Sermon – Job 42.1-6, 10-17, Mark 10.46-52, P25, YB, October 28, 2018

Tags

Bartimaeus, belong, blessed, community, conversation, God, Jesus, Job, judge, relationship, Sermon, speak, stewardship, suffering, transformation

If ever there was a confluence of people not “getting it,” in holy scripture, today is that day of confluence.  First, we have the Job story.  Many of us are thrilled to hear the victorious ending of Job today.  After weeks of following Job’s story – from the fateful bargain between God and Satan, to Job’s suffering, to those around him cajoling him to give up on God – we finally arrive at the great redemption of Job.  But what I love most about this last chapter of Job is not what we heard, but the verses we skipped.  The verses we skipped are about Job’s friends, his friends who have tried and tried to tell Job what he has done wrong, what he needs to change, why all this bad stuff is happening to him.  In verses 7-9, God expresses God’s anger at Job’s friends, saying, “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”  At least, the New Revised Standard Version translates the text that way.  But the original Hebrew does not say, “you have not spoken of me,” but “you have not spoken to me.”[i]  In other words, the friends of Job talked and talked to Job – but never to God.  They sat and mourned with Job, but when they opened their mouths, they did not open them in petition to God.  They just ran their mouths, spouting all sorts of unhelpful nonsense.

We could argue the same of the followers of Jesus.  They are faithfully following Jesus toward Jerusalem, presumably the innermost circle of Jesus’ followers.  When blind beggar Bartimaeus shouts out to Jesus, their immediate response is to shut him down.  We are not clear if they are embarrassed by this filthy beggar’s presumptuous cries, or they feel as if the beggar is breaking protocol for appropriate ways to seek healing, or they just think Jesus is above helping this person in need.  Regardless, their immediate reaction is to shut him down, push him aside, shush him into oblivion.  The crowd following Jesus assumes they knew better and they presume to speak for Jesus about when, how, and to whom God offers healing or blessing.  They never speak to Jesus himself.

The summer I spent as a hospital chaplain, I saw this sort of behavior all the time.  Hospitals can be places of deep despair and suffering.  The hospital can be the place where we face our mortality, where a diagnosis changes the course of our lives, or where decisions have to be made that no one ever wants to make.  In that thin place of life and death, all sorts of things are said, much of which is an attempt to make sense of things that do not make sense.  I cannot tell you the number of times a patient was blamed for their fate by a family member, a patient began to question their life choices, or a friend blamed God for the patient’s suffering.  When there was no medical solution, those who were suffering seemed to be looking for something or someone to blame.  Those were the times when devastatingly hurtful things were claimed or God was used as a weapon instead of a companion.

We could easily wag our fingers at the friends of Job or at the followers of Jesus or even those patients and family members in the hospital, saying in exasperation, “When will those people ever get it?!?”  We fancy ourselves as Jobs or Bartimaeuses.  But that is not where God is speaking to us today.  God sees us in the crowds today.  God sees us as we saddle up to friends, and instead of simply listening or affirming someone’s frustrations or sufferings, we offer explanations and answers, we think of hundreds of “if you just would do this” solutions, or we even act as judge, thinking of reasons why maybe they, in fact, deserve this suffering.  God sees us as we scold a panhandler or judge a family living in a motel.  God sees us when we judge someone’s addiction or mental health challenges as if they are not medical conditions.  God sees us secretly wonder about whether someone’s suffering is a result of “bad karma.”

This summer, in the days before General Convention started, the House of Bishops held a listening liturgy for victims of sexual abuse in the church.  The first-person accounts of twelve men and women were read by bishops.  Unlike most of General Convention, where one person after another makes impassioned, but time-limited speeches at a podium, this was an opportunity to simply listen, to let the painful words fall on those gathered, and to make space for painful truth.  The liturgy was made all the more powerful by having male and female bishops in purple clericals saying the words aloud – in essence, taking on the victim’s pain through their own voices, and ultimately, demonstrating the pain of individual victims belongs to the entire church.  Resolutions, covenants, and task forces would follow, but for that hour and a half, everyone stopped and sat in the ashes, not presuming to speak for God, not explaining the suffering away like the friends of Job, or not trying to stifle the voices of the suffering like the crowd around Jesus.

The counter example to the friends of Job and the crowds are Job and Bartimaeus.  Job could easily listen to his friends and turn his suffering inward, accepting his suffering is somehow his own fault or assuming his suffering is God’s way of casting Job out of favor and relationship.  But unlike Job’s friends, who God proclaims refuse to speak to God in the midst of suffering, Job does nothing but speak for about forty chapters.  Instead of abandoning his relationship with God as his friends do, Job does something different.  “In the midst of his dark night, he dares to tell the truth of his life to his Creator.  By lamenting, complaining, and shouting his discontent to the God he believes to be attacking him, he keeps his relationship with God alive.”[ii] As Biblical scholar Kathleen O’Connor explains, “In the midst of his abyss, Job holds fast to God; he argues, yells, and acts up in courage and fidelity; Job clings to his dignity as a human, maintains his integrity, and sets it without qualification before God.”[iii]  Job understands that suffering is not an occasion to walk away from God, but to stay in brutally honest, painful, vulnerable conversation with God.

Bartimaeus seemed to embrace a similar relationship with Jesus.  When Bartimaeus needs healing, he shouts out to Jesus – an uncouth, ugly, socially unacceptable, raw cry to Jesus.  And when the crowd shushes him, he cries out even more loudly.  Where the crowd wanted boundaries around Bartimaeus’ relationship with Jesus, Bartimaeus understands that relationship means staying in conversation, calling God to account, demanding presence with God.

Now the fact that Job is restored to wealth and wholeness and Bartimaeus’ sight is restored is not really the point.  We could easily and cheaply want to say, “all you need to do is cry out to God and you get whatever you want.”  You and I both know from firsthand experience that that is not how God works.  As O’Connor explains, “It is not true that good things always come to good people, but it is true, as Job discovers, that new experience of life requires new ways of speaking to God.”[iv]  What we see today in scripture is a model of how to engage with God throughout all of life’s journeys – the joys, the sorrows, the celebrations, the suffering.  We are not promised a happy ending, but we are promised a transformed life when we stay in active, vulnerable, ugly conversation with God.

Today we are celebrating our blessing to belong to this faith community, and are offering our financial pledges to support the work and ministry of this place that has blessed us beyond measure.  But our invitation today from scripture is to also celebrate the way in which we belong to God.  For some of us, that invitation will be quite easy.  We may be in a place where our love for the Lord is abundant, and we can happily proclaim our love.  For others of us, that celebration may be more difficult, because, quite frankly, we are a bit angry with God, have lost trust in God, or are just trying to make it through this day.  Part of our responsibility as a community who is blessed to belong here at Hickory Neck is embracing each one of us here and wherever we are in that journey with God.  The blessing of this community is that no one here is going to be like the crowd or the friends of Job, telling you to get your relationship right with God.  But we will sit with you in your suffering and celebrate the transformation of your life in Christ.  Because we know part of being blessed to belong here at Hickory Neck means you will do the same for us someday.  And that is a community I want to belong to everyday!  Amen.

[i] Rolf Jacobson, “Sermon Brainwave #629 – Ordinary 30 (Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost),” October 20, 2018, http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1068, as found on October 24, 2018.

[ii] Kathleen M. O’Connor “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 196.

[iii] O’Connor, 198.

[iv] O’Connor, 194.

Sermon – Luke 24.36b-48, E3, YB, April 15, 2018

Tags

afraid, Christian, disciples, God, hiding, identity, Jesus, judge, Sermon, witness, world

Last month I was talking to Pastor Alex from Stonehouse Presbyterian.  We were walking toward our cars and he complimented my license plate, noting how fun spotting my plate around town has been.  I chuckled and told him the plate had been both a blessing and a curse.  He asked me what I meant, and I explained.  You see, I love the plate for the very reason he mentioned – that I run into people who recognize my plate, that people connect who I am with what I do, that people ask me about my vocation and about Hickory Neck.  But the plate is also a bit of a curse.  If I had to choose any place to be a witness for Christ, I am not sure the car is the best location.  You see, the car is where I leave prayer books, post-its about phone calls, gum wrappers, and coffee cups.  The car is where I cart around children – sometimes singing at the tops of our lungs to a favorite song, and sometimes scowling after an argument about behavior.  The car is where I find a moment to getaway before picking up children, and the car is where I sometimes reveal that I once lived in a region of the country that is known for impatient, sometimes foul-mouthed drivers.  The car is not really home to my best witness for loving Christ.  And yet, there is where a big plate – on both the front and the back – witnesses to the world who and whose I am.

That is what I find so funny about the disciples this week.  Here they are in Luke’s gospel, not unlike what we heard in John’s gospel last week, hiding in a room, afraid, disbelieving, and wondering what to make of all that has happened.  To be fair, life has gotten a bit chaotic of late.  Their whole world has gotten turned upside down since that beautiful, sacred night when Jesus washed their feet.  They had ideas about what was coming in their life, what was going to happen to Jesus, and how the world would be changed.  But Jesus dies, they are outcasts, and God seems to have closed a door – a tomb door.  Then, just days later, their world gets upended again.  The disciples learn from the women that the same closed tomb door is now open.  Two of the disciples have an encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus.  And as if all of that is not enough, today, Jesus shows up – very much alive, proving his corporality, teaching them, and reminding them they are witnesses.

The disciples certainly have our sympathy and concern.  And yet, the disciples remain holed up in a room – as if they can hide.  As if they can integrate back into the world, with no one realizing who and whose they are.  As if no one will notice the license plate on their car that says, “Jesus’ disciple.”  The disciples are hiding, acting as though no one is watching, no one is making conclusions about them based on their behavior, no one is making conclusions about Christ.  Their hiding is just as much of a witness as going out into the community.  Perhaps they feel being in that room is giving them a break from being witnesses – that no one sees them.  But we know better.  And so does Jesus.  “You are witnesses of these things,” says Jesus.

Sometimes we do the exact same thing.  We too can start to believe that we have hiding places in our lives – places where we do not have to be witnesses.  Maybe yours is a car.  Maybe yours is at work or school because those places seem more removed from what we do here on Sundays.  Maybe yours is at home, on vacation, or when surrounded by friends.  Like the disciples, we too have that same longing to “turn off” our witness.  Maybe we are just tired and feel like being a witness for Christ is exhausting.  Maybe we are upset with or disappointed in God and are not sure communicating those feelings helps our witness of Christ.  Or maybe we are just afraid – that people will notice that we do not live lives that reflect who and whose we are.

But “turning off” our identity as people of faith is not really an option.  Sooner or later we will get caught.  Sometimes being caught can be a very positive thing.  An acquaintance who knows you go to church may ask you to add them to your church’s prayer list because they or their child just received a horrible diagnosis.  But sometimes being caught can be less flattering.  At our Adult Forum series on evangelism this fall, we watched a video about how not to invite people to church.  The video features two neighbors, one who is out gardening in the yard and the other who is clearly just coming home from church.  The neighbor who is out gardening wonders to himself, “I wonder why he never invites me to his church.  I would go if he asked me.”  But sometimes being caught can be even worse.  I had a friend who waited tables during college.  She always moaned when she got her work schedule and discovered she was assigned a Sunday.  I finally asked her why she hated Sundays so much.  She said, “Because that’s when all the churchgoers go out to eat – and they are the worst tippers!”  Somehow, in all her long hours of trying to make a few bucks to pay for books and school fees she had gotten the message that people of faith did not value her.

We know from experience that hiding as a Christian is really an illusion.  Wherever we are, whenever we are, with whomever we are, our identity is always there.  Jesus confirms that today.  As biblical scholar Karoline Lewis says, “Jesus’ address to the disciples is not, ‘you will be witnesses.’ Not, ‘please be witnesses.’ Not, ‘consider being witnesses if you have time.’ No, [Jesus says] ‘you are witnesses of these things.’ We are witnesses.  As it turns out, witnessing is not voluntary, but a state of being.”[i]  Lewis goes on to add, “‘We are witnesses’ does not depend on our acceptance or agreement or approval. ‘We are witnesses’ does not depend on our readiness or recognition or responsiveness. ‘We are witnesses’ just is.”[ii]  The disciples learn that today.  When Jesus says, you are witnesses, he empowers a very scared, uncertain, fearful group of followers to remember who and whose they are.

The good news is that Jesus does not judge the disciples today.  Jesus meets the disciples where they are.[iii]  Jesus’ first words are words of encouragement.  “Peace be with you,” he says.  Then, ever the tender pastor, Jesus asks the question in verse 38, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your heart?”  Knowing their confusion, Jesus eats with them to assure them he is really there, not just some ghost or figment of their imagination.  He sits down and teaches them once again, taking them back to their roots, reminding them of how the prophets have taught them all they need to know.  And then, come those fateful words in verse 48, “you are witnesses of these things.”  Jesus meets them where they are, offering comfort, assurance, and affirmation.  But Jesus also encourages them to move beyond where they are.

After September 11^th, there were two widows featured on the news.  “Grateful for the outpouring of support they received, they started thinking about the women in Afghanistan who, when widowed, lose status in that society and therefore find their already difficult lives even harder.  They raised money and formed a foundation called Beyond the 11^th to support Afghani widows, and even made visits to Afghanistan to meet the widows they were helping.”[iv]  Those widows had lot of options – fear, anger, vengeance, or isolation.  But instead, they remembered how Jesus encourages us to remember our identity as witnesses and to move beyond where we are.  Our invitation today is to reclaim that same identity.  Now I do not know if that means you go put a Hickory Neck bumper sticker on your car, or you start wearing that cross necklace again, or you start tangibly connecting your words and actions to your identity as a witness.  Only you can know the shape your witness will take.  But today Jesus invites us to let go of our hiding places, realizing that even when we think we are hiding, we are still witnessing.  Our invitation is to own who we are, so that others might see the beauty of who and whose we are.  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “We Are Witnesses,” April 9, 2018, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5126 on April 12, 2018.

[ii] Lewis.

[iii] Nancy R. Blakely, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 424.

[iv] Blakely, 428.

Sermon – Luke 18.1-8, P24, YC, October 20, 2013

Tags

God, Jesus, judge, persistence, prayer, Sermon, transformation, widow

“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”  From the very beginning of our gospel lesson, Luke tells us what this funny little parable is all about:  persistent prayer.  That message sounds simple enough, but once we hear the actual parable, the realities of persistent prayer sound like a lot more work than most of us care to think about, let alone do.  The parable today is about an unjust judge, who has no fear of God or respect for people, who is constantly harassed by a widow demanding justice.  The translation we hear today says that the judge finally decides to give the widow her way because he does not want the widow to wear him out by continually coming.  But the literal translation of the original Greek is a little stronger.  One translation reads that the judge gives the widow her way for fear that the widow will “slap me in the face.”[i]  Another translation reads that the judge gives the widow her way because he does not want to “end up beaten black and blue by her pounding.”[ii]  There is something about these more figurative translations that help us see that when Jesus says the disciples’ prayers need to be persistent, he means knock-down-drag-out, stubborn-headed, unrelenting, radically-vigilant persistence.

I don’t know about you, but most people I know do not approach their prayer life with this kind of rigor.  Many people who keep up this type of persistence for any amount of time eventually lose heart, finally concluding that prayer just does not work – or they are not praying the right way.  For those who have prayed without ceasing for months and years only to watch a child, a spouse, a friend, or a mother die, may have begun to question whether prayer is not just what people do to fill the time – not an effective means of healing.  And for those who have faced horrible atrocities, who can find no sense in a world that abuses, oppresses, and starves its people, may have given up not only on prayer, but on God too.

I remember the first time Scott and I tried to get pregnant.  We had been trying for almost a year, when I finally brought the subject up with my spiritual director.  I had not wanted to talk about the issue, but I think my distance from God was too obvious for the spiritual director to ignore.  When she pushed me on the issue, asking whether I had been giving my pain and suffering to God, I admitted to her that God felt dead to me.  I had nothing more to say to God because, quite frankly, God felt absent from my life at the time.  When I shared that sense of absence in my life, my spiritual director suggested another way.  She suggested I start praying through Mary instead.  My first reaction to her suggestion was rage and indignation.  How insensitive could this woman be to suggest that I, unable to conceive, try praying through a woman who was able to conceive without even trying?!  Though I left my session angry with my spiritual director, a few days later, I gave her suggestion a try.  Two things stuck with me about that experience.  One, Mary now holds a very special place for me in my faith and prayer life.  Two, what I realized was that my spiritual director never suggested I stopped being persistent in prayer.  She simply suggested prayer in a different way.

In some ways, I think we lose this understanding of persistence when we hear Jesus telling us to be like a woman who will physically fight her way through prayer.  We imagine Jesus telling us to keep doing the same thing over and over again until that thing works.  But I do not think that is exactly what Jesus means.  Staying persistently in the prayer relationship is essential, yes.  But that does not mean that relationship does not evolve and change over time.  I think about that widow in our parable today.  I am guessing that her approach with the judge was not the same everyday.  I imagine her starting with the traditional way of begging for justice as anyone would.  But when she is refused, I imagine her trying everything else possible.  From just being a constant presence as the judge was judging other cases; to interrupting the judge’s walk to work in the morning; to following behind him on the way home, pleading her case; even situating herself at a nearby table at his favorite lunch spot – maybe even loudly pleading her case in front of other people, so as to embarrass the judge in front of his friends and colleagues.  Perhaps this is what the judge means when he says the widow is wearing him out.

If we think about the widow’s persistent actions, they are not all that different from the actions of God with God’s people.  As our Thursday morning Bible Study group works its way through Genesis, I have been thinking about the persistent pursuit of God toward God’s people.  Adam and Eve sin, and yet God stays in relationship with them.  The whole earth falls into abominable sin, and even after flooding the earth, God forms a new covenant with humanity.  God’s people break covenant after covenant, and God continues to pursue them.  God’s people disrespect, dishonor, and disparage God, and yet God tries again and again to redeem God’s people.  God is so persistent in God’s relationship with us that God even sends a Son to redeem us from our sinful ways – allowing Jesus to die on a cross for us.  If the widow is the consummate example of persistence in prayer, she learned this persistence from the God is ever pursuing us.

So how do God and the woman do it?  How do they manage this kind of vigilant persistence?  I think what both of them experience is that they are changed in the process.  We have heard many times in scripture how God changes God’s mind – how the flood leads God to vow to never destroy the earth again, or how the argument of Abraham makes God tone down God’s judgment, or how the repentance of the people of Nineveh changes God’s mind about punishment.  I imagine the widow is changed too.  With each attempt at convincing the judge she must have become more and more bold.  In the story, she is transformed from a woman who is likely powerless about her own future and the future of her orphaned children to a woman who is almost feared by a powerful judge.  She is transformed through her persistence.

That transformation is what happens in the life of persistent prayer.  “Repeated, habitual prayer gradually tests and sifts what you believe is really important and what is of ephemeral value.”[iii]  I think about the many times I have prayed and prayed over a particular issue, fully aware of how, when, and why I wanted God to intervene.  But slowly, over time, my prayer about the same issue changes.  I may go from wanting a particular outcome, to being willing to accept a positive outcome, to accepting the defeat and being open to God’s will, to simply wanting God to be present in the midst of it all.  That is why persistent prayer is so important.  Our one-time prayers or our perfunctory prayers do not really open us up to God.  Those rote prayers are just our lips moving without our hearts being equally moved.  But when we are persistent in our prayers, constantly evolving our conversation with God, constantly amending our approach toward God, constantly leaning on others to inform our prayer life, slowly our prayers become transformed, leading us to that God who responds to the deepest, most vulnerable versions of ourselves.

I remember a story of a seminarian who studied at General Theological Seminary.  Desmond Tutu was on campus and the seminarian was excited to watch Tutu in action.  He was happy to see Tutu join the students and faculty at Morning Prayer.  Later, on his way to class, he noticed Tutu in the chapel again, praying on his own.  That afternoon, he saw Tutu in the chapel once more praying.  He watched this pattern again and again over three days.  Finally, at evening prayer one day, the seminarian got up the nerve to approach Tutu and ask Tutu how he ever got any work done when he spent so much time praying in the chapel.  Tutu’s response was simple, “Oh I could never do any of my work if my work were not first rooted in prayer throughout the day.”  This is the kind of persistence in prayer Jesus invites us into today:  prayer that takes us out of ourselves, transforms our desires and actions, and reshapes our relationship with God.  Jesus’ instruction to the disciples is the same for us:  pray always and do not lose heart.  Amen.

---

[i] New Jerusalem Bible.

[ii] The Message.

[iii] Maggi Dawn, “Prayer Acts,” Christian Century, vol. 124, no. 2, October 2, 2007.

A confession…

Tags

church, conversation, fear, God, judge, meaningful, teens

One of the things I find fascinating about teenagers, especially as a priest, is how difficult it can sometimes be to have a deep conversation.  I do not know if it is the collar, if I am particularly uncool, or if my timing is off (I suppose right before a Sunday 8:30 am Eucharist might not be the best time!), but there are times when I get one-word answers or blank looks.  Even in our confirmation class this year, I found that the teens were willing to ask big questions, but my responses did not evoke much extended dialogue.

So imagine my pleasant surprise this Sunday to see how our confirmands led worship.  They read scripture, served as ushers and chalicists, prayed the prayers of the people, and preached with confidence.  I was particularly nervous about the sermon because the preacher did not seem to want much guidance from me in her preparation.  But her sermon blew me away.  I found myself nodding at her insightful words, wanting to say aloud, “Yes!”  Her words were prophetic, perceptive, and powerful.

After service on Sunday, my perspective shifted a bit.  First, I began to realize that the way I judge meaning may not be a true indicator of meaning.  Just because I feel like I am not getting the feedback I am looking for from a teen does not mean that something meaningful is not happening.

But second, and much more importantly, I think that teens are getting a bad rep from people like me.  The truth is that I know an equal amount of adults who are unable or unwilling to have deep, meaningful conversations.  We are all a bit guarded about the things that make us uncomfortable, and our faith is probably one of the biggest areas in our lives that make us feel uncomfortable – because we are not sure how to explain some of the things we believe, or we worry someone will point out some basic biblical or theological concept that we do not know.  In fact, one of the major reasons that adults give for not wanting to teach teens is that they are afraid the teens will ask a question that they don’t know how to answer.

In order for us to have deeper, more meaningful, and more authentic conversations about our faith, our invitation today is to do a little more listening and a lot less judging.  Our invitation today is to let go of the fear we have of embarrassment and be honest about what we are still figuring out about the mystery of God.  Our invitation today is to remember that only through our collective sharing – from our three- to our thirteen- to our thirty- to our sixty-three-year-olds – will we begin to hear the fullness of God’s voice among us.