Revelation 21:1-4
Robert Benson is an author who writes books that explore the question of just how the holy or sacred is found in the ordinary, every day part of our lives. Here is what he said about saints in a book entitled Between the Dreaming and the Coming True:
"All of the places of our lives are sanctuaries; some of them just happen to have steeples. And all of the people in our lives are saints; it is just that some of them have day jobs and most will never have feast days named for them."
And so it is for the saints we have known and whom we honor during these All-Saints’ Remembrances today. These are the people in our families and in our congregation who passed away during the last year. They are men and women. They are old and young. They are the ones who really did not take us by surprise when they left this earth for whatever it is that comes next. They are the ones whose death shocked us to the very core. They are the ones we loved, and we still feel lost without them. They are the ones whose memories we will always hold dear and whose legacy has been passed on to us. The best of who they were will live on in us – in our courage, our conscience, our caring for one another.
KENNETH A. BERRY – Catharine’s husband of 51 years. He sat right back there and also faithfully prepared the Weathervane for mailing each month – even after he became ill. Ken was an extraordinary carpenter and craftsman who could spot a roof or a kitchen counter that was not square a mile away. He built the home he and Catharine shared. Frugal - always looking for a bargain – and most of the time finding ones he could not resist. Hard working, kind, and generous. A soft-spoken and gentle man. He loved his gardens and “The Three Stooges. He adored his grandchildren. He never officially joined this church, but, oh, he was a faith filled man. The day before he died, I was talking with him at home. His eyes were closed, and I whispered to him, “Ken, everything is going to be OK, you know.” He opened those eyes wide and looked directly at me. “Oh, yes, Nancy, I know that,” he replied emphatically.
MABEL FRANCES CROCKETT – Mabel used a walker up until two days before she died. That is no mean feat when you live to be 105 years old. With her husband, she owned and operated Migis Lodge for 24 years. Born in Nova Scotia, she came to the US when she was 17 to go to secretarial school in Boston, where she graduated first in her class. Independent, resilient, and feisty.
A wry sense of humor and a never ending smile. Always busy – never walking but rather “trotting.” A lover of horses, an active supporter of the Raymond Library, and a member of the Raymond Semicircle, a women’s group loosely affiliated with our church. Hardworking, honest, and straightforward. Mabel followed her own path –driving until she was 89, living in her own home until she was 90, and winning a pool tournament in her retirement community when she was 96.
HELENA THORNTON MAKER DICKINSON – mother of Nancy Yates. Loving, kind, generous, and selfless. Tireless with unending energy for her family. Frugal – oh, could she ever stretch the few resources she had – able to make so much out of so little. But then, how could she not have had all of those traits in spades? After all, she raised ten children – beginning at age 18 with Nancy – and for many of those years, with no one to ease the burden!? An excellent cook – she did not fall back on all the easy TV dinners and processed food. As Nancy told me, “The taste of her homemade bread and beans, potato salad and johnny cake will live on in our memories.” Helena made the holidays special with memorable feasts – good food and good family. Again, as Nancy said, “Of all the many oft-remembered treats, we will especially miss her cherry walnut cake, for which, regrettably, we have no recipe.”
HOWARD M. DODGE – brother of Bernie Dodge. Retired from the Air Force. Also served in the Army Reserve. Worked in a bank and as a taxi driver before he found his niche serving customers in the U.S. Postal Service for 30 years. Howard was devoted to his wife and his family. Known for his boundless love and generosity. A devoted member of St. Boniface Parish in Cold Spring, Minnesota, a church and community volunteer through the Catholic Order of Foresters, Knights of Columbus, Catholic Aid Association, and the American Legion. Bernie wrote this about his brother: “My strongest memory or admiration of Howard was the fact that he rose from a childhood of no positive fatherly influence or training to become a loving father, sometimes working three jobs at a time and with his wife Darlene raised seven successful children.”
JENNILEE LAMBERT – Dan Lambert’s daughter by birth, but Lori will always consider Jenni to be her daughter as well. Jenni would have been 29 this month but lost a battle with an illness she did not even know she had. Jenni was energetic, courageous, and a marvelous lover of life. She was a beautiful young woman inside and out. Lori described her as a person with “a kind soul and a caring heart.”
The ways of God are mysterious, and Jenni left this earth with so many questions unanswered – why her? Why now? We can only pray that because she is at peace, we too can find peace in knowing that for now, there are no satisfying answers. Jenni was the middle child between two brothers, but for Lori’s and Dan’s daughter, Kaleigh, Jenni epitomized what it meant to be the “big sister.” Leader, listener, confidante, and the one who made things happen, Jenni shined in that role like the sun. As Lori said, “We miss her devilish grin and unique sense of humor, which would sometimes have her saying things like ‘I come with my own background music; can you hear it?’”
WILLIAM H. PARKER – husband of Ginny Parker for just over 64 years. Always ready with a smile. Caring, gentle, kind, and a wonderful community volunteer. Bill was a man who loved working with his hands, and so he enjoyed his time as an electrician, building inspector, volunteer firefighter, and even a voting machine mechanic. Loved boating, loved summering at his family cottage in Rhode Island, loved retiring to Raymond where he became a stalwart and much admired volunteer for the Fire Department here in town. He particularly enjoyed those times when he was head of the Fire Patrol, and a lot of those Fire Lane signs around here were kept accurate by Bill. Bill loved Tara, that little dog of his, and disliked vegetables. Diane said of Bill, “As long as Bill could stand-up, he showed up to help!” He was always ready to lend a hand,
Ken, Mabel, Helena, Howard, Jenni, Bill – They have left us with a lot, you know. They have given us rich memories that will never be taken away. They have presented us with a legacy of faithfulness, independence, selfless love for family, strong work ethic, unique background music, and devotion to community. May we take up that legacy and carry those qualities - not only in our hearts but also in the way we choose to live our own lives. After all, in the end, our saints live on in us.
But what about them? What is in this for them? Well, we as Christians trust that they now rest in the arms of God, in the eternal love and peace of the Holy One. It is all a mystery we can not understand but can only trust. It is like this story that I know some of you have heard entitled, “The Dragonfly.” It is a children’s story: that is true. However, sometimes we can see the mysteries of life more clearly through a child’s eyes.
Once, in a pond, in the muddy water under the lily pads, there lived a little water beetle in a community of water beetles. They lived a simple and comfortable life with few disturbances and interruptions.
Once in a while, sadness would come to them when one of their fellow beetles would climb the stem of a lily pad and never be seen again. They knew when this happened; their friend was dead, gone forever.
Then, one day, one of the little water beetles felt an irresistible urge to climb up that stem. However, he was determined that he would not leave forever but would come back and tell his friends what he had found at the top.
When he reached the top and climbed out of the water onto the surface of the lily pad, he was so tired, and the sun felt so warm, that he decided he must take a nap. As he slept, his body changed and when he woke up, he had turned into a beautiful blue-tailed dragonfly with broad wings and a slender body designed for flying.
So, fly he did! And as he soared, he saw the beauty of a whole new world, so different but so much better than anything he had eve known existed.
Then he remembered his beetle friends and how they were thinking by now that he was dead. He wanted to go back to tell them and explain to them that he was actually more alive than he had ever been before. His life had been fulfilled rather than ended.
However, his new body would not go down into the water, and so he could not get back to tell his friends the good news. But he also knew that their time would come, when they, too, would know what he now knew, a time when they would all be together again. So, he raised his wings and flew off into his joyous new life!
May it be so for our saints! Fly Saints, Fly!
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Luke 18:9-14 "Conundrum"
We in the 21st century are not all that different from those men and women in the 1st century who sat at Jesus’ feet, listening to him teach with parables. One similarity across the millennia is that whether we live today or whether we lived 2000 years ago, most of us prefer to see the world in black and white.
There are good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. For us, there is Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Cinderella and the Wicked Stepmother, Barack Obama and Glenn Beck, the Tea Party and the Liberal Establishment. For Jesus’ listeners, there were the one God Jews and the Zeus loving pagans, the Jewish peasant class and the Roman Emperor himself.
And yet, we will discover that this parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector praying next to each other in the synagogue is not black and white at all, but rather many shades of gray.
Presbyterian pastor and seminary professor Victor Shepherd tells the story like this: “A Pharisee and a tax-collector go to church together. The Pharisee is morally circumspect. He’s squeaky clean, consistent in it all as well. He’s a genuinely good man. There’s nothing deficient or defective in his religious observance or his moral integrity. There isn’t a whiff of hypocrisy about him. As soon as he gets to church he reminds God how circumspect and how consistent he is.
(The) tax-collector, (however, was part of the) most despised group in Israel. (Tax collectors) made a living collecting taxes for the Roman occupation…This branded them publicly as exploitative, ready to “fleece” their own people, greedy, and heartless concerning the kinfolk they kept impoverished.
The Pharisee looked at this one tax-collector in church, looked away and then looked up, nose in air as he said “God, I thank you I am not like other men. They are extortionists, unjust, adulterous. I’m none of this. I am not like them. I’m not at all like this creep standing beside me.” The tax-collector, we’re told, made no religious claim at all. He simply cried, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’”
Now, at first glance, the tale may look black and white. However, when you closely observe the two characters in the story, this simplicity rapidly disappears.
The parable presents a conundrum, a puzzle, a brain teaser, a mind boggler. The Pharisee or the tax collector? Who does one identity with? Jesus’ listeners would not have enjoyed being associated with either one. There is no good guy in this parable. There is no hero.
On the one hand, Jesus was perpetually in conflict with the Pharisees. They were the religious hierarchy and way too tight with the Roman government. Pharisees dictated the nits and nats of Jewish holiness and considered themselves to be of that righteousness.
However, Pharisees also had the reputation of being religious hypocrites. Because they were generally well off, they had the financial means to observe all the complexities of the Mosaic law, down to the tiniest nit or nat, something impossible for most of the Jewish populace. Those who followed Jesus had no love for the Pharisee in our parable.
Yet, on the other hand, a tax collector was the scum of the earth. As the author of a blog entitled “Magdalene’s Musings” wrote, “If Pharisees were models of holiness and righteousness, tax collectors were models of a different kind: they were mostly thought of as models of greed, uncleanness and dishonesty,…working on behalf of the enemy,… making themselves rich off the misery of their own people.
Tax collectors were traitors.” Those who followed Jesus had no love for the tax collector in our parable either.
That is the conundrum. Who does one identify with?
The Pharisee was not a bad person. His religion was his passion. He would be the one in church every Sunday without fail. He loved the Bible, and its literal teachings dictated how he lived his life. He was a good upstanding Jew.
In fact, he lived in exemplary fashion, going above and beyond the minimum requirements for a good religious life. He fasted regularly – and he tithed on everything he acquired, even down to the herbs in his garden. He invested 10% of his treasure where his heart was – and looking at it from the perspective of this day and age, that is nothing to sneeze at. The Pharisee had religious zeal. Seen from this perspective, the Pharisee is no villain.
Of course, Jesus points out that he does have this shortcoming when it comes to his prayer life. His prayers seem less about God and more about himself – though all he was doing really was offering prayers of gratitude – thanking God that he was blessed in not being like the tax collector who prayed beside him.
Now, the tax collector – well, he is a different story. Not a paragon of good solid ethics, he would never be elected church treasurer. As United Church of Canada pastor David Ewart notes, “Not only does collecting taxes make one very unpopular, it also makes one unable to live according to the teachings of the Bible because one must constantly be in contact with ritually unclean people and goods. And taxes paid for the Roman armies and elites that were occupying the Holy Land.” Seen from this perspective, the tax collector is no hero.
However, when it comes to his prayer life, this fellow got it right. His words may not have been very articulate, but they were to the point. He asks for mercy and throws himself upon the grace of God. And in the long run, Jesus seems to say, his seeking of forgiveness in the face of tremendous odds counts for something.
Who does one identify with? It is a conundrum. The pompous prig of a Pharisee who deeply loves his God and his church? Or the irreligious, morally bankrupt tax collector who throws himself on the mercy of Yahweh? It is a puzzle, a brain teaser, a mind boggler.
As I thought about the parable this week, I wondered if perhaps there is no black or white answer to that niggling question of who we identify with – Pharisee or tax collector. Perhaps Jesus did not mean for there to be a clear right or wrong. Perhaps we are meant to learn something about prayer from both the tax collector and the Pharisee. Perhaps we are not meant to judge either one of them but simply to acknowledge that, if we look closely, we will see ourselves in the eyes of both of them.
Take the prayers of the Pharisee. They were prayers of thanksgiving – and surely there is nothing untoward in that. So often we come to God with a list of demands. We want healing for him, luck in the job search for her. We want some sort of holy intervention, so that we will sell our house or our child will travel safely back to college.
But we seldom actually thank God for that child in the first place – or even for another blessed day of life itself. Where the Pharisee went astray was not in being grateful to God, but in holding up and thereby judging the tax collector as his spiritual opposite. And when he did that, he was no longer praying but comparing.
But haven’t we all done that on occasion? We hear of mudslides in Guatemala and thank God that it was them and not us. We read in the newspaper of children killed in a car accident on prom night and thank God that our own children came home safely. We have all done it. We are all like the Pharisee.
Take the prayers of the tax collector. In spite of the fact that he was morally bankrupt, a deeply flawed human being, he understood his relationship with God clearly enough to be ever so humble in his prayers, thereby setting up a marvelous teachable moment – and that is this:
We too must be self-reflective enough to acknowledge to God our sinfulness, our shortcomings – even as count our blessings and present our list of demands to the Almighty. We too must trust enough to openly share our deepest and darkest secrets with God. Admitting out loud his deep need for God was what justified the tax collector.
And just as we are all like the Pharisee, so we are also all like the tax collector. Face it – we may not be cheaters and chiselers like he, but we all have something deeply sorry about our lives. From the tax collector’s experience, we are assured that owning up to the bad and ugly things about us will be OK – and indeed will serve to cement even more our relationship with the Almighty.
The parable is surely a conundrum, a puzzle that has no black and white solution. However, I think that the interplay between the Pharisee and the tax collector is a way for Jesus to remind us just how important prayer is in our relationship with God.
Surely it has the potential to help us discover more of who we are and who God is – even if we at times stumble in our attempts to pray properly.
Martin Luther King, Jr., [said] “to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” This parable teaches us that "prayer is the occasion for honesty about oneself (but also) generosity about others…(For Jesus’ listeners and so for us) prayer is not a last resort when all the plans and programs and power plays have failed; prayer is, rather, the first and primary task of Christians" (Charles Cousar) – even though, as the Pharisee and the tax collector illustrate for us, we have not yet perfected the technique.
Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
There are good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. For us, there is Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Cinderella and the Wicked Stepmother, Barack Obama and Glenn Beck, the Tea Party and the Liberal Establishment. For Jesus’ listeners, there were the one God Jews and the Zeus loving pagans, the Jewish peasant class and the Roman Emperor himself.
And yet, we will discover that this parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector praying next to each other in the synagogue is not black and white at all, but rather many shades of gray.
Presbyterian pastor and seminary professor Victor Shepherd tells the story like this: “A Pharisee and a tax-collector go to church together. The Pharisee is morally circumspect. He’s squeaky clean, consistent in it all as well. He’s a genuinely good man. There’s nothing deficient or defective in his religious observance or his moral integrity. There isn’t a whiff of hypocrisy about him. As soon as he gets to church he reminds God how circumspect and how consistent he is.
(The) tax-collector, (however, was part of the) most despised group in Israel. (Tax collectors) made a living collecting taxes for the Roman occupation…This branded them publicly as exploitative, ready to “fleece” their own people, greedy, and heartless concerning the kinfolk they kept impoverished.
The Pharisee looked at this one tax-collector in church, looked away and then looked up, nose in air as he said “God, I thank you I am not like other men. They are extortionists, unjust, adulterous. I’m none of this. I am not like them. I’m not at all like this creep standing beside me.” The tax-collector, we’re told, made no religious claim at all. He simply cried, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’”
Now, at first glance, the tale may look black and white. However, when you closely observe the two characters in the story, this simplicity rapidly disappears.
The parable presents a conundrum, a puzzle, a brain teaser, a mind boggler. The Pharisee or the tax collector? Who does one identity with? Jesus’ listeners would not have enjoyed being associated with either one. There is no good guy in this parable. There is no hero.
On the one hand, Jesus was perpetually in conflict with the Pharisees. They were the religious hierarchy and way too tight with the Roman government. Pharisees dictated the nits and nats of Jewish holiness and considered themselves to be of that righteousness.
However, Pharisees also had the reputation of being religious hypocrites. Because they were generally well off, they had the financial means to observe all the complexities of the Mosaic law, down to the tiniest nit or nat, something impossible for most of the Jewish populace. Those who followed Jesus had no love for the Pharisee in our parable.
Yet, on the other hand, a tax collector was the scum of the earth. As the author of a blog entitled “Magdalene’s Musings” wrote, “If Pharisees were models of holiness and righteousness, tax collectors were models of a different kind: they were mostly thought of as models of greed, uncleanness and dishonesty,…working on behalf of the enemy,… making themselves rich off the misery of their own people.
Tax collectors were traitors.” Those who followed Jesus had no love for the tax collector in our parable either.
That is the conundrum. Who does one identify with?
The Pharisee was not a bad person. His religion was his passion. He would be the one in church every Sunday without fail. He loved the Bible, and its literal teachings dictated how he lived his life. He was a good upstanding Jew.
In fact, he lived in exemplary fashion, going above and beyond the minimum requirements for a good religious life. He fasted regularly – and he tithed on everything he acquired, even down to the herbs in his garden. He invested 10% of his treasure where his heart was – and looking at it from the perspective of this day and age, that is nothing to sneeze at. The Pharisee had religious zeal. Seen from this perspective, the Pharisee is no villain.
Of course, Jesus points out that he does have this shortcoming when it comes to his prayer life. His prayers seem less about God and more about himself – though all he was doing really was offering prayers of gratitude – thanking God that he was blessed in not being like the tax collector who prayed beside him.
Now, the tax collector – well, he is a different story. Not a paragon of good solid ethics, he would never be elected church treasurer. As United Church of Canada pastor David Ewart notes, “Not only does collecting taxes make one very unpopular, it also makes one unable to live according to the teachings of the Bible because one must constantly be in contact with ritually unclean people and goods. And taxes paid for the Roman armies and elites that were occupying the Holy Land.” Seen from this perspective, the tax collector is no hero.
However, when it comes to his prayer life, this fellow got it right. His words may not have been very articulate, but they were to the point. He asks for mercy and throws himself upon the grace of God. And in the long run, Jesus seems to say, his seeking of forgiveness in the face of tremendous odds counts for something.
Who does one identify with? It is a conundrum. The pompous prig of a Pharisee who deeply loves his God and his church? Or the irreligious, morally bankrupt tax collector who throws himself on the mercy of Yahweh? It is a puzzle, a brain teaser, a mind boggler.
As I thought about the parable this week, I wondered if perhaps there is no black or white answer to that niggling question of who we identify with – Pharisee or tax collector. Perhaps Jesus did not mean for there to be a clear right or wrong. Perhaps we are meant to learn something about prayer from both the tax collector and the Pharisee. Perhaps we are not meant to judge either one of them but simply to acknowledge that, if we look closely, we will see ourselves in the eyes of both of them.
Take the prayers of the Pharisee. They were prayers of thanksgiving – and surely there is nothing untoward in that. So often we come to God with a list of demands. We want healing for him, luck in the job search for her. We want some sort of holy intervention, so that we will sell our house or our child will travel safely back to college.
But we seldom actually thank God for that child in the first place – or even for another blessed day of life itself. Where the Pharisee went astray was not in being grateful to God, but in holding up and thereby judging the tax collector as his spiritual opposite. And when he did that, he was no longer praying but comparing.
But haven’t we all done that on occasion? We hear of mudslides in Guatemala and thank God that it was them and not us. We read in the newspaper of children killed in a car accident on prom night and thank God that our own children came home safely. We have all done it. We are all like the Pharisee.
Take the prayers of the tax collector. In spite of the fact that he was morally bankrupt, a deeply flawed human being, he understood his relationship with God clearly enough to be ever so humble in his prayers, thereby setting up a marvelous teachable moment – and that is this:
We too must be self-reflective enough to acknowledge to God our sinfulness, our shortcomings – even as count our blessings and present our list of demands to the Almighty. We too must trust enough to openly share our deepest and darkest secrets with God. Admitting out loud his deep need for God was what justified the tax collector.
And just as we are all like the Pharisee, so we are also all like the tax collector. Face it – we may not be cheaters and chiselers like he, but we all have something deeply sorry about our lives. From the tax collector’s experience, we are assured that owning up to the bad and ugly things about us will be OK – and indeed will serve to cement even more our relationship with the Almighty.
The parable is surely a conundrum, a puzzle that has no black and white solution. However, I think that the interplay between the Pharisee and the tax collector is a way for Jesus to remind us just how important prayer is in our relationship with God.
Surely it has the potential to help us discover more of who we are and who God is – even if we at times stumble in our attempts to pray properly.
Martin Luther King, Jr., [said] “to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” This parable teaches us that "prayer is the occasion for honesty about oneself (but also) generosity about others…(For Jesus’ listeners and so for us) prayer is not a last resort when all the plans and programs and power plays have failed; prayer is, rather, the first and primary task of Christians" (Charles Cousar) – even though, as the Pharisee and the tax collector illustrate for us, we have not yet perfected the technique.
Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Luke 18:1-8 "Live Boldly"
“You see,” Jesus said as the peasant entourage of listeners settled down at his feet for a good story, “there was this widow, and she had been wronged.” And the audience clucked and whispered and nodded their heads. They knew what “being wronged” meant. It happened to them all the time – being cheated, getting the short end of the stick. They knew from their own experience that it was not a good place to be.
Why, the dear old soul really had nothing going for her. She was powerless because when she had buried her husband, she had buried her identity as well. She was a nobody because that was just the way it was with women who were not associated with a better half, a better half who could be depended upon to speak up in times of need.
She was poor – because all the widows of whom Jesus ever spoke were poor – and because she was poor she had no money with which to grease the wheels of justice. She could not have put up a bribe even if she had wanted to. When you lined up all the things that worked against her, the chance of her wrong being righted was virtually nil.
“And then,” continued Jesus, “there was this judge - and the judge was corrupt.” And his listeners knowingly nodded their heads once again. Judges like that were a denarius a dozen. They knew that taking bribes was probably so commonplace in that judge’s book that he had most likely rationalized that it was best for society if he filched a shekel or two from the poor whenever he could.
The audience could picture that judge. He was calloused and had long ago mastered the ability to simply look the other way when it suited his purposes. He was condescending – adept at staring through those wire rimmed glasses he wore down the length of his pointy nose to whoever groveled at his feet.
They just knew that he was the kind of judge who ordered his assistants to bribe the riffraff outside of the Tent of Justice, so only those with the ability to pay were prompted to plea their cases. And the shekels came rolling in – even if true justice slipped out the back door.
“So,” said Jesus, “There was this widow and there was this judge.” But that is where the stereotypes ended. Because the widow was not like the usual run-of-the-mill widows the judge was used to. This one was persistent. This one just did not give up.
Every time the judge turned around, there she was – giving him that look and shaking her finger at him. She rattled the tent flaps, and he could hear her arguing with his bouncers as he shuffled papers around on his desk.
She found him at the café on Main Street in the morning just as the waitress brought him a platter of steaming eggs and sausage – and well before his second cup of coffee.
She was right there when he snuck out of his flimsy Tent of Justice for a cigarette. And when all he wanted was a few minutes of quiet in the mid-afternoon for a cup of tea and a biscuit – there she would be. She badgered him all the way home – night after night.
He even dreamt about her. It was the same dream every night, one of those recurring things. The widow would be following him down a long darkened tunnel that seemed to go on forever, her high pitched voice bouncing off the floors and ceiling, echoing up and down the ancient passageway and rattling interminably inside his head -
- Until he could stand it no longer. “Leave me alone!” the judge shouted one day at the widow in broad daylight. “I give up. You can have what you want. Just get out of my life. Just leave me be.” And she did. And he did. And the parable ended.
An assistant manager of a large department store saw a boy standing at the bottom of the escalator one day. The assistant became suspicious. He watched the boy for a while. The boy had his eyes glued on the moving handrail. Finally the assistant approached the lad and questioned him.
"Something wrong, young man?" he asked.
"No sir," replied the boy, not taking his eyes off the handrail, "I'm just waiting for my bubble gum to come back."
Persistence - that is what this parable is about. As a prelude to the actual story, Jesus tells his listeners that this tale is about prayer and its link to the kind of perseverance that the old widow demonstrated. And most sermons I have heard on this passage focus on just that – on how we need to be persistent in our prayers, how we need not be alarmed if our prayers are not answered in our own good time, how we need to be conscious of what many see to be the causal relationship between prayer and faith.
And those are certainly worthy topics to spring from this parable in the Gospel of Luke. However, I keep thinking that prayer is not (or at least should not) be something we do in a vacuum, closed off from the world. I am reminded of Frederick Douglass when he said, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
To be truly efficacious, prayer necessarily involves action on our part. And so, it would seem to me that if Jesus is telling us to be persistent in our prayer life, then he is also implying that we must be persistent in all of life as it unfolds before us. And when we think about the parable from this wider perspective, suddenly it becomes both a daring call to action and a profound word of hope.
Just as the old powerless widow was as feisty as could be, just as she was persistent to the point even of obnoxiousness, just as she never gave up when the world around her was probably snickering behind her back or laughing out loud in her face, so I believe that we are called to do the same. We are not pawns in this world, being moved around by some Higher Being. No – we are powerful – masters of our own destiny.
Live boldly this parable is telling us. Figure out what your passion is, where your heart lies – and act upon it. As Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, noted about the widow: "She is willing to say what wanted – out loud, day and night, over and over – whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart…" Live boldly.
God did not put us on this earth to be wishy washy, to take whatever comes our way. Though that is sometimes mistakenly called meekness, it is in reality lack of conviction. God put us here to be agents of change and transformation, to live with passion and conviction.
Along about Saturday afternoon last weekend, at mile 15 of 23 miles, I wondered why I do these 3 day, 60 mile breast cancer walks. Oh, it is fun to wear pink, but the mobile showers are not the Ritz. Trying to get your 40 winks in one of literally a thousand cheap pink pup tents inches apart from each other gets old after the first year or so. Getting dressed in your sleeping bag so you can stay warm at 5:30 A.M. is not something I would want to do every day either. And a weekend of porta-potties? Need I say more!
And yet, there is something about 2700 people – walkers and volunteer crew – coming together not only with a common commitment to rid the world of cancer but also with a marvelous love for life itself, all of us participating in this event because of a strong belief that everyone deserves a full and rich lifetime and no one should have to endure months and years of surgeries and chemotherapy treatments -just to be able to be there when a toddler grows old enough to start kindergarten.
There is something about 2700 people coming together with a shared passion - albeit edged with blisters and ice packs – and a commitment to live that passion, walk that conviction, even if you are hobbling a bit at the end of the day but still trusting that tomorrow you will not be so stiff and so you will go on – and on – and on.
In a world that is too often jaded and cynical, apathetic, inert, and focused on what we can not do, there is something about 2700 people coming together to be what Leonard Pitts, a fellow walker and syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald wrote last Wednesday, to be like ants. “Ants don't know about inertia,” Pitts writes. “They have a goal: to build and expand their underground cities. And they do achieve this by working cooperatively, moving earth one grain at a time.”
This parable is about persistence. It is about having the widow’s hutzpah to keep nagging the judge even when it seems pointless to continue to do so. It is about putting one foot in front of the other when what you really want to do is take your shoes off and put your feet up. It is about looking deep inside of you and discovering what means the most to you – whether that be a cancer-free world, simply another day lived, or something in between.
This parable is about persistence, but it is also about realizing that if you live persistently, as the old widow did, you will also live boldly as she likewise did.
If you consciously and persistently pursue your passion, whatever it may be, you will live boldly. It can be no other way. And when you live boldly – oh, the things you will do, the ways the world will change.
When you live boldly – oh, what you will realize about life itself. That it is not about challenges that are too big, problems that are too complex, difficulties that can not be handled, or dilemmas that can not be untangled.
No – when you live boldly, you will realize that life is indeed a journey and it is what we – each one of us – will choose to make of it. It is an adventure – one to be enjoyed, to be savored. And in the end, it is for living. Live boldly!
Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Why, the dear old soul really had nothing going for her. She was powerless because when she had buried her husband, she had buried her identity as well. She was a nobody because that was just the way it was with women who were not associated with a better half, a better half who could be depended upon to speak up in times of need.
She was poor – because all the widows of whom Jesus ever spoke were poor – and because she was poor she had no money with which to grease the wheels of justice. She could not have put up a bribe even if she had wanted to. When you lined up all the things that worked against her, the chance of her wrong being righted was virtually nil.
“And then,” continued Jesus, “there was this judge - and the judge was corrupt.” And his listeners knowingly nodded their heads once again. Judges like that were a denarius a dozen. They knew that taking bribes was probably so commonplace in that judge’s book that he had most likely rationalized that it was best for society if he filched a shekel or two from the poor whenever he could.
The audience could picture that judge. He was calloused and had long ago mastered the ability to simply look the other way when it suited his purposes. He was condescending – adept at staring through those wire rimmed glasses he wore down the length of his pointy nose to whoever groveled at his feet.
They just knew that he was the kind of judge who ordered his assistants to bribe the riffraff outside of the Tent of Justice, so only those with the ability to pay were prompted to plea their cases. And the shekels came rolling in – even if true justice slipped out the back door.
“So,” said Jesus, “There was this widow and there was this judge.” But that is where the stereotypes ended. Because the widow was not like the usual run-of-the-mill widows the judge was used to. This one was persistent. This one just did not give up.
Every time the judge turned around, there she was – giving him that look and shaking her finger at him. She rattled the tent flaps, and he could hear her arguing with his bouncers as he shuffled papers around on his desk.
She found him at the café on Main Street in the morning just as the waitress brought him a platter of steaming eggs and sausage – and well before his second cup of coffee.
She was right there when he snuck out of his flimsy Tent of Justice for a cigarette. And when all he wanted was a few minutes of quiet in the mid-afternoon for a cup of tea and a biscuit – there she would be. She badgered him all the way home – night after night.
He even dreamt about her. It was the same dream every night, one of those recurring things. The widow would be following him down a long darkened tunnel that seemed to go on forever, her high pitched voice bouncing off the floors and ceiling, echoing up and down the ancient passageway and rattling interminably inside his head -
- Until he could stand it no longer. “Leave me alone!” the judge shouted one day at the widow in broad daylight. “I give up. You can have what you want. Just get out of my life. Just leave me be.” And she did. And he did. And the parable ended.
An assistant manager of a large department store saw a boy standing at the bottom of the escalator one day. The assistant became suspicious. He watched the boy for a while. The boy had his eyes glued on the moving handrail. Finally the assistant approached the lad and questioned him.
"Something wrong, young man?" he asked.
"No sir," replied the boy, not taking his eyes off the handrail, "I'm just waiting for my bubble gum to come back."
Persistence - that is what this parable is about. As a prelude to the actual story, Jesus tells his listeners that this tale is about prayer and its link to the kind of perseverance that the old widow demonstrated. And most sermons I have heard on this passage focus on just that – on how we need to be persistent in our prayers, how we need not be alarmed if our prayers are not answered in our own good time, how we need to be conscious of what many see to be the causal relationship between prayer and faith.
And those are certainly worthy topics to spring from this parable in the Gospel of Luke. However, I keep thinking that prayer is not (or at least should not) be something we do in a vacuum, closed off from the world. I am reminded of Frederick Douglass when he said, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
To be truly efficacious, prayer necessarily involves action on our part. And so, it would seem to me that if Jesus is telling us to be persistent in our prayer life, then he is also implying that we must be persistent in all of life as it unfolds before us. And when we think about the parable from this wider perspective, suddenly it becomes both a daring call to action and a profound word of hope.
Just as the old powerless widow was as feisty as could be, just as she was persistent to the point even of obnoxiousness, just as she never gave up when the world around her was probably snickering behind her back or laughing out loud in her face, so I believe that we are called to do the same. We are not pawns in this world, being moved around by some Higher Being. No – we are powerful – masters of our own destiny.
Live boldly this parable is telling us. Figure out what your passion is, where your heart lies – and act upon it. As Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, noted about the widow: "She is willing to say what wanted – out loud, day and night, over and over – whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart…" Live boldly.
God did not put us on this earth to be wishy washy, to take whatever comes our way. Though that is sometimes mistakenly called meekness, it is in reality lack of conviction. God put us here to be agents of change and transformation, to live with passion and conviction.
Along about Saturday afternoon last weekend, at mile 15 of 23 miles, I wondered why I do these 3 day, 60 mile breast cancer walks. Oh, it is fun to wear pink, but the mobile showers are not the Ritz. Trying to get your 40 winks in one of literally a thousand cheap pink pup tents inches apart from each other gets old after the first year or so. Getting dressed in your sleeping bag so you can stay warm at 5:30 A.M. is not something I would want to do every day either. And a weekend of porta-potties? Need I say more!
And yet, there is something about 2700 people – walkers and volunteer crew – coming together not only with a common commitment to rid the world of cancer but also with a marvelous love for life itself, all of us participating in this event because of a strong belief that everyone deserves a full and rich lifetime and no one should have to endure months and years of surgeries and chemotherapy treatments -just to be able to be there when a toddler grows old enough to start kindergarten.
There is something about 2700 people coming together with a shared passion - albeit edged with blisters and ice packs – and a commitment to live that passion, walk that conviction, even if you are hobbling a bit at the end of the day but still trusting that tomorrow you will not be so stiff and so you will go on – and on – and on.
In a world that is too often jaded and cynical, apathetic, inert, and focused on what we can not do, there is something about 2700 people coming together to be what Leonard Pitts, a fellow walker and syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald wrote last Wednesday, to be like ants. “Ants don't know about inertia,” Pitts writes. “They have a goal: to build and expand their underground cities. And they do achieve this by working cooperatively, moving earth one grain at a time.”
This parable is about persistence. It is about having the widow’s hutzpah to keep nagging the judge even when it seems pointless to continue to do so. It is about putting one foot in front of the other when what you really want to do is take your shoes off and put your feet up. It is about looking deep inside of you and discovering what means the most to you – whether that be a cancer-free world, simply another day lived, or something in between.
This parable is about persistence, but it is also about realizing that if you live persistently, as the old widow did, you will also live boldly as she likewise did.
If you consciously and persistently pursue your passion, whatever it may be, you will live boldly. It can be no other way. And when you live boldly – oh, the things you will do, the ways the world will change.
When you live boldly – oh, what you will realize about life itself. That it is not about challenges that are too big, problems that are too complex, difficulties that can not be handled, or dilemmas that can not be untangled.
No – when you live boldly, you will realize that life is indeed a journey and it is what we – each one of us – will choose to make of it. It is an adventure – one to be enjoyed, to be savored. And in the end, it is for living. Live boldly!
Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Psalm 137 "Love and Anger"
Psalm 137
If you attended Sunday School as a child, you probably learned that the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament part of our Bible is really a collection of songs, traditionally said to be written by King David. I have a vivid image of a long ago square paperback children’s book whose cover featured a very sweet-faced, Caucasian looking young David at the feet of Saul (the first king of Judah). David was playing his harp – or lyre – presumably composing all 150 psalms as he sang.
Though it makes for a lovely scene, the book’s illustrator was historically grossly inaccurate. You see, most modern Biblical scholars attribute only 73 of the psalms to David, and the likelihood that he wrote them as a youngster is slim to none.
The remaining psalms, such as the 137th, which we just read, were composed much later in Jewish history. We know that to be true because psalms like the 137th reflect devastating events that were unimaginable during King David’s glorious reign.
I think that this 137th psalm is one of the most powerful psalms of all. You see, it is an immense outpouring to God of all the sorrow and all the anger with its irresistible thirst for vengeance that overwhelmed the Israelites – understandably so - at the time the song was written.
Last week here in church, we talked about the prophet Jeremiah intuiting the inevitable fall of Jerusalem in 588 BC and the subsequent loss of the Jewish homeland to the Babylonians. As Jeremiah predicted, the Holy City was destroyed, and the temple lay in ruins.
For a people who had understood itself to be chosen by God, these circumstances were pretty hard to fathom – and that is why the psalmist sang about them. He was trying to make sense of these events that made no sense.
According to Walter Brueggemann, “The political-military experience…(was) effectively transposed into a deep theological crisis.” As UCC pastor, Kate Huey, speculated, “This disaster shook the people to their core (where trust in God lives), and drew from them questions, cries of anguish, and a thirst for vengeance.”
The Babylonian army had brought the Israelites to their knees, but the worst part was that much of the population was forcibly exiled to the far side of nowhere, there to become strangers in a strange wasteland – physically separated from families and communities, not to mention that Holy of Holiest place where God resided.
“Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion” - Jerusalem.
Their lives and culture had fallen apart. What had happened to them? How had they gotten here, where, as Kate Huey writes, the “past was separated from the present by the ashes of destruction, by miles of desert traversed under duress, and by the scenery of a land foreign and strange?”
These years of exile were a time of barrenness, bitterness, brokenness – and homesickness beyond measure. Yet, as painful as it was to remember Jerusalem, it would be even worse to forget. The experience of being taken captive and forcibly relocated led to decades of trying desperately to keep the ancient story alive – yet fearing that someday their children would not remember, that someday a future generation would be assimilated into this pagan culture and would lose its own identity, lose its God.
“If I ever forget you, Jerusalem, let my fingers wither and fall off like leaves. Let my tongue swell and turn black if I fail to remember you..”
It was a time of tears, and that is part of what the Psalmist is telling us. It was a time so sad that the Israelites could not even sing –
“Alongside the quaking aspens, we stacked our unplayed harps.”
It was impossible to play a single note even when the soldiers who stood nearby mockingly demanded a song. “Hey, Jewboy, sing us a song. Sing us a song about your happy homeland so far away.”
But beyond the sadness, it was also a time of great anger coupled with a deep seeded wish for revenge, and that is also what the Psalmist is telling us.
“GOD, remember the ruin of Jerusalem…And you, Babylonians—ravagers! A reward to whoever gets back at you for all you've done to us; Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies and smashes their heads on the rocks!”
Wow! Now that is pretty harsh! And yet, as the Psalmist sings to God of all the vengefulness and grief and anger and fear and homesickness and abject sorrow, in doing so, he invites the Holy One to embrace that which lies deepest in his heart and in the hearts of the exiles.
It is not a pretty sight for Yahweh/God to behold. The psalmist know that but through his song prays that God will not turn away in disgust and displeasure but rather will accept the invitation and enter into the bleakness and ruin of their lives.
Sometimes I think that today we have homogenized our relationship with God. Our prayers are composed and controlled and seldom are a groaning cry. Our hands are neatly folded and are not often raised in an angry fist shaking in the direction of the Almighty.
We tell one another that there is a good reason that we are under terrible financial stress, that our spouse was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, that our seemingly happy marriage ended in shock and pain – and if we do not really believe there is a reason, we convince ourselves that there must be, but we just are not good enough or faithful enough to see it clearly. And the anger and sadness we feel is heaped upon our spouse or child or the ones we love – rather than upon the shoulders of the one who has always understood the depth of our pain.
Human emotions are powerful and real. Sometimes we feel like crying. Like the Israelites, we too hurt and bleed and despair. We find ourselves exiled, strangers in a strange wasteland of grief and sadness.
Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried,
Sometimes we do not feel like singing. There is nothing to sing about, and the words will not come. We wish we could go back to the way things were before but know we can not. And the pain squeezes our heart, and the anger engulfs us – and paralyzes us.
“Alongside the quaking aspens we stacked our unplayed harps.”
And sometimes we even feel like hating. We feel like putting a fist through a wall, lashing out at the spouse who did not ask first but deputized us as a cancer caretaker. We feel like damning the collection agencies that haunt us and getting back at the one who walked out on us and our marriage. There is nothing to build up. All that is left is to destroy.
Psalm 137 taps into those potent emotions. It can be a scary song because if we listen carefully to its words, they become our words too. The anger, the sadness, the vengefulness - these painful emotions – are at one time or anther - our emotions.
However, it is this naming of the deepest parts of our humanity that makes the psalms so powerful. They voice those deepest, most painful realities and trust that “God loves us as we are.” (Huey)
The anguished questions, the angry fist shaking, the eyes dimmed with weeping, the pillow wet with tears (Kathy Galloway) are all part of a truly honest relationship with God. You see (and this is the Good News), God accepts all of us – the sadness, the anger, even the thirst for vengeance. That is what the Psalmist is saying to us.
He is not whining or simply bemoaning the fact of the exile, but through this song, he is taking it all to God. He is praying his experience. Surely Walter Brueggemann is right when he says: “It is an act of profound faith to entrust one’s most precious hatreds to God, knowing they will be taken seriously.”
Pray your sorrow then. Pray your anger and your stress. Pray your despair and even your wish for vengeance. Cry out to God whatever lies deepest in your heart, trusting that the love which passes all our understanding is so profound that God will hold us close through it all – weeping with us, maybe even sometimes getting angry alongside us, but surely in the end bringing justice, healing, wholeness, and hope to us and to the world.
Written by Rev. Nancy A. Foran, pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
If you attended Sunday School as a child, you probably learned that the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament part of our Bible is really a collection of songs, traditionally said to be written by King David. I have a vivid image of a long ago square paperback children’s book whose cover featured a very sweet-faced, Caucasian looking young David at the feet of Saul (the first king of Judah). David was playing his harp – or lyre – presumably composing all 150 psalms as he sang.
Though it makes for a lovely scene, the book’s illustrator was historically grossly inaccurate. You see, most modern Biblical scholars attribute only 73 of the psalms to David, and the likelihood that he wrote them as a youngster is slim to none.
The remaining psalms, such as the 137th, which we just read, were composed much later in Jewish history. We know that to be true because psalms like the 137th reflect devastating events that were unimaginable during King David’s glorious reign.
I think that this 137th psalm is one of the most powerful psalms of all. You see, it is an immense outpouring to God of all the sorrow and all the anger with its irresistible thirst for vengeance that overwhelmed the Israelites – understandably so - at the time the song was written.
Last week here in church, we talked about the prophet Jeremiah intuiting the inevitable fall of Jerusalem in 588 BC and the subsequent loss of the Jewish homeland to the Babylonians. As Jeremiah predicted, the Holy City was destroyed, and the temple lay in ruins.
For a people who had understood itself to be chosen by God, these circumstances were pretty hard to fathom – and that is why the psalmist sang about them. He was trying to make sense of these events that made no sense.
According to Walter Brueggemann, “The political-military experience…(was) effectively transposed into a deep theological crisis.” As UCC pastor, Kate Huey, speculated, “This disaster shook the people to their core (where trust in God lives), and drew from them questions, cries of anguish, and a thirst for vengeance.”
The Babylonian army had brought the Israelites to their knees, but the worst part was that much of the population was forcibly exiled to the far side of nowhere, there to become strangers in a strange wasteland – physically separated from families and communities, not to mention that Holy of Holiest place where God resided.
“Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion” - Jerusalem.
Their lives and culture had fallen apart. What had happened to them? How had they gotten here, where, as Kate Huey writes, the “past was separated from the present by the ashes of destruction, by miles of desert traversed under duress, and by the scenery of a land foreign and strange?”
These years of exile were a time of barrenness, bitterness, brokenness – and homesickness beyond measure. Yet, as painful as it was to remember Jerusalem, it would be even worse to forget. The experience of being taken captive and forcibly relocated led to decades of trying desperately to keep the ancient story alive – yet fearing that someday their children would not remember, that someday a future generation would be assimilated into this pagan culture and would lose its own identity, lose its God.
“If I ever forget you, Jerusalem, let my fingers wither and fall off like leaves. Let my tongue swell and turn black if I fail to remember you..”
It was a time of tears, and that is part of what the Psalmist is telling us. It was a time so sad that the Israelites could not even sing –
“Alongside the quaking aspens, we stacked our unplayed harps.”
It was impossible to play a single note even when the soldiers who stood nearby mockingly demanded a song. “Hey, Jewboy, sing us a song. Sing us a song about your happy homeland so far away.”
But beyond the sadness, it was also a time of great anger coupled with a deep seeded wish for revenge, and that is also what the Psalmist is telling us.
“GOD, remember the ruin of Jerusalem…And you, Babylonians—ravagers! A reward to whoever gets back at you for all you've done to us; Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies and smashes their heads on the rocks!”
Wow! Now that is pretty harsh! And yet, as the Psalmist sings to God of all the vengefulness and grief and anger and fear and homesickness and abject sorrow, in doing so, he invites the Holy One to embrace that which lies deepest in his heart and in the hearts of the exiles.
It is not a pretty sight for Yahweh/God to behold. The psalmist know that but through his song prays that God will not turn away in disgust and displeasure but rather will accept the invitation and enter into the bleakness and ruin of their lives.
Sometimes I think that today we have homogenized our relationship with God. Our prayers are composed and controlled and seldom are a groaning cry. Our hands are neatly folded and are not often raised in an angry fist shaking in the direction of the Almighty.
We tell one another that there is a good reason that we are under terrible financial stress, that our spouse was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, that our seemingly happy marriage ended in shock and pain – and if we do not really believe there is a reason, we convince ourselves that there must be, but we just are not good enough or faithful enough to see it clearly. And the anger and sadness we feel is heaped upon our spouse or child or the ones we love – rather than upon the shoulders of the one who has always understood the depth of our pain.
Human emotions are powerful and real. Sometimes we feel like crying. Like the Israelites, we too hurt and bleed and despair. We find ourselves exiled, strangers in a strange wasteland of grief and sadness.
Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried,
Sometimes we do not feel like singing. There is nothing to sing about, and the words will not come. We wish we could go back to the way things were before but know we can not. And the pain squeezes our heart, and the anger engulfs us – and paralyzes us.
“Alongside the quaking aspens we stacked our unplayed harps.”
And sometimes we even feel like hating. We feel like putting a fist through a wall, lashing out at the spouse who did not ask first but deputized us as a cancer caretaker. We feel like damning the collection agencies that haunt us and getting back at the one who walked out on us and our marriage. There is nothing to build up. All that is left is to destroy.
Psalm 137 taps into those potent emotions. It can be a scary song because if we listen carefully to its words, they become our words too. The anger, the sadness, the vengefulness - these painful emotions – are at one time or anther - our emotions.
However, it is this naming of the deepest parts of our humanity that makes the psalms so powerful. They voice those deepest, most painful realities and trust that “God loves us as we are.” (Huey)
The anguished questions, the angry fist shaking, the eyes dimmed with weeping, the pillow wet with tears (Kathy Galloway) are all part of a truly honest relationship with God. You see (and this is the Good News), God accepts all of us – the sadness, the anger, even the thirst for vengeance. That is what the Psalmist is saying to us.
He is not whining or simply bemoaning the fact of the exile, but through this song, he is taking it all to God. He is praying his experience. Surely Walter Brueggemann is right when he says: “It is an act of profound faith to entrust one’s most precious hatreds to God, knowing they will be taken seriously.”
Pray your sorrow then. Pray your anger and your stress. Pray your despair and even your wish for vengeance. Cry out to God whatever lies deepest in your heart, trusting that the love which passes all our understanding is so profound that God will hold us close through it all – weeping with us, maybe even sometimes getting angry alongside us, but surely in the end bringing justice, healing, wholeness, and hope to us and to the world.
Written by Rev. Nancy A. Foran, pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15 "Buy!"
One of my all-time favorite movies is “Gone with the Wind.” I love the opulent costumes, the dramatic storyline, and the marvelous insights into Southern plantation life, all set against the backdrop of the Civil War. Over and above all that, of course, Rhett Butler is not so bad either – especially when he picks up Scarlet O’Hara and carries her up that long staircase for a night that is probably best left to our imaginations.
Now that Joe and I have our little farm in Naples, the ending of “Gone with the Wind” makes a lot more sense to me. Perhaps you recall the last scene when Scarlet is silhouetted against the Georgia evening sky, holding the red earth of Tara, her beloved plantation, in her hands, finally understanding something her father had told her years before. She might have lost her husband, lost her daughter, lost all the wealth she had grown accustomed to, but she still had the land – and from that she could forge a future.
Both the real and symbolic significance of land – real estate – goes back to the very beginnings of Biblical lore – stretching all the way in history to God’s promising land to Abraham – and the journey the old nomad and his family undertook to reach that Promised Land.
However, just as Moses died before he set foot on the land God gave to the Israelites, so Abraham never got there either. By the time he died, the only land he owned was the cemetery plot he had purchased for Sarah, his wife. It would be many hundreds of years later that Abraham’s descendents led by Joshua would finally take possession of the gifted land, only to lose it time and again as one empire or another overran the tiny Jewish nation.
The significance of land is a recurrent theme in the Old Testament – and so we should not be all that surprised to find real estate the topic of the passage we just read. Here, embedded in the book of Jeremiah, is a strange little story about the prophet purchasing utterly useless land on a real estate tip from God.
The year is 588 B.C. - five hundred and eighty eight years before the birth of Jesus. The city of Jerusalem is under siege, and the vast army of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, is camped at its gates. Jeremiah is the top dog prophet of Zedekiah, the current King of Judah.
And Jeremiah knows what is going to happen. He is not called a prophet for nothing. Resistance is futile, he realizes. The Babylonian armies will prevail, the Holy City will fall – and, for the Israelites, all will once again be lost. And, being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah told the King and the royal military commanders exactly that.
Well, you can imagine the impact of such an announcement on the morale of both the troops and the civilian populace. Not surprisingly, King Zedekiah was exceedingly displeased with the prophet’s report. As kings in that day were wont to do when they did not like what they were told and because Jeremiah was so maddeningly persistent in his prophecies of doom and gloom, King Zedekiah imprisoned Jeremiah, placing him under house-arrest as a traitor.
And there, while Jeremiah was in jail, something very unusual happened. God gave the prophet a real estate tip. "Your cousin is going to offer to sell you some land. When he does, buy it."
How crazy is that! The land is going to be overrun by the Babylonian army any minute now. The Jews will be ousted – and God says “Buy!”?
Jeremiah is in prison and will never see the land. The mightiest empire in the world will occupy it anyway. No one in Jeremiah’s generation will ever inhabit the land, much less prosper on it – and God says “Buy!”?
Vandals are camped outside the Holy City walls. The people inside are starving, sick, and desperate – unable to tend the land outside the city anyway. And everyone knows that being in a battle zone wreaks havoc on real estate - and God says “Buy!”?
Buy? When the land is useless, worthless, and a horrible reminder of everything that has been lost? This is like buying stocks when the market is crashing, or purchasing a home even as you watch it disappear down a sinkhole (Scott Hoezee).
“Yes,” God says to Jeremiah. “Buy.” And being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah does just that. The old prophet buys the land from his cousin – and even makes quite a public display of his outrageous and seemingly foolish decision by making sure that the purchase is witnessed and registered. Then he buries the deed in an earthen jar to preserve it.
What a marvelous Biblical scene this is – and such an insight into Jeremiah’s relationship with the Almighty. Jeremiah’s trivial action of purchasing this worthless piece of real estate is a mighty and highly visible symbol of faith in God and hope for better times ahead.
When Jeremiah seals the deed in an earthenware jar, he provides the nation of Judah with a potent reminder that, all rationalism aside, the future is in God’s hands, not the hands of the Babylonians.
Through this real estate deal, through this seemingly bad investment on Jeremiah’s part, God is telling the people that the horrific circumstances in which they now find themselves is not the end.
There is a future – a good future for them – so good that God’s prophet himself is investing in it. There will come a time when the Promised Land will have value once more – when it will be economically worthwhile for everyone to buy and sell. Though it may be impossible to fathom now, one day the people of the covenant will again have the land because that is what God has always promised. God has not sold Israel. One day, the Jewish people will return.
In a way, Jeremiah’s very act helps to create that future for the Jewish people and challenges them to once again dream God’s dreams, invest in God’s future. Jeremiah puts his shekels where his faith is – and that is in the power and promises of Yahweh/God.
Like the ancient Israelites, you and I do not live in easy times. The economy hardly seems to be recovering. You may be worried about getting a job, keeping your job, selling your home, or making ends meet. You may feel overwhelmed by the poverty statistics nationwide – 1 in 7 people in our country living below the poverty line. As the talk of election and re-election heats up, you may wonder if real change is ever possible – or if it will always be the same old political bluster.
But remember Jeremiah’s real estate deal. Remember that in the midst of whatever our circumstances are, just as for the people of ancient Judah, there is good news for us too – and that is that this God of Jeremiah – this God of hope, this faithful God – is our God as well. It does not mean that all our problems will be solved. It does not mean that you will sell your house tomorrow or finally find a job. It does mean, however, that there is something to be said for trusting as Jeremiah did that a better future lies ahead.
Hold fast to that hope, tenuous as it may seem at times. Carve your future out of the sure and steadying knowledge that just as God had something better in mind for the Israelites after they were exiled to Babylon, so it will be for us.
Though it may be different than we expect, life will persist and somehow flourish. The future is worth investing in. As Walter Brueggemann once wrote: “The threats do not wane. The dangers are not imagined, the power to undo is on the loose…." God's word, however, "cuts the threat…siphons off the danger…tames the powers," and tells us, "do not fear."
United Church of Christ pastor Thomas Warren notes that “in January of 1943, three months before he was arrested and subsequently killed by the Nazis, Lutheran Pastor and Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words about Christian hope and faith when times are dark: "There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative."
And so Jeremiah buys the land – when investing in land is illogical – because he trusts in the promises and goodness of God. And so we struggle in our own dark times to live in the great hope of tomorrow – as individuals and as a community of faith – because we too trust in the promises and goodness of God.
Perhaps that is one of the most important things we can do as a faith community – be a source of that hope for Raymond and beyond. As Thomas Warren explains, we “build up the church, build up God's kingdom, build up God's reign of justice and righteousness and peace. (We) invest in and prepare the ground for the future. (We) show the world that God's spirit is alive and well here on earth - no matter the cost, no matter the risk, no matter the bad news of the day. Indeed the future of our lives, the future of our churches, the future of our world is not pre-determined; the future hangs in the balance.”
This is the kind of radical hope – and the outlandish investment style - that is required of us, we who are the Jeremiahs of our day.
by Rev. Nancy A. Foran
Pastor, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
.
Now that Joe and I have our little farm in Naples, the ending of “Gone with the Wind” makes a lot more sense to me. Perhaps you recall the last scene when Scarlet is silhouetted against the Georgia evening sky, holding the red earth of Tara, her beloved plantation, in her hands, finally understanding something her father had told her years before. She might have lost her husband, lost her daughter, lost all the wealth she had grown accustomed to, but she still had the land – and from that she could forge a future.
Both the real and symbolic significance of land – real estate – goes back to the very beginnings of Biblical lore – stretching all the way in history to God’s promising land to Abraham – and the journey the old nomad and his family undertook to reach that Promised Land.
However, just as Moses died before he set foot on the land God gave to the Israelites, so Abraham never got there either. By the time he died, the only land he owned was the cemetery plot he had purchased for Sarah, his wife. It would be many hundreds of years later that Abraham’s descendents led by Joshua would finally take possession of the gifted land, only to lose it time and again as one empire or another overran the tiny Jewish nation.
The significance of land is a recurrent theme in the Old Testament – and so we should not be all that surprised to find real estate the topic of the passage we just read. Here, embedded in the book of Jeremiah, is a strange little story about the prophet purchasing utterly useless land on a real estate tip from God.
The year is 588 B.C. - five hundred and eighty eight years before the birth of Jesus. The city of Jerusalem is under siege, and the vast army of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, is camped at its gates. Jeremiah is the top dog prophet of Zedekiah, the current King of Judah.
And Jeremiah knows what is going to happen. He is not called a prophet for nothing. Resistance is futile, he realizes. The Babylonian armies will prevail, the Holy City will fall – and, for the Israelites, all will once again be lost. And, being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah told the King and the royal military commanders exactly that.
Well, you can imagine the impact of such an announcement on the morale of both the troops and the civilian populace. Not surprisingly, King Zedekiah was exceedingly displeased with the prophet’s report. As kings in that day were wont to do when they did not like what they were told and because Jeremiah was so maddeningly persistent in his prophecies of doom and gloom, King Zedekiah imprisoned Jeremiah, placing him under house-arrest as a traitor.
And there, while Jeremiah was in jail, something very unusual happened. God gave the prophet a real estate tip. "Your cousin is going to offer to sell you some land. When he does, buy it."
How crazy is that! The land is going to be overrun by the Babylonian army any minute now. The Jews will be ousted – and God says “Buy!”?
Jeremiah is in prison and will never see the land. The mightiest empire in the world will occupy it anyway. No one in Jeremiah’s generation will ever inhabit the land, much less prosper on it – and God says “Buy!”?
Vandals are camped outside the Holy City walls. The people inside are starving, sick, and desperate – unable to tend the land outside the city anyway. And everyone knows that being in a battle zone wreaks havoc on real estate - and God says “Buy!”?
Buy? When the land is useless, worthless, and a horrible reminder of everything that has been lost? This is like buying stocks when the market is crashing, or purchasing a home even as you watch it disappear down a sinkhole (Scott Hoezee).
“Yes,” God says to Jeremiah. “Buy.” And being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah does just that. The old prophet buys the land from his cousin – and even makes quite a public display of his outrageous and seemingly foolish decision by making sure that the purchase is witnessed and registered. Then he buries the deed in an earthen jar to preserve it.
What a marvelous Biblical scene this is – and such an insight into Jeremiah’s relationship with the Almighty. Jeremiah’s trivial action of purchasing this worthless piece of real estate is a mighty and highly visible symbol of faith in God and hope for better times ahead.
When Jeremiah seals the deed in an earthenware jar, he provides the nation of Judah with a potent reminder that, all rationalism aside, the future is in God’s hands, not the hands of the Babylonians.
Through this real estate deal, through this seemingly bad investment on Jeremiah’s part, God is telling the people that the horrific circumstances in which they now find themselves is not the end.
There is a future – a good future for them – so good that God’s prophet himself is investing in it. There will come a time when the Promised Land will have value once more – when it will be economically worthwhile for everyone to buy and sell. Though it may be impossible to fathom now, one day the people of the covenant will again have the land because that is what God has always promised. God has not sold Israel. One day, the Jewish people will return.
In a way, Jeremiah’s very act helps to create that future for the Jewish people and challenges them to once again dream God’s dreams, invest in God’s future. Jeremiah puts his shekels where his faith is – and that is in the power and promises of Yahweh/God.
Like the ancient Israelites, you and I do not live in easy times. The economy hardly seems to be recovering. You may be worried about getting a job, keeping your job, selling your home, or making ends meet. You may feel overwhelmed by the poverty statistics nationwide – 1 in 7 people in our country living below the poverty line. As the talk of election and re-election heats up, you may wonder if real change is ever possible – or if it will always be the same old political bluster.
But remember Jeremiah’s real estate deal. Remember that in the midst of whatever our circumstances are, just as for the people of ancient Judah, there is good news for us too – and that is that this God of Jeremiah – this God of hope, this faithful God – is our God as well. It does not mean that all our problems will be solved. It does not mean that you will sell your house tomorrow or finally find a job. It does mean, however, that there is something to be said for trusting as Jeremiah did that a better future lies ahead.
Hold fast to that hope, tenuous as it may seem at times. Carve your future out of the sure and steadying knowledge that just as God had something better in mind for the Israelites after they were exiled to Babylon, so it will be for us.
Though it may be different than we expect, life will persist and somehow flourish. The future is worth investing in. As Walter Brueggemann once wrote: “The threats do not wane. The dangers are not imagined, the power to undo is on the loose…." God's word, however, "cuts the threat…siphons off the danger…tames the powers," and tells us, "do not fear."
United Church of Christ pastor Thomas Warren notes that “in January of 1943, three months before he was arrested and subsequently killed by the Nazis, Lutheran Pastor and Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words about Christian hope and faith when times are dark: "There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative."
And so Jeremiah buys the land – when investing in land is illogical – because he trusts in the promises and goodness of God. And so we struggle in our own dark times to live in the great hope of tomorrow – as individuals and as a community of faith – because we too trust in the promises and goodness of God.
Perhaps that is one of the most important things we can do as a faith community – be a source of that hope for Raymond and beyond. As Thomas Warren explains, we “build up the church, build up God's kingdom, build up God's reign of justice and righteousness and peace. (We) invest in and prepare the ground for the future. (We) show the world that God's spirit is alive and well here on earth - no matter the cost, no matter the risk, no matter the bad news of the day. Indeed the future of our lives, the future of our churches, the future of our world is not pre-determined; the future hangs in the balance.”
This is the kind of radical hope – and the outlandish investment style - that is required of us, we who are the Jeremiahs of our day.
by Rev. Nancy A. Foran
Pastor, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
1 Timothy 2:1-7 "Kings and Rulers, Premiers and Presidents"
Last week, here in worship we looked at the very beginning of this letter written in Paul’s name to Timothy, that struggling young pastor of a small church community near Ephesus in modern day Turkey. You may remember that those verses were a personal confession of sorts, and we concluded that their purpose was to establish the author’s credibility, so that Pastor Timothy and his congregation would give him their full attention.
Since this letter was most likely written several generations into the life of the early church, we know that modern scholars believe that Paul himself did not write the letter, but rather the real author used Paul’s name because Paul was a well-respected leader and scholar that people would listen to.
We learned that such a practice of using a pseudonym or ghost name was very common in antiquity and does not diminish the authenticity of the letter. Almost two thousand years later, the words to Timothy still speak to our church in a deeply meaningful and profound way.
This week, now that the author’s credibility is established, we will focus on a nitty gritty detail of the letter, which is the protocol for worship, in particular how and why we pray. But first, let’s figure out the historical context of this letter, which is important because the author had a particular group of people at a particular time in mind - and knowing that setting will shed some light on how we might interpret the author’s advice.
UCC pastor Kate Huey tells us that “If this letter to Timothy was written in Paul's name late in the first century, a generation or two of early Christians had passed from the scene. Jesus had not returned as expected before the apostles themselves died, and persecutions and trials and resistance, including expulsion from the synagogues (remember that many of these early followers of Jesus still considered themselves to be Jewish), had been part of the Christian experience for many years.
Even when the emperors weren't actively persecuting and executing Christians as Nero and others did, they were nevertheless pagans, and the Roman Empire itself was thoroughly pagan. It was clear, too, just who was in charge of earthly affairs, with troops, money, and power of every kind in the hands of those pagans.”
Pastor Timothy’s house church struggled to survive in the midst of a mighty non-Christian empire where money talked and military power threw its ample weight around, getting its own way through coercion and fear. No wonder he struggled to bring hope and a viable path forward to his congregation.
And yet, the author of this letter reminds Pastor Timothy of something very important – in Rev. Kate Huey’s words, Pastor Timothy needs to reaffirm “just who was really in charge of everything. In such an age, not unlike our own, earthly rulers might have been awed by their own power and might, and their subjects might have cowered, too, and wondered where to place their trust.
(The author) writes to his beloved colleague clarifying things. (Timothy, he seems to say, remember that) there is only one God, not a bunch of competing ones, and there is such a thing as truth, and you can count on it because we have received it from the One true mediator, Jesus Christ.”
And in the meantime, the in between time, before this truth of Jesus, this Gospel Message, supersedes the political messages of the day, the author of this letter instructs the congregation in Timothy’s care (and us as well, I would submit) to pray.
Pray always, and pray for everyone – not just for our friends and family, not just for those living with cancer and other health concerns, not just for those we personally know who are facing challenging financial times, but everyone – including kings and rulers, premiers and presidents – even if we do not agree with their policies.
God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
We in the moderate church have always been a bit leery about praying for our leaders, about bringing the political into the religious, about melding Capitol Hill with the Church. Oh, on Inauguration Day, it is alright to pray as Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson did in the prayer we just heard – but on an everyday basis, that gets a little dicey because if we pray in that way, we open ourselves and our churches to embracing politics with its undeniably messy reputation. When we begin praying for our rulers and kings, premiers and presidents, church is no longer about us and our needs and our personal relationship with our savior, but it is about something else – and that something else can get very uncomfortable at times.
And yet, if religion and politics do not confront each other here in the church, then I believe that something is desperately and pathetically wrong. As Presbyterian pastor, John Wilkinson wrote, “When someone tells you that we should not get involved in politics (and) that we should stick to religion, that's often a good indication that the particular moral issue on the table - from war to education to poverty - is in fact precisely the kind of political and ethical issue that calls for a religious response.” It is not a new idea. Another Presbyterian pastor and peace activist, William Sloan Coffin, noted that the confrontation between religion and politics dates back as far as when Moses asked Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go – and Pharaoh said no.
And the mission of Jesus is no less politically neutral. The Gospel message of compassion and reconciliation, of standing with the victims of this world, of taking the side of the least of these is a powerful political tool. In fact, I believe that it is the ONLY political tool that in the end will remake our world.
Yet, for the Gospel to be truly transformative, we in the church must act upon its potential and its power. You see, Jesus’ message was never meant to be domesticated and confined to the synagogues. It was never meant to be only about families and friends. It was never meant to be a neutral message. In contrast, it challenges each one of us to strive to stand with those God stands with.
How do we know that? We look to Jesus – the mediator, the truth which the author of this letter to Timothy alludes to. And when we do, what do we find?
First and foremost, we find that Jesus did things that might make us uncomfortable – like not just preaching about social justice, but mixing it up with tax collectors and Pharisees and deliberately putting himself in harms way by taking on the political power of Rome itself.
It is in light of all those disagreeable parts of Jesus’ legacy that the author of this letter we read tells Pastor Timothy to get his congregation praying – praying even politically, praying for kings and rulers, premiers and presidents, even those they despise.
And so it is for us. As seminary professor and elder of the Free Methodist church, Rob Wall, notes: “The public prayers of the Christian community (should) hardly reflect a program of social domestication…but (rather) a Christian mission that boldly evangelizes…It's perhaps another way of being leaven, (of making a difference), no matter how small and seemingly powerless you may be.”
So – I implore you to take the author’s advice to Pastor Timothy seriously and pray. Pray often:
Pray very hardy. Pray for republicans. Pray for democrats and for those without a party
Pray for the vain ones. Pray for the weak. Pray for the bold ones and for those who seem quite meek.
Pray for the old, for the young, and in between. Pray for the kind and even for the mean.
Pray for happy. Pray for the sad. Pray for the angry, the confused and the glad.
Pray for the healthy. Pray for the sick. Pray for the slow. Pray for the quick.
Pray for the quiet ones. Pray for the talkers. Pray for the runners and the skippers and the walkers.
Pray for the big ones. Pray for the small. Pray for the hairy and for those whose heads are bald.
Pray for the curly. Pray for the straight. Pray for the early and for those always late.
Pray for the rude and for those who say please. Pray for the proud or those who pray on their knees.
Pray for Americans. Pray for Caucasians. Pray for all colors, Indians, Africans, and Asians.
Pray for the athletes. Pray for the artists. Pray for the talented, the dullest, and the smartest.
Pray for the hardy. Pray for the faint. Pray for the atheist, the sinner, and the saint.
Pray for the he’s. Pray for the she’s. Pray for the picky and those who are pleased.
Pray for all people even those who disagree with our standards and our morals or beliefs that we decree.
Each one is God’s creation. Judging’s not what we’re about. Just pray and love them all and let God sort them out.
And who knows, if we do, then as Kate Huey mused, “perhaps it won't be so hard to get along with one another, and with our rulers and kings (and presidents and premiers) as we make our way toward the truth” – the truth of Jesus, the truth of the Gospel.
…..And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace. Amen.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
Since this letter was most likely written several generations into the life of the early church, we know that modern scholars believe that Paul himself did not write the letter, but rather the real author used Paul’s name because Paul was a well-respected leader and scholar that people would listen to.
We learned that such a practice of using a pseudonym or ghost name was very common in antiquity and does not diminish the authenticity of the letter. Almost two thousand years later, the words to Timothy still speak to our church in a deeply meaningful and profound way.
This week, now that the author’s credibility is established, we will focus on a nitty gritty detail of the letter, which is the protocol for worship, in particular how and why we pray. But first, let’s figure out the historical context of this letter, which is important because the author had a particular group of people at a particular time in mind - and knowing that setting will shed some light on how we might interpret the author’s advice.
UCC pastor Kate Huey tells us that “If this letter to Timothy was written in Paul's name late in the first century, a generation or two of early Christians had passed from the scene. Jesus had not returned as expected before the apostles themselves died, and persecutions and trials and resistance, including expulsion from the synagogues (remember that many of these early followers of Jesus still considered themselves to be Jewish), had been part of the Christian experience for many years.
Even when the emperors weren't actively persecuting and executing Christians as Nero and others did, they were nevertheless pagans, and the Roman Empire itself was thoroughly pagan. It was clear, too, just who was in charge of earthly affairs, with troops, money, and power of every kind in the hands of those pagans.”
Pastor Timothy’s house church struggled to survive in the midst of a mighty non-Christian empire where money talked and military power threw its ample weight around, getting its own way through coercion and fear. No wonder he struggled to bring hope and a viable path forward to his congregation.
And yet, the author of this letter reminds Pastor Timothy of something very important – in Rev. Kate Huey’s words, Pastor Timothy needs to reaffirm “just who was really in charge of everything. In such an age, not unlike our own, earthly rulers might have been awed by their own power and might, and their subjects might have cowered, too, and wondered where to place their trust.
(The author) writes to his beloved colleague clarifying things. (Timothy, he seems to say, remember that) there is only one God, not a bunch of competing ones, and there is such a thing as truth, and you can count on it because we have received it from the One true mediator, Jesus Christ.”
And in the meantime, the in between time, before this truth of Jesus, this Gospel Message, supersedes the political messages of the day, the author of this letter instructs the congregation in Timothy’s care (and us as well, I would submit) to pray.
Pray always, and pray for everyone – not just for our friends and family, not just for those living with cancer and other health concerns, not just for those we personally know who are facing challenging financial times, but everyone – including kings and rulers, premiers and presidents – even if we do not agree with their policies.
God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
We in the moderate church have always been a bit leery about praying for our leaders, about bringing the political into the religious, about melding Capitol Hill with the Church. Oh, on Inauguration Day, it is alright to pray as Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson did in the prayer we just heard – but on an everyday basis, that gets a little dicey because if we pray in that way, we open ourselves and our churches to embracing politics with its undeniably messy reputation. When we begin praying for our rulers and kings, premiers and presidents, church is no longer about us and our needs and our personal relationship with our savior, but it is about something else – and that something else can get very uncomfortable at times.
And yet, if religion and politics do not confront each other here in the church, then I believe that something is desperately and pathetically wrong. As Presbyterian pastor, John Wilkinson wrote, “When someone tells you that we should not get involved in politics (and) that we should stick to religion, that's often a good indication that the particular moral issue on the table - from war to education to poverty - is in fact precisely the kind of political and ethical issue that calls for a religious response.” It is not a new idea. Another Presbyterian pastor and peace activist, William Sloan Coffin, noted that the confrontation between religion and politics dates back as far as when Moses asked Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go – and Pharaoh said no.
And the mission of Jesus is no less politically neutral. The Gospel message of compassion and reconciliation, of standing with the victims of this world, of taking the side of the least of these is a powerful political tool. In fact, I believe that it is the ONLY political tool that in the end will remake our world.
Yet, for the Gospel to be truly transformative, we in the church must act upon its potential and its power. You see, Jesus’ message was never meant to be domesticated and confined to the synagogues. It was never meant to be only about families and friends. It was never meant to be a neutral message. In contrast, it challenges each one of us to strive to stand with those God stands with.
How do we know that? We look to Jesus – the mediator, the truth which the author of this letter to Timothy alludes to. And when we do, what do we find?
First and foremost, we find that Jesus did things that might make us uncomfortable – like not just preaching about social justice, but mixing it up with tax collectors and Pharisees and deliberately putting himself in harms way by taking on the political power of Rome itself.
It is in light of all those disagreeable parts of Jesus’ legacy that the author of this letter we read tells Pastor Timothy to get his congregation praying – praying even politically, praying for kings and rulers, premiers and presidents, even those they despise.
And so it is for us. As seminary professor and elder of the Free Methodist church, Rob Wall, notes: “The public prayers of the Christian community (should) hardly reflect a program of social domestication…but (rather) a Christian mission that boldly evangelizes…It's perhaps another way of being leaven, (of making a difference), no matter how small and seemingly powerless you may be.”
So – I implore you to take the author’s advice to Pastor Timothy seriously and pray. Pray often:
Pray very hardy. Pray for republicans. Pray for democrats and for those without a party
Pray for the vain ones. Pray for the weak. Pray for the bold ones and for those who seem quite meek.
Pray for the old, for the young, and in between. Pray for the kind and even for the mean.
Pray for happy. Pray for the sad. Pray for the angry, the confused and the glad.
Pray for the healthy. Pray for the sick. Pray for the slow. Pray for the quick.
Pray for the quiet ones. Pray for the talkers. Pray for the runners and the skippers and the walkers.
Pray for the big ones. Pray for the small. Pray for the hairy and for those whose heads are bald.
Pray for the curly. Pray for the straight. Pray for the early and for those always late.
Pray for the rude and for those who say please. Pray for the proud or those who pray on their knees.
Pray for Americans. Pray for Caucasians. Pray for all colors, Indians, Africans, and Asians.
Pray for the athletes. Pray for the artists. Pray for the talented, the dullest, and the smartest.
Pray for the hardy. Pray for the faint. Pray for the atheist, the sinner, and the saint.
Pray for the he’s. Pray for the she’s. Pray for the picky and those who are pleased.
Pray for all people even those who disagree with our standards and our morals or beliefs that we decree.
Each one is God’s creation. Judging’s not what we’re about. Just pray and love them all and let God sort them out.
And who knows, if we do, then as Kate Huey mused, “perhaps it won't be so hard to get along with one another, and with our rulers and kings (and presidents and premiers) as we make our way toward the truth” – the truth of Jesus, the truth of the Gospel.
…..And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace. Amen.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
1 Timothy 1:13-17 "Scorpions"
Being a pastor is not always an easy job – especially when you are starting a church from scratch! The Apostle Paul understood this fact of life – which was why he took the time to write to one struggling young church leader in Ephesus named Timothy. Actually, it was why Paul wrote numerous letters to those nascent faith communities that he had nurtured in his extensive travels throughout Asia Minor, and many of these letters that have survived make up the bulk of our New Testament.
You see, the Pauline epistles take up more word space than any other group of writings in this Christian part of our Holy Scriptures – more than the Acts of the Apostle, the Book of Revelation, and even the Gospels.
However, did you know that many modern Biblical scholars do not believe that Paul himself wrote each and every letter included in our Canon? Their research into everything from vocabulary and literary style to comparative theology would indicate that the later letters were written by people who took Paul’s name as a respected and honored teacher to boost their own street cred, a common practice in antiquity. By using Paul’s name, these later authors simply hoped that people would actually read what they had written and take it to heart.
This letter to Timothy that we are focusing on this morning is one of those later epistles – probably not written by Paul himself but still a remarkable look into the life of an early Christian church community. As U.C.C. pastor Kate Huey wrote, “After (Paul) (and, in this case, “Paul” in quotes) left a church behind, he wrote letters back to it, offering advice and encouragement, and today our churches hear these letters as if they were written to us as well.
Once a church is planted and attracts enthusiastic people, there's work to be done to help them thrive, to grow in God's love, and besides, you know how people are: every time we come together, whether we form a book club or start a religious order, organize a softball league or get married--dare we say, "establish an institution"--there are going to be matters to be handled, questions, challenges, and of course a few rough spots along the way.”
Rev. Huey continues by pointing out that “Paul is writing back to his young friend to encourage and guide him, and he begins his letter of instruction by establishing his credentials, or at least his credibility, by reminding Timothy that he, Paul, was "the foremost" of sinners, and yet one whose life was transformed by the power of God's mercy and grace.
Everyone knows his story, when Paul--a man of deep and sincere faith--was so sure of himself and the rightness of his cause, back when he was persecuting Christians, and yet God knocked him off his horse and blinded him until his heart and mind were opened to the grace of Jesus Christ in his life. That call on the road to Damascus, the experience of life-changing grace and his response to it, gives Paul authority to write the things he is about to tell Timothy.”
But today – this morning – we are not going to look at the nitty gritty details of the letter, such as protocol for church worship, expectations for church leadership, qualifications for helpers in the church, and admonitions against false teachings – all of which are found in later chapters of this epistle.
No – today we are going to simply rest for a few brief moments in this beautiful Pauline personal confession that we just read and be soothed by the acknowledgement of God’s grace that flows from this passage. “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” Surely – if you have ever examined your own life to any great extent and acknowledged your foibles and petty failures - it can not get much better than that!
There was once a school teacher who, for reasons of her own, asked the children one day: "If all the bad children were painted red and all the good children were painted green, which color would you be?" One very wise child answered the teacher: "Striped.” Surely, as that child recognized, even we who have done pretty well for ourselves, even we are in need of God’s abundant love and mercy overflowing.
You see, each one of us is a curious combination of black and white, right and wrong, dark and light, lost and found. As United church of Canada pastor Richard Fairchild reminds us, “Rarely are we completely lost. And rarely are we completely found. There is always a part of us that needs to be dragged and cajoled into the light, and there is always a part of us that is already there. (However), the wonderful thing is that the lost part of us (the black part, the wrong part, the dark part) is as valuable to God as the found part, (the white part, the right part, the light part). God wants to bless us - all of us.”
Dutch Reformed pastor and professor Henri Nouwen told a story once about an man who used to meditate each day on the Ganges River in India.
One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling his hand and giving him much pain. Another man passing by saw what was happening and yelled at the old man, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?"
The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save."
And so it is with God – and us. It is in God's nature to save - because it is in God's nature to love. It is what God does – seeking, healing, forgiving, offering hope to you and me, to all of us who at one time or another in our lives have been – or will be - in need. It is what God has promised us. It is what the story of the cross is all about.
And just as important for us here today who have chosen to spend an hour or so sitting in these wooden and somewhat uncomfortable pews, it is the story of what the church is all about too. You see, it is not enough for us to somehow understand our sacred transformation to be complete simply because we believe that we are saved or that we have a personal relationship with Jesus. That alone does not exempt us from responsibility for the world around us.
Because we are the church, much more is required of us. You see, as Christ did for Paul, so we are called to do for those around us: to see the Christ potential in everyone we meet and then to be a community of Christ that is open, inviting, and welcoming – none of which is particularly easy.
However, that is our calling. It is who we are as the church. It is why we do missions. It is why we fling open our doors to everyone – even if they are odd or different or make us feel fearful and uncomfortable. You see, we are called to consider the ways in which we grow in faith….We are invited to think about our responsibility to nurture the gift of God's love in our lives and in the lives of others.
Our role as the church is to find that Christ-like potential in everyone we encounter, from young to old, from friend to stranger. And to do so in gratitude - because God’s love and mercy has indeed saved us – saved us from ourselves.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
You see, the Pauline epistles take up more word space than any other group of writings in this Christian part of our Holy Scriptures – more than the Acts of the Apostle, the Book of Revelation, and even the Gospels.
However, did you know that many modern Biblical scholars do not believe that Paul himself wrote each and every letter included in our Canon? Their research into everything from vocabulary and literary style to comparative theology would indicate that the later letters were written by people who took Paul’s name as a respected and honored teacher to boost their own street cred, a common practice in antiquity. By using Paul’s name, these later authors simply hoped that people would actually read what they had written and take it to heart.
This letter to Timothy that we are focusing on this morning is one of those later epistles – probably not written by Paul himself but still a remarkable look into the life of an early Christian church community. As U.C.C. pastor Kate Huey wrote, “After (Paul) (and, in this case, “Paul” in quotes) left a church behind, he wrote letters back to it, offering advice and encouragement, and today our churches hear these letters as if they were written to us as well.
Once a church is planted and attracts enthusiastic people, there's work to be done to help them thrive, to grow in God's love, and besides, you know how people are: every time we come together, whether we form a book club or start a religious order, organize a softball league or get married--dare we say, "establish an institution"--there are going to be matters to be handled, questions, challenges, and of course a few rough spots along the way.”
Rev. Huey continues by pointing out that “Paul is writing back to his young friend to encourage and guide him, and he begins his letter of instruction by establishing his credentials, or at least his credibility, by reminding Timothy that he, Paul, was "the foremost" of sinners, and yet one whose life was transformed by the power of God's mercy and grace.
Everyone knows his story, when Paul--a man of deep and sincere faith--was so sure of himself and the rightness of his cause, back when he was persecuting Christians, and yet God knocked him off his horse and blinded him until his heart and mind were opened to the grace of Jesus Christ in his life. That call on the road to Damascus, the experience of life-changing grace and his response to it, gives Paul authority to write the things he is about to tell Timothy.”
But today – this morning – we are not going to look at the nitty gritty details of the letter, such as protocol for church worship, expectations for church leadership, qualifications for helpers in the church, and admonitions against false teachings – all of which are found in later chapters of this epistle.
No – today we are going to simply rest for a few brief moments in this beautiful Pauline personal confession that we just read and be soothed by the acknowledgement of God’s grace that flows from this passage. “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” Surely – if you have ever examined your own life to any great extent and acknowledged your foibles and petty failures - it can not get much better than that!
There was once a school teacher who, for reasons of her own, asked the children one day: "If all the bad children were painted red and all the good children were painted green, which color would you be?" One very wise child answered the teacher: "Striped.” Surely, as that child recognized, even we who have done pretty well for ourselves, even we are in need of God’s abundant love and mercy overflowing.
You see, each one of us is a curious combination of black and white, right and wrong, dark and light, lost and found. As United church of Canada pastor Richard Fairchild reminds us, “Rarely are we completely lost. And rarely are we completely found. There is always a part of us that needs to be dragged and cajoled into the light, and there is always a part of us that is already there. (However), the wonderful thing is that the lost part of us (the black part, the wrong part, the dark part) is as valuable to God as the found part, (the white part, the right part, the light part). God wants to bless us - all of us.”
Dutch Reformed pastor and professor Henri Nouwen told a story once about an man who used to meditate each day on the Ganges River in India.
One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling his hand and giving him much pain. Another man passing by saw what was happening and yelled at the old man, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?"
The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save."
And so it is with God – and us. It is in God's nature to save - because it is in God's nature to love. It is what God does – seeking, healing, forgiving, offering hope to you and me, to all of us who at one time or another in our lives have been – or will be - in need. It is what God has promised us. It is what the story of the cross is all about.
And just as important for us here today who have chosen to spend an hour or so sitting in these wooden and somewhat uncomfortable pews, it is the story of what the church is all about too. You see, it is not enough for us to somehow understand our sacred transformation to be complete simply because we believe that we are saved or that we have a personal relationship with Jesus. That alone does not exempt us from responsibility for the world around us.
Because we are the church, much more is required of us. You see, as Christ did for Paul, so we are called to do for those around us: to see the Christ potential in everyone we meet and then to be a community of Christ that is open, inviting, and welcoming – none of which is particularly easy.
However, that is our calling. It is who we are as the church. It is why we do missions. It is why we fling open our doors to everyone – even if they are odd or different or make us feel fearful and uncomfortable. You see, we are called to consider the ways in which we grow in faith….We are invited to think about our responsibility to nurture the gift of God's love in our lives and in the lives of others.
Our role as the church is to find that Christ-like potential in everyone we encounter, from young to old, from friend to stranger. And to do so in gratitude - because God’s love and mercy has indeed saved us – saved us from ourselves.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Luke 12"13-21 "Money Makes the World Go Round"
If you are going to take the Gospel of Luke seriously, then you had better be prepared for some lessons in economics. I know that Jesus did not probe the depths of Keynesian theory, nor did he lecture on supply and demand, capitalism, or socialism.
However, as a Jewish rabbi, Jesus - more often than we sometimes care to admit – did discuss economics from the perspective of the God’s kingdom. Through parable and sermon, he taught his listeners about how money and possessions relate to God’s purposes for the world and humankind.
It is in the Gospel of Luke that we encounter so many stories about the haves and the have nots. Each of the other three Gospels certainly has a few such passages, but in Luke they abound.
It is in Luke that we find not only stories and sayings shared by the other Gospels, such as the Widow’s Mite and references to selling all you have and giving it to the poor. We also find stories unique to Luke, such as the Rich Man and Lazarus and today’s Scripture reading, the Parable of the Rich Fool. The writer of Luke seems at times almost obsessed with the theme of wealth and how we choose to handle our money and finances.
So, you see, you can not get through Luke’s gospel here in church without talking about money. You just can’t! The Gospel writer would be terribly frustrated to learn that in many congregations, the only time we mention the “M” word is when the stewardship pledge campaign rolls around each fall, and all good pastors realize that their salaries may be in jeopardy if they do not talk about money. Money and our use of it is about as integral to the Gospel of Luke as money and our use of it is integral to, well, to our every day lives. Talk about the Bible being relevant!
So do not blame me that on this lovely summer Sunday we are focusing on a particularly uncomfortable story that begins with a random question on property inheritance, a question raised by someone in the crowd who in his quest for an answer interrupted Jesus as he taught. I mean, here was the rabbi talking about spiritual things, eternal things, when this young man, who clearly had more temporal things on his mind, shouted out, “Teacher, tell my brother to divvy up the family inheritance. Believe me when I say that I did not get my fair share.”
“Hey,” said Jesus. “I am not a property attorney. Nor am I a mediator. And I am certainly not an economics teacher – at least not your brand of economics.
All I can say is this: beware of greed, for it leads to a dangerous path. It is insidious and eats away at you. Let me give it to you straight: Life is not defined by what you have – your possessions - even when you have a lot. Now – I am not saying that possessions are bad. They just do not say anything about who you really are.
It may seem like money makes the world go round, Jesus continued, but it really does not. Trust me when I say that there are more important things to have a lot of – like compassion, like the courage to see that justice prevails, and, most of all, like love.
And the people in the crowd shrugged their shoulders and scratched their heads and looked genuinely confused – mostly because they did not have many possessions to begin with and also because everything around them seemed to indicate that money, in fact, did make the world go round.
So, as he was wont to do to make his point clear, Jesus told a story and, in the telling, artfully moved from talking about money (which the young man in the crowd was concerned about) to discussing attitudes about money (which the young man should have been concerned about).
The story featured a farmer who finally had a good year. The rains had fallen. The sun had shone. The harvest was a bumper crop. As he looked out over his amber fields of grain, the farmer rubbed his hands together gleefully because all his hard work had finally paid off. He was genuinely happy because the life of a farmer is hard and so dependent on factors – like weather – outside his control.
Proudly, he thought to himself – my barn is not big enough to hold all of this grain. What to do? What to do? I know. I will tear down the old one and build something bigger to store it all – maybe a warehouse even. I can put a lot of stuff in a warehouse. Whoopee! I have got it made in the shade for the next few years. Time to kick off my shoes, put my feet up, eat, drink, and be merry!
However, in spite of the farmer’s good upstanding Protestant work ethic, God – who interestingly enough never speaks out directly in any of Jesus’ parables in this Gospel – called the man a fool. God did not say that he was bad, mind you, because he was dishonest. Nor did God say that he was morally corrupt because he was insatiably greedy.
God called him a fool. Why? Perhaps because the farmer did not realize how empty and lonely his life really was – all stored away in his warehouse. Perhaps because, as the old saying goes, you can not take it with you – so why treat it like you can.
It is like a reporter who asked a young Wall Street broker on the fast track what his chief goal was in life.
"To make my first million dollars by the time I am 28," was the answer.
"Then what?" the reporter continued.
"Well, I suppose I would like to become a multi-millionaire."
The reporter pressed on. "Then what?"
Beginning to get a bit irritated, the broker said, "I want to have a family and enough money to retire at 40 and travel around the world."
"Then what?"
Exasperated, the would-be multi-millionaire said, "Well, like everyone else, I guess someday I will die!"
Like the rich man in Jesus' story, the difficulty with the young broker was not that he desired to have possessions -- it was that his desire for possessions had him. He wanted more of what, by any reasonable standard, he already had enough of. And, besides that, everything was mine, mine, mine. My barn, my possessions, my first million.
Jesus' warning is strong. "Watch closely! Be on your guard! When your desire for things gets its claws into your life, it can lead you down a very dangerous road!"
Advice that perhaps we should at least take note of since the fastest growing industry in our country is the storage industry – warehouses, just like the ones the farmer intended to build to hold all his stuff.
And then Jesus summed it up by saying that those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich in the things of God in the end are, indeed, fools.
Fools for believing in a culture that regularly tells us, as Luther Seminary professor David Lose writes, “that we don't have enough. Television commercials, billboards, and the internet all not only tell us that we are insufficient, incomplete, and not quite right on our own, but they also promise us that if we only buy the product they're pushing – be it a tube of toothpaste, new laptop, or better car – then we will be complete. Our culture unequivocally equates consumption with satisfaction, possessions with happiness, and material wealth with the good life.” And that, says God, is foolish.
What is wise is to remember this:
God won't ask what kind of car you drove - God will ask how many people you drove who needed a ride.
God won't ask the square footage of your home - God will ask how many people you welcomed into your home.
God won't ask what social class you were in - God will ask what kind of "class" you displayed.
God won't ask what your highest salary was - God will ask if you compromised your character to get it.
God won't ask what you did to help yourself - God will ask what you did to help others.
God won’t ask how many times your deeds matched your words - God will ask how many times they didn’t.
The truth of this parable lies in a profound recognition of this viral wisdom. When all is said and done, money does not make the world go round.
A very rich man died and left his inheritance equally to his two sons. Now one son had married young in life and had a large and happy family. The other was still a bachelor.
The night after the division of the estate the single man sat thinking in his living room. "Why did my father make such a mistake? Here's my brother, with all those mouths to feed, so many to provide for. While I'm quite comfortable, I've got more than I could ever use. Why divide the estate equally?"
The other brother, when the children were tucked in bed, mused: "Why would my father divide the estate equally? Here I am, surrounded by a loving family, while my brother sits alone over in his house. I have my family to care for me, while he will need financial security for his future. Why divide the estate equally?"
So each man resolved on that very night to place the majority of his inheritance in a suitcase and hide it where the other brother would find it. And in their random act of kindness, they met between their two homes and, realizing what each had intended, fell into one another's arms, meeting in love as their father had hoped they might.
I have a small plaque in my kitchen that I bought at Weston Priory many years ago. It says, “The best things in life aren’t things.”
And we know that. We really do. We know that money alone does not make the world go round. We know that love and compassion and justice lie at the root of God’s economic system. We know all that – but sometimes, through a parable like this one about the Rich Fool, it helps to be reminded.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
However, as a Jewish rabbi, Jesus - more often than we sometimes care to admit – did discuss economics from the perspective of the God’s kingdom. Through parable and sermon, he taught his listeners about how money and possessions relate to God’s purposes for the world and humankind.
It is in the Gospel of Luke that we encounter so many stories about the haves and the have nots. Each of the other three Gospels certainly has a few such passages, but in Luke they abound.
It is in Luke that we find not only stories and sayings shared by the other Gospels, such as the Widow’s Mite and references to selling all you have and giving it to the poor. We also find stories unique to Luke, such as the Rich Man and Lazarus and today’s Scripture reading, the Parable of the Rich Fool. The writer of Luke seems at times almost obsessed with the theme of wealth and how we choose to handle our money and finances.
So, you see, you can not get through Luke’s gospel here in church without talking about money. You just can’t! The Gospel writer would be terribly frustrated to learn that in many congregations, the only time we mention the “M” word is when the stewardship pledge campaign rolls around each fall, and all good pastors realize that their salaries may be in jeopardy if they do not talk about money. Money and our use of it is about as integral to the Gospel of Luke as money and our use of it is integral to, well, to our every day lives. Talk about the Bible being relevant!
So do not blame me that on this lovely summer Sunday we are focusing on a particularly uncomfortable story that begins with a random question on property inheritance, a question raised by someone in the crowd who in his quest for an answer interrupted Jesus as he taught. I mean, here was the rabbi talking about spiritual things, eternal things, when this young man, who clearly had more temporal things on his mind, shouted out, “Teacher, tell my brother to divvy up the family inheritance. Believe me when I say that I did not get my fair share.”
“Hey,” said Jesus. “I am not a property attorney. Nor am I a mediator. And I am certainly not an economics teacher – at least not your brand of economics.
All I can say is this: beware of greed, for it leads to a dangerous path. It is insidious and eats away at you. Let me give it to you straight: Life is not defined by what you have – your possessions - even when you have a lot. Now – I am not saying that possessions are bad. They just do not say anything about who you really are.
It may seem like money makes the world go round, Jesus continued, but it really does not. Trust me when I say that there are more important things to have a lot of – like compassion, like the courage to see that justice prevails, and, most of all, like love.
And the people in the crowd shrugged their shoulders and scratched their heads and looked genuinely confused – mostly because they did not have many possessions to begin with and also because everything around them seemed to indicate that money, in fact, did make the world go round.
So, as he was wont to do to make his point clear, Jesus told a story and, in the telling, artfully moved from talking about money (which the young man in the crowd was concerned about) to discussing attitudes about money (which the young man should have been concerned about).
The story featured a farmer who finally had a good year. The rains had fallen. The sun had shone. The harvest was a bumper crop. As he looked out over his amber fields of grain, the farmer rubbed his hands together gleefully because all his hard work had finally paid off. He was genuinely happy because the life of a farmer is hard and so dependent on factors – like weather – outside his control.
Proudly, he thought to himself – my barn is not big enough to hold all of this grain. What to do? What to do? I know. I will tear down the old one and build something bigger to store it all – maybe a warehouse even. I can put a lot of stuff in a warehouse. Whoopee! I have got it made in the shade for the next few years. Time to kick off my shoes, put my feet up, eat, drink, and be merry!
However, in spite of the farmer’s good upstanding Protestant work ethic, God – who interestingly enough never speaks out directly in any of Jesus’ parables in this Gospel – called the man a fool. God did not say that he was bad, mind you, because he was dishonest. Nor did God say that he was morally corrupt because he was insatiably greedy.
God called him a fool. Why? Perhaps because the farmer did not realize how empty and lonely his life really was – all stored away in his warehouse. Perhaps because, as the old saying goes, you can not take it with you – so why treat it like you can.
It is like a reporter who asked a young Wall Street broker on the fast track what his chief goal was in life.
"To make my first million dollars by the time I am 28," was the answer.
"Then what?" the reporter continued.
"Well, I suppose I would like to become a multi-millionaire."
The reporter pressed on. "Then what?"
Beginning to get a bit irritated, the broker said, "I want to have a family and enough money to retire at 40 and travel around the world."
"Then what?"
Exasperated, the would-be multi-millionaire said, "Well, like everyone else, I guess someday I will die!"
Like the rich man in Jesus' story, the difficulty with the young broker was not that he desired to have possessions -- it was that his desire for possessions had him. He wanted more of what, by any reasonable standard, he already had enough of. And, besides that, everything was mine, mine, mine. My barn, my possessions, my first million.
Jesus' warning is strong. "Watch closely! Be on your guard! When your desire for things gets its claws into your life, it can lead you down a very dangerous road!"
Advice that perhaps we should at least take note of since the fastest growing industry in our country is the storage industry – warehouses, just like the ones the farmer intended to build to hold all his stuff.
And then Jesus summed it up by saying that those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich in the things of God in the end are, indeed, fools.
Fools for believing in a culture that regularly tells us, as Luther Seminary professor David Lose writes, “that we don't have enough. Television commercials, billboards, and the internet all not only tell us that we are insufficient, incomplete, and not quite right on our own, but they also promise us that if we only buy the product they're pushing – be it a tube of toothpaste, new laptop, or better car – then we will be complete. Our culture unequivocally equates consumption with satisfaction, possessions with happiness, and material wealth with the good life.” And that, says God, is foolish.
What is wise is to remember this:
God won't ask what kind of car you drove - God will ask how many people you drove who needed a ride.
God won't ask the square footage of your home - God will ask how many people you welcomed into your home.
God won't ask what social class you were in - God will ask what kind of "class" you displayed.
God won't ask what your highest salary was - God will ask if you compromised your character to get it.
God won't ask what you did to help yourself - God will ask what you did to help others.
God won’t ask how many times your deeds matched your words - God will ask how many times they didn’t.
The truth of this parable lies in a profound recognition of this viral wisdom. When all is said and done, money does not make the world go round.
A very rich man died and left his inheritance equally to his two sons. Now one son had married young in life and had a large and happy family. The other was still a bachelor.
The night after the division of the estate the single man sat thinking in his living room. "Why did my father make such a mistake? Here's my brother, with all those mouths to feed, so many to provide for. While I'm quite comfortable, I've got more than I could ever use. Why divide the estate equally?"
The other brother, when the children were tucked in bed, mused: "Why would my father divide the estate equally? Here I am, surrounded by a loving family, while my brother sits alone over in his house. I have my family to care for me, while he will need financial security for his future. Why divide the estate equally?"
So each man resolved on that very night to place the majority of his inheritance in a suitcase and hide it where the other brother would find it. And in their random act of kindness, they met between their two homes and, realizing what each had intended, fell into one another's arms, meeting in love as their father had hoped they might.
I have a small plaque in my kitchen that I bought at Weston Priory many years ago. It says, “The best things in life aren’t things.”
And we know that. We really do. We know that money alone does not make the world go round. We know that love and compassion and justice lie at the root of God’s economic system. We know all that – but sometimes, through a parable like this one about the Rich Fool, it helps to be reminded.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Luke 10:38-42 Either/Or? Both/And?
When our children were young, I marked time by the weeks between school vacations and long weekends. There was the start of school and Labor Day in September, Columbus Day in October, Veterans’ Day and Thanksgiving in November, Christmas in December, New Year’s and Martin Luther King’s Birthday in January, winter vacation in February, spring vacation in April, Memorial Day in May, and school was out before the end of June. The only month that had nothing to offer was March. The mud month seemed to stretch on far longer than its 31 days.
The church calendar – or liturgical calendar – is organized much the same way. We delight in the high holy days of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. The seasons which precede or follow (Advent, Epiphany, and Lent) ebb and flow like the tides. Each one has its unique time-marking traditions - candles lit or extinguished, special songs.
However, there is are those many weeks - from the Sunday after Pentecost in May until the beginning of Advent after Thanksgiving – when not much happens. Like March, they seem to stretch on forever.
The church has a name for that period of time. It is called most fittingly “ordinary time.” It is the time when we go about our lives as Christians – day by day by day – uneventfully incorporating the message of the Gospel into our comings and goings. Without its own brand of fanfare, it is very ordinary time.
Our Scripture lesson this morning, the almost parable-like story of Martha and Mary, gives us an important insight on how to spend that ordinary time, a most important consideration since ordinary time makes up a large portion of the church year.
Martha and Mary were sisters, and in this brief passage we see clearly that they expressed their devotion to Jesus very differently.
Because this story comes on the heels of the Parable of the Good Samaritan with its lessons of hospitality and neighborliness, we can hardly fault Martha for her initiative in welcoming Jesus and his disciples – 13 guests in all – into her house.
In the Greek, the word the Gospel writer uses for Martha’s hospitality means “to receive.” In short, Martha opened her home to these men, which traditionally meant concocting a no holes barred soups to nuts dinner.
After all, one can not serve a famous rabbi and friend hotdogs or bologna sandwiches. Jesus was coming to dinner – and his presence called for a special meal!
Lutheran pastor Edward Markquart describes the scene this way: We can imagine Martha going to market the day before the feast to get the freshest food available. She may have found…fish that had been brought in from the Jordan River (as well as) dates and pomegranates and figs and raisins and nuts - and (of course) the finest wine.
What a shopping spree that was, and the next morning, Martha was a flurry of activity, busy cleaning the house and the yard before she began to prepare the feast for Jesus…She set the table with her finest, bringing out her brass menorah…for a candle light dinner and her favorite pottery ware.
(Soon) Jesus knocked on the door, and everyone was excited to see (him). They laughed and chatted and Jesus noticed how clean and prepared the house was, and Martha was pleased. Then Jesus sat down on a pillow in the front room and started to teach. Being a rabbi, he talked about God and love and prayer.
However, soon Martha was out in the kitchen, so busy with her last minute preparations, and irritated that she couldn’t hear the conversation between Jesus and her younger sister in the living room. (The Greek word for Martha’s predicament means literally dragged away from. Because of her kitchen tasks, Martha was pulled away from hearing what the rabbi had to say. So it is hardly surprising that) the more she worked, the more frustrated she got with her sister.
So Martha started to send signals to her sister, banging the pots and pans so that the noise would bring Mary into the kitchen. It didn’t work. Then Martha walked into the living room with the hors d’oeuvres, the wine, the cheese and crackers. As she walked by Mary, she gave her the eyeball roll in the direction of the kitchen. But Mary wasn’t looking.
Then Martha returned to the living room to pick up the leftovers and gave her sister another signal, this one the rolling shoulder motion, again in the direction of the kitchen. Once more, Mary did not respond. She was still focused on Jesus and his words.
Martha finally stood in the kitchen door way, and her anger could be contained no longer: ‘Jesus, would you tell Mary to come into the kitchen and help me with all this work? She is taking advantage of being the youngest again, so as to get out of doing her share. Would you tell her to come into the kitchen and help with this meal?’
Jesus spoke to Martha calmly, ‘Martha, Martha, don’t be so upset. You are busy and distracted with many things. Mary has chosen the better portion, listening to me, and this will not be taken away from her.’
Martha put her hand on her hips, said ‘hrumpff,’ and stomped back into the kitchen to put the finishing touches on the main course.
Baptist pastor Don Fortner notes the not so subtle differences between the two sisters. “Martha was an active, impulsive, strong-willed, hard-working woman. She spoke her mind openly (and was) a woman truly devoted to Christ.
Mary was a quiet, contemplative woman, more easy-going than Martha, but no less firm in her convictions. She felt things deeply, but said far less than she felt – a woman genuinely devoted to Christ!
Martha, when Jesus came to her house, was delighted to see him and immediately began to make preparations in most lavish manner she could, so that he would feel welcome.
Mary also rejoiced to see the Lord coming into their home, but her first thought was to sit at his feet and hear his word.”
If we were to look at this story as a parable, we would conclude that Martha’s discipleship is grounded in action - welcoming and hospitable activity - while Mary’s discipleship reflects contemplation – listening to and reflecting upon the words of Jesus.
I think we would all agree that both action and contemplation are equally important aspects of the Christian life. Yet, so often when we hear this story, we insist that one of the sisters is right, and the other is wrong. Martha was out of line, and Mary is to be applauded.
That seems harsh because, I do not know about you, but for my part, I am terrific in the role of Martha – and a bit lacking on the Mary front. Give me a task to do – and I’ll do it. Is there a celebration to prepare for? Just call on me.
You should see me before Christmas – and I know I am not the only one in our congregation like this. I bake dozens of cookies and whip up needhams and other candies. Yikes! There are the plum puddings to steam, pumpkin bread to bake – and let’s not forget the presents and stockings and decorating the house, etc., etc. etc. Though I am less frenetic than I used to be, Advent is still a whirlwind of activity.
Now, I am not saying that this is wrong or inappropriate. After all, we would be lost without the Marthas. Marthas are the keepers of Christmas. They also keep the church going. Without the Marthas, there would be no coffee hour, no Sunday School, no public suppers. I am grateful for all the Marthas around here. However, I do think this observation points to the fact that most of us make far better Marthas than we do Marys.
And yet, Jesus seems to be holding up Mary as the exemplar. Think about it – Mary was the one who shirked her kitchen duties, stood by as her sister freaked out over meal preparations, and who by traditional standards was really a selfish slacker. Can we reconcile these two approaches to discipleship because, as we said initially, both Martha and Mary were devoted to Jesus?
I think their approaches are really two sides of the same coin. What I mean is this: Usually we contrast the sisters and create an “either/or” scenario, so that we can logically conclude that only one of them can be right. Either Martha is right or Mary is right.
However, if we can shift the paradigm and see the situation as “both/and”, we can come to a different conclusion. I think the truth of the story is that both Martha and Mary are right. If we reflect on the story as a parable, then its truth is that we need both activity and contemplation to live an enriched Christian life.
We need times of activity – opening our church and ourselves to the community and the world. We need to do public suppers and Monday meals. We need to weatherize our neighbors’ homes, so they stay warm in the winter. We need to work in our community garden, so we can donate fresh produce to the food pantry. Those activities define us as an important force for God’s good. We need to be Marthas.
However, because we do all this activity in Jesus’ name, because it is our faith in the Gospel message that motivates us, we also need to be Marys. We need time to reflect on Jesus’ message and to hear the old, old stories reminding us why we have chosen to oftentimes run counter to our cultural norms – being hospitable, being good neighbors, being peace makers, and being justice instigators.
That is why worship should be so important to us. Worship is our Mary time. These are our moments of contemplation to listen to the teachings of Jesus, to be empowered once again by his message, and to be strengthened by this community of committed men and women.
Worship should not be discretionary. If we are committed Christians, worship should be a high priority – not something we do when it is convenient or the karma is right. And if worship does not figure importantly in our lives, then we need to engage each other and find out why. Of course, I am really preaching to the choir – but all of you who are here can tell those who aren’t about this insight!
Jesus understood this symbiotic relationship between activity and contemplation – mission and worship – and that is why he encouraged Mary. He understood that we are first rate at the activity business. We make wonderful Marthas.
However, he also understood that we find the contemplation piece, the worship piece, the Mary piece a bit more problematic. That is what the Gospel writer is trying to tell us in this parable of Christian living: Martha/Mary. Activity/Contemplation. Mission/Worship. Not either/or, but both/and. In the end, in order to be truly effective followers of Jesus, we have to be both a Martha and a Mary too.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
The church calendar – or liturgical calendar – is organized much the same way. We delight in the high holy days of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. The seasons which precede or follow (Advent, Epiphany, and Lent) ebb and flow like the tides. Each one has its unique time-marking traditions - candles lit or extinguished, special songs.
However, there is are those many weeks - from the Sunday after Pentecost in May until the beginning of Advent after Thanksgiving – when not much happens. Like March, they seem to stretch on forever.
The church has a name for that period of time. It is called most fittingly “ordinary time.” It is the time when we go about our lives as Christians – day by day by day – uneventfully incorporating the message of the Gospel into our comings and goings. Without its own brand of fanfare, it is very ordinary time.
Our Scripture lesson this morning, the almost parable-like story of Martha and Mary, gives us an important insight on how to spend that ordinary time, a most important consideration since ordinary time makes up a large portion of the church year.
Martha and Mary were sisters, and in this brief passage we see clearly that they expressed their devotion to Jesus very differently.
Because this story comes on the heels of the Parable of the Good Samaritan with its lessons of hospitality and neighborliness, we can hardly fault Martha for her initiative in welcoming Jesus and his disciples – 13 guests in all – into her house.
In the Greek, the word the Gospel writer uses for Martha’s hospitality means “to receive.” In short, Martha opened her home to these men, which traditionally meant concocting a no holes barred soups to nuts dinner.
After all, one can not serve a famous rabbi and friend hotdogs or bologna sandwiches. Jesus was coming to dinner – and his presence called for a special meal!
Lutheran pastor Edward Markquart describes the scene this way: We can imagine Martha going to market the day before the feast to get the freshest food available. She may have found…fish that had been brought in from the Jordan River (as well as) dates and pomegranates and figs and raisins and nuts - and (of course) the finest wine.
What a shopping spree that was, and the next morning, Martha was a flurry of activity, busy cleaning the house and the yard before she began to prepare the feast for Jesus…She set the table with her finest, bringing out her brass menorah…for a candle light dinner and her favorite pottery ware.
(Soon) Jesus knocked on the door, and everyone was excited to see (him). They laughed and chatted and Jesus noticed how clean and prepared the house was, and Martha was pleased. Then Jesus sat down on a pillow in the front room and started to teach. Being a rabbi, he talked about God and love and prayer.
However, soon Martha was out in the kitchen, so busy with her last minute preparations, and irritated that she couldn’t hear the conversation between Jesus and her younger sister in the living room. (The Greek word for Martha’s predicament means literally dragged away from. Because of her kitchen tasks, Martha was pulled away from hearing what the rabbi had to say. So it is hardly surprising that) the more she worked, the more frustrated she got with her sister.
So Martha started to send signals to her sister, banging the pots and pans so that the noise would bring Mary into the kitchen. It didn’t work. Then Martha walked into the living room with the hors d’oeuvres, the wine, the cheese and crackers. As she walked by Mary, she gave her the eyeball roll in the direction of the kitchen. But Mary wasn’t looking.
Then Martha returned to the living room to pick up the leftovers and gave her sister another signal, this one the rolling shoulder motion, again in the direction of the kitchen. Once more, Mary did not respond. She was still focused on Jesus and his words.
Martha finally stood in the kitchen door way, and her anger could be contained no longer: ‘Jesus, would you tell Mary to come into the kitchen and help me with all this work? She is taking advantage of being the youngest again, so as to get out of doing her share. Would you tell her to come into the kitchen and help with this meal?’
Jesus spoke to Martha calmly, ‘Martha, Martha, don’t be so upset. You are busy and distracted with many things. Mary has chosen the better portion, listening to me, and this will not be taken away from her.’
Martha put her hand on her hips, said ‘hrumpff,’ and stomped back into the kitchen to put the finishing touches on the main course.
Baptist pastor Don Fortner notes the not so subtle differences between the two sisters. “Martha was an active, impulsive, strong-willed, hard-working woman. She spoke her mind openly (and was) a woman truly devoted to Christ.
Mary was a quiet, contemplative woman, more easy-going than Martha, but no less firm in her convictions. She felt things deeply, but said far less than she felt – a woman genuinely devoted to Christ!
Martha, when Jesus came to her house, was delighted to see him and immediately began to make preparations in most lavish manner she could, so that he would feel welcome.
Mary also rejoiced to see the Lord coming into their home, but her first thought was to sit at his feet and hear his word.”
If we were to look at this story as a parable, we would conclude that Martha’s discipleship is grounded in action - welcoming and hospitable activity - while Mary’s discipleship reflects contemplation – listening to and reflecting upon the words of Jesus.
I think we would all agree that both action and contemplation are equally important aspects of the Christian life. Yet, so often when we hear this story, we insist that one of the sisters is right, and the other is wrong. Martha was out of line, and Mary is to be applauded.
That seems harsh because, I do not know about you, but for my part, I am terrific in the role of Martha – and a bit lacking on the Mary front. Give me a task to do – and I’ll do it. Is there a celebration to prepare for? Just call on me.
You should see me before Christmas – and I know I am not the only one in our congregation like this. I bake dozens of cookies and whip up needhams and other candies. Yikes! There are the plum puddings to steam, pumpkin bread to bake – and let’s not forget the presents and stockings and decorating the house, etc., etc. etc. Though I am less frenetic than I used to be, Advent is still a whirlwind of activity.
Now, I am not saying that this is wrong or inappropriate. After all, we would be lost without the Marthas. Marthas are the keepers of Christmas. They also keep the church going. Without the Marthas, there would be no coffee hour, no Sunday School, no public suppers. I am grateful for all the Marthas around here. However, I do think this observation points to the fact that most of us make far better Marthas than we do Marys.
And yet, Jesus seems to be holding up Mary as the exemplar. Think about it – Mary was the one who shirked her kitchen duties, stood by as her sister freaked out over meal preparations, and who by traditional standards was really a selfish slacker. Can we reconcile these two approaches to discipleship because, as we said initially, both Martha and Mary were devoted to Jesus?
I think their approaches are really two sides of the same coin. What I mean is this: Usually we contrast the sisters and create an “either/or” scenario, so that we can logically conclude that only one of them can be right. Either Martha is right or Mary is right.
However, if we can shift the paradigm and see the situation as “both/and”, we can come to a different conclusion. I think the truth of the story is that both Martha and Mary are right. If we reflect on the story as a parable, then its truth is that we need both activity and contemplation to live an enriched Christian life.
We need times of activity – opening our church and ourselves to the community and the world. We need to do public suppers and Monday meals. We need to weatherize our neighbors’ homes, so they stay warm in the winter. We need to work in our community garden, so we can donate fresh produce to the food pantry. Those activities define us as an important force for God’s good. We need to be Marthas.
However, because we do all this activity in Jesus’ name, because it is our faith in the Gospel message that motivates us, we also need to be Marys. We need time to reflect on Jesus’ message and to hear the old, old stories reminding us why we have chosen to oftentimes run counter to our cultural norms – being hospitable, being good neighbors, being peace makers, and being justice instigators.
That is why worship should be so important to us. Worship is our Mary time. These are our moments of contemplation to listen to the teachings of Jesus, to be empowered once again by his message, and to be strengthened by this community of committed men and women.
Worship should not be discretionary. If we are committed Christians, worship should be a high priority – not something we do when it is convenient or the karma is right. And if worship does not figure importantly in our lives, then we need to engage each other and find out why. Of course, I am really preaching to the choir – but all of you who are here can tell those who aren’t about this insight!
Jesus understood this symbiotic relationship between activity and contemplation – mission and worship – and that is why he encouraged Mary. He understood that we are first rate at the activity business. We make wonderful Marthas.
However, he also understood that we find the contemplation piece, the worship piece, the Mary piece a bit more problematic. That is what the Gospel writer is trying to tell us in this parable of Christian living: Martha/Mary. Activity/Contemplation. Mission/Worship. Not either/or, but both/and. In the end, in order to be truly effective followers of Jesus, we have to be both a Martha and a Mary too.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
Friday, July 9, 2010
2 Kings 5:1-14 Little Voices
This is a story about voices. It is a story about big voices – loud and authoritative voices proclaiming and directing and ordering people about – and it is a story about little voices – barely heard and quavering voices whispering in darkened hallways and speaking gently out-of-turn.
But the voices are just a way understanding what the story is really about – and that is power. It is the story of the power of those people on whom we most often bestow power – rulers and military commanders – and it is the story of the power of those we deem to be powerless – servants, slave girls, and messengers.
This is a story about voices – and power behind those voices. It is the story of the great Syrian generalissimo Naaman and how he was healed of a terrible skin disease, commonly known as leprosy.
We hear Naaman’s story only once in the three year cycle of the lectionary. Who was he anyway? If we were ancient military historians, then surely we would know all about him. After all, he had proved himself on the battlefield time and time again. Why, it was his army that had brought down powerful King Ahab with a well-placed arrow.
His own Syrian king had great respect for Naaman and held him in the highest esteem. After all, Naaman’s uniform was weighted down and decorated with various medals of honor, distinguished service medals, and purple hearts.
He had everything going for him – well, just about everything - until that evening when he felt the first sensation of numbness in his right hand – his sword hand - and he noticed a small patch of redness and those telltale tiny raised pustules.
“How can this be? Where is the fairness in my plight?” He shouted in his loudest and most powerful generalissimo voice. And he lay awake all that night until dawn - the refrain of “Untouchable! Untouchable! -” knitting together his terrible nightmares.
As author and seminary professor, Barbara Brown Taylor, noted, even the simplest of everyday encounters would inevitably change for Naaman. The powerful generalissimo knew that there would soon be a time when his success and fame and power would mean very little.
Instead there would be the awkward discomfort of someone who might not want to shake his hand or who could not help but stare too long at his disfigurement.
Needless to say, his wife was distraught as well, and his entire household stood by, horrified at the grisly news of Naaman’s dreadful but sure demise.
As the fingers of dawn first began to part the night sky and before the sun arose, one of Naaman’s war trophies, a little nameless slave girl went to Naaman’s wife, her little slave girl voice quavering as she whispered to her mistress in a darkened backstairs hallway. “The prophet in Samaria – Naaman should go to him. He could heal my master.”
When Naaman heard these whispered words of hope, he went to his king who, of course, would do anything to save the powerful generalissimo. And so the powerful king of Syria wrote a most powerful letter of introduction to the equally powerful king of Israel: This is to inform you that you must cure my most powerful generalissimo of his disease.
Figuring that perhaps a letter might not be quite enough to sway an equally powerful king, the Syrian monarch also sent along thirty thousand pieces of silver, six thousand pieces of gold, and ten fine changes of clothing rich in brocade and of the best fabric – powerful gifts from one powerful king to another on behalf of a powerful soldier.
Not surprisingly, the king of Israel wanted nothing to do with the situation – in spite of the silver and gold and ten new brocaded outfits. Wary of a trick or some sort of political high jinx, he was all ready to send Naaman packing when the prophet Elisha stepped in.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Elisha said to the king of Israel for whom he prophesized. “Just send Naaman to me. I will cure him – and in doing so show him how powerful a real prophet – a prophet of Israel – can be.”
And so the most powerful generalissimo gathered up his most powerful gifts of silver and gold and brocaded outfits and knocked on Elisha’s door. Fully expecting that a powerful military commander of his stature would be greeted by the powerful prophet himself, Naaman was a more than a little taken aback when a servant – again with no name – bowed before him, bringing only a message from Elisha.
What moxie this prophet of Yahweh had in the face of such political and military power! Imagine - Elisha staying inside and sending a messenger boy instead.
“Elisha says to wash seven times in the Jordan River, and you will be healed,” the young servant said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Take a bath? He wants me to take a bath? I came all this way to have him tell me to take a bath? In the muddy Jordan River, no less?” Naaman shouted in his most enraged and powerful voice even as he loudly dissed the Israeli watering hole. “When I have got far better and cleaner rivers back home in Syria than any river I could possibly find here in Israel? Do you know what they DO in the Jordan River? Laundry, that’s what. And who knows what else. Swimming in the Jordan River? Your prophet has got to be kidding. I am out of here.”
And the most powerful generalissimo began turning the horses and mules around, his loud voice still muttering expletives and critiques. And once again it was the small and powerless voices of servants – Naaman’s this time - who saved the day. Imagine – servants telling their masters what to do.
“Oh, most powerful generalissimo,” his servants whispered in quavering voices. “If Elisha had told you to do something hard or dangerous or expensive, you would have obeyed. Just dunk yourself in the Jordan River. Just try it. Just do it.”
And Naaman the powerful generalissimo – in spite of his injured pride - took the advice of the powerless ones – and dipped himself into the muddy Jordan. One, two, three, four, five, six – and a seventh time. And lo and behold, just as Elisha said, Naaman was healed.
This is a story about power. It is a story about those people we have bestowed power upon and those we have deemed to be powerless. It is a story of the power of kings and generalissimos and that of slaves and servants.
But it is also the story of mega-churches – and small membership congregations. It is the story of Washington - and the man on the street, Walmart and the small business person. It is the story of Wall Street -and Main Street, agribusiness and local farmers. It is the story of us – you and me - and the power that we in fact do have even we when are deemed – or feel ourselves to be - powerless.
All the power of the King of Syria and all the power of Naaman could not cure the generalissimo of his leprosy. All of their shouting and loud voices, their orders, proclamations, and directives could not restore his health.
It was the little voices – the whispering of the powerless ones – that made the difference: the slave girl’s quiet suggestion in the hallway to send Naaman to Elisha in the first place, the shy voice of the messenger speaking the words of the cure, the reticent servants pleading with their master to just take a swim in the Jordan.
When you really think about it, even the power of God channeled though Elisha would not have made a whit of difference had it not been for the slave girl, the messenger, and the pleading servants. It was they – the powerless ones – who in the end played the most important role in the story – and made all the difference.
I have to tell you. I find this tale personally very empowering. You see, I do not think we are like the Kings of Syria and Israel. Neither are we like the generalissimo Naaman. I see us more as the slave girl and messenger and bevy of pleading servants. At least, that is how I see myself.
And yet, there is power within us - a power to love, a power to commit ourselves to economic and social justice, a power that is the powerful message of the Gospel.
I believe that if we choose to wield that power, like the powerless ones in our Scripture lesson, we can make a difference. We can be a catalyst for healing – for the healing of the whole world.
Now, because today is Independence Day, I would like to leave you with something to carry with you to all your parades and celebrations – and that is this.
We in this country are NOT exceptional people. We are not the Naaman’s and the Syrian Kings - though we have certainly done our share of proclaiming and directing in loud and authoritative voices. We have bestowed a power upon ourselves and deemed others to be powerless.
No - we are not exceptional people – but our style of government is exceptional and the fact that our democracy has remained in tact for over 200 years is exceptional. That each one of us can exercise the power within us to make a difference is exceptional. That the little voices – when they choose to speak out - are honored is exceptional. That Margaret Mead’s observation has the potential to be so true in our nation is exceptional: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Let your little voice be heard, for therein lies its power!
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
But the voices are just a way understanding what the story is really about – and that is power. It is the story of the power of those people on whom we most often bestow power – rulers and military commanders – and it is the story of the power of those we deem to be powerless – servants, slave girls, and messengers.
This is a story about voices – and power behind those voices. It is the story of the great Syrian generalissimo Naaman and how he was healed of a terrible skin disease, commonly known as leprosy.
We hear Naaman’s story only once in the three year cycle of the lectionary. Who was he anyway? If we were ancient military historians, then surely we would know all about him. After all, he had proved himself on the battlefield time and time again. Why, it was his army that had brought down powerful King Ahab with a well-placed arrow.
His own Syrian king had great respect for Naaman and held him in the highest esteem. After all, Naaman’s uniform was weighted down and decorated with various medals of honor, distinguished service medals, and purple hearts.
He had everything going for him – well, just about everything - until that evening when he felt the first sensation of numbness in his right hand – his sword hand - and he noticed a small patch of redness and those telltale tiny raised pustules.
“How can this be? Where is the fairness in my plight?” He shouted in his loudest and most powerful generalissimo voice. And he lay awake all that night until dawn - the refrain of “Untouchable! Untouchable! -” knitting together his terrible nightmares.
As author and seminary professor, Barbara Brown Taylor, noted, even the simplest of everyday encounters would inevitably change for Naaman. The powerful generalissimo knew that there would soon be a time when his success and fame and power would mean very little.
Instead there would be the awkward discomfort of someone who might not want to shake his hand or who could not help but stare too long at his disfigurement.
Needless to say, his wife was distraught as well, and his entire household stood by, horrified at the grisly news of Naaman’s dreadful but sure demise.
As the fingers of dawn first began to part the night sky and before the sun arose, one of Naaman’s war trophies, a little nameless slave girl went to Naaman’s wife, her little slave girl voice quavering as she whispered to her mistress in a darkened backstairs hallway. “The prophet in Samaria – Naaman should go to him. He could heal my master.”
When Naaman heard these whispered words of hope, he went to his king who, of course, would do anything to save the powerful generalissimo. And so the powerful king of Syria wrote a most powerful letter of introduction to the equally powerful king of Israel: This is to inform you that you must cure my most powerful generalissimo of his disease.
Figuring that perhaps a letter might not be quite enough to sway an equally powerful king, the Syrian monarch also sent along thirty thousand pieces of silver, six thousand pieces of gold, and ten fine changes of clothing rich in brocade and of the best fabric – powerful gifts from one powerful king to another on behalf of a powerful soldier.
Not surprisingly, the king of Israel wanted nothing to do with the situation – in spite of the silver and gold and ten new brocaded outfits. Wary of a trick or some sort of political high jinx, he was all ready to send Naaman packing when the prophet Elisha stepped in.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Elisha said to the king of Israel for whom he prophesized. “Just send Naaman to me. I will cure him – and in doing so show him how powerful a real prophet – a prophet of Israel – can be.”
And so the most powerful generalissimo gathered up his most powerful gifts of silver and gold and brocaded outfits and knocked on Elisha’s door. Fully expecting that a powerful military commander of his stature would be greeted by the powerful prophet himself, Naaman was a more than a little taken aback when a servant – again with no name – bowed before him, bringing only a message from Elisha.
What moxie this prophet of Yahweh had in the face of such political and military power! Imagine - Elisha staying inside and sending a messenger boy instead.
“Elisha says to wash seven times in the Jordan River, and you will be healed,” the young servant said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Take a bath? He wants me to take a bath? I came all this way to have him tell me to take a bath? In the muddy Jordan River, no less?” Naaman shouted in his most enraged and powerful voice even as he loudly dissed the Israeli watering hole. “When I have got far better and cleaner rivers back home in Syria than any river I could possibly find here in Israel? Do you know what they DO in the Jordan River? Laundry, that’s what. And who knows what else. Swimming in the Jordan River? Your prophet has got to be kidding. I am out of here.”
And the most powerful generalissimo began turning the horses and mules around, his loud voice still muttering expletives and critiques. And once again it was the small and powerless voices of servants – Naaman’s this time - who saved the day. Imagine – servants telling their masters what to do.
“Oh, most powerful generalissimo,” his servants whispered in quavering voices. “If Elisha had told you to do something hard or dangerous or expensive, you would have obeyed. Just dunk yourself in the Jordan River. Just try it. Just do it.”
And Naaman the powerful generalissimo – in spite of his injured pride - took the advice of the powerless ones – and dipped himself into the muddy Jordan. One, two, three, four, five, six – and a seventh time. And lo and behold, just as Elisha said, Naaman was healed.
This is a story about power. It is a story about those people we have bestowed power upon and those we have deemed to be powerless. It is a story of the power of kings and generalissimos and that of slaves and servants.
But it is also the story of mega-churches – and small membership congregations. It is the story of Washington - and the man on the street, Walmart and the small business person. It is the story of Wall Street -and Main Street, agribusiness and local farmers. It is the story of us – you and me - and the power that we in fact do have even we when are deemed – or feel ourselves to be - powerless.
All the power of the King of Syria and all the power of Naaman could not cure the generalissimo of his leprosy. All of their shouting and loud voices, their orders, proclamations, and directives could not restore his health.
It was the little voices – the whispering of the powerless ones – that made the difference: the slave girl’s quiet suggestion in the hallway to send Naaman to Elisha in the first place, the shy voice of the messenger speaking the words of the cure, the reticent servants pleading with their master to just take a swim in the Jordan.
When you really think about it, even the power of God channeled though Elisha would not have made a whit of difference had it not been for the slave girl, the messenger, and the pleading servants. It was they – the powerless ones – who in the end played the most important role in the story – and made all the difference.
I have to tell you. I find this tale personally very empowering. You see, I do not think we are like the Kings of Syria and Israel. Neither are we like the generalissimo Naaman. I see us more as the slave girl and messenger and bevy of pleading servants. At least, that is how I see myself.
And yet, there is power within us - a power to love, a power to commit ourselves to economic and social justice, a power that is the powerful message of the Gospel.
I believe that if we choose to wield that power, like the powerless ones in our Scripture lesson, we can make a difference. We can be a catalyst for healing – for the healing of the whole world.
Now, because today is Independence Day, I would like to leave you with something to carry with you to all your parades and celebrations – and that is this.
We in this country are NOT exceptional people. We are not the Naaman’s and the Syrian Kings - though we have certainly done our share of proclaiming and directing in loud and authoritative voices. We have bestowed a power upon ourselves and deemed others to be powerless.
No - we are not exceptional people – but our style of government is exceptional and the fact that our democracy has remained in tact for over 200 years is exceptional. That each one of us can exercise the power within us to make a difference is exceptional. That the little voices – when they choose to speak out - are honored is exceptional. That Margaret Mead’s observation has the potential to be so true in our nation is exceptional: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Let your little voice be heard, for therein lies its power!
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
2 Kings 2:1-14 A Double Dose
Apparently the old prophet Elijah understood that his days in this world were numbered. He seemed to have an inkling that it was his time to leave this earth for whatever it was that would come next for him. I can imagine that he was fatigued enough – even spiritually depleted enough at least some of the time – to sense in a distant corner of his ancient heart that his work was done.
As one of the most noteworthy prophets to the kings of Israel, Elijah had always been devoted to his God, Yahweh. He had championed this Holy One – even under the most difficult of circumstances: Like the time he had to break the news to King Ahab of a multi-year, country-wide drought. And the reason for the extended dry season was because Ahab had insisted upon looking the other way when his wife, Jezebel, and a majority of the people in his kingdom insisted upon worshiping in their curious cults, worshipping pagan gods like Baal rather than the one true God of Israel, Yahweh.
That particular disagreement between Elijah and Ahab had climaxed in a fiery display of Yahweh’s power at a good old-fashioned theological showdown between the true prophet, Elijah, and the 400 lesser prophets of Baal.
Elijah remembered the afternoon vividly - how Yahweh’s altar was consumed in miraculous flames from heaven while Baal’s altar was left untouched. No one could argue after that display that Yahweh was clearly the winner.
Oh, Queen Jezebel had been furious, so angry that Elijah had no choice but to flee the country and live as an exile and refugee for years until it all blew over. Oh, yes, Elijah had tried to keep King Ahab in line, but a prophet’s life is not an easy one. That was for certain.
We should not be too surprised then at this morning’s tale of Elijah trying so hard to meet his Maker – but all the while his A-one follower, Elisha, being unwilling to leave his side and let him go. The story is at once poignant and hilarious.
“You stay here,” Elijah had said. “I have to go to Bethel.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Elisha replied. “I am sticking with you – like glue.”
“You stay here,” Elijah tried again. “I have to go to, ah, Jericho.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Elisha replied with unstoppable youthful exuberance. “You can not trick me. I am sticking with you – like glue – and I will follow you not only to Bethel but all the way to Jericho as well.”
Even the local prophets and soothsayers who watched the antics of the one old and one young Jew pulled at their beards and shook their shaggy heads. They finally pulled Elisha aside and said to him, “Elisha, this is hardly rocket science. You do not have to be a prophet to understand what is going on here. It is time for Elijah to go to his God – and you simply can not go with him.”
“Yes, I know,” Elisha replied evenly. “But I do not want to talk about it.”
“You stay here,” Elijah tried one last time. “I have to go to the Jordan River.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Elisha replied once again as 50 of the most curious local prophets and soothsayers followed and looked on, tut tutting and clucking as only local prophets and soothsayers can.
“You are not getting off the hook that easily. I am sticking with you – like glue – even if I have to cross the mighty Jordan River to do it.”
“Fine,” Elijah replied in a tired and cranky voice.
And so the leader and his A-one follower continued walking together all the way to the Jordan River. Elijah must have figured that Elisha was bound and determined to stick by him - like glue - because when he got to the river’s edge, instead of arguing one more time, Elijah simply snapped his cloak over the waters, and the waters parted – like other waters had parted so long ago for Moses and the Hebrew slaves - and the two prophets – old tired Elijah and young energetic Elisha – crossed over together to the other side.
Then Elijah turned to the young upstart beside him. “Elisha, Elisha,” he queried. “You have followed me and learned from me. You have taken all that I can give to you. You have not left my side. You have stuck to me like glue – even when I did not want you around – to Bethel, to Jericho, and now to the far side of the Jordan River. What is it that you want from me?”
And Elisha looked with great love and deep respect into the old clouded eyes of his mentor. “I want to be a holy man just like you.” But he wanted more than that really. Elisha knew he had a tough act to follow. He knew he needed what amounted to a first son’s share of the inheritance, and he so asked for it.
“Let me inherit a double dose of your spirit,” Elisha begged. “Let your spirit have double force in me because of these dangerous times. Let me have the most of you – more than any other prophet.”
There, it was out - in the open – all the hopes and fears of Elisha, who deep down inside knew that he was to be the next spiritual leader of his people.
“Oh, Elijah,” he continued. “Your sandals are too big for me to fill. What am I to do? How am I to follow someone like you? How will I face what is ahead when I leave the banks of this river? I need to know what to say when people ask me about my faith, why I do what I do, why my God is so important to me. Oh, Elijah, I need your spirit. Because I am half the man you are, I need a double dose of it if I am to do the work Yahweh has called me to do.”
“That would be difficult,” Elijah replied. “But not impossible.”
And then a great wind came, whipping up and frothing the waves of the Jordan. And out of the wind came a chariot that was consumed in fire, and suddenly Elijah was not there anymore. Not really dead apparently – simply taken up to finally meet his God.
For Elisha, the afternoon’s event was both dramatic and devastating – his mentor gone – this time for good - the aloneness and inadequacy already seeping into the very core of his being.
There is a story about a famous preacher who was a bit of a fraud. You see, his sermons were astounding, but no one ever realized that they had all been written by a staff assistant. Finally the assistant’s patience ran out, and one day the preacher was speaking to thousands of expectant listeners and at the bottom of page two read the stirring words, “And this, my friends, takes us to the very heart of the book of Habakkuk, which is…” only to turn to page three and see nothing but the dreaded words, “You’re on your own now.”
That was how Elisha felt. He too was on his own, knowing full well that he would never see Elijah again. The only piece of his mentor that remained lay on the ground – his cloak, his mantle. Elisha picked it up and pressed it close to his face, breathing deeply of the human odor that was so “Elijah” even as he sobbed, even as the feelings of aloneness and inadequacy flooded his heart.
And when he could weep no longer, feeling more lacking than ever in his ability to fill Elijah’s sandals, Elisha wiped away his tears and put the cloak – the mantle - over his shoulders.
And lo and behold, when he did, he seemed to stand a little taller. And the road looked a little straighter. And the world appeared less daunting.
Could it be that in picking up Elijah’s mantle, Elisha had also picked up his spirit, a double dose of his spirit? Could it be that the spirit was there all the time, but he had to pick up the mantle to know that? Could it be that he first had to say yes to becoming Israel’s next great prophet (symbolized by putting on the mantle) – and only then did he discover that he had that double dose of Elijah’s spirit, the double dose he needed to be the leader he was called to be?
I think that is part of the truth of this passage. Elisha had to say yes to his call – even though he felt inadequate to the task - and only then did he receive the Spirit necessary to fulfill that call.
And so it is for us, I think – you and I – in our calls to ministry….Oh, Jesus, your sandals are too big for me to fill. What am I to do? How am I to follow someone like you? How will I face what is ahead when I leave this place of worship and go out to be your Body in the world? I need to know what to say when people ask me about my faith, why I do what I do in your name, why God – and church – are so important to me. Oh, Jesus, I need your spirit – all you can spare – if I am to do the work you have called me to do.
Pick up the mantle, I think Jesus would say. Be like Elisha, and pick up the mantle. Just do it. Say yes to your calling to be my disciple. Have faith enough to first say yes, trusting that if you do, the spirit – the courage and strength – will come. But you have to pick up the mantle of discipleship first – mo matter how inadequate to the task you may feel. First pick up the mantle and then you will receive your share of the spirit you need to fulfill your call.
Elisha knew he had received a double dose of Elijah’s spirit only when he put on his mentor’s cloak or mantle. I think it might be the same for us.
First, we make a commitment to the way of Jesus by saying yes to justice, yes to peace, yes to loving our neighbor as ourselves – all the while, like Elisha, not knowing how in heaven’s name we are ever going to actually transform our lives, ever going to actually walk the way of justice, of peace, of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Then, when the commitment is made, when all we really have to rely on is faith – and grace – only then will we know that the Spirit has come to us as it did Elisha.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
As one of the most noteworthy prophets to the kings of Israel, Elijah had always been devoted to his God, Yahweh. He had championed this Holy One – even under the most difficult of circumstances: Like the time he had to break the news to King Ahab of a multi-year, country-wide drought. And the reason for the extended dry season was because Ahab had insisted upon looking the other way when his wife, Jezebel, and a majority of the people in his kingdom insisted upon worshiping in their curious cults, worshipping pagan gods like Baal rather than the one true God of Israel, Yahweh.
That particular disagreement between Elijah and Ahab had climaxed in a fiery display of Yahweh’s power at a good old-fashioned theological showdown between the true prophet, Elijah, and the 400 lesser prophets of Baal.
Elijah remembered the afternoon vividly - how Yahweh’s altar was consumed in miraculous flames from heaven while Baal’s altar was left untouched. No one could argue after that display that Yahweh was clearly the winner.
Oh, Queen Jezebel had been furious, so angry that Elijah had no choice but to flee the country and live as an exile and refugee for years until it all blew over. Oh, yes, Elijah had tried to keep King Ahab in line, but a prophet’s life is not an easy one. That was for certain.
We should not be too surprised then at this morning’s tale of Elijah trying so hard to meet his Maker – but all the while his A-one follower, Elisha, being unwilling to leave his side and let him go. The story is at once poignant and hilarious.
“You stay here,” Elijah had said. “I have to go to Bethel.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Elisha replied. “I am sticking with you – like glue.”
“You stay here,” Elijah tried again. “I have to go to, ah, Jericho.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Elisha replied with unstoppable youthful exuberance. “You can not trick me. I am sticking with you – like glue – and I will follow you not only to Bethel but all the way to Jericho as well.”
Even the local prophets and soothsayers who watched the antics of the one old and one young Jew pulled at their beards and shook their shaggy heads. They finally pulled Elisha aside and said to him, “Elisha, this is hardly rocket science. You do not have to be a prophet to understand what is going on here. It is time for Elijah to go to his God – and you simply can not go with him.”
“Yes, I know,” Elisha replied evenly. “But I do not want to talk about it.”
“You stay here,” Elijah tried one last time. “I have to go to the Jordan River.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Elisha replied once again as 50 of the most curious local prophets and soothsayers followed and looked on, tut tutting and clucking as only local prophets and soothsayers can.
“You are not getting off the hook that easily. I am sticking with you – like glue – even if I have to cross the mighty Jordan River to do it.”
“Fine,” Elijah replied in a tired and cranky voice.
And so the leader and his A-one follower continued walking together all the way to the Jordan River. Elijah must have figured that Elisha was bound and determined to stick by him - like glue - because when he got to the river’s edge, instead of arguing one more time, Elijah simply snapped his cloak over the waters, and the waters parted – like other waters had parted so long ago for Moses and the Hebrew slaves - and the two prophets – old tired Elijah and young energetic Elisha – crossed over together to the other side.
Then Elijah turned to the young upstart beside him. “Elisha, Elisha,” he queried. “You have followed me and learned from me. You have taken all that I can give to you. You have not left my side. You have stuck to me like glue – even when I did not want you around – to Bethel, to Jericho, and now to the far side of the Jordan River. What is it that you want from me?”
And Elisha looked with great love and deep respect into the old clouded eyes of his mentor. “I want to be a holy man just like you.” But he wanted more than that really. Elisha knew he had a tough act to follow. He knew he needed what amounted to a first son’s share of the inheritance, and he so asked for it.
“Let me inherit a double dose of your spirit,” Elisha begged. “Let your spirit have double force in me because of these dangerous times. Let me have the most of you – more than any other prophet.”
There, it was out - in the open – all the hopes and fears of Elisha, who deep down inside knew that he was to be the next spiritual leader of his people.
“Oh, Elijah,” he continued. “Your sandals are too big for me to fill. What am I to do? How am I to follow someone like you? How will I face what is ahead when I leave the banks of this river? I need to know what to say when people ask me about my faith, why I do what I do, why my God is so important to me. Oh, Elijah, I need your spirit. Because I am half the man you are, I need a double dose of it if I am to do the work Yahweh has called me to do.”
“That would be difficult,” Elijah replied. “But not impossible.”
And then a great wind came, whipping up and frothing the waves of the Jordan. And out of the wind came a chariot that was consumed in fire, and suddenly Elijah was not there anymore. Not really dead apparently – simply taken up to finally meet his God.
For Elisha, the afternoon’s event was both dramatic and devastating – his mentor gone – this time for good - the aloneness and inadequacy already seeping into the very core of his being.
There is a story about a famous preacher who was a bit of a fraud. You see, his sermons were astounding, but no one ever realized that they had all been written by a staff assistant. Finally the assistant’s patience ran out, and one day the preacher was speaking to thousands of expectant listeners and at the bottom of page two read the stirring words, “And this, my friends, takes us to the very heart of the book of Habakkuk, which is…” only to turn to page three and see nothing but the dreaded words, “You’re on your own now.”
That was how Elisha felt. He too was on his own, knowing full well that he would never see Elijah again. The only piece of his mentor that remained lay on the ground – his cloak, his mantle. Elisha picked it up and pressed it close to his face, breathing deeply of the human odor that was so “Elijah” even as he sobbed, even as the feelings of aloneness and inadequacy flooded his heart.
And when he could weep no longer, feeling more lacking than ever in his ability to fill Elijah’s sandals, Elisha wiped away his tears and put the cloak – the mantle - over his shoulders.
And lo and behold, when he did, he seemed to stand a little taller. And the road looked a little straighter. And the world appeared less daunting.
Could it be that in picking up Elijah’s mantle, Elisha had also picked up his spirit, a double dose of his spirit? Could it be that the spirit was there all the time, but he had to pick up the mantle to know that? Could it be that he first had to say yes to becoming Israel’s next great prophet (symbolized by putting on the mantle) – and only then did he discover that he had that double dose of Elijah’s spirit, the double dose he needed to be the leader he was called to be?
I think that is part of the truth of this passage. Elisha had to say yes to his call – even though he felt inadequate to the task - and only then did he receive the Spirit necessary to fulfill that call.
And so it is for us, I think – you and I – in our calls to ministry….Oh, Jesus, your sandals are too big for me to fill. What am I to do? How am I to follow someone like you? How will I face what is ahead when I leave this place of worship and go out to be your Body in the world? I need to know what to say when people ask me about my faith, why I do what I do in your name, why God – and church – are so important to me. Oh, Jesus, I need your spirit – all you can spare – if I am to do the work you have called me to do.
Pick up the mantle, I think Jesus would say. Be like Elisha, and pick up the mantle. Just do it. Say yes to your calling to be my disciple. Have faith enough to first say yes, trusting that if you do, the spirit – the courage and strength – will come. But you have to pick up the mantle of discipleship first – mo matter how inadequate to the task you may feel. First pick up the mantle and then you will receive your share of the spirit you need to fulfill your call.
Elisha knew he had received a double dose of Elijah’s spirit only when he put on his mentor’s cloak or mantle. I think it might be the same for us.
First, we make a commitment to the way of Jesus by saying yes to justice, yes to peace, yes to loving our neighbor as ourselves – all the while, like Elisha, not knowing how in heaven’s name we are ever going to actually transform our lives, ever going to actually walk the way of justice, of peace, of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Then, when the commitment is made, when all we really have to rely on is faith – and grace – only then will we know that the Spirit has come to us as it did Elisha.
Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
http://www.rvccme.org/
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