Christmas Eve Meditation

Luke 2:1-20

Some things never change. Last weekend, it was snow and ice all up and down the east coast. Interstates closed, hotels so full that people camped out in the lobbies, flights delayed. Today there was a wintry mix from Minnesota to Michigan with full-blown blizzards from the southern Plains to the Dakotas. Already this morning, hundreds of flights at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport had been cancelled, leaving thousands of holiday travelers stranded. Once again, the unexpected wreaks havoc with life’s plans.

Maybe all those stranded travelers can take some small comfort in the fact that the same thing happened that first Christmas. Mary and Joseph, after all, had been planning for their baby’s arrival. In spite of the unusual circumstances surrounding Mary’s pregnancy, together they had made the plans and preparations every young couple makes to open their lives to a child.

In their case, the unexpected was not the weather, but the Emperor, who decided it was a good time for a census. That meant they had to travel to Joseph’s home town of Bethlehem, along with hundreds of other people. Mary and Joseph were especially unlucky, first, they couldn’t find a room with a proper bed and bath, but wouldn’t you know it, as soon as they settled down in the stable to try to get a little rest, Mary’s contractions started. Luke tells us nothing about the details of the birth, which suggests that it was probably no more or less challenging or monumental for them than the labor and delivery of any firstborn child.

I can’t help but wonder if the very normalcy of the birth surprised them. After all, Mary had been told by an angel that the baby she carried and nurtured for nine months was none other than, “the Son of the Most High.” She may not have understood what that meant, but she knew it was a big deal, that God was interacting with humanity in an entirely new way. Don’t you think when that baby was finally born, Mary and Joseph almost expected to hear angels singing when Jesus drew his first breath? But in the small, bare room, there was no sound except the cry of a newborn child and the adoration of brand new parents for their baby. That night, God came to Mary and Joseph, but not in the way they expected or planned.

Of course, just because there weren’t angels singing outside the stable doesn’t mean there weren’t angels singing somewhere. Out in the hills, where there were no inns or houses or even stables, angels were singing...to an astonished group of shepherds who had no other plans, that night or any night, but sleeping under the stars.

Shepherds were the migrant workers of New Testament times. They moved from place to place and slept in the fields; they were poor and homeless and they didn’t need to be counted for the census because, for the government, they really weren’t worth counting. But not for God.

God sent angels to the shepherds -- the poor, lowly shepherds -- to proclaim the good news: “to you is born this day the Messiah, the Lord.” The even better news was what the angel said next: “you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” In other words, this is no royal child born in a governor’s mansion, a child you can’t relate to or even hope to visit. This child is like you, poor and lowly, wrapped up in strips of cloth like all the infants born to common people, sleeping not in a cradle covered with jewels, but in a manger lined with nothing but clean straw.

This was something the shepherds had to see, a king, the messiah, born into a humble home. So they went to find the child, and when they do, it is the unlikely shepherds who share the good news with Mary and Joseph that the baby they have already fallen in love with is God’s love come into the world for all people, the fierce, unconditional, self-sacrificial love of a mother for her newborn child.

That love is the gift God gives us at Christmas. And God gives it to us no matter where we come from, how much money we have, or where we sleep at night. At Christmas, God comes to us all, and gives the gift of love.

*****

It happened at a Christmas Eve service at a church not so different from this one. The church was full of devoted members and expectant visitors and the sanctuary beautifully decorated with poinsettias, Christmas trees, and twinkling lights.

As Sam, one of the ushers, put it, “he swirled in like a dust devil,” looking for all the world like Charlie Brown’s friend Pigpen. He asked Sam directions to Central and Bridge Streets, but before hearing the answer, headed down the aisle in a cloud of dust and sat down in the second pew from the front. With some concern, Sam followed, sat down next to him, and gave him a bulletin. The man said his name was Joe.

Early in the service there was the baptism of a baby boy. Joe turned to Sam and said, “Oh my God...it’s baby Jesus!” Sam kept wanting to return to his ushering duties, but he decided it was more important to stay next to Joe as long as Joe wanted to worship. And Joe did worship. He sat in awe during the choir’s anthem and expressed surprise when a woman stepped into the pulpit to preach. But he listened to every word. During the offering, Sam gave Joseph a five dollar bill and told him he was free to keep it or give it away. Joe joyfully put it into the offering plate. And when the light of Christ was passed around and everyone sang Silent Night, Sam and Joe stood side by side, their shoulders touching. Afterward, everyone greeted Joe with enthusiastic Christmas wishes, handshakes, hugs, and kisses.

Sam was so moved by what happened that night that he went home, wrote it down in a letter, and sent the letter -- a true Christmas card -- to his family and friends. God came to Sam that Christmas in a most unexpected way and gave him the gift of love, a gift he could not help but share with others.

Love came down at Christmas...God’s gift to us all. Like Mary and Joseph, like the shepherds, like Joe and Sam, may we share it well. Amen.

The Soundtrack of Salvation (sermon, Dec. 20, 2009)

Luke 1:39-55

The movie The Pianist tells the true story of the Polish composer and musician Wladyslaw Szpilman. Szpilman lived in Warsaw, Poland and happened to be Jewish. He was performing a Chopin piano concerto live on Radio Warsaw when the Germans began bombing the city at the start of World War II. By an incredible combination of circumstance, skill, and sheer luck, Szpilman survived life in the ghetto and months of hiding in an apartment right in the heart of German-occupied Warsaw.

By 1944, the entire city of Warsaw was nearly destroyed. The Polish people who remained were deported and the German soldiers fled from the approaching Soviet army. Szpilman was essentially the only person left in the ruined city. One day, while searching an abandoned house for food, he was discovered by a German soldier. The soldier questioned Szpilman and upon learning he was a pianist, the soldier lead Szpilman to a piano in the house and told him to play something. With bony, emaciated hands and surrounded by the devastation of war, Szpilman played a Chopin concerto on that battered, out of tune piano.

Afterward, the German soldier not only spared Szpilman’s life, he helped Szpilman find a hiding place and for months brought him food and other supplies that ultimately enabled him to survive the war. It wasn’t the only time that music had saved Szpilman’s life; when he lived in the Warsaw ghetto, playing music allowed him to earn enough money to buy food for his family. After his family was taken to a concentration camp, it was Szpilman’s former colleagues from Radio Warsaw who found him apartments in which to hide.

Music is not just a trivial part of life, there to entertain us when we grow bored of the sound of silence or the sound of our own voices. As Szpilman’s story shows, music is powerful. Music inspires us; it stirs powerful emotions in us; it triggers memories we thought were long forgotten; it helps us to express ideas and thoughts we couldn’t articulate any other way. Like light in the darkness, music offers us hope against silence. All this is true even for those who have no musical talent or can’t carry a tune. You don’t have to be able to play an instrument or sing on key to experience the effects of music. Think about how music is used in movies to manipulate emotions -- to indicate that a particular scene is supposed to make you feel uplifted, sad, or anxious about what’s going to happen next. If there had been no music in the movie Jaws, the scenes of people swimming in the ocean would probably have made us want to be the swimmers. But the music let us know, in no uncertain terms, that those swimmers weren’t safe, that something very bad was about to happen.

Daniel Levitin explains why music affects us so deeply in his book This is Your Brain on Music. He argues that the ability of the brain to remember and recognize music is remarkable. Think about a song that every American knows, like “Happy Birthday.” No matter how loudly, how quickly, or what key it is played in, our brains recognize that song after we hear just the first few notes. Not even a computer can identify a song with that level of accuracy.

According to Levitin, our musical preferences begin to form when we are children as our brains learn to recognize the common chord progressions in the music of our native cultures. There is even evidence that such preferences are formed when we are fetuses in our mother’s wombs. And on the other side of life, Levitin notes that many Alzheimer’s patients who have lost so much of their memories often remember their favorite songs from their teenage years. Music is powerful.

While we can certainly assume that biblical characters didn’t have a clue about the specific ways music affects the brain, obviously they knew the power of music. Over and over again in the midst of biblical stories, a long narrative suddenly stops, and you can almost sense the flood lights going down, you see the spotlight swing onto the main character of the moment, and the silence is suddenly filled with the sound of a full orchestra. And that’s when the main character bursts into song.

Can you think of some of these musical moments in the Bible?
Hannah sings of God’s power and faithfulness when she finally conceives a child.
Miriam breaks into song after God parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites safely out of Egypt.
Then of course, there is King David, who wrote all kinds of songs, many of which we now know as psalms -- songs of praise, songs of repentance, songs of despair, and song of deep faith and trust.

In the NT, there is the gospel of Luke. The opening chapters of Luke are a musical in which the characters use song to express their emotions and faith. Today we heard the song of Mary that is called “The Magnificat,” but Mary isn’t the only one with a singing role in Luke. Elizabeth’s husband, Zechariah, is rendered mute after he expresses disbelief that his elderly wife had finally conceived a son. After the son was born, Zechariah gets his voice back and he uses it to sing a song of praise and prophecy to the Lord.

Then when angels announce to the shepherds the birth of the Messiah in Luke’s gospel, the angels too burst into song: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Finally, an old man named Simeon who had been told by an angel that he would live to see the Messiah, sings a song of thanksgiving to God after seeing the infant Jesus in the temple.

Certainly in Luke but also throughout the whole Bible, the story of how God cares for Israel and all the world is told, not just through narrative, commandments, laws, gospels, prayers and letters, but in song, the very thing that has the power to trigger emotions and memories in the human beings God created.

In today’s reading, before Mary bursts into song, there is an intimate scene between these two improbably pregnant women: Elizabeth, pregnant in her old age after years of barrenness, and Mary, a young and unwed girl, pregnant after a miraculous encounter with the Holy Spirit. Their meeting takes place not in any of the famous cities like Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Jerusalem, but in an unnamed town in the hills of Judea. It would be like the mother of our Lord and the mother of his cousin meeting in a farmhouse in Holmes County, Ohio. No one who saw them would have ever suspected that their wombs carried both God’s messenger and God’s message (1). They would have seen instead the kind of scene most of us long for at Christmas: just two relatives sitting together, sharing a cup of tea and catching up, making the most of lost time.

What proves to us that Mary and Elizabeth’s meeting was more than that is first, Elizabeth’s declaration and second, Mary’s song.

Elizabeth would have had no way of knowing about the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, or that Mary was pregnant. Yet as soon as Elizabeth sees her young cousin and hears her voice she is overcome with a prophetic awareness. The words then tumble from her as involuntarily as John the Baptist’s in utero leap: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb...blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Can you imagine what it must have meant to Mary to have a trusted family member confirm what must have felt like a bizarre dream? Apparently, Mary wasn’t going crazy after all. If Elizabeth could have a baby after all this time, and if she could know what had happened to Mary just by looking at her, then what the angel Gabriel had told Mary must certainly be true: Nothing is impossible with God.

And how does Mary respond? With a song.

Mary’s song begins with a focus on what God has done for her: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant...”

But then, the song takes a surprising turn. Suddenly this is not just a song about Mary, this is a song about what God has done for all God’s people: “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Mary’s song isn’t just the sweet tune of a faithful young girl, humbled at having been singled out by God: it is a powerful prophecy. Mary sings in the past tense about things that will happen in the future, which seems strange until we realize that she is singing about God’s character, God’s very nature. Mary’s song reminds us that we shouldn’t be surprised that God is coming to earth as a helpless infant because it has always been God’s nature to reach out to God’s people, especially the poor and lowly and oppressed, to stand with them and give them hope. The Israelite slaves who escaped from the powerful Pharaoh; the poor, barren women like Sarah and Hannah who conceived children who grew up to play major roles in Israel’s history; David, the young shepherd boy tapped by God to be king.

Mary knew all those stories, but now, with this confirmation from Elizabeth, those stories have become her story, now their song becomes her song, a song she sings to give hope to all who have known, at one time or another, what it is to be poor, to be weak, to be hungry, to desperately need God.

Music is powerful, there is no denying that. It is also a crucial way we participate in God’s story, the story in which the downtrodden and oppressed are lifted up and the powerful are brought down. From the Civil Rights Movement in this country to the musicians like Szpilman who played their music even in the terrible conditions of the Holocaust to the German people twenty years ago who gathered to sing songs of hope and protest which eventually brought down the Berlin Wall -- in every one of these cases the power of music allowed oppressed people to proclaim that God’s love and justice would ultimately prevail.

During Advent and Christmas, music is as important as prayer and candlelight. For when we sing the songs of the season, we join with Mary and with all people in proclaiming that the gospel story is our story. We sing for ourselves and for all those who, this Christmas, are still waiting for the promises of God to come true for them. When we lift up our voices in song we join all the faithful in heaven and on earth in praise of the One who loves us enough to become one of us so that all of us, no matter what our circumstances, can live with hope. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Cooper, Steven, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, p. 93.

Advent Fruit (sermon, Dec. 13, 2009)

Luke 3:7-18

My husband prides himself on keeping an endless stash of “cocktail tidbits” -- you know, interesting trivia that you pull out at a party when the conversation gets slow. As you might imagine, I’ve heard most of them several hundred times. Today let me share with you one of his favorites, which he read in the book Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Here it is: Did you know that every seed inside of every apple has a different genetic code? Every apple seed, if planted in the ground and nourished with water and sunlight, will grow into a tree that produces a unique kind of apple, one that may or may not have much in common with the apple from which the seed came.

What this means is that, when a particularly tasty kind of apple is discovered -- like red delicious, gala, or honeycrisp -- the only way to grow another tree that produces that particular variety of apple, is to take a graft from the original tree and plant it in the ground. So every red delicious apple you’ve ever eaten can trace its lineage back to the very first tree to produce red delicious fruit. All apples of the same variety share a common original ancestral tree.

Of course, ancestry isn’t just important for apples. Most of us humans think it’s pretty important too. If we know our ancestors -- our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents -- that means we know things about ourselves; we figure out where our blue eyes came from, or our curly hair, or our musical or artistic talent. As we like to say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. A friend of mine married a man who was adopted as an infant and never knew his birth parents. Shortly after the birth of their first child, she overheard her husband talking to their son. “You are the only person in the world I know who looks like me,” he said. There is something comforting in being able to trace particular traits back to a person in our families; it helps us feel grounded in our identity.

Well, it seems that John the Baptist didn’t care too much about human ancestry. In fact, he believes that clinging too tightly to your family can cause problems when it comes to your relationship with God. When John began preaching to the crowds who came to be baptized and to hear his fiery sermons, he let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they had work to do -- the hard work of repentance, of owning up to the ways they had fallen short in their faithfulness to God. And he warns them that even though they can trace their ancestry all the way back to Abraham they still have to repent. According to John the Baptist, people will not be judged by who their ancestors are but by what kind of fruit their lives produce.

John the Baptist was one of the original fire and brimstone preachers, following in the footsteps of the Old Testament prophets like Amos, Hosea and Isaiah who announced that the full weight of God’s wrath was going to fall on those who didn’t follow God’s ways of justice and kindness and humility.

The remarkable thing is, when John finishes telling the crowds that their ancestry doesn’t earn them a “get out of judgment free” card, the people don’t run away in fear. They don’t call the authorities to haul him off to jail for disturbing the peace -- or for disturbing their peace of mind -- and they don’t stick their fingers in their ears and pretend they can’t hear. Instead, they ask him a simple question: “What should we do?”

And to our surprise, instead of raining down more fire and brimstone, John offers the people a refreshingly simple answer. Well, answers, actually, because he has specific instructions depending on who asks the question. To the common people who make up the majority of the crowd, John says, in a word: “Share.” To the tax collectors, he says: “Be honest.” To the soldiers, he says: “Don’t bully.” For all his apocalyptic imagery of fiery judgment, his advice is remarkably straightforward. As one commentator put it, “this feels more like the stuff of kindergarten than the Apocalypse.” (1)

I can’t help but wonder if the people in the crowd, and the tax collectors, and the soldiers were all just a little bit disappointed when John gave them their instructions. John had been announcing impending judgment and doom, complete with stones coming to life and axes chopping down trees and all-consuming fires. When the crowds asked him what they should do, they were probably expecting some major life changes. As he held them under the waters of baptism, don’t you think they expected to emerge with their lives completely transformed?

Isn’t that what we hope for at this time of year -- that our lives and our world will be completely transformed by Christmas? Every year during Advent as we cling to our faith that Christ’s birth brings hope and love and grace into this world in spite of the darkness all around us, don’t we secretly hope that this year, Christmas will change everything? That God’s love and grace will come into the world and really do something: stop wars, heal the sick, fix our families, give everyone food and shelter and jobs and healthcare? Deep down, isn’t that what we all really want for Christmas?

Well, if that is what we want, then we will be as sorely disappointed as John’s first hearers must have been when he told them what to do to bear good fruit and avoid God’s wrath. “Share. Be honest. Don’t bully.” In other words, don’t expect some kind of huge, miraculous change. When he baptized those crowds of people, John didn’t send them off into a brand new setting to start their lies of faith anew, even though that might have been easier. Instead, he sent them right back where they came from with a deceptively simple assignment: return to your work, your life, your family, but once there bear good fruit: live every day like your faith, your identity, really matters.

After all, baptism, both then and now, is all about identity. When we are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, something changes, but it’s not something we see, and in fact, it’s something we often forget. Baptism doesn’t change who we are, it changes Whose we are, which in turn changes how we act.

In baptism, we get re-rooted, just like a branch of an apple tree that gets removed and planted in new soil to bear good fruit. In our baptism our primary identity shifts. We become no longer just a member of our particular human family; we become a child of God. Of course, we are still related to all the people on our family tree, but in baptism we affirm that our most important relationship is with God.

But I suspect we all still have the question that John’s crowd had so long ago: “What then should we do?” It sounds like it’s going to be so complicated, but it’s not. “Share. Be honest. Don’t bully.” Return to the life that you have -- the job that may compromise your morals; the family that is never as perfect as all the other families seem; the fears and frustrations and anxieties that persist in spite of all your efforts to bury them away. They will be the same, but you can respond to them differently.

*****

My friend Caroline lives and works in New York City. She’s lived there for more than ten years now and she’s gotten used to many of the challenges of life in a big city, but not long ago something happened that she was totally unprepared for. A panhandler, started showing up in the same place every day on Caroline’s walk to work. Now she had a policy that she didn’t give money to panhandlers. But this guy was crafty. He saw that she was young, well-dressed, with sympathetic eyes. And he didn’t just stand there looking pitiful -- he looked her in the eye and talked to her. “Come on, can’t you spare some change?” She blushed, but kept walking.

The next day, he did it again. “Gimme some money, please lady,” he begged. She gritted her teeth and walked on. The third day he used his attention to detail. Caroline always wears a gold cross around her neck and this day, he called her on it. “You’re a Christian, aren’t you? Help me out, then!” That night, Caroline lay in bed, thinking about the man. She was determined that the next day, if she saw him, she would not make eye contact, but just keep going.

The next day, when she saw him, Caroline panicked. She bolted for the nearest door into a large office building. She was already caught up in a swell of people entering the door when she realized it was a revolving door. Stuck in the inside of the door, she couldn’t get out as the door moved through the inside of the building and the next thing she knew she stumbled back out onto the sidewalk. When she looked up, there was the man, standing right in front of her, a smile on his face and his hand held out.

Baptism, Christmas, any of the major events and celebrations in our lives of faith are like revolving doors. We enter a new space, we undergo a transformation, but then we come right back out where we started. Yet we are not the same as before, we are inspired -- literally, with the Holy Spirit -- and we are re-born into our former lives with a new identity.

Today John the Baptist reminds us that when we return to the ordinary circumstances of life, we have countless opportunities to live into our identity as children of God, opportunities to simply be faithful, to show that we are God’s people.

At the end of today’s speech from John the Baptist, Luke writes that John “proclaimed the good news to the people.” And it is good news, even to those of us caught in this Advent time between Christ’s birth and Christ’s return. John’s instructions to use the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives to show our true identity echoes the good news of the incarnation: that in the birth of Jesus God did not change everything, God redeemed everything. God came into the world to be Emmanuel, God with us, to be one of us, and in doing so God made human life and this world precious and sacred.

Today may we remember our baptism and recommit ourselves to the simple yet powerful task of living out our faith wherever we may be. And as we do, may we bring to the world the miracle of Emmanuel, God-with-us. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. David Lose in his Working Preacher commentary on Luke 3:7-18; online here.

Pregnant Pause (sermon, Nov. 29, 2009, First Sunday of Advent)

Luke 21:25-36

The movie Scrooged is an updated version of Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol. The movie stars Bill Murray as the Scrooge figure, a television executive named Frank Cross. Cross is a total cynic who hates Christmas except for one thing: it’s the time of year when his TV network can make a lot of money, and money is the only thing that seems to fill the persistent emptiness in Frank Cross’ life. This year, Cross has produced a flashy Christmas special that will air on Christmas Eve. The special itself isn’t controversial, but the ad he creates to promote it is. The ad features a series of alarming images of nuclear holocaust, a bloody drive-by shooting, terrorists exploding a plane, and drug addicts shooting up heroin. At the end of all this comes the somber voice-over: “In a world as terrifying as this one, now more than ever you need to see the Christmas Eve spectacular here on NBC.”(1)

The ad may have been effective, but everyone who saw it hated it. And they hated it because it was the antithesis of Christmas. At Christmas we expect to see images of serene pregnant women; bright stars piercing dark, cloudless skies; shepherds leading a few white and fluffy sheep; stately wise men bearing luxury gifts; and, of course, a well-swaddled, peaceful baby Jesus. Most of us feel that Christmas is not the time to dwell on the atrocities of our time: economic crisis, wars, natural disasters, terrorism. Christmas is the time when we want a break from all that. No wonder Frank Cross’ ad for the Christmas Eve special was such a flop.

But when we read today’s gospel lesson it looks like Frank Cross might have actually been on the right track. You see, it turns out that each year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the lectionary readings for the day point us to one of the apocalyptic texts in the gospels. “Apocalyptic” is just a fancy word for things that refer to the end-times, what some people call the “Second Coming.” Although it may not be something we talk about much, it is part of our understanding of who Jesus is that he not only came to the world as God in human flesh, but that someday, in the fullness of time, he will return. So the first Sunday of Advent is the day we are called to acknowledge that Advent -- the season during which we prepare for Christ’s coming -- involves our past, present, and future. Advent is not just about getting ready to celebrate what happened in the past -- Christ’s birth -- it’s also about celebrating that in the present Christ is with us in the Holy Spirit, and that at some future time Christ will return.

In today’s passage from Luke, we heard part of Jesus’ answer to the question “when will this happen and what will it look like?” Jesus’ answer sounds a bit like Frank Cross’ commercial for the Christmas special: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s really not what I was hoping to hear about in church on the first Sunday of Advent. I wanted to hear the beginning of the story of Jesus’ birth and instead this text is all about the end of the story, the end of time, when Jesus will come again to judge the earth and all of its inhabitants.

Jesus isn’t just telling his followers what to expect here, he is warning them to be on alert, to be on guard, to pay attention and make sure they are ready to stand before God when Jesus finally returns. We may have come here today hoping for comfort, but instead we get a frightening glimpse of the future and a stern warning to get ready for it.

*****

The question is: how? How can we possibly get ready for such an event? Well, how about by swinging. My son loves and hates to swing at our local park. He is always drawn to the swings, but he never stays on them for long. It seems he doesn’t actually like the sensation of swinging. Well, a life of faith is like swinging. We swing back and forth from joy to despair, from sincere faith to disorienting unbelief, from feeling the wonder of God’s presence to wondering if God is even there. But when you are on a swing there is a moment at the highest point when you are no longer sure if you are still going up or if you have started to come back down. That moment, that pregnant pause, is Advent. It is a moment between time, out of time, and it is a moment (despite the fact that it scares us half to death) that offers us a great opportunity.

In Advent, we have the opportunity to choose how to respond to the gift of God’s presence with us in Jesus, a gift that was given to us when Jesus was born so long ago and a gift that God has promised to return to us in the fullness of time. Advent marks the first day of the Christian year, and as with our secular New Year, this can be a time for us to reflect on our faith and to recommit ourselves again to our relationship with God.

The problem is that the Advent season has been so taken over by secular forces that it’s hard for any of us to find the time, space, and silence we need to reflect and recommit. There are decorations to hang, parties to attend, cards to address, gifts to buy, food to make, a perfect holiday to create for family and friends. No wonder so many of us feel exhausted by the holidays before they have even begun.

Apparently, Jesus knew the challenges we would face. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life,” he said. Eugene Peterson, in his translation The Message, says it like this: “Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping.”

What Jesus is talking about here is how we over-consume as a way to avoid the real work of getting ready. And we avoid it for good reason: because when we go before God we are likely to come face to face with the loneliness and despair that grips us all from time to time. We drink too much, eat too much, spend too much, and the reason we do this at the holidays is not just because we’re enjoying the season. It’s because our culture -- a culture of over-consumption and over-indulgence -- demands that we use this time to try, for at least a little while, to forget all that’s wrong with the world and with our lives. We too often over-consume and over-indulge in an attempt to forget the very reasons we need God in the first place, in an attempt to fill the empty places inside our souls.

Fortunately, there is another way to fill yourself. And that way is Advent. Advent begins by calling us to keep the end in sight, to remember that this season isn’t just about celebrating Jesus’ birth but getting ready for Jesus’ return. We also remember why that return is so important: because we desperately need what Jesus gives us: redemption from the evil and violence and darkness that so often seem to have the upper hand. The reason God entered the world the first time was not because things were going so smoothly, but because the world was desperately in need of love and guidance and hope. And God will come again not when we finally get it right, but when it looks like all hope is lost. “When these things begin to take place,” Jesus says, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” In other words, as long as you are ready, fear not! For the day of judgment is also the day of grace, the day when God will once and for all make everything right again.

So during Advent, this pregnant pause of the church year, we need to take some time out, remembering that the most important thing about the next few weeks is not checking off every item on our to-do lists but reconnecting with God, making sure that we are ready for Christ’s coming, even if being ready means only that we acknowledge our emptiness and our hunger for God to come into our lives and into our world.

*****

The writer Anne Lamott tells a story of taking a vacation to Lake Tahoe with her two year-old son, Sam. This area near Reno is a hotbed of gambling, which means that all the rooms in hotels or condos have curtains so heavy and thick that the rooms can be dark as night even in the middle of the day. This is supposed to encourage tourists to stay up all night gambling and spending money, and then sleep all day.

One afternoon, she put Sam down for a nap in his crib, closed the curtains, and went into the other room to work, pulling the door shut behind her. A few minutes later, she heard Sam calling to her. Sam had climbed out of his crib and gotten to the door. But when he had grasped the handle, he had depressed the button lock. Try as she might, Anne could not get him to unlock the door. When it became clear that his mother couldn’t open the door, Sam cried and screamed while his mother, in a panic, called the rental agency for the condo and left a message, then called the building manager and left another message. Finally, not knowing what else to do, she lay down next to the door, reached her fingers in the small space underneath it and told Sam to reach down and find her fingers in the dark. He did. And as the reality of his mother’s love and presence sunk in, Sam gradually calmed down. Mother and son stayed like that for a long time, lying on the floor side by side, a locked door between them, taking comfort in the touch of their fingers. (2)

All too often we are like toddlers in a pitch-black room, not sure where to go or what to do, longing to simply throw open the door between us and God. But we can’t. And so we panic, running around the room, screaming and crying and trying to find another way out. Or we try to pretend there isn’t anything wrong, going off in a corner and finding ways to pass the time, no matter how self-destructive those ways might be. But in Advent God calls us to come to the door. It’s still locked, and when don’t know when it will opened. But when it does open, we want to be ready to greet the God who will be revealed on the other side of the door. And so we wait and in Advent we prepare, by lying quietly by the door, grasping the fingers of the God who loves us enough to wait with us, the God who has come and who will come again to unlock the door, shine light into the darkness, fill our emptiness, and redeem this broken world once and for all. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. from an illustration in the sermon “At That Time” by Scott Hoezee; read it here.
2. from an illustration in the sermon, “Belonging”, by the Rev. Mark Ramsey, in Journal for Preachers, Vol. 23, No. 1, p. 23.

1 Samuel 1:4-20

The town of Manchester, England once knew some very good times. It was the hub of the Industrial Revolution and the home of Rolls Royce automobiles. Although its past was remarkable, its present is simply a sad reflection of the depressed economy affecting similar towns around the world, not to mention towns all over Ohio. For now, the only thing the residents of Manchester can count on is this: their town’s future is uncertain.

Stefani Schatz is a young Episcopal priest serving a working-class church in Manchester. Most of the members of her small church are unemployed and have been for years or, in some cases, for generations. Many of them know only the loneliness and shame of never having meaningful work and they find solace in drugs and alcohol. The region, and its people, are depressed.

“There is no sense of hope,” Stefani says. “So many people believe that nothing will change, nothing will get better...This feeling pervades everything.” (1)

That feeling of depression, hopelessness, and despair for the future was exactly what had defined the life of Hannah, whose story we just heard. Where our culture values above all one’s ability to be a productive, working member of society, Hannah’s culture valued a woman’s ability to bear children, and particularly sons. Hannah had a husband who loved her, she had food and shelter, but none of this could make up for the fact that she did not have children. And she couldn’t even speculate that the fault lay with her husband, Elkanah, since his other wife, Peninnah, had multiple children, both boys and girls. Hannah knew that whatever the reason she didn’t have children, the fault lay with her. Even worse, there was no knowledge of the many biological reasons she may have been infertile; in those days people believed if you couldn’t have children, God was simply punishing you. So Hannah believed that nothing would change, nothing would get better...and that feeling pervaded every moment of Hannah’s life.

The Bible tells us that Hannah was miserable, she cried all the time and had no appetite. Hannah’s present, even though she had a loving husband, was gray and colorless, and her future, no brighter. And things were bad enough at home, where Penninah was always making snide comments, but the worst was the one time each year when the whole family travelled together to the temple at Shiloh. There, in public, Penninah made sure everyone knew that the children with them were hers, not Hannah, and that Hannah was barren, that God was punishing her. Every year, Hannah dreads this trip.

Then, one year, at the annual pilgrimage to the temple at Shiloh, she decides she can’t stand her own despair one second longer. After the misery of having to share a celebratory meal with Elkanah and Peninnah and their noisy brood of children, listen to what the text says happened: “After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose.”

The preacher James Forbes says that he tells every couple who is expecting a baby girl that they should name her Hannah Rose. Hannah rose. Finally, after years of depression and despair and staring into a hopeless future, Hannah made a decision to act, and she rose up from the table. Hannah rose and she went to the Lord’s house, the temple. (2)

And as Hannah rises and goes to the temple, a glimmer of hope enters our story.

Hannah enters the temple, and once inside she worships, she prays, she weeps, she spills out her despair to God. Perhaps she has simply grown weary of acting like she has it all together, of putting on a happy face for her husband, of trying not to react when Peninnah cruelly provokes her, pouring salt in the wound of her barrenness. Maybe she has had enough of her own tears. If God is punishing her, then she is going to share those tears with God. Hannah even goes so far as to bargain with God, promising that if God grants her a son she will return the child to the temple and dedicate him to God as a nazirite, a servant. Hannah prays so fervently and with such passion that the priest who sees her accuses her of being drunk! But she assures him otherwise. “I am not drunk,” she says, “I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.”

“I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.” Maybe that’s an experience you have had yourself or maybe you’ve even witnessed someone else doing it. But in Old Testament times, people didn’t go to the temple to pour out their souls before the Lord. They went to the temple to bring sacrifices, the first fruits of their harvest and their livestock, and to present these sacrifices to the Lord in the hope that God would bless them. When Hannah rose up from that table and entered the temple to pour out her soul before the Lord, that is the first time in the Old Testament someone uses the temple to directly petition God. No wonder Eli thought she was drunk! Even the priest didn’t have any idea what she was doing!

Stefani Schatz, that Episcopal priest in Manchester, has witnessed people pouring out their souls before the Lord, and she says she most often sees it happen, not in the course of Sunday morning worship or during weddings or baptisms, but at funerals. Since she became the pastor of the Manchester church, she has done a lot of funerals, nearly one a week, not because the church is so big, but because the congregation is older and generally not in good health. But in the midst of all these funerals, she has discovered something: when people bring their sorrow and despair into the church for the funeral of a loved one, God meets them there. The minute they enter the church to worship and pour out their grief and sadness -- to pour out their souls -- before the Lord, they are changed. “Men cry, people comfort each other,” Stefani says. “Submerged in the mourning, I see such joy.” (3)

Although Hannah didn’t enter the temple at Shiloh for a funeral, she buried something there when she poured out her soul before the Lord. When she left the temple after receiving the assurances of the priest that God heard her cries, she was able to return to her family, to eat and drink with her husband, and, the Bible tells us, she was no longer sad.

Did you notice what happened there? Before her prayer was even answered, Hannah was no longer sad. The joy that had been submerged in Hannah’s mourning surfaced because she rose and entered the temple and when she did that, God entered her story. And when that happened, Hannah’s understanding of herself changed. She was no longer defined by the value afforded to her by her society; she now knew that she belonged first to God, the God who received her prayer. And she knew this even before that prayer was answered.

And indeed, Hannah’s prayer was answered. “In due time,” says the text, she conceived and bore a son. And Hannah kept her side of the bargain and took her son to the temple of Shiloh. She rose up again and offered her son -- her first fruits -- to the Lord.

If that was the whole of the story, if the story simply ended there, with Hannah taking her son to the temple and presenting him to the priest, nearly bursting with pride, it would be a story worth telling and a story worth preaching. Hannah’s story reminds us that when we rise up and go to God’s house, which for us is here, the church, and when we present our whole selves to God, not just our reverence and our gratitude but our depression, despair, and anxiety for the future, God receives us. When we enter God’s house to pour out our souls before the Lord, God enters our stories and brings new life from our barren soil.

So if the story ended there it would be enough, but it doesn’t end there. Hannah’s son, the one she dedicates to the Lord, is Samuel, and Samuel will grow up to be the last of the judges over Israel. Samuel will oversee Israel’s transition from a group of tribes ruled by judges to a nation ruled by a king. Samuel will be the “kingmaker,” anointing first Saul and finally David, who will rule Israel for more than forty years.

At the beginning of 1 Samuel, Hannah isn’t the only one waiting on God to deliver her from an uncertain future. As Walter Brueggemann puts it, “Israel is a community in moral chaos.” (4) So when Hannah enters that temple in Shiloh and pours out her soul before the Lord, she is playing out her particular story, yes, but she also represents this particular historical moment in the story of Israel. At this moment, Israel is barren, its future as a nation, as a people, is by no means certain. It is not until the appearance of David that Israel’s story begins to change, and without Samuel, there would be no David.

Behind Samuel and David, two heroes in the story of Israel, stands a depressed, bereft, barren young woman named Hannah. Like Hannah, Israel must pour out its soul before the Lord and wait for God to enter the story and bring the first fragile green shoots of new life from its barren soil.

*****

At the 1996 summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, things were tense for the American women’s gymnastics team. The team competition had come down to the Russians and the Americans and on the last day of competition, with just one rotation left for each team, the Americans had a slight lead. The Russians’ last rotation was floor exercises in which they were very strong. So if the American gymnasts did not perform exceptionally well on the vault, they would lose the gold medal to the Russians.

Kerri Strug was the last member of the team to vault. But on her first attempt, she under-rotated the landing and fell. When she stood up, she was limping on her left foot. But with a look of steely determination, Kerri sprinted down the mat again and launched herself into the air. She executed a spectacular vault, stuck the landing and then immediately began hopping on her right leg, clearly in agonizing pain.

In that moment, overcoming her injury to capture the gold medal for her team, Kerri Strug gained the love and affection of the entire country she represented. It wasn’t just because it was a great story; it’s because it was our story. She overcame adversity, she “pulled herself up by her boot straps,” “she took one for the team.” Announcer John Tesh even suggested that Kerri’s story went beyond her country when he said, “Her story is an inspiration to every adult, to every youngster who has ever had a dream.”

The story of Kerri Strug wasn’t just about Kerri Strug. It was about her team, her country, and even all humanity. Stories like that are bigger than just one person. That is also true of Hannah’s story. The story of how barren Hannah rose and poured out her soul before the Lord, and then conceived and bore a son who grew up to anoint the great King David is not just Hannah’s story. Her story was also Israel’s story, the story of how God creates life where it looks like all hope for the future is lost. And later, a barren world would discover that Hannah’s story is not just Israel’s story, but the story of a world, mired in chaos and confusion, who received not an earthly king, but Christ the King, God in human flesh, come to show us that what is so hard for us to believe is indeed true: that God longs to stand with us in our despair and hopelessness and make a new way where we thought there was none.

When, like Hannah, we have been driven to despair trying to understand where God is in our stories, we need to rise up and enter the church, plant ourselves in a chair in God’s waiting room, and pour out our souls before God, no matter how foolish or intoxicated we might look to anyone who sees us, trusting that God will grant us the gift of seeing how our stories are part of God’s story, the gospel story, in which poor, barren women are lifted out of their despair, a young shepherd boy becomes a mighty and powerful king, a tiny nation of chosen people shines a light to all the world, God takes on human flesh and walks among us, and when Jesus is unjustly condemned to death, after three days he will rise. Hannah rose...and so can we. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. 1 Howard, Anne Sutherland, Claiming the Beatitudes. The Alban Institute, 2009, p. 34.
2. Forbes’ sermon on this passage, “Hannah Rose,” can be found online here.
3. Howard, p. 35.
4. Brueggemann, Walter, First and Second Samuel (Interpretation commentary series), John Knox Press, 1990, p. 10.

Going All In (sermon, November 8, 2009)

Mark 12:38-44

On June 10 of 2000, a new pedestrian bridge opened in London. The Millennium Bridge is a high-tech structure consisting of an aluminum footbridge spanning the Thames river with steel beams projecting out from the sides.

The architects who designed it spent enormous amounts of time anticipating the effects of people walking across the bridge. But on the day the bridge opened, as thousands of people streamed over the bridge at the same time, something totally unexpected happened. As people walked, the bridge began to sway ever so slightly. In order to keep their balance, people changed the way they normally walked. They spread out their legs and adopted a movement that was more side to side than up and down. The resulting lateral force caused the bridge to sway even more. In response to that swaying people began to move, simultaneously, in ways that preserved their own ability to stay upright and keep their balance. These movements, rather than being random, which the engineers had expected, were synchronized. This caused the bridge to sway even more significantly and authorities eventually had to close it down. It was two more years before the bridge could be used safely. (1)

In today’s passage from the gospel of Mark, we have another example of how individuals looking out only for their own interests can bring down a major structure. “Beware of the scribes,” Jesus says, and then he goes on to point out that these scribes, these religious leaders are despicably self-centered and hypocritical, doing everything they can to preserve their status and their way of life. And by doing so, they put the institution they are supposed to serve at risk.

In contrast to the self-centered scribes, Jesus points out to his disciples the poor widow who places into the treasury -- the ancient equivalent of the offering plate -- her entire net worth, which is worth almost nothing.

Now most of us have probably heard this passage about the poor widow many times before. Often it is used to encourage us to give more than we think we are able, to be more generous than we have been in the past. The widow in this story has for centuries been the poster girl for sacrificial giving. After all, if she can give her last two coins worth barely a penny, then surely we can do better ourselves. And to be sure, Jesus does seem to hold her up as an example. But it is often the case that our basic assumptions about a biblical passage are challenged if we look at what comes before and after it, and that is certainly true here.

Before this story about the poor widow, as we have already noted, Jesus reveals the hypocrisy of the scribes, who insist on having people acknowledge their special status and seat them at the head tables at banquets. They pray, yes, but their prayers are empty, said only so that other people can hear them and admire them for their apparent piety. But even worse, Jesus says that the scribes “devour widows’ houses.” It’s not clear to biblical scholars what that phrase means exactly, but we can safely assume that it has something to do with the scribes not caring for the poor and vulnerable in their midst, a group exemplified by widows and orphans. According to the laws and prophets of the Hebrew Bible, caring for the poor, and particularly for widows and orphans is one of the most important responsibilities of faithful Jews and particularly for religious leaders. So whatever it meant that they were devouring widows’ houses, it wasn’t good. As one of the elders put it at session this week, surely it had something to do with sub-prime mortgages.

Immediately after the story of the poor widow, Jesus’ followers admire the majestic temple. “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” one of the disciples gushes. But Jesus is unimpressed. “Do you see these great buildings?” he snaps. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” In other words, the temple itself and the institution it represents will soon be nothing more than a pile of rocks. And when we pair those words with Jesus’ disgust for the temple leadership, we get the feeling that Jesus might just think that the destruction of the temple is the natural consequence of selfishness and greed -- not unlike the consequences of hundreds of people on a bridge all trying to keep their balance and thus causing the entire bridge to sway.

So it is between Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and his prediction that the temple, corrupt as it is, won’t long remain standing, that we hear this story about the poor widow who gives her last two coins to that corrupt institution, to those hypocritical leaders. And so we have to wonder: is Jesus really holding up this woman as an example of faithfulness? Or does he want us to take pity on her because she has somehow been manipulated into giving away what little she had -- manipulated by the very people who were supposed to be taking care of her? As one commentator suggests, maybe when Jesus said “that’s all she had to live on,” he said it not with amazement in his voice, but exasperation -- “She out of her poverty has given everything she had. That’s all she had to live on,” the implication being, “she should not have done that. She should not have been told to do that.” (2)

*****

After church today, you are each invited to pick up an envelope in the back of the sanctuary that has a card in it, a commitment card. I want you to take that card home and sit down with your spouse or your children or simply by yourself and prayerfully decide how much of your financial resources you will commit to the church in 2010. I want you to do this not because the church today is an institution cleansed from all the hypocrisy and corruption that so upset Jesus about the temple. Frankly, it’s not. We can all get frustrated from time to time with the church, both our individual church, our denomination, and the whole institution of the Christian church. There are certainly good reasons for this frustration. But there are also good reasons, important reasons, for each of us to sit down and prayerfully consider what portion of our financial resources we will commit to the church. The most important reason is that there is a direct correlation between how we spend our money and what we value. In fact, before you even pray about what to give the church, do this: look at a recent bank statement or credit card statement or checkbook and see where your money went in the past month. That will give you a clear indication of where your priorities lie.

There is a story told about the Gauls, a warring people who in ancient times lived in what is now France and Belgium. As the Roman Empire spread, Christian missionaries entered Gallic territory and convinced many of the Gauls to be baptized. When a converted warrior was baptized in a river, he would hold one arm high up in the air as the missionary dunked him under the water. The missionaries discovered why he did this the next time a battle broke out. Then, the warring Gaul would grab his club or sword and destroy his enemy in a most un-Christian way, shouting “this arm is not baptized!”

You may think that when you were baptized, your entire life was given over to God, but the reality is many of us hold something back. Most of us aren’t warriors, but all of us are consumers. And all of us probably use our money, at least sometimes, in ways that are decidedly un-Christian. In our English translation of the story of the poor widow, Jesus says that the widow puts into the treasury “all she had to live on.” But the literal translation of that phrase is “her whole life.” She doesn’t just give her last two coins, she gives her whole life, her whole being to God. She goes all in. It may not have been a smart thing to do, giving all her money to a corrupt institution that was supposed to be caring for her, not taking from her, but still it was a remarkable act of faith.

That is true giving. That is the meaning of stewardship. We are called to go all in, to bring every part of our lives into our life of faith, including our financial resources.

But didn’t I just say that the church is still misguided at best and hypocritical at worst? Yes, I said that, you heard me right. It doesn’t change my message, though, except that when we see the church as a flawed human institution, we may find that it is even easier to give. Because the church needs us, it needs us to work and pray and seek justice and look out for the poor and vulnerable among us. The church needs us to challenge its outdated thinking and misguided doctrines. The church needs us to give, not just our money, but our lives, so that the church can give itself to the world. If we hold something back, if we refuse to go all in, if we delude ourselves into thinking that we can be faithful to God with everything but our wallets, then not only will we suffer the greater condemnation Jesus predicts for the hypocritical scribes, we will also magnify the suffering of those people the church is called to care for, the widows and orphans of our time who rely on the kindness of faithful strangers for their well-being. Because if we, the followers of Jesus, don’t care for them, then who will?

If a bunch of people walking in the same way can together cause an entire bridge to sway, imagine what we can accomplish when we work together toward a common cause. When we pool our resources, when we combine our energies, we are capable of remarkable achievements. When we consider what financial resources we will commit to this flawed institution we acknowledge that giving to the church is not just about money, it’s about caring for others. The poor widow is here to teach us that we may not all be called to give more, because certainly God does not want us to give so much that we have nothing left, as the widow did. But we are all certainly called to care more, to work for justice for all. For those of us with more than adequate financial resources -- and even in today’s economy, many of us here have more than enough -- caring more does mean giving more. This is not just so that the church will have adequate funds for necessities like utilities and payroll, but also so that collectively, as a church, we can reach out to the needy in our community and world and ensure that they are well cared for. This is not just a nice thing to do, it is a crucial aspect of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to be a baptized Christian. Even as we work to keep our doors open and our ministries thriving, we need to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves with all the resources we’ve been given. Jesus has no patience for religious institutions that devour widow’s houses, and neither should we.

Over the last month, first at our fall retreat and then last week with Dan Schomer, we have had some great conversations about the future of FPPC. It is obvious to me that you are proud of this church and you are committed to ensuring that this church is going to be here for a long time. Well, for that to happen, you are going to have to go all in together. You are stepping onto a newly constructed bridge in faith that the engineers have done their job. And if each of you only look out for your individual needs to find security and balance, then you risk making that bridge sway so dangerously that you’ll never make it to the other side. But if you commit together to looking out not so much for your well-being as for the well-being of those around you and the strangers who aren’t even with you on the bridge but who need your kindness and grace the most, I have no doubt that you will cross this bridge safely into a bright and blessed future. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Cassidy, John, “Rational Irrationality,” The New Yorker, October 5, 2009.
2. Scott Hoezee, This Week in Preaching, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=343

The Deep Water (sermon by General Presbyter Dan Schomer, November 1, 2009)

Luke 5:1-11

When I was a small child, I learned the dangers of deep water. I was a preschooler and, like most small children, I wasn’t terribly conscious of my surroundings. In the midst of playing on a boat dock, I apparently stepped off and fell into water that was well over my head. To the best of my recollection, my whole life passed before my eyes. Given my age, that didn’t take very long; but before I got to the end of my life story, my father had reached down and pulled me out of the water blubbering and sputtering. During the remainder of my childhood, I was not at all fond of docks, boats, and water that was over my head. But as I grew older and learned to swim, I learned that deep water offered adventures that were simply unavailable in the shallows.

The text from Luke 5 begins with a sense of the familiar. A group of fishermen are washing their nets after a long night of fishing. It was a routine they had carried out daily for many years. It felt right and it felt comfortable. Routines are like that. Familiarity and normalcy help us feel safe and secure.

When Jesus asked Simon Peter to take him a little way off the shore of the lake so that he could use the boat as his pulpit, it added a little adventure to the day. Jesus sat down in the boat and taught the people who had gathered on the shore. As Peter listened, his heart and mind must have danced. How wonderful were Jesus’ words. How wise were his teachings. Jesus had given this hard-working fisherman much to think about. But Peter was still in the shallows.

Congregations are often faced with the temptation of staying in the shallows. Worship that is uplifting, comforting and familiar is well received; but let the sermon become too challenging or the music move too far out of people’s comfort zones, and the session is likely to hear about.
Speak of the generosity and grace of God and there will be smiles all around; but move on to suggest that our response to God’s generosity is to be generous in our giving of time, talents, and, yes, money, and a few frowns may develop. Suggesting that the church needs to meet the needs of its members will gain many nods; but suggest that the church is called to reach out to people who aren’t just like us, and there will be some squirming in the pews. We start in the shallows with Jesus. He is our source of comfort and security. He does provide generously for us. But Jesus is not content to stay in the shallows for long.

When he had finished teaching, Jesus turned to Simon Peter and said, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch”…which must have been a real surprise to Peter.
After all, who was the preacher and who was the fisherman? Peter knew the best time to let down your nets for a healthy catch and this wasn’t it. Peter and his partners had fished all night and come up empty.

Sound familiar? How many times is a ministry not attempted because someone warns, “We tried that before and it didn’t work.” The deep waters look kind of risky. We’ve had bad experiences out there. Everyone will feel a lot better if we just stay in the shallows.

There may be times when the church is open to risk-taking, but this isn’t one of those times. We live in a time of rapid change and many of these changes challenge our fundamental values. Peter Steinke, well known for his application of family systems to the life of the church, indicates that rapid change tends to breed anxious congregations. The more anxious congregations becomes, the more people crave familiarity and certainty. And the more anxious the church becomes, the less likely it is that risk taking will be attempted. When Darryl Royal was the coach of the University of Texas Longhorns, he developed one of the best rushing offenses in the country. Royal was famous for saying, “When you throw the ball three things can happen, and two of them are bad.” When we are anxious, when we focus on our own comfort and security, we tend to exaggerate the risks and diminish the possibilities that can be discovered by venturing out into the deep water.

Of course, Simon Peter could have brought this story to an abrupt end. He could have turned to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, you are no doubt a great preacher, but you are a lousy fisherman.” He could have rowed back to shore, bid Jesus farewell, and headed off to his bed to catch a little sleep before another night of fishing. And that would have been the end of the story…a story not worth telling in the pages of Scripture.

But motivated by little more than respect for Jesus, Simon Peter half-heartedly did move out to the deep water and let down the nets. Now things get exciting. The net is filled to overflowing with fish. Simon Peter calls his partners to come and help. Simon falls to his knees in awe at the power of God revealed in Jesus. And Jesus commissions Peter and his partners to go into a new kind of fishing business. But it begins with a little risk taking by one who at least shows enough faith to put out into the deep waters.

So what do the deeps waters look like for Presbyterian Churches today? Let’s be honest—they look scary. We have no desire to get in over our heads. Risk taking means that we cannot be in total control of what happens. Add to all this the rapid changes with which we have been confronted, and no one would blame us for staying in the shallows. Except, we don’t find Jesus in the shallows.

Brian McLaren, a leading spokesperson for the emergent church movement, calls the contemporary church into the deep waters by encouraging a radical faith that takes the example of Jesus seriously. In his book Everything Must Change, McLaren reminds us where we find Jesus and with whom he associated throughout his ministry. Jesus was an agent of change and transformation, confronting the religious community of his day and advocating for those on the fringes who were either rejected or forgotten. That sounds like deep water.

Diana Butler Bass in her book Christianity for the Rest of Us speaks to mainline denominational churches that seek to relate to the world around them in new and vital ways. Bass encourages churches to celebrate and learn from their heritage while also developing a deep spirituality. One of the primary characteristics of a vital church, according to Bass is hospitality. Bass writes, True Christian hospitality is not a recruitment strategy designed to manipulate strangers into church membership. Rather, it is a central practice of the Christian faith—something Christians are called to do for the sake of that thing itself…Christians welcome strangers as we ourselves have been welcomed into God through the love of Jesus Christ. Through hospitality, Christians imitate God’s welcome. Again, that sounds like deep water.

So what do the deep waters look like for the Firestone Park Presbyterian Church? That’s something that you are best equipped to discover for yourselves. I say that because ministry today is radically contextual. There is no one-size-fits-all ministry these days. Today effective ministries are those that are responsive to the needs of the community surrounding the church. Those who live in the community and know the community are best equipped to develop ministries to and with the community. But, if Jesus was to walk the streets of Firestone Park, Akron, where would we likely find him? Would you find him across the street at the park shooting baskets with some teens, telling stories to children, or listening sympathetically to a single parent that is at the end of here rope? It’s hard for me as an outsider to guess where Jesus would be. But this much I know--We would find Jesus with the people with whom we often do not associate. That’s why we call it deep water.

When I was a boy growing up in the First Methodist Church in Butler, Pa., one of the highlights throughout the year was when foreign missionaries would come to speak. I would listen attentively, captivated by these brave people of remarkable faith who would sooner laugh in the face of death than abandon their mission to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the four corners of the earth. Now, we are the missionaries called into the mission field that, in your case, is called Firestone Park. There are plenty of people out there who are not just like us and the challenges we face require courage. But that’s where Jesus calls us to be, out there, demonstrating the good news of God’s love through Jesus Christ.

I didn’t learn to swim until I was 11-years-old. I stuck around the shallow end of the pool while my friends were doing cannonballs in the deep end. I practiced swimming—putting my face in the water, kicking my feet, and making my hands go. Then, one day, I took the risk of walking down to the deep end where my feet couldn’t touch and the water was well over my head…and I jumped in. That was a day of joy and freedom that I will never forget.

Put out into the deep water!

Happily Ever After? (sermon, Oct. 25, 2009)

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

These days there aren’t many things you could say with confidence that all Americans have in common, but here’s one: we love happy endings. If you need proof of this, look no further than some of our most popular movies: Miracle on 34th Street, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and, of course, every Disney movie ever made -- I’m sure you can add your own favorites to the list. Part of this, of course, is that the movie industry is in the business of making money and, as one movie critic put it, “you don’t build [movie] franchises on bleak conclusions.”(1) Some argue that the reason for our love affair with happy endings is that the American Dream itself is a happy ending: the little guy overcomes adversity and hardship and makes it big. Deep down, we all believe that we are the little guy, and we dream of facing down our adversity and one day making it big,

While we may think this affinity for happy endings is particularly American, the Book of Job suggests otherwise. After all the suffering, after the painful process Job goes through that ends in his admitting that he really knows nothing about the ways of God, what do we get but a Hollywood-worthy happy ending. And not only that, we get an ending that seems to directly contradict the message in the rest of the book, in which Job and God go to great lengths to prove that the theological belief that the righteous get rewarded and the wicked get punished is flat-out wrong. The last seven verses of the Book of Job suggest that in fact, that is exactly how God works. Job perseveres through his suffering, keeps hold of his faith and in the end everything he lost is restored to him.

Am I the only one here who finds this ending deeply disappointing?

Well, whether you are disappointed or relieved to find that the end of the book of Job suggests that God indeed rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, we all need to look a little more closely at this ending which, at first glance, looks like a happy one.

First of all, before the seemingly “happy” ending in which Job’s fortunes are restored, we hear a final speech from Job. In this speech Job finally finds words with which to respond to God’s long monologue on creation. Although God never once addresses Job’s suffering or his guilt or innocence, Job still learns something from what God has to say: he learns that God’s power is far beyond Job’s ability to understand. Yes, we are unique and special in God’s sight, but that doesn’t mean that we are equal to God or capable of understanding God. As God speaks Job discovers the limitations of being human. “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know,” Job confesses. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” In other words, Job has experienced God in a completely new way; he now has a whole new perspective, not just on his own life and faith, but also on God’s relationship to creation and to humanity.

To understand what this experience must have been like for Job, let me ask you a question: who here remembers where you were on September 11th, 2001? Let’s see a show of hands. And why is it that everyone remembers this? It’s because that day changed our lives. Even if we didn’t personally know someone who was hurt or killed or involved in the tragedy, the events of that day drew a permanent line in the calenders of our minds. There is life before September 11th and life after. And every American knows that we can never go back to life as it was before September 11th, no matter how much our lives today resemble our lives then. That is what Job is expressing in his words to God: both because of his suffering and because of God’s response, Job’s perspective has permanently changed.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that in the book of Job there is a three-fold movement from orientation to disorientation and then to a new re-orientation. At the beginning of the book, Job’s life and faith make sense to him; when suffering hits, he moves into a period of life during which he is profoundly confused and disoriented and nothing makes sense any longer; finally, when his health, family, and wealth are restored, he moves into a new stage of life, a reorientation made possible by God. But within this reorientation there are “persistent traces of loss.” (2)

This three-fold movement in Job’s life is illustrated in the Pennyroyal Claxton Bible. In this Bible, three portraits by artist Barry Moser accompany the book of Job. In the first, Moser has drawn Job as a well-dressed, older man, looking down but with the slightest expression of condescension on his face. In the second picture, Job is naked and covered with sores, looking up with his jaw set. The determined look on his face shows that he wants an explanation for his condition. Moser’s final drawing is captioned “Job, Old and Full of Days.” Here is a man who has been restored to his prior life. He is once again well-dressed and, as in the first picture, he is looking down. But there is no longer any trace of condescension in his face; instead he looks almost confused but certainly humbled. (3) This is not the same Job as before his suffering.

If we return to that so-called “happy” ending, then, with this in mind, we realize that even when Job received back the equivalent of what he had lost, it doesn’t mean that his suffering has been erased or even somehow redeemed. For one thing, since Job knows firsthand that whatever you have you can lose in an instant, then surely he now lives with the persistent awareness that he could lose it all again. For another thing, Job may have been blessed with ten new children, the same number of children that had died before; and he may have had the most beautiful daughters in the land, but we all know those children could not totally replace the children who died, and whatever joy they brought Job, that joy could not take away or make up for the pain Job continued to feel over the absence of his first family.

Of course, the text doesn’t tell us any of this; in fact, it doesn’t give any hint at all that Job was haunted by the memories of his suffering. But, even if he is a remarkably righteous and faithful human being, he is still human. As Walter Brueggemann puts it, to be human is to discover that “the savage reality of loss eventually spares no one.” (4) And so we assume that Job’s experience is the same as ours. He lives fully again, he laughs again, he experiences joy again but he is never too far removed from that savage reality of loss and the pain it brought him.

The text does, however, make clear that Job’s suffering and the new perspective that suffering gave him changed him in another way. Listen again: “The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning...He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch...and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.”

Not only does the text tell us that Job had three daughters, we find out their names. Usually, in the Old Testament, most of the named characters are men; it is rare that a woman has a big enough role to actually be named in the text. But that’s not all; Job also gives his daughters a portion of the inheritance which would usually be divided among sons. This was simply unheard of. Daughters were property to be married off in exchange for livestock or maybe land, and once they were married, they became someone else’s property. But not Job’s daughters. Something about Job’s orientation, disorientation, and reorientation has brought him to a place where he is no longer willing to accept the cultural norms. After discovering in his suffering that his prior understanding about God isn’t true, it appears that Job is no longer willing to accept as infallible the norms of his society, especially those that unnecessarily cause others to suffer. And so in his reoriented life Job seeks to remedy one such injustice, at least as much as he can within his own family.

In the end, then, perhaps the book of Job does offer us a kind of happy ending. As we come to the end of this book we must still hold onto the deep suffering and despair Job knew, just as, for Job himself, the reality of that experience will always be with him. But even as we refuse to forget Job’s suffering, we can also recognize that, because of his suffering, Job has changed in ways that have allowed him to look beyond himself and do what he can to alleviate the suffering of others.

And so this is the lesson Job teaches us when his suffering has finally ended and his wealth, health, and family have been restored. When we are confronted with the “savage reality of suffering,” -- and, eventually, we all will be -- then we need to be honest about it, honest about our pain and confusion, honest even about the anger we feel toward God. But even in that time of disorientation when we discover firsthand that we understand little about the ways of God, we must still trust that God is there and that there will be an end to suffering, whether or not we see it on this side of heaven.

If, like Job, we are fortunate enough to see the end of our suffering while we still have life left to live, may we embrace the knowledge our suffering gave us. May we embrace the awareness that life is terribly, heart-breakingly fragile, even without the suffering and injustices we inflict on each other. And embracing these difficult truths, may we do what we can to minimize the suffering and to remedy the injustices we see all around us. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Ansen, David, “Endless Summer.” Newsweek, April 28, 2008; online at http://www.newsweek.com/id/132858.
2. Brueggemann, Walter, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox, 2003, p. 302.
3. Hoezee, Scott in the commentary at “This Week from the Center of Excellence in Preaching,” http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=340.
4. Brueggemann, Walter, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox, 2003, p. 302.

When God Shows Up (sermon on October 18, 2009)

Job 38:1-7, 34-41

This is now our third week hearing a passage from the Book of Job, so it's probably a good time to take a step back and review what happened to bring us to this incredible moment in chapter 37 when God responds to Job. When we first met Job, he was a faithful and righteous servant of God who also happened to have been blessed with land, wealth, good health, and a large family. After God gave the satan permission to test Job’s faith, Job lost everything: first his livestock, then his servants, then in one fell swoop, all ten of his children. When those losses didn’t shake Job’s faith, the satan took away his good health, causing Job to be covered with oozing, itching sores all over his body. At first, it looked like Job was going to persist in his faithfulness and integrity: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?” he asked.

Still, Job was not immune to grief. He took a piece of broken pottery with which to scratch his sores and he sat upon a heap of ashes, where he received visits from three friends, each of whom wanted to offer Job some theological advice.

One commentator suggests that the book of Job establishes a theological triangle. In one corner we have the belief that God is good. In another corner is the belief that Job is righteous. In the third corner is the belief that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. The problem is, these three beliefs cannot coexist; only two of them can be true at a time, and so the characters in the book of Job must choose. (1)

So, which two corners of the triangle did the friends choose? Well, they sincerely believe that God is good and that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, so they reject the idea that Job is righteous. Like the politician who plays the role of strict moralist in public while engaging in distinctly immoral behavior in private, Job’s friends believe that Job must be covering up some secret that only God knows and that secret is the reason for Job’s suffering.

As we heard in last week’s passage, Job totally and completely rejects that argument. So which two points of the triangle does he affirm? Well, he knows he is righteous and he too believes that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, so what Job rejects is the belief that God is good. God has let Job down in a huge way. In his suffering, Job has discovered a whole new side of God and there is nothing good about it in Job’s eyes. Some would say that Job almost commits blasphemy in the accusations he hurls at God; one scholar goes so far as to say that “by any meaning of the word blaspheme, Job blasphemes time and time again.” (2)

“God destroys both the righteous and the wicked,” Job declares, and God “mocks the calamity of the innocent.” He even insists that “the earth has been handed over to the wicked.” (Job 9:22-24). In spite of his blasphemy Job still wants nothing more than for God to show up and give Job an explanation. Job must harbor at least a sliver of hope that there is still a plausible explanation for everything that’s happened -- some explanation that will restore all three sides of that theological triangle. Job wants to hear that explanation...and he wants to hear it from God. Job is as desperate and determined as the husband standing outside the house of the man with whom his wife committed adultery, demanding that the man show his face and account for his actions.

Ever heard the expression “be careful what you wish for...”? Well, it could have been Job who coined that phrase because after all of Job’s raging and debating with his friends, after all his demands for God to offer an explanation, God finally shows up. And God proceeds, not to restore the corners of that triangle, but to throw the triangle out of play as easily as a grown man tossing a frisbee across a lawn.

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God thunders from the midst of a whirlwind. “Gird up your loins like a man...”

Now I know the language might seem a little outdated here, so let me make it very clear: God is calling Job out. That phrase: “gird up your loins like a man”? -- well, back when men wore long robes, you had to tuck your robe into your belt in order to engage in any physical activity. God is telling Job to “man up” and get ready for a fight. “You want a piece of me?” God is saying. “Then you’ve got it.”

And then God gets down to business, not fighting Job with jabs and left hooks, but with words. “I will question you,” God thunders, “And you shall declare to me.” Actually, Job isn’t going to declare much of anything, probably because, as any rational human being would be when God’s voice comes crashing around you from out of a whirlwind, Job was terrified.

Certainly it must have been terrifying, heart-stopping, panic-inducing, yes, to hear God’s voice as Job, but don’t you also think Job was relieved? I mean, he had been waiting a long time for God to offer him some explanation of his suffering and finally it looks like God has come to do just that. But when God speaks again -- and this speech continues way beyond what we heard today; it is nearly four chapters long -- God doesn’t say much of anything about Job at all, and certainly nothing that addresses Job’s suffering. Instead, God wants to talk about creation and to ask Job some rhetorical questions:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
“Who determined its measurements...or who stretched the line upon it?...who laid its cornerstone?"
“Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens?”

As if to be sure no one misses God’s point, and least of all Job, those “who” questions alternate with “can you” questions:
“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you?”
“Can you send forth lightnings?”
“Can you hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of the young lions?”

Of course, the answers to these questions are clear: The “who” is none other than God, the creator of heaven and earth. And as far as whether Job can do any of those things, clearly the answer is “no.”

So, Job gets his wish: God shows up. But what are we to make of this speech that makes God seem, if we’re really honest, like a blustering, bragging bully?

Well, first of all, it seems obvious that God is making a point: Job and his friends don’t know what they are talking about when they try to explain why Job is suffering, any more than they can fathom or explain the complexities of creation. And God also wants Job to understand something else: much as his suffering has consumed him lately, the world simply isn’t all about Job. “Who, who, who...” God keeps asking. And the answer is not Job, it is never Job, the answer is God. And yes, it is the same God Job has worshipped and obeyed his whole life long, but as Job now learns, God is not who Job thought God was, not completely anyway.

When God shows up and responds to Job and his friends, God completely shatters any boxes -- or triangles -- they may have constructed to contain God. In his speech to Job, God shows that the human mind’s ability to understand Godis severely limited. There is simply no three-sided or four-sided or any-sided figure complex enough to explain or contain the God who created this entire universe out of what was once “a formless void” and who continues, every day, to sustain it (Genesis 1:2). And God makes clear to Job that although human beings enjoy a special relationship with God, we simply are not the center of the universe, nor are we the only creatures over which God feels a Maker’s rightful sense of pride and joy.

In this speech God strikes a final blow at Job: having lost everything but his firm belief in who God is, God ensures that Job now loses even that. But the most important thing in the book of Job is what happens in chapter 38: God shows up. God responds. And when this happens, when God enters the conversation, God restores Job’s relationship with God. That relationship does not return to what it was before Job’s suffering -- when something so life-altering happens as happened to Job there can never be a return to how things were before. Instead, their relationship is transformed. From this point on it will never be the same as before, but it will be no less real and significant to Job.

This week the New York Times ran a story about a military program called Operation Proper Exit. This program has taken two groups of wounded veterans of the Iraq war back to Iraq in the hope that returning them to the place they left either unconscious or in agonizing pain might help them achieve some degree of closure. Most of the returning veterans were amazed at the differences between the Iraq of today and the one they left years ago at the height of the fighting -- they were struck at the quiet, since there were no longer constant sounds of mortal shells exploding; they were also amazed that the most recently assigned regiment has so far not lost one soldier to the war. During their visit, a Command Major said to the veterans, “This is the new Iraq, and what you did here is part of that.” (3)

Obviously, returning to a more peaceful Iraq isn’t going to change the veterans’ memories of their time there, nor is it going to restore their lost limbs or instantly heal their psychological wounds. But it gives them new information about a place that deeply affected their lives. It gives them new experiences with that place beyond the violence and suffering that had been their most vivid memories. So far, studies have shown that Operation Proper Exit is helping the veterans who participate. Some report that their night terrors stopped completely; others that they finally felt free from the guilt they carried home. Returning to Iraq transformed their relationship with a place that will always be a part of them.

When God shows up to argue with Job, God clearly makes the point that human suffering is just one part of the complex and mysterious world God created. But the very fact that God shows up reveals to Job -- and to us -- that we human beings matter enough to God that God will show up, even one on one, even if it is to argue, even if it is to put us in our place and make sure we understand that God is God and we are not, that God’s ways are not our ways and cannot be explained by our logic.

Job doesn’t get an explanation from God. In fact, when God finally finishes his speech about creation, Job probably has more questions than answers. But he knows that God cares enough to make that speech to him, to be with him, to show up. The God who created the universe from nothing speaks to Job! And that act changes and restores Job’s relationship to God. His suffering is not taken away or explained, but still there is a change and that relationship which had seemed dead suddenly receives new life. All because God shows up.

There is a haiku by the sixteenth century Japanese poet Masahide which, I believe, perfectly expresses what happens to Job when his suffering causes him to question everything he thought he understood about God and then when God speaks directly to him, restoring their relationship and offering Job a new vision of God. I will end with Masahide’s words.

Barn’s burnt down
now
I can see the moon.


Endnotes:
1. Rolf Jacobsen, in the Working Preacher “Sermon Brainwave” podcast for June 21, 2009. http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=71
2. John C. Holbert in the Working Preacher lectionary commentary for June 21, 2009, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=6/21/2009&tab=1.
3. Nordland, Rod, “Wounded Soldiers Return to Iraq, Seeking Solace,” The New York Times. Thursday, Oct. 15, section A1. The article can be found online here.

Unforgiveness

"Perhaps...there is a gap in all of us that remains essentially unbridgeable, a part of us that we cannot mend because it is a feature of our mortality to be without some degree of reconciliation. To be unforgiving almost seems inevitable, even natural, within a part of us."

~Kenneth Briggs, The Power of Forgiveness


"Forgiveness is a gift and if you don't have it don't pretend that you do."

~Thomas Moore, The Power of Forgiveness

For the last two weeks, we have gathered after worship to discuss forgiveness, both its elusive nature and its scientifically-documented effects on human health and well-being. This Sunday we are going to talk about unforgiveness. Clearly forgiveness is not a natural instinct for human beings; rather, we are quick to take offense and then seek revenge or hold a grudge. But are there offenses that actually justify our being unforgiving? Are there ways in which holding onto a sense of betrayal and resentment is actually a good, protective instinct? Does the Bible ever depict the gracious God we worship as unforgiving?

These are difficult questions with no easy answers, but I guarantee they will make for a fascinating discussion that will challenge and maybe even deepen your faith. Join us on Sunday in the sanctuary right after worship until 12noon.

See you in church!

The Presence of God's Absence (sermon, Oct. 11, 2009)

Job 23:1-9, 16-17

Throughout the Bible runs a common theme: God is with us. In Jesus Christ, who was God incarnate, we have the ultimate proof that God loves us and that God desires to be with us. We know this because God became human and walked among us, experiencing all the realities of life on earth. Because of the incarnation we may take comfort in God’s presence and know that God’s love is the most dependable aspect of our existence. In many ways we might think of this as a primarily New Testament theme, since the NT is devoted to the story of the incarnation. But it turns out the foundations for the theme God is with us were laid in the Old Testmant. Just listen to this portion of Psalm 139:


O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away...


Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence? 

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night’, 

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.
(Psalm 139:1-2, 7-12)

In the New Testament, apart from the gospels, which are devoted to the revelation of God on earth in human form, we read in Paul’s letter to the Romans, that nothing, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

God is with us, in all things, in every circumstance. This belief is at the core of Christian theology.

What happens then, when the only thing we can discern about God is not presence, but absence? Well, those are the moments when we can be grateful the the Book of Job is also in the Bible.

Job presents the antithesis to those lines in Psalm 139 when he declares, “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face!” (Job 23:16-17)

When we left Job last week back in chapter 2, he was still an inspiration to us: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?” he asked in the face of unimaginable grief and hardship. But now Job seems, not patient and resigned, but angry and frustrated. In one translation of chapter 23 verse 1, Job describes himself as “bitter”; in another translation as “rebellious.” Either way, this is not the Job we met in the early chapters of the book. What has happened to bring Job to this place?

What has happened between chapter 2 and 23 is that Job has had several visits from men who claim to be his friends. For twenty-five chapters, three of Job’s friends each get three chances to convince Job that the suffering he is experiencing must be the result of some sinful behavior in Job’s past. As one commentator puts it, “the friends argue backwards from Job’s suffering to his supposed unrighteousness; since Job is clearly suffering, he must have sinned in some way that has brought God’s punishment upon him.” And “his only way out is repentance.”(1)

The problem is, Job refuses to agree with his friends’ calculations, insisting over and over again that he has done nothing wrong, certainly nothing that could justify the punishment he has received at the hand of God. In today’s passage, Job is responding to his friend Eliphaz, who has argued that God has no use for human beings because, morally speaking, human beings are filled with wickedness. What Job needs to do to feel better, says Eliphaz, is receive his suffering as a gift from God, a gift that motivates Job to repent of his sin -- whether or not he knows what his sin is -- and be at peace with the all-powerful God who rewards the righteous and repentant.

Job has no patience for that argument. When he responds to Eliphaz he shows that he isn’t interested in whether God is all-powerful or loving or gracious to the righteous and repentant creature; what Job wants is a God who is present. And for Job, the primary reality of his existence at this point is that God is nowhere to be found. Job wants God to be present not just for the comfort he might find in God’s presence, but also so that Job could make his case to God, so that he could convince God that he truly has done nothing to deserve this. Job is having a “why me?” moment and he wants some answers from God.

Well, Job certainly isn’t the only human being in the world who has ever had such a moment of profound frustration and despair, when, just at the moment you need God the most, suddenly God is not there. You have no comforting sense of God’s presence and all the theological declarations in the world sound empty and trite. Surely most of us have had such moments. Hopefully they were short-lived, but if not, then it turns out we are in good company.

The book Psalms of Lament is a collection of fifty poems modeled after the psalms. Each of these poems was written by poet Ann Weems as she grieved the death of her son Todd, who was murdered just hours after his twenty-first birthday. In one of these psalms Weems challenges God with no less passion than Job:

God, have you forgotten our covenant?
Have you forgotten your promise?
Can’t you enter my world of tears?
Can’t you make your home
in a heart that is broken?
O God, acknowledge that
you hear my cry!
Send word that you
are on the way!
Answer me so that
I can cling to some hope
of your presence,
for I have believed
that you would come. (2)

In his book Surprised by Joy, British writer C.S. Lewis describes his unexpected conversion to Christianity at the age of 33. Even though he was raised in the church, Lewis proclaimed to be an atheist at age 15. He later described himself as a young person as having been “very angry with God for not existing.” I just love this quote, since how can you be angry with someone or something that does not exist? That anger itself, the very kind of anger Job expresses in today’s passage and Ann Weems proclaims in her poetry, presupposes the existence of God even if all that is perceived is God’s absence. But Lewis’ experience of God’s absence became even more profound many years after he converted to Christianity when his wife of four years died of cancer. A Grief Observed, Lewis’ book describing his grief, is so raw and honest that it’s no wonder that Lewis originally published it under a different name. Finally, after numerous friends recommended the book to him as one that might help with his grieving process, he decided to claim the work as his own. One of the most disturbing sections from the book describes his sense that God has completely abandoned him to his suffering.

“Meanwhile, where is God,” Lewis writes. “...go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away.” (3)

You’ll find this quote in its entirety in the inside of your bulletin today. When our church secretary, Carol, brought me a draft of the bulletin to proofread, she asked, “Is that quote right? It just seems, so, so...” She didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t have to. It seems awful at best, downright heretical at worst. It certainly isn’t a quote that you’d take home and stick on the refrigerator or the bathroom mirror. But I wanted that quote in the bulletin because it’s true. It is a reflection of an experience that most of us are likely to have at some point in our lives and when that experience happens to you, when you feel like God has left the scene and slammed the door in your face on the way out, I want you to know that you are not alone. Job, Ann Weems, C.S. Lewis and countless unnamed people of faith have had these moments too, when they felt only the chilling, disorienting, unnerving presence of God’s absence. The gospel of Mark even suggests that Jesus had such a moment as he hung dying on the cross when he shouted out -- as his last words! -- “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Such questions, such experiences of God’s absence do not prove our lack of faith. And there is no “right” way to respond to such experiences. But I want to offer you a few options if and when you find yourself in the depths of despair, when the thing that seems most real to you is not the presence of God but God’s absence.

The first option is the one that Job and Ann Weems and C.S. Lewis each demonstrate: let God have it. One of the gifts of the book of Job is that is shows us an example of faithful anger toward God. Job is not walking away from God and abandoning his faith; he is challenging God as an expression of his faith and in that, he is gaining a maturity of faith that can only be won through suffering. We can do the same thing in our moments of suffering, whether our anger is spoken or written or shouted to the night.

A second option is the opposite of the first. Instead of expressing your anger at God, retreat instead to a place of expectant quiet. “Be still and know that I am God,” writes the psalmist (Psalm 46:10). Especially in Job’s case, he wants God to be present to him so that he can argue with God about whether or not he deserved the suffering that had been heaped upon him. Job wants God to show up in the courtroom and hear the facts of the case. But God is not just a judge or arbiter, and perhaps that’s why Job’s experience of God’s absence was so profound here: because God refused to show up and be what Job wanted God to be. The psalm doesn’t just tell us to be still, but to be still with our knowledge, our faith that, whether we feel it or not, God is with us in all things. Sometimes in the face of suffering we may find that silence is the only acceptable option.

To explain the third option, I’m going to tell you the story of a woman whose experience of God’s absence did not last for just a moment or a particularly dark season, but for most of her adult life. That woman was Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to the poor and dying of India. Most of us probably think she was “a God-intoxicated saint,” as one writer put it, but after Mother Teresa died in 1997, letters she had sent to spiritual directors over the years painted a very different picture. Although she experienced a profound union with Christ and had visions of him that prompted her to go to work on the streets of India and to create the Missionaries of Charity, from 1947 until her death -- fifty years! -- she experienced a spiritual darkness, a true dark night of the soul. She wrote that she had intense feelings of doubt, loneliness, and abandonment; she had no sense of God’s presence, only an awareness of “just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.” (4)

And yet, in the face of that emptiness, Mother Teresa neither challenged God in anger nor did she wait in silence for God’s return. Instead, she “deal[t] with her trial of faith by converting her feeling of abandonment by God into an act of abandonment to God.” (5) In other words, she abandoned herself to the work to which she knew Christ had called her, the work of loving and serving Christ in every person, no matter how poor or sick. Her faithfulness was revealed in the very fact that for fifty years she labored for Christ, fulfilling her vows as a nun and her personal vow to Christ to serve the poor, in spite of the fact that she herself had no subjective experience of God’s presence.

Although an experience of God’s absence is something that almost every person of faith confronts at some point, our responses to that experience will all be different. There is not one “right” way to respond, and if Job’s unhelpful friends teach us anything it is that we should be very careful what we say to someone who is in the midst of suffering. But may we all remember in these moments, whether we respond through silence, anger, or by abandoning ourselves to God’s work, may we remember that even when the only thing real to us about God is God’s absence, we are not alone. We are in the company of many people, from Job to Jesus to Mother Teresa to countless unnamed souls, who confronted and endured their suffering with honesty and integrity and, yes, with faith. May we find the strength to do the same. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Throntveit, Mark A. Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4, Westminster John Knox, 2009, p. 151.
2. Weems, Ann, Psalms of Lament. Westminster John Knox, 1995, p. 14.
3. Lewis, C.S., A Grief Observed. HarperOne, 2001.
4. First Things magazine, “The Dark Night of Mother Teresa” by Carol Zaleski, May 2003 Issue.
(http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/08/the-dark-night-of-mother-teresa-42)
5. Ibid.