Life in the Wilderness: Traveling By Stages

Pentecost 15A 2011 

Exodus 17:1-17                                                                                                

        From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Friday night a satellite fell out of orbit and burned up on re-entry, except for a few pieces that landed wherever they landed.  This week the news carried stories about whether it was at all likely that any of us would get hit by a piece of satellite.  NASA calculated that the odds of a person being hit was 1 in 3200, but, because there are 6 billion of us on the planet, that means that the likelihood of you being hit was 1 in 3200 times 6 million, which is something like 1 in 2 quadrillion.  We had far better odds, NASA said, of winning the lottery, which is 1 in 175 million.

And yet, people play the lottery.  Maybe some of you were out in your yards Friday trying to catch a piece of satellite, but I think you’re smarter than that (plus, it was raining).  What makes the lottery so attractive is the remote possibility that we can become instantly rich, without having to work for it for years and years.  That’s not the only lottery people would like to win – wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a pill we could take that would make all our fat vanish overnight, or a process that would instantly implant all the knowledge we needed so we didn’t have to go to school for twelve or sixteen or twenty years?  How many of us would like to have an instant cure for cancer, or heart disease, or fibromyalgia, or lupus, or arthritis, so we wouldn’t have to go through surgeries and treatments and therapy?  I can’t count the times over the years when I have stood by a hospital bed, or said to a family grieving the death of a loved one, or said to struggling parents or to people whose marriage is dissolving, “I wish I had a magic wand to make all this better.”  And I wish that thirty-eight years ago when I was appointed to those three little churches in Madison County, I had known the little bit I know now about myself and life and God and ministry.  We all want to win the lottery.  But that’s not how it works.

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded.  When you look at a map of the Exodus, like the one on the front of your bulletin today, the route makes no sense.  Why didn’t Moses and the Hebrews make a beeline along the coast of the Mediterranean for Canaan?  Why did they wander around the Sinai peninsula, taking forty years to travel the same distance as from here to Baltimore?

The Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded.  Not stages from the old West, mind you.  They traveled by fits and starts.  They wandered, sometimes in circles.  They would travel a few miles, and then camp for months or for years.  And, amazingly, the Bible says all this was as the Lord commanded.  Why? 

In Margery Williams’ fairy tale too wonderful just for children, The Velveteen Rabbit, the rabbit is a toy largely ignored by the little boy who owns him, and he is kept in the nursery cupboard with the other toys.  He is befriended by the Skin Horse, an ancient and battered toy who once belonged to the boy’s uncle.  Other toys in the cupboard, especially the mechanical ones and the tin soldiers, make fun of the horse and the rabbit, because they aren’t real.  

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."[1]

The Hebrews needed to become real before they entered the Promised Land.  They had to leave behind their old ways of believing and acting, they had to be loved by God for a long, long time, and they had to learn a new way of thinking and being before they could live into the promise that God had for them.  And, the Bible tells us, some of them never made it.  Many died in the Wilderness.  Some wandered off on their own.  Some probably went back to Egypt.  They traveled slowly, starting and stopping, in stages, because that’s how God designed them.  And us.

Those of you who were trained to be teachers learned, somewhere along the way, about the work of a psychologist named Jean Piaget.  Piaget said that children pass through stages of intellectual development.  From birth to about age two, children learn through the motions they make and the sensations that result from those movements.  Our granddaughter, at fifteen months, has just learned to walk, and is learning to talk by experimenting with sounds she makes with her mouth.  The next stage, Piaget said, about to age seven, is when children learn that words and objects can stand for something else, but they are still very self-centered and assume that everyone sees things from their point of view.

From about seven to eleven, children learn that others don’t always see things the way they do.  They begin to imagine things outside their own experience.  Then, from about age eleven on, children can begin to reason in abstract ways, and think about possibilities and ideologies.

About fifty years ago a psychologist named Lawrence Kohlberg said that there are stages of moral reasoning that parallel what Piaget said about intellectual development.  Very young children behave so they won’t be punished.  Then they begin to see that other people have different points of view, so they begin to negotiate:  “what’s in this for me?”  The next stage focuses on social conformity:  “But Mom, everybody has a cell phone!”  Or, this is what good people do.  Then, Kohlberg said, young adults realize that there are different ideas about right and wrong, so they negotiate an agreement with each other so they can live with each other.  That’s the basis of a functioning society.

Now, developing intellectually or morally doesn’t come automatically on a third or seventh or twenty-first birthday.  Some people get stuck:  there are adults, for example, who steadfastly maintain that if a car is in front of you, even if you’re staying the same distance behind them, they’re traveling faster than you are.  There are adults who insist that God rewards you for being good and punishes you for being bad, and there’s only one way of looking at life and that’s from their own eyes -- which is what a three-year old believes.  This is why sometimes it’s so hard for us to discuss moral issues with each other:  people are operating at such different stages of their intellectual and moral development.

About forty years ago a young theologian named Jim Fowler took Piaget and Kohlberg’s stages of development and said there were corresponding stages of faith development.  Small children live in a wonderful world of fantasy and magic, and receive stories about God with trust from parents and others.  When children are school-age, they become much more logical and literal about their beliefs.  If the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, then he was.  When children become teenagers, they are most influenced by the beliefs of their peers, and they have a hard time seeing out of their own box.  Young adults begin seeing outside their own boxes, and become disillusioned with their former faith.  That’s why there are so few young adults in church – they’ve outgrown their old faith, and are in the process of deciding what they do believe.  In midlife, people realize the limits of their logic and begin to embrace paradox and mystery, outside the boxes.  Lastly, said Fowler, a few people come to a place where they see a great oneness in diversity, and abandon themselves to serve others without concern for themselves.

I was blessed to have studied with Jim Fowler when I was in seminary.  His work has become hugely important in Christian education and faith development.  Fowler was trying to teach us that we all travel through the wilderness in stages.   We don’t get there – become real – all at once, like winning the lottery.  That’s a lie that was promised by generations of revival preachers who told their congregations that if they would just come down to the altar rail and give their lives to Jesus, then all their problems would be instantly solved.  I wish!  I believe in coming down to the altar rail and giving your life to Jesus.  I’ve done it.  I did for the first time at age seventeen, and it did change my life.  But it wasn’t winning the lottery.  I’ve had to grow and change and develop, much too slowly, and I’ve learned that I have to go to that altar rail every day and surrender my life to Jesus and let God change what God can that day.  And I expect that to go on, not just until I die, but for eternity.  We journey by stages, as the Lord commanded.

This is why if you still believe as you did when you were three, or seven, or seventeen, or twenty-seven, or as you did yesterday, you’re never going to make it to the Promised Land.  This is why all of you who come to worship but skip Sunday School, or our weekday Bible studies, or fellowship groups, aren’t on the journey.  If you can’t look back at the way you believed or thought or acted or felt a year ago and see some difference in who you are now, you’re stuck.  A friend of mine said some years ago that he measures his journey with God by asking himself the question, “Who do you love today that you didn’t love a year ago?”  If he can’t answer that question, he says he’s not following God.

Thirty-two years ago, when I was about to be ordained an Elder, Bishop Goodson lined up all of us who were being ordained in front of the Annual Conference, and asked us the same questions that have been asked all Methodist preachers since John Wesley formulated the questions in the 1700’s.  Goodson liked to do a little sermon between each question.  One of the questions is:  “Are you going on to perfection?”  Before we could answer, the Bishop said, “If you’re not going on to perfection, where are you going?  If you’re going on to imperfection, you’ve already arrived.”

We travel to the Promised Land by stages, as the Lord commanded.  This is how God made us.  There’s no lottery, no pill, no magic wand to bring us to the fullness of God’s design for us.  It’s long, hard work that literally takes an eternity.  And if you’re in the same place you were at seventeen, or last year, or yesterday, you’re in a rut.  And, as another preacher friend of mine used to say, a rut is just a grave with both ends knocked out.

We journey by stages. "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."[2]

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[1] Williams, Margery, The Velveteen Rabbit, New Your, Bantam Doubleday, 1922

[2] Ibid.

Life in the Wilderness: Quit Your Whining

Pentecost 14A 2011

Exodus 16:2-15                                                                                             
The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.” So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaining against the Lord. For what are we, that you complain against us?” And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the Lord has heard the complaining that you utter against him—what are we? Your complaining is not against us but” against the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, ‘Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.’“ And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. The Lord spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’“

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. 

One of the persistent themes of conversations I’ve had with people this past week, as we begin to genuinely recover from Hurricane Irene and examine how we felt during and after the storm, has been how stressed everyone felt after the worst was over.  Of course, as the wind was howling and trees were crashing down around – and sometimes on – our homes in our powerless dark, our stress levels were off the scale.  But two weeks later, so many people have shared with me that they still feel tired and anxious and on edge, as though they continue to carry a great burden.  These are people who came through the storm relatively unscathed.  Vicki and I, for example, only lost power for three days and had one significant limb come down from a tree in our back yard, but we’ve been aware that our baseline stress level – not counting parishioner emergencies or crises at Hallmark or the Orioles edging towards losing 100 games – is higher than normal.  I think we’re still recovering from the storm.

But, it seems to me and to almost everyone I ask, we all seem to feel on edge.  The stock market roller coasters up and down, and we wonder if we’ll be able to eat in retirement.  The news celebrates yet another governmental impasse, the debt continues to climb, people continue to search in vain for work, the weather gets weirder and weirder, loved ones fall in front yards and parking lots or get sick for no clear reason.  We are uncertain people who live in uncertain times with uncertain leaders.  Is it any wonder that the best of us feel numb in our souls, while the worst of us numb ourselves with drugs or destructive behavior or with the brain-destroying fare displayed on our television screens and video games?

The Hebrews had participated in the most miraculous display of God’s salvation in history.  God had sent seven plagues upon Egypt, culminating with the death of firstborn Egyptian children and the sparing of Hebrew children.  They had crossed the Red Sea as God drove back the waters with a strong wind, and then watched as Pharaoh and his army had been drowned behind them.  A cloud of smoke and pillar of fire had led them into the Wilderness with the promise that a new land filled with milk and honey lay before them.  And what was their response to these stunning signs of God’s love and power?  We should have stayed behind in Egypt where we had food to eat, instead of coming out here to die in the desert.

The Hebrews in the wilderness remind me of the skits years ago on Saturday Night live featuring Doug and Wendy Whiner, who managed to drive everyone around them insane with their nasal complaining about everything.  They go to a fancy French restaurant and whine that they can’t eat anything on the menu because they have diverticulitis, and want the chef to make them macaroni and cheese.  They get on an airliner and whine about everything so much that when the flight attendant announces that the flight is overbooked and they need some passengers to volunteer to give up their seats, the entire cabin rushes for the door.  Yes, the Hebrews are in a place they’ve never been before.  Yes, they are surrounded by uncertainty and confusion.  Yes, there is not a Food Sphinx around every bend where they can get food.  But wouldn’t you think that they might get a clue that a God who can create a universe, bring plagues, save children, roll back the waters of the Red Sea, and defeat the mightiest king and army on the face of the planet might be able to find them some food and water?  No.  Better a known evil than an unknown good.  We should have stayed home in Egypt and died building pyramids rather than pursue freedom.

The Hebrews, of course, are us.  So how might we stop our whining about what we don’t have and begin to open our minds and hearts and lives to the God who not only has blessed us over and over and over in the past, but who wants us to live futures overflowing with grace and mercy?

Listen to the people who are more attuned to where God is that where God isn’t.  The Hebrews, no doubt roused by the most cynical and trouble-making in their number, take their complaints to Moses and Aaron, who are God’s agents and witnesses.  Moses and Aaron listen to God, and point out what God is doing in the world.  Pointing out where God is at work in the world is the primary mission of the church, says theologian David Harned.[1]  What everyone else is doing is to point out all the places where they don’t see God.  I haven’t watched television news for many, many years, so on those rare occasions that I do watch it, I am astounded at its utterly sensationalistic focus.  Why is a murder in Utah a story on Richmond television news?  Because there weren’t enough rapes, robberies, and murders locally to fill twenty-two minutes of programming.  If it bleeds, it leads says the old aphorism.  Seriously, church:  stop watching and listening to news – with the possible exception of the weather.  Stop listening to talking heads on TV or radio.  Read news that is a week or a month old instead, news that has been seasoned by thought and deliberation and time.   The twenty-four hour news and opinion cycle feeds on sensation, violence, disaster, and fear.  It is a primary source of emotional and spiritual stress in us all, which is its objective, so it can sell us alcohol, lust, drugs, toys, vacations, and entertainment to numb or distract our dis-ease.

Where are the Moses and Aarons of our day?  Look around you:  we are surrounded by people who have amazing stories of God sightings (which is the focus of Julie Martin’s Wednesday night class).  I’ve heard some of you tell astounding tales of near-misses during the hurricane.  Yes, Margaret Boyle had a terrible fall and concussion this week, but it happened when she was surrounded by church members who loved her and cared for her until the Rescue Squad came:  it could have happened when she was home alone.  Mary Lou Frassmann fell this week in her front yard and broke her arm, but she told me that before she went outside, she put her cordless phone in the pocket of her robe – something she never does.  We just celebrated the tenth anniversary of the horrible events of 9/11, but for every tragic story of lost loved ones there are two stories of miraculous sacrifice and courage and healing.  At lunch last week Bishop Kammerer told me a postscript to the story in her sermon about the United Methodist churches that opened their doors after 9/11 for prayer while other churches were padlocking theirs. After 9/11 Muslim women in Charlotte were afraid to go out to grocery stores to buy food for their families.  United Methodist women in town wrapped scarves around their heads and accompanied their Muslim neighbors shopping as a sign of love.  In the midst of terrible anger and fear, God’s people could see where God was at work to save and to heal.

Amazingly, instead of letting these whining amnesiac Hebrews starve as they deserved, God fed them with quail and manna.  They weren’t fed because of anything they had done to deserve it:  on the contrary, it was so much more than they deserved.  But God loved them in spite of them forgetting the miracles that had just happened and their whining about the slavery they had left behind.  Nothing, St. Paul would say two thousand years later, can separate us from God’s love.

The Trappist monk and spiritual giant Thomas Merton was once asked how he could believe in God, given all the evil and ugliness and injustice in the world.  “You’re asking the wrong question,” Merton replied.  “Given the unlimited capacity of human beings to destroy the world, hurt each other, and reject the image of God within themselves, that there’s any love and hope and beauty left in the world, how can you not believe in God?”

Let’s quit our griping.  Yes, there are plenty of things wrong with the world, and we’re responsible for most, if not all, of them.  But, as I like to say, we are so much better than we deserve.  And in a world that uses hate and darkness and violence and fear to sell us what can never heal, let’s be Moses and Aarons, pointing out where God is still feeding his children, still forgiving their forgetfulness, and still listening in love through the whining.

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[1] Harned, David Baily, The Ambiguity of Religion, Westminster, 1968

Life in the Wilderness: Signed in Blood

Pentecost 12A 2011

Exodus 12:1-14                                                                                                

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

Lillian Daniel, a United Church of Christ pastor, recently wrote:

On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual but not religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo. 

Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in the sunsets. These people always find God in the sunsets.  And in walks on the beach.  Sometimes I think these people never leave the beach or the mountains, what with all the communing with God they do on hilltops, hiking trails and . . . did I mention the beach at sunset yet? 
           

Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself. 




Thank you for sharing, spiritual but not religious sunset person . . .  Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community?  Because when this flight gets choppy, that's who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church. [1]


This fall – except next Sunday, when the Bishop preaches, and I have no clue what she’s going to preach about – we’re going to look at the story of the Exodus of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, through the Wilderness, and into the Promised Land.  While these are the appointed readings for this fall in the Revised Common Lectionary, I thought they were particularly appropriate as sermon material, because it seems to me that we are people caught between a familiar past and an uncertain future, following a dream but not sure where we’re going or if we’ll ever get there.  In so many ways, doesn’t it feel as though we’re wandering in our own Wilderness, especially this last week as the winds howled, the trees fell, our modern conveniences became useless, and we had no clue when rescue would ever come?

Hebrew faith really begins here with this story of the first Passover – an act of ritual observance that comes before the miracle, not as a memorial invented afterwards.  Passover is the central act of Hebrew worship:  the family gathers, clothed for a quick getaway, to eat a meal of a freshly killed lamb whose blood has been smeared on the outside doorframe of the house.  That night, as God passes through the land, God will spare the life of the firstborn child in houses marked with blood.  In all other homes – especially those of the Egyptians, even Pharaoh’s palace, there will be death.

Not exactly “spiritual, but not religious,” is it?  This is no walk on the beach, no apprehension of the beauty of Creation when the sun is on the horizon.  This is hard-edged stuff:  butcher a lamb, smear the blood, get ready to run, because people are going to die where there has been no sacrifice.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I’ve been thinking a lot about sacrifice.  The whole world was moved by the extraordinary sacrifice of the police and firefighters and other first responders in New York City and Washington, by the sacrifice of the passengers on Flight 93 who prevented that plane from being crashed into whatever its target was, and, of course, the sacrifice of the men and women who went to the Middle East to fight terrorism.  Next Sunday, I want us to spend some significant prayer time remembering those people.  But I’ve also been thinking about the sacrifices that weren’t made – how we embarked upon two wars without paying for them; how we were not asked to make sacrifices in our lifestyles or in our finances as Americans were in the first and second World Wars.  Now we are bearing the cost, with interest, of having avoided sacrifice when it was most needed.

One of the seven great evils in the world, said the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, is worship without sacrifice:  the essence of being “spiritual but not religious.”  Right from the start, the Bible requires sacrifice:  Adam and Eve are asked to sacrifice their wills for the sake of obedience; Abram sacrifices his home and security to follow God’s call; Moses forgoes a safe life herding sheep to confront the greatest king on earth; and in this morning’s lesson, the path to freedom begins with the death of a choice lamb, with the abandonment of all that is familiar, and with the sacrifice of personal choice to the call for radical obedience.  The Bible records the death of Pharaoh’s son and the death of thousands of Egyptian children, but surely there were Hebrew households that night who, “spiritual but not religious,” communing with God in the sunset over the Pyramids, elected to not sacrifice their best lamb, not ruin their doorposts, not leave their new granite countertops or plasma high-definition widescreen hieroglyphic tablets behind.  Odds are, there were dead Hebrew children that awful night too, because their parents did not want to sacrifice.

Blood, in the Bible, is the sacred sign of life.  But the blood on the Passover doorposts is a sign of life sacrificed.  Salvation from slavery and death only comes where people have followed God’s commandment to sacrifice.  It’s the same story in the New Testament:  Jesus’ shed blood on the cross does nothing to save us from our slaveries and our deaths if we do not follow his commandment to take up our own crosses, sacrifice our wills and commitments and priorities and our very lives to God.  Jesus dies for us so we can die for him.  Salvation is signed in blood – Jesus’, and ours.

Isn’t that why we find the stories about 9/11 so compelling?  Something in us is drawn, like a moth to a flame, to those stories about people giving their lives to save the lives of others.  That something is the deeply buried image of God, calling us to the life-giving blood-sign on the doorpost, on the cross, in charred wreckage in New York and Washington and a field in Pennsylvania, in Flanders’ Field and Normandy and Kandahar and Baghdad. 

There is no salvation where there is no flesh and blood – in being “spiritual without religious.”  This is hard, bloody work, that requires life and death and sacrifice, not happy thoughts and pretty pictures. Because when this flight gets choppy, that's who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church.

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[1] http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/spiritual-but-not- religious

What Does God Want?

Pentecost 10A 2011

Romans 12:1-8

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Indulge me for a few moments. Think about one of the best presents you ever received from someone else. Maybe it was an article of clothing, or a book, or a trip, or a musical instrument, or a vehicle. Now, what did you do with that gift? Did you use it as the giver intended, or did you waste it, ignore it, or do something else with it? Turn to your neighbor and briefly tell them what that gift was and what you did with it.

Now, think about a gift you gave someone else, but it wasn’t appreciated or used as you had hoped. Tell each other about that.

Finally, share with each other about a time you gave someone a gift and they loved it and used it well. How did you feel when that happened?

As last Thanksgiving approached, my wife’s brother sent me a message saying he had an extra bike that he was no longer using, and he thought he would give it to me. Eric is an avid cyclist and rides a really nice and really expensive racing bike. He had bought that bike to replace another bike, only about three years old and while a really nice bike, not as state-of-the-art as his new bike. He decided to give the old bike to me because I was the only other person in the family his size.

I tried to beg off. It was much too nice a bike for a fat old guy like me to be riding around once in a blue moon. I suggested he sell it on ebay, but, when Eric and his family pulled into our driveway Thanksgiving morning, there was the bike on top of his car.

Now, this produced a crisis in me. What do you do when someone gives you something ever-so-much nicer than you need or deserve or are going to use? I tried to give Vicki a Porsche to drive back and forth to work and church, but she refused because it was more car than she really needed. What was I going to do with this ridiculously wonderful bike my brother-in-law had given me?

Well, I decided I really had to start riding it. I asked Vicki to give me an indoor trainer so I could ride it during the winter, and when spring came I started riding it in the neighborhood every now and then. As time went on, I rode it more often, and on longer trips. I bought a new, more comfortable seat, some cycling shorts with the padding to compliment my natural padding, and a little computer to tell me how much I’ve ridden and how fast. Yesterday I did my farthest ride so far – 20 miles to Ashland and back. And in October Eric and I are going to ride the Tour Between the Waters on the Eastern Shore – a “metric century” of 62 miles in one day. Next year we want to ride the full century – 100 miles. You see, I had been given this incredible gift, and the best thing for me to do with it was to use it as it was intended. And a strange thing has happened: now I can’t wait to get out and ride the bike.

The magnificent 1998 film Saving Private Ryan is the story of a squad of American infantry, led by Tom Hanks, who are assigned to find an American paratrooper after D-Day and bring him home safely. The first twenty-seven minutes of the film are a blood and gore-bathed portrayal of the horrors of war, featuring the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy. As a child, I could not understand why my father, a veteran of two World Wars, would not watch the war movies and TV shows I so dearly loved. His answer was, “Because it’s not like that.” Saving Private Ryan shows what war is really like, and, as William Tecumseh Sherman said, it is hell.

Private James Ryan is the last survivor of four brothers, and because of the “Sole Survivor Policy,” which protected soldiers if they were the last surviving family member in the war, Hanks is ordered to find him and bring back alive. The squad searches for Ryan, finally finding him at the expense of many of the squad member’s lives, including their leader. Near the end of the film, as Hanks is bleeding to death, he looks at Private Ryan and says, “James, earn this. Earn it.”

The last scene in the movie – spoiler alert if you’ve not seen it – shows an old man and his wife searching through a military cemetery in France. He comes to the grave of Hank’s character, Captain John Miller. With tears streaming down his face, the elderly Private Ryan asks if he’s been a good man, if he’s earned the gift that had been given him. He then salutes the grave, as the camera pans down to a small American flag on the grave.

What do you do with an incredible gift that’s been given you?

By the time St. Paul gets to today’s lesson from the twelfth chapter of Romans, he has laid out for eleven chapters the meaning of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection for Jews, for Gentiles, and for the entire cosmos. The Letter to the Romans is, in many ways, the foundation of all Christian theology forever after. After laying out this grand vision of what God has done in Jesus, chapter twelve begins with a crucial word: Therefore. Whenever you see or hear therefore in a speech, in an article, or especially in the Bible, draw a big circle around it. Therefore is like that moment at 9:53 pm when Dr. House suddenly stops and stares wide-eyed into the distance. Therefore is when all the discussion and argument and conjecture are done, and you’re going to get the answer to what really needs to happen. Here it comes. Here’s the punch line, the bottom line, the instructions. And in this case, after St. Paul has laid out this staggering gift of salvation God is offering to the world through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, we’re going to hear, in one sentence, what God really really wants us to do about it.

Therefore, I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. What does God want? He wants our bodies.

What? I thought God wanted our hearts. God wants us to feel good feelings and to think good thoughts and, above all, try. Just try to love God. Try to be nice. What’s this body thing? What does God want with this body?

The real sign of commitment, the real sign of love, is not what we feel or think – it’s where we put our bodies. When Eric gave me the bike, I could have thanked him profusely, written him notes, told the whole world about the wonderful thing he did, but what counted was whether I actually put my fat carcass on the thing or not. Thursday my best friend, Jim Hewitt, had some follow-up surgery on his brain. Lots of folks sent best wishes and notes and said he would be in their prayers. Vicki and I needed to drive to Arlington and be there. We needed to put our bodies there in the room with him. It wasn’t enough for Captain Miller and General Marshall and President Roosevelt to send their condolences to Private Ryan and his mother. They needed to get his living body back home safely, sometimes at the expense of their own.

Faith is not, primarily, about what we feel or what we think. It’s about what we do. It’s about where we put our bodies and time and presence and gifts down. It’s about getting down on our knees to pray, it’s about getting our bodies in the pew to worship and in the classroom seats to learn and in the kitchen to cook and on the floor with the children and in the ghetto with the poor and the shelter with the homeless and the hospital with the sick and the dying and in the jail with the imprisoned and in the statehouse with the lawmakers and in the school with the teachers and children. It’s not about thinking about it or feeling about it – it’s about presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, as our spiritual worship. God doesn’t give a rip what you think and feel if your butt is not in the seat or on the line.

Look at the next sentence from Paul: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God. First our bodies, then our minds. We get that conveniently backwards all the time. I could have studied about riding the bike (which I did), I could have thought and felt about riding the bike (which I did), and waited until I was in the right frame of mind and feeling the right feelings before I went out to ride. Had I done that, how many miles do you think I would have ridden so far this year? Any parent will tell you he or she doesn’t wait until their child thinks and feels the right things before they teach a child to eat, or walk, or use the toilet, or talk, or read, or say please and thank you. You teach the action, and the mind and heart follow. Do not be conformed to this world means do not ACT like this world. Change the action, and you will change the thinking and the feeling. Every great athlete, every great musician, every great dancer, every great actor practiced right action over and over and over until the mind and heart followed. That’s why “I don’t feel like it” or “my mind’s just not in the right place” are the two most ridiculous excuses in the world. Do the right thing, and your heart and head will follow.

God has given you this incredible gift: forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, love, grace, peace, and eternal life, through Jesus Christ. Just as Captain Miller and his men died for Private Ryan, the Son of God died for you, so you could come home safely, too.

Now, what are you going to do with that gift? What does the giver of that gift want you to do with it?

It’s not about what you think, and not about what you feel. By the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Put your bodies at God’s disposal, and you’ll be amazed at how your heart and brain will follow.

What Goes In, What Comes Out

Pentecost 9A 2011

Matthew 15:10-28

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

One of the most notorious – and hilarious – episodes of the iconic TV show Seinfeld is called “The Bubble Boy.” On their way to vacation in a lakeside cabin, George and his girlfriend, Susan, stop by a house to visit a young man who, because of an auto-immune deficiency, lives in a plastic bubble. His father, a fan of Jerry’s comedy, plays upon their sympathies, telling them of the sad, isolated life his son lives. When George and Susan arrive at the Bubble Boy’s house, they discover he is a rude, selfish lecher. They try to play “Trivial Pursuit” with the Bubble Boy but get in an argument about one of the answers. George and the Bubble Boy start trying to choke each other and Susan accidentally punctures the bubble, sending the Bubble Boy to the hospital. Trust me – it’s hilarious.

Like the Bubble Boy, some – not all – of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day wanted to quarantine themselves from the world’s messiness. In the passage immediately before today’s lesson, Jesus is accosted by some scribes and Pharisees who ask why Jesus and his disciples don’t observe the tradition of scrupulously washing their hands before they eat. Much of first-century rabbinical literature is preoccupied with ritual holiness. Surrounded by a Roman army of occupation and an increasingly politically and religiously diverse culture, the Pharisees were trying to recall Jews to their distinct identity as God’s holy people.

It’s customary for Western Christians like us to ridicule the Pharisees for their attempts to call their people to distinctive patterns of holiness by emphasizing cleanliness, but we need to look in our own mirrors. This nation is little more than a generation removed from separate bathrooms, schools, and even water fountains for Anglo and African Americans. It was not long ago that people with terminal but non-contagious diseases were excluded from general society. People with handicapping conditions were kept separated from “temporarily abled” people. We have our bubbles, still. We live, and work, and learn, and play, and worship, for the most part, with the “right kind of people:” you know, people like us.

Jesus, as usual, went to the heart of the matter with the Pharisees. Instead of obeying the commandment to honor and care for one’s parents, Pharisees were declaring that because they were giving money to the Temple they were no longer under obligation to care for their elderly relatives. That, Jesus said, was hypocrisy. Then Jesus went on, in this morning’s reading, to talk about where sin comes from. It doesn’t come from the outside, he said – from eating the wrong foods or not washing hands or listening or looking at the wrong things. Just as the Bubble Boy in Seinfeld was free from outside germs but was an obnoxious and dirty-minded jerk on the inside, Jesus knew where sin came from. The snake didn’t make Adam and Eve sin in the Garden of Eden – the snake only brought out the problem that was already there.

Two monks were walking down a road one day and, approaching a town, a naked young woman was lying in the ditch, bruised and unconscious. The first monk immediately veered to the other side of the road and hid his eyes. The second monk went to the young woman, wrapped his cloak around her, picked her up and carried her to a doctor in town, leaving her there with money for her care. The two monks resumed their silent journey through and out of the town. About two miles on the other side of the town, the first monk broke his silence and said to the second, “I can’t believe you touched that naked woman and carried her into town. You will have much to repent of when we get back to the monastery!” The second monk said, “I took her into town and left her there. You’re still carrying her.”

The episode that follows Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees perfectly embodies Jesus’ teaching about what comes from without and what comes from within. He heads into pagan territory north of Israel – modern day Syria. A Caananite woman confronts him, shouting at him to heal her daughter from demon possession. Multiple taboos are broken in this scene: women were not supposed to approach men; she is an idol-worshipping, pig-eating pagan asking favors from a devout Jewish rabbi; demons were to be avoided at all costs. In an amazing give-and-take, Jesus first refuses her demands, saying that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. She insists, kneeling before him and crying out, Lord, help me – not incidentally, exactly the same words Peter used last week when he was drowning in the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, incredibly, calls her a dog. It’s not right to take the children’s food – the message of salvation intended for the Jews, God’s children -- and throw it to the dogs. Forget, for a moment, that our pets eat better than millions of children around the world. Forget our cute and cuddly puppies. Jews didn’t keep dogs as pets – dogs were unclean animals. Jesus is calling this woman and her daughter dogs. It’s a stunning comment from gentle Jesus, meek and mild. The Quaker writer Elton Trueblood tried to excuse this by suggesting that Jesus is being funny.[1] I’m not so sure. I think something else is going on here – I think this pagan woman is going to help Jesus expand his understanding of himself, of his mission, and of God.

Rather than run from this shocking insult, the woman, for the love of her possessed daughter, throws Jesus’ insulting analogy right back at him: But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table. Jesus, you said it’s not what comes from the outside that makes us who we are. Don’t measure me by my nationality, by my history, by my diet, or by my gender. I’m not asking for a banquet, Jesus, I’m asking, for the love of my daughter, for just a crumb of love, of hope, of healing. Three times in three sentences she calls Jesus Lord, and then refers to him as Master. If it’s not what goes in that makes us what we are, but what comes out of us from our heart, then this woman, kneeling at Jesus’ feet begging for mercy is a child of God and a disciple of the Savior. No wonder Jesus, amazed, exclaims Woman, you have great faith! Let your wish be answered! Isn’t it possible that Jesus, not just real God but real man, learned and grew from this encounter with this remarkable woman? If we can’t change God’s mind, why do we pray?

Quarantine, whether for religious or biological reasons, is far less effective than immunization. Recent medical research seems to show that overuse of antibiotics and underexposure to normal allergens and bacteria in infants actually increases the likelihood of them developing allergies and asthma during childhood. The presence of dogs and cats in an infant’s home decreases the chances of children developing allergies to pets, ragweed, grass, and dust mites. [2] Exposure to small amounts of bacteria, allergens, and viruses – as when we are inoculated against smallpox, tetanus, measles, chicken pox, polio, whatever – helps us build up resistance. The same is true spiritually. That’s why we need to talk to each other and with our children about sin, evil, temptation, and things that go bump in the night. It’s like Halloween: when children dress up as ghosts, goblins, monsters, vampires, or congressmen, it helps inoculate them against their fears. It gives them some sense of control over things they don’t understand. It tells them what Jesus said is true: it’s not what comes from the outside that makes us dirty and sinful – it’s what’s in our hearts that really reveals who and what and whose we are.

Don’t live your life, or your family, or your church, in a bubble, terrified of all the bad things out there. Let’s talk instead about the real fears, the real hopes, the real darkness, and the real dreams that are down inside each of us. Way down there, Jesus says, is where God knows us and loves us.

Many years ago I was invited to a Bible study and prayer group, and at the end of the evening, the group leader led us in prayer, and asked us all to raise our hands as we prayed. That’s just not the way I pray. If you want to raise your hands when you pray, I think that’s fine, but that’s not how I pray. The leader noticed I wasn’t raising my hands, and launched into a mini-sermon about how if we really loved God we should feel comfortable raising our hands to bless God. He went back into prayer, and I didn’t raise my hands. He stopped again, and repeated his insistence that everyone should raise their hands. A friend of mine in the group interrupted him and said, “I think God is much more interested in where our hearts are than where our hands are.”

It’s not what comes in that defiles – it’s what comes out.

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[1] Trueblood, Elton, The Humor of Christ, Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1975

[2] http://www.webmd.com/asthma/news/20030930/early-antibiotics-tied-to-asthma-allergy

Watching the Wind

-->Matthew 14:22-33

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

His name was John Gravelle, and he was my Driver’s Education teacher in Summer School my sixteenth summer. Not only was he the primary teacher for the hundred of us gathered in the band room for the classroom part of the course, but he was the on-the-road instructor to whom Debbie Dunphy and I were assigned. He was a wonderful, gregarious, unforgettable teacher.

Mr. Gravelle taught us five principles for good driving, two of which for the life of me I can’t remember. But the number one principle, said Mr. Gravelle, was aim high when steering. Don’t look at the white line to the right, or the yellow line to the left, or ten feet in front of the car. If we would look as far down the road as possible, Mr. Gravelle promised, we would magically stay in the middle of the lane. And, when I took the wheel of that 1967 Buick Skylark that was our instructional vehicle, I looked as far down the road as I could and, to my surprise, it worked.

Where we fix our sights in life makes all the difference. The same rule applies in my sailboat – I pick out a buoy, or a house or a tree on shore, and steer for that. It’s the way I got through math class in school – I looked for the end of the period, the end of the day, the year, or the promise that someday I was going to graduate from college and never take another math class. It may be the way some of you make it through a sermon – you know that somewhere around 9:30 or noon this service is going to end, you’re going to lunch and then watch a ballgame or a movie. Parents, you use it to survive the summer – you know that Labor Day and the beginning of school is coming. Aim high when steering.

Like all preachers, Jesus was always trying to get away by himself for a while. He pronounces the benediction over the congregation, tells the Church Council to take the boat across the Chesapeake, and he’ll meet them on the Eastern Shore. Then Jesus goes up on the mountain alone, to pray. The physical setting of this story is highly symbolic: in the Bible, mountains and hillsides are places where God and people meet. People go up, God comes down. The sea, on the other hand, almost always represents chaos and danger. God creates the world out of the waters of chaos. Noah takes his family and all the animals to escape the flood. Moses leads the Hebrews through the sea. Jonah is cast into the sea to escape God’s call. The disciples are sent ahead of Jesus, into chaos.

A storm pounds the disciples in their boat. All night long they struggle to stay afloat, and as dawn begins to break, the exhausted disciples are desperate for help. They have been looking at the waves, looking at the wind, and they are terrified. They’re looking for the shoreline, and as their bleary eyes stare into the distance, they see someone walking across the water towards them. At first, they think it must be a hallucination, a mirage. But the image grows. It must be a ghost, a demon, perhaps even Death himself. They scream in terror.

Jesus, out across the waters, hears the scream, and calls out to them. The Greek, ego eimi, is the same wording as the Greek translation of God’s words to Moses at the burning bush: I Am. This is no accident, Matthew is telling us. This is no ghost. This is the God who hears his people cry, in Egypt and on the Sea of Galilee.

Peter is crazy with exhaustion, fear, and hope. Master, if it’s really you, command me to come out to you on the water. Go for it, Jesus answers, and Peter climbs out of the boat.

The sequence is remarkable. First, Peter waits for Jesus’ command. Peter doesn’t just jump out of the boat and walk, on his own power, to Jesus. He knows he can’t do this thing on his own. He can only do it in response to Jesus’ command. There are a million good and miraculous things we can imagine to do. The question for us as a congregation, as well as the question for each one of us personally, is not what would Jesus do, but what is Jesus commanding us to do? When I was in Charlottesville, the University church there decided it would be a good thing to start a ministry to the homeless. The problem was that the homeless were largely downtown, not out by the University. It was a good thing to do, but wasn’t what Jesus was asking them to do. I kept saying to them, if you want a ministry to the homeless, how about the 18,000 homeless students across the street? That’s your call from Jesus. They still haven’t gotten the message. Of the million good things to do, what is Jesus calling you, and us, to do?

Second, Peter has to get out of the boat and into the waters of chaos. Ernest Campbell, former pastor of Riverside Church in New York, was once asked why it seems that we see so little faith in our time. His response was that “we are not doing anything that requires it.”[1] We can’t rise above the chaos all around us if we’re not willing to leave the relative security of our foundering little boats. We stay close to home, close to the vest, close to the knitting. Martin Luther King left the safety of his pulpit for the segregated streets of Birmingham; Mother Theresa left the security of her convent for the dying poor of Calcutta; Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan left their Belfast homes to face down Irish terrorists. We will never learn to walk on water by staying in the boat.

Third, Peter can rise above chaos only as long as he keeps his eyes upon Jesus. But when he starts to think about what he’s doing – note, what he is doing – and is distracted by the wind and the water and the danger all around, he sinks into chaos. Aim high when steering. Don’t look at the lines on the road, don’t look at the pretty girl on the sidewalk or the fat guy on the bike or who’s sent you a text message. Don’t be distracted by the chaos – look down the road and keep your eyes upon Jesus. Otherwise, as Mr. Gravelle said, you will steer towards that distraction. We live in a world of nonstop distraction. Don’t watch the wind, or the water. Aim high.

Some of us have to aim high when we go off for another cancer treatment or another surgery or another round of therapy, remembering the long-term goal. We have to aim high when we’re paying the bills, and not be distracted from the goal on the horizon by what might look good at the moment. Would that Congress had the same discipline – and stayed in the middle of the road. We need not to be distracted in our homes and in our jobs and our relationships when the boat seems to be sinking and everything is turning into chaos. We need to aim high as a congregation, glorifying God by giving God and each other the very best we have, making disciples of Jesus Christ, not distracted by cranky air conditioning systems, balky septic tanks, or personal preferences and agendas. And when we lose loved ones for no good reason, when the sin and insanity of the world come crashing over the gunwales, when the questions are dark and deep and threaten belief in anything good and loving and holy, we need to look out on the horizon for the Savior who always hears the cries of his people, who always rises above chaos, even the chaos of death itself, and calls us out of our sinking boats and into his arms.

Don’t watch the wind or the waves. Aim high.

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[1] Bartlett and Brown, eds., Feasting On the Word, Westminster John Knox, 2011, Year A, Volume 3, pp. 334-336