for something better. We have been offered friendship . . . relationship . . . status as God’s beloved.

Have you ever stopped to ponder what makes a real friend? One person put it this way:
“Friends are people with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with them. They ask you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. They do not want you to be better or worse. When you are with them, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, as long as it is genuinely you. With a friend you breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meanness and absurdities, and in opening them up to friends they are lost, dissolved on the white ocean of loyalty. They understand. You do not have to be careful. They like you. You can weep with them, sing with them, laugh with them,. Pray with them. Through it all – and underneath – they see, know, and love you. A friend? Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself.”

God offers this kind of friendship with us – the kind of friendship I know to be true in my own life. No more aching loneliness. No more yearning for something better. No more unfulfilled promises. God sees us, know us, and despite of what we’ve done, and especially because of everything we’ve done, God loves us. What baptism did you experience? Are you living a life of waiting for unfulfilled dreams, not knowing that they have all come true? Are you living in only half the blessing, not knowing the tremendous joy and love that comes with experiencing God through a relationship with Christ and a submersion in the Spirit? Are you living a Christian life on the outside and secretly wondering if there is more? If so, there is no secret formula. No magic words. Nothing to buy. No gimmicks. We simply believe, receive, and begin a new life submerged in God.

Sermon for August 1, 2010

Angry at God

Sometimes I hear people talk about feeling angry toward God. And sometimes they feel kind of guilty about it. Take this letter for instance. It was written to a newspaper columnist:

At an early age, my mother was taken from me and my family due to an illness. It was a terrible blow for all of us to take. My biggest struggle then and now is my anger. I acknowledge the existence of a higher power but find it hard to believe in God. I'm angry with him for taking my mother from me. It seems as though God is made out to be our savior, our forgiver and our friend. Why would he tear my family life asunder by taking her from us? I've moved away from the Lord as a result, angry that he robbed such a powerful figure from my life. How can I cope with and heal my anger with him?

The mother's death has not merely cost this man a mother. That alone is hard enough. His experience has alienated him from God. His sense of how and why he belongs in this world has shifted. The one whom he intimately called “God” is now a source of anger. He acknowledges the existence of a higher power but finds it hard to believe in God.

It's like saying you acknowledge the existence of your father, whose name is Fred, but now you're calling him Fred instead of Dad, or maybe even you're calling him "hey you." Because, while you know he's standing there, you're mad at him. And you don't trust him. So you choose a name that provides safe distance. For this man, even the word “God” fills him with images of an mean alpha male who rips families apart.

The people who wrote our scriptures knew this kind of anger. We read about it a lot in the Psalms. Listen to the opening words of Psalm 13:

Long enough, God— you've ignored me long enough.
I've looked at the back of your head long enough.
Long enough I've carried this ton of trouble,
lived with a stomach full of pain.
Long enough my arrogant enemies
have looked down their noses at me.

More often than not, we get angry at God over things over which we have no control. It may be a failed relationship. Or the death of a loved one. Or our growing grief over an unending health crisis. Or financial worries. Or any number of things about which we feel we have no control. If we can’t control it, then God must. Someone has to be in control.

So we get angry. And since no one else seems to be available, we get angry at God. And sometimes we feel guilty. The problem is, some of us have been told that it’s inappropriate to get angry at God. We worry that God's feelings will be hurt. Or worse yet, God will return our anger -- and most of us were raised to believe that God is much better at being angry than we can ever be. There is an old saying: Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig. Some people think the same reasoning applies to our relationship with God. Never get angry at God. It wastes your time and annoys God. And you do not want to be on the receiving end of God’s anger. Remember good old Jonathan Edward’s sermon, Sinners in the hands of an Angry God? Edwards wrote, “It is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell.” No one wants to get that God angry!

I think that’s a bunch of nonsense. I say go ahead, be angry at God! Anger is a sign that something is wrong. And it’s OK to let God know about it.

God already knows that we are angry, and God knows why we are angry. God knows the feelings of helplessness, fear, confusion, and disappointment that lead to our anger. Sometimes we feel angry because we are powerless, and God knows our powerlessness. God knows the events and experiences that make us angry. Sometimes we get angry because we are hurt. And God understands pain. God might even share our anger!

Listen to this quote about anger:

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people.

Nelson Mandela wrote those words in his book Long Walk to Freedom. Mandela was truly angry at the injustice that occurred throughout the life of his people. He was not remorseful or ashamed of this anger — it was actually a source of blessing. Anger moved people enough to stand up, to fight for freedom, and to change the unjust system of oppression that was governing South Africa. What an incredible gift anger can be -- to be aware and, therefore, upset. Your anger can be a great motivator to help you seek justice and change in the world.

Our feelings do not surprise God. Instead of letting your anger block God, use your anger to let God in. Tell God how you are feeling. Let God know your deepest, darkest fears and concerns. God knows your sorrows and counts your tears. You may never get all the answers, but you may get something else. You may get comfort instead of answers. You may get motivated to change your part of the world. You might even get inspired to change your own life.

You know something else? God can take it. Do you think your anger is so intense that God will crumple before you in a mess of tears and hurt feelings? Is God like an over-sensitive child? Of course not! God has faced greater anger than ours and survived! God’s shoulders are broad and powerful. God can certainly deal with our anger. We do not run the risk of harming God when we are being honest about our feelings.

I think being honest with God is a good thing. To protest against God is still good. You know what is not good? To simply ignore God. Anger, yes. Protest, yes. Affirmation, yes. But indifference? Never.

So if God already knows about our anger, understands the source of our anger, recognizes why we are angry, and can easily handle our anger, why are we reluctant or guilty about expressing how we feel? Rather than keeping it all pent up inside us, sometimes just letting go and yelling our heads off can be a good thing. Too often we let our anger fester inside us, building up and growing until it seeks escape in destructive and violent ways. Let off some of that steam. Go outside and yell at God. Sit in your room and tell God what you think. Pace your living room and give God a good talking to! You just might feel better and God won't be any worse off - honest! You might even be able to do some clear and constructive thinking about what made you angry after venting your emotions. Here’s an idea: go to a private safe place, perhaps alone in your car. Turn your radio up loud, wind up your windows and verbalize all those angry feelings to God in all their intensity. Do it for 30 days. The first day, take 30 minutes and vent. The next day, try it for 29 minutes. On day three, be alone for 28 minutes, and so on. See what happens by day 30.

You might just come to realize that God has a different plan for your life. Consider this passage from Colossians 3:

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory. So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you . . . now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.

I think it’s OK to be angry at God, but it’s not OK to stay angry. That only hurts you. Ongoing anger doesn’t affect God. But it changes you. Ongoing anger changes the way you perceive reality. Ongoing anger harms your relationships. Paul advises us to get rid of feelings like anger, rage, and malice, because they make our lives worse off. Over time, these feelings keep us from experiencing the liberating, transforming, renewing, glorious new life that God wants us to have.

Anger is a holy, if difficult intimacy. Whatever causes you to feel pain is now part of your spiritual journey. It calls for strength, and honesty, and the steadfast assurance that God is for us.

God, thank you that in the tragedies of life you know, you care, and you understand. Please help us to understand why bad things often happen to good people, and lead us to the help we need to understand our anger at you. Use us -- our lives, our emotions, our fears, our strengths, and our weaknesses – to fulfill your aims for us, our families, and the world.

Sources:
http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/kalas/It_takes_great_faith_to_be_angry_with_God.html
http://www.whosoever.org/v5i3/adam.html
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/history/spurgeon/web/edwards.sinners.html
http://protestantism.suite101.com/article.cfm/prayers-for-anger

Sermon for July 18, 2010

The Prayer of the Empty Soul

We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies. So we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you. But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, “I believed in God, so I spoke.” We know that God, who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself together with you. All of this is for your benefit. And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory. That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. -- 2 Corinthians 4:7-18

I once read an article in a men’s magazine entitled, “The 50 Skills Every Man Should Know.” Here are some life skills that every man should be able to do:

tell a joke, land a plane (but only if you really have to), cook with passion, roll a kayak, hit a three-point shot in basketball, spot a liar, grill a nice steak, nail a swan dive, teach his dog to fetch the paper, hold his breath underwater for a long time, listen to others, know one good fitness trick, give a compliment, and build a blazing campfire. So, men, how do you stack up?

Women, I don’t want you to feel left out. Blogger Shay Davidson offers her own survival tips that every modern woman needs to know if she wants her happy marriage to last while she remains sane.

1. Teach him to say, “Yes, dear.” In the spirit of fair is fair, women must learn to say, “Yes, dear,” as well. Smile, nod a lot; then do whatever the flip you want. Also, after smiling and nodding, don’t roll your eyes until you’ve turned your back to walk away. Nothing tics a guy off like rolling your eyes at his suggestions. Also, don’t use the phrase “As if!” out loud.

2.In an effort to keep the peace, do NOT take him shopping at the mall with you. Shopping with your husband is like taking your bowling ball along for a swim!

3. When you sign up for cable or satellite service, avoid any package that includes any channel that carries wrestling, boxing or “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Tryouts.” Don’t worry. He’ll get used to watching CSPAN.

4. Never, ever whine to your parents about your marital problems; they will hate him forever, even long after you’ve forgiven him. From the day on that you complain to mommy, she will refer to him as “that husband of yours…” This is why God made girlfriends to complain to.

5. Pick your battles. Leaving his socks on the bedroom floor is not cause for fight. However, using your brand new designer bathroom towels to wash his car with, might be. On that same note, if you’re annoyed about picking up his clothes from the bedroom floor, stop doing it! Eventually he will need clean clothes and he will need to pick up his own clothes. He will get the hang of it, and it will all happen without any argument at all!

6. When he wants to go camping in a tent on your vacation and you want to go to Paris, compromise; then go to Paris. If your definition of "fun" includes spending days at a time washing dishes under a spigot, shaking dirt out of your shoes and trying to keep the kids clean while he sits in a lawn chair with a drink commenting on how wonderful it is to be out in the wild, then go for it.

7. Sometimes you just have to shake your head and laugh. Relationships and partners can be pretty funny.

This all gets me thinking about the spiritual skills that Christians should possess for a fruitful life. What would you put on your list? Some ideas come to my mind. Christians should know how to pray, to serve, to love, to forgive, to study, and give sacrificially. Christians should also have one more skill. We should know how to survive in the desert. Listen to the words of the Psalmist . . .

As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him? Day and night I have only tears for food, while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, “Where is this God of yours?” My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be:I walked among the crowds of worshipers, leading a great procession to the house of God, singing for joy and giving thanks amid the sound of a great celebration! Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! will praise him again— my Savior and my God! . . . Each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life. “O God my rock,” I cry, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies?” Their taunts break my bones. They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?” Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again — my Savior and my God! --Psalm 42

Sure, we have times when we feel on top of the world. We can remember when we felt spiritually vibrant. But the psalmist expresses another experience. He travels through a spiritual desert. At one time he felt the presence and power of God, but now he thirsts for God in the midst of an arid faith. Enemies taunt him. His heart is discouraged. He feels forgotten. His spiritual life is empty. I can relate. I imagine you can, too. A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me for a good prayer when your soul is empty. What do we do when our lives are marked by feelings of loneliness, and separation from God? How do we go one when we don’t feel God’s presence? How do we cope with spiritual lives that feel arid and we thirst for God.

Where are the arid places in your spiritual life? How do you pray when your soul feels empty? I looked up a dozen or so Internet sites with tips on how to survive in a desert. Perhaps there is some wisdom in these survival tips that applies to our spiritual lives.

1. Don’t ration water. Drink it.
The experts agree that if you are in a desert and you save all your water for the hike home, you may die. If you are stuck in the desert, drink what you have as often as you can. The same is true in our spiritual lives. We need to drink, even when we aren’t thirsty. What is our water? What keeps us alive? Jesus says he is the Living Water who satisfies us and renews our lives. When we are in a spiritual drought, sometimes the last thing we want to do is seek the Lord. Reading the bible can feel dull and dreary. Prayer can feel monotonous. But if you want to survive the spiritual desert, don’t stop drinking from the well of Christ’s wisdom. It may feel like scripture study, prayer, and other acts of faith are useless, but they may actually be keeping you alive. Drink from wisdom of God. Drink from what you have, as often as you can.

2. Know the Danger.
Survival experts say that travelers need to know ahead of time when they are entering a dangerous place. Know the risks before you leave. There are heat-related dangers like heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. And by all means, leave the snakes alone. They can hurt or kill you if you stick your hand some place where it shouldn’t be. There is a parallel here to our spiritual journeys. When it comes to our faith, we like to talk about the blessings. We rarely mention the hard parts. If we are serious about walking in the footsteps of Jesus, we need to know the risks. When we follow Jesus, we become more aware of the evil and temptation around us. We will reach out and grab something and it will bite us. There will be times when we feel perplexed, crushed, persecuted, and cut down. Why do you think the Bible spends so much time describing God as a strong rock, a firm defense, a sure refuge and a help for the weak? It’s so that we remember that when we face the dangers of life, we have someone to lean on. If you want to survive the spiritual desert, follow the advice of the Psalmist: put your hope in God.

3. Stay Together.
Many rescues occur in situations where a group decided to split up to find help and someone ended up alone. People could avoid some disasters if they stayed together. So often in our spiritual deserts, we decide to go it alone -- to split off from the rest of the church. We decide we know the best route, that we don’t need the rest of “those people” to help us find the way. I believe we do so at our own peril.

The Discovery Channel once showed a film about wildebeests on the Serengeti plains in Africa. Herds of wildebeests migrate there each year to mate and birth their young. Among them roam vicious predators, including the hyena. A newborn wildebeest has about 15 minutes to get up and run with the adult herd. Slow starters risk becoming a hyena’s lunch. The baby barely has time to get used to breathing when the mother nudges it to stand. The newborn steadies itself on wobbly hind legs, forelegs bent beneath its bobbing head. The film shows a hyena approaching, stiff-legged with lowered head and bared teeth.The mother wildebeest bravely steps between the hyena and the baby. Before long, a circle of more hyenas distract the mother, while other hyenas take the baby. Meanwhile, there are thousands of wildebeests spread out nearby. As they graze, they lift their heads occasionally to watch the desperate mother. Any of them could rally to help save the newborn. Not a single one dies. It’s hard to survive spiritually without others to support you, encourage you, pray for you, and help you grow into a well-nourished spiritual person. Our habit is to live our lives as stoic individualists. We learn to stay out of each other’s affairs, to keep our distance. But that’s now God’s way. We are called to love each other, to care for one another, and to stick together.

4. Be prepared for some cold nights.
The desert is a place of extremes. Brutal heat by day gives way to icy coldness at night. If you aren’t prepared for the drastic differences, you will die in the desert. We should be prepared for some extremes in our faith journeys, too. There will be times when we feel cold-hearted and alone. Expect that extreme conditions will afflict us. The Apostle Paul puts it this way: We are treasures in clay pots. The gifts of God are contained in these ordinary, fragile human bodies. We are mortal vessels who face life’s challenges. We are surrounded by hardship and humility, even though Christ fills us with glory. So remember that both the hardship and the glory, the extremes of our faith, help us recognize our utter dependence on God. With this in mind, let me offer one more tip.

5. Don’t lose hope. Help is on the way.
God knows where we’ve come from. God knows our starting point, our destination, and every point in between. God knows when we’re ablaze with love and when we need to be rescued from arid faith. That’s why I cherish Paul’s words so much. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. In fact, Jesus has already been there. He faced the desert. We put out hope in God because Jesus was in despair. He was abandoned. He was struck down. But that’s not the end of the story. Jesus was not destroyed. He lives on. For this reason, we know that our momentary journeys through the desert regions of life lead us to eternal glory in God’s presence. Don’t lose hope. Help is on the way.

God knows where we are, and God knows how to bring us to safety. No one plans on getting lost. So, when you find yourself in spiritual deserts, hang in there. There are no instant paths out. It takes time. Drink deeply, know the dangers, stay together, and be prepared for some cold nights. And most of all, never, ever give up hope. God is coming to help.

Sermon for June 20, 2010

What Has God Done for You?

[Jesus and the disciples] arrived in the region of the Gerasenes, across the lake from Galilee. As Jesus was climbing out of the boat, a man who was possessed by demons came out to meet him. For a long time he had been homeless and naked, living in a cemetery outside the town. As soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down in front of him. Then he screamed, “Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Please, I beg you, don’t torture me!” For Jesus had already commanded the evil spirit to come out of him. This spirit had often taken control of the man. Even when he was placed under guard and put in chains and shackles, he simply broke them and rushed out into the wilderness, completely under the demon’s power. Jesus demanded, “What is your name?”

“Legion,” he replied, for he was filled with many demons. The demons kept begging Jesus not to send them into the bottomless pit. There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby, and the demons begged him to let them enter into the pigs. So Jesus gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the entire herd plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned. When the herdsmen saw it, they fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, spreading the news as they ran. People rushed out to see what had happened.

A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been freed from the demons. He was sitting at Jesus’ feet, fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid. Then those who had seen what happened told the others how the demon-possessed man had been healed. And all the people in the region of the Gerasenes begged Jesus to go away and leave them alone, for a great wave of fear swept over them. So Jesus returned to the boat and left, crossing back to the other side of the lake. The man who had been freed from the demons begged to go with him. But Jesus sent him home, saying, “No, go back to your family, and tell them everything God has done for you.” So he went all through the town proclaiming the great things Jesus had done for him. -- Luke 8:26-39

One Sunday morning, everyone in one bright, beautiful, tiny town got up early and went to the local church. Before the services started, the townspeople were sitting in their pews and talking about their lives and their families. Suddenly, Satan appeared at the front of the church. Everyone started screaming and running for the front entrance, trampling each other in a frantic effort to get away from evil incarnate.

Soon everyone was evacuated from the church, except for one elderly gentleman who sat calmly in his pew, not moving, seemingly oblivious to the fact that God's ultimate enemy was in a church. This confused Satan a bit, so he walked up to the man and said, "Don't you know who I am?"

The man replied, "Yep, sure do."
Satan asked, "Aren't you afraid of me?"
"Nope, sure ain't," said the man.
Satan was a little perturbed at this and queried, "Why aren't you afraid of me?"
The man calmly replied, "Been married to your sister for over 48 years."

This man had obviously met evil. I know. We don’t like to talk about demons. Many of us wonder if there really is such a thing as a demon, or a devil for that matter. For me, any force that prevents even a single one of us from experiencing the full humanity God intends for all humanity is demonic. I think of demon possession as an unhealthy way of relating to God, our fellow human beings, and even our selves. Something unholy takes root in us, forms a life of its own, and threatens to take us over completely. I was once looking over some recovery literature and saw a piece called “A Letter From Your Addiction.” The beginning of the letter says,

I've come to visit once again. I love to see you suffer mentally physically spiritually and socially. I want to have you restless so you can never relax. I want you jumpy and nervous and anxious. I want to make you agitated and irritable so everything and everybody makes you uncomfortable. I want you to be depressed and confused so that you can’t think clearly or positively. I want to make you hate everything and everybody-especially yourself. I want you to feel guilty and remorseful for the things you have done in the past that you’ll never be able to let go. I want to make you angry and hateful toward the world for the way it is and the way you are. I want you to feel sorry for yourself and blame everything but your addiction for the way things are. I want you to be deceitful and untrustworthy, and to manipulate and con as many people as possible. I want to make you fearful and paranoid for no reason at all and I want you to wake up during all hours of the night screaming for me. You know you can’t sleep without me; I’m even in your dreams.

Those are the words of evil. Addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling, and unhealthy relationships destroy constellations of lives. The evils of racism, sexism, and homophobia haunt our communities through generations. The evils of poverty enslave millions around the world, keeping them uneducated, unemployed, homeless, hungry, and hopeless despite an overabundance of resources.

Today we hear about a man who was tortured by evil. Imagine the sight: a naked man, quite insane, living among the dead. I wonder, was it demons or a mental illness? Might he have suffered from schizophrenia or a form of bipolar disorder? What social condition might have driven him insane? Might it have been unspeakable abuse as a child? Might it have been the horrors of war? Did something happen to someone he knew and loved that was more horrifying than his mind could bear?

We know some of the stories of some of the people who are among the “walking dead.” You will usually see them walking city streets; people who mutter to themselves as they push their grocery cart filled with all of their earthly belongings, who live under bridges and highway overpasses or deep in the bowels of the subway system where they might escape the unforgiving winds of winter or the blazing, burning rays of the summer sun. I’ve seen them in Trumbull, too -- people who wander the streets, muddled and confused, directing traffic and screaming at litterers as they collect trash off the ground.

As I read this story and prepared this sermon, I was fascinated by what happens after the man is healed. Scripture says, “A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been freed from the demons. He was sitting at Jesus’ feet, fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid.” I’m sure they were afraid of the man when he was insane. But why are they now so afraid that they beg Jesus to leave the town? The demons are gone. The man sits, clothed and quiet, at the feet of Jesus. And yet, we are told that the townspeople are afraid. Why? Why now? After the healing? Once the demons had gone?

Were they mad that Jesus sent a herd of pigs over a cliff and ruined the local economy? Did they realize that they cared more about their livelihoods than the healed man? Where they scared of Jesus' power over the powers of darkness? Were they afraid of the unknown? Scared of change? Worried that Jesus might confront the demons in their lives? Sounds silly doesn't it? If one's life is bound by fear, or addiction, or illness, you'd think one would want to find freedom. But that's not always the case. Some people prefer to remain prisoners. The fear of what a new life might look like is greater than the pain of staying the same. More accurately, perhaps, people are not afraid of healing. They are afraid of pain. They count the cost and finding it too much.

I think Jesus exposes our woundedness. He sees people like the Gerasene Demoniac and says, "Show me your wounds." He offers the same healing to everyone. "Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."

"Are you crazy, Jesus? I've spent a lifetime trying to hide my wounds. I'm trying to ignore that pain, to move my mind AWAY from the places where evil lurks. I need to function, and keep on living, keep on doing what I do, one day after the next."

"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
"You really don't understand, Jesus, my body is evolutionary conditioned to back away from things that cause me pain. It’s a matter of survival."

"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
"I can't."
"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
"I don't want to look."
"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
"I don't want to think about it."
"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
"I can't stand the thought."
"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
"The pain is unbearable."
"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
I don't want to go where it hurts.
"Show me your wounds, and I will heal them."
"I am afraid."

I get it. Jesus presents people with new information. They've never seen such a sight before. They try to make sense of this new experience. Perhaps they realize the possibilities. Maybe they are challenged to learn, and grow, and heal. Maybe they are not ready. Sometimes I'm afraid of that, too.

What can we do when we see evil in us and evil around us? What do we do when we are afraid of the pain of healing yet also afraid to stay the same?

1. Acceptance.
Don't ignore the darkness in you. Don't ignore the darkness around you. We know people whose lives have been destroyed by their demons. We don't call them demons. We call them addictions. We call them emotional disorders. We call them disturbances. Sometimes we call them hobbies. But when they destroy people, wouldn't it be more accurate to call them demonic?

I really believe that acceptance is the beginning of healing. Acceptance is the answer to all our problems. “When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation---some fact of my life---unacceptable to me. I want to change it. I can find no peace until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake . . ." (AA Big Book).

Anthony Mello was a Jesuit priest, author, and teacher. He writes about a man he met who was trapped by the demons of hatred. The man was really having trouble with a few people in his life. He decided that, for a couple of hours, he was going to get in touch with how badly he felt toward these people. As he confronted his pain, he admitted that he really hated those people. Then I said, "Jesus, what can you do about all that?" A little while later he began to cry, because he realized that Jesus lived and died for those very people and they couldn't help how they were, anyway.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you're living in an illusion. There's something seriously wrong with you. Something inside of YOU has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? "He is to blame, she is to blame. She's got to change.” No! Just leave the world alone. The one who has to change is YOU.

So, we accept our faults. We can even love them. That man who felt hatred learned it somewhere. I'm sure it served its purpose at one point in his life. Imagine him speaking to his feelings of hatred. Imagine him saying, “Hatred, you and I have been together for a long time. You have helped me feel protected. You have taught me to feel right when others are wrong. You have motivated me towards action. But now you are draining my emotions and my spirit, and we need to part ways. You see, I used you like you used me. Hatred, I have used you to avoid looking at the deeper, darker part of myself and focus on how bad other people are. I love you, but I need to find some other ways to handle my problems. I need to change. Christ calls me to love.”

As psychologist Erich Fromm said, your main task in life is to give birth to a self, to become what you potentially are. Don't ignore the darkness. Find it. Expose it. Show it to the Christ. He wants to help you change and be the YOU that you were created to be.

2. Go and tell what God has done
I understand that some of you may be shy or anxious to share your faith with others. Don’t worry! Jesus didn’t say that every person has to approach strangers and explain the most difficult theology of the church. To the man from the Gerasenes he said, “Tell them everything God has done for you.” I think that's an invitation for us, today. Tell others the good things Christ has done for you personally. Mother Teresa would say to her sisters, “Just go and offer God’s love to someone else. Smile at someone. Show them the joy that God has given you in your life. Don’t let anyone ever come to you without leaving better and happier.” In this way, we share the good news. And don't people need some good news?

God, free us from all that binds and enslaves us. All that concerns us from freely following you. Free us from merely respectable, polite religion so that we may more boldly, courageously, and exuberantly be the disciples you deserve. Free us to step over our boundaries...to go where you are in the world of human need. Free us that we might be bound only to you.

Sermon for June 6, 2010

Courageous Compassion

Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain, and a large crowd followed him. A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow’s only son, and a large crowd from the village was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. “Don’t cry!” he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. “Young man,” he said, “I tell you, get up.” Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk! And Jesus gave him back to his mother. Great fear swept the crowd, and they praised God, saying, “A mighty prophet has risen among us,” and “God has visited his people today.” And the news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding countryside. -- Luke 7:11-17

Many years ago, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old manager of a bar in Queens, New York, returned to her quiet residential neighborhood, parked her car in a lot adjacent to her apartment building, and began to walk the 30 yards through the lot to her door. Noticing a man at the far end of the lot, she paused. When he started toward her, she turned the other way and tried to reach a police call box half a block away. The man caught and stabbed her. She started screaming that she'd been stabbed, and screaming for help. Lights went on in the apartment building across the street. Windows opened. One man called out, “Let that girl alone!”

The assailant shrugged and walked away. Windows closed and lights went out. The assailant returned and attacked Ms. Genovese again. This time she screamed “I'm dying! I'm dying.” This time lots more windows opened and lots more lights went on. The attacker walked to his car and drove away, leaving Genovese to crawl along the street to her apartment building. Somehow, she managed to drag herself inside. The man returned a third time, found Genovese on the floor at the foot of her stairs, and finally succeeded in killing her. During those three separate attacks over the course of 35 minutes, not one of Genovese's neighbors tried to intervene. Worse than that, of the more than 30 people who saw at least one of the attacks and heard Genovese's screams and pleas for help, not one of them called the police.

We hear stories like this once in a while. They make us wonder about what makes us human. They call us to a deeper level of reflection and responsibility. Today, I want is to think about how the church responds to the screams for help around us. What do we do when we see people in pain?

One response religions often take is to ignore problems. Sometimes, we withdraw from the crucial issues of the world. Our religious values and practices can disconnect from human suffering. The problem is, compassion is inconvenient. Think back to the story about Kitty Genovese. One of the witnesses to the crime said he was too tired to call the police, so he went back to bed! He found a way to justify his actions. We've probably all done it, when we are presented with an opportunity to show compassion. For instance, I've excused myself pulling over when I witnessed a minor fender bender at midnight because I didn't want to stick around for an hour to fill out a police report. Without any good reason, I've excused myself from several opportunities to show compassion.

Another strategy is anger with the sponsors of crisis. I experienced this yesterday. I was out for a bike ride on the trails. As I was crossing Rte. 111, I heard something clap the pavement. A driver threw a full garbage bag into the middle of the road and sped away. Was I ever angry! How dare he pollute, especially in this day and age! How dare he assume someone else will pick up his filth! The more I thought, the angrier I got. The laziness!! The arrogance!! The lack of concern!! Guess what I did NOT do. I did not go back and pick up the garbage from the road. Turns out, the laziness, hubris, and lack of concern were part of my soul, too. Religions do this all the time. We get angry at the sources of pain, but we do nothing to alleviate the suffering. In fact, that which we condemn, we often find lurking in our own religious worlds.

Another strategy religions use to deal with pain is to talk about it. We need to think, explore, read, reflect, pray, understand, mull, listen, form a committee, go to a workshop, call in experts, find all the opinions, debate, vote, and then come up with a proposition to deal with the problem. This may be helpful in moral and ethical development, but it seems to have limited success in engaging the pain of the world around us. Here is the problem: We can convince ourselves that we are correct in our own conclusions when we talk too much. We begin to think we are wise. When we talk too much, we open ourselves to arrogance and superiority.

Here is another response: sometimes religions engage in social action. Finally, we meet need with deed. Many churches are great at social action, such as charity to the poor, food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, and so on. We need to be careful here, though. Charity is not compassion. Charity can be good. It alleviates pain temporarily. But it is not the same as compassion.

I remember when I began to learn about the difference between compassion as charity and compassion as empowerment. I think I've told you about my experience with a woman named Jen. It was right before my 28th birthday. I worked in a small rural church – I’d been there for about a year. One day I met Jennifer, and 18-year old mom with a daughter who was just a few months younger than Zoe. When Jen was 17, she was romanced by a 30-year-old man who got her pregnant. They lived together, unmarried, trying to raise their new daughter. Rumors had it that the boyfriend was abusive, so Chris invited Jen to a mother’s group to get her out of the house and meet some people in the community. That afternoon, when I came home from work, Jen was sitting at our kitchen table with Chris and Zoe. Jen decided to leave her boyfriend who, according to her, was verbally and emotionally brutal. She was like a prisoner in her own house and she wanted out. Since she was still 17 and a minor, her decision posed some unique challenges. Jen quickly learned the “system”: social services, WIC, welfare, and family court. We gave her grocery money to help her get by. Chris watched her baby for free. The deacons bought Christmas gifts for Jen and her baby. Family Court eventually awarded her full custody. When she wasn’t living with a family member, she and her baby stayed at a sleazy hotel room, funded by Social Services. After a few months, Jen moved back in with her boyfriend. I guessed she would rather live with the abuse than live with the alternative. She also got used to our charity, still expecting us to give gifts, watch the baby, and fund her reckless decisions. When we heard she moved back, I felt so naive. It felt like all of our compassion was for nothing. My compassion moved me to give charity, but was she ever empowered to be a better person, a better mother, a healthier member of our community? Did we do the right thing? Did we help her like Jesus would have helped her? This band-aid approach may salve guilty consciences and give temporary symptomatic aid to victims but does not attend to structural and institutional causes of the crises.

Today, I suggest another response. Courageous Compassion. This is what I see Jesus doing, and it's where I see us going. We need a new religious vision that addresses the global problems around us. The twentieth first century, so far, leaves millions of people hungry and homeless and hopeless. Nightly news depicts the pathetic pictures of bloated stomachs, bodies distorted by disease and wars, and the agonies of death by starvation. These dark images of misery stand in contrast to equally deplorable images of overfed, overweight, and overindulged consumers who live in overdeveloped countries. The poor have always had a special place in the thoughts and practice of major religions. Yet, as deprivation grows, traditional religions limit themselves to making statements and providing temporary handouts. They seldom tackle the systemic changes required to make the world a better place.

In today's gospel reading, Jesus does something amazing. When the Lord sees the grieving widow, he has compassion. He comes forward and touches the coffin. What Jesus does is inconceivable. Few things are as unclean in ancient Jewish culture as a corpse, or anything connected with a corpse. It is against the law of Torah to touch a coffin. One who does so becomes unclean. Rabbis don't touch the unclean. Jesus touched the coffin. Jesus is willing to get his hands dirty to touch something unclean and controversial for the sake of the weak and vulnerable. Jesus polluted himself. The people talked. They murmured. They gossiped. They accused. But no one else was willing to take the pain upon himself like Jesus did. This is about more than raising a dead man. With Courageous Compassion, Jesus confronts a system where rules have become more important than people. He puts love before law, the integrity compassion before the purity of dogma.

There is another healing that day, too. Consider the mother. She is in trouble. She is a widow and her only son has died. With no more family connections, her life expectancy is short. In Jesus’ day, women did not speak on their own behalf. They did not own property. They had no status. This mother's last remaining means of survival was gone. What would happen to her? Jesus sees her, and moved with compassion, he touches her dead son. He lives, and now the mother is given her life back, too. Jesus raises the mother from social death, just as he raises the son from physical death. Both are now empowered to live new, productive lives.

Courageous Compassion means loving everyone. Period. It means we don't listen to shoulds, coulds, and oughts when it comes to touching the pain of others. It means we don't even consider another person's skin color, or social class, or religion, or sexual orientation, or wealth, or anything. Every human is created in the image of God and they need to be loved.

Courageous Compassion begins with us, today, right here, right now. God is leading you to confront some pain and suffering in the world. You might ignore it, but it's there. You might get angry at it, but that only makes YOU worse off. You might talk about it, but the problem persists. You might give charity, but while you feel better, it is only a temporary fix. So now what? How about Courageous Compassion? How about becoming unclean for the sake of restoring some sanity to the world? How about touching the pain, without first mapping out consequences? How about embodying love in action to those who offend us, to those who have hurt us, to those who don't deserve a second chance (or a third or fourth)? How about turning the status quo upside down? How about confronting unjust family systems, and religious systems and economic or political systems that offer great gifts to insiders while pushing others to the side?

In Christ's sight, there are no insiders. No outsiders. We are all one nature. One flesh. One grief. One hope. If we fail to love, we fail in everything else, too. So, train your heart to look at people at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants, at the office, in the neighborhood, and the people you see as you drive. Give yourself permission to be inconvenienced by their pains. Let yourself be moved by compassion that is free from any strings. Be open, and God will use you. And who knows? You might just change part of the world!

Sermon for May 30, 2010

Wisdom Calls -- A Letter From Home

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—
when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him,
like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. Prov. 8:22-31

Dear Matt,

We had ourselves a garden-variety tornado here on the hill. It danced its way through the better part of our county. When my weather radio alarm went off, I turned on the television to see what the radar picture would show (I’m a visual learner). The weatherman was giving me ‘bout 8 to 10 minutes to get my life in order. I don’t have a basement or a storm shelter -- just a small bathroom in the back of the house. From the television it didn’t look like it was heading dead-on straight at me but it was close enough. I took up a few items I didn’t want blown away to the next county and stored them in the back bathroom. Then I went out on the front porch and looked westward through the trees along our ridge. It was pitch black. The blackness moved northeast towards the end of our farm. While it was taking out a neighbor’s barn, I could hear what sounded like a jet engine with the pilot’s foot all the way down on the gas pedal. It then continued to the next little town where it tore things up even more.

Now this tornado was said to have only been an EF-0 to an EF-1, not anything that would get cast in a movie. But there it was. It completely demolished a barn and took roofs off of some houses as it hiked through the hills leaving a path not unlike the one Bea Jimson leaves when she’s havin’ one of her temper spells. You remember Bea -- she’s Woodchuck’s wife. We have a saying ‘round here: Meanness don’t happen overnight. They wrote that one in honor of Bea Jimson.

I never thought I was so special that I could get a tornado right at my front door any more than believing Ed McMann would show up holding balloons and a Publishing Clearance House check. It makes me stop and think ‘bout what’s most important in life. What kind a’ person I want to be.

The tornado made your cousin, Daryl-Bob Broadfoot, think ‘bout the meaning of life, too. Usually he keeps to himself in his 390 C Travelair luxury park model trailer. You know, he’s always trying to make a buck or two. He heard that rich city folk pay big money for old our throwaway art projects. They call it folk art. Why not take some of our simple hill food and market it as fancy cuisine? Our chow is actually more savory than the strange garbage I see them TV chef’s serving up to their tongue-wagging fans. Those people think we eat strange, all the while they suck down all sorts of unholy offerings. The other day, on the cable TV, I saw a chef cooked up a LIVE lobster sushi. No joke. The dying lobster was served while in his final death throws, his antennae frantically waving like a last ditch SOS code. This dish is for people who enjoy watching the lobster watching them devour his tail, fully horrified at being eaten alive. It’s all for the show, not the flavor, since raw lobster is probably a lot like eating greasy rubber eggs.

Anyways, Daryl-Bob has been working at making new Slim Jim recipes. One’s called Slim Jim Chili Mac. He boils the Slim Jims in beer until he gets a red greasy sludge, adds pasta and nacho cheese sauce. It would do if you were easy to please, but last time I tried it, the chili mac coated my tongue with an odd waxiness. He drives all the way to Chigger Falls to pick up the meat sticks, due to the Slim Jim shortage from the gas leak, which destroyed the only Slim Jim plant on the planet. Anyways, he was going to the Ozark Unnatural Food Coop when he saw something that changed his life. It was a martial arts practice hall, run by a one-armed judo master named Freelove Turnbo. Freelove Turnbo lost his arm in a farm accident when he was just 10. His parents put him into the Judo to help him learn some confidence, not to mention some balance. Freelove actually was good at the Judo. There was only one problem. After three months of training, the humble Judo master only taught him one move. Freelove finally got up the guts to ask his teacher, “Shouldn’t I learn more moves?” “This is the only move you’ll ever need to know,” the humble Judo master replied.

Freelove didn’t get it, but he kept on training. Several months later, the teacher took Freelove to his first Judo Games. Surprise, surprise, Freelove won his first two matches, easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Amazed by his success, Freelove made it to the finals. His opponent was big as a continent and strong as a brick outhouse. Called himself Child of Calamity. Freelove was overmatched, and he sure took a beating for a while. Eventually, the brute got distracted. Freelove saw the opportunity and used his move topple Calamity to the ground. Freelove Turnbo, the one-armed judo boy, was the champion. On the way home, Freelove summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind. “Teacher, how did I win the Judu Games with only one move?”

“I reckon you won for two reasons,” the humble Judo master answered. “First, you mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second . . . the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grip your left arm.”

That was one wise teacher. Turned out, Freelove Turnbo’s biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.

When Daryl-Bob heard that story, he decided he was gonna change the world by learning the Judo. Daryl-Bob’s not the smartest man in the world. I love him, but that boy is ‘bout as dumb as a pot of beans. ‘Bout a week ago, I was washing my dinner dishes when I see a flash of red out the window. Thought maybe it was a cardinal. ‘Bout two minutes later, I spot that flash again, only big this time. I slinked out to the stoop to investigate, and there is Daryl-Bob, wearing his blue jeans and dirty t-shirt. He also had a red cape that he twirled around his shoulders like a rodeo clown. Right next to him is his lazy sidekick, his dawg named Mr. Pickles. The old Bloodhound got a cape on, too, and a pair of star-spangled undergarments. I reckon that dog looked just like Wonder Woman, and he looked real shamed ‘bout it. I says, “Daryl-Bob, what are you up to now.” He looks at me, kind of mysterious-like, and he says, “I’m the Jerico Ninjee.” Turns out, after one Judo lesson with Freelove Turnbo, Daryl-Bob went and bought his’ self and his dawg some fancy get ups, and now they will protect us from Lord knows what. What I’ve always wanted to know is, who will protect us from Daryl-Bob Broadfoot.

Daryl-Bob wants to show me his routine. Now, I’m not really in the mood, mind you, not with dishes in the sink that need washing. But I’ve learned, you can’t say no to Daryl-Bob. I nod, but I give him the hairy eyeball so he knows he better not be wasting my time. He lifts his right arm up and swings it straight back down, and he says, “Right there’s a Judy Chop. You gotta say it as you do it.” He yells out, “Judy Chop,” and swings his arm again, like he’s a hillbilly Jackie Chan on a Twinkies high. Then he kicks his foot in the air and hollers out, “Kung Fu Kick! Did ya’ see that Antie Georgee? I know, you are just a beginner, so I’ll go over it slow.” He chops at the air again. “You got yourself a Judy Chop, and a Kung Fu kick. But you don’t NEVER want to do ‘em at the same time. Likely to chop your own leg right off if you ain’t careful.” He starts spinning and kicking, like he’s having a sleep twitch. Then, as soon as it began, the judo fit stops. He folds his hands, takes a deep bow, and runs inside to make himself a sandwich. Guess all those “Judy” moves work up an appetite. I follow him in the house and watch him make a grilled bologna sandwich on buttered Wonder Bread toast. He drips some soy sauce on the top -- figures he might as well eat like a real ninja now. With his mouth full of food, he gets all serious and says, “Auntie Georgee, you gotta promise me somethin’, OK? I showed you some real secret moves out there. With great power comes great responsibility. Now you promise me not to use any of them Ninjee moves I showed ya’ unless you have ta’. Don’t go ninjin someone who don’t need ninjin! OK?”

Daryl-Bob is a lovable fool. He couldn’t hurt a shoe fly if he wanted to. Problem with Daryl-Bob is he lacks wisdom. Daryl-Bob is oblivious. He just does his own thing – makes his own tainted recipes, dresses in his own red cape, and Judy Chops to the tune of his own sak-u-hachi. I’m just waiting for him to learn what Freelove Turnbo learned all those years ago: his biggest weakness can become his greatest strength.

As for me, I don’t know if I can change. I’m just getting old. Some people think if you soak up enough years, pretty soon everyone will be asking for your advice. I don’t think wisdom just comes to us when we get old. Wisdom is something that God creates, “The first of God’s acts long ago,” Scripture says. Wisdom leads us from one point to another in life until we learn what we’re supposed to learn. We do what we’re supposed to do. We each become what God crafted us to become. It’s like we become God’s folk art.

Pastor Sanford at the Jerico Springs Progressive Church of the Ozarks was just preaching on wisdom. He did a ten-part sermon series. If he asked me, I could’ a done it in two sermons. He likes to stretch things out. Anyways, he says if you wanna get wise, the first thing you need to do is get in touch with bad feelings. Lots of people have bad feelings they’re not even aware of. Take gloominess, for instance. You’re feeling gloomy and moody. You feel that life is as pointless as having two windows at the McDondald’s drive-thru -- it just makes no sense. You’ve got hurt feelings. You’re nervous and tense. Get yourself in touch with those feelings first.

Next, you gotta understand that the feelings are not reliable. We spend all our time trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else. But we don’t stop and ponder that maybe WE need to change instead. Truth is, no person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on this wide earth that has the power to disturb you. So stop taking stuff personally.

Let’s suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who’s grumbling? The rain, or YOU? When you bump your knee against a table, the table’s fine. It’s busy being what it was made to be -a table. Believe me, the table’s not sitting there wondering why you hate it. That table’s not saying, “Oh, I guess Jimmy, there, is havin’ a bad day and he’s taking out on me.” Nope -- it’s just a table. The pain’s in your knee, not in the table. The feeling is in you, not in reality.

You see, you are more than your feelings. Don’t say, “I am gloomy.” If you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But don’t say, “I am gloomy.” You’re defining yourself by a feeling. Your gloominess actually has nothing to do with your happiness.

No matter how clever you are, or how wise you have been in the past, the moment you allow these distractions to control you and define you. Why, that’s ‘bout as foolish as yankin’ a dawg’s ears. We’re so busy thinking ‘bout how we’ve been insulted, we stop forgiving. Carrying grudges makes us even worse off. It’s all so incredibly addled-brained.

We spend so much time seeking. We seek happiness. We seek revenge. We seek justice. We seek peace. If I’ve learned one thing I’ve learned is that when it some to faith, I’m better off when I let God seek me. God has a lot of ways of finding me, too. That’s what the wise ones do – they stop seeking.

The Ozark Standard had a nice way of explaining wisdom – it was right next to a recipe for livermush on page 12: a wise person no longer marches to the drums of society. The wise one dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within. When you depend on what all the other people think ‘bout you to make you happy, then you always have to be on your best behavior. You can never let your hair down. You can’t take your girdle off an have a piece of candy. You’ve got to live up to expectations, right? But, if you live to love, and find ways to get yourself found by God, maybe we’d get rid of all that fool pain we carry around. Deep wisdom has been there since the dawn of time. What might happen if we let that deep and ancient wisdom from God lead us home?

As I scribble this note, it gets me to thinking that maybe Daryl-Bob is wiser than I give him credit for. Maybe he’s wise ‘cause he lives in a life of compassion, and there really is no such thing as wisdom without compassion. He’s truly ignorant of what the world thinks about him, and he’s happy. He doesn’t know how ridiculous he really is. It’s ‘cause he has nothing to prove. He has no hatred. He has no enemies, far as he’s concerned.

Well, time for this old lady to stop preaching. I got a new martial art that I’m gonna teach Daryl Bob. I call it No Kan Do. It’s actually a very simple art. I’ve doin’ it for years, and no one can lay a blow on me. When someone tries to fight me, I scream “No Kan Do” and run away. I’m undefeated in fifteen, cross-discipline bouts. You no longer need to be bullied, just learn No Kan Do.

Give my love to the little ones, and remind those church people in CT that there’s a good way to live -- the way of wisdom and compassion. Just be still and let God be God.

Love,
Aunt Georgia.

Sermon for May 23, 2010 / Pentecost

Sharing in Suffering, Sharing in Glory

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Romans 8:14-17

I’ve always worried that there is a fatal flaw in my life. If people see it, they won’t want to be near me. I will feel abandoned. People will reject me. Growing up, I concluded that dancing on the lips of an abyss can move a person from insignificance to importance. When edged between hope and despair, why not throw caution to the wind? I think that’s how I ended up perched atop the Granby Gorge.

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

So there I was, toes curled over the edge of the rocks, hands in the air, ready to perform a record-breaking cannonball to the cheers of my high school friends. One well-placed leap could put me in the pantheon of gorge jumpers. I’d have friends, and fame, and respect, and girls who liked to go out with risk-taking daredevils like me. Yes, I was about to have it all in one 30-foot jump. No more feelings of abandonment. No more snubs. I would be unique and special, and people would see me for who I really am.

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

I didn’t really want to jump the gorge. I really wanted to be popular and liked and accepted. I really wanted people to see something heroic, and intense, and mysterious about me. I wanted to be like The Most Interesting Man in the World, like in those Dos Equis commercials. “The police often question him just because they find him interesting. His blood smells like cologne. When he orders a salad, he gets the dressing right there on top of the salad, where it belongs . . . where there is no turning back. If he disagrees with you, it is because you are wrong. Dicing onions doesn’t make him cry . . . it only makes him stronger. He’s against cruelty to animals, but isn’t afraid to issue a stern warning. Who is this man of mystery? Matt Braddock!”

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

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

One would think that we would then let the fire go. We’ve been burnt once. Let’s not let that happen again.

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

In the South of India, people used to catch monkeys in a very special way. Actually they let monkeys catch themselves. A hunter cuts a small hole in a coconut, just large enough for a monkey to put its hand in. Next, the hunter ties the coconut to a tree, and fills it with something sweet. The monkey smells the sweet, squeezes its hand into the coconut, grabs the sweet and finds that the fist does not fit through the hole. Here’s the trick. The last thing the monkey will think of is to let go of the sweet. The monkey holds itself prisoner. Nothing could be easier for a human who comes and catches it. Desires . . . attachments . . . cravings . . . they arise again and again. Trying to fulfill our desires is like reaching for an alluring treat and getting caught rather than letting go. It’s like reaching for the fire again. You get burned. This is life: full of suffering from our self-made pain. Humans tend to long for what they do not have, or to wish for their lives to be different than they are; they often fail to fully appreciate what they do have.

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

In the book of Romans, Paul says that there are two ways to live and that the difference between these two ways is everything. Paul says that we can live, “according to the flesh,” or we can be, “led by the Spirit of God.” To live according to the flesh is to live with self at the center. My desire to be loved as an original man of mystery is a self-centered way of life. My impatience in the traffic jam is a self-centered thing. It is MY schedule that is supreme and MY destination that is most important. Everyone else on the road should yield to MY needs. Paul thinks that this self-centered way of living, this attachment to our obsessions, leads to slavery and death.

Paul says there is another way to live. There is a way to overcome suffering. For Christians, it happens when we stop living according to the flesh and begin to be led by the Spirit of God. This puts God and God’s interests at the center of our lives. Instead of reaching into flames and getting burned over and over, we allow the fire of the Spirit to come upon us and control our lives. If we look closely, we can see those tongues of flame resting on people around us. The Spirit is upon people who realize that craving does not make life better. They have a purpose beyond self-protection. They appreciate the world around them because it’s God’s world. They can enjoy it without unrealistically grasping at it. They can be part of God’s world and not try to control what it offers. They can be authentic selves among others and they seem to have what many of us long for: peace, harmony, safety, comfort, trust, belief, and security.

Instead of being burned by the flames of false attachment, we are ignited by the Spirit of God.

I once read a story about a church deacon. The pastor tried to get the deacon to open up and let the spirit of God lead her. The deacon concluded that there was one thing she could do. She could take the youth group to the old folk’s home. Once a month the youth group of this church went to the old folk’s home and put on a little church service for the people who lived there. Once she went with the youth group and she stood in the back of the room. The young people were performing and this old man rolled his chair over to where this deacon was standing, took hold of her hand and held it all during the service. The man did the same thing the next month, and the next month, and the next month, and the next month, and the next month. Then they went one Sunday afternoon and the man wasn’t there. The deacon asked the nurse in charge, “What happened to that man?” “Oh,” she said, “He’s near death. He’s just down the hall, the third room. Maybe you should go in and visit him. He’s unconscious, though.”

The deacon walked down and went into the room. You know how people are when they are just about gone and lying there? It was a horrible scene. The deacon went over and held the hand of the gentleman in the bed. She did not know what to do. Those moments are so awkward. Then, instinctively, led by the Spirit, she said a prayer. And when she said “Amen,” the old fellow squeezed her hand. The deacon was so moved by that squeeze, she began to weep. She shook a little. She tried to get out of the room. As she was leaving, she bumped into a woman who was coming into the room. The visitor said, “He’s been waiting for you. He said he did not want to die until Jesus came and held his hand. I tried to tell him that after death he would have a chance to meet Jesus and talk to Jesus and hold Jesus’ hand. But he said, ‘No. Once a month Jesus comes and holds my hand and I don’t want to leave until I have a chance to hold the hand of Jesus once more.’”

To be ignited by the Spirit may bring you into doing things as awesome as that. When you live in the Spirit, there’s something very important that God wants to do in you and through you. It might be just as simple as this: to go some place and to hold somebody’s hand and Jesus for somebody. That’s what Christ wants of us. Not just to have us believe in him, he wants us to be people who surrender to the Spirit, people who are transformed by the Spirit.

People are waiting for us to stop living for ourselves and to live in the Spirit. They are waiting for us to awaken them to their holiness and their giftedness. In the Spirit we move away from the attachments that trap us. We move from isolation to unity. We go from oppression to liberation. We are freed from insignificance and find importance. We recognize the failures and accept grace. We have shared in the suffering. Now it is time to share in the glory. We live in the Spirit, and allow God to transform our lives.