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Ordinary 33C, November 17, 2013

Not The End of the World

Isaiah 65:17-25

¹⁷For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. ¹⁸But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. ¹⁹I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. ²⁰No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. ²¹They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. ²²They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. ²³They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. ²⁴Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. ²⁵The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

I know that not many of you are fans of social media, but I am very grateful that such things as Facebook and Twitter exist because they give me the ability to stay in touch with friends and colleagues I seldom get to see, and sometimes I find myself becoming acquainted with people I haven’t even met. 

One such person is my Facebook friend, Joe Linden, whom many of you remember fondly as a member of Emsworth U.P. Church until he and his family moved to Alaska some years ago.  It was devastating for many of you last year when we heard that Lane, Joe’s wife, committed suicide after battling severe depression for many years. 

A couple months ago, Joe commented on a sermon I posted on the church’s Facebook page (yes, Emsworth U.P., we have a Facebook page), and within a few weeks, Joe and I became Facebook friends.  I really enjoy reading what Joe writes.  His posts are always filled with wisdom, insight, and humor that are both surprising and reassuring considering what he and his family have endured in the last year.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that Joe is participating in the 30 Days of Gratitude project on Facebook.  During the month of November, Joe and many of my Facebook friends are posting daily about all the things for which they are thankful.  And Joe’s post this Monday was entitled, simply, “Thankful It’s Not The End of the World.”  In the post, he told the story about thinking that Monday was a day off school for his son, Max, due to Veterans Day.  They slept late, ate pancakes, and then Joe drove Max somewhere.  Joe returned home only to find an email from Max’s school awaiting him.  The email said that Max had been marked absent from school that day. 

Uh oh. Somehow, over the course of the weekend, Joe had forgotten that although he had the day off from work, Max did not.

Joe totally lost his parenting gold star last Monday.  But what Joe wrote about his reaction to Max’s unauthorized absence from school was really sort of beautiful.  He wrote:  “There were times in this family’s history when Monday’s tale would have occasioned great drama:  heated accusations, denials, arguments, hard feelings, weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

And here’s the part that got to me:

“I’ve seen the end of the world, peered over the edge, and it does not look anything like this.”

And you know what?  Joe is absolutely right.  Missing a day of school doesn’t look anything like the end of the world.  It isn’t the end of the world. 

But then I got to thinking – what does the end of the world look like?  And how does our perception of the “end of the world” line up with how we see God and Jesus speaking and working in scripture? 

That was a particularly hard question to ponder this week while seeing and reacting to the incredible destruction and loss of life in the Philippines. The typhoon that hit the country was the most powerful storm in the history of recorded weather events.  The photos from the hardest hit areas are truly heartbreaking.  Beyond the death and destruction that have already occurred -- which is certainly horrible enough -- I read that doctors there are bracing themselves for outbreaks of more disease and death because of no sanitation, shortages of fresh water and the inability of emergency health teams to get where they need to be quickly.

The situation in the Philippines is horrible.  And I’m sure even those who managed to survive the storm may feel that they have come to the end of the world, certainly the end of life as they’ve known it. 

But even devastation on that kind of scale is not the end of the world.  We know that in time there will be rebuilding and renewal.  People around the world, Christians and non-Christians alike, are rushing in to aid the survivors, and in time, rescue will morph into recovery, and recovery will morph into rebuilding, and rebuilding into flourishing.  The flourishing piece will take time.  It might take a generation or maybe even two for the terrible memories of the storm to heal.  But even the worst of what can nature can do is not the end. 

The situation in which the prophet Isaiah speaks into in our text this morning probably looked a whole lot like the Philippines.  The people and land of Judah had been overrun by the Assyrians.  You know the story.  Jerusalem was utterly destroyed, the temple demolished and many of the people dragged off into exile. 

But Isaiah is speaking to the people who coming back after all that.  After nearly 50 years in a foreign country, YHWH’s people are finally going home, but it’s a home they scarcely recognize.  Indeed many of people in the first wave of exiles have never seen Judah at all.  For a generation who had heard nostalgic stories about their parents’ and grandparents’ country, their first glimpse of the wreckage that once was Judah must look like what?  The end of the world.  But it wasn’t.  It wasn’t even close to the end of YHWH’s ongoing project with these people whose story began when God scooped up their ancient ancestors from slavery and sent them into the wilderness to wander around, but finally find the Promised Land.  

In the midst of what looks like a whole lot of nothing, the prophet Isaiah tells the people that it they are to get back to the business of being the people God created them to be – a blessing and joy to the world.  Isaiah speaks God’s word saying, “I’m about to create a new heavens and a new earth.”  And you notice that what Isaiah goes on to describe is not something totally new or different, but a description of YHWH’s imagination for what Judah is supposed to be and look like.  No weeping.  No distress.  No infant death or lives ended before their time.  No theft or misuse of someone else’s property.  All of these terrible things that have happened were not God’s dreams for God’s people.  As Isaiah directs the people to look to the future, he also points back to God’s blueprint from the beginning – a blueprint that we recognize from the book of Genesis. As it was in the beginning of time, so it is to be for the returning exiles.  God’s imagination points to the goodness of Eden, the peace of the original creation.  God is still creating – and recreating – God’s people for God’s purposes all of which lead to life, not death.

In our gospel text today from Luke, Jesus presents a devastating monologue -- wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, false leadership, violence, suffering, arrest, persecution and the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem.  The disciples hear all this – including that part about being betrayed by trusted family and friends, then being put to death – and think this must be the end of the world.  It can’t get much worse than what Jesus is describing.    

In a few days, Jesus will be crucified, and as he draws his last breath, the skies will darken and the curtain of the temple is torn in two.  And for those who witnessed what happened in Jerusalem after Jesus’ death and resurrection, including the destruction of the second temple as Jesus foretold, it sure seemed the time was ripe for the end of the world and a second coming.

But it wasn’t the end.  As Jesus said, “The end will not follow immediately…Not a hair of your head will perish.  By your endurance of all these experiences that feel like the end of the world, you will gain your souls.”

Every Sunday we say it.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done.  On earth as it is in heaven. What sort of kingdom are we looking for? And what is God waiting for?

Where I was in seminary, I studied with New Testament professor Dale Allison and it was his teaching that really formed my ideas about the end of the world.  As we worked through all the scriptures that seemed to speak to end times and the second coming, Dr. Allison said that his conclusion was that the end of the world will probably look like the beginning.   We can only intuit God’s original intention for what the world should be based upon the on-going witness of scripture.

But one of the things he said that have really struck with me is that the end of time, the fullness of God’s Kingdom come to earth is contingent…meaning that kingdom building requires participation by both God and human beings.  Even prophecies cannot be read as promise.  They are also contingent on human events. 

God does not need to get involved in the destruction of the world.  Destroying things is something we can do all by ourselves without God’s help.  Human beings have all the power we need to bring about the end of the world without God having to do a thing.  A super virus.  A technological snafu (remember the millennium fears?).  Global warming.  Nuclear war.  Technology continues to put more and more power into the hands of fewer and fewer people.  That’s how we imagine the world ending. 

But if scripture is any guide, I bet that even if we manage to pretty much destroy all life on earth, that still won’t be the end.  Because death, destruction and despair is not God's end game.  Death is not God’s plan for us.  God’s plan is as it always has been, since the beginning of creation.  God’s idea is life, abundant life.  We see the mind of God in the primeval poetry of Genesis.  And we see the mind of God most clearly in the life and ministry of Jesus. 

Maybe, just maybe, the end of the world actually will look a lot less like death, destruction and despair, and all of those awful ways in which television, movies and books portray the end of days.  Maybe God’s kingdom is already breaking in when relationships once thought lifeless come back to life.  Maybe God’s kingdom is revealed in the naval ships rushing off to the Philippines to take food and supplies instead of rushing off to war.  Maybe the end of the world will be when people have finally banded together to solve the problem of people being hungry, or when Habitat for Humanity has run out of houses to build.

God created the world and called it good, but it didn’t take very long for us to decide that we knew better than God.  But God didn’t give up on creation.  God invited his people Israel into God’s imagination for recreating and restoring God’s good creation.

The people returning to Judah after a generation of exile thought they had stumbled upon the end of the world.  But God spoke a word to them through the prophet Isaiah and after much mumbling and stumbling, the people took God up on God’s invitation to begin again.

The people who had followed and loved Jesus saw him die in the most hideous way possible at the hands of a cruel and tyrannical government.  It sure looked like the end of their dreams and Jesus’ ministry.  But resurrection three days later happened and in that resurrection God said, here’s the truth:  I still haven’t given up on this project I began millions of years ago.  Death is defeated.  Love wins.  And I will give you the power of Holy Spirit, which is all the power you need to do the work I need you to do.

If we look closely at Jesus and his ministry in the gospel of Luke -- a ministry that we’ve been tracing throughout the past year -- we see God inviting us into God’s story of re-creation:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Later, Jesus says: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among (or in) you.” (Luke 17:20b-21)

Jesus also says, “No one knows the day or the hour.”

We do not get a map or a timetable about the end of the world.  All we receive is an invitation to stand in front of what seems impossible boulders to move – poverty, suffering, injustice, scarcity, grief.  We are invited to take our turn in our moment in God’s eternal time to chip away all this isn’t in God’s original plan.  Day by day.  Relationship by relationship.  Just as a sculptor takes a piece of marble and with careful application of a chisel creates a piece of art little by little.  Bit by bit.  In small ways until the day comes on which everyone will no longer see a piece of marble, but the beautiful creation the artist envisioned from the beginning.  And in our work, the Holy Spirit will chip away everything in us that isn’t God until we are also revealed as God’s beloved and beautiful people.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

A Day of Celebration at Emsworth U.P. Church

On Sunday, November 10th, we gathered together for a traditional turkey dinner and celebrated God's abundance within our community of faith.

One of the highlights of the day was the drawing for prizes that reflected the theme of our stewardship campaign:  Five Smooth Stones of Mission.  We also celebrated the completion of renovations to our men's restroom in the basement!

Many thanks to all who worked so hard to make the day so memorable and delicious!  Particular thanks to Bez Stellfox, Donna Hunter, Jon Stellfox, Tom Smart and Ben Stellfox!

Ordinary 32C, November 10, 2013

The Problem with Resurrection

Luke 20:27-38

  

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him ²⁸and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. ²⁹Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; ³⁰then the second ³¹and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³²Finally the woman also died. ³³In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” ³⁴Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; ³⁵but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

The Sadducees only appear once in the gospel of Luke and many of us tend to lump the Sadducees and the Pharisees together as the bad, bad guys of the New Testament.  In fact, there’s an old church camp song that warns children about Pharisees, Sadducees, hypocrites and goats, and tells them these are the kinds of characters we DON’T want to be.  So it’s easy to get them all confused as bad guys, even for grownups. 

However, when we dealing with scripture, it’s kind of important to know what kind of dubious characters we are dealing with when we talk about Pharisees and Sadducees.  So let’s break it down a little bit.

I read a really good sermon recently in which the preacher rightly described the Pharisees as the less conservative or more liberal Jews of their time.  The Pharisees read all of Hebrew Scriptures including the historical books, the Psalms and the Prophets.   They came up with the oral Torah - developing new interpretations for old laws so to make the Torah more acceptable and more relevant.  In fact, the Pharisees were the ones who were trying to open up the Jewish faith so that everyone could participate in Torah law, not just the priestly class.   Compared to the Sadducees, the Pharisees were the open-minded ones.  

The Sadducees, however, only accepted the first five books – the Pentateuch – as sacred text.  They rejected oral tradition and relied upon literal reading of scripture.  The Sadducees were sort of the “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” kind of folks. 

Another important difference between Pharisees and Sadducees was their political views, particularly their views about the Romans occupation.  The Pharisees were downright hostile toward non-Jews and especially the Roman government in Jerusalem. The Sadducees, however, were happy to align themselves with the Romans, supposedly to keep the peace, but many of them also managed to get rich working with Rome.  If the Pharisees were more blue collar, working class types, the Sadducees were the white-collar guys, the ruling elites, the ones who held most of the power in the temple hierarchy even though nobody liked the Sadducees very much.  The Pharisees were concerned about the spiritual condition of ordinary people, although Jesus often accused them about not tending to the physical needs of the people, particularly those outside the religious community.  The Sadducees kept a careful distance from anyone who was not a Sadducee so, not surprisingly, ordinary people wanted very little to do with them.

The Pharisees were faithful Jews who studied and thought deeply about their faith, believed in resurrection and a life beyond their present reality, especially since that reality included suffering at the hands of the Roman government.  In fact, one of the Pharisees’ big disappointments in Jesus was that he didn’t seem interested in overthrowing Rome.  In the passage just prior to this one, Jesus in fact tells them, “Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 

The Sadducees wore their religion lightly, like an attractive accessory, and were most concerned about how they were doing in the here and now.  The idea of resurrection or an afterlife seemed ridiculous.  There’s nothing explicit about resurrection in the first five books of the Old Testament, so if you read your text as literally as the Sadducees did, resurrection isn’t even an issue. So the Sadducees stored up all their blessings, and what mattered to them was protecting what could be seen and felt and spent in this life.  The Sadducees were truly, “live your best life now” kind of guys.

If you had to place Jesus in one of the two camps, it’s clear that Jesus would be more aligned with the Pharisees than the Sadducees.  Jesus, however, had issues with the way in which both groups misapplied their understanding of scripture, particularly when it came to how they took care or didn’t take care of God’s people.    

The Sadducees and Pharisees had pretty much nothing in common with one another except for one thing:  Jesus had become an enormous problem for them.    

Today’s text takes place on the Tuesday of Holy Week and Jesus has already faced a number of challenges from the Pharisees.  The Pharisees questioned Jesus’ authority to teach in the temple, his healings on the Sabbath, and his questionable associations with sinners.  And you can see Jesus engaging with and trying to teach the Pharisees over and over again in the Gospels. In earlier arguments, Jesus goes back and forth; the Pharisees ask one question and Jesus asks another.  And some of the Pharisees seem to eventually understand what Jesus is talking about.

But today the Sadducees show up in all their priestly splendor to take Jesus on.  But it’s clear that they really are just messing with Jesus.  The idea of resurrection is so laughable to them that they ask Jesus a complicated hypothetical question designed to make Jesus look foolish and discredit him entirely.   They invoke marriage laws from Deuteronomy in which the brother of a man who dies childless is required to marry his widow.  And the Sadducees produce this elaborate hypothetical in which 7 brothers marry the same woman and all 7 die without producing children.  Which brother will be the poor woman’s husband in heaven?

It’s unclear how the Sadducees reacted to Jesus’ answer to them, but it seems to me that Jesus demonstrates two things in his reply.  First, that resurrection means something far different than the Sadducees’ question suggests.   Jesus seems to say that the issues involved in resurrection for the Sadducees, like marriage and inheritance and multiple husbands and who belongs to who are not really issues.  After all, angels don’t worry about husbands.  Angels don’t worry about inheritance. Angels don’t die. Angels don’t have children.  The children that seem to matter in resurrection are the children of God and, according to Jesus, that’s pretty much everybody. 

Then Jesus goes on to use the Sadducees preferred scripture to point out that when Moses encounters the burning bush in Exodus, the voice of God says, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” God speaks of the patriarchs not as some fondly remembered friends, not as a bunch of guys who have been dead and buried for years, but as living people.  So while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob might be a distant memory to the Sadducees, captured only in the literal ink of the Torah, the patriarchs are alive for God.  The resurrection of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has already happened.

So what is Jesus up to in this answer? 

Remember that we are talking about resurrection.  Resurrection is not the same as immortality.  Resurrection is not the same as life after death.  Resurrection is not even about heaven.  We are talking about resurrection – the transformation we see most clearly in scripture as the transformation that happens to Jesus on Easter Sunday.  Jesus wasn’t simply raised from the dead, although he was no longer dead.  Jesus didn’t only walk out of the tomb like Lazarus, although his body was missing from the tomb when the women went to look for it.  Jesus didn’t just come back to life like Jairus’ daughter, although Jesus lives and reigns among us and through us and in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

When we look at the lived experience of the disciples and other Christians’ experiences of the resurrected Christ, we can see that resurrection is a much deeper and, frankly, more mysterious experience than immortality and the assurance that we’ll be married to the same person in heaven that we were married to in life.   I’ll leave it up to you if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

It seems in resurrection, death is no longer an issue at all.  Resurrection is a living, breathing, tangible experience of Jesus in the world.  And it changes everything.  For Jesus.  For the disciples.  And for us.  It changes every human experience we have.

Resurrection is such a game-changer that it is hard to give the Sadducees a hard time on this particular point.  It is difficult to wrap our minds around the resurrection.  Even the Pharisees’ understanding is limited by their wish to see the Romans get theirs after exploiting and torturing the people of Israel for so many years.  The Pharisees want to know there is an afterlife so as to extract some sort of cosmic justice for the suffering they’ve endured in this life.

Quite simply, resurrection is a problem.  It’s a problem.  Because resurrection isn’t only what happens after we are dead.  The Gospel stories of the resurrected Christ are not intended to prove that the resurrection happened bodily, literally, and historically and all we have to do is give our intellectual assent to it and all will be well.  Rather, the Gospel stories are intended to invite us – all of us, the disciples of today – to experience the ongoing reality of resurrection NOW.  A resurrection reality in which things that look dead to us – people, relationships, all of the world’s brokenness – all of those situations are, in fact, being transformed into something new.  Right now.  Right in front of our eyes. 

Where do we see resurrection happening among us? 

First, it happens in our experience of the liturgy in worship.  Every Sunday, we come face-to-face with the resurrected Christ who has been made known to us in the breaking of the bread, in the waters of baptism, and in the proclamation of God’s word.  Resurrection is not just something that will happen to us someday.  Resurrection happens now.

I thought about this as I was preparing the funeral service for my friend Alan’s father yesterday.  Our service of witness to the resurrection proclaims that death isn’t the beginning, but the completion of our resurrection that began in our baptism when we died to our old lives and were resurrected to new life in Jesus.  So it’s not like we will be resurrected.  It’s that we already are.  In our baptism, we have all been resurrected. 

Jesus says that God is not the God of the dead, but God of the living.  God doesn’t let dead things stay dead.  And that’s a problem for us.  Because while we see resurrection as good news – and it is very good news indeed – it is also bad news for folks like the Sadducees or anyone else who can only imagine that what we see is all there is to see, or that justice only happens at some distant point on the horizon, which is the Pharisees’ understanding.  Resurrection is terrible news for those of us who want to bury our heads in the sand and imagine that things were once better, are bad today, and nothing good can happen in the foreseeable future.

But resurrection won’t let us off the hook.   And the resurrected Jesus never stops pursuing us.  We may feel that pursuit just like the disciples when they encountered the resurrected Christ.  They are lost in their grief.  They are terrified when they find an empty tomb.  Dismissive and scornful of the women.  They run to see for themselves and yet still cannot believe their own eyes. They are doubting and dubious.  The disciples mistake Jesus for an ordinary gardener or a stranger on the road.  They decide to go back to their old lives, but then they see a figure on a distant shore.  A terrible night of fishing turns into a morning of nets filled to bursting.  The disciples’ experience of resurrection is confusing, heartbreaking, filled with moments of great joy, and difficult to explain in a way that sounds anything but ridiculous.  But what is clear from all of the post-resurrection stories in the New Testament, that the disciples were transformed fundamentally.  After resurrection, the disciples are different people. 

The New Testament confirms that experiencing resurrection is neither comfortable nor comforting, and even when it's staring us in the face, it won’t be immediately recognizable.  But if we keep our eyes open for it, the scales will fall.

Once there was a wise old woman who lived in a small village. The children of the village were puzzled by her—her wisdom, her gentleness, her strength. One day several of the older children decided to fool her. No one could be as wise as everyone said she was, and they set out to prove it. So they found a baby bird. One of the boys cupped it in his hands and said to his friend, “We’ll ask her whether the bird I have in my hands is dead or alive. If she says it is dead, I will open my hands and let it fly away. If she says it’s alive, I’ll crush it and she’ll see that it’s dead.” So they went to the woman and presented her with this puzzle. “Old woman,” the little boy asked, “this bird in my hands—is it dead or alive?” The old woman became very still, studied the boy’s hands, then looked carefully into his eyes. “It’s in your hands,” she said.

Brothers and sisters, we have a choice.  We can live as if we are dying or we can live as if we trust that death truly has been defeated.  We can believe that God will take every broken thing, hold it in his hands, blow the dust of sin off it, and transform us into something new and redeemed and beautiful.  That is what God does.  That is who God is.  The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.  That is our God.  Let us live into the promise of our resurrection.  Let us welcome the resurrected Christ among us as we break bread together with one another today. 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

A Service of Witness to the Resurrection for David Olson, November 9, 2013

Romans 8:26-28, 31-39

²⁶Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. ²⁷And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. ²⁸We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

³¹What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³²He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I can remember when I was a little girl, I had a recurring nightmare about being lost in an unfamiliar place. I can still remember feeling the panic of disorientation in my chest. My heart beat faster and faster as I struggled to figure out exactly where I was.

And then in my dream, I saw the familiar figure of my mother on a crowded street corner and I ran toward her as quickly as I could.  As I was running to her, she began walking away from me, heading in the opposite direction.  I called out her name and she just kept walking as I struggled to get to her, yelling out to her over and over again as she moved farther and farther away from me, eventually disappearing altogether into a crowd of people.

Some years later, I read that this kind of dream is not an uncommon one in children, or in adults for that matter.  The dream, of course, represented my fear of death and of losing my mother.  I was fearful of losing the most important human connection a little girl could have in order to feel safe and secure.

But here’s the thing:  our fears about losing important human connections are not at all irrational are they?  Our fears of being lost are neither childlike nor naïve. We will all eventually lose one another -- and leave one another -- through death.  Our worst nightmares will play out in our lives.  The experience of loss is an unavoidable consequence of being human enough to take the risk of loving and losing.

When we gather together on occasions such as today, I think we feel that same panicky catch in our throats and pounding in our hearts.  We are reminded -- as if we needed reminding -- how fleeting our connections to one another really are.  Days like today, really this whole week since David died suddenly on Sunday, have an ethereal quality.  These days and weeks, particularly after an unexpected death, are liminal, in-between times -- time out of time -- that feel as unreal as a bad dream.  Our connection to David feels as if it has been snapped like a dry November twig, leaving us as bewildered as children, even if we are all grown up.

But in our reading this morning, the apostle Paul talks about a reality that is more real than death, more reliable than any dream, and more lasting than any human connection.  Paul reminds us of the one connection that is never broken, and the one love that endures forever.  What lasts through all of time is the love of God as expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Paul reflects back to us our deepest needs and our deepest fears and baddest bad dreams in one fell swoop.  Paul assures us that we will not – and cannot – be separated from God. We are never, ever lost in this world, even in our loneliest hours.  No matter what nightmares haunt us, no matter where we go or what we do or have done to us, no matter what bleak stuff life throws at us, there is nothing on heaven or on earth that can separate us from God.  Even in  -- or perhaps especially in -- our brokenness and grief, God holds us and loves us forever.  We can sit in our mourning and feel as bad as we need to feel, and still believe beyond all doubt that David is being held in love and grace by God.  And God’s love and grace is true for us on this day.

Paul is persistent and passionate about this point when he tells us,  “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Can you imagine a promise more powerful than this?  Can you imagine a love more amazing?

Moreover, it is not just God, but the love of God in Christ Jesus who came to us as a human being to share our pain and live in our sorrows.  And through our baptism we have been claimed by Christ and grafted onto the family tree of God.   Jesus is the true vine and our connection to one another through him as brothers and sister in Christ is no flimsy twig, but a strong and eternal connection that neither bends nor breaks even in death.  We belong to God and to one another forever.

David was called in his baptism to be a child of God.  And all of us, throughout our whole lives, are also called to be sons and daughters of the God who is connected in intimate, loving relationship within God’s very being, the mysterious unity of the triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We are never independent, self-sufficient creatures.  Every breath we take is dependent upon God’s grace.  And despite what we may think of ourselves, none of us will ever be anything more or anything less than a beloved child in the eyes of God.   No matter how much good we do or how much we mess up, we are loved, forgiven and held by grace in an unbroken pattern of mercy.

So in a sense, death is the completion of a connection to God that begins in baptism and is perfected in death.  While it is true that our human connection to David is broken in a very real and terrible way for Alan and all of you who loved him, this very gathering here shows us how God continues to gather God’s people and creates connections to one another through the memories, stories, tears, laughter, and music we are sharing today and will continue to share into the future as we remember David.

I will always be so grateful to Alan for introducing me to his Dad a few years ago at our family’s annual Festivus party, always held 2 days before Christmas. (If you don’t know what Festivus is, ask Alan after the funeral).  Alan asked me if he could bring his dad with him to the party and I said, of course, we’d be delighted to have David with us. There was a long pause and Alan said, “Do you mind if he brings his bagpipes with him?”

Now you all know that there are really only two kinds of people in the world.  People who simply cannot stand bagpipe music and liken the sound to nails being slowly dragged across a chalkboard.  And people like me, who have enough residual Scottish blood coursing through their veins that they begin openly weeping before the first note of “Scotland the Brave” is played.  And so David and his pipes came to Festivus, and David not only played for our gathered friends and family, but also went out into the snow and played up and down the street for our neighbors.  I don’t know what the neighbors thought about David’s bagpipes and I’m not at all sure I care.  Because my family and I will always hold those moments of David’s bagpipe playing and his laughter at our table as grace.

There’s a lovely final line in the hymn we’re about to sing:

“There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come;

No more a stranger, or a guest,
but like a child at home.”

It is a poignant, terrible, beautiful fact of which we are painfully reminded this morning -- as long as we are alive, people we love will go and come and go.  We are strangers and guests, husbands and wives, co-workers and friends, children and parents, family and lovers.  And in every human relationship, there is brokenness and beauty

What finally disrupts the coming and going is death.  And all we can finally know about that broken branch is the unceasing promise of God for us.  We can believe that David has arrived to a settled rest wrapped in God’s grace and love.   One day we will follow that same path when we will become who we always meant to be, even when we didn’t know it.  No longer a wayfaring stranger.  No more an awkward, out-of-place guest.

David is who he was always created to be which is God’s beloved child.  Safe and sound.  No more nightmares. He is home.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.
 

Ordinary 31C/All Saints Sunday, November 3, 2013

The Pain and Promise of Embrace

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4

The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw. ²O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? ³Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. ⁴So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. ²Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. ³For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. ⁴Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

I do not imagine that you will be very surprised to learn that Habakkuk wasn’t a text I spent much time studying as a seminary student.  In fact, I’m sure I probably spent about 5 minutes thinking about Habakkuk in seminary, and only then in the context of learning the 12 Minor Prophets in the Old Testament.  Habakkuk is tucked right in there between Nahum and Zephaniah.  And I’ll admit that I didn’t spend much time on Nahum and Zephaniah either.  They are, after all, minor.  The major ones like Isaiah and Jeremiah are challenging enough and that’s who I hung out with in seminary. 

Still, a few of the other Minor Prophets are sort of famous, right?  You probably know something about Hosea, Joel, Amos, Jonah, and Micah.  You may even know Obadiah only because it’s so much fun to say, “Obadiah.” But the truth is the texts that comprise the Minor Prophets are called “minor,” not because they are unimportant, but because they are much shorter in length than Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekial.

But Habakkuk is a little read text that appears in the lectionary once every three years.  Frankly, Habakkuk faces some pretty heavy competition from other texts on this particular Sunday.  You just heard today’s gospel reading from Luke and the story about Zacchaeus, which is a very popular text to preach.  In fact, because today is All Saint’s Sunday, preachers who use the Revised Common Lectionary had no fewer than 8 texts from which to choose this week.  Odds are that there are not very many congregations hearing a sermon about Habakkuk this morning. 

Well, lucky you.  You have a pastor who can’t resist the obscure and overlooked.  You are getting Habakkuk.

So what can I tell you about Habakkuk?  Well it is short-- only three chapters.  And it covers some familiar territory in terms of its historical context.  Most scholars suggest that Habakkuk was composed in the midst of the Babylonian conquest of Judah, possibly in the period right before Jerusalem was sacked and the people dragged into exile. Nobody knows anything about Habakkuk himself.  The only reason we call this book, “Habakkuk” is because somebody, possibly an editor many years later, added verse 1 which reads, “The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.”  Habakkuk is quoted by Paul in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews, but Paul only uses a single verse from the book, the verse that ended our reading today, “the righteous live by their faith.”  Of course, Paul cherry-picked that verse to support his theology of grace by faith, rather than to share Habakkuk’s perspective of people in the middle of conquest by a tyrannical army about to smash the place to smithereens.   I am not sure how much grace Habakkuk experienced in the chaos of Jerusalem.

I can only speak for myself, but I am most smitten by the English translation of the name, “Habakkuk.”  Can you guess what Habakkuk means in English?  It means to embrace.  And then I read a quote from Martin Luther and he said that Habakkuk “comforts and encourages (the people) as one embraces a poor weeping child or another person, quieting and pacifying it with the assurance that, if God wills, conditions will mend.”[1]  That’s a lovely image – not unlike 2 Isaiah in which comfort is more prevalent than condemnation.

In fact, Habakkuk reminds me of that friend you want to go to when something horribly unjust has happened or someone has done something incredibly hurtful to you.  Every person needs at least one friend like that.  If you don’t have one, I suggest you find one because such a friend is priceless.   They are the kind of friend who will not try to talk you out of being upset, but will just hang in there and not judge you for losing your cool.  That’s who Habakkuk reminds me of – the kind of friend who doesn’t try to fix things and never once tries to talk you out of being as angry as you have every right to be or convince you whatever you are feeling doesn’t hurt as much as you think.  A friend who won’t dismiss your anger, but gently embrace them – and you – for as long as it takes for the pain to ease and the fury to pass.  Habakkuk is a hugger, an embracer, someone who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.

Habakkuk begins with lament, of course, with the familiar, “How long, oh Lord, how long?” which we hear often in the Hebrew scripture, particularly in the Psalms and in the book of Job.  It is the voice of someone who cannot for the life of him see one little bit of good in suffering.  He sees violence, wrong-doing and trouble.  Destruction, strife and contention.  There is no justice.  In fact, there is only lawlessness as the enemy advances and society sinks into chaos.   The people of Jerusalem are guilty of sin against YHWH, but God’s response to their sin -- the Babylonian army -- is even worse. It is impossible to say who is a good guy and who is a bad guy in the confusion and disorder.  Right and wrong bleed into each other in gory, awful squalor. Habakkuk asks how long will God allow this mayhem to continue?  How long will the prophet be forced to stare into the heart of this unholy mess?

I met a guy named Bradley at the conference I attended in San Francisco last week and I was immediately drawn to him when I found out that he was a pediatric hospice chaplain for many years.   Talk about someone who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to staring into unholy, awful situations.  When I told Bradley I was thinking about preaching on Habakkuk, he said that the kind of lament reflected in this text is really the only the gateway to hope.  Otherwise, when terrible things happen and we can’t allow ourselves to lament, we resort to unhelpful platitudes like, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” Or worse we become cynical and withdraw from God altogether.  Giving voice to our rage means we are willing to take the risk of engaging with a God we can barely acknowledge on bad days, much less love with all our hearts, minds and strength.  Lament means that we are willing to stand on our faith and shake our fists at God, trusting that even if God is silent, by God, he will listen to what we have to say.  For Habakkuk, the worst outrage is that the Babylonian solution God has fashioned for Judah’s totally deserved punishment isn’t sufficient.  As far as Habakkuk is concerned, there is still injustice because Babylon, the superpower being used by God to punish Jerusalem, goes unpunished. 

Habakkuk is dwelling in a deep dark pool of unreason.  A place in which nothing at all makes sense.  Which sounds strange, until you realize how often we have to deal with suffering that seems unreasonable.  For so many people, all it takes is one bad decision.  One thoughtless moment.  And everything comes crashing down on our heads. 

We so desperately want to imagine that everything that happens for a reason.  Good or bad.  Because we are, for the most part, “reasonable” human beings.  We want to know the cause and effect of every last thing.   Sometimes believing that there is some sort of cosmic justice in the universe is the only thing that gets us out of bed in the morning.  And the older I get, the more I read scripture, the more I realize that “everything happens for a reason” is probably not even true.  Holding on to the notion that everything happens for a reason is wishful thinking rather than faith. 

Sometimes, oftentimes, life just happens.  The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous.  Good things happen to bad people who we don’t think deserve them.  Although we hate it when it seems like someone who doesn’t deserve it gets more than their fair share of good stuff, it really doesn’t seem like God considers undeserved blessings a problem.  Ask the prodigal son if you think I’m wrong.  Actually, ask his brother.

What really shakes our faith, though, is when bad things happen to good people.  You probably don’t need to go leafing through your Bible to find the book of Job to know that is true.  Just read the newspaper.  Listen to the radio.  Ask your friends. Life happens and life can seem utterly unreasonable and out of control when we try to make it fit into reasonable categories.  Which leads me to believe that we are wasting our time looking for reasons for both deep suffering and surprising joy. 

I don’t know why God doesn’t give us the kind of answers or reasons we want so desperately.  The problem of unanswered prayer is a common human complaint.  Some days it truly does feel like God has gone off to take a tour of another planet and left us to fend for ourselves.  There is the famous story by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in which he tells about a horrible scene in a death camp in which three people are hanged.  He writes:

“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive…

But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...

And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.

And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him…

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

"For God's sake, where is God?"

How long, oh Lord?  How long must we look at trouble and suffering beyond our ability to bear it?  How long will God be silent?  Why is there injustice, suffering and pain?  So many of our prayers seem lost, floating out there into endless space toward a distant or uncaring God.

What keeps me from folding my hand and walking away from the table is this.  I remember.  I remember.  I remember the Divine Silence experienced by the human Jesus.  The fully human Jesus had to suffer rejection, disappointment and loss. Remember?  Jesus prayed a “lost prayer” in the garden, a prayer for his followers to become one even though, at the very moment Jesus was praying, Judas was getting everything ready to turn Jesus in.  Just 24 hours later, Jesus prayed another desparate prayer: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”   

Jesus experienced the same kind of human pain as Habakkuk and the people of Judah.  Jesus looked down from the cross at a scene of violence, destruction and rage, and then he looked up, giving up his life to a Father who seemed out of reach and unresponsive to Jesus’ agony.  Silence was God’s answer to Jesus’ pain.  Jesus’ prayer hung in the air for three days until…God spoke.  God gave the ultimate answer to human sin, pain and suffering three days later.  In resurrection, God spoke God’s YES to the world’s NO so clearly and plainly that its power still roars in our lives today.

So there is lament in Habakkuk.  The prophet embraces the pain of a people who are lost and faithfully lifts their desperate situation up to God.  And then Habakkuk climbs up to a watchtower and stations himself at a rampart to see what God will do.  Habakkuk takes his lost prayers and his broken heart and climbs up to a quiet place to wait for God to speak.  Like the centering prayer we practiced this summer, Habakkuk silently watches and waits to see what God will say to him.  He waits with expectation that God will act.  He waits with patience so he can understand God’s vision when it comes to him.  He waits with determination for God’s reply to his lament.  Even when things are as messed up as they can possibly be, Habakkuk believes there is “still a vision for the appointed time.”  Habakkuk believes that God will speak and God will speak plainly.

Do we believe it?

Do we believe God’s promises are sure and true?

Do we dare to believe -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- that God hasn’t left the building after all?

Do we believe that God has a vision for the future that will surely come, and that God will make that vision so plain that we’ll be able to tweet it, text it, slap it up on a billboard and laminate it for our wallets? 

More importantly, can we choose to move toward embracing the silence of God? Can we be audacious enough to wait faithfully and expectantly in the space between our deepest questions and God’s answers?  Can we be like the disciples living in Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection morning?

In his suffering and death, Jesus confirms that God is with us in this life, in every moment.  In brokenness and beauty.  In unfathomable fiascos and unexpected joys that simply take our breath away.  The ancient Hebrews knew that truth in a way that is amply reflected in the psalms and prophets, and particularly in the language we hear in Habakkuk.  They knew that lament was necessary to keep faith alive when life makes no sense.  The Hebrew people also knew lament is transformed into words of expectation promise and, for us, in Jesus Christ, the assurance of new life.  Resurrection life.  Not in some far off future.  But today.  But every day.  Resurrection happens again and again. 

As he looked up at the victims dangling from ropes and saw the suffering of the boy, Ellie Weisel found himself answering his own question: "Where is (God)? He is here –hanging on the gallows.” 

Habakkuk’s small testimony of lament, patience and faith ends like this:

Though the fig tree does not blossom,
   

and no fruit is on the vines;


though the produce of the olive fails
   

and the fields yield no food;


though the flock is cut off from the fold
   

and there is no herd in the stalls, 
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
   

I will exult in the God of my salvation. 
God, the Lord, is my strength;
   

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
   

and makes me tread upon the heights.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

---

[1] “Lectures on Habakkuk 1526” in Luther’s Works (St. Louise: Concordia Publishing House, 1974), 19:156.

Looking Forward To All Saints Sunday

Join In The Celebration – All Saints’ Sunday

Next Sunday, November 3^rd, we will celebrate All Saints’ Day.  All Saints’ Day invites us to remember those whom we love that have gone on through the gates of larger life.  In some mysterious way we are gathered, now, with all those who have gone before, with those we love who live in different parts of the world, as well as with those in the room with us. From the earliest days, the church has taken this opportunity to celebrate and you are invited to join in the celebration of resurrection.

On Sunday, November 3, we will mark All Saints’ Day with a special liturgy and prayers of thanksgiving for those saints who are dear to our congregation.  Please think about those saints you would like to be named and honored on November 3 during worship. The names can be those of family members, friends, or people from other times and places whom you have never met, but have inspired you in life.  Email the names of your "saints" to Susan smr33@verizon.net or bring the names with you to worship on November 3.