Holding on and letting go

Genesis 32: 22-31; Luke 18: 1-8
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
October 20, 2013 

Jacob and the Angel, Anthony Armstrong

About three weeks ago, at the beginning of the government shutdown, Susan Thistlethwaite, former president of Chicago Theological Seminary, published an article in the Washington Post entitled “Why Republicans Long for a Debt Apocalypse”. In it she quotes a Washington Post/ABC poll in which 66% of Republicans want their representatives to cause an economic catastrophe. She writes that this is something more than just crazy talk. She goes on to remind us of Freud’s theory, that when human beings are overwhelmed with fear and anxiety, the psyche, individual or collective, can induce a death wish, what the Greeks called thanatos.

The citizenry of the United States has been living with the “War on Terror” for 12 years, as well as wars we fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and an economy in recession since 2008. All of this has been occurring during a period of immense social, climate, and technological changes, some of which happen faster than some of us can adapt to them. According to Thistlethwaite, all of this pent-up anxiety and fear has produced within our political culture a desire to ‘just crash the whole thing’.

As I was preparing to move here, I found it increasingly difficult to leave decisions open-ended, or I would wed myself passionately to a particular option. I have not lived alone for 20 years. I have not moved for 15 years, the longest I have ever gone without changing my address. As the anxiety escalated within me, I was frightened that living apart from my family could have the power to separate us for good. There were times I was crabby, tense, and difficult to live with. And when I read Susan Thistlethwaite’s article, I realized that I too was exhibiting my own version of the urge ‘to just crash the whole thing’.

Yet even when I became aware of this very human urge toward implosion, later that night I had a waking dream in which I rose out of bed, ready to fight some dark threat, my heart beating as if I were confronted by a burglar. It was as if my unconscious mind was saying, (pull out Darth Vader mask) “You don’t know the power of the dark side. You can’t end the turbulence within so easily. Hang in there, keep wrestling until you receive the blessing.”

Since humanity has been able to reflect on itself and human beings have perceived themselves as individuals and not just as a member of a group, the question of why do we move toward self-destruction, why do we act on our darker impulses has persisted. We have been wrestling with God on this point for millennia and we have not come any closer to an answer that gives us any peace. We have witnessed the power of prayer in times of inner and outward conflict and yet we have also experienced its apparent failure, when it seems the dark side has won.

How do we pray and not lose heart sometimes? We are all shades of light and dark, sunshine and shadow. Often, in the midst of change and transition, it can be daunting to trust the unknown, seeing only one step at a time. God never promised us a rose garden. God offers no guarantees; that’s why it’s called faith. And so, does the efficacy of our prayers depend on our faith or how frequently we pray? Is it how we word our prayers, how specific or general our requests? Would things have turned out the way they did anyway, regardless of our prayers?



In my experience, it seems to me that, in the American Christian experience of faith, too easily we grasp onto God and too easily we let go. The idea of God is something we should approach with fear and trembling as much as with comfort and release. The same could also be said about letting go of the idea of God. Too often, in the emptiness that our fear or anger or despair creates, we latch onto God as a cosmic cure-all, in a desperate attempt to assuage our very natural, very human dark side. We also tend to let go of God in that very same emptiness, when the God of our perceptions fails us.

There are two fundamental questions at the core of our human experience that as yet have no once-and-for-all, satisfactory answer: one, where did this existence we live in come from? How was energy transformed into matter? What started all of this? And two, where is all this headed? What is the purpose of the universe? To put it in terms of human experience, where did we come from, how did each of us unique persons come to be? And what will happen to us when we die? Any of those questions has the power to create an aching emptiness that often we can be so desperate to fill.

The majority of human beings have come to believe that there is some sort of higher power at work in this world, that there is something beyond what science and our five senses can tell us. There is a mystery beyond our present capacity to understand. Author Joseph Campbell wrote "We keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact. God is simply our own notion of something that is symbolic of transcendence and mystery. The mystery is what's important." But how do we encounter the mystery, the unanswerable, the ineffable?

Ironically, we generally avoid these existential questions at church. Ron Brown, one of my Connecticut colleagues, says that there’s not a great deal of wrestling in the church. There’s plenty of what he calls ‘rassling’: arguments over small details, tussles over relatively unimportant matters. But what the church needs is more wrestling. For instance, what about wrestling with the push and pull of the Holy Spirit and how we are called to be church not only today but in the future? What about wrestling with how to be like Jesus in our daily lives? What about wrestling with forgiveness and self-acceptance?

In these days it’s too easy to hang on to a feel-good faith or to let go of it when it runs empty. It’s hard hanging on to that mystery called God when what we’re wrestling with is the poverty or oppression of our neighbors or the cancer eating away at our life or an addiction compelling us to fill that emptiness inside us or the darkness seeping into our souls. It’s hard hanging on to God when we’re feeling spiritually hurt, especially when the church has been involved. And it is then that a lower power can take the place of our higher power.

Jacob had the nerve to hang on until the blessing came, and we are challenged to do the same. Yes, he came away with a limp, but God never promised us a struggle-free life and certainly not struggle-free community. God did promise to help us and to remain faithful and love us unconditionally—forever.

Jesus dares us to be persistent, even nagging, in our need for justice. God’s mercy is not of the quick-fix variety or a security blanket or a bulletproof shield protecting our bodies from all harm. Luke’s gospel was speaking to early followers of Jesus—Jews and Gentiles—around the time that the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Few, if any, of Luke’s readers may have known Jesus; most did not. They were hopeful of his return but also despairing over their circumstances of persecution and what appeared to be permanent exile. In this parable, Jesus is telling his present disciples and those through the ages that God’s mercy will come quickly.

But how quickly, they and we wonder? People were perishing; communities of faith were growing weary, the power to transform seemingly ebbing away from them. Sounds familiar, yes? And so Jesus compels the disciples to engage in a spiritual discipline that is the same for disciples of the 21st century: to pray always and to not lose heart. And it is possible to pray always and not lose heart because prayer is a team sport.

Prayer that sustains us is more, though, than talking to God and a list of our requests. Rabbi Harold Kushner writes that prayer is “to come into the presence of God in the hope that we will be changed by doing so.” In prayer we persevere with God, we wrestle with God, and we hang on until the blessing comes, until justice is done and mercy is granted. Prayer does not take us out of the world but brings us face to face with it and with God’s dream for the world: that blessed community of peace and righteousness for the whole of creation. In prayer we hang onto God for dear life and we let go of the outcome, trusting that God has not only our best interests, but the wholeness of all at heart.



The Serenity Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer are ones we can say through the day to help us not lose heart, to help us not let go of our hearts. I’d like to introduce you to another prayer to take with you, one that has power, like any other prayer, to bring change and healing: “Holy Spirit, if this direction or course of action is right for me (or for our church), let it become more firmly rooted and established in my life (or in our life together). If this is wrong for me (or for our church), let it become less important to me, and let it be increasingly removed from my life (or our life together).”

Are we ready to hang on for love and healing and understanding? Are we ready to let go of the schedule, the timeline, the expectation, the outcome and trust God? Are we ready for blessing, for justice, for mercy? Are we ready to be saved from ourselves? Are we ready to go deeper with God that we would be raised to new life? And may the people of God say, “Amen”.


[1] Flora Slosson Wuellner. Prayer, Stress and Our Inner Wounds. Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 1985, pg. 78.

Enough is enough

Our self-worth has nothing to do with anything other than we draw breath!

The Church Improv

General Association of Ministers in Connecticut
Silver Lake Conference Center, Sharon, CT
Sept. 23, 2013

(Every year since 1709 the clergy of the Missionary Society of Connecticut - now the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ - have gathered for renewal and to conduct business.  This gathering is called, with no sense of poetry, the General Association of Ministers in Connecticut. It is even said that when the Congregational Church was linked with the governance of the state, that it was this body that nominated the governor!

Since its inception, the gathering now includes educators, members in discernment [those considering the ministry as their vocation], and church musicians.  This year I was asked to be on the planning committee and to give the Moderator's address.  The term 'moderator' simply means 'the one on the pointy end of  the ship'.  Anyway, here are the words I shared with my colleagues in ministry.)





Of the almost 22 years that I’ve been ordained in the ministry of the United Church of Christ, 16 of those have been spent in temporary ministry settings so that I could be home with my two daughters. I’ve served as an interim, filled in for colleagues on sabbatical, and offered pulpit supply in 24 churches in the CT Conference, not to mention a small handful in the OH Conference. I’ve had to remain light on my feet, be flexible, and willing. Maybe we ought to pronounce it ‘pulpit supplely’. You might say my ministry here has been a bit of an improvisation.

Our keynoter, Kirk Byron Jones, will be speaking about, among other things, stillness, awareness, and playfulness. Playfulness is something I can really groove with. A couple of years ago I read Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants, in which she recalls her days as a member of the Second City improv theater in Chicago. Did you know that there are rules for doing improvisational comedy? You wouldn’t think so to look at it. There’s no scenery, no props, and no script; it’s just made up as the actors go along.

Even though the Christian faith has a script (holy scriptures—what we call the Bible), some fabulous scenery (the whole of creation and the living of our lives), and a few props (the cross, bread, juice, the waters of baptism), the religious establishment is sometimes accused of making it up as it goes along. Indeed there are some tenets of Christian doctrine that seem as though they were conjured from the human imagination: original sin, the virgin birth, even the resurrection. For hundreds of years there have been rules about what is orthodox belief and what is heresy; rules about what makes a faith community the Church rather than just a social club.

Thankfully, church life has loosened up some over the years. Indeed there are some who would say it has loosened up too much. In the United Church of Christ there are no tests of faith, no creeds we must adhere to. We recognize that everyone is on a journey of faith, that every relationship with God and with the church is unique. Yet there is also an ancient tradition that goes all the way back to Jesus and his disciples, and it is this faith and this community that we strive to emulate.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that Jesus knew the rules of improvisational comedy. Not that he was ever trying to be funny, sometimes I wish he was, but according to the comedy law laid out by Tina Fey, it seems like Jesus lived by these four simple rules. The rules of improv would also make for some interesting by-laws for what it means to be the church.

1. The first rule is to agree, to say yes to whatever is being created. So if your partner says “Freeze, I have a water pistol,” you can’t reply with “No, it’s not. It’s your finger,” because then the scene has come to a stop rather than going forward. This rule reminds us to keep an open mind to what is going on around us. Jesus is God’s big “yes” to creation. “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.” And Jesus kept echoing that ‘yes’ throughout his ministry: yes to justice, yes to peace, to healing, to the poor and the marginalized, to women and children, to foreigners and strangers, to tax collectors and prostitutes, yes to the incarcerated, yes even to death on a cross and to those who died with him. And then that huge ‘yes’ to life and love on Easter morning.

And so we can experiment in church, we can say yes to what is being created and take a chance, risk looking foolish because we just might be surprised by the Holy Spirit, who is the queen of sacred improv if ever there was one. “Keep an open mind and remain supplely” helps us to be able to respond to the Spirit with a light heart.

2. The second rule to is to add something of your own, to say ‘yes, and’, to agree but to also go on with what has been handed to you. If I say, “Gee, it sure is humid,” and you say, “Yeah…”, then there’s really no where to go. But if you say, “What do you expect from living inside a giant rice cooker?” or “Yeah, it’s so humid even my wrinkles can’t hold out” or “I told you we shouldn’t have crawled into the belly of a whale”, then we’ve got somewhere to go. When Jesus says to Thomas ‘put your hand in my side’, Thomas doesn’t say “Eew, yuck! No, thanks!” Rather, he adds his ‘yes, and’, his confession of faith: “My Lord and my God!”

So someone suggests that the youth group hold a car wash to raise money. No, not very original. But what if instead of saying no, we said “Yes, and we’ll all dress up in costume or wear funny hats and take flyers to work, I know someone who could DJ, we could do a cookout too.” “Yes, and” allows the creative energy to flow.

3. The third rule is to make statements. If we ask questions all the time, we put pressure on our partner to come up with all the answers. If we point out all the obstacles, it then becomes up to our partner to solve them. Whatever the difficulty is, we need to be part of the solution rather than add to the problem. People were always asking Jesus questions, expecting him to have the answers. Sometimes he would ask a question in return but he usually would follow it up with not only a statement but a story. A story that left his hearers sometimes in a quandary, that is, having received an answer that sounded more like a mystery. Jesus reminds us that faith is not about what is certain but what is uncertain. Improvising is all about uncertainty and not knowing what is going to happen next. Which sometimes can turn all that vision planning on its head.

4. Finally, there are no mistakes, only opportunities. The disciple Thomas, who always gets a bad rap, wasn’t there the first time Jesus appeared to the rest of the disciples: rather than a mistake it was an opportunity for Jesus to teach and to help his friends understand what it means to believe and to be in community with those who may have doubts. Jesus and the disciples could have chastised Thomas for missing out the first time. Instead we have a beautifully improvised scene in which those who doubt are included and we receive the blessing of the words “come to believe”, illustrating that faith and living in community are not a place to arrive at but a journey, a process, an improvisation.

Like any good improvisation, Jesus worked with what he had and created something new. He had fishermen, tax collectors, zealots, a woman healed of her demons, sinners galore, and he made community out of them, community that would not only survive his horrific death, but would proclaim him risen from that death. He had some bread and wine and from them came a meal to whet our appetite for justice and righteousness and to remind us that we do not do this alone. He had a death that looked like a monumental mistake, the biggest failure history had even seen, but was actually a transformational opportunity for rebirth and the galvanization of a movement that has not seen its equal.

But do we leave room for improvisation in our faith communities? I often wonder if our expectations for worship and leadership have gotten a bit out of whack. We want to fill our spirits, what Anne Lamott calls our ‘God-sized hole’, but nothing ever seems to be enough. It feels like we keep upping the ante, increasing our desire for the transcendent experience of God, when the immanent is right in our face.

Worship is often more like a thoroughly-scripted performance, and when it’s not, we get nervous. We strive for perfection, when the Greek word for perfect is better translated as complete, and it is God who completes our improvisation, working with us like a jazz master. If we really want to have an experience of God in our worship, then let us be willing to tell the truth about ourselves and accept one another and ourselves as we are; let us forgive one another as God has already forgiven us; and if we really want to step up our game, let us love our perceived enemy for surely we have been a thorn in someone else’s side. Jesus heals us and sets us free to leave the armor and the weapons and the façade at the door and then abandon them after our worship.

God is the one who completes our improvisation. If we want God to play with us, we have to leave some wiggle room, some room for stillness, some room for playfulness, to just be. Which makes it possible for us to become aware that the love of God has always been shining, just waiting for us to come out and play.

Choosing God

Deut. 30: 15-20; Jeremiah 18: 1-11

New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE

September 8, 2013

(This was my candidating sermon for the New Ark United Church of Christ in Newark, DE.  They voted unanimously to call me as their next settled pastor.  I begin there on October 15.)

My oldest daughter Andrea has a standard phrase whenever she teases me and pushes my buttons:  “I couldn’t resist, Mom!”  Then I give her ‘the look’, she laughs at me, and so it goes.

One day I realized that she was making a choice, that we both were, and that, if we wanted to, we didn’t have to do the same old thing every time.  She said, “Oh, I couldn’t resist, Mom!”  I replied, “Oh yes you could.  There were two paths in front of you.  One was rather ordinary and plain, the other bright and shiny as a penny and you chose the bright and shiny one, you did!”  And we both laughed.

Every day such choices and possibilities exist before us.  Some feel like old habits and ruts, others like a warm, comfortable piece of clothing, some like that bright, shiny penny, others seem empty of any kind of thrill or joy.  If we take time to think about it, our whole reality is created, moment by moment, by our choices.  What we think, what we feel, what we do.  What our attitude will be, what kind of mood we’re in, whether or not we’ll be hurt or annoyed or just amused by someone’s actions.  And from these choices come a myriad of possibilities that affect not only our reality but others’ as well.

We’re convinced that we’ve been conditioned in some way to respond, to choose the way we always have.  We were raised a certain way, with certain values, a mix of good and bad experiences.  Sometimes it’s hard to see a way through our present situation, to choose another course.  Most of the time, we don’t like knowing that we possess the ability to be co-creators of our reality.  It would mean we would have to take some responsibility for shaping the way things are.

John Calvin, a 16^th century theologian and Protestant reformer, believed that before the creation, God predestined the fate of the universe; that some of God’s creation was made for grace and salvation and some of it was not.  Yet humankind was also given free will and the option to reject that saving grace.

 

In the readings from both Deuteronomy and Jeremiah, God’s people are given a choice, between life and death, good and evil, blessings and curses, listening to God’s messenger or ignoring him at their peril.  It hardly sounds like free will.  Life or death?  That’s a no brainer!  And yet listen to the next verse in the reading from Jeremiah: “But they'll [God’s people] just say, 'Why should we? What's the point? We'll live just the way we've always lived, doom or no doom.”

Fear has never really worked as a coercive to get us to choose the next right thing.  It’s also given the God of the Hebrew scriptures a really bad, undeserved rap.  Actually, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah were written during and after the Babylonian exile, after the bad choices had been made, after the doom had happened.  God’s people, in retrospect, realized that their stubbornness and their unwillingness to be shaped by God led to their destruction.  And yet God continues to reach out to God’s people, again and again, offering life, blessing and goodness when we would rather die than surrender.

It’s words like surrender, obedience and repentance that make faith leave a bad taste in our mouths.  In the words of the poet William Ernest Henley, we like to think that we are the masters of our fate, the captains of our soul.  We are when it comes to our attitude and our outlook on life; no one can choose that for us unless we give them that power.  But resisting God will do us no good.  Though we may be able to master our moments, God is the master of all space and time and we do indeed ignore that life-giving wisdom at our peril.

God is the master-potter, an artist working with an ever-changing medium called the creation.  God is still discovering how to work with us earthen vessels, still shaping us, still creating us and creating through us.  There are still possibilities untold: everlasting peace, the end of hunger, poverty, violence and oppression, a new heaven and a new earth but also destruction, torment, death, extinction.  What will we choose?  Which path will we take?  What do our choices about how we live speak to the God to whom we still need to surrender?

 

All it takes is one step: one step toward life, one step toward blessing, one step toward God.  In any twelve step program one does not agree to do all twelve steps—just to begin with the first one.  And that first step is all about surrender, that God knows better than we do how to end the insanity and how to begin to live.  Author and Quaker Parker Palmer wrote that faith is less about taking a big leap and more about taking one more step.  It’s all about doing the next right thing, whatever that may be.

Humanity’s relationship with God is changing, evolving, as it always has been.  In our faith tradition, in the beginning and ever since, God demands loyalty, obedience, and covenants were built upon that foundation.  “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.”

With Jesus we are invited to follow, to go, to live as Jesus lived, to pick up our cross and die to ourselves.  In the death of Jesus on the cross, in our baptism and affirmation of it, and whenever we break bread together, we are given the covenant of community, of belonging, of being loyal to each other.

It is said that we are now living or making the transition into the Age of the Spirit.  Not just what astrologers might call the Age of Aquarius, which is typically associated with, among other things, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, Idealism, modernization, rebellion, nonconformity, veracity, and perseverance.  These qualities are certainly part of the Age of the Holy Spirit as well, but I am speaking of something more.

The Age of the Holy Spirit is one of transcending differences and opposites, an age of oneness, connectedness, relationship, and kinship to all living things through a living Spirit.  In the Age of the Spirit there is no longer “us” and “them” but only “us”.  It is a loyalty that transcends tribe and culture, race, skin color, gender and sexuality, creed and belief.  This Age of the Spirit doesn’t mean that we are chucking God, that we leave behind Jesus.  It means we make room.

All these folks who say (and there are probably some in this room) that they are spiritual but not religious—there is probably a very good reason why they say this.  We all want to feel close to God and to each other, close to the holy, the sacred, close to the Spirit living in me and the Spirit living in you.  Religion is just as much about binding ourselves to each other as it is about faith.  But living in community can be hard work, really hard.  Author Henri Nouwen said that “community is that place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”

The covenant now is still about community but more about belonging, about kinship, about, as Father Greg Boyle would say, “creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it …moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased.”  The covenant of the Holy Spirit is one of vulnerability, authenticity, flexibility and malleability.  It’s about being ready for the Spirit to enter, to speak, to reveal: anytime, anywhere, through anyone or anything.  It’s less about programs and more about being light on our feet.  It’s less about success or failure and more about going where the Spirit leads.  It’s less about belief or unbelief and more about being real and accepting each other as we are. 

What is the next thing toward which the Holy Spirit is calling you, the next step toward God, that you need to take in your life and in your life together (and I'm not talking about whether or not you will call me as your next pastor)?  In what ways do you still resist the Holy Spirit and God’s desire to be in relationship with you?  Though God may not be necessary for a life lived for good, why not live with spiritual companionship that accepts us as we are and yet prods us off ourselves?  What are some habits, some old ruts that need to be replaced with spiritual practices such as service, study, prayer, and giving?

Our choices shape who we are and whose we are.  Will we put ourselves into God’s hands and allow God to mold us and use us or will we resist and grow hard and unmalleable?  When we choose God and God’s community of kinship and compassion, of justice and peace for all and not just some, we are shaped into a vessel that can be used toward that blessed community.  Every time we choose God, God’s blessed community becomes more than a possibility.  It becomes more and more visible, more and more a reality.  And all it takes is just one step, one choice at a time. 

Amen.

 

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Genesis 18: 1-10a; Luke 10: 38-42
First Church of Christ UCC, Woodbridge, CT
July 21, 2013

 

O Lord Jesus, put us in touch

with the joy of your presence, mercy, and grace,

and let it disturb us to life.

Amen.

You've got to give a little, take a little,

and let your poor heart break a little.

That's the story of, that's the glory of love.


 

And with those words, the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner begins. It debuted in 1967 but its themes are still timely today. It’s about a young couple, head-over-heels in a whirlwind romance who come to the girl’s parents’ home to give the big news: that they’ve fallen in love with someone of a different skin color and they’re going to be married.

The girl, Joanna, is bright, happy, and fearless. She is as her parents raised her: colorblind. Her fiancé, John, a handsome widower and a brilliant doctor, is more cautious and guarded, unsure that Joanna’s liberal parents’ ideals will hold up when confronted with the reality of a black son-in-law. The evening gets even more complicated when, upon hearing that their son has found a girl to marry, that he feels alive again, John’s parents decide to jump on a plane to join the dinner party, not knowing that their future daughter-in-law is white. Enlivening the mix is a forward-thinking Catholic priest, a family friend who holds Joanna’s father’s feet to the fire of his convictions.

It’s a story of upending expectations and cultural norms. Everyone finds themselves on shaky ground. And everyone knows what the right thing to do is, yet each one has their own difficulty accepting it and owning the courage to do it.

You've got to win a little, lose a little

And always have the blues a little

That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

The same could be said for Abraham and Sarah. Unexpected guests for a meal were thought of as a blessing and were indeed a cultural norm. One could not survive in the desert without the hospitality of strangers. Yet Sarah and Abraham did not expect that these would be holy visitors, or that they would bring news of a son, a child in their old age. At this shocking, upending revelation, a few verses later, Sarah laughs, perhaps nervously, realizing the immanence of God, even in the intimacy of a longtime marriage. It’s as if God is saying, “How do you know what to expect with me? I am God. I am always doing a new thing.”

We in our post-modern world think that God doesn’t show up anymore the way God used to, and perhaps that’s because we’re so sure what that would look like. But God is not about fulfilling expectations so much as making sure we’re paying attention to the upending that God is doing in everyday lives.

Kurt Walker, a UCC pastor in Indianapolis, posted a story on Facebook the other day about how God works. Kurt had found an abandoned bicycle in some bushes near his house. He didn’t know if the bike had been stolen or not but decided to bring it with him to the church and call the police to file a report.

Later than morning an officer came to the church to interview Kurt and write up the report about the bicycle. As they were finishing their conversation, the officer, whose name was Ralph, pronounced as ‘Rafe’, as in Ralph Vaughan Williams the famous English composer, asked if the church had an organist, curious because Ralph played the organ. Kurt was a bit skeptical, asking “Did you go to school for that?” To which Ralph replied, “ Yes, I studied under a professor that once taught at Notre Dame. I used to play up-state way back when but it’s been a long time. I’ve been on the force for twenty years so I primarily play for fun now.”

Kurt was brought up a bit short by this; even more so as he listened to Ralph talk about how his father was worried that playing the organ would never pay the bills and that Ralph should get a ‘real job’. “Oh”, Kurt replied, feeling sheepish about the sarcastic thoughts he’d been having a moment earlier: a police officer who’s a closet organist? Kurt was then reminded that he himself was a second-career pastor, having had to deal with his own worries about paying seminary bills in a line of work not famous for its lucrative income.

After chatting about whether he’d be interested in being a substitute organist some Sunday, Ralph asked, “What kind of organ do you have, anyway?” The church secretary invited Ralph to go take a look, while Kurt offered to turn on the organ if Ralph would like to “take it for a spin”. A former Roman Catholic, Ralph paused on the bottom step. Kurt gestured and said, “Come on up and take a seat.”

What happened next was one of the most grace-filled moments Kurt had ever experienced. Ralph sat on the bench, swung his legs over the side toward the pedals, in full uniform and belt with handcuffs, service piece, and radio, and proceeded to play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor from memory.





Kurt said that every few minutes the two would make eye contact and smile, knowing that God had just upended both their worlds and created something new. After he had finished about half of the Bach, Ralph then moved over to the Baldwin classical piano he had admired and played the Adagio Cantabile from Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, from beginning to end, again from memory.





Kurt wept tears of joy and thanks. Both men stepped out of themselves and into the presence of God and were nourished. And what a meal it was.

We’re not always ready for the presence of God to show up. And perhaps it’s better that way, because it always seems that God’s surprises are better than what we’ve planned for. But such upendings can also be challenging, because we often get very attached to our plans, our expectations, and the way things have always been done.

We find our sister Martha in such a situation. This story has been classically interpreted as ‘those who are human doings and those who are human beings’, urging us disciples to achieve some sort of balance between the two. Many who thrive at doing have felt slighted by this explanation, defending their way of being by declaring “Well, nothing would get done if we didn’t do it!” And oftentimes, that’s very true.

But I don’t think that’s what this story is really about. Jesus has come to dinner and by his presence he has upended the whole dinner party and everyone’s expectations. Martha is upset, not because Mary is not helping, but because she’s not behaving like a good Jewish girl should. Rather, by sitting at the feet of Jesus, Mary is behaving like a rabbinical student, something that was only allowed for boys and men. The better part that Mary has chosen is not a contemplative life but freedom. Freedom from the way we think things are supposed to be; freedom to be and to do that new thing that God is creating. And that new thing is a relationship with Jesus: a relationship that will upend our lives in fresh and challenging ways, if we allow it.



Notice that this depicts Mary with her head uncovered.

Right now your life as a community is being upended. Where do you see Jesus offering you a closer relationship, a deeper connection in that upending? What freedoms do you now see that were previously hidden? What is the next right thing that you need to do, as a church and as a disciple of Jesus?

When we’re in the midst of an upending, when we’re on shaky ground and trying to scare up a little courage, we need to remember that what’s being offered is new life, yet another second chance, the freedom to love as God loves.

You've got to laugh a little, cry a little

Until the clouds roll by a little

That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

Amen.

Daughter blogger

My oldest daughter wants to be a commercial airline pilot.  She has one more year of high school, which means we've been visiting colleges.  Purdue University and Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts are two schools where she can get a 4-year degree in Aviation Science and be trained to fly.  I insisted that she get a liberal arts education as well as flight training.  A well-rounded pilot is a better one, in my opinion.

Part of her high school education requires that she research a project that deals with her future career.  So this summer she's working on getting her private pilot's license.  I suggested that she start a blog, because she needs to keep a journal as one of the requirements.

 

So go on over and make her feel welcome, friends!

http://renaeroplane.blogspot.com/

Note to self (2)

Justin Case: A Fingers-Crossed-Behind-His-Back, Well-Meaning Christian (7)

About every other day, Justin is ready to chuck church and go the way of the heathen.  What happens on the other days, you ask?  That's what he'd like to know too.

Kingdom, not fandom

1 Kings 19: 1-15a; Galatians 3: 23-29

Newtown Congregational Church, Newtown, CT

June 23, 2013

 

(My colleague and friend, Matt Crebbin, has been going full tilt and then some since Dec. 14, 2012.  Not only has he been caring for the members of his congregation, and with his wife, parenting their four active children, he's also been a strong, steady presence in the gun control movement, both here in CT and in Washington.  I'll be preaching at his church through July 14 to help give him some much needed rest.)

 

Lately, it seems, whenever a television show has an unhappy ending to its season finale, it’s a newsworthy occasion.  Earlier this year when Matthew died in a car crash on Downton Abbey, one could hear the collective “NO!” accompanied by tears, echoed on Facebook and other social media websites.  And just two weeks ago, HBO’s Game of Thrones shocked and disappointed most, if not all, of their fandom with more than its share of violent and unexpected deaths.

 

 

 

Do you know the word ‘fandom’?  If you live with teenage or any age fans of The Doctor or Avatar the Last Airbender or Star Wars, you know what I’m talking about.  Fandom is a combination of the word “fanatic” and “kingdom”.  Those who inhabit a fandom are passionate, from the smallest details to the overarching narrative and themes of the object of their focus.  They engage in ‘cosplay’, dressing up as favorite characters, paying attention, again, to every detail so as to look as authentic as possible.  They attend huge fandom gatherings, such as Comic Con or a Star Trek convention, form discussion groups on social media, throw thematic parties, and collect all the toys.  They are invested.

 

 

Where great stories are massacred

 

They are especially invested in the story arc and the characters.  Whenever any of us reads a novel or watches a movie or TV show, we are invested in the outcome.    How many of you have ever felt betrayed by an author or screenwriter?  What was your expectation that was dashed? 

 

It seems we are geared for the happy ending, or if circumstances are bad, to expect the worst.  But life is lived in shades of charcoal, slate, and battleship.  In books, TV and movies we often seek to escape the way life is for a more hopeful or sometimes an even darker fiction.  We can put up with villains for a while, even suffer through a few heroes’ deaths, but only because we expect the villains to get their due and the heroes their redemptive victory in the end.  We expect a certain amount of justice and redemption, of fair play.  But a great many events in the past decade up to the past six months have given us cause to question that narrative.

 

Though it has been with us since the beginning, but especially since September 11, we know that evil, pain, and suffering can come down on anyone, anytime, anywhere.  Some of it is within our control but a lot of it isn’t.  Sometimes the hero wins, sometimes not.  Justice is our aim but oftentimes we miss the mark.  We’ve known for quite a while that fairytales are just that.  But now as a human race it seems we have begun to collectively wonder about the hero’s tale and does it still ring true for us?  There are times we are tempted, like one fan of Game of Thrones who tweeted, “I don't know if I'll ever recover from this.  No, I'm out. I quit. I'm done.”

 

Our hero, the prophet Elijah, has reached this point in his relationship with the God fandom.  He’s followed God’s storyline faithfully, he’s preached against the foreign god Baal, even ordered the death of the priests of Baal, and it’s got him in deep trouble with Queen Jezebel.  Prophets walk a fine line between hero and scapegoat, good-guy and outlaw.  In order to establish her cult to the god Baal, Jezebel had given orders that all the prophets of Israel be killed; Elijah thinks he is the sole survivor of that holocaust.  Now Jezebel wants Elijah dead.

 

So Elijah assumes that he’ll never recover from this, that he’s out, he’s quitting, he’s done.  He goes out into the desert, lies down under a tree, and asks God to take his life.  And like a good Jewish mother, perhaps God is thinking “When was the last time he ate?  Maybe he’s just hungry”, and sends an angel with some fresh bread, baked on hot desert rocks and a jar of water to nourish Elijah not just once but twice.  The journey will be long and God wants Elijah to live.

Ferdinand Bol, Elijah Fed by an Angel, (c. 1660-1663)

 

When Elijah reaches Mt. Horeb, he’s still sticking to the hero’s script:  “God, I’ve been passionate about you and your word.  Everyone else has either abandoned you or has been killed.  I’m the only one who’s left, and now I’m about to be killed off as well.”  God then tells Elijah that he is about to pass by.  Suddenly there is a violent wind, then an earthquake, and last a fire.  Yes, earth, wind and fire.  Knowing the Jewish narrative well, Elijah expects God to show up in one of these.  But no; rather, God arrives in a mighty silence.

 

We in the United Church of Christ proclaim that God is still speaking but there are times when it seems that God is strangely quiet.  Many a faith community has been closely following the script, passionate about the details, and yet even so, our numbers have been steadily declining for a decade, if not two or more.  The tale of our hero, Jesus, has not rung true for some folks.  Resurrection is not easy to come by.  Good people have stood faithful during the hard times and good, and have left church for various reasons, many of them hurtful.  “I don't know if I'll ever recover from this.  No, I'm out. I quit. I'm done.”

 

But none of this is really new.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German pastor arrested for conspiring to assassinate Hitler, wrote these words from prison in 1944:  “God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics, or science, has been surmounted and abolished; the same thing has happened in philosophy and religion.  …Anxious souls will ask what room there is left for God now.”
 

He continues, “So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God.  God would have us know that we must live as [those] who manage our lives without him.  The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us.  The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually.  Before God and with God we live without God.  God lets himself be pushed out of the world onto the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which [God] is with us and helps us.” [i]

 

God doesn’t take control of the story, despite all that we have done to mess with God’s narrative of mercy and justice.  Rather, God works within the thwarted plot lines.  God uses us to accomplish a sacred purpose, even though our character is riddled with flaws.  When the inexplicable, the unthinkable happens, God comforts us in the faces of unexpected helpers.  And, with the patience of Job, God guides us through what we often cannot understand, even violence and meaningless death.  And time and again, it’s not our death or another’s that we’re afraid will be meaningless but our lives or the life of one cut short. 

 

We live in an unpredictable world, sometimes random and cruel, yet also fiercely beautiful and fragile.  We’re beginning to realize that maybe there isn’t a script to follow so much as we’re co-authoring a story, our story, each day.  And it’s full of contradictions, not just Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, but gay and straight and bisexual, transgendered and queer.  It’s extreme wealth, different kinds of middle class, working poor, and abject poverty; it’s seeker, believer, agnostic and atheist; not just Republican or Democrat but Independent, Libertarian, Tea Party, Green Party, and many others.  We are many colors, many voices, all inhabiting this one earth.

 

Norman Rockwell, The Golden Rule, 1961

 

God IS still speaking but through us and within our stories.  How invested are we in the outcome, not just of our own stories but of the story of our neighbor and the stranger and the enemy?  The ending will take care of itself if we are mindful of our character, our actions, decisions, and attitudes.  But it is up to us to choose each day whether we are going to hang in there, not with the fandom but the kingdom—God’s story of righteousness, mercy and justice.
 

There are times, I am sure, when we all have been in doubt that we would recover from a blow to our faith, when we thought we were through with church and were ready to quit.  What brought us back from that cliffhanger?  What is the story of this church and how has it changed your life?  What choices do you need to make in order that the outcome is one of mercy and justice?  Just how invested are you as one Body?
 

 

The story is ongoing, and we have come this far by faith.  May God grant us the courage to live out what we pray and profess, that in the end, love will win.

 

 Amen.

---

[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. (New York:  Collier Books, 1972) 360.

Positively obsessed

(Almost six months ago I wrote a letter to the author Richard Russo in response to his memoir Elsewhere.  As yet, I have not received a response.  So consider this letter to be a book review of sorts.  And if you cannot tell from the letter, yes, I recommend this book wholeheartedly.)

December 12, 2012

Richard Russo
c/o Alfred A. Knopf Publishers
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Dear Mr. Russo:

Thank you for your courage and willingness to be vulnerable in the writing of your recent memoir Elsewhere. Though a book does not seem to be part of what is known as ‘call and response’, still I feel compelled to respond to what seemed to me, a prayer.

In the last paragraph of the chapter entitled “Unsettled” you come to understand that you possess some of the same tenacious qualities that plagued your mother. You describe novel writing as triage and obstinacy, then go on to use several metaphors to illuminate a rather dark process. Though you did not intend to, in those metaphors you also portrayed a life of faith and how I have come to experience what it means to serve the Church as ordained clergy. The Church is nothing if not obsessive, at least with its own survival if nothing else. If the Church is to survive, it must live with and welcome uncertainty, experiment again and again, welcome clutter, surrender a good idea for a better one, put one foot in front of the other, and so on. And one more thing: forgive.

I’m not sure that obsession is something to be cured so much as one needs to find meaning, a purpose in which obsession can thrive and accomplish something, a magnum opus. I have always felt the need, heard the call to participate in something larger than myself. Though many of us lead small lives in small towns or big cities, our dreams long to be made visible on a wider stage. My own mother struggles with OCD but as a hoarder; she has often felt the need to find a larger purpose other than wife, mother, sister, grandmother—which I know has not been enough for her, nor for many women or myself. I too recognize some of the same traits in myself, yet I do not believe it was only dumb luck or grace that expanded our worlds as you suggested.

You and I and countless others made a conscious choice to have a different life. We put our obsessive energies into something positive— resolutely we put one foot in front of the other. Some might call it evolution. We adapted. Author Octavia Butler wrote in her book Parable of the Sower, “Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.” In the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is quoted as saying, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”

The journey for all of us is the congruency, the integrity of our inner life and our outward being, something I learned from Jenny Boylan. We were all given the ability to create, to make manifest, to bring into Being, but life has a way of thwarting us as much as it is the source of inspiration. You found the means by which your imagination, your persistence, your obsession could find a positive expression but with a good measure of humility, grace, and dumb luck, as well the choice you were compelled, perhaps called, to make: to be a writer.

Like many sinful saints before, that mystery that we name as God calls the obsessively compelled. I mean, who else is going to get the job done? Who else makes a story so engaging? We hope the pendulum is going to swing one way rather than the other but we know better and on the story will go. And on we go as well. Because we must. We can’t help it. The Bible calls it ‘steadfastness’. To me, that’s what faith is all about.

Peace be with you,

Rev. Cynthia E. Robinson