(Matthew 14.22-33)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time - July 26, 2009
The fifth in a summer sermon series on questions members have asked to hear sermons about.
This morning's question: "If I'm led by the head and not the heart,
does that mean I'm missing out on something when it comes to my faith?"
I forget where I first heard it, but it's true. Every question is a statement. Sometimes they're obvious. "Would you like to change clothes and clean up before our guests arrive?" isn't really a question. It's a statement. And there's only one right response.
With other questions, the statement they are making isn't as clear. It helps to get a context for the question. So I've asked Lyda to tell us where the question for today's sermon comes from.
I was at a worship service in Atlanta a while back. The church was packed to the rafters. There were liturgical dancers who were amazing. They were dressed all in red. And they stomped down the aisle and shouted. It was incredibly moving. Then the preacher talked about the Jesus of the black woman - the Jesus who sustained black women through slavery. This he called the Jesus of the heart. Then he talked about the white woman's Christ. He talked about white women who approach things very intellectually. That is the Christ of the head. I was with him all the way. Then he said the true Jesus was the Jesus of the heart. And that got me angry. And I've wondered about that ever since. Is there something I'm missing because I come at things out of my head so much?
"If I'm led by the head and not the heart, does that mean I'm missing out on something when it comes to my faith?"
The German poet Rainer Marie Rilke is most famous for something he wrote in 1903. In a letter to a young poet, he encouraged him to
have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were unlocked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers . . . because you would not be able to live them. . . . Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer (Letters to a Young Poet, New York: The Modern Library, 2001, p. 34).
What I hear Rilke saying is that the questions we live are really important. And if we're not living the right question, then we probably won't get what we seek. I wonder, Lyda, if the question you're asking is one that can get you to the faith you seek. You talk about being someone who comes at things from your head. But I don't think we can divide ourselves like that. Into head and heart. Body and mind. Spirit and soul. Our Jewish ancestors who wrote the Hebrew Bible saw humans as whole, undivided, living selves (Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology, Fortress Press, 1997, pp. 452-3). In the second creation story, God takes dirt from the ground and breathes on it (Genesis 2.7). And we became living beings. We didn't become discrete bodies and souls or heads and hearts or flesh and spirit. God makes us whole, undivided, living selves.
Lyda, it's not like there's an orchestra conductor inside you, who, when you saw the liturgical dancers who so deeply moved you, cued your heart to say, "Feelings, get louder." And it's not like when you listened to the sermon, the conductor signalled your heart to play quiet down so your brain to get louder because you had some serious thinking to do. All of you reacted to the power of the dancers. All of you reacted to the sermon you heard. We have kind thoughts. We have wise feelings. We're not separate . . . God makes us whole, undivided, living selves.
So, Lyda, I suggest the way you've asked this question isn't going to get you to the faith you seek. Because it assumes you're a divided being. Maybe a question that has a better chance of clearing the way for you is something like, What keeps me from finding the faith I seek?
One of the things that gets us in trouble when we talk about creating a deeper faith is the holy trinity many of us worship: our reason, our experience, and our beliefs about how the world works. What happens when I hear a story in the Bible or hear something about the Christian faith . . . and it isn't logical . . . it doesn't fit with my experience . . . something happens that doesn't fit with how I know the world works? Often, I dismiss it outright. I close myself off to it. I say, "That's ridiculous. No one can expect me to believe that." The whole, undivided, living being God has made me to be has shut the gate. That Bible story, that teaching, is not going to get in.
Which means there's no room for wonder. If I let my reason, my experience, or my certainty about how the world works close me off to a Bible story or teaching about Christian faith that they have no room for, then I don't wonder about them. I don't wonder what they might have to say to me. I don't bring that to my faith community and ask them to wonder with me about what it would mean if it were true. I just dismiss it out-of-hand.
But if we don't have room for wonder, we will never find the faith we seek, if the faith we seek has anything to do with God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Because we've turned our reason, our experience, or our certainty about how the world works into our gods. They are the source of truth we trust. They determine what we can and cannot believe. They are the gods we worship. Which means there's no room for the God we hunger for.
One of the best expressions of the relationship between wonder and faith is Hymn #144. Let us sing it together.
Praise the Source of faith and learning that has spared and stoked the mind
with a passion for discerning how the world has been designed.
Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey
keep our faith forever growing and renew our need to pray:
God of wisdom, we acknowledge that our science and our art
and the breadth of human knowledge only partial truth imparts.
Far beyond our calculation lies a depth we cannot sound
where your purpose for creation and the pulse of life are found.
May our faith redeem the blunder of believing that our though
has displaced the grounds for wonder which the ancient prophets taught.
May our learning curb the error which unthinking faith can breed
lest we justify some terror with an antiquated creed.
As two currents in a river fight each other's undertow
till converging they deliver one coherent steady flow,
blend, O God, our faith and learning till they carve a single course,
till they join as one, returning praise and thanks to you, their Source.
Thomas Troeger © 1987, Oxford University Press,
in The New Century Hymnal © 1995, The Pilgrim Press)
One river is our reason, our experience, our certainty about how the world works. Another river is a Bible story or faith teaching that doesn't fit with those. Like the hymn says, these two rivers begin to come together. And they fight each other's undertow. There's turbulence. It's anything but calm. But if we allow wonder to rise in us, then the turbulence subsides a bit. The gate that our reason, experience, and certainty about how the world works had kept locked shut cracks open a bit. Which is enough for God's Spirit to get through. And help us imagine letting Her work wonder in us, and see if indeed this story or teaching might clear the way a bit and bring us closer to the faith we seek.
There's something else related to this comes up when we live the question, What keeps me from finding the faith I seek? That has to do with preachers who interpret the Bible or Christian teachings in a way that seems to say having a living faith requires us to believe things we know cannot be true. This is different from the defensive stance we take of keeping the gate shut because something might threaten our reason, experience, or way we think the world works. What I'm talking about are those times preachers seem to be telling us that faith demands that we ignore what we know to be true. What are honest Christians who want to deepen their faith supposed to do when preachers tell them this?
This morning's Gospel reading is a perfect example of such a Bible story. Listen for a word from God.
Jesus insisted that the disciples get in their boat and go on ahead to the other side of Lake Galilee while he dismissed the people. With the crowd dispersed, Jesus climbed the mountain so he could be by himself and pray. He stayed there alone, late into the night.
Meanwhile, the boat was far out to sea when the wind came up against them, and they were battered by the waves. At about four o'clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them, walking on the water. They were scared out of their wits. "A ghost!" they said, crying out in terror.
But Jesus was quick to comfort them. "Courage, it's me. Don't be afraid."
Peter, suddenly bold, said, "Master, if it's really you, call me to come to you on the water."
He said, "Come ahead."
Jumping out of the boat, Peter walked on the water to Jesus. But when he looked down at the waves churning beneath his feet, he lost his nerve and started to sink. He cried, "Master, save me!"
Jesus didn't hesitate. He reached down and grabbed his hand. Then he said, "Faint-heart, what got into you?"
The two of them climbed into the boat, and the wind died down. The disciples in the boat, having watched the whole thing, worshiped Jesus, saying, "This is it! You are God's Son for sure!"
(Matthew 14.22-33, adapted from The Message ©1993-96, 2000-2002; used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group)
When Lyda and I talked about this passage last week, she said, "Peter gets out of the boat and walks on water. It's only when he becomes aware of what he's doing that he becomes afraid and sinks under the water. But at least he got out of the boat. I'd be the one who'd say, 'Wait a cotton-picking second! People don't walk on water!' That's my anxiety: I come to all of this from the rational side, and is my rational brain getting in the way of opening my spiritual side?"
Up until yesterday, every Bible scholar I've come across has interpreted this story the same way. Every preacher I've heard preach on this passage, including me, has interpreted this story the same way. Using Rilke's image of living the questions, interpreters of this Bible story say it asks us, "If I had the faith that I seek, I would step out of the boat with Peter and believe I can walk on water."
The anxiety you talk about, Lyda, seems to grow out of this question. You are a whole, undivided, living being. You hear a Bible story like this. Your whole being gets caught up in it, as it did when you saw those liturgical dancers. You long to have the faith you seek. So your being begins to imagine what it would be like to have so much faith that you step out of the boat with Peter, and walk on the water toward Jesus. Then, as a whole, undivided, living being, you say, "Wait a minute! Humans can't walk on water, no matter how much faith they have!" Which drops you into that anxious place. To have the kind of faith I seek, do I need to believe that humans are able to do things I know they can't?
Which makes me very grateful that yesterday I came across a different interpretation of this story that blows the traditional interpretation totally out of the water . . . so to speak.
Look at this story again. The disciples are in the middle of Lake Galilee. A storm comes up, and they fear they will drown. Jesus comes to them on the water. [I'm not going to get into a debate about whether Jesus could walk on the water. Those who believe he was fully human and fully divine could argue he is able to do things humans cannot. But that's for a different sermon!] And he tells them, "It's me. Don't be afraid." Which should have been enough assurance for the disciples. But then Peter says this truly odd thing: "If it's really you, then call me, and I'll come to you on the water." Jesus, who has to be wondering what in the world Peter is thinking, says, "Come!" And so Peter steps out, and, like any of us would, he sinks under the surface. So Jesus lifts him out of the water and says, "Faint-heart, what got into you?" Or as a more traditional translation says, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
Up until yesterday, every interpreter of this story has assumed Jesus is referring to Peter sinking under the water when he talks about Peter's lack of faith. But there's nothing in the story that says that's the case. Instead, what if Jesus is telling Peter he lacks faith because he got out of the boat in the first place? What if Jesus is telling Peter he lacks faith because he didn't believe God was in the boat with them all the time? It should have been enough for the disciples that Jesus came to them in their fear and told them they didn't need to be afraid. It was enough for the rest of the disciples. But not for Peter. Peter didn't trust he was safe in the boat. He didn't trust God was with him in the boat. So he decides to leave his faith community. And step out by himself. To head toward the God he could see. Instead of trusting he was held in the presence of the God whom he could not see. (This interpretation of the story is in M. Eugene Boring, "The Gospel of Matthew," The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume VIII, Abingdon Press, 1995, pp. 329-330.)
This way of hearing this story can free us from the anxiety we feel when it seems like having the faith we seek requires us to believe humans can do things we know they cannot. Jesus does not ask us to believe utterly ridiculous things to follow him. He just tries to help us clear the way, so we can move toward the faith we seek, and the God we hunger for.
Looked at this way, the story invites us to live some different questions that have nothing to do with believing we can walk on water. Jesus' message that God is always with us and with our faith communities invites us to live questions like, Do I expect to find God in church? Do I expect to find God in all the communities I'm part of? Do I look for God there? Do I bring God with me to these communities? Do I trust my faith community enough to believe there's really a place for me there? Do I trust that they love me and will be there for me when I need them? Do I trust that people in my faith community will receive the love I want to give? And trust they will listen as I talk about the God I know, and the God I long to know?
A faith that makes God real and alive for us doesn't require us to believe we can walk on water. A faith that makes God real and alive for us invites us to live the questions that move us toward God. Such a faith shows us how to clear the way of all that gets in our way as we try to follow Jesus on the way. In community . . . with God . . . as whole, undivided selves whom God breathed life into, we live the questions. We clear the way. And in deep wonder, we seek to build a faith. We seek to build a faith in the God who loves each of us and all creation with a depth of love we will never truly know.
Amen.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Times to Surrender and Times to Rest
(Mark 14.32-41 and Luke 18.1-7)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time: July 19, 2009
The fifth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear sermons about.
Today's question: If you keep failing at the same thing, is God saying you haven't learned a lesson?
If you keep failing at the same thing, is God saying you haven't learned a lesson?
When I hear this question, I hear an ache and a hunger.
I hear the ache that comes with the words keep failing. The ache of trying over and over and over again to make a dream real. To find, create, or achieve something. And failing. It's an ache asks hard questions: Why can't I make this dream real? Am I a failure? Is God trying to teach me the lesson that I'm chasing the wrong dream? Or chasing the right dream at the wrong time? Is God trying to teach me I'm going about trying to make it real in the wrong way? Is God punishing me by keeping my dream from becoming real - even though I feel so strongly that this is God's dream for me because it would make me feel more joyful and loving and alive?
And I hear a hunger in this question. Does God talk to me? Does God have dreams for me? How do I know what God wants for me? How do I hear or see or feel God? Does God really love me?
If our dream never becomes real, no matter how hard we try, it may be that God is trying to teach us a lesson. But what that lesson is is far from clear. God could be trying to teach us any number of things.
I'd like to explore the question for this morning in several ways. The first is a hymn that sings of a God who comes to us, who calls and heals and frees us.
This hymn is on the middle page of your bulletin. The choir will sing the first verse; please join in on the rest.
Chorus: The God of heaven is present on earth in word and silence and sharing,
in face of doubt, in depth of faith, in signs of love and caring.
Gentler than air, wilder than wind, settling yet also deranging,
the Spirit thrives in human lives both changeless and yet changing. Chorus
Far from the church, outside the fold, where prayer turns feeble and nervous,
the Spirit wills society's ills be healed through humble service. Chorus
From rural quiet to urban riot, in every social confusion,
the Spirit pleads for all that leads to freedom from illusion. Chorus
Truth after tears, trust after fears, God leaving everyone wiser,
the Spirit springs through hopeless things transforming what defies her. Chorus
In terms of this morning's question, the part that touches me most deeply is the last part of the third verse: In every social confusion, the Spirit pleads for all that leads to freedom from illusion (John Bell & Graham Maule, "The God of Heaven," Iona Abbey Music Book, Wild Goose Publications, 2003).
When all of our efforts do not bring us what we are looking for - when in spite of everything we do we 'fail' to make real our dream - what do we pray for? I'm sure we pray that something will change so we can make our dream real. Along with that prayer, I think we need to pray for freedom from any illusions we're operating under. For a long time, Peter and I dreamt of finding a church that would hire us to be their pastors. We were sure getting a church to hire us was God's call. After we got 50 rejections, God's Spirit helped us understand that this was an illusion. Yes, we wanted to serve as pastors together. But at that point, we needed to be freed from this belief that by not getting any church to look at us we were 'failing' to achieve what God was calling us to. As we wondered if the God was calling us to something else, we got 20 or so more rejections. And then God's Spirit freed us from the despair and anger of this failure. She opened us to hear her call to keep knocking at the door of churches. To force 'Open and Affirming' churches to struggle with whether they were open and affirming enough seriously to consider calling a gay couple as their pastors. Letting the Spirit convince us that what we thought was our call wasn't our call was not something we did without kicking and screaming. We still wanted to be pastors. And I think hearing this new call from the Spirit kept us applying to churches. Because as we followed the call to keep knocking at church doors, we kept applying to churches. And 30 or so rejections later, a church in Seattle called us. But we needed to be open to hearing a different call than the one we were sure was our only true call. Or we would have given up.
When doors don't open for us - when our best efforts to make our dreams real end in failure after failure, we have at least two options. We can resist. Or we can surrender. We can resist by redoubling our efforts. Or by changing our strategy and tactics. Or, instead of trying to make our dream real all at once in one huge leap, we can pray for the wisdom to take a first step toward that dream. Choosing to resist means we feel confident that what we are trying to achieve is God's dream for us. Or we can surrender. We often think surrendering is a sign of weakness and cowardice. But sometimes to surrender is the most courageous and honest action possible. When we surrender, we admit that this dream isn't going to come true. Maybe it's the wrong time, or wrong place; maybe we're the wrong person to make this happen. Whatever the reason, we surrendering means we know we need to let go of a dream that may have been what we've been living for for a long time. But it's not going to come true. At least for now.
Our first Bible story this morning is a story of resistance. Listen for a word from God.
Jesus told the disciples a story on the necessity of praying always and not losing heart: "There was a judge in a certain city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him: 'My rights are being violated. Protect me!'
"The judge never gave her the time of day. But after this went on and on he said to himself, 'I care nothing what God thinks, even less what people think. But because this widow won't quit badgering me, I'd better do something and see that she gets justice - otherwise I'm going to end up beaten black and blue by her pounding."
Then the Master said, "Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think God won't step in and work justice for the beloved, who continue to cry out for help? Will God delay long over them? I tell you, God will give them swift justice." (Luke 18.1-7; adapted from The Message ©1993-96, 2000-2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.)
This morning before worship Linda, Lauren, and I were talking about this Bible story. And Linda said, "I love that widow!" This widow is absolutely convinced of two things. First, she is convinced that her God is a God who demands justice - especially for widows and orphans. And she is convinced that this judge is giving her the shaft. So she breaks every social code that says how respectable women in Palestine should act. She goes to the house of a male who was not her relative without being accompanied by another male. And she stands outside his house and screams for justice. She keeps screaming and screaming, and will not be silenced. The neighbors start to talk among themselves: She keeps screaming. Maybe this judge isn't treating her fairly. And the judge starts to fear what the neighbors are thinking. If they believe I haven't given this woman justice, I'll lose their respect. I'll be shamed. I'll get kicked out of the country club. My life will be a wreck. So he gives her the justice she seeks. Her imaginative act of resistance gets her the justice being polite and playing by the rules never would have provided.
That's resistance. That's chutzpah. She knew God's dream was a dream of justice. And that certainty sustained her until God's dream became real.
Our second Bible reading this morning is a story of surrender. Listen for a word from God.
Jesus and the disciples came to an area called Gethsemane, the Place of the Olive Press. Jesus told his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took Peter, James, and John with him. He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. He told them, "I feel bad enough right now to die. Stay here and keep vigil with me."
Going a little ahead, he fell to the ground and prayed for a way out. "Papa, Father, you can - can't you? - get me out of this. Take this cup away from me. But please, not what I want - what do you want?"
He came back and found them sound asleep. He said to Peter, "Simon, you went to sleep on me? Can't you stick it out with me a single hour? Stay alert, be in prayer, so you won't enter the danger zone without even knowing it. Don't be naïve. Part of you is eager, ready for anything in God; but another part is as lazy as an old dog sleeping my the fire."
He then went back and prayed the same prayer. Returning, he again found them sound asleep. They simply couldn't keep their eyes open, and they didn't have a plausible excuse.
He came back a third time and said, "Are you going to sleep all night? No - you've slept long enough. Time's up." (Mark 14.32-41, adapted from The Message ©1993-96, 2000-2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.)
He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. That's how it is with us when we've tried everything to make our dream real and it hasn't happened. Jesus spent his whole adult ministry loving with a huge love and calling people to do the same thing. He spent his whole adult ministry telling the disciples that following him wasn't going to be easy; being his disciple came with a cost. He spent his adult ministry trying to convince the leaders of the Temple that if they didn't stop supporting people who wanted to overthrow Rome violently that this would only destroy the Temple. And nothing really worked. No one paid attention. Nothing really changed. So Jesus realizes he must surrender. He knows he will be executed. A love like his is too big and scary for the world to embrace. For now he knows he cannot keep fighting. So he puts himself in God's hands.
Resistance and surrender. Two ways to respond when we realize we keep failing at the same thing. But how do we know which to do? How do we know what lesson, if any, God is trying to teach us? How do we listen for what God is saying to us? How do we trust that God says anything to us? And open ourselves actually to feel like God loves us?
Some people feel God's love as easily as they take a breath. And I think children feel it pretty naturally as well. Then they grow up . . . and it becomes a lot harder for many of us to feel God's love. Harder for us to hear God and see God and feel God's presence as close as our breath. So for most adults, trusting that God speaks and calls and loves and reaches out to us takes practice. These practices are called spiritual disciplines. For most of us, discipline is not an attractive word. I have the image of a strict nun in India breaking a ruler on my hand for misspelling a word. That's discipline. But a spiritual discipline is different. A spiritual discipline is something we do every day to help us love and feel loved by God.
I've noticed something in the churches I've worked in. Someone's loved one is dying. The person comes up to me and says, "I'm praying all the time, and nothing's happening. I don't feel like God is answering me at all. I don't even feel like God is there. So how can you say God cares?" Asking if God cares when someone we love is dying is a fair question. And at the same time, there's something I want to say to them that I still haven't figured out how to say pastorally. What I want to say goes something like this. If you'd never played the trombone, you wouldn't wake up one morning, borrow your friend's trombone, try out for the band, and expect to get first chair. A casual jogger shouldn't expect to wake up one morning and decide to run a marathon. If you meet someone and then don't talk to them for five years, you don't expect to give them a call and have heart-to-heart conversation. It's the same way with God. If we don't practice building a relationship with God - if we don't do some daily spiritual discipline that helps us love and feel loved by God, then we can't expect just to start praying in the midst of a crisis and feel God close as our breath. If we want to build a relationship with God, we need to practice.
So if I keep failing at something, I need to have been practicing some spiritual discipline if I hope to be able to hear any lesson God might have for me in that failure. That's where examen comes in. Right under the Bible stories in your bulletin you'll find a method of examen. Examen is a way to pray that involves examination and investigation. It was developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a 16th-century Spanish man who founded the Society of Jesus or Jesuits. What I have in the bulletin is one way of doing examen. Once you get used to this form of prayer, it's something you can do at the end of each day in about 10 minutes. Practiced each day, over time it can help you feel God's love for you, hear God's dreams for you, and trust God's presence in your day-to-day life and in the life of the world. So you can know if it's time to resist or time to surrender or time to do something else.
Let us look at this spiritual discipline together.
AN EXAMEN FORMAT
(adapted from the Ignatian Spirituality Center, Seattle, WA)
THANK YOU
God, my Creator,
I give you thanks for
the gifts of this day . . .
HELP ME
Lord, give me increased
awareness of how you are
guiding my life. . .
I LOVE YOU
Lord, you are present in my life today.
Let us look together at my day.
Let me see through your loving eyes . . .
when did I listen to your voice today? . . .
when did I resist your voice today?
FREE ME
I ask your healing for . . .
I ask your forgiveness and mercy for . . .
I ask your freedom from . . .
I ask your freedom for . . .
BE WITH ME
Filled with hope and a firm
belief in your love and power,
I entrust myself to your care.
Continue to be with me each
and every day of my life.
This isn't rocket science. It's wisdom passed down to us from women and men who were hungry to know God, and found a way to pray that gave them food. If you'd like to build a closer relationship with God. If you'd like to be able to hear more fully God's dreams for you. And find guidance in those deeply painful times when you are so sure what it is you want . . . and nothing seems to be getting you any closer to it. Try it for six months, and see what happens.
I close this sermon with words from Teilhard de Chardin. de Chardin was a biologist and paleontologist - an expert on prehistoric life forms. And he was a Jesuit, a follower of Ignatius of Loyola. So he probably knew something about the spiritual discipline of examen. For all of us who fail, for those of us who wonder if anything we do matters, and if God is working with us or through us or by our side, de Chardin offers this words. Let us say them together.
Trust in the Slow Work of God
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (1881-1955)
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to
something unknown, something new.
And yet is it the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually - let them grow.
Let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Amen.
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time: July 19, 2009
The fifth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear sermons about.
Today's question: If you keep failing at the same thing, is God saying you haven't learned a lesson?
If you keep failing at the same thing, is God saying you haven't learned a lesson?
When I hear this question, I hear an ache and a hunger.
I hear the ache that comes with the words keep failing. The ache of trying over and over and over again to make a dream real. To find, create, or achieve something. And failing. It's an ache asks hard questions: Why can't I make this dream real? Am I a failure? Is God trying to teach me the lesson that I'm chasing the wrong dream? Or chasing the right dream at the wrong time? Is God trying to teach me I'm going about trying to make it real in the wrong way? Is God punishing me by keeping my dream from becoming real - even though I feel so strongly that this is God's dream for me because it would make me feel more joyful and loving and alive?
And I hear a hunger in this question. Does God talk to me? Does God have dreams for me? How do I know what God wants for me? How do I hear or see or feel God? Does God really love me?
If our dream never becomes real, no matter how hard we try, it may be that God is trying to teach us a lesson. But what that lesson is is far from clear. God could be trying to teach us any number of things.
I'd like to explore the question for this morning in several ways. The first is a hymn that sings of a God who comes to us, who calls and heals and frees us.
This hymn is on the middle page of your bulletin. The choir will sing the first verse; please join in on the rest.
Chorus: The God of heaven is present on earth in word and silence and sharing,
in face of doubt, in depth of faith, in signs of love and caring.
Gentler than air, wilder than wind, settling yet also deranging,
the Spirit thrives in human lives both changeless and yet changing. Chorus
Far from the church, outside the fold, where prayer turns feeble and nervous,
the Spirit wills society's ills be healed through humble service. Chorus
From rural quiet to urban riot, in every social confusion,
the Spirit pleads for all that leads to freedom from illusion. Chorus
Truth after tears, trust after fears, God leaving everyone wiser,
the Spirit springs through hopeless things transforming what defies her. Chorus
In terms of this morning's question, the part that touches me most deeply is the last part of the third verse: In every social confusion, the Spirit pleads for all that leads to freedom from illusion (John Bell & Graham Maule, "The God of Heaven," Iona Abbey Music Book, Wild Goose Publications, 2003).
When all of our efforts do not bring us what we are looking for - when in spite of everything we do we 'fail' to make real our dream - what do we pray for? I'm sure we pray that something will change so we can make our dream real. Along with that prayer, I think we need to pray for freedom from any illusions we're operating under. For a long time, Peter and I dreamt of finding a church that would hire us to be their pastors. We were sure getting a church to hire us was God's call. After we got 50 rejections, God's Spirit helped us understand that this was an illusion. Yes, we wanted to serve as pastors together. But at that point, we needed to be freed from this belief that by not getting any church to look at us we were 'failing' to achieve what God was calling us to. As we wondered if the God was calling us to something else, we got 20 or so more rejections. And then God's Spirit freed us from the despair and anger of this failure. She opened us to hear her call to keep knocking at the door of churches. To force 'Open and Affirming' churches to struggle with whether they were open and affirming enough seriously to consider calling a gay couple as their pastors. Letting the Spirit convince us that what we thought was our call wasn't our call was not something we did without kicking and screaming. We still wanted to be pastors. And I think hearing this new call from the Spirit kept us applying to churches. Because as we followed the call to keep knocking at church doors, we kept applying to churches. And 30 or so rejections later, a church in Seattle called us. But we needed to be open to hearing a different call than the one we were sure was our only true call. Or we would have given up.
When doors don't open for us - when our best efforts to make our dreams real end in failure after failure, we have at least two options. We can resist. Or we can surrender. We can resist by redoubling our efforts. Or by changing our strategy and tactics. Or, instead of trying to make our dream real all at once in one huge leap, we can pray for the wisdom to take a first step toward that dream. Choosing to resist means we feel confident that what we are trying to achieve is God's dream for us. Or we can surrender. We often think surrendering is a sign of weakness and cowardice. But sometimes to surrender is the most courageous and honest action possible. When we surrender, we admit that this dream isn't going to come true. Maybe it's the wrong time, or wrong place; maybe we're the wrong person to make this happen. Whatever the reason, we surrendering means we know we need to let go of a dream that may have been what we've been living for for a long time. But it's not going to come true. At least for now.
Our first Bible story this morning is a story of resistance. Listen for a word from God.
Jesus told the disciples a story on the necessity of praying always and not losing heart: "There was a judge in a certain city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him: 'My rights are being violated. Protect me!'
"The judge never gave her the time of day. But after this went on and on he said to himself, 'I care nothing what God thinks, even less what people think. But because this widow won't quit badgering me, I'd better do something and see that she gets justice - otherwise I'm going to end up beaten black and blue by her pounding."
Then the Master said, "Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think God won't step in and work justice for the beloved, who continue to cry out for help? Will God delay long over them? I tell you, God will give them swift justice." (Luke 18.1-7; adapted from The Message ©1993-96, 2000-2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.)
This morning before worship Linda, Lauren, and I were talking about this Bible story. And Linda said, "I love that widow!" This widow is absolutely convinced of two things. First, she is convinced that her God is a God who demands justice - especially for widows and orphans. And she is convinced that this judge is giving her the shaft. So she breaks every social code that says how respectable women in Palestine should act. She goes to the house of a male who was not her relative without being accompanied by another male. And she stands outside his house and screams for justice. She keeps screaming and screaming, and will not be silenced. The neighbors start to talk among themselves: She keeps screaming. Maybe this judge isn't treating her fairly. And the judge starts to fear what the neighbors are thinking. If they believe I haven't given this woman justice, I'll lose their respect. I'll be shamed. I'll get kicked out of the country club. My life will be a wreck. So he gives her the justice she seeks. Her imaginative act of resistance gets her the justice being polite and playing by the rules never would have provided.
That's resistance. That's chutzpah. She knew God's dream was a dream of justice. And that certainty sustained her until God's dream became real.
Our second Bible reading this morning is a story of surrender. Listen for a word from God.
Jesus and the disciples came to an area called Gethsemane, the Place of the Olive Press. Jesus told his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took Peter, James, and John with him. He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. He told them, "I feel bad enough right now to die. Stay here and keep vigil with me."
Going a little ahead, he fell to the ground and prayed for a way out. "Papa, Father, you can - can't you? - get me out of this. Take this cup away from me. But please, not what I want - what do you want?"
He came back and found them sound asleep. He said to Peter, "Simon, you went to sleep on me? Can't you stick it out with me a single hour? Stay alert, be in prayer, so you won't enter the danger zone without even knowing it. Don't be naïve. Part of you is eager, ready for anything in God; but another part is as lazy as an old dog sleeping my the fire."
He then went back and prayed the same prayer. Returning, he again found them sound asleep. They simply couldn't keep their eyes open, and they didn't have a plausible excuse.
He came back a third time and said, "Are you going to sleep all night? No - you've slept long enough. Time's up." (Mark 14.32-41, adapted from The Message ©1993-96, 2000-2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.)
He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. That's how it is with us when we've tried everything to make our dream real and it hasn't happened. Jesus spent his whole adult ministry loving with a huge love and calling people to do the same thing. He spent his whole adult ministry telling the disciples that following him wasn't going to be easy; being his disciple came with a cost. He spent his adult ministry trying to convince the leaders of the Temple that if they didn't stop supporting people who wanted to overthrow Rome violently that this would only destroy the Temple. And nothing really worked. No one paid attention. Nothing really changed. So Jesus realizes he must surrender. He knows he will be executed. A love like his is too big and scary for the world to embrace. For now he knows he cannot keep fighting. So he puts himself in God's hands.
Resistance and surrender. Two ways to respond when we realize we keep failing at the same thing. But how do we know which to do? How do we know what lesson, if any, God is trying to teach us? How do we listen for what God is saying to us? How do we trust that God says anything to us? And open ourselves actually to feel like God loves us?
Some people feel God's love as easily as they take a breath. And I think children feel it pretty naturally as well. Then they grow up . . . and it becomes a lot harder for many of us to feel God's love. Harder for us to hear God and see God and feel God's presence as close as our breath. So for most adults, trusting that God speaks and calls and loves and reaches out to us takes practice. These practices are called spiritual disciplines. For most of us, discipline is not an attractive word. I have the image of a strict nun in India breaking a ruler on my hand for misspelling a word. That's discipline. But a spiritual discipline is different. A spiritual discipline is something we do every day to help us love and feel loved by God.
I've noticed something in the churches I've worked in. Someone's loved one is dying. The person comes up to me and says, "I'm praying all the time, and nothing's happening. I don't feel like God is answering me at all. I don't even feel like God is there. So how can you say God cares?" Asking if God cares when someone we love is dying is a fair question. And at the same time, there's something I want to say to them that I still haven't figured out how to say pastorally. What I want to say goes something like this. If you'd never played the trombone, you wouldn't wake up one morning, borrow your friend's trombone, try out for the band, and expect to get first chair. A casual jogger shouldn't expect to wake up one morning and decide to run a marathon. If you meet someone and then don't talk to them for five years, you don't expect to give them a call and have heart-to-heart conversation. It's the same way with God. If we don't practice building a relationship with God - if we don't do some daily spiritual discipline that helps us love and feel loved by God, then we can't expect just to start praying in the midst of a crisis and feel God close as our breath. If we want to build a relationship with God, we need to practice.
So if I keep failing at something, I need to have been practicing some spiritual discipline if I hope to be able to hear any lesson God might have for me in that failure. That's where examen comes in. Right under the Bible stories in your bulletin you'll find a method of examen. Examen is a way to pray that involves examination and investigation. It was developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a 16th-century Spanish man who founded the Society of Jesus or Jesuits. What I have in the bulletin is one way of doing examen. Once you get used to this form of prayer, it's something you can do at the end of each day in about 10 minutes. Practiced each day, over time it can help you feel God's love for you, hear God's dreams for you, and trust God's presence in your day-to-day life and in the life of the world. So you can know if it's time to resist or time to surrender or time to do something else.
Let us look at this spiritual discipline together.
AN EXAMEN FORMAT
(adapted from the Ignatian Spirituality Center, Seattle, WA)
THANK YOU
God, my Creator,
I give you thanks for
the gifts of this day . . .
HELP ME
Lord, give me increased
awareness of how you are
guiding my life. . .
I LOVE YOU
Lord, you are present in my life today.
Let us look together at my day.
Let me see through your loving eyes . . .
when did I listen to your voice today? . . .
when did I resist your voice today?
FREE ME
I ask your healing for . . .
I ask your forgiveness and mercy for . . .
I ask your freedom from . . .
I ask your freedom for . . .
BE WITH ME
Filled with hope and a firm
belief in your love and power,
I entrust myself to your care.
Continue to be with me each
and every day of my life.
This isn't rocket science. It's wisdom passed down to us from women and men who were hungry to know God, and found a way to pray that gave them food. If you'd like to build a closer relationship with God. If you'd like to be able to hear more fully God's dreams for you. And find guidance in those deeply painful times when you are so sure what it is you want . . . and nothing seems to be getting you any closer to it. Try it for six months, and see what happens.
I close this sermon with words from Teilhard de Chardin. de Chardin was a biologist and paleontologist - an expert on prehistoric life forms. And he was a Jesuit, a follower of Ignatius of Loyola. So he probably knew something about the spiritual discipline of examen. For all of us who fail, for those of us who wonder if anything we do matters, and if God is working with us or through us or by our side, de Chardin offers this words. Let us say them together.
Trust in the Slow Work of God
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (1881-1955)
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to
something unknown, something new.
And yet is it the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually - let them grow.
Let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Amen.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Who is God?
(2 Corinthians 3.2-3, 5-6)
A sermon preached by the entire congregation
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time: July 12, 2009
This is the third in a summer series on topics members of the church want to hear a sermon about.
The topic of today is, 'Who Is God?' Members of the church were invited to share
stories, songs, and symbols which are one expression of who God is for them.
There's a desk calendar you can buy that every day has a different name for God from the Bible. Which means if you just use names for God in the Bible, there are at least 365 different ways to answer the question, Who is God? If you throw in names and images for God that aren't in the Bible, but that mean something to us, then the number of ways to answer this question would be as many as there are grains of sand on a beach.
That's why I've asked you to preach this sermon with me today. We can only talk about who God is together. I can't answer the question for you and you can't answer it for me. Which is why it's such a good question. It asks each of us to go deep inside and ask, "How is God real for me?" As I hear this question, it assumes two things. The question Who Is God? assumes God exists. It assumes God is. And the question assumes we can know, touch, feel, hear, see, or taste God in some way.
It was hard to pick a Bible passage for this sermon. At first I thought about choosing one or two passages that showed why my answer to this question was right . . . but that kind of felt like I was stacking the deck. So Linda and I picked music that praises the God who has many different names. Then I found some words from the Apostle Paul. When I read them, it was like they reached out of the Bible and grabbed me. We'll read the passage out loud together. I've changed the wording a bit. So when each of us reads "my", "me", and "I", we're not talking about Paul, but we're talking about ourselves.
A reading from the second letter of Paul to the church at Corinth. As we read it together, let us listen for a word from God.
My life is a letter that anyone can read by just looking at me. Christ himself wrote it – not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiselled in stone, but carved into my life and yours. . . .I couldn't think of writing this kind of letter myself. Only God can write such a letter. . . .It's not written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing my spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, God's life in my life (Adapted from The Message © 1993-96, 2000-2002; used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group).
It's been said that you or I might be the only gospel someone ever reads. If someone who doesn't know us follows us around for the day, by the end of the day they should know one of the ways we answer the question Who is God? Paul says each of us is a letter that Jesus Christ has written. Jesus has written God's love and written God's call into each one of us. Our lives are like a letter that everybody can read. That letter says how in any given moment we respond to being loved by God and being called by God to some work in the world. Whether we've thought about it before or not, who we believe God is has a big influence on the letter we write with our lives.
On this day, what is one way you answer the question, Who Is God?
(congregation shares responses)
I brought a picture of my parents. There were six of us kids. My father loved all of us equally. And I knew I was my father's favorite. I felt kind of guilty about that. At his memorial service, I said something to some of my siblings about being my father's favorite. One of my sisters said, "No, I was his favorite. And another one said the same thing. I think that says something about God: God lets each of us know he loves us. And he makes each of us feel like we're his favorite.
* * * *
This is a picture that hung in my house growing up and that I've had in my own house for years. It's a picture of Jesus knocking at the door. I see it as Jesus knocking at the door of our hearts. He wants us to open them. And let his love flow through us. So we can love the world.
* * * *
These are two paintings by our kids. There are three things about who God is I got from this art and from painting with the kids. One thing I see about God in them is just the output. It's fun to look at nature from the eyes of our kids. The smiling face on the octopus, and the smiling picture on the shark. (pointing to a second picture) I don't know what this is. The second is last night, I was sitting at the table painting and drawing with our daughter – just doing that. And I loved it. The third is the love of drawing my partner has fostered in our kids. It's amazing to watch our kids grow and develop and get their own perspective on things.
* * * *
A few days ago, Gabriela, a dear friend of mine, who is Brazilian by birth and currently residing in Monterey, California, decided on a whim to do a little experiment on Facebook. She innocently suggested that it might be "kind of fun" to ask her friends to post pictures of the moon from their current locale.
Now, I think it is worth clarifying that Gabriela is a professional friend maker. She knows more people that I thought humanly possible. Her current "friend" count on Facebook is 1,888. She is also extremely well-traveled and ironically enough Brian and I actually met her in Fiji of all places. Unlike the myriad of folks I have met at various times in my own travels, when Gaby said she would keep in touch, she actually did. Today, I count myself lucky to call her a friend, and not just in the "Facebook" way.
The moon pictures started coming in – there were a few from various cities Brazil, Rio and Sao Paolo to name a couple (as an aside, one of the fun things about having Gaby as a Facebook friend is that more than a few of her and her hometown friends' posts are in Portugeuese…), I posted one from Seattle, Gaby added a few herself from Pebble Beach and Carmel. One friend sent a picture of the moon out the window of an A320 from his iPhone. A Harvest moon came in from Alberta Canada. Then the locations just became more amazing and unbelievable – Guangzhou China, Rome, Chile, Michigan, Dallas, Hamburg Germany, Chattanooga, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (with a picture that literally took my breath away), Singapore, The Taj Mahal, Bangkok Thailand, Hong Kong – and last, but not least, New Jersey. It blew my mind watching picture after picture come in from literally around the world, although knowing Gaby and having met her myself in a rather exotic place, it wasn't totally surprising that she would have garnered such a response. She simply has the kind of personality where it is simply impossible to tell her no and I figured out a few years ago that it was hardly worth the fight anyway and thus far she has never steered me wrong.
As I first viewed the pictures, I was mostly ooh-ing and ahh-ing over either where the picture was taken or the quality of the photograph. But as I kept looking at them, it occurred to me that something bigger than just a few fun photos was at play. On the one hand, I was struck by the awesomeness of the moon itself and its capacity to be amazing wherever it was viewed from. It somehow made the moon seem bigger and grander. On the other hand, postings coming in one after the other and all from such a seemingly inauspicious request made the world shrink for me in that moment. People from every corner were posting comments about their favorite pictures or where or how a particular picture was taken. The notes were congenial and informal as if we were all chatting around a cup of coffee, not around the globe.
Here is my own post on her site:
"Gaby, I cannot believe what an amazing idea you had to do this!! Without getting too philosophical, this "experiment" kind of reconfirms for me what a small world it is these days and at the same time how awesome..."
She immediately replied and suggested that I articulate my philosophical ramblings more fully:
I was just thinking here with my buttons...I would really LOVE for you to get philosophical as a matter of fact…you write so well, and I so agree with you about this "experiment". I am truly touched and amazed by it…it gave me such a clear idea of how huge, rich, diverse our planet is, yet how small we are making it just by our daily interactions here…it is all so impressive, like one of my friends who posted the moon from China, and i had seen on his status earlier that the government had banned facebook and he was going around it through using his phone…yet he found a way to take a picture of the moon and post it...I never even asked him anything, but I was so amazed by it all… so I started to think...maybe you could write a note that I could post on the album, you are so talented on writing, giving your view on it..
I don't know, it was just a little idea brewing in my little head here :)))) if you are up for it, i would LOVE it...
--Gabriella
I was honored by her request and up for the challenge, but some element to bring it all together was missing. Then, coincidentally (are there really any coincidences??), Pastor Dave Shull sent his email asking for folks to come to church and "bring something to share on Sunday that shows us who God is for you."
This experiment, this lark of an idea of my dear friend, was simply and clearly who God is for me. It is people, intimately connected to each other in amazing and far-reaching ways. It's the moon, glorious in all her splendor. I'm not sure whether Gabriela believes in God – she tends to be a bit more of a practical nature, but I know she believes in people and that too is part of what shows me who God is for me. One of the real beauties of this story for me is that those two things – her doubt and my faith are not mutually exclusive. We are both able to be moved in untellable ways from our unique view of the universe.
The pictures made the moon seem bigger and grander – a sense of bigness. Then you're seeing these people post these informal and chatty things about the pictures. Then the world totally shrunk and we were all in one tiny place.
* * * *
My husband and I met with our son and daughter-in-law in Monterrey. We tried to trace a family tree to figure out where our grandkids came from. Our granddaughter loves France, and she was very concerned that she didn't have much French ancestry, but was more German! We keep bringing in different cultures to our families. My niece is married to a man who is half Japanese. Another relative married someone from the Ukraine, and other married someone from Mexico. My daughter-in-law is French. Whenever we grow our generations, we expand this. I think we're probably supposed to look like Tahitians – a mixture of all cultures.
I found a picture of Elizabeth (my daughter) and Abby Rose (the daughter of another church member) that was taken 18 or so years ago. If we look back, we can see there are the Danes and Scots and Germans and Irish and Norwegians . . . we have these wonderful backgrounds that all come together. That's what God is for me and in me – a wonderful melding of our entire world.
* * * *
For me, as you could have guessed, God is music. It goes through me. It is a greater high than I've ever found. My dad would wake me up with blues cranked at 6:30am. He thought that would be better than me waking up to the alarm a half-hour later. Blues is a beautiful mix of people expressing themselves. The greatest enjoyment is not only listening to music but watching someone deliver it. I saw a performer a while back. She didn't have a script; she had no set structure. She lost her voice part way through and had to take the volume down. And yet to see her enjoy it so fully and people enjoying it all was incredible. I've written a lot of music. This is called "Like Only He Can".
Darkness consumed me
Once upon a time
I was lost and livid
With a world that left me behind
Couldn't eat
Couldn't sleep
So I prayed the prayer for
My soul to keep
Chorus
He won't leave me
Drowning in the mud
Never drop me
Never stop the love
Eyes won't break me
Tender hands
God has blessed me
Like only he can.
* * * *
Is God credible or 'incredible'?
I believe God is theoretical, abstract, vague, intangible, ambiguous. For me to believe in God, I must change the words and the language.
God is a metaphor, a symbol, a figure of speech. God is the spirit within me – working towards grace and acceptance – reverence and love for all human beings.
In that spirit, I strive to have or believe in: compassion, fairness, justice, equality, humanity, integrity, mercy, forgiveness, faith.
My spirit has been moved through the birth of my children – the birth of our grandchildren – the death of my parents – the feeling of a heaven – the knowledge of people seeing the 'light' at the end of life.
I find myself wishing there was a concrete God that would do all the things we pray for – it's hard to 'believe' unless we experience blind faith that satisfies our emotions 'at the time of prayer'.
* * * *
Today we walked to the Hungarian Holocaust Museum in Budapest. It was hard to see God in most of it. But towards the end there were stories of those who fought back, of the resistance fighters. And then you leave the exhibits behind and enter one of the most moving and beautiful sanctuaries I have ever been in – a synagogue so beautiful that I found myself in the presence of a God who heals and forgives, but doesn't forget.
* * * *
For me, Jesus is who God is. I love to imagine that I was walking with him on those dusty roads, and listening to his stories, and feeling God so alive in Jesus that I could almost touch God. For several years, the phrase that I've used to talk about Jesus is the way.
So when I think about who God is for me, I think of Jesus as the way. And he's the way in two different ways. He is the way because he is the one I know I walk beside. Even when I ignore him entirely, I know every way I travel Jesus is by my side. So he is the way, the road, the path I walk. Trying to keep me from letting fear or confusion or loneliness overpower me. And he is the way because I want to live my life in the way Jesus would live my life. His life shows me how to live.
Who God is is Jesus as the one I walk beside on the way, and the one who shows me the way to live.
Which is why this picture has hung in the living room of the four different places Peter and I have lived. I love pictures with roads that invite you to step into the picture and onto them. I imagine I step into the picture. And join Jesus there. We walk together down the road. I try to see the world as Jesus might see it. And respond how he might respond. So we stop to give the horse some sugar cubes. We ask the person in the sled how their life is and listen deeply as they tell us. We build a snowman with the little kid. With deep gratitude, we say "Yes!" when the child's grandmother invites us to warm ourselves by her fire with a cup of hot chocolate.
And then we step back outside. Onto the road. Onto the way that goes behind this house. The way that is unknown. To walk this way that goes somewhere I can't see, I need to trust that Jesus is beside me.
There's a road by our old house that reminds me of this road. It goes under the only canopy of trees in the neighbourhood. And then it curves to the right. And goes off the picture. Somewhere you can't see unless you go down that road. When I was trying to figure out whether I should leave my job at University Congregational United Church of Christ, I kept walking down that road. I imagined going around the corner, where I couldn't see the way anymore, was leaving my job, and stepping into the unknown. It took me a year-and-a-half to go around that corner. To leave my job and step into the unknown. And I don't think I could have done it without being sure that Jesus was with me on the way. And that leaving that job was something he might have done if he were living my life.
I hope the letter I'm writing with my life tells the story of someone for whom God is this Jesus who is the way I try to know, follow, enjoy, and love the living God.
* * * *
Last December, I ran across on the KOMO website a picture of Mt. Rainier. The mountains and the clouds make such an awesome picture. To me, mountains are a symbol of permanence and a symbol of change. This mountain didn't look like this 10,000 years ago. This represents God. God is always permanent and always changing. And God interacts with the natural world as much as God does with all of us.
* * * *
Life is like a box of chocolates .. no, wait, God is like an onion . . .What is God? God's like an onion. You peel off different layers. Is this God? Or is it just my reaction to the world? Something that I've come up with? Yeah – so that's not God. And I keep peeling the onion. Maybe I get the middle and there are some green sprouts. I peel some more. And then the onion's all gone. Did I miss something? Is that all there is? Is God in the middle of all the layers that are lying in the sink? But then I smell my hands. The scent of the onions stays on my hands. I smell it. God is there.
* * * *
God has been grace for me. His grace for me has been through second changes. God for me is a God of second changes. Here is a pictures of one of my twin daughters on her first day of life (she was born 3-1/2 months premature). Here is the first day we could hold them. . . and here is the first time I held them together. Here's when they came home from the hospital for the first time. . . and they were holding hands in bed. And here are my other two beautiful girls who had a second chance. I met Craig and we kind of recovered from a really hard time. Second chances from the God of second chances.
* * * *
I should have my granddaughter's book with ballerinas in it. Music, song, and dance are very moving to me – as is my family. I have to talk about my three munchkins, my granddaughters who have turned 6. On the last day of camp they want to show what they've done. It's a lot of fun – something to enjoy and laugh about. This last Friday morning was the time for the three of them to make a presentation after their ballet camp. I went there thinking this would be a fun thing to see. Then I saw their excitement and joy – and they started to show us what they learned. They had an amazingly gentle and good teacher who asked them to show us all their positions. Soon I was looking at my daughter and asking, How did they remember all of this? They then put these positions into an exercise, doing things at the bar, putting on costumes for something from Cinderella. (as the speaker leans on the communion table, she says:) I can't stand here unsupported, it's getting so exciting! Toward the end, they put on these beautiful costumes and they became Sleeping Beauty, on the floor in a ballet pose. One at a time, with so much grace, each one awoke. I was nearly in tears . . . to see the joy of these children and what they were learning, what they meant to me . . . God had to have been there . . . it was an amazing morning. What if I had missed this? To watch them that day was surely a godly event . . .and it's a godly event just that we have them.
* * * *
I got this e-mail from Dave earlier this week asking us to bring something that represents who God is for us. I read it and I read it again . . and then I went and did something else. I had no idea how even to start. Honestly I don't know if I have an answer, because I think everyone has different answers. God is kind of in everything, so you can't really describe him. I did find one poem at 3am last
night . . . and it's either a good poem or I was really tired. It's by Rumi:
Buoyancy
Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but yours,
but I couldn't.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
But who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
And mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your voice.
I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.
I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!
The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.
A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.
To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.
So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It's a total waking up!
Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.
We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
* * * *
I guess the thing that makes me feel God the most is when I was younger, I went a couple times to an astronomy camp in eastern Oregon with my sister and our dad. There was a big hill with an observatory and the biggest telescope I've ever seen. The camp was there because the air was clear; there was no pollution or light to distract. You can see whatever you want to. One year when we were there, we had a sleepover with all the bugs and people had these crazy electronic bug zappers. That night, I saw the northern lights. It was beautiful: very vivid teal blue and green, all over the sky , interspersed and woven with light. That night I saw Andromeda – a whole other galaxy. It was astonishing. For me, God is seeing something that's always been there . . .something that's not changing, waiting for me to see it. Something that's new to me though it's always been there. I still remember all the things I saw in the sky and how beautiful they were. It's the newness and the oldness at the same time that is really special to me.
* * * *
I brought the Daniel Smith color chart of extra fine water colors, which I've become fond of. For me, God is the being who melds art and science together. Whenever I do art or look at art, I am captivated by it, and there's also a science to it, a science to what we find appealing – colors that vibrate with the right frequencies so we find them attractive. Also the art and science to what you have to mix to get just the right color. It's like God has created just the right stuff out there – the infinitesimal shades of green that you find everywhere (but nowhere better than in the northwest!). They are what make me feel God is here. There's the science part you can't tease away from it. There's art in science. We don't always look at both of them together – and how they're melded together.
* * * *
I think one of the ways I've always appreciated God is as a Creator. I go back to the stereotype of Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel of God reaching out to touch Adam, to give a spark of life or soul to him in that touch, to awaken him. I look out the window at the greens, at the ocean . . . so many things I see and I think, "Thank you to God" for all of the beautiful things he's created. A new child, the oceans, the trees . . . all are his creation.
* * * *
Three things popped into my mind. I'd like to echo music. When Dave and Linda collaborate, it has been a God-like moment for us in the choir. Second: when my 6'2" son stands next to me and I think about how he's now in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse: that's God to me. And the third is each of you here. We have been through so many ups and downs. We have permanence and we have change. Each of you sitting here is God to me.
* * * *
I could take up an entire hard drive on examples of God I've had in y life. Of course music is one that has been in my life since birth. It's the biggest example I have. If I hear music, I can't stop moving. But this particular week I wanted to share an example. I've been in a very tender spot with one of my teenagers. I felt like possibly my parenting and my husband's was not what he needed, that we were having some repetitive behaviors and encounters where I thought, this has happened too many times . . . I don't know if we can get beyond this. So we said to our son, We love you . . .but this doesn't seem to be the right environment for you. If you can't follow our rules, we don't think we have another choice than for you to look at other alternatives that might be out there. He was telling us none of his friends have to follow the same number of rules. It was a difficult spot. One day this week, my husband was on the Olympic Peninsula doing work. My son spent the night at the neighbor's because he needed to. The next morning, my son knocked at the door and said, "What's up?" I said, "You knocked at the door – do you have anything to say?" We had a ½-hour conversation sitting on the front porch, going over the same things. I was at the lowest point, searching my heart. I don't know if there's been any change or recognition in him . . . I'm offering the 350th chance, it seems. My husband and I had gone through the prodigal son story with him a few times, and that seemed to be having an effect. Sitting there, we'd had a long silence, I had my head down, there were some private tears. I said to God, "If there's some way, some sign, that you could give me like if my teen moved across to me and put his arms around me . . ." Then boom, it happened! He came over and did it. Which is a fairly unlikely thing from a 14-year-old. That was my sign of who God was this week.
* * * *
Answers from the young people of the church to the question Who is God?
When I think of God I think of Molly, our cat. She loves my mom and me for who we are, and that's how God loves us, too.
At the "Time for the Young People" images of God were a toy horse (God gives me courage to get on my horse and ride), two live frogs (God made them), rocks that came from the earth and that God made, ballet and a book on ballet (I love ballet).
From siblings:
"Oh, that's easy. God is everywhere. He is in everything."
"No He isn't. God lives in the water. You can find God at the beach."
From a 6-year-old: God is in my stuffed animals; he makes them fluffy. God is in watermelon – he's in the seeds, and he makes them grow. God is a person who lives in Heaven. God plays with me when I'm playing with my stuffed animals – God loves stuffed animals and so do I! God helps me dance when I'm doing ballet. God makes water for people to drink. God makes pencils so people can write. God gives us balance so we can walk. God makes dream catchers catch the bad dreams and let go of the good ones.
From a 6-year-old: God gives me courage when I'm rock climbing so I can go high. God helps me so that I don't fall off my horse when I'm riding him. God helps me balance in ballet so that I don't fall down. God makes people want to do good things and help other people. God dances when he hears music. God laughs when he sees silly things. God sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
* * *
In closing I share these words from a wise Christian woman. If we want to continue to live lives that respond to God's love and God's call, then, she says, how we answer the question Who is God? will not stay the same.
Some people retire 'belief in God along with belief in Santa Claus, Lady Luck, and the Tooth Fairy'. However: 'For those willing to keep heaving themselves toward the light, things can change. What has been lost gradually becomes less important than what is to be found. Curiosity pokes its green head up through the asphalt of grief, and fear of the unknown takes on an element of wonder as the disillusioned turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is. Every letdown becomes a lesson and allure. Did God fail to come when I called? Then perhaps God is not a [slave]. So who is God? Did God fail to punish my adversary? Then perhaps God is not a policeman. Then who is God? Did God fail to make everything turn out all right? Then perhaps God is not a fixer. Then who is God' (Barbara Brown Taylor, quoted in Mackenzie, pp. 165-6)?
Who is God? A question to live, pray, and share – a question to spend a lifetime answering with lives that are letters of God's love and God's call. Amen.
A sermon preached by the entire congregation
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time: July 12, 2009
This is the third in a summer series on topics members of the church want to hear a sermon about.
The topic of today is, 'Who Is God?' Members of the church were invited to share
stories, songs, and symbols which are one expression of who God is for them.
There's a desk calendar you can buy that every day has a different name for God from the Bible. Which means if you just use names for God in the Bible, there are at least 365 different ways to answer the question, Who is God? If you throw in names and images for God that aren't in the Bible, but that mean something to us, then the number of ways to answer this question would be as many as there are grains of sand on a beach.
That's why I've asked you to preach this sermon with me today. We can only talk about who God is together. I can't answer the question for you and you can't answer it for me. Which is why it's such a good question. It asks each of us to go deep inside and ask, "How is God real for me?" As I hear this question, it assumes two things. The question Who Is God? assumes God exists. It assumes God is. And the question assumes we can know, touch, feel, hear, see, or taste God in some way.
It was hard to pick a Bible passage for this sermon. At first I thought about choosing one or two passages that showed why my answer to this question was right . . . but that kind of felt like I was stacking the deck. So Linda and I picked music that praises the God who has many different names. Then I found some words from the Apostle Paul. When I read them, it was like they reached out of the Bible and grabbed me. We'll read the passage out loud together. I've changed the wording a bit. So when each of us reads "my", "me", and "I", we're not talking about Paul, but we're talking about ourselves.
A reading from the second letter of Paul to the church at Corinth. As we read it together, let us listen for a word from God.
My life is a letter that anyone can read by just looking at me. Christ himself wrote it – not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiselled in stone, but carved into my life and yours. . . .I couldn't think of writing this kind of letter myself. Only God can write such a letter. . . .It's not written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing my spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, God's life in my life (Adapted from The Message © 1993-96, 2000-2002; used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group).
It's been said that you or I might be the only gospel someone ever reads. If someone who doesn't know us follows us around for the day, by the end of the day they should know one of the ways we answer the question Who is God? Paul says each of us is a letter that Jesus Christ has written. Jesus has written God's love and written God's call into each one of us. Our lives are like a letter that everybody can read. That letter says how in any given moment we respond to being loved by God and being called by God to some work in the world. Whether we've thought about it before or not, who we believe God is has a big influence on the letter we write with our lives.
On this day, what is one way you answer the question, Who Is God?
(congregation shares responses)
I brought a picture of my parents. There were six of us kids. My father loved all of us equally. And I knew I was my father's favorite. I felt kind of guilty about that. At his memorial service, I said something to some of my siblings about being my father's favorite. One of my sisters said, "No, I was his favorite. And another one said the same thing. I think that says something about God: God lets each of us know he loves us. And he makes each of us feel like we're his favorite.
* * * *
This is a picture that hung in my house growing up and that I've had in my own house for years. It's a picture of Jesus knocking at the door. I see it as Jesus knocking at the door of our hearts. He wants us to open them. And let his love flow through us. So we can love the world.
* * * *
These are two paintings by our kids. There are three things about who God is I got from this art and from painting with the kids. One thing I see about God in them is just the output. It's fun to look at nature from the eyes of our kids. The smiling face on the octopus, and the smiling picture on the shark. (pointing to a second picture) I don't know what this is. The second is last night, I was sitting at the table painting and drawing with our daughter – just doing that. And I loved it. The third is the love of drawing my partner has fostered in our kids. It's amazing to watch our kids grow and develop and get their own perspective on things.
* * * *
A few days ago, Gabriela, a dear friend of mine, who is Brazilian by birth and currently residing in Monterey, California, decided on a whim to do a little experiment on Facebook. She innocently suggested that it might be "kind of fun" to ask her friends to post pictures of the moon from their current locale.
Now, I think it is worth clarifying that Gabriela is a professional friend maker. She knows more people that I thought humanly possible. Her current "friend" count on Facebook is 1,888. She is also extremely well-traveled and ironically enough Brian and I actually met her in Fiji of all places. Unlike the myriad of folks I have met at various times in my own travels, when Gaby said she would keep in touch, she actually did. Today, I count myself lucky to call her a friend, and not just in the "Facebook" way.
The moon pictures started coming in – there were a few from various cities Brazil, Rio and Sao Paolo to name a couple (as an aside, one of the fun things about having Gaby as a Facebook friend is that more than a few of her and her hometown friends' posts are in Portugeuese…), I posted one from Seattle, Gaby added a few herself from Pebble Beach and Carmel. One friend sent a picture of the moon out the window of an A320 from his iPhone. A Harvest moon came in from Alberta Canada. Then the locations just became more amazing and unbelievable – Guangzhou China, Rome, Chile, Michigan, Dallas, Hamburg Germany, Chattanooga, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (with a picture that literally took my breath away), Singapore, The Taj Mahal, Bangkok Thailand, Hong Kong – and last, but not least, New Jersey. It blew my mind watching picture after picture come in from literally around the world, although knowing Gaby and having met her myself in a rather exotic place, it wasn't totally surprising that she would have garnered such a response. She simply has the kind of personality where it is simply impossible to tell her no and I figured out a few years ago that it was hardly worth the fight anyway and thus far she has never steered me wrong.
As I first viewed the pictures, I was mostly ooh-ing and ahh-ing over either where the picture was taken or the quality of the photograph. But as I kept looking at them, it occurred to me that something bigger than just a few fun photos was at play. On the one hand, I was struck by the awesomeness of the moon itself and its capacity to be amazing wherever it was viewed from. It somehow made the moon seem bigger and grander. On the other hand, postings coming in one after the other and all from such a seemingly inauspicious request made the world shrink for me in that moment. People from every corner were posting comments about their favorite pictures or where or how a particular picture was taken. The notes were congenial and informal as if we were all chatting around a cup of coffee, not around the globe.
Here is my own post on her site:
"Gaby, I cannot believe what an amazing idea you had to do this!! Without getting too philosophical, this "experiment" kind of reconfirms for me what a small world it is these days and at the same time how awesome..."
She immediately replied and suggested that I articulate my philosophical ramblings more fully:
I was just thinking here with my buttons...I would really LOVE for you to get philosophical as a matter of fact…you write so well, and I so agree with you about this "experiment". I am truly touched and amazed by it…it gave me such a clear idea of how huge, rich, diverse our planet is, yet how small we are making it just by our daily interactions here…it is all so impressive, like one of my friends who posted the moon from China, and i had seen on his status earlier that the government had banned facebook and he was going around it through using his phone…yet he found a way to take a picture of the moon and post it...I never even asked him anything, but I was so amazed by it all… so I started to think...maybe you could write a note that I could post on the album, you are so talented on writing, giving your view on it..
I don't know, it was just a little idea brewing in my little head here :)))) if you are up for it, i would LOVE it...
--Gabriella
I was honored by her request and up for the challenge, but some element to bring it all together was missing. Then, coincidentally (are there really any coincidences??), Pastor Dave Shull sent his email asking for folks to come to church and "bring something to share on Sunday that shows us who God is for you."
This experiment, this lark of an idea of my dear friend, was simply and clearly who God is for me. It is people, intimately connected to each other in amazing and far-reaching ways. It's the moon, glorious in all her splendor. I'm not sure whether Gabriela believes in God – she tends to be a bit more of a practical nature, but I know she believes in people and that too is part of what shows me who God is for me. One of the real beauties of this story for me is that those two things – her doubt and my faith are not mutually exclusive. We are both able to be moved in untellable ways from our unique view of the universe.
The pictures made the moon seem bigger and grander – a sense of bigness. Then you're seeing these people post these informal and chatty things about the pictures. Then the world totally shrunk and we were all in one tiny place.
* * * *
My husband and I met with our son and daughter-in-law in Monterrey. We tried to trace a family tree to figure out where our grandkids came from. Our granddaughter loves France, and she was very concerned that she didn't have much French ancestry, but was more German! We keep bringing in different cultures to our families. My niece is married to a man who is half Japanese. Another relative married someone from the Ukraine, and other married someone from Mexico. My daughter-in-law is French. Whenever we grow our generations, we expand this. I think we're probably supposed to look like Tahitians – a mixture of all cultures.
I found a picture of Elizabeth (my daughter) and Abby Rose (the daughter of another church member) that was taken 18 or so years ago. If we look back, we can see there are the Danes and Scots and Germans and Irish and Norwegians . . . we have these wonderful backgrounds that all come together. That's what God is for me and in me – a wonderful melding of our entire world.
* * * *
For me, as you could have guessed, God is music. It goes through me. It is a greater high than I've ever found. My dad would wake me up with blues cranked at 6:30am. He thought that would be better than me waking up to the alarm a half-hour later. Blues is a beautiful mix of people expressing themselves. The greatest enjoyment is not only listening to music but watching someone deliver it. I saw a performer a while back. She didn't have a script; she had no set structure. She lost her voice part way through and had to take the volume down. And yet to see her enjoy it so fully and people enjoying it all was incredible. I've written a lot of music. This is called "Like Only He Can".
Darkness consumed me
Once upon a time
I was lost and livid
With a world that left me behind
Couldn't eat
Couldn't sleep
So I prayed the prayer for
My soul to keep
Chorus
He won't leave me
Drowning in the mud
Never drop me
Never stop the love
Eyes won't break me
Tender hands
God has blessed me
Like only he can.
* * * *
Is God credible or 'incredible'?
I believe God is theoretical, abstract, vague, intangible, ambiguous. For me to believe in God, I must change the words and the language.
God is a metaphor, a symbol, a figure of speech. God is the spirit within me – working towards grace and acceptance – reverence and love for all human beings.
In that spirit, I strive to have or believe in: compassion, fairness, justice, equality, humanity, integrity, mercy, forgiveness, faith.
My spirit has been moved through the birth of my children – the birth of our grandchildren – the death of my parents – the feeling of a heaven – the knowledge of people seeing the 'light' at the end of life.
I find myself wishing there was a concrete God that would do all the things we pray for – it's hard to 'believe' unless we experience blind faith that satisfies our emotions 'at the time of prayer'.
* * * *
Today we walked to the Hungarian Holocaust Museum in Budapest. It was hard to see God in most of it. But towards the end there were stories of those who fought back, of the resistance fighters. And then you leave the exhibits behind and enter one of the most moving and beautiful sanctuaries I have ever been in – a synagogue so beautiful that I found myself in the presence of a God who heals and forgives, but doesn't forget.
* * * *
For me, Jesus is who God is. I love to imagine that I was walking with him on those dusty roads, and listening to his stories, and feeling God so alive in Jesus that I could almost touch God. For several years, the phrase that I've used to talk about Jesus is the way.
So when I think about who God is for me, I think of Jesus as the way. And he's the way in two different ways. He is the way because he is the one I know I walk beside. Even when I ignore him entirely, I know every way I travel Jesus is by my side. So he is the way, the road, the path I walk. Trying to keep me from letting fear or confusion or loneliness overpower me. And he is the way because I want to live my life in the way Jesus would live my life. His life shows me how to live.
Who God is is Jesus as the one I walk beside on the way, and the one who shows me the way to live.
Which is why this picture has hung in the living room of the four different places Peter and I have lived. I love pictures with roads that invite you to step into the picture and onto them. I imagine I step into the picture. And join Jesus there. We walk together down the road. I try to see the world as Jesus might see it. And respond how he might respond. So we stop to give the horse some sugar cubes. We ask the person in the sled how their life is and listen deeply as they tell us. We build a snowman with the little kid. With deep gratitude, we say "Yes!" when the child's grandmother invites us to warm ourselves by her fire with a cup of hot chocolate.
And then we step back outside. Onto the road. Onto the way that goes behind this house. The way that is unknown. To walk this way that goes somewhere I can't see, I need to trust that Jesus is beside me.
There's a road by our old house that reminds me of this road. It goes under the only canopy of trees in the neighbourhood. And then it curves to the right. And goes off the picture. Somewhere you can't see unless you go down that road. When I was trying to figure out whether I should leave my job at University Congregational United Church of Christ, I kept walking down that road. I imagined going around the corner, where I couldn't see the way anymore, was leaving my job, and stepping into the unknown. It took me a year-and-a-half to go around that corner. To leave my job and step into the unknown. And I don't think I could have done it without being sure that Jesus was with me on the way. And that leaving that job was something he might have done if he were living my life.
I hope the letter I'm writing with my life tells the story of someone for whom God is this Jesus who is the way I try to know, follow, enjoy, and love the living God.
* * * *
Last December, I ran across on the KOMO website a picture of Mt. Rainier. The mountains and the clouds make such an awesome picture. To me, mountains are a symbol of permanence and a symbol of change. This mountain didn't look like this 10,000 years ago. This represents God. God is always permanent and always changing. And God interacts with the natural world as much as God does with all of us.
* * * *
Life is like a box of chocolates .. no, wait, God is like an onion . . .What is God? God's like an onion. You peel off different layers. Is this God? Or is it just my reaction to the world? Something that I've come up with? Yeah – so that's not God. And I keep peeling the onion. Maybe I get the middle and there are some green sprouts. I peel some more. And then the onion's all gone. Did I miss something? Is that all there is? Is God in the middle of all the layers that are lying in the sink? But then I smell my hands. The scent of the onions stays on my hands. I smell it. God is there.
* * * *
God has been grace for me. His grace for me has been through second changes. God for me is a God of second changes. Here is a pictures of one of my twin daughters on her first day of life (she was born 3-1/2 months premature). Here is the first day we could hold them. . . and here is the first time I held them together. Here's when they came home from the hospital for the first time. . . and they were holding hands in bed. And here are my other two beautiful girls who had a second chance. I met Craig and we kind of recovered from a really hard time. Second chances from the God of second chances.
* * * *
I should have my granddaughter's book with ballerinas in it. Music, song, and dance are very moving to me – as is my family. I have to talk about my three munchkins, my granddaughters who have turned 6. On the last day of camp they want to show what they've done. It's a lot of fun – something to enjoy and laugh about. This last Friday morning was the time for the three of them to make a presentation after their ballet camp. I went there thinking this would be a fun thing to see. Then I saw their excitement and joy – and they started to show us what they learned. They had an amazingly gentle and good teacher who asked them to show us all their positions. Soon I was looking at my daughter and asking, How did they remember all of this? They then put these positions into an exercise, doing things at the bar, putting on costumes for something from Cinderella. (as the speaker leans on the communion table, she says:) I can't stand here unsupported, it's getting so exciting! Toward the end, they put on these beautiful costumes and they became Sleeping Beauty, on the floor in a ballet pose. One at a time, with so much grace, each one awoke. I was nearly in tears . . . to see the joy of these children and what they were learning, what they meant to me . . . God had to have been there . . . it was an amazing morning. What if I had missed this? To watch them that day was surely a godly event . . .and it's a godly event just that we have them.
* * * *
I got this e-mail from Dave earlier this week asking us to bring something that represents who God is for us. I read it and I read it again . . and then I went and did something else. I had no idea how even to start. Honestly I don't know if I have an answer, because I think everyone has different answers. God is kind of in everything, so you can't really describe him. I did find one poem at 3am last
night . . . and it's either a good poem or I was really tired. It's by Rumi:
Buoyancy
Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but yours,
but I couldn't.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
But who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
And mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your voice.
I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.
I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!
The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.
A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.
To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.
So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It's a total waking up!
Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.
We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
* * * *
I guess the thing that makes me feel God the most is when I was younger, I went a couple times to an astronomy camp in eastern Oregon with my sister and our dad. There was a big hill with an observatory and the biggest telescope I've ever seen. The camp was there because the air was clear; there was no pollution or light to distract. You can see whatever you want to. One year when we were there, we had a sleepover with all the bugs and people had these crazy electronic bug zappers. That night, I saw the northern lights. It was beautiful: very vivid teal blue and green, all over the sky , interspersed and woven with light. That night I saw Andromeda – a whole other galaxy. It was astonishing. For me, God is seeing something that's always been there . . .something that's not changing, waiting for me to see it. Something that's new to me though it's always been there. I still remember all the things I saw in the sky and how beautiful they were. It's the newness and the oldness at the same time that is really special to me.
* * * *
I brought the Daniel Smith color chart of extra fine water colors, which I've become fond of. For me, God is the being who melds art and science together. Whenever I do art or look at art, I am captivated by it, and there's also a science to it, a science to what we find appealing – colors that vibrate with the right frequencies so we find them attractive. Also the art and science to what you have to mix to get just the right color. It's like God has created just the right stuff out there – the infinitesimal shades of green that you find everywhere (but nowhere better than in the northwest!). They are what make me feel God is here. There's the science part you can't tease away from it. There's art in science. We don't always look at both of them together – and how they're melded together.
* * * *
I think one of the ways I've always appreciated God is as a Creator. I go back to the stereotype of Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel of God reaching out to touch Adam, to give a spark of life or soul to him in that touch, to awaken him. I look out the window at the greens, at the ocean . . . so many things I see and I think, "Thank you to God" for all of the beautiful things he's created. A new child, the oceans, the trees . . . all are his creation.
* * * *
Three things popped into my mind. I'd like to echo music. When Dave and Linda collaborate, it has been a God-like moment for us in the choir. Second: when my 6'2" son stands next to me and I think about how he's now in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse: that's God to me. And the third is each of you here. We have been through so many ups and downs. We have permanence and we have change. Each of you sitting here is God to me.
* * * *
I could take up an entire hard drive on examples of God I've had in y life. Of course music is one that has been in my life since birth. It's the biggest example I have. If I hear music, I can't stop moving. But this particular week I wanted to share an example. I've been in a very tender spot with one of my teenagers. I felt like possibly my parenting and my husband's was not what he needed, that we were having some repetitive behaviors and encounters where I thought, this has happened too many times . . . I don't know if we can get beyond this. So we said to our son, We love you . . .but this doesn't seem to be the right environment for you. If you can't follow our rules, we don't think we have another choice than for you to look at other alternatives that might be out there. He was telling us none of his friends have to follow the same number of rules. It was a difficult spot. One day this week, my husband was on the Olympic Peninsula doing work. My son spent the night at the neighbor's because he needed to. The next morning, my son knocked at the door and said, "What's up?" I said, "You knocked at the door – do you have anything to say?" We had a ½-hour conversation sitting on the front porch, going over the same things. I was at the lowest point, searching my heart. I don't know if there's been any change or recognition in him . . . I'm offering the 350th chance, it seems. My husband and I had gone through the prodigal son story with him a few times, and that seemed to be having an effect. Sitting there, we'd had a long silence, I had my head down, there were some private tears. I said to God, "If there's some way, some sign, that you could give me like if my teen moved across to me and put his arms around me . . ." Then boom, it happened! He came over and did it. Which is a fairly unlikely thing from a 14-year-old. That was my sign of who God was this week.
* * * *
Answers from the young people of the church to the question Who is God?
When I think of God I think of Molly, our cat. She loves my mom and me for who we are, and that's how God loves us, too.
At the "Time for the Young People" images of God were a toy horse (God gives me courage to get on my horse and ride), two live frogs (God made them), rocks that came from the earth and that God made, ballet and a book on ballet (I love ballet).
From siblings:
"Oh, that's easy. God is everywhere. He is in everything."
"No He isn't. God lives in the water. You can find God at the beach."
From a 6-year-old: God is in my stuffed animals; he makes them fluffy. God is in watermelon – he's in the seeds, and he makes them grow. God is a person who lives in Heaven. God plays with me when I'm playing with my stuffed animals – God loves stuffed animals and so do I! God helps me dance when I'm doing ballet. God makes water for people to drink. God makes pencils so people can write. God gives us balance so we can walk. God makes dream catchers catch the bad dreams and let go of the good ones.
From a 6-year-old: God gives me courage when I'm rock climbing so I can go high. God helps me so that I don't fall off my horse when I'm riding him. God helps me balance in ballet so that I don't fall down. God makes people want to do good things and help other people. God dances when he hears music. God laughs when he sees silly things. God sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
* * *
In closing I share these words from a wise Christian woman. If we want to continue to live lives that respond to God's love and God's call, then, she says, how we answer the question Who is God? will not stay the same.
Some people retire 'belief in God along with belief in Santa Claus, Lady Luck, and the Tooth Fairy'. However: 'For those willing to keep heaving themselves toward the light, things can change. What has been lost gradually becomes less important than what is to be found. Curiosity pokes its green head up through the asphalt of grief, and fear of the unknown takes on an element of wonder as the disillusioned turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is. Every letdown becomes a lesson and allure. Did God fail to come when I called? Then perhaps God is not a [slave]. So who is God? Did God fail to punish my adversary? Then perhaps God is not a policeman. Then who is God? Did God fail to make everything turn out all right? Then perhaps God is not a fixer. Then who is God' (Barbara Brown Taylor, quoted in Mackenzie, pp. 165-6)?
Who is God? A question to live, pray, and share – a question to spend a lifetime answering with lives that are letters of God's love and God's call. Amen.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
An Oasis of Happiness in the Desert of Absurdity
(Ecclesiastes 3.1-15)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The third in a summer series on topics the congregation wants to hear sermons about.
The focus for today: What is the context and meaning of the Ecclesiastes text,
'To everything there is a season'?
Friday afternoon I was facilitating a group for my other job at The Recovery Café. One of the members asked, "If your prayers aren't answered, how can you justify continuing to believe in God?" Members of the group started to answer. One said, "God is a God of love. So God never gives us more than we can handle." Another said, "God answers prayers in his own time. And God's time is never our time." A third said, "How God answers my prayers usually isn't how I want them to be answered. But God knows best. God knows best what will help us succeed and prosper.
The guy who asked the question clearly wasn't getting the answers he hoped for. He asked, "How can you say God never gives us more than we can handle when you look at Auschwitz?" And he went on, "I've never felt held or loved or comforted by God. Everywhere I look I see people whose lives are screwed up, and no matter how much they pray, I don't see any of them getting better."
This guy didn't realize it. But he was doing an amazing job answering the question for today's sermon. The writer of Ecclesiastes talks about a God whose presence and friendship with us is absent.; the writer of Ecclesiastes says God has left us to fend for ourselves on in lives of toil that end only in death (W. Sibley Towner, "The Book of Ecclesiastes," The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. V, Abingdon Press, 1997,p. 280). Which is how the guy at the Recovery Café was saying he experienced God.
So we come to the passage for this morning. For my generation, it's probably one of the better known verses in the Bible. In 1959, Pete Seeger wrote a song based on these words. And the Byrds released a version of it in 1965, when it became the #1 song in this country. Other generations discovered it because it was featured prominently in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump.
To everything (Turn, Turn Turn) there is a season . . .
But what might these words mean? What do they have to say to us today?
Let us listen for a Word from God.
There's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on earth.
A right time for birth and another for death,
a right time to plant and another to reap,
a right time to kill and another to heal,
a right time to destroy and another to construct,
a right time to cry and another to laugh,
a right time to lament and another to cheer,
a right time to make love and another to abstain,
a right time to embrace and another to part,
a right time to search and another to count your losses,
a right time to hold on and another to let go,
a right time to rip out and another to mend,
a right time to shut up and another to speak up,
a right time to love and another to hate,
a right time to wage war and another to make peace.
That's where the song Pete Seeger and the Byrds sing ends.
There's a right time for everything on earth. What I hear in these words is that life brings us all of these things. Birth and death, laughing and crying, constructing and destroying, making war and making peace: all of these happen to us and our world. But notice what these verses don't say. There's no promise that the joyful and the painful will be nicely spaced out. No promise we'll only have one or two of the painful things to deal with at any given time. No promise that our lives will know more joy than pain. And the song doesn't tell us how we might have more joy than suffering.
Which is why Suzi hit the proverbial nail on the head by the way she asked the question for today's sermon. She wrote, What is the context for this passage? The context for this passage gets at the question about how we can get more of the joy and less of the pain and suffering.
Here's what comes after the song the Byrds sing ends.
But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I've had a good look at what God has given us to do – busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time – but has left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether God is coming or going. I've decided that there's nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That's it – eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It's God's gift.
I've also concluded that whatever God does, that's the way it's going to be, always. No addition, no subtraction. God's done it and that's it. That's so we'll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear.
Whatever was, is, whatever will be, is.
That's how it always is with God.
—The Message © 1993-96, 2000-02. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
Listen to these phrases! Does it really make a difference what anyone does? Whatever God does, that's the way it's going to be. Quit asking questions and simply worship God in holy fear – which means obey the God whom you live with all of being.
The context for the Byrds' song seems to be saying, There's not much you can do to increase your joy and decrease your suffering. Because God has created a world that is no bed of roses. The experiences of the writer of Ecclesiastes have convinced him that life isn't fair. Life isn't just. Some good people die poor and lonely and young. Some cruel people die with friends and money after celebrating their hundredth birthday.
The experiences of the writer of this book tell him if you expect to get rewarded for being good, you're setting yourself up to suffer even more than you will anyway. The same if you expect the world to follow some kind of order or expect the world to make sense. Expecting these mean you'll never be happy. Life is hard. God is one whose presence and friendship is absent. God has left us to fend for ourselves in toil that ends only in death. Life is random. One minute someone is alive and expects to live for years to come, and the next they've been killed in a freak accident. No sense to it. No reason for it. It just is. Expecting there to be a reason only strips you of what happiness and joy are available to you.
As she reflects on this message from Ecclesiastes, a professor of the Hebrew Scriptures thinks about how she always expected life to be good and fair and ordered:
In the script I wrote [for my life], God rubber-stamped all my ambitions and justified all my actions. In my screenplay, my good habits led to good health, and my cooperation and kindness to others is reciprocated without fail. In my autobiography, the future is no mystery. Rather, my planning and common sense lead to an orderly, altogether admirable life! [I want to believe the favorite quote a local TV anchorwoman sent to my son's 6th-grade class: 'If you can conceive it and believe it, you will achieve it'.]
But her life hasn't quite turned out that way. She says, Now, at mid-life, I come to find out that, while I have conceived it, and at times even believed it, I have not thoroughly achieved it (Alyce McKenzie. Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self-Help Society, Abingdon, 2002, p. 158-9). Because life doesn't turn out life it does in self-help books. We might follow all 17 of the steps the book promises will lead to prosperity and happiness . . . and achieve nothing.
The one hopeful message this book seems to offers is that God wants us to be happy. The writer of Ecclesiastes says God wants us to be happy. God wants us to have joy. Listen to this odd verse from this morning's passage: "[T]here's nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. Eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It's God's gift" (3.13).
God wants us to be joyful and happy in the present moment. And in an absurd world that isn't fair and that makes no sense, the only way we can find moments of happiness and joy is if we eat, drink, and work well at the work we've been given. In the midst of our suffering and our experience of God's absence, the only way we can be happy is if we gather with people who love us, and do good work at whatever our work is. If we do this without expecting it to be any different, we can create an oasis of happiness in the midst of a desert of absurdity (phrase from W. Sibley Towner, "The Book of Ecclesiastes," The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. V, Abingdon Press, 1997, p. 303). For we will not expect life to be anything but absurd.
This isn't much to work with. If this were the only book in the Bible, I don't think Judaism or Christianity would have survived. This picture of God and human life is not enough to build a faith on. There are 65 more books in the Bible. And most of them offer a different view of God. And a different picture of what human life is like. Most of these other books tell stories of a God who hears our cries and responds. A God who rages at injustice and calls people to acts of compassion and mercy and peacemaking. The New Testament tells stories of the God who took human form in Jesus. Jesus said, I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10.10). Jesus refused to stop loving the poor and the excluded, and the enemies of the Empire, even though he knew loving them would lead to his murder. I'm glad these 65 other books of the Bible offer us a different view of God and human life than Ecclesiastes.
And I'm grateful Ecclesiastes is there. It's an embarrassing book to have in your Bible. And it's in the Bible because the Jews refused to be silent about what they knew to be true. They had experienced God's absence and the absurdity of human life. Think about your own life. Haven't there been times when you felt like God had taken a trip and was far, far away from you? Haven't there been times when you expected life to be fair and to make sense and to reward you for doing what you should? Then the book of Ecclesiastes speaks to your experiences.
When I think of people Ecclesiastes speaks for, I think of a woman in the church I grew up in. She was one of the kindest, gentlest people I've known. She watched her husband die of a rare, hereditary disease before he was 40. And then she lived with the horrific powerlessness of knowing her three sons were all going to die of the same illness by the same age.
I don't know how she survived burying her husband and then each one of her three sons. When I try to imagine what this hell would have been like, I know one thing. There would have been times I would not want to have heard anyone tell me God loves me, or tell me God knew the number of hairs on my head and would prevent me from harm. It would have been cruel to talk about such a God with one whose world had crumbled around her. And I wouldn't have wanted anyone to tell me that God holds this world, and has a plan for this world, and God never gives anyone more than they can handle. I think at times I would have wanted to hear from the writer of Ecclesiastes. Who reflects my experience when he talks about the God whose presence and friendship is absent. And when he says life is hard, hard toil that ends in death. In the meantime, the world just spins without direction or purpose on its absurd axis. I would have wanted to hear the writer of Ecclesiastes talk about the right time for life and death . . . and what he implies without saying it: that there also can be a wrong time for life and death. He would give me permission to scream to an unanswering universe: Dying at age 40 is never the right time to die!
So what does the writer of Ecclesiastes say this lovely women can do in response to the too-early deaths of her entire family? In a world that is absurd, oases of happiness can only be found by eating, drinking, and doing well the work that has been given to you. Fleeting moments of happiness and joy are possible in this life only when we gather with people who love us, and when we do good work. That is all we can do in this desert of absurdity to find and create oases of happiness
The poet Mary Oliver gives voice to Ecclesiastes' vision of what offers happiness
Work, Sometimes
I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.
The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.
What are we sure of? Happiness isn't a town on a map,
or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing. Which is not likely to be the trifling around
with a poem.
Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.
You have had days like this, no doubt. And it wasn't it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.
—New and Selected Poems, Volume Two, Beacon Press, 2005, p. 6
Eat, drink, and do well the work you've been given. Gather with people who love you, do good work. Then happiness and joy might bless you in this life. Amen.
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The third in a summer series on topics the congregation wants to hear sermons about.
The focus for today: What is the context and meaning of the Ecclesiastes text,
'To everything there is a season'?
Friday afternoon I was facilitating a group for my other job at The Recovery Café. One of the members asked, "If your prayers aren't answered, how can you justify continuing to believe in God?" Members of the group started to answer. One said, "God is a God of love. So God never gives us more than we can handle." Another said, "God answers prayers in his own time. And God's time is never our time." A third said, "How God answers my prayers usually isn't how I want them to be answered. But God knows best. God knows best what will help us succeed and prosper.
The guy who asked the question clearly wasn't getting the answers he hoped for. He asked, "How can you say God never gives us more than we can handle when you look at Auschwitz?" And he went on, "I've never felt held or loved or comforted by God. Everywhere I look I see people whose lives are screwed up, and no matter how much they pray, I don't see any of them getting better."
This guy didn't realize it. But he was doing an amazing job answering the question for today's sermon. The writer of Ecclesiastes talks about a God whose presence and friendship with us is absent.; the writer of Ecclesiastes says God has left us to fend for ourselves on in lives of toil that end only in death (W. Sibley Towner, "The Book of Ecclesiastes," The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. V, Abingdon Press, 1997,p. 280). Which is how the guy at the Recovery Café was saying he experienced God.
So we come to the passage for this morning. For my generation, it's probably one of the better known verses in the Bible. In 1959, Pete Seeger wrote a song based on these words. And the Byrds released a version of it in 1965, when it became the #1 song in this country. Other generations discovered it because it was featured prominently in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump.
To everything (Turn, Turn Turn) there is a season . . .
But what might these words mean? What do they have to say to us today?
Let us listen for a Word from God.
There's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on earth.
A right time for birth and another for death,
a right time to plant and another to reap,
a right time to kill and another to heal,
a right time to destroy and another to construct,
a right time to cry and another to laugh,
a right time to lament and another to cheer,
a right time to make love and another to abstain,
a right time to embrace and another to part,
a right time to search and another to count your losses,
a right time to hold on and another to let go,
a right time to rip out and another to mend,
a right time to shut up and another to speak up,
a right time to love and another to hate,
a right time to wage war and another to make peace.
That's where the song Pete Seeger and the Byrds sing ends.
There's a right time for everything on earth. What I hear in these words is that life brings us all of these things. Birth and death, laughing and crying, constructing and destroying, making war and making peace: all of these happen to us and our world. But notice what these verses don't say. There's no promise that the joyful and the painful will be nicely spaced out. No promise we'll only have one or two of the painful things to deal with at any given time. No promise that our lives will know more joy than pain. And the song doesn't tell us how we might have more joy than suffering.
Which is why Suzi hit the proverbial nail on the head by the way she asked the question for today's sermon. She wrote, What is the context for this passage? The context for this passage gets at the question about how we can get more of the joy and less of the pain and suffering.
Here's what comes after the song the Byrds sing ends.
But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I've had a good look at what God has given us to do – busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time – but has left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether God is coming or going. I've decided that there's nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That's it – eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It's God's gift.
I've also concluded that whatever God does, that's the way it's going to be, always. No addition, no subtraction. God's done it and that's it. That's so we'll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear.
Whatever was, is, whatever will be, is.
That's how it always is with God.
—The Message © 1993-96, 2000-02. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
Listen to these phrases! Does it really make a difference what anyone does? Whatever God does, that's the way it's going to be. Quit asking questions and simply worship God in holy fear – which means obey the God whom you live with all of being.
The context for the Byrds' song seems to be saying, There's not much you can do to increase your joy and decrease your suffering. Because God has created a world that is no bed of roses. The experiences of the writer of Ecclesiastes have convinced him that life isn't fair. Life isn't just. Some good people die poor and lonely and young. Some cruel people die with friends and money after celebrating their hundredth birthday.
The experiences of the writer of this book tell him if you expect to get rewarded for being good, you're setting yourself up to suffer even more than you will anyway. The same if you expect the world to follow some kind of order or expect the world to make sense. Expecting these mean you'll never be happy. Life is hard. God is one whose presence and friendship is absent. God has left us to fend for ourselves in toil that ends only in death. Life is random. One minute someone is alive and expects to live for years to come, and the next they've been killed in a freak accident. No sense to it. No reason for it. It just is. Expecting there to be a reason only strips you of what happiness and joy are available to you.
As she reflects on this message from Ecclesiastes, a professor of the Hebrew Scriptures thinks about how she always expected life to be good and fair and ordered:
In the script I wrote [for my life], God rubber-stamped all my ambitions and justified all my actions. In my screenplay, my good habits led to good health, and my cooperation and kindness to others is reciprocated without fail. In my autobiography, the future is no mystery. Rather, my planning and common sense lead to an orderly, altogether admirable life! [I want to believe the favorite quote a local TV anchorwoman sent to my son's 6th-grade class: 'If you can conceive it and believe it, you will achieve it'.]
But her life hasn't quite turned out that way. She says, Now, at mid-life, I come to find out that, while I have conceived it, and at times even believed it, I have not thoroughly achieved it (Alyce McKenzie. Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self-Help Society, Abingdon, 2002, p. 158-9). Because life doesn't turn out life it does in self-help books. We might follow all 17 of the steps the book promises will lead to prosperity and happiness . . . and achieve nothing.
The one hopeful message this book seems to offers is that God wants us to be happy. The writer of Ecclesiastes says God wants us to be happy. God wants us to have joy. Listen to this odd verse from this morning's passage: "[T]here's nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. Eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It's God's gift" (3.13).
God wants us to be joyful and happy in the present moment. And in an absurd world that isn't fair and that makes no sense, the only way we can find moments of happiness and joy is if we eat, drink, and work well at the work we've been given. In the midst of our suffering and our experience of God's absence, the only way we can be happy is if we gather with people who love us, and do good work at whatever our work is. If we do this without expecting it to be any different, we can create an oasis of happiness in the midst of a desert of absurdity (phrase from W. Sibley Towner, "The Book of Ecclesiastes," The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. V, Abingdon Press, 1997, p. 303). For we will not expect life to be anything but absurd.
This isn't much to work with. If this were the only book in the Bible, I don't think Judaism or Christianity would have survived. This picture of God and human life is not enough to build a faith on. There are 65 more books in the Bible. And most of them offer a different view of God. And a different picture of what human life is like. Most of these other books tell stories of a God who hears our cries and responds. A God who rages at injustice and calls people to acts of compassion and mercy and peacemaking. The New Testament tells stories of the God who took human form in Jesus. Jesus said, I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10.10). Jesus refused to stop loving the poor and the excluded, and the enemies of the Empire, even though he knew loving them would lead to his murder. I'm glad these 65 other books of the Bible offer us a different view of God and human life than Ecclesiastes.
And I'm grateful Ecclesiastes is there. It's an embarrassing book to have in your Bible. And it's in the Bible because the Jews refused to be silent about what they knew to be true. They had experienced God's absence and the absurdity of human life. Think about your own life. Haven't there been times when you felt like God had taken a trip and was far, far away from you? Haven't there been times when you expected life to be fair and to make sense and to reward you for doing what you should? Then the book of Ecclesiastes speaks to your experiences.
When I think of people Ecclesiastes speaks for, I think of a woman in the church I grew up in. She was one of the kindest, gentlest people I've known. She watched her husband die of a rare, hereditary disease before he was 40. And then she lived with the horrific powerlessness of knowing her three sons were all going to die of the same illness by the same age.
I don't know how she survived burying her husband and then each one of her three sons. When I try to imagine what this hell would have been like, I know one thing. There would have been times I would not want to have heard anyone tell me God loves me, or tell me God knew the number of hairs on my head and would prevent me from harm. It would have been cruel to talk about such a God with one whose world had crumbled around her. And I wouldn't have wanted anyone to tell me that God holds this world, and has a plan for this world, and God never gives anyone more than they can handle. I think at times I would have wanted to hear from the writer of Ecclesiastes. Who reflects my experience when he talks about the God whose presence and friendship is absent. And when he says life is hard, hard toil that ends in death. In the meantime, the world just spins without direction or purpose on its absurd axis. I would have wanted to hear the writer of Ecclesiastes talk about the right time for life and death . . . and what he implies without saying it: that there also can be a wrong time for life and death. He would give me permission to scream to an unanswering universe: Dying at age 40 is never the right time to die!
So what does the writer of Ecclesiastes say this lovely women can do in response to the too-early deaths of her entire family? In a world that is absurd, oases of happiness can only be found by eating, drinking, and doing well the work that has been given to you. Fleeting moments of happiness and joy are possible in this life only when we gather with people who love us, and when we do good work. That is all we can do in this desert of absurdity to find and create oases of happiness
The poet Mary Oliver gives voice to Ecclesiastes' vision of what offers happiness
Work, Sometimes
I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.
The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.
What are we sure of? Happiness isn't a town on a map,
or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing. Which is not likely to be the trifling around
with a poem.
Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.
You have had days like this, no doubt. And it wasn't it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.
—New and Selected Poems, Volume Two, Beacon Press, 2005, p. 6
Eat, drink, and do well the work you've been given. Gather with people who love you, do good work. Then happiness and joy might bless you in this life. Amen.
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