Ordinary 28C, October 13, 2013

Thank You Notes To God

Luke 17:11-19

¹¹On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, ¹³they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” ¹⁴When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. ¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. ¹⁶He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? ¹⁸Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Today we have a story about 10 guys who find themselves bound together not by blood or religion, but by something far more powerful.  Disgust.  People were disgusted by these 10 men who suffered from a skin disease the Bible refers to as “leprosy,” but was likely any number of skin diseases that would cause someone to look at these men and say, “yuck.”  Their families and friends were so disgusted by their appearance that these 10 guys were thrown out of their homes, relegated to living outside the village, disconnected from family, friends and their faith communities. 

As I was thinking about these 10 men in Luke, I remembered that Rachel went to high school with a young woman named Hunter Steinitz who has a skin disease called Harlequin ichthyosis.  A couple years ago, Rachel and I were in JFK airport, getting ready to fly home and Hunter walked up to us in the gate area to say hello to Rachel. 

To call Hunter’s physical appearance startling is really an understatement.  Hunter’s face is bright, bright pink and has the appearance of someone who had been severely burned.  Her skin is covered with thick, dry scales. Her hairline is constantly receding because her skin follicles on her scalp grow over every time a hair falls out, so she has trouble re-growing hair.  The places on her skin that aren’t flaky and dried out are downright slimy because Hunter has to apply a strong moisturizer every two hours just so she can move and even breathe. 

I didn’t know anything about Hunter or her skin disease when Rachel and I met up with her at the airport.  But I am ashamed to admit my strong visceral reaction to her.  I cannot tell you if I shook her hand or not when I was introduced, but I can tell you with all certainty that I didn’t want to.  Instead, I experienced that very primitive, feeble-dinosaur brain reaction of disgust. I probably tried to hide it, but I suspect Hunter scoped it out immediately.  People like Hunter are never fooled by people trying to hide their disgust.  Even at the age of tender age of 15, I bet Hunter could probably spot disgust at 20 paces.  As we were flying home, Rachel told me about Hunter and what a hard time kids gave her at school about her disfiguring illness, but that Hunter was actually a pretty cool and talented kid.  All of which made me feel even worse about how grossed out I had felt when I met her.

Coincidentally, when Rachel and I got home to Pittsburgh, there was a front page article in the Post-Gazette about Hunter which explained why we had met up with her in New York.  She had just finished making an appearance with National Geographic on a program about extraordinary human beings.  What made Hunter extraordinary was not just the severity of her disease, but her courageous commitment to NOT hide away from her peers but to educate people about herself and others like her with disfiguring skin diseases. 

That was three years ago.  This week I found out that Hunter is now a freshman at Westminster College studying theology and planning to become a Presbyterian minister.  She says she is going into ministry to teach people that everyone is as God intended them to be, and she believes her skin is going to be a vital part of that work.   Go Hunter.

It is not at all surprising that Hunter might see her skin as part of her call to ministry because the Bible is filled stories about people who are suffering from any number of physical conditions that make their existence a living hell.  Jon just read the story from 2 Kings about Naaman, the mighty warrior who seeks out the prophet Elisha’s help to be healed from his skin disease.   And it seems that a fair number of people with skin diseases manage to run into Jesus, including the 10 men we meet today in the gospel. 

Unlike many of the ostracized people we see in the New Testament who deal with their misery on their own, these 10 men in today’s text have formed a mutual support system on the outskirts of a village.  We know that one of them is a Samaritan and the rest of them are probably Jewish, which is a somewhat odd pairing. But it seems that their shared disability has broken down the barriers that would normally exist between observant Jews and Samaritans – a group of people most Jews would have considered to be unclean and downright disgusting heretics. 

In the meantime, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, wandering near territory that most observant Jews would also avoid, which is Samaria.  On a map, it would seem that Jesus might just be taking a short cut, but Jesus’ location seems to be a deliberate attempt by Luke to tell us something important about where Jesus is.  And Jesus is in no man’s land where no good Jew should be. 

There seems, in fact, no rhyme or reason to the way in which Jesus is traveling as we move with him to Jerusalem in Luke.  Which reminds us again that we can’t read the gospels as travel diaries or precise historical accounts of Jesus’ movements.  Jesus’ movements are more like theological journeys of heart, soul and spirit.  Jesus’ geography is theology; where Jesus is located helps us understand what Jesus is up to, particularly when he ends up in a surprising location like this in-between place, a region between Galilee and Samaria.  That geography tells us what is most true about Jesus – he crosses every boundary, even that seemingly uncrossable boundary of disgust that is still at the root of so much human misery. 

We don’t how the 10 men know Jesus as he comes toward them, but they do.  They know it is Jesus, but they also know the Levitical law that says that people in their condition must stay at least 50 yards away from any healthy person.  But instead of calling out, “Unclean, unclean,” as would be customary, they cry out for Jesus to show them mercy.  And Jesus, without a second thought, tells them to go to the priests and present themselves.  

I really think Luke wants us to notice all these details. Jesus is not disgusted by the men.  Jesus acknowledges their need immediately.  And Jesus invites them back into the community of God’s people by sending them straight to the priests – the most direct path to social acceptance in Jesus’ day.  Jesus doesn’t just heal their skin – he heals their lives by sending them on a path back to the community from which they have so long been excluded. 

We do not know if their skin cleared up on the spot.  The text says that, “as they went, they were made clean.”  It would have taken them several days to get to the priests in Jerusalem, so perhaps the healing process was a gradual one as they went on their way.  Perhaps it took time for their skin to smooth out.  All we know for sure is that those nine disconnected men were given a second chance.  Not for a perfect life, but a life in which they had at least a decent shot at being reconnected to the community of faith that had once excluded them. 

But I think that the nine who immediately ran off to see the priests will always be missing something. They will only believe in their healing when someone else believes it.  They are the kind of people who seek acceptance from others.  And we know from our own experience that acceptance can takes time.  Even if the nine men now have skin as smooth as glass, there will always be people won’t forget how disgusting they used to be.  Maybe even some in their own family will not be able accept them.  Ask a recovering alcoholic, an ex-addict, someone just being released from prison – all of them will tell you how difficult it is to re-enter a society that had pretty much given you up for dead. 

Only one of them, the Samaritan, recognizes the full extent what Jesus has done.  Only he pays enough attention to recognize the astounding presence of God.  He pays enough attention to feel gratitude and thanksgiving and praise.  Only one of the ten men doesn’t take the healing for granted as something he deserved or earned or entitled to after years of suffering.   Only one of the ten men turns around and says, “Thanks.” 

In our midweek study this week, Jon Stellfox said that his father taught him to always look closely at questions in scripture.  Always look at the questions Jesus asks and you’ll begin to unlock the meaning of the text.   I think that approach is particularly wise in approaching this story because when I began really looking hard at the Jesus’ questions, I realized that I really stink at this gratitude thing.  Because so many of my prayers focus on what I do not have, or what others do not have, or what this church does not have, instead of being grateful for what we do have.  I realized I would probably be one of those nine guys running away with whatever blessing I can get, fearful that it will not last.  Too often, we end up in the 90% who forget where the good stuff comes from, as Jesus so astutely observes when he wonders out loud about what happened to the other guys.

In fact, we live in a time when it is much easier and maybe even cooler to complain than be grateful.   And there are a whole lot of reasons for us to be straight-up crying for mercy most of the time.  A grid-locked Congress and a shut down government.  Too much unemployment and too few good jobs.  Not to mention so many challenges we face in our own congregation and in our own family situations.  Despair is definitely the theme of our age.  And I am willing to wager that 90% of the prayers we utter on any given day have more to do with wistfulness for what we want rather than thankfulness for what we have.  And there’s nothing wrong with being honest with God about how lousy things are and how much better things should be.  Just like the 90% did nothing wrong by doing exactly what Jesus told them to do. 

But the ones who left missed out on the best part.  Just as certainly as we miss out, every day, by not taking the time to see Jesus at work, healing and restoring the most hopeless situations.  We miss out when we become so wrapped up in our despair that we forget to give thanks for every single blessing that falls on our worried heads. 

I mean, can you imagine how good the Samaritan felt when he turned around and saw himself in the eyes of Jesus as a whole, healed and beloved child of God?  He was blown away.  For the first time in his miserable life, he wasn’t an outsider anymore.  He was no longer a beggar on the street, wrapped up in anxiety and fear.  In that moment of sheer grace, the man who gave thanks knew exactly who we was and whose he was.  For the first time, he was beautiful.  What else could he do but give God thanks and praise?  I don’t know about you, but I would much rather be in the 10%, knowing exactly who I am as a beloved child of God,  than waiting around with the other 90% for someone to accept me.

Our gratitude has nothing to do with getting what we want or getting rid of what we don’t want.   Gratitude is acknowledging how blessed we have been through our whole lives, how blessed we are right now, and the promise of God’s blessing into the future.  Gratitude has the power to make life richer, deeper and more joyful than we can possibly imagine.  The practice of gratitude makes us whole human beings. 

God is not some heavenly egomaniac, waiting around for a thank you note.   God doesn’t need our praise.  God doesn’t need our thankfulness.  In truth, God doesn’t need our money.  God can do anything God wants to do because God is sovereign, God is Lord, God knows exactly how to get things done.  God will always be generous -- giving and providing and healing because that’s just who God is.  Because we are made in God’s image, I suspect we are created to be generous too.

God requires our praise because God knows we need to praise.  God wants our thankfulness because God knows that thankfulness makes us more able to see Christ at work in the world.  And God wants us to give generously because giving to God reminds us where all these good things came from.  In giving, we acknowledge that everything we have, everything we are, and everything we will be is all God’s gift to us. 

I know a lot of people who live as if they are dying.  And I know a lot of churches that live that way as well.  Those ten guys hanging around outside the village were living like ones who were dying until Jesus showed up and they recognized the source of all life standing right in front of them.  All ten of them received healing.  Nine of them took new life and ran with it, which is probably what most of us would do.  But one saw new life as the incredible gift it is.  Only the one man -- the outsider, the foreigner, the Samaritan – only he received a second blessing, the complete healing that comes from simply saying, “Thank you.” 

Let us pray:

You are the giver of all good things.

            All good things are sent from heaven above,

                        rain and sun,

                        day and night,

                        justice and righteousness,

                        bread to the eater and

                        seed to the sower,

                        peace to the old,

                        energy to the young,

                        joy to the babes.

We are takers, who take from you,

            day by day, daily bread,

            taking all we need as you supply

            taking in gratitude and wonder and joy.

And then taking more,

            taking more than you give us,

            taking from our sisters and brothers…

                        taking because we are frightened, and so greedy,

                        taking because we are anxious, and so fearful,

                        taking because we are driven, and so uncaring.

Give us peace beyond our fear, and so end our greed.

Give us well-being beyond our anxiety, and so end our fear.

Give us abundance beyond our driven-ness,

                        and so end our uncaring.

Turn our taking into giving…since we are in your giving image:

            Make us giving like you…,

                                                giving as he gave himself up for us all,

                                                giving, never taking. Amen.

                                                -- Walter Brueggemann

(Read more about Hunter Steinitz in this 2010 Post Gazette article:  http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sectionfront/life/city-girl-aims-to-educate-about-her-skin-disease-253056/)

Ordinary 27C, October 6, 2013

Making Mustard Seeds Out Of Mountains

Luke 17:5-10

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” ⁶The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

⁷“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? ⁸Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? ⁹Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? ¹⁰So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

We have a house rule that really only applies to my son David who is a lottery aficionado.  I don’t know where he got his lottery fervor as neither my husband nor I are gamblers by any stretch of the imagination.  But I once made the mistake of letting David buy a $1.00 scratch off ticket and, wouldn’t you know it, the kid won $5.00.  After that big win, every trip to the Giant Eagle involved a lengthy lecture from Mom about the terrible odds against winning the lottery, and how he’d be much better off buying a pack of gum or a candy bar with that $1.00 because at least he’d have something to show for his investment instead of just a worthless piece of cardboard. 

But this is my son we’re talking about, a kid who isn’t easily dissuaded from anything, so I came up with this house rule to end the quibbling in the check out line: if the Power Ball jackpot reaches more than $250 million, I will buy one ticket. One. And every time the Power Ball has risen over $250 million over the past couple years, I buy one ticket, and then I ask David what he would do with the money.  After a while, I realized that the child really has no idea what he would do with all that money; he just knows he wants to be rich.

So today’s sermon could well be dedicated to my dear son David. In fact, this sermon is dedicated to all of us who imagine that all that we need in order to become super duper Christians is that one winning ticket.  We long for the jumbo jackpot of faith to fall into our laps.  If we only had more faith, everything that is terrible in our lives wouldn’t be so terrible.  If only we had more faith, we could move that proverbial mountain without breaking a sweat. Our super duper faith would be an irresistible beacon of light shining high on a hill, attracting hordes of people to fill our church pews and offering plates.  And if all of us had giant faith, we’d be able to set right a world that seems to be spinning out of control.  We could glide through our days with our faith as a Teflon shield to deflect those horrible hobgoblins of fear, dread and anxiety nipping at our heels, tripping us up at every turn.

Some of us decide that the way to increase our faith is to embark on a spiritual strengthening program. So we pray more.  We read more scripture.  We go to church every Sunday and show up for bible study or Sunday school as often as we are able.  We listen to Christian music and read Christian books.  We do all of that, thinking that our good efforts will deliver the faith fitness we seek, and we measure our progress in those endeavors by how good or how lousy our lives seem to be. If things go well, we figure we have the faith thing nailed.  If things fall apart, we think we’re just not doing enough or doing enough right, or maybe we’re doing our spiritual fitness training with the wrong people at the wrong church.

Well, scripture suggests that this approach may be a bit off the mark.  Spiritual disciplines of prayer, worship, and study are all good things that are worth doing.  But you’re not going to get more faith by doing any more or any less of those things.  No matter how hard we try to increase our faith, we won’t get what we want. The pews in our churches will still be empty, the world will still spin out of control, fear, dread and anxiety will still grip us and, the last time I checked, there are not many mulberry trees bobbing around in the ocean.  There is no magic ticket, no secret faith formula.  We can’t will or work or talk ourselves into having more faith.

It seems to me that this realization is hitting the disciples hard as they follow Jesus.  As we move through the gospel of Luke, we can see that they have been really working at this discipleship thing. Their patience in trying to untangle the words and teachings of Jesus is beginning to wear thin.  And understandably so because the Jesus we see again and again in the gospel is demanding and frankly, a little difficult to deal with.

Jesus’ stories and teachings are so not what the disciples want or expect to hear, and I can understand why they might feel that Jesus is just messing with them.  Jesus keeps insisting on taking everything the disciples believe, and turning their understanding upside down.  The first will be last, the greatest will be the servant, and shameful people like lepers, tax collectors, beggars and youngest sons who blow through family fortunes will receive the highest honor.  People who never cracked open a Torah or set foot in a synagogue seem to be hogging all of Jesus’ attention and getting all the winning tickets.  The disciples feel like they have given up everything, yet Jesus tells them that following him means giving up even more -- close family relationships, all their possessions, and even a comfortable place to lay their head at night.

Then, right before today’s reading, Jesus says, oh wait…here’s one more thing you need to do: forgive and forgive and forgive everyone who sins against you, even if the same person sins against you seven times a day.  And it seems like that notion of radical, repeated forgiveness is what finally blows the disciples’ minds.  The disciples essentially say to him:  “Whoa there, Jesus.  If you want us to do that forgiving thing, we definitely need something more from you.”

I love how the disciples say all the mostly stupid but totally human things we would say if Jesus were standing up here today.  We would give our list of issues to Jesus including everything that’s messed up in the world from our own family situations to our lousy health to the wars raging in the Middle East and budgets crashing in D.C.  We would cry out, “Jesus we want more faith,” as if faith is a power we can control or manipulate, or as if our lack of faith is the only explanation for why the world is so screwed up and we can’t do anything about it.

The disciples in the text today want more faith because it has become all too clear that this discipleship thing is really hard.  Following Jesus is extraordinarily difficult on good days and almost impossible on bad ones.  Living up to the expectations of Jesus is made even more complicated by the fact that Jesus keeps speaking in parables and never seems to answer their direct questions.  The disciples need something from Jesus that will keep them from losing it entirely.

We WANT more faith because we have decided that whatever faith we do have isn’t nearly enough to deal with the reality of our lives in this world.  Which is why I think we spend so much time hoping that our faith will at least be enough to get us into the next world, because it sure doesn’t seem like enough faith to fix this one.

But Jesus won’t let us off the hook.  Jesus says that faith no bigger than a mustard seed is enough to do everything we are called to do. That our itty bitty teensy weeney faith is more than enough to carry us beyond what we think achievable in the right here and the right now.

I’m not sure we really know exactly what we would do if our faith increased 250 million times over night, any more than my son would know what to do with $250 million dollars.  We just have this nagging feeling that we somehow don’t have enough of something to do the things that seem to need doing.  Faith seems as good an answer as anything to our feelings of Christian inadequacy.

Over the past several weeks, I have been serving on two different presbytery committees assisting two different churches.  One of the churches is very, very small with extremely fragile finances.  I mean seriously fragile finances.  It is possible that this church is just a few weeks or months away from closing their doors and dissolving their congregation.  At the same time, I am working with another church that has plenty of members, a huge endowment, and every material resource to do ministry for a long, long time.

You would think that these two churches in very different financial places would be facing different sets of problems.  But the leadership in both churches use almost the exact same language in describing their fear, dread, anxiety about the future.  And it has occurred to me that what both churches need is not more faith or more hope, or even more or less money.  

What they need is more Jesus. What we need is more Jesus.

We need the One who not only leads the disciples to a place where they will see his suffering and death on a cross BUT also the One who will lead them from death to resurrection.  We need the Jesus who will lead us not only to the edge of the cliff where things look awful, dark and scary, but will jump with us into the pit and stay with us while we try to figure a way out.  And it is that same Jesus who will lift us out of the ditch, dust us off and set us on the path to new life.  There are no spiritual short cuts.  Only Jesus.

To that end, perhaps the only other thing we need more of is that very Jewish concept –  chutzpah.  Chutzpah comes from the Hebrew word that means “audacity” -- to look in the face of things that are difficult and things that are hard and say: "We can do this. We can do what we need to do not because we have super awesome faith, because we have Jesus.  We can do the hard work of living and loving and staring death in the face without allowing the hobgoblins of fear, dread and anxiety to send us into a panic."   

In that sense, this quirky parable about the slave who just shows up, does the work and expects nothing in return makes a little more sense.  The parable reminds us who we are -- servants of the servant – following Jesus who came to serve, not to be served.   Like Jesus, we are to do the tasks given to us not because we will receive the thanks of more members, more money, more security, but because our actions are our obedience to the One who cares for us in all things, the One to whom we belong in life and in death, the One in whom we move and live and have our being.

Maybe, just maybe, this faith stuff is a matter of having chutzpah -- the outright audacity to get up every morning and tend to what is right in front of us.  Maybe it is trusting that we have been equipped to do every task God gives us, and that everything we do has a huge impact in the way the kingdom of God measures things.  Which is entirely opposite of the way in which we measure things in the world.  In the kingdom of God, small is beautiful and powerful and capable.

So maybe what we need is not more faith.  Maybe we just have to stop making mustard seeds out of the mountains of faith we’ve been given. 

We look at ourselves and see smallness and scarcity. Jesus looks at us and sees power beyond our imagination.

We think what we do is unimportant, mundane and maybe sometimes dull.  Jesus celebrates every small kindness we do and every genuine act of love as a giant step toward the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

Deep down, we doubt that we are worthy of love or forgiveness.  Jesus loves us as we are and forgives us as we are.  In fact, Jesus is crazy about us in the way a parent is crazy about even the most rebellious child and would do just about anything to help us see ourselves as the miracle we are.

We grieve for a church that we think is dying.  Jesus rejoices over a church that he alone is transforming. 

We believe we live in a world in which there isn’t enough, and if we give away too much, there won’t be enough leftover for us. Jesus invites us to live into God’s vision of a world in which there is more than enough for everyone.  Even enough for second helpings. 

If you do not believe me, I invite you to come to this table today where we are assured that the grace of Jesus is sufficient, God’s promises are sure, and that our fear, dread and anxiety are nothing – NOTHING – compared to God’s generosity, abundance and love.  On World Communion Sunday, we gather around this table with Jesus’ disciples of this age, in every place around the globe, to share this simple meal.  We gather because what we really need – what we really hunger and thirst for – is to stand close to one another and closer to the One who has promised to walk with us through this age and in ages to come.  Here are stuffed silly with God’s love for us.  It is enough.

Beloved, it is time to relax and shake off those hobgoblins of fear, dread and anxiety. Come to the table.  Eat.  Drink.  All has been prepared.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

After the sermon, the Emsworth U.P. congregation sang its first new song from the new Presbyterian hymnal, "Glory to God."  Here is a beautiful version of the song we sang: "Your Are Mine" by David Haas. 

I will come to you in the silence
I will lift you from all your fear
You will hear My voice
I claim you as My choice
Be still, and know I am near

I am hope for all who are hopeless
I am eyes for all who long to see
In the shadows of the night,
I will be your light
Come and rest in Me

Chorus:
Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine

I am strength for all the despairing
Healing for the ones who dwell in shame
All the blind will see, the lame will all run free
And all will know My name

Chorus:
Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine

I am the Word that leads all to freedom
I am the peace the world cannot give
I will call your name, embracing all your pain
Stand up, now, walk, and live

Chorus:
Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine

Ordinary 26C, September 29, 2013

Risky Business

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. ²At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, ³where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him.

⁶Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: ⁷Hanamel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.” ⁸Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.” Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. ⁹And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. ¹⁰I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. ¹¹Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; ¹²and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard. ¹³In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, ¹⁴Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. ¹⁵For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

We return to the book of Jeremiah this morning not because things are looking any better for Judah than they did last week.  Last week, we heard Jeremiah weeping a fountain of tears over a people who had pretty much messed up in every way it is possible to mess up.  Today, Judah’s future is looking even more bleak.

For more than 20 years, Jeremiah preached to the careless and forgetful people.  He preached judgment because the people kept turning to the many false idols that they had created for themselves.  Jeremiah called the people to turn back to YHWH for their security.  Jeremiah warned them over and over again of doom and gloom, telling the leaders and the people of Judah that if they kept going in the direction they were going, they would most certainly lose everything dear to them --  their land, their independence, their very identity as a nation of God’s chosen people. And despite Jeremiah’s prophetic tenacity and fervor, nobody wanted to hear what he had to say. 

And in today’s text, it’s all coming to a head.  It is the end for Judah, just as Jeremiah had warned them.  The army of Babylon is beginning its siege of Jerusalem. Very soon, most of the people who either hadn’t heard or completely tuned out Jeremiah’s warnings will be exiled from the land and dragged into captivity.  The nation of Judah has no foreseeable future.  The land they had cultivated for generations will be worthless.  The temple will fall.  Everything Jeremiah foretold has come to pass. 

And in this moment of national crisis, where is Jeremiah?  The great prophet is in jail.  Jeremiah told King Zedekiah something that no ruler ever wants to hear – that his power is worthless and his enemies will prevail.  Such talk tagged the prophet as a traitor.  Zedekiah had quite enough of Jeremiah’s nay-saying and threw Jeremiah into prison.  Unfortunately, for the king and everyone else in Judah, Jeremiah’s predictions are unfolding before their eyes. 

And then the strangest thing happens.

Out of the gathering storm clouds, Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel emerges.  Hanamel comes to see Jeremiah in prison to ask him if he would be willing to buy a piece of family property in Anathoth.  Jeremiah seems to have foreseen this offer from his cousin coming – in fact, Jeremiah prophesizes that his cousin is going to come to him and offer to sell him this property.  But Jeremiah’s response to his cousin’s offer is really very strange.  

Because this is Jeremiah, after all.  This is the guy who has been preaching doom and gloom for years, a prophet who sees nothing but ruin in Judah’s foreseeable future.  And yet, Jeremiah does something very strange.  Jeremiah not only agrees to buy the property, but also agrees to pay full price for land that is most certainly going to be worthless within a matter of hours, days or weeks.  Hanamel looks like a total genius in dumping the property and Jeremiah’s decision to buy it seems utterly foolish.

After all, it’s not like God directly told Jeremiah to agree to the deal.  God did give Jeremiah advance notice that his cousin would be coming with the offer to sell the land to Jeremiah.  But notice, the word of the Lord doesn’t include instructions on what Jeremiah is to do.  The word of the Lord only tells Jeremiah that the opportunity will present itself.

And this raises a very interesting question for all of us.  How do we discern what God would have us do when it seems as though the smartest, safest, most intelligent option would be to say, “no?”   What would God have us do when we are presented with something that seems, on its surface, totally reckless and foolish?

Jeremiah’s decision to purchase the property from his cousin is like someone paying full price for a piece of uninsured beachfront property on a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina when a category 5 hurricane is roaring toward shore.  It is like saying yes to buying a house next to a vacant field that is slated to become a toxic waste dump.  In other words, Jeremiah saying “yes” to his cousin is probably the most spectacularly stupid thing that Jeremiah could possibly do at that moment.  Given what he knew was going to happen momentarily, the smartest, sanest thing for Jeremiah to do would be to keep the shekels he had and get ready for the coming invasion. Who could blame Jeremiah if he had said “no way” to his shrewd cousin’s blatantly self-serving plan to dump a soon-to-be-worthless real estate holding into Jeremiah’s lap for seventeen shekels of cold, hard, silver cash money?  Buying a piece of land in a war zone was about the dumbest thing Jeremiah could do. 

And it is exactly the kind of stupid thing that the people of God are called to do ALL THE TIME.  God is always calling God’s people to do things that look like utter and complete foolishness.  

Think about Abraham and Sarah leaving a pretty sweet and stable gig in Ur to follow the voice of YHWH.  Think about Moses taking on the most powerful man in Egypt just because a burning bush told him to do it.  Think about a young, unmarried girl named Mary being asked to take part in this incredibly bizarre plan presented to her out of nowhere by an angel.  I could go on and on with these examples of ordinary people agreeing to do blatantly foolish and sometimes even dangerous things in response to God’s call.  But God has a history of calling out ordinary people who just sitting around, minding their own business.  And God trusts that at least some of them will say “Yes” to God’s crazy plans which frequently require them to do something that most people would consider very, very ill-considered.  

If fact, it is rather astonishing that God ever gets anything done with any of us at all.  We’d all rather look wise than faithfully foolish.  We’d much rather hedge our bets than go all-in the way Jeremiah goes all-in on God’s vision for the future. 

Given what was going on all around Jeremiah, he had more than enough reason to say no to his cousin’s offer.  He had ample evidence to just take what was left of his shekels and go on to Babylon and spend the rest of his days telling those faithless people of Judah that he told them so.  That’s what I would do.  Maybe that’s what you would do.  That’s what a lot of people do.  At one time or another, we are so stressed out about what looks like an absolutely hopeless future that we are ready to just give in, give up, put our money in the mattress, stock up on guns and bottled water, and hunker down to protect what we have.

But not Jeremiah.  After all those years of preaching nothing but doom and gloom, God gives Jeremiah a brand new sermon to take to the people of Judah.  After years of despair, Jeremiah is given a tiny glimpse of something that looks an awful lot like – dare I say it -- hope.  In the midst of Judah’s past and present crumbling all around him, Jeremiah decides to engage in the risky business of investing in God’s future.  Jeremiah catches a glimpse of God’s deep desire to begin again.  Even with feckless, faithless Judah.  Somehow Jeremiah spies a future lying beneath the nation’s dismal present.  A future with houses, flourishing fields and verdant vineyards.

What I find most poignant about this story is that Jeremiah is investing in a future he will never see.  And I think Jeremiah knows this, which is why he instructs Baruch to take the paperwork involving the transfer of the property and put them in an earthenware jar so they can last for a long time.  Jeremiah makes this foolish investment in a future he will never see, but there is one thing he knows for sure.  The future for him, for the people of Judah, for the people of God in every time and place is always in God’s sure and loving hands.  Jeremiah’s strength is not in his power of positive thinking or Pollyanna optimism.  Jeremiah’s resilience is rooted in his willingness to be so honest about the darkness that he can also perceive the light that is beginning to creep back in. 

One of my favorite things to do when I am alone in the church is to walk around and look at the old pictures hanging on the walls.  I especially love the pictures of the old Sunday school classes and the pictures of the church building when it was newly constructed.  I realized this week that we are only two years away from the 150^th anniversary of the founding of this church as well as the 120^th anniversary of the building. 

I sometimes look at those pictures of people who invested their time and money and energy into that new church in the 19^th century and I wonder – what did they envision for the future?  What would they think if they saw us now?  Would they be dismayed that the church is no longer filled to bursting or would they be amazed that we’re even still here?  Did that investment of 150 years ago pay off in the way they imagined it would?

At the presbytery meeting this week, we learned that Dormont Presbyterian Church will soon sell their building to Northway Christian Community.  You probably know something about Northway – it is a huge mega-church with satellite campuses all over the Pittsburgh area. Dormont Presbyterian Church was once one of the largest churches in Pittsburgh Presbytery with a membership in the thousands.  Nearly every person I’ve run into has a Dormont story.  Nearly everybody in the presbytery knows somebody who was a member, baptized, married or confirmed in the Dormont Presbyterian Church.  It has been a sad, hard time for that congregation.  Selling the building was a painful, but necessary step in their life as a community.

Yet, there will still be ministry happening on that corner in Dormont, but not a Presbyterian ministry.  There will not be the sort of traditional worship services that have been there for the past 100 years.  What will be in that space is nothing at all what the original founders of that church could have possibly imagined.  A coffee bar?  Computer screens? 

The Dormont Presbyterian congregation has a future, although it is a future still unfolding.  Without the idol of a giant, expensive building weighing them down, the people of Dormont Presbyterian have been set free to turn toward God’s future for them, wherever that may lead them.

From that perspective, I do not see what is happening in any of the churches in this presbytery or in this denomination as a cautionary tale to hunker down and stop making investments in the future.  If anything, I think the prophet Jeremiah calls us to go all-in on the investment our ancestors made on our behalf long ago.  I think Jeremiah tells us that we should be confident and crazy enough to invest our souls, our spirit, our energies, our creativity and, yes, our money into something that even I will admit doesn’t look entirely promising – the PCUSA.  But we can take chances and dream big knowing that God has a future in mind for us, as Jeremiah says in chapter 29: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope (Jer. 29:11).

Jeremiah’s risky and seemingly ridiculous real estate transaction is a radical act of hope for the people of Israel.

The war and destruction they see around them will not have the final say.

The failure of the political system and religious structures will not have the final say.

The death of a denomination or even death on a cross is not God’s final judgment on God’s people.

God’s final judgment is forgiveness.  God’s final judgment is grace.  God’s final judgment is not the church visible with all our flaws and foibles and fiascos, but the church triumphant when we will finally see exactly what God has had in mind for us all along.

We can say no.  We can say yes.  We can say no to God’s future and stick with the idols that will drag us down.  Or we can say yes and make a deep commitment to a future that we can hardly imagine and may not live to see, but can trust as God’s good plan for God’s people.  Deep commitment brings deep healing, and deep healing brings deep generosity. Commitment allows us to take the lids off the earthenware jars that are our lives, and helps us to embrace change.[1]

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

---

[1] http://inwardoutward.org.  September 28, 2013. “Living into Change.”

Prayer Garden Kickoff at Avon Club Fall Festival

Many, many thanks to everyone helped out at the Avon Fall Festival on September 28th!  The community's response to our plans for a neighborhood prayer garden including an outdoor labyrinth was amazing and encouraging.  We gave out more than 200 balloons with our labyrinth logo, dozens of dog treats, lollipops, and talked with so many members of the community that we were hoarse by the end of the afternoon!  Kids and adults alike loved walking our "temporary" labyrinth that was skillfully crafted by Jon Stellfox.  Many neighbors offered to donate plants, time and prayers to help our vision for a beautiful contemplative space a reality in our little corner in Emsworth.

Special thanks to Bez Stellfox, Donna Hunter, Erin Williams, Dan Williams, Tom Smart, Marti Smart and everyone who helped make the day such a wonderful success!  Keep watching your bulletin, newsletter and this blog for more information as the prayer garden moves forward.  For more information about what's going on and how you can help, please contact Pastor Susan or leave a comment below!

Ordinary 25C, September 22, 2013

The Balm in Gilead Looks Like My iPhone

Jeremiah 8:18 – 9:1

 My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land:“Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” 

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”) 

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

 For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?

 O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!

The process of preparing a sermon each week is a strange and odd thing.  I suspect that sermon preparation is something most people would rather not see…sort of like sausage-making or open-heart surgery. All of you have arrived here this morning expecting to hear a word from the Lord spoken by your thoroughly imperfect, occasionally inelegant, but always earnest pastor.  When you listen to my sermons or anyone’s sermons, you probably don’t have a strong curiosity about how it got written, as long as I show up with something reasonably reasonable when 11:15 rolls around.

Well, today I’m going to take the risk of telling you about the ugly process I went through this week. I promise, there is a point to the stupid story you are about to hear about my stupid week.  This was a week in which I was gob-smacked more than usual by the Holy Spirit and now that it’s Sunday and I’m standing up here before you, I feel compelled to honestly confess that I totally deserve every blessed moment of the week’s misery. 

But despite, or maybe because of my stupidity, I think I learned something important about idolatry, grief, and the unbelievable power of human self-delusion and denial.  And all of these lessons were cheerfully delivered to me by the Holy Spirit via the comedian Louis CK, Bruce Springsteen, and my local Apple Store.  And, believe it or not, all of these have something to do with the text from Jeremiah.  Because Jeremiah is really, at its heart, a book about idolatry, grief, and the power of human self-delusion and idolatry. 

Here’s what Jeremiah asks in our text this morning.  Is there no balm in Gilead?  What a totally silly question.  Of course there is.   I even brought it with me.  (Hold up the new iPhone).

Do you know what this is?  This is an iPhone 5s, the new phone released this past Friday by Apple.  My balm in Gilead is this phone.  It is my idol.  It is the healing balm for which I stood in line for 3 ½ hours on Friday morning.  And so did a lot of other people all around the country. 

Understand that I did not plan this expedition. I’m not that crazy.  I was sort of forced into line by circumstance.  Two days before releasing the new iPhones, Apple released a new operating system for all their iPhones. I downloaded the new system to my old phone because I thought it would help my old phone run a little better.  

Well, that was a really terrible idea.  Installing this new software on my old phone was the final insult to its system.  All dayThursday, I missed a bunch of calls, received texts hours after they were sent, couldn’t access my email or my calendar, totally lost track of who was liking what on Facebook, and couldn’t a score for the Pirates game.  I was totally and utterly rudderless.  Well-played Apple.  Well-played.

When I woke on Friday morning, I hadn’t planned on getting a new phone.  I thought I could wait a couple days.  But when my friend called to tell me that she was in line at the Apple store to get a new phone and did I want to come join her, I hesitated for about a minute and said, sure…how long could it take?  My balm was on the horizon.  A shiny new idol.  How I could I resist? 

It took 3 ½  hours.  But finally…I had it.  (Hold up the phone again)  Isn’t it beautiful?  Shiny?  Fast?  And look…it can read my fingerprint so I don’t have to put in a passcode.  So it’s magic too.

After standing in line for 3 ½ hours, I went to a meeting at the seminary and by mid-afternoon on Friday, I was heading home to finish the sermon which I had mostly done on Monday. 

I got home, went to my computer, turned it on and instead of the comforting “boing” of a laptop booting up, I heard alarm bells.  I never knew laptops could make that sound, but evidently they do when the hard drive is completely fried. 

To make a long story shorter, Jesus saves and so do I, but the last back up I had done on my computer was two weeks ago.  Which meant my mostly written sermon from Monday was gone.  Kaput.  All gone.

So, on Saturday afternoon, once I had a functioning computer, I had to begin this sermon all over again.   I had to start all over again with the weeping prophet Jeremiah and this beautiful yet haunting passage about what happens when a group of people get so caught up with the things that seem important, that they lose track of what really matters.   I had to face the fact that idols come in all shapes and sizes, and I was as guilty as anyone of slobbering over all of the external things I think are critical to keeping my life running smoothly.

Which is, of course, what happened in Judah.   They got caught up in the day to day struggle of trying to keep their lives running smoothly – which for the people of Israel meant trying to scratch out an existence as a small country surrounded by much bigger and much more powerful enemies.  The people in Judah, as spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, motivated by anxiety and fear, had lost sight of their covenant with YHWH and wandered off to go after worthless things and, in the process, had become worthless themselves (Jer. 2:5).  The people had given in to the easy and less-demanding comfort of false idols, all the while deluding themselves with a false sense of security they would always be ok because YHWH lived in Zion. As Jeremiah puts it, they became stupid children with no understanding who had become skilled in doing evil and did not know how to do good (Jer. 4:22).

God looks down on the earth and what does God see?  People standing in line for iPhones. 

Like every human being who has walked this earth since Judah fell in 587 B.C., the people of Judah fell hard for all the shiny things that they imagined would make them secure.  And human beings sure do love shiny things.  Bombs.  Guns.  New cars.  The soothing balms of food and alcohol.  The idols of money and power.   All of those things we imagine can protect us or make us feel good.  In every generation, you can observe the way in which all of us, every one of us, are lured to the things that fill us up as we attempt to fill in the hole that is God-shaped in every human being.  

As St. Augustine so astutely observed, we are cranky, anxious creatures with restless hearts, endlessly searching for a place to land.  Until we come to the place when we understand that no other idol is going to fill our God-shaped spaces, our hearts will wander restlessly until they rest in God. 

The people of Judah found this out the hard way.  Despite the warnings of prophets like Jeremiah, the people of Judah drifted so far away from being the people God desired them to be, there was nothing left for God to do but let the rug be pulled out from under them by an invading army. The Babylonians hit Judah like a ton of bricks.  The once fruitful land became a desert.  All the cities were laid in ruins (Jer. 4:26). 

The alarm bells of broken idols are ringing loud and clear in our text today.  And the voice of God asks in sorrow, why did they do it? “Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”

Why indeed?  Why did they not listen?  Why do we not listen?  Why do we not listen to the sirens that sound around us every day, warning us that we’re staking our faith on idols and balms that cannot save us?

The onerous drone that we hear every day can become overwhelming.  An economy still sputtering.  Families facing cuts in food stamps.  People struggling to pay their bills.  Friends and family struggling with physical and mental illness in a fractured and frustrating system of health care.  Just this week, think about what have we had to wrap our tired minds around?  The continuing impasse in Washington, D.C.  Chemical weapons and unreliable allies.  Old wars, civil wars and the very real prospect of new wars.  The death of dozens in Chicago.  A mall bomb in Nairobi. The deaths of thousands in Syria. 

Given what is going on in the world, it is small wonder we turn to balms and idols and anything we can get our hands on. It is not surprising that we rely upon easy, comfortable balms when there seems to be no answer to hard questions. We cling to idols when everyday anxiety threatens to choke us up and leave us weeping like Jeremiah.  Nobody wants to wade into the muck of deep human misery that Jeremiah experiences.

 My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick…

O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!

On Saturday afternoon, as I was floundering around, trying to recreate my sermon, I watched a clip from the Conan show on Friday night.  Conan’s guest was Louis C.K. who is a really great comedian.  Louis was talking about his decision not to allow his teenage daughters to have a smart phone because he thinks they are thoroughly toxic for the human soul.  Although he didn’t use the word, “idol,” his description of what smart phones do to us as human beings really resonated with me given the week I had with technology.  And what he said also resonated with the kind of deep down grief you hear in this text from Jeremiah. 

What idols do – whether they are iPhone or foreign gods or sports teams or anything else – is take away our ability to just be who we are without doing something to distract us from the very real pain that life hands to us.  The average Judean lived in constant anxiety about weather, flooding, drought, children dying in infancy, epidemics and other harsh realities of ancient agrarian existence.  Living with tension and anxiety certainly made turning to idols an almost an irresistible force. Our lives in the 21^st century are certainly less precarious than those of the ancients, but we do live with anxieties that are simply a part of being human.

On the Conan show, Louis CK described those everyday moments in which we feel a deep sadness.  And when those moments wash over us, Louis says we turn to the closest idol available.  For me, it’s this (hold up the iPhone).  For you, it may be something else.  But it’s what we do when we feel lost and vulnerable. 

Louis CK said that one day he was in his car and a Bruce Springsteen song came on the radio and while listening to it, he was filled an almost unspeakable sadness and longing.  He said he had to try hard to resist the urge to pick up his phone, maybe text a few friends, and find a distraction that would make the sadness go away.   And he said he realized that it is so hard for us just to allow ourselves to be sad, to just cry about things that really deserve to be cried about.  About the loss of a friend or a job.  The absurdity of old age and the stress of trying to find our way in youth.  About the terrible beauty of raising children and the awful pain of letting them go. 

We can make an idol out of anything.  A spouse or a lover.  A miraculous healing or a chronic illness.  An imagined hurt or a real one.  Anytime we’re in a place in which we turn away from who we are meant to be before God, we are worshipping an idol.  Anything that distracts us from being fully present to the Creator who loves us, and fully engaged in the world God entrusted us to care for and love on God’s behalf is a balm that will ultimately disappoint us in the end.  

There is no balm in Gilead.  There are no easy answers for the healing of a sin sick world.  The balm that will ultimately heal us is beyond our ability to prescribe, procure or even purchase, no matter how long we’re willing to stand in line.  We can not escape the terror of simply being human while we traipse upon this earth.  The only meaning we can hope to claim as sure and lasting is the identity we have as children of God and as brothers and sisters in Christ.  That is the only promise in which our hearts may find rest.  This is the reality that lays beneath every other reality -- the peace of Christ, the love of God and the gob-smacking companionship of the Holy Spirit which comforts us, challenges us, weeps with us and invites us into God’s future. 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Here's Louis CK on Conan (9/20/13)

And a bonus song:  "Jungleland"  from "Born to Run" released in 1975.