On his first Sunday in the pulpit, the new minister delivered an amazing sermon. The congregation was deeply moved – laughing, crying, filled with awe. At the end of the service, they congratulated him on his wonderful message and congratulated each other on their inspired decision to call this new pastor.
On the second Sunday, the new minister delivered exactly the same sermon as the week before. People were still deeply moved though some wondered what was going on. However, they gave him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he had picked up the wrong notes that morning, so they did not say too much.
However, on the following Sunday, the minister once again gave exactly the same sermon for the third time. Now there was widespread consternation. The Church Council called a meeting and asked the minister what was going on.
"Pastor", they said, "The sermon you preached today is a really great sermon, but you have delivered it three times now. Don't you have any other sermons?'
"Oh, yes!” replied the new minister, "I have scads of them, and they are all just as good as the one you heard."
"Well then," replied the Church Moderator. "Why don't you preach one of them next week?"
"Oh,” the minister replied. “I am not going to do that until you start following the message of the first one."
Well, even though today I have a new sermon, its message is an old one that you have probably heard before. It is a sermon about journeys, in this case a physical journey where an ancient family up and moved for no reason other than that the man of the house had started hearing strange and wonderful voices. However, this sermon is also about spiritual journeys, which is precisely what we find ourselves in the midst of each Lenten season.
Though this sermon begins with verses from the 12th chapter of Genesis, it really begins in the very beginning of time as time is written about in this first book of the Bible. And there we find God establishing a master plan in the Garden of Eden. It started out well - until that apple and serpent business - and then, needless-to-say, God was not a happy camper when it came to this order out of chaos business. In fact, God got so fed up with the garden dynamics that the Holy One kicked out the occupants (that would be Adam and Eve).
Things were back on track for a while, but what with the generations coming and going, the parties getting wilder, and the arguing louder until it was little more than a continuous din, all that coupled with the total disregard of the created for the Creator, one day God could not take it any more.
It seemed that everything was evil or on the road to hell, and so God wiped the slate clean. Hoping for the best, God kept one man and his family (that would be Noah) and a bunch of animals to start the world anew.
The saga of this starting and stopping, all of God’s efforts to get the world up and running on an even keel, all these wonderful mythological events with their own inherent truths are found in the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis.
Our story for today in the 12th chapter marks a monumental shift and dramatic transition in God’s creating. You see, God takes another tact and chooses a single person (that would be Abram - not Abraham, mind you; his name change comes later on, second only to Moses when it comes to hero status in the Old Testament), and designating Abram as the one through whom the sacred master plan will be jumpstarted and without whom it can not be fulfilled.
To get the ball rolling, God calls on Abram and his barren wife who will later be called Sarah, and his nephew Lot to take a journey into the unknown, into nothingness - for God’s sake.
Now, Abram was no perfect human specimen. He was a commonplace nomad, neither more righteous nor more rebellious than anyone else. I am sure Abram wondered why God had chosen him in the first place, why he had to leave town to get the blessing God promised, and what guarantees had been put in place to ensure that his life would be better for the journey.
And yet, in spite of Abram’s ordinariness and the slew of questions that surely we would have asked too, God tapped him on the shoulder. And it is through Abram’s story that three important Biblical themes are interwoven. These themes encircle and challenge not only this ancient family but also us – down through the ages – so many millennia later in time. The themes are call, covenant, and journey.
The story of Abraham and so the story of Israel, which is really the beginning of our story as well, starts with God’s call: “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’”
What would you have done? I mean, when God calls you into the unknown (which is what God most often does) – into a new ministry, a new relationship, a new way of looking at the world - it is always a difficult choice. And so it must have been for Abram. God directed him to leave behind everything that was most important to him: his land, his birthplace, and the house of his father.
As Old Testament scholar, Wilma Anne Bailey, writes, “In ancient societies, place and relationships were the most important considerations. One’s home and network of family and friends provided support and a means of earning a living. Without the political and economic structures that are in place today, travel beyond one’s homeland was difficult and dangerous.
Interestingly enough, Abram is not promised that life will be better in Canaan…Actually it’s almost guaranteed that at first - when he’s left behind his known language of communication, his reputation, his kin network, his knowledge of a place and how to survive in it - life will be worse.” Calls from God are not always what we want to hear because they usual mean disruption, dislocation, and – dare I say it - change.
However, for Abram, along with the call came a covenant – a kind of generous quid pro quo that God initiated. “By deserting his country he lost his name there: care not for that, (saith God) but trust me, and I will make thee a greater name than ever thou couldst have had there." That is how John Wesley, the founder of the Protestant denomination of Methodism, puts it.
The Message translation of our Bible continues: “I'll make you a great nation and bless you. I'll make you famous; you'll be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you; those who curse you I'll curse. All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you."
I bet it was the blessing part that gave the Abram the hutzpa to, on a wing and a prayer, up and move his sheep and tents and cooking pots and slaves and servants. After all, he was an old man at the time – and though it was virtually impossible that a blessing upon him and his long barren wife would result in a child, let alone a whole nation – well, it was God who was doing the blessing, and that should mean something.
We often applaud Abram as a man of great faith because he followed God’s call. However, I think Abram was faithful not because he never doubted the call or ever tried to fulfill it on his own terms, which time and time again, he did.
No – Abram was faithful because when the chips were down and, oh, at times they were, when Abram stumbled and fell as he most certainly did, he always got back up and clung to the promises – tenuous as they might have seemed. He held fast to the covenant God had made with him.
It is like when we get that urge to risk ourselves and our way of doing things, to change our perspective, and it all seems quite overwhelming until we realize that the one who is nudging us is also the one reminding us in thirty ways to Sunday that we do not do it alone. God promises to be with us. God promises that Jesus walks beside us and the Holy Spirit leads us. To trust in the covenant makes all the difference – standing on the promises of God.
And so with the call and the covenant in his heart, Abram began the journey, believing in God’s future as it was laid out before him. He believed in the blessing. He also believed that he – even he – was meant to be a blessing too.
And so it is for us – our own journeys. Just as Abram leaves behind the old and moves forward into the unknown, so we journey out of nothingness into something else. We look forward to a future yet unknown. But we do know two things – and maybe this is the old, old message encased in a new, new sermon.
First, God chose an unlikely pair on which to found a chosen people. But with my hair turning gray, I find that both comforting and deeply inspiring. I mean, if God can choose an elderly man and his equally elderly and barren wife to be the ones to begin the process that would bring the holy plan to fruition, then surely there is a role for you and me in this kingdom business as well.
As seminary professor Louis Smedes wrote, “What really matters is not whether Abraham is good or bad or cowardly or heroic, but that God pursues His design for the welfare of the human family with people like that -- in other words, people like us."
Even we who may feel past our prime, believing that there is nothing we can really contribute, we too we have important work to do as we journey toward God’s kingdom.
If we trust in the covenant – stand on the promises – just a fraction of how much Abram did, then I believe that we will have the energy and will to follow where God leads. You see, God lets no one off the hook.
And, second, the journey itself really does still continue, and we are children of that journey. It is up to us now. Abram was willing to take risks and embrace change. Though certainly cowardly at times and no doubt fearful for what might come, he stepped into the journey anyway, a journey that took this 75 year old man far from the old and thrust him into the new.
And so it must be for us. Whether we are twentysomethings or pushing 90 and beyond, God calls us to venture down unknown paths, at the end of which, we will never be the same.
As Methodist pastor, Geoff McElroy claims: “the journey is still before us, a journey to try and make the covenant real in this world, to enact those covenant promises, that we might be blessings ourselves to all the families of the earth.”
So, go. Go this Lenten season. God calls you. The journey beckons you and encourages you to move ahead in faith through the unknown, daring to trust in a greater vision for life – and new life. You are invited on a bold journey of exploration, and you are secure in God's keeping and blessing. (Seasons of the Spirit)
So, go. Follow God’s call, knowing that you are blessed because God blesses you. Go on your journey wherever it may lead because it will end to a place of restoration and newness. Go on your journey, believing as well that you can be a blessing to all whom you meet.
Rev. Nancy Foran
http://www.rvccme.org/
Friday, March 25, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Matthew 5:21-37 "It's All About Community"
"You have heard it said do not murder," Jesus preached.
Yep. Got that. Haven't killed anyone yet. Good for me….
“But I say - do not be angry”….Uh-oh.
“You have heard it said do not commit adultery," Jesus exhorted.
Haven't done that either. I am a faithful sort, so I am totally clean in this regard. Yay, me!…..
"But I say - do not look with lust" …Uh-oh.
Look at these verses, will you! Did you really listen to this third in three weeks excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount that we just read? Murder, anger, lust, adultery, swearing - all lumped together in one scriptural passage!
This is hardly easy material for any pastor or congregation to really delve into on a Sunday morning. Were you expecting to feel so uncomfortable when you walked in the door today?
You might never have been divorced – and maybe you have never experienced lust – and maybe you have never said a swear word – out loud, at least – but surely all of us have experienced anger at one time or another. No, this passage is a very difficult, almost downright scary, one on which to preach – or about which to be preached to.
What is Jesus thinking – laying out these exacting demands which, over the millennia since he spoke them, have formed if not official church policy then surely informal church culture. Are they meant to be taken literally? Are they even really meant to be taken seriously?
There are a couple of notions we must be aware of from the outset as we try to make sense of these verses for our own lives. First, the Gospel writer of Matthew starts with what is known – and that is the Jewish law. You might recall the final verse of Scripture that we read last week. As Jesus finished up talking about salt and light, he said that he had come not to abolish the law but rather to fulfill it.
Though Jesus does not specifically mention the Ten Commandments, he indirectly refers to them and, in doing so, shows the utmost respect for those ten holy phrases. In other words, let’s remember that Jesus’ role was not to replace or belittle or water down the Ten Commandments – the core of Jewish discipline.
Five years ago, when I was called to be pastor of this church and many of you were on the tail end of some pretty destructive theological conflicts, the rumor “out there” was that here at RVCC we did not believe in the Ten Commandments. Now how silly is that?
I like to think that we intuitively understood that living in the footsteps of Jesus involved a moral and ethical code that is not less than the Ten Commandments but significantly more. As Presbyterian pastor Susan Andrews writes, “Jesus is embodying the law, putting flesh on the law, and digging underneath the law in order to find God's deeper values and vision which the law points to….
Then Jesus….makes it concrete, giving…examples of how the (law, the) word becomes flesh in…our everyday lives. And as usual Jesus is neither polite nor politic. He takes on murder, adultery, divorce, lust.” Jesus is not throwing out the Jewish law, but rather he is looking above and below, in and around the ancient words, in order to tease out their deeper meaning about how God wants us to live.
The second thing to be aware of is the historical context in which Jesus spoke these words about anger and lust and divorce. We need to understand a bit about the culture in which Jesus’ listeners lived and to which the Ten Commandments had originally been given.
According to social scientist and theology professor, Bruce Mallina, Jewish society was an “honor-shame” society. It was conflict-driven and centered on a person’s honor, which was to be defended at all costs. Revenge was commonplace and expected.
Individual and family honor could suffer for many reasons - the dissolution of a marriage, adulterous behavior, or even debt leading to loss of land. These discords often led to war-like conflicts.
In fact, Bruce Mallina would say that the historical purpose of the Ten Commandments was to prevent inbred feuding because such community dissension could actually lead to annihilation of that community – not a good thing to have happen to God’s chosen people.
What Jesus offers in these verses from the Sermon on the Mount is a way out of the honor-shame impasses that had long dogged his people – and I would submit to a greater or lesser extent still characterize our world. Jesus suggests a new way of living, one grounded not in retaliation, but rather in reconciliation and restored relationships.
In these highly charged verses, Jesus is speaking to the difficulties of living within a community and to the rigors of maintaining healthy relationships. He does so through the lens of God’s personal code of morality. Without a doubt, it is a radicalized ethic.
As Eugene Petersen writes in his Biblical translation called “The Message,” “Trivialize even the smallest item in God's Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom.”
Without a doubt, then, these verses surely are meant to be taken seriously. But are they meant to be taken literally? Poking out your eye and cutting off your right hand when you do something wrong seems a bit out of line. Let’s look for a moment at what a couple of these admonitions might have meant to Jesus’ listeners – and what they might mean for us?
First and foremost, Jesus is not in punishment mode. Rather, he is seeking a way to restore relationships. When Jesus uses that common pattern of “You have heard that it was said . . ." contrasted with "But I say to you . . . ." he is focusing our attention, not on the act itself, but instead on the intention behind the act.
In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is grappling with motivation – the reason why someone would commit murder, be adulterous, insist upon divorce or even take oaths. Jesus is focusing our attention on what lies beyond the act itself – and what lies beyond is our relationships and ultimately how we treat one another.
And so, for example, Jesus looks beyond the act of murder to the reason behind it, which, in the end, is anger gone wild - not the occasional burst of ire, but rather the long term brooding outrage that eats away at us like a cancer. Such dark insidious anger is a barrier to restoring relationships. Such fury destroys rather than build ups our bonds with one another.
As UCC pastor, Patricia de Jong reminds us, “Our relationships with each other are crucial elements of our spiritual life. We cannot seek to know and understand God apart from our activity and our actions in human community.” We come to know God and God’s love through knowing and loving one another.
And so Jesus calls us to the radical ethic of reconciliation. He even puts this commitment to healing what is broken before the required temple offerings – and that is huge.
Now, Leigh, our new treasurer, might not be so keen on this – so I will say just imagine not putting your offering in the plate this morning but rather carrying it around with you for this next week, reminding you to consciously seek out peace and reconciliation in your life. Would you be different next Sunday?
Jesus lifts up divorce in the same way, perhaps because it is a most graphic example of a broken relationship. Divorce is a pain-filled acknowledgement that a particular human connection was not as God intended and did not reflect the covenant grounded in love that each one of us has with our Creator.
Divorce is an anguished example of what happens when reconciliation does not work or is not attempted. As Patricia de Jong reminds us, “Jesus is not trying to enhance the pain of divorce, but rather, he is upholding God's intentions for the marriage…covenant, a covenant of love which reflects the covenant between God and God's own people.”
In a way, Jesus shifts our attention from the actions we must avoid to the attitudes we must cultivate within ourselves. And at the root of those attitudes is love, not the Valentine’s Day kind of love that might be born out of in chemistry or mood, but rather the love that goes beyond what seems right according to the letter of the law and enters into the Spirit of what God wants for us, the love that heals and restores others, the love that values others.
When he speaks those difficult verses we read this morning, Jesus is announcing a new ethic. He is challenging us to create human relationships in a cutting edge, state of the art way by striving to express in those relationships the kind of love God has for us – that love which has such patience, such mercy, and such concern for what is best for the other. Jesus sets before us not the prohibitions of the law, but rather the beautiful vision of what is possible – and what will surely be – when we begin to doing our part to usher in God’s kingdom.
by Rev. Nancy Foran
Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Yep. Got that. Haven't killed anyone yet. Good for me….
“But I say - do not be angry”….Uh-oh.
“You have heard it said do not commit adultery," Jesus exhorted.
Haven't done that either. I am a faithful sort, so I am totally clean in this regard. Yay, me!…..
"But I say - do not look with lust" …Uh-oh.
Look at these verses, will you! Did you really listen to this third in three weeks excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount that we just read? Murder, anger, lust, adultery, swearing - all lumped together in one scriptural passage!
This is hardly easy material for any pastor or congregation to really delve into on a Sunday morning. Were you expecting to feel so uncomfortable when you walked in the door today?
You might never have been divorced – and maybe you have never experienced lust – and maybe you have never said a swear word – out loud, at least – but surely all of us have experienced anger at one time or another. No, this passage is a very difficult, almost downright scary, one on which to preach – or about which to be preached to.
What is Jesus thinking – laying out these exacting demands which, over the millennia since he spoke them, have formed if not official church policy then surely informal church culture. Are they meant to be taken literally? Are they even really meant to be taken seriously?
There are a couple of notions we must be aware of from the outset as we try to make sense of these verses for our own lives. First, the Gospel writer of Matthew starts with what is known – and that is the Jewish law. You might recall the final verse of Scripture that we read last week. As Jesus finished up talking about salt and light, he said that he had come not to abolish the law but rather to fulfill it.
Though Jesus does not specifically mention the Ten Commandments, he indirectly refers to them and, in doing so, shows the utmost respect for those ten holy phrases. In other words, let’s remember that Jesus’ role was not to replace or belittle or water down the Ten Commandments – the core of Jewish discipline.
Five years ago, when I was called to be pastor of this church and many of you were on the tail end of some pretty destructive theological conflicts, the rumor “out there” was that here at RVCC we did not believe in the Ten Commandments. Now how silly is that?
I like to think that we intuitively understood that living in the footsteps of Jesus involved a moral and ethical code that is not less than the Ten Commandments but significantly more. As Presbyterian pastor Susan Andrews writes, “Jesus is embodying the law, putting flesh on the law, and digging underneath the law in order to find God's deeper values and vision which the law points to….
Then Jesus….makes it concrete, giving…examples of how the (law, the) word becomes flesh in…our everyday lives. And as usual Jesus is neither polite nor politic. He takes on murder, adultery, divorce, lust.” Jesus is not throwing out the Jewish law, but rather he is looking above and below, in and around the ancient words, in order to tease out their deeper meaning about how God wants us to live.
The second thing to be aware of is the historical context in which Jesus spoke these words about anger and lust and divorce. We need to understand a bit about the culture in which Jesus’ listeners lived and to which the Ten Commandments had originally been given.
According to social scientist and theology professor, Bruce Mallina, Jewish society was an “honor-shame” society. It was conflict-driven and centered on a person’s honor, which was to be defended at all costs. Revenge was commonplace and expected.
Individual and family honor could suffer for many reasons - the dissolution of a marriage, adulterous behavior, or even debt leading to loss of land. These discords often led to war-like conflicts.
In fact, Bruce Mallina would say that the historical purpose of the Ten Commandments was to prevent inbred feuding because such community dissension could actually lead to annihilation of that community – not a good thing to have happen to God’s chosen people.
What Jesus offers in these verses from the Sermon on the Mount is a way out of the honor-shame impasses that had long dogged his people – and I would submit to a greater or lesser extent still characterize our world. Jesus suggests a new way of living, one grounded not in retaliation, but rather in reconciliation and restored relationships.
In these highly charged verses, Jesus is speaking to the difficulties of living within a community and to the rigors of maintaining healthy relationships. He does so through the lens of God’s personal code of morality. Without a doubt, it is a radicalized ethic.
As Eugene Petersen writes in his Biblical translation called “The Message,” “Trivialize even the smallest item in God's Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom.”
Without a doubt, then, these verses surely are meant to be taken seriously. But are they meant to be taken literally? Poking out your eye and cutting off your right hand when you do something wrong seems a bit out of line. Let’s look for a moment at what a couple of these admonitions might have meant to Jesus’ listeners – and what they might mean for us?
First and foremost, Jesus is not in punishment mode. Rather, he is seeking a way to restore relationships. When Jesus uses that common pattern of “You have heard that it was said . . ." contrasted with "But I say to you . . . ." he is focusing our attention, not on the act itself, but instead on the intention behind the act.
In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is grappling with motivation – the reason why someone would commit murder, be adulterous, insist upon divorce or even take oaths. Jesus is focusing our attention on what lies beyond the act itself – and what lies beyond is our relationships and ultimately how we treat one another.
And so, for example, Jesus looks beyond the act of murder to the reason behind it, which, in the end, is anger gone wild - not the occasional burst of ire, but rather the long term brooding outrage that eats away at us like a cancer. Such dark insidious anger is a barrier to restoring relationships. Such fury destroys rather than build ups our bonds with one another.
As UCC pastor, Patricia de Jong reminds us, “Our relationships with each other are crucial elements of our spiritual life. We cannot seek to know and understand God apart from our activity and our actions in human community.” We come to know God and God’s love through knowing and loving one another.
And so Jesus calls us to the radical ethic of reconciliation. He even puts this commitment to healing what is broken before the required temple offerings – and that is huge.
Now, Leigh, our new treasurer, might not be so keen on this – so I will say just imagine not putting your offering in the plate this morning but rather carrying it around with you for this next week, reminding you to consciously seek out peace and reconciliation in your life. Would you be different next Sunday?
Jesus lifts up divorce in the same way, perhaps because it is a most graphic example of a broken relationship. Divorce is a pain-filled acknowledgement that a particular human connection was not as God intended and did not reflect the covenant grounded in love that each one of us has with our Creator.
Divorce is an anguished example of what happens when reconciliation does not work or is not attempted. As Patricia de Jong reminds us, “Jesus is not trying to enhance the pain of divorce, but rather, he is upholding God's intentions for the marriage…covenant, a covenant of love which reflects the covenant between God and God's own people.”
In a way, Jesus shifts our attention from the actions we must avoid to the attitudes we must cultivate within ourselves. And at the root of those attitudes is love, not the Valentine’s Day kind of love that might be born out of in chemistry or mood, but rather the love that goes beyond what seems right according to the letter of the law and enters into the Spirit of what God wants for us, the love that heals and restores others, the love that values others.
When he speaks those difficult verses we read this morning, Jesus is announcing a new ethic. He is challenging us to create human relationships in a cutting edge, state of the art way by striving to express in those relationships the kind of love God has for us – that love which has such patience, such mercy, and such concern for what is best for the other. Jesus sets before us not the prohibitions of the law, but rather the beautiful vision of what is possible – and what will surely be – when we begin to doing our part to usher in God’s kingdom.
by Rev. Nancy Foran
Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Matthew 5:1-12 "The Way Life Should Be"
When Jesus called his twelve disciples, they had no clue what they were in for. We found that out last week when we heard the story of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, the fishermen who dropped everything – nets, fathers, homes – to follow this itinerant preacher whom they had met during a casual encounter on the lakeshore of Galilee one warm summer morning. The four strapping twentysomethings left all they had ever known - on a wing and a prayer – and not much in the way of concrete information.
Put yourself in their sandals for a moment. Imagine how shell-shocked you would have been as the early days of your newfound life stretched into weeks away from home. Picture yourself as they were - on the sidelines, watching Jesus, the man they hardly knew, not only heal the sick and the lame (which was impressive in and of itself), but also empower those who were at the end of their ropes, comfort the ones who had lost everything, and embrace the moments when he encouraged cooperation and brought peace to strained relationships along the way. Imagine the disciples asking one another: What is this man all about anyway?
Perhaps Jesus sensed their bewilderment because, according to the Gospel writer of Matthew, he did not leave the four fishermen and their compatriots in the dark for too long. You see, we find out in the very next chapter of the Gospel of Matthew that one day, though crowds of people followed him, Jesus took his disciples off, “up a hill,” we are told. And there he gathered together Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the others and enlightened them. How fortunate we are – through the Gospel of Matthew - to be eavesdroppers on these ancient teachable moments!
What gist of what he taught them is what we call “The Sermon on the Mount.” These three chapters in our gospel narrative are really a collection of short pithy sayings and insights about life, love, morality, and God.
Most likely, Jesus did not speak all of them at one time or in one place. However, the Gospel writer of Matthew chose to present them to us all neatly compiled – much as the Lucan gospel writer does. However, all that really does not matter because the setting in which Jesus might have actually spoken these timeless words hardly detracts from their beauty and truth.
Jesus begins by teaching his twelve followers about what constitutes true happiness, true joy, and what makes a life truly worth living. We call these first teachings the Beatitudes, and I can not help but wonder whether the disciples were as thunderstruck by what must have seemed like overwhelming demands as we ought to be when we read the plain language of this text.
A few years ago, a Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper published an article entitled: "How Do You Measure Up As A Man?” It was based on a research study that explored the criteria we in our society use to judge the successful – and therefore presumably the happiest, most joy-filled male – the one who knows how to truly live. Here are the top eight criteria:
1. His ability to make and conserve money.
2. The cost, style, and age of his car.
3. How much hair he has.
4. His strength and size.
5. The job he holds and how successful he is at it.
6. What sports he likes
7. How many clubs he belongs to.
8. His aggressiveness and reliability.
Frankly, I find those criteria dreadfully shallow. However, I do think people have used them – or ones similar – going all the way back to Jesus’ time…1. Hs ability to make and conserve shekels, 2. The number of sheep he owns, 3. His place in the temple hierarchy – you get the picture.
Knowing how un-self-reflective people can be at times, we should not be surprised then to read that the core curriculum Jesus outlined for his disciples turned these shallow criteria topsy turvy and instead outlined a completely different way to experience happiness, joy, and a life worth living.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are poor in spirit, Jesus said, who are not full of themselves and their ability to make and conserve money, but rather have room for God – a lot of room for God – who rely upon the Holy One for direction rather than the values of their culture.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who lament and let go of all that is dead and dying in their own lives – all the ephemeral things – their strength and size, not to mention the people and relationships who sap their energy, and, of course, the old ways of doing things - who also weep over the grief and pain they witness in the world around them.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are meek – but not in our usual sense of the word, not the weak, the milquetoasts, the mousy, the wimpy – but rather the ones who possess a silent strength deeply rooted in a faith in God, trusting that in the end good will prevail over any evil the world can create, meek like Jesus in the judgment hall before Pilate.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who long for, who ache and agonize for things to be as God would have them be, who will do whatever lies within their power to bring healing where there is hurt, justice where there is injustice, equality where there is inequality, right where there is wrong, who will not simply look the other way.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who have hearts overflowing with compassion, whose souls are moved by pain and suffering, who have the innate capacity to walk in another’s shoes and to understand intuitively that the one who suffers could just as easily be themselves.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who love God more than they love themselves and their possessions, who have the clarity of vision to see that loving God – and allowing themselves to be loved by God - is enough to transform their lives and their world and is more than any amount of money can buy.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who understand that God calls them to bring peace to the world and to their own lives and relationships, but not just the absence of war or conflict. In the end, this peace is the one that passes all our understanding, for it is shalom, healing, wholeness, prosperity, reconciliation, and ultimately communion or oneness with God.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are willing to pay the price for following Jesus - because there is a price - who commit themselves to honesty, integrity, justice, and healing, understanding that the world will not take to them kindly – but in the end it will all be worthwhile.
“Yikes!” we might say. “I can’t live up to this stuff. These Beatitudes are way over the top. I am out of here.”
But wait! If that is what you think about the Beatitudes, that you better hustle off because you can not live up to them, then you are reading them all wrong. You have not really heard them.
It is like the scene in the Monty Python movie, “Life of Brian.” What did he say?
I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
Really listen to the words here. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is clear that the Beatitudes are not standards that we are required to reach. They are not conditions or terms. They are simply blessings, statements of fact about what will bring happiness, what will bring joy, what will make life truly worth living.
The Beatitudes are a vision, a beautiful vision of the world with God at the center and God at every turn along the way, urging and challenging us to step deeper into the waters of faith, deeper into the Divine Presence that is all around us. As UCC pastor Susan Blain writes, Jesus is “not demanding of us extravagant sacrifice or liturgical purity… God is calling us to follow Christ into the world to engage in a lifetime of faithful, creative, courageous, community-building love.”
Those of us who are into good grammar might already have noticed that, as seminary professor Mary Hinkle Shore, points out, the Beatitudes are in the indicative. They are statements of fact. They are not demands. They are not conditions. They are not “if you do this or that, then you are blessed.
The Beatitudes are merely a statement of the way things are, “a statement of the world turned upside down, where those who mourn are comforted rather than abandoned or merely pitied, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied, not ignored or shouted down, where the meek inherit the earth rather than being ground into the dust.
"Right," someone will say. Or "Get real." (Life is not like that.
But, wait, suspend disbelief for a moment, and ask yourself this question:) What if Jesus is describing the real world, and we go around all day thinking the other world – the world as we know it - is the (ultimate) truth about us and our neighbors?” What if all along we have been living a lie? What if Jesus really is right?
“The meek, the mourning, the persecuted, the merciful: are they blessed in the present and given a trustworthy promise concerning the shape of the future? Or are they just weak, foolish, and out of touch with reality?...
(I think) the Sermon on the Mount (and most particularly for us this morning, the Beatitudes) is Jesus' Dream Speech of a better way, a better home, and his sketch of what the place will look like when we (finally) arrive.” The Beatitudes are not pie in the sky. They outline the way life should be.
So do not ignore the Beatitudes because you know that you can not live up to them. Do not disregard the Beatitudes because you think they are conditions for God’s blessings.
Rather cherish them – keep them safe in your hearts – so when given a choice – a choice to be:
Full of yourself or full of God
Lamenting the death of the old or embracing the new
Being silently strong or crumbling beneath some cultural expectation
Making even a small thing right or looking the other way
Walking in another shoes or standing on the sidelines in your own shoes
Loving God more than loving yourself
Striving for peace rather than ignoring or inciting conflict
Being willing to pay the price of the Gospel message or deciding it is not worth the cost
When you are given those choices, you can, first, recognize that you have a choice, and, second, you can make an informed decision.
Cherish the Beatitudes, so you can remember just what in the long run brings happiness, brings joy, what makes a life truly worth living, a life which God blesses.
Put yourself in their sandals for a moment. Imagine how shell-shocked you would have been as the early days of your newfound life stretched into weeks away from home. Picture yourself as they were - on the sidelines, watching Jesus, the man they hardly knew, not only heal the sick and the lame (which was impressive in and of itself), but also empower those who were at the end of their ropes, comfort the ones who had lost everything, and embrace the moments when he encouraged cooperation and brought peace to strained relationships along the way. Imagine the disciples asking one another: What is this man all about anyway?
Perhaps Jesus sensed their bewilderment because, according to the Gospel writer of Matthew, he did not leave the four fishermen and their compatriots in the dark for too long. You see, we find out in the very next chapter of the Gospel of Matthew that one day, though crowds of people followed him, Jesus took his disciples off, “up a hill,” we are told. And there he gathered together Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the others and enlightened them. How fortunate we are – through the Gospel of Matthew - to be eavesdroppers on these ancient teachable moments!
What gist of what he taught them is what we call “The Sermon on the Mount.” These three chapters in our gospel narrative are really a collection of short pithy sayings and insights about life, love, morality, and God.
Most likely, Jesus did not speak all of them at one time or in one place. However, the Gospel writer of Matthew chose to present them to us all neatly compiled – much as the Lucan gospel writer does. However, all that really does not matter because the setting in which Jesus might have actually spoken these timeless words hardly detracts from their beauty and truth.
Jesus begins by teaching his twelve followers about what constitutes true happiness, true joy, and what makes a life truly worth living. We call these first teachings the Beatitudes, and I can not help but wonder whether the disciples were as thunderstruck by what must have seemed like overwhelming demands as we ought to be when we read the plain language of this text.
A few years ago, a Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper published an article entitled: "How Do You Measure Up As A Man?” It was based on a research study that explored the criteria we in our society use to judge the successful – and therefore presumably the happiest, most joy-filled male – the one who knows how to truly live. Here are the top eight criteria:
1. His ability to make and conserve money.
2. The cost, style, and age of his car.
3. How much hair he has.
4. His strength and size.
5. The job he holds and how successful he is at it.
6. What sports he likes
7. How many clubs he belongs to.
8. His aggressiveness and reliability.
Frankly, I find those criteria dreadfully shallow. However, I do think people have used them – or ones similar – going all the way back to Jesus’ time…1. Hs ability to make and conserve shekels, 2. The number of sheep he owns, 3. His place in the temple hierarchy – you get the picture.
Knowing how un-self-reflective people can be at times, we should not be surprised then to read that the core curriculum Jesus outlined for his disciples turned these shallow criteria topsy turvy and instead outlined a completely different way to experience happiness, joy, and a life worth living.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are poor in spirit, Jesus said, who are not full of themselves and their ability to make and conserve money, but rather have room for God – a lot of room for God – who rely upon the Holy One for direction rather than the values of their culture.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who lament and let go of all that is dead and dying in their own lives – all the ephemeral things – their strength and size, not to mention the people and relationships who sap their energy, and, of course, the old ways of doing things - who also weep over the grief and pain they witness in the world around them.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are meek – but not in our usual sense of the word, not the weak, the milquetoasts, the mousy, the wimpy – but rather the ones who possess a silent strength deeply rooted in a faith in God, trusting that in the end good will prevail over any evil the world can create, meek like Jesus in the judgment hall before Pilate.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who long for, who ache and agonize for things to be as God would have them be, who will do whatever lies within their power to bring healing where there is hurt, justice where there is injustice, equality where there is inequality, right where there is wrong, who will not simply look the other way.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who have hearts overflowing with compassion, whose souls are moved by pain and suffering, who have the innate capacity to walk in another’s shoes and to understand intuitively that the one who suffers could just as easily be themselves.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who love God more than they love themselves and their possessions, who have the clarity of vision to see that loving God – and allowing themselves to be loved by God - is enough to transform their lives and their world and is more than any amount of money can buy.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who understand that God calls them to bring peace to the world and to their own lives and relationships, but not just the absence of war or conflict. In the end, this peace is the one that passes all our understanding, for it is shalom, healing, wholeness, prosperity, reconciliation, and ultimately communion or oneness with God.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are willing to pay the price for following Jesus - because there is a price - who commit themselves to honesty, integrity, justice, and healing, understanding that the world will not take to them kindly – but in the end it will all be worthwhile.
“Yikes!” we might say. “I can’t live up to this stuff. These Beatitudes are way over the top. I am out of here.”
But wait! If that is what you think about the Beatitudes, that you better hustle off because you can not live up to them, then you are reading them all wrong. You have not really heard them.
It is like the scene in the Monty Python movie, “Life of Brian.” What did he say?
I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
Really listen to the words here. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is clear that the Beatitudes are not standards that we are required to reach. They are not conditions or terms. They are simply blessings, statements of fact about what will bring happiness, what will bring joy, what will make life truly worth living.
The Beatitudes are a vision, a beautiful vision of the world with God at the center and God at every turn along the way, urging and challenging us to step deeper into the waters of faith, deeper into the Divine Presence that is all around us. As UCC pastor Susan Blain writes, Jesus is “not demanding of us extravagant sacrifice or liturgical purity… God is calling us to follow Christ into the world to engage in a lifetime of faithful, creative, courageous, community-building love.”
Those of us who are into good grammar might already have noticed that, as seminary professor Mary Hinkle Shore, points out, the Beatitudes are in the indicative. They are statements of fact. They are not demands. They are not conditions. They are not “if you do this or that, then you are blessed.
The Beatitudes are merely a statement of the way things are, “a statement of the world turned upside down, where those who mourn are comforted rather than abandoned or merely pitied, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied, not ignored or shouted down, where the meek inherit the earth rather than being ground into the dust.
"Right," someone will say. Or "Get real." (Life is not like that.
But, wait, suspend disbelief for a moment, and ask yourself this question:) What if Jesus is describing the real world, and we go around all day thinking the other world – the world as we know it - is the (ultimate) truth about us and our neighbors?” What if all along we have been living a lie? What if Jesus really is right?
“The meek, the mourning, the persecuted, the merciful: are they blessed in the present and given a trustworthy promise concerning the shape of the future? Or are they just weak, foolish, and out of touch with reality?...
(I think) the Sermon on the Mount (and most particularly for us this morning, the Beatitudes) is Jesus' Dream Speech of a better way, a better home, and his sketch of what the place will look like when we (finally) arrive.” The Beatitudes are not pie in the sky. They outline the way life should be.
So do not ignore the Beatitudes because you know that you can not live up to them. Do not disregard the Beatitudes because you think they are conditions for God’s blessings.
Rather cherish them – keep them safe in your hearts – so when given a choice – a choice to be:
Full of yourself or full of God
Lamenting the death of the old or embracing the new
Being silently strong or crumbling beneath some cultural expectation
Making even a small thing right or looking the other way
Walking in another shoes or standing on the sidelines in your own shoes
Loving God more than loving yourself
Striving for peace rather than ignoring or inciting conflict
Being willing to pay the price of the Gospel message or deciding it is not worth the cost
When you are given those choices, you can, first, recognize that you have a choice, and, second, you can make an informed decision.
Cherish the Beatitudes, so you can remember just what in the long run brings happiness, brings joy, what makes a life truly worth living, a life which God blesses.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Revelation 21:1-4 "All-Saints' Remembrances"
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
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, 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
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