Traveling, Turmoil, and Transformation

Traveling, Turmoil, and Transformation
(Lamentations 3.19-26 and a prayer by Desmond and Mpho Tutu)
A message by Sue Healey
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
All Saints’ Sunday: October 30, 2011

A Love Songs to Us from God by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
(from Made for Goodness by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, HarperOne, 2010, pp.109-10)

I have seen suffering make heroes of some of my children.
The strength with which they endure their pain is a shining example to all.
But sometimes, child, suffering is only suffering.
It seems gratuitous. It feels meaningless.
It teaches nothing. It brings no gifts. It just is.
It just is and you feel alone, abandoned, forsaken.
You think I have gone so you run.
Your mind skitters away from the hurt.
Your body shrinks away from the pain.
Your heart tries to shut itself against the suffering.
I see you run.
You don't believe I am with you.
But I am there.
When you stop running from the pain and turn to face it, when you step into the agony and let it be, when you can turn to your own suffering and know its name, then you will see me.
You will see me in the heart of it with you.
It doesn't matter if your body is wracked by pain or your mind is spiraling through aches and anguish. When you stop running you will see me.
I will not forsake you.
I cannot abandon you.
You are not alone.
I am with you.

Loss has many names…death, divorce, disease, unemployment, loneliness, hardship… Grieving is the result.

This morning I would like to tell you the story of a horrible time in my life. My hope is that as I share my story, it will resonate with yours and in the remembering of our deepest hurts, we will be able to let God further heal us.

When I was 38, my daughter was 16, my husband was working two jobs, and I was making and selling teddy bears, going to college full time, working in my basement beauty salon, and volunteering at my church. I was going faster than the speed of light when I found a lump in my breast….it was cancer.

My world came to a dead stop. It felt like being in a twilight zone episode...one where I woke up and the world was in gray. My Technicolor world turned to black and white overnight and no one else seemed to notice. It was surreal.

Here are some of the things people said:

“You are lucky they caught it early. You are lucky to have it in only one breast. I don’t believe you have cancer, I think the lab made a mistake. Call and reassure your brother, he is afraid to talk to you, I think we should announce it from the pulpit, it will help Trudy. You need to get that weight off you. You go to Group Health?... more like Group Death … NOT HELPFUL.

Here is what DID help:

Jesters of kindness, listening, and words that said “Tell me how it is going for you.” …Knowing God didn’t smite me with cancer. One thing I found that I could do for myself was to help others who had a tragedy that was worse than mine....no matter what I am going through, I can usually find someone else who has it worse. It is like finding someone else in the gray, twilight zone world.

Fast forward a month. It was the week before my mastectomy. By this time, instead of my world being at a dead stop, I was once again up to speed...I had dropped out of school, seen numerous doctors, called all my customers and cut their hair, made a month’s worth of dinners and frozen them, gotten my daughter a drivers’ license, bought and wrapped the Christmas gifts....completed my teddy bear orders, … I was going to take charge, have cancer, and do it right! I had things under control!

Then the phone rang. A family tragedy had occurred, and I realized:

Things were not under control. I had no control….DID ANYONE HAVE CONTORL? ……….I was afraid, I couldn’t sleep or eat. I tried not to think about it. In desperation, I tried a prayer technique called “focusing prayer”. Rather than run from the fear, I focused on it. After I admitted my worst fears, I asked God into them. It was very freeing.

Fast forward three months.… I was back doing hair, back to taking care of my family, back to volunteering at church, back to making teddy bears….. I was vacuuming when I noticed my hand was swollen. ….I had developed lymphedema....a condition brought about by the removal of the lymph nodes in my armpit. There is no cure and it is permanent.

The more I used my hand, the bigger it got. A cut, a hang nail, a mosquito bite all gave me infections. ..And each infection made my arm bigger. I spent two hours a day hooked up to a machine to reduce the swelling. One by one the things I loved had to be cut from my life…all my hobbies were cut, my beauty salon…gone, making teddy bears…gone, wedding ring…gone, ….and on and on….I felt I had given up everything that made me-me. I no longer had an identity. I felt like my body had betrayed me. I couldn’t count on anyone or anything, including myself.

Here are what some of the things people said: “What happened to your arm? At least you didn’t die of cancer; at least it’s your left arm.…. You go to Group Health? Group Health doesn’t know anything. You need to get different insurance. Have you asked God to heal you? If only you had faith you would be healed. I still hear some of the same things.

Here’s what helped: NOTHING. I was pissed! Hadn’t I been through enough? What are you thinking, God? I have lost everything that is me. My hobbies, my lively-hood, my body was ugly enough, now a swollen arm too? I’ve been good; I didn’t get mad at you over having cancer. What is the lesson here? Am I too stupid to get the lesson? What good can come out of this? Don’t you want me able bodied to serve you? Why won’t you heal me? I have had it; I am not speaking to you anymore.

I didn’t doubt there was a God; I just didn’t want to talk to Him anymore. He was just too far away. What good did prayers do anyway? I stopped going to church. I put a cocoon around me and insulated myself from everyone.

I felt like the author of Lamentations:

I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness, the taste of ashes, and the poison I’ve swallowed. I remember it all-oh, how I remember-the feeling of hitting the bottom (3.19-20).

Now there was NO a fast forward, there appeared to be no movement, no change, no hope, and no future. “God, what do you want me to do? OH, that’s right I’m not speaking to you.” I was not gentle with God; I was not gentle with myself. I should be grateful I was alive. But, I wasn’t alive. Almost all the things I loved about myself had died. I felt as if I was carrying a broken heart. I tried to hide the grief, I tried to ignore it, but I could not escape it no matter what I did or where I went. Nothing was fun. Life felt like ashes in my mouth…. I was so weary.

I was unsuccessful in giving God the silent treatment… I was in the habit of talking to Him all day long. I finally told Him that I gave up trying to figure Him out. I gave up trying… I just gave up. And in the giving up, I found life again.

Here is what He said to me, “Rest”. Stop and rest in me. Give me your sorrow. I know what to do with it.”

Resting sounded like something I could do. Stopping sounded like something I could do. So I stopped. I rested. IN return, He soothed me. He gave me an image that really helped me heal. I pictured my sore heart, bloody and raw like hamburger. I imagined clean, cool, refreshing water pouring over my painful heart. With the water, the blood and the pain was starting to be rinsed away. The water that left my heart was filled with blood, but as I continued to use the imagery, the water got clearer and clearer. With each rinsing, it got a little less bloody. I used this image repeatedly.... I rested.... And I waited. You would think resting is easy. Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes I felt guilty resting. I felt useless, and like I should be doing SOMETHING….but I kept hearing God saying “REST”.

As gradually as you notice the days are getting longer in the spring, I noticed that I was beginning to feel more hopeful. I had started to allow a work to begin in me. Don’t misunderstand me; it wasn’t a steady getting better, Discouragement, sadness, anger, loss, confusion were still my companions, but, not as constantly. I had to give it all to Jesus again and again. Eventually I felt like the author of lamentations.

“But there is one thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on hope; God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out. God’s merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They are created new every morning. How great your faithfulness. I am sticking with God (I say it over and over.) You’re all I’ve got left. God proves to be good to those who passionately wait and who diligently seek (3.21-26).

That all happened twenty years ago this month. It took me years before I was able to see a blessing in it … But God was able to transform my loss into a blessing. I appreciate each day. Life is now a gift, not a right. I don’t put things off. I don’t worry about the future. I keep my relationships current. I don’t allow time to go by without forgiving, without encouraging, without telling people I love them. Each birthday is a celebration. I put myself into life giving situations. I SEEK LIFE. I seek life in church. I seek life in friendships. I seek life in nature. I seek life in the Creator of life. What robs me of life…I eliminate. What gives me life, I do repeatedly.

Best of all, I know I can get through anything with God’s help. I also know it will hurt like hell. But I can get through it. When I get too tired and weary, I can rest.

Healed Memory

Healed Memory, A Fourth Step Toward Desiring to Embrace an Enemy
(Isaiah 65.17-25)
A message by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 23, 2011

The fifth in a series of messages addressing the question, “How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ?” The inspiration for this series comes from Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Abingdon Press, 1996.

In a recent New Yorker cartoon, a sixty-something year old man says to his wife, “My memory isn’t getting worse. I’m just choosing to live in the now.”

I think this world would be a lot more loving and just if more of us chose to live in the now. Instead of giving so much power to past wrongs and past wounds. Which can trap us in unhealed memories, and keep God from using us to give birth to something new.

You know the old saying. A cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. But he’ll never sit on a cold stove either. He’s trapped by the memory of a past wound. His unhealed memory will forever convince him that all stoves are dangerous.

There was a man in his 80s at University Congregational United Church of Christ I’ll call Henry. Henry thought my partner Peter and I were about the worst pastors in the history of the world. He freely shared that opinion with anyone who would listen. Two days before he died, Peter visited Henry in the nursing home. Where Henry told Peter he’d fought in World War II. Henry said one of his fellow soldiers made a pass at him. For the next 50 years, Henry’s unhealed memory convinced him the only thing gay men want to do is have sex with straight men. Now, two days before he died, Henry apologized to Peter. He said, “I said all those awful things about you and Dave when I didn’t even know you.”

That is healed memory. That is letting God heal our memory of past wrongs and past wounds. So God can use us to give birth to something new.

In the 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was breaking up. Power-hungry people knew they could turn people’s unhealed memory into a weapon. They kept saying, Remember when…?, and they’d finish the question by reminding people of something horrible the “enemy” did to 20 or 50, or in one case, even 500 years before. Unhealed memory still longs for revenge. So these power-hungry people drew on the poison of unhealed memory. And the result was genocide.

I fear leaders in this country will continue to take advantage of our nation’s unhealed memory surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. Our unhealed memory convinces us our only choice is to carry out a perpetual “war on terror” against whoever our government tells us is our “enemy”. And because “we” are the victims, and “they” are the evil ones, our nation’s unhealed memory convinces us God blesses whatever “we” do to “them”.

Today I’m talking about the last of four steps we can take to be peacemakers. Four steps we can take to nurture a desire to embrace someone who has hurt us deeply. The last three weeks we’ve looked at the steps of repentance, forgiveness, and letting Christ hold us in an embrace alongside someone who has hurt us. Today we look at the fourth step. The step of healed memory. Healed memory frees us from the poison that convinces us our only choice in life is to hurt others…or hurt ourselves.

I’m not talking about forgetting. I don’t think it’s possible to completely forget times when we’ve been deeply wounded.

But I believe the memory of even the deepest wounds can and must be healed. And I believe healed memory is the only thing that will finally heal us. Former enemies embracing each other is the only path to true peace in this world.
Which is why God’s vision for a new, healed creation begins with healed memory.

Listen for a word from God.

[God said to the people,]
“Pay close attention now: I'm creating new heavens and a new earth.
All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten
Look ahead with joy.
Anticipate what I'm creating: I'll create Jerusalem as sheer joy, create my people as pure delight.
I'll take joy in Jerusalem, take delight in my people:
No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish;
No more babies dying in the cradle, or old people who don't enjoy a full lifetime;
One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal—anything less will seem like a cheat.
They'll build houses and move in.
They'll plant fields and eat what they grow.
No more building a house that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
They won't work and have nothing come of it,
they won't have children snatched out from under them.
For they themselves are plantings blessed by God,
with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.
Before they call out, I'll answer.
Before they've finished speaking, I'll have heard.
Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,
lion and ox eat straw from the same trough, but snakes—they'll get a diet of dirt!
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill anywhere on my Holy Mountain," says God.
(Isaiah 65.17-25, The Message ReMix © 2003 Eugene Peterson)

What a picture of peace. No weeping. No violence. Long, full lives for all. A just order where everyone has enough. And where former enemies are healed. A joyful creation in love with God.

How does God bring this about? It starts with healed memory. Look at the first thing God does. God says, All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten. Creation can only become a place of true peace and joy when all memory has been healed. So no one wants revenge. And everyone has a desire to embrace their enemy.

For our closing hymn this morning (“I Will Change Your Name,” D.J. Butler, © 1987 Mercy Publishing), we will sing some names others have given us. And names we’ve given ourselves:
Wounded
Outcast
Lonely
Afraid

Every moment of our lives, I believe God is searching for us (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, Volume II, Harper & Row, 1962, p. 218). God wants to find us. And break us open. And help heal our memories. So we can hear God say, The names you call yourself are a lie. Let me change your name. So you see yourself the way I see you:
Confidence
Joyfulness
Overcoming One
Faithfulness
Friend of God
One Who Seeks My Face

Four years ago I sat in a support group at Recovery Café, where my other job is. There was a woman in the group I’ll call Vicki. Vicki had been abused the first 30 years of her life. Then she heard God speak to her. She felt God’s arms around her. God’s love became the most real thing in the world for her. She began to heal.

In the support group that day, a man talked about all the names people have been calling him from the time he was a kid right up to now. Trash. Worthless. Victim. God’s Mistake. He said, “This is who I am. This is who I’ll always be.”

Vicki looked at him. Then she said, “I’ve stopped responding to the names others give me. I only respond to the name I’ve been given. God’s Beloved.”

Vicki has done the hard work of healing her memory. She hasn’t forgotten the abuse. She’s let God and the people who love her heal her memory. Her memory no longer has power to make her hate herself or the people who hurt her. She no longer lets false names define her. God is using her to do something new. She embraces every wounded soul she meets with the love of the God whose embrace saves her.

Sometimes the memory of our past wounds is so powerful we let those wounds define us. Healing our memory terrifies us because that means we have to grieve all the loss that has resulted from letting our wounds define us. Facing all that loss can keep us from wanting our memory to heal.

When I worked as a family therapist on the South Side of Chicago, I had a client I’ll call Shirley. Shirley had been abused for many, many years. While I was counseling her, she began dating a really nice man. I was sure that would help lift her despair. But the longer she dated him, the more depressed she seemed to get. So I went to my supervisor, Sandy, and said, “I don’t get it. Why isn’t Shirley thrilled she’s finally met someone who treats her like she deserves?”

Sandy said something I’ll always remember. She said, “For 40 years, Shirley’s been living a story that says ‘I don’t deserve to be loved.’ It’s a deep part of her identity. It’s helped the world make sense to her. Now, all of the sudden, this guy treats her like a human being. Part of her feels really good. But another part of her says, ‘Wait. If I’m not junk, if I deserve to be loved, then the past could have been different. And that would be too depressing to admit.’ My supervisor said, “Dave, if Shirley starts to see herself as someone who deserved to be loved her whole life, she’s going to have to grieve all those years when she wasn’t loved. How would you feel if you suddenly realized you were cheated out of 40 years of love?” For Shirley to heal her memory, for her to believe her true name is Lovable instead of Junk, she would have to grieve all that love she lost. Healed memory would force her to change how she’s always seen herself and made sense of her place in the world. And that can feel impossible.

What’s a memory you have that still has the power to trap you in a desire to hurt others or yourself? What’s an unhealed memory that your family, your church, your workplace, your ethnic group, your country keeps alive? What would help heal one of those memories…so you can strip it of its power to keep you trapped in brokenness, bitterness, victimhood, or a desire for revenge? What unhealed memory keeps you and another separated by a seemingly unbridgeable dividing line between “us” and “them”?

Look ahead with joy [at] what I'm creating….:
No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish;
No more babies dying in the cradle, or old people who don't enjoy a full lifetime;…
They'll build houses and move in. They'll plant fields and eat what they grow.
No more building a house that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
They won't work and have nothing come of it,
they won't have children snatched out from under them….
Before they call out, I'll answer.
Before they've finished speaking, I'll have heard.
Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,
lion and ox eat straw from the same trough…;
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill anywhere on my Holy Mountain.

It’s a vision of the peace Jesus calls us to help create right here and right now. And what’s the first step toward making it real?

All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten.
Peace. A Spirit of Peace. It can only come with healed memory.

Amen.

Feeling Christ Embracing Us

Feeling Christ Embracing Us so We Might Embrace the Other:
A Third Step Toward Desiring to Embrace an Enemy
(Luke 15.11-32)
A message by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, WA
The 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 16, 2011

The fourth in a series of messages addressing the question, How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ?

The inspiration for this series comes from Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Abingdon Press, 1996.

This fall, what I’m talking about in these messages focuses on one question: How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ? One of the first things Jesus says in that sermon is usually translated, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. As I said several weeks ago that, in the language of Jesus, blessed means, Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called the children of God (Megan McKenna, Matthew: The Book of Mercy, New York City Press, 2007, p. 60).

A bit later in the sermon, Jesus tells us what peacemakers do: Love your enemies, he says. Let them bring out the best in you.
(Matthew 5.39, The Message)

Today is the third of four weeks I’m looking at how we might do that. I’m drawing on the work of my favorite theologian, Miroslav Volf. He’s from Croatia. And he’s doing all he can to try to follow this command of Jesus, and find a way to love people who killed family members and friends in the Balkan Wars. He’s decided being a peacemaker means he has to come to a place where he has a sincere desire to embrace those who brought him so much pain.
(Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Abingdon Press, 1996, p. 126)

This morning I’m focusing on three of the four steps Volf is taking himself to try to nurture that desire: repentance, forgiveness, and feeling Christ embracing us so we might embrace someone who has hurt us. (Volf, p. 126)

I had my monthly conversation about life and faith with the motorcycle-riding ex-nun Shelia, who’s my spiritual director. I was telling her it seems like my brain never shuts down these days. And it doesn’t feel like there’s much room inside me for God to get in. Talking with you, I know many of you are juggling many more balls than you’d like. For many of you, life is more than full. You are anxious. You are stressed. You are hurting.

So it probably doesn’t feel like we have the time or energy to try to love those who’ve hurt us. Doesn’t Jesus know what our lives are like? Why does he expect so much from his followers? Doesn’t he know we don’t have the luxury of the kind of silence and space we need for something huge like loving our enemies?

The author of our theology book group writes, Like us, the men and women who populate the New Testament worried every day about the material stuff of life – food, clothing, health, and work. We misread the Bible when we over-spiritualize it, assuming everything Jesus said was about an inner reality or an otherworldly hope. Jesus was born into the real world – a world of Palestinian peasants, powerful religious leaders, and Roman oppressors – and the people he hung around didn’t have time to listen to a spiritual guru. Like all of us, they had spiritual needs, but it was hard to ponder their relationship with God when they had to wake up before dawn to work.
(Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, God’s Economy, Zondervan, 2010, pp. 77-78).

So Jesus asks his followers to try to walk side-by-side with others who are trying to walk a road of unyielding love and amazing grace. In the midst of our day-to-day lives.

A story Jesus told about repentance, forgiveness, and embrace is the story of a father and his two sons. In your bulletin, it’s divided into three sections so we can look at these three steps that can move us to embrace one who has hurt us.

Listen for a word from God.
(I) Jesus said, "There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.' "So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
"That brought him to his senses. He said “I'm going back to my father. I'll say to him, “Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.”’ He got right up and went home to his father.

When the younger son asks for his share of his inheritance before his father dies, what his father would have heard is, Dad, in my eyes, you’re already dead. But for some reason, the father gives his son what he wants.
The son blows all his money. At some point, he has a God moment. He decides a life of feeding pigs is no life at all. So he repents. He decides to go home. Admit the deep hurt he’s caused. Commit himself to do whatever he needs to do to help heal the torn relationships. Ask his father to forgive him. And to be fully aware that what he did has changed things, so he can’t expect to be treated the same. Since he treated his father like his father was dead, he expects his father to act as if he no longer has a younger son. He expects to be treated as a servant. Repenting opens the door to some kind of return. Though the story makes it clear the younger son never expects his father to open his arms in embrace to him again. Why would his father want to embrace someone who’s hurt him so deeply?

Now let’s look at the next step toward embracing an enemy: forgiveness.

(II) "When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced and kissed him. The son started his speech: 'Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son….' "But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going to feast! We're going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!' And they began to have a wonderful time.

We don’t know how long the younger son has been away. However long it’s been, we get the sense the father has been looking for him. It’s clear the father aches to hold his son again. Which is why people look at this story and say, This is how God loves us. We treat God like God’s dead, we reject God’s love, and his way of unyielding love and amazing grace. And still God stands on the front porch, scanning the horizon. Hoping beyond hope that we’ll make the long walk home. And when God sees us, God runs out of the house. To embrace us. And whisper, Welcome home. Why did it take you so long to trust my love for you?

For both father and son, this is a costly forgiveness.

The father has to move past the memory of how deeply his son hurt him. And his son has to let his father embrace him, even though his shame screams, I’m unworthy!

But the father’s embrace silences the shame. Somehow the father has been freed from the poison of his son’s betrayal. Freed from the poison, the door is open to embrace. And the father steps through that door. He doesn’t just step through it. He runs through it. The son steps into his father’s embrace. And the rains come to the parched and broken earth (phrase from the songwriter Fred Small).

There’s one more person in this story who needs to enter the embrace for the family to be made whole. And for peace to come.

(III) "All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day's work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, 'Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast…because he has him home safe and sound.'
"The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen. The son said, 'Look how many years I've stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!'
"His father said, 'Son, you don't understand. You're with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he's alive! He was lost, and he's found!'"
(Luke 15.11-32, The Message Re-Mix © 2003 by Eugene Peterson)

May God help us hear and live this word. Amen.

Part of me wants to shake this older brother. It’s the part of me that wants a happy ending to this story. But Jesus lived and walked with real people. And sometimes their stories didn’t have happy endings. When I get past this need, I can totally sympathize with the older son. I hear him saying to his dad, “How could I not be jealous and resentful? I was loyal to you. I stayed with you all those days and nights when you wept for this jerk of a younger son of yours.” His father tries to reassure him of his love for his older son. The father assures him everything’s not going to be how it used to be. He tells his older son, “Everything that is mine is yours.” Which means the younger son isn’t going to get any more inheritance. Forgiveness doesn’t mean the past is undone. I think the father just wants his older son to know, “Forgiving your brother doesn’t mean I have less love for you. Forgiveness just means we can hold each other in one embrace again. It means we can be a family at peace again.”

The father has opened both his arms as wide as the world. The younger son has repented. He falls into one of those open arms. He receives his father’s forgiveness. Now his other arm is open. But when the story ends, that one arm is still empty. That empty, wide-open arm longs for the older son to step into its embrace. If that happens, the two brothers will be held in the same embrace. Together.

And what would that ask of them? Would they have to imagine, at some point, embracing each other?

It’s the image of Jesus on the cross. His arms nailed in a posture of openness. His open arms inviting anyone into his embrace. Even – especially? – those who hated him so much or were so afraid of him that they wanted him dead.

I love the image of Jesus drawing me into his embrace. But what if he draws me into his embrace with one of his arms…while, with the other, he’s drawing into his embrace someone who has hurt me? What then? What would that ask of me? ...

Forgiveness

Forgiveness: A Second Step Toward a Desire to Embrace an Enemy

(Matthew 6.9,12; Psalm 35.1-6, 11-12, 17, 22-23, 27-38; “The Hills of Ayalon”, Words & Music by Fred Small)
A message by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, WA
The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 9, 2011

The third in a series of messages that address the question, How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ?

This fall, what I’m talking about in these messages focuses on one question: How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ?

Two weeks ago, I said that if we want to be a people who follow Jesus, then we have to open ourselves to do what seems both impossible and outrageous. We have to open ourselves to have a desire to embrace those who have hurt us. Even those who have hurt us deeply.

Last week, I focused on the first of four steps we can take to might take help us do that. The step of repentance. I said repentance isn’t just saying, Sorry, I’ll try to do better next time. Instead, when I repent for not showing love, I promise to turn around and walk on a better road. To repent means to admit only God and my faith community can help me turn away from the road that harms myself and others. And walk a better road. Of compassion and justice.

Today I’d like to focus on a second step that can move us closer to embracing our enemies. That step is forgiveness.

There are lots of things any of us could say about forgiveness. This morning, I’m going to talk about why Christians have to do it, and why it’s so hard. And I’m going to look at the very odd, creative way the Bible tells us to do it.

When we choose to forgive, what are we “doing”? When we choose to forgive, we stop hoping the past is going to be different. We stop resenting what has happened, and instead make peace with it. Even if there are parts of our past that we hate. When we choose to forgive, we confess that we’ve allowed the hurt others have caused us to fill us with hatred, hurt, and the desire for revenge. When we choose to forgive, we confess the ways we’ve allowed these feelings to poison us. And to see those who hurt us as less than human.

When we choose to forgive, we take a step closer to having a desire to embrace one who has hurt us deeply.

I don’t forgive very well. I hold on to resentments toward others. And I have trouble forgiving myself. I hold on to regret. I keep replaying ways I’ve messed up and how I wished I’d done things differently. I know I have trouble truly forgiving. And I haven’t experienced anything like the kinds of violation and betrayal so many people have. This week, Leymah Gbowee won the Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Gbowee stood in front of militias and warlords in Liberia and to demand that they stop using rape as a weapon. I cannot imagine how the women she works with come to a place of forgiving those who have brutalized them. Or how I would talk with them about forgiveness not being optional for Christians.

Because Jesus is so clear about that. It’s because Jesus knew what Roman Catholic priest Richard Rohr has recently reminded us of. Rohr says, “Everything that isn’t transformed is transferred.” When wounds go unhealed, we raise our kids with the hatred we feel. When they breathe the air, they inhale hate. When they drink the water, they ingest our desire for revenge. When we refuse to forgive, our kids learn the way they show their love and loyalty to us is by hating the people we hate.

Jesus calls his followers to stop passing on our the poison we feel. Though we use different words, every week in worship Christians around the world pray the same thing:

“Abba in heaven, Holy is your name …. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” (Matthew 6.9,12).

Whether we realize it or not, when we pray these words, we’re asking God to forgive us in the same way we forgive those who have hurt us. If I refuse to forgive, then I’m asking God to refuse to forgive me.

So for Christians forgiveness is not optional. It’s hard enough when individuals hurt individuals. But what happens when we’re wounded by groups. Like a family. Or a church. Or an army. Or an ethnic group. Or a nation?

I have a song I’d like you to listen to. Some of the words are words young Israelis and Arabs have said to each other. Their words show the how adults pass the poison on to young people. And how young people can and do choose not to act on it. But to imagine walking the better road of forgiveness.

“In the Hills of Ayalon”
(Words & Music by Fred Small)

In Israel there is a settlement, called in Hebrew Neve Shalom, and in Arabic, Wahai Al-Salam. Here, Jews and Arabs live and work together, and lead workshops. At these workshops, Arab and Jewish young people can learn more about each other.

This song is based on an actual dialog at one of those workshops.

In the hills of Ayalon above the broken earth
two boys shout and play with a ball on a field of shrub and dirt.
Divided sons of Abraham exhausted embrace –
Prince of Islam, Pride of Judah know each other’s face.

“If we met on the sands of Sinai under a molten sky,
and if you held me in your sights and looked me in the eye, what would you do?”
“If we met on the sands of Sinai under a molten sky,
and if I held you in my sights and looked you in the eye,
I would shoot you dead.”

In the hills of Ayalon that once were no man’s land,
shepherds chase their wandering sheep and lead them home again.
“My grandfather died at Dachau. Never will I forget.”
“The British set fire to my grandfather’s village, left 12 Moslem dead.”
“If we met on the cliffs of Haramoun stunned by the rocket’s flash,
and if you found my heart exposed and a pistol in your grasp, what would you do?”
“If we met on the cliffs of Haramoun stunned by the rocket’s flash,
and if I found your heart exposed and a pistol in my grasp,
I would take you prisoner, hide you away, then set you free.”

In the hills of Ayalon, the young ones play a game:
toss an orange in the air and call each other’s name.
Ricky, Shimon, Shalom, Naomi – catch it before it falls!
Youssef, Hassan, Amal, Amira – tear down the wall…
“If we met by the River Jordan, under a rain of nails,
and if you raised your rifle up, and your aim could not fail, what would you do?”
“If we met by the River Jordan, under a rain of nails,
and if I raised my rifle up, and my aim could not fail,
I would put down my gun, open my arms, and weep.”
(© 1988 Fred Small/Pine Barrens Music)

What can free us from the human desire to hurt people who’ve hurt us? Or the desire forever to define ourselves as victim? Or the desire to refuse to imagine a new kind of relationship with them is possible? Our Jewish sisters and brothers offer an odd, creative step toward forgiveness. It has the power to free us. And it would make our worship services a lot less tame and polite.

Listen for a word from God.

1-3 Harass these hecklers, God, punch these bullies in the nose.
Grab a weapon, anything at hand; stand up for me!
Get ready to throw the spear, aim the javelin, at the people who are out to get me.
Reassure me; let me hear you say, "I'll save you."
4-6 When those thugs try to knife me in the back, make them look foolish.
Frustrate all those who are plotting my downfall.
Make them like cinders in a high wind, with God's angel working the bellows.
Make their road lightless and mud-slick, with God's angel on their tails….
11-12 Hostile accusers appear out of nowhere, they stand up and badger me.
They pay me back misery for mercy, leaving my soul empty….
17 God, how long are you going to stand there doing nothing?...
Save me from their brutalities; everything I've got is being thrown to the lions…
22 Don't you see what they're doing, God?
You're not going to let them get by with it, are you?
Not going to walk off without doing something, are you?

23 Please get up—wake up! Tend to my case.
My God, my Lord—my life is on the line….
27-28 Those who want the best for me,
let them have the last word—a glad shout!—
and say, over and over, “God is great—
everything works together for good for God’s servant."
I'll tell the world how great and good you are,
I'll shout Hallelujah all day, every day
(Psalm 35.1-6, 11-12, 17, 22-23, 27-38, The Message ReMix © 2003 Eugene Peterson).

I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound like any prayer request I’ve ever made. It doesn’t even sound like a prayer I’d in the privacy of our home. But our Jewish sisters and brothers knew prayers like this can drain us of the poison … and open us to forgive. This prayer is in our collection of sacred stories. So prayers like this are our sacred stories. The person praying this prayer knows God’s command: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19.18). So when he is willing to pray like this, he’s saying to God, If you expect me to hold back when all I want to do is make them hurt the way they’ve hurt me, then you have to show me you’re willing to do something. I need to trust that you are a God of justice. I need to know they’re going to pay for what they did. So they don’t get away with hurting me and hurting others If I’m not going to act on the hate, hurt, and desire for revenge I feel, then you, God, need to make things right. So I can trust justice and love will triumph in the end.

When we hand God the poison, when we are willing to ask the people in our faith community to help carry the poison, then we can start to walk a better road. Giving God the poison, asking God to punish those who have hurt us so we don’t feel like we have to, puts us on that better road. It brings us to a better place where, one day, we can truly forgive.

On that day, we will be free.

Amen.

Repentance: A Step Toward a Desire to Embrace an Enemy

Repentance: A Step Toward a Desire to Embrace an Enemy
(John 8.1-8)
A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, WA.
The 27^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 2, 2011.
The second in a series of reflections on the characteristics of a community that takes its shape from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

Jesus talked about it more than anything else. It goes by a lot of different names. The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven. The realm of God. God’s new world. The world God dreams of. Jesus came to make this world real. And to gather a community of people to walk with him and make it real. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the summary of how we live if we want to be a Jesus community walking the Jesus way of peace. God’s new world is where we’re walking together over these next months.

Last week I talked about Miroslav Volf, who teaches and talks a lot about God. He’s from Croatia. Many people he loves were killed during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. Volf asks, Do you want to be people who follow Jesus on the path toward peace? Then you must help each other nurture a desire to embrace an enemy. He says wanting to embrace one has deeply hurt you is the only sure path toward peace (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Abingdon Press, 1996, p. 126).

I ended last week’s reflection by telling a true story about a South African mother who does just that. She stands in front of a room full of people. Behind a table in that room sits the white police officer who murdered her son. She tells him and everyone else in the room about her son. And what her life has been like since he was murdered. Then she walks over to where the police officer is sitting, looks him in the eye, and says “Your name means blessing. The world needs you to be a blessing. To do that, you need a mother.” Then she opens her arms wide to him and said, “Come here” (story told by South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey in 2005).

That’s where I left things last week.

Today, and for the next three weeks, I want to look at what steps we can take that might help us imagine doing what this mother did. It may seem impossible and utterly outrageous. And that is what people who follow Jesus on the way of God’s new world do.

The four different actions I’m talking about over the next four weeks grow out of the work of Miroslav Volf. As a person of deep Christian faith, he is trying to take these steps. So one day he might be able to embrace just one of the many Serbian soldiers who killed those in Croatia he loved.

The step toward the impossible and outrageous I’d like to explore today is repentance.

I don’t use that word very often. When I do repent, what I think I’m doing is saying, “I’m really sorry I did that. I’ll try not to do it again.”

But that’s not even close to what Jesus means by repentance. To repent in the Jesus way means to turn around and go a totally different path (Volf, p. 113). We know we can’t change ourselves. So we throw ourselves into God’s arms. We ask our community to walk with us on this new road. because we know we can’t change ourselves. When we truly repent, people see that we’re doing life differently.

If I truly want to repent, the first step I take is to stop pointing my finger at someone or something else. And stop trying to justify my sin by saying it’s all because of what those awful people did to me. To truly repent, the only person I can point to is me. The only actions I can talk about are mine. The only sin I can admit to are those times I have chosen not to do what is loving.

To repent means I refuse to pass judgment on anyone else. And I look only at myself.  I think that’s what this morning’s reading from the Gospel of John is all about. Listen for a Word from God.

Jesus went across to Mount Olives, but he was soon back in the Temple again.
Swarms of people came to him.
He sat down and taught them.
The religion scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in an act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said,
"Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?"
They were trying to trap him into saying something incriminating so they could bring charges against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said,
"The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone." Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt. Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. "Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?"
“No one, Master."
"Neither do I," said Jesus. "Go on your way. From now on, don't sin."
(John 8.1-11, The Message ReMix © 2003 Eugene Peterson)

In one hand, they’re holding a stone. With the other, they’re pointing their fingers of judgment at this woman. They’re so sure they’re right. They’re so sure God loves them more than God loves her. They’ so sure that in stoning her, they’re doing God’s will. And they also know they can trap this Jesus who is so soft when it comes to enforcing God’s law. It’s a slam-dunk. What a great day….

And what does Jesus do? He draws pi pictures in the dirt. Maybe he’s just stalling for time. Maybe he’s kind of kinesthetic, and doodling helps him focus his thoughts. Maybe he’s thinking, It takes two to commit adultery…so where’s the guy? And then he does what he always does when he encounters people who love being self-righteous and so sure God’s on their side. He says a couple of words. Or tells a story. And he invites them into God’s new world. He asks them to leave the world of self-righteousness and arrogance and judgment and violence and I’m better than you. And to step into God’s new world. He says, “Don’t you want to come and play over here for a while? This is where you’ll find the love you seek. This is where you’ll find the healing you need. This is where you’ll find joy.

In this story, his invitation to God’s new world goes like this: The sinless one among you, go first.

Why did they all leave? The story doesn’t tell us. Maybe it’s because they all know each other so well. So if one guy throws the stone, everyone else will look at him and yell, “Wait a minute! You’re calling yourself sinless? Who are you trying to kid? What about the time you...? And what about that time you…?” And maybe Jesus’ words forced them to look at the finger that was pointing at the woman. And they saw the other four fingers pointing back at them. And they thought about all the times they’d refused to show love. All the things they felt ashamed of. And when they realized that, all they could do was drop their stone. And walk away.

We can only guess why they do it. All we know is every single one drops his stone. And walks away. For once love wins.

One of my favorite members of Recovery Café is a man I’ll call Bill. He’s in his early 60s. He served time in prison for committing a sexual crime against a friend his high school-age daughter had at the house for a sleepover. Bill served his sentence. He has followed every requirement of his parole. Whenever a school group comes into the Café to do community service, he has to leave. He knows that and he does it. He deeply regrets what he did. He doesn’t blame anybody else. He has paid the price society demands. As a result of what he did, he lost his marriage, his family, and his job. He lives in his truck. He knows he deeply, deeply wounded this girl. And he doesn’t want pity. He wants a job.

Bill is a skilled machinist. He’s been looking for work for two years. He was really hopeful about an interview he had this past Tuesday. I sat down to have a cup of coffee with him on Thursday. He told me it was the same story. Everything was going great. He passed the tests they put him through. Then the person interviewing him asked, “Do you have any felonies?” He said yes. And said what it was. And that was the end of the interview. “I like you a lot,” the interviewer said. “But we’re a family-run business. We don’t hire felons.” And for at least the tenth time since I’ve known him, Bill was judged. He can understand why the interviewer threw the stone. Because Bill knows most people believe what he did means doesn’t deserve anything better.

But in God’s new world, everyone is better than their worst act. In God’s new world, we never point fingers first. In God’s new world, we always take the time to try to get to know someone we have no desire to know. In God’s new world, we drop the finger that points in judgments. So for once love can win.

The sinless one among you, go first. Throw a stone.

Amen.