Angels we have heard: Christmas Eve

 Every year I wonder, what can I possibly say that would be new?  I know that there is really nothing new to say, but I still try to find new ways to share the message of the birth of Christ.  This year I decided to try to imagine what it would be like watching the events from heaven.  The following is a conversation between two angels.  One angel is in italics.  I also have a video and will post that soon.

----------------the story begins----------- 

“Oh my….have you heard? Tonight is the night.  The whole heavenly host is going down to visit our Lord’s people on earth.”

“Has that ever happened?”

“Not that I know of.  Sometimes, our Lord has sent down one, or two or three of his messengers to deliver his holy word, but never an entire army, a heavenly host.”

Will they bring their swords? Will there be a great battle?  I know that our Lord is most displeased.

You are right.  Our Lord is angry.  We have all heard him ranting and raving.  It’s just like when he watches sports: “Why are they doing that again?  How many times have I told them not to do that?”  When he is angry, it gets tense.  Once I went down myself to see what was going on.  It was bad.  I don’t know why people are acting like this.  It’s like they don’t even believe anymore.

I heard Gabriel went down several months ago and talked to someone. The heavenly choirs have been talking about it ever since.  You know how choirs are….Do you know why he went?”

 Well, I have heard something, but it doesn’t make any sense. They say he went to talk to a young woman named Mary.  He told her that she was going to bear the Son of God.  But that does not make any sense.  That seems like a drastic measure.  To send the Son of God down as a baby is risky.  Anything could happen.  It’s not safe.  Maybe that is why the heavenly host is going down.  They will be the body guards for the baby.

 Shhh….it’s happening now. 

 Wait…..who are they talking to?  Are they talking to shepherds?  Why are they talking to shepherds?  No one is going to get the message if they are talking to shepherds. No one listens to shepherds.

 Shhhh….we won’t be able to hear it if you keep jabbering.

Trumpet fanfare. An angel from the choir loft proclaims:

“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 

Choir says together:
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

What could they mean? Why are they bringing joy? I thought God was disappointed.  This does not make any sense.

It does seem a little odd. Why send an army of angels to deliver that kind of message?  And what kind of sign is that….a baby in a manger?  Surely an army of angels could have done anything.

 They should have done that moving fire that our Lord used to lead Moses and his people out of Egypt.  Fire always gets people’s attention.  What is a little baby going to do?

Our Lord likes to think outside of the box.  Maybe since nothing else has really worked, he decided to shake things up a bit.  I am sure this baby is more than just your average baby, not that all babies aren’t always cute, but this is the Son of God.

 What was it again that Gabriel told the girl...Mary?

 

He told her that she would conceive a son, and she will name him Jesus.  He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.  He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

 Woh! That is huge news.  This Mary must be very powerful.  She must be a married to a king.

 That’s the thing, she is not married.  She is young and has very little.  She is a peasant.  But I have heard that she is very holy.  She is one of God’s favorites.  Our Lord told me that she has been especially chosen.

 That is a huge job.  Hey look, the shepherds are moving.  They looked pretty scared when all those angels were talking. Angels can be a little showy at times.  They really like to make an entrance.  No wonder the shepherds were terrified. 

 Just because you did not get chosen is no reason to be critical.  They needed to be sure to get their attention.  How else would you convince a bunch of shepherds that the savoir of humanity is about to be born to an unmarried peasant in a barn?  I mean really, you can’t make this stuff up.

 I hope they find him.

 I am sure our Lord will make sure they do.  Obviously he wanted those shepherds to be the first to greet the new baby.  Wait….it really is barn.  Do you see the baby?

 They put our Lord’s son, the hope of all humanity, in animal feeding trough?  What are they thinking?

I think it is all that they have.  Our Lord chose Mary because she is holy and good, not because she has money or power.

The shepherds are talking to them.  They have seen the Christ child. One of them is leaning over the manger in wonder.  They are so excited! They are telling them everything they saw, everything the angels told them.  They are doing a good job telling the story.  I heard shepherds are good story tellers.  It looks like Mary and Joseph are listening. Look at Mary.  She seems so wise, so pure and good.  I think I understand why our Lord chose her over a queen.  Now the shepherds are leaving.  They are making quite a raucous with their loud shouts and praises for our Lord.  That is how it should always be.  Our Lord should always be praised with such wild abandon.  Hopefully they will share the good news with the people.

 Maybe that is why our Lord chose these regular people to bear witness to this miracle. This is why he chose a baby to be his representative on earth.  It is the only way people are going to hear.  If they listen, they will come to know God as we know God.

 Do you think the baby will be safe?

 I don’t know if he will be safe.  I am sure Mary and Joseph will keep him safe for as long as they can, but as soon as people realize who he is, as soon as he starts sharing God’s message, he is no longer safe.  

 Maybe God will send the heavenly host down when things get dangerous. Our Lord can protect anyone.

 I don’t think that’s his plan this time around.  I think Jesus will grow up with the people and he will love them just as our Lord loves them.  Maybe our Lord realized that the other ways of communicating with his people wasn’t really working.  They needed to experience our Lord’s love up close and personal.

 It cannot be safe.  I am worried for him. What if it doesn’t work?

 Even we do not know what will come of this, but our Lord has a plan.  It’s a different kind of plan than we are used to.  It’s so crazy, it might just work.

I hope the people listen this time.

I do too. 

Priest to the congregation:

The plan will only work if they people will listen. Will you, the people of St. John’s, listen on this Christmas Eve?

Soul Power: December 20, 2015

Year C, Advent 4                                          

Luke 1:39-55                                                              

It’s that time of year when we start talking about Mary.  It’s pretty much the only time we talk about Mary, which always bugs me a little.  There is a lot more to Mary than the nativity story.  There is more to her than a blue robe and a beatific smile. 

Throughout my life I have had an on again off again relationship with Mary.  Being that the Roman Catholic Church was a rather male dominated denomination, I often found myself talking to Mary-just so I could talk to a woman. I felt like she could understand me better.  As I started questioning my place in the Catholic Church, Mary was hurled at me as an example of the perfect female; submissive, obedient and sinless.  I began to resent her and saw her as another impossible ideal that I could never live up to. 

A couple of years ago, I had another change of heart about Mary.  For the first time I read the Magnificat as a powerful manifesto of sorts.  She talked about bringing down the powerful and sending the rich away empty.  It seemed like a rebel cry, a cry of a woman who had been one of the lowly, the poor, the ostracized.  For the first time, I saw the feistiness of Mary and I once again found myself identifying with her.  This time I tried to look at the whole picture of Mary. It turns out that the whole picture is not so very whole.  Very little is said about Mary in the Bible. The Gospel of Mark does not even mention her by name.  Paul (who wrote one third of the New Testament) only refers to her once and she was not named.

            What we know about Mary comes from the 3 Gospels that mention her as well as The Book of Acts.  This is what those sources tell us: She was engaged to a man named Joseph and lived in Nazareth where she was visited by an angel and agreed to bear the Son of God.  She visited her cousin Elizabeth who also had conceived miraculously.   She was a Virgin and gave birth to Jesus.  She was Jewish and followed the purity rites by having Jesus circumcised on the 8^th day.  She worried when she lost him for several days while in Jerusalem.  She asked him to perform his first miracle. She was at his crucifixion.  She was with the disciples after his crucifixion.   There are a lot of things we can infer from that information, but as far as facts, that is all we have. 

            Yet sometimes it is the small things that allow us to really know a person. We don’t need to know the life story of someone to feel that we know them.  In my quest to know Mary this time around, I became fixed on two verses.  The first comes from what we heard today. “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”  I kept wondering what it means to have your soul magnify the Lord.  Magnify essentially means to declare something great, to exalt.  It would seem that she did not need words to magnify the Lord, her soul, her very being magnified the Lord.  If that was all I knew about someone, that would probably be enough.   I started wondering what it would take to have your soul magnify the Lord.  Would it require constant prayer…a sinless life?  It seems like a long shot.   

            As I read on in the Gospel of Luke, I came across what is commonly referred to as the Song of Simeon.  When Mary took Jesus to be circumcised at the temple, she encountered two very devout individuals. The first was Simeon who immediately recognized this 8 day old infant as the Son of God.  He then proclaimed to Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”  Simeon was essentially telling Mary that her child would be rejected and it would be so painful it would pierce her soul.  Her soul….her soul that magnifies the Lord was destined to be pierced.

            It was.  When they pierced her son’s side at his crucifixion, there is no doubt that her soul was pierced at the same time.  Yet her soul, her soul that exalted the Lord by its very existence was scarred but not broken.  I suspect that all along, her soul was preparing for that moment, that moment that caused stronger men to run and hide found Mary, and her radiant soul at the foot of the cross watching her son die.    

I wish my soul magnified the Lord.  There are moments when it does, and it is then when I feel most whole, like you could pierce so many holes, and I would still be standing.  The Lord wants to be worshipped.   God talks about it all the time in the Bible.  It almost seems a little needy.  If God is so great, why does he need little old humans to worship him? 

I believe that we worship God not only to please God, but to strengthen our own soul.  In worshipping God, we create and maintain a relationship with him.  God wants to be worshipped so that we can know him and he can know us.   When our soul magnifies the Lord, it means that we are in relationship with God and that relationship gives us strength.

That is what people like Mary teach us, how to be humans in relationship with God.  Sometimes things will fall into place.  We will know exactly what God wants and like Mary, we will have Elizabeths in our life who can affirm what we are feeling.  Sometimes, our relationship with God will look a bit like an impressionist painting, kind of blurry, but beautiful.  And sometimes, there will be pain and confusion. We will wonder why there is so much pain in a relationship with a being as perfect as God.  Mary experienced all of this.  She prayed and questioned.  She leaned on people when she needed to.  And sometimes she was alone in her faith and fear. Yet in the end, she was the mother of God, and nothing could change that.  You might think, yeah, but I am not the mother or father of God.  You are right.  We are children of God.  And no matter where we are or what we do, nothing can change that.  Our souls can be pierced, but they will not be broken. 

Nonetheless: December 13, 2015

Advent 3, Year C             
Zephaniah 3:14-20                                                                

 

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  Many were killed, but some survived. Sadako Sasaki was only two years old when the bomb was dropped a mile from her home.  She was unscathed as were many of her family.  They were the survivors, those who remained after so many had been killed.  However, 10 years after the bomb was dropped, her family discovered that Sadako had leukemia which at the time was referred to as “A-bomb disease.” [1]  She was told by the doctor that she had less than a year to live.  She was determined to live and tried hard to leave the hospital whenever she could.  On August 6^th, they had a ceremony near the site of the atomic bomb’s epicenter, which had been recently named Peace Park.  She was not able to stay but heard a song while she was there.  She sang it all the way home and as she lay in her hospital bed bleeding and in pain, she continued to sing. [2]  She even taught the song to her roommate. While she was in the hospital, a group donated origami paper for the patients.  A legend at the time was that if you fold 1000 paper cranes, your wish would be granted.  Sadako set out to accomplish this task in hopes that her wish for life would be granted.  She did not stop at 1000.  She continued to fold them until she died.  On one of the cranes, the discovered that she had written, “I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

            I learned about Sadaka’s story after I read a commentary that referenced her briefly.  As I read more about her, I could not tear myself away from the story.  The part about her singing in her hospital bed reminded me of our reading from Zephaniah.   Our reading begins with, “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion, shout, O Israel!”  This comes after two and a half chapters of the prophet Zephaniah railing against the people saying that God will destroy the people and the land because they have not obeyed God.   Zephaniah went on and on about the horrible things that would happen to the people of Judah as a result of their behavior.  Yet if you look at our reading for today the prophet seems downright cheery.  Not only does he encourage the people to shout for joy, he describes a God who will “rejoice over you with gladness…exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”  

            This is quite a change from the God who wanted to destroy them. The Book of Zephaniah is only three chapters long and in the first two and a half chapters,  Zephaniah was not a happy prophet.  It is unclear what exactly was going on but some people have surmised that the beginning part was before the Babylonian exile where there was all kinds of bad behavior. Then the Babylonians came and carted off most of the Hebrew people, leaving a small group to remain.  Because of the hopeful and joyful tone of the last chapter, scholars and readers have hypothesized that these words of hope were for those who remained in Jerusalem, the survivors.  These people, often referred to as the remnant, had seen their holy city destroyed.  They saw their loved ones carted away to a foreign land to serve their enemy as slaves.  They undoubtedly saw many of their friends and family killed.  They were left behind to pick up the pieces and pray that they would not be left alone forever.

            This is a hard place to be, left behind and still living in terror.  They still lived in this familiar place, but it could not have been more different.  Where there was once a beautiful temple, there was now rubble.  Where there was once a vibrant community, there were now only small pockets of traumatized people.  Now Zephaniah is telling them to rejoice and exult with all your heart.  It’s like when you are having the worst day of your life and someone comes along and says, “Cheer up.”  That is never helpful! Zephaniah was not telling the people to cheer up or be happy.  He was telling them that God was there with them in the rubble.  God was with their families who had been taken to Babylon. 

Zephaniah wrote, “Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.”  That line about your hands growing weak caught my attention. I wonder if the people were weary of putting their homes and their lives back together and God was telling them, “Don’t give up!  Keep rebuilding.  Keep starting over.  I will be your strength when you are weary.”   We need that strength when we are starting over.  God was providing not only the strength but the inspiration and joy as well.  When they could not sing, he sang for them. God sang and sang until the song became their reason for dusting themselves off and starting again. 

            A theologian named Karl Barth described Biblical joy as a defiant “nonetheless.”  For instance, the Hebrew people might have said: “The world is against us.  We live in constant fear for our lives.  Our holy city stands in rubble.  Nonetheless…God is with us today and God is singing.”   Sadaka might have said, “I am dying.  My country lost 150,000 lives in 3 days.  It seems as though all hope is lost.  Nonetheless, I will continue to sing for peace and I will make these cranes until I die.” 

That is the power of God.  God does not ensure that bad won’t things happen.  When we feel abandoned- living in the rubble of our lives, God gives our weak hands strength to keep building, keep starting over.  God gives us people like Sadaka to inspire us.  Her death could have led to hatred and bitterness. Instead, her 7^th grade classmates decided that they would raise the money to build a monument in her honor at Peace Park.  The Children’s Peace Monument depicts a girl with her hands outstretched and paper crane in her hand.  This story has spread far and wide.   Every year, about 10 million cranes are offered before the monument.  At the base of the monument, there is a plaque that reads, "This is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in this world."

            Sadaka and her community built peace, one paper crane at a time.  It seems like strange building blocks, does it not?  Origami paper cranes are delicate and easy to crush.  But when they start to fill a hospital room, they provide hope.  When they fill a park that was once the scene of disaster and agony, they fill the hearts of the world.  I imagine Sadaka lying in her hospital bed singing her song for peace with God standing beside her singing that same song.  Sometimes the song that God sings for us is one of sorrow for our pain.  Yet I find comfort in a God who will sing for us when we are too weak, who will find joy for us when our eyes are too clouded to see the joy. 

            We are at a place in our country where we are living in fear.  We are afraid for our country.  We are afraid for those outside our borders.  Every time we turn on the news, we find something new to fear, something new to grieve. The best way to combat fear is with joy.  Our songs cannot keep us safe in a literal sense but they will give us strength to start again, and again, and again. And when we remember that God is singing with us, then our song has the power to cover the whole world with joy.  As we prepare for Christmas, for the birth of the Prince of Peace, let us remember that peace and joy are not for Christmas alone. 

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[1] http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/VirtualMuseum_e/exhibit_e/exh0107_e/exh01071_e.html

[2] http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/VirtualMuseum_e/exhibit_e/exh0107_e/exh01072_e.html

Christ the King & Flower Power: Nov. 22nd

John 18:33-37                                                                                                                

                Like many of you, I have been following the response of the French community to the recent attack in Paris.  As one might imagine, much of response has been grief and fear.  Yet there are also people speaking from a place of hope and faith.  Not all of them are calling it faith, but it sounds a lot like faith to me.  There is one interview that went viral.  It was viewed more than 15 million times on facebook alone.  In it a reporter is speaking to a man and his son who cannot be more than 4 years old.  The son is saying that he is afraid they will have to move because there are bad guys with guns.  The father, whose name his Angel, tells his son that it is ok, because they have flowers. The son wisely responds that flowers cannot do anything. The father says that they can and points to all the flowers and candles that people have placed in the midst of the rubble and ash of their city.  The child then asks, “So the flowers and the candles protect us?”  The father tells him they do.  Then the child smiles, not a big smile, but one that makes you think that maybe he understands something—something that even we as adults cannot.

                Today is Christ the King Sunday and it is a Sunday that many people approach with ambivalence.  On the one hand, we know that Jesus was referred to as a king in the scriptures.  But we are also a nation that was founded when we rebelled against the very notion of having a king.  We are a democracy because we didn’t trust monarchies.   God wasn’t a big fan of earthly kings either. In the Old Testament, God encouraged the people not to have a king.  He warned them that kings would not serve them.  A king would only take advantage of the people. They needed to rely on God, not some earthly power.  So it seems odd, that we have come to use this king language for Jesus.  He didn’t really act like a king.

                Pope Pius XI established Christ the King Sunday in 1925.  It was right after World War I and he felt that with the rise of nationalism and dictatorships, people needed to be reminded that regardless of the apparent power of our earthly leaders, there was only one king that mattered, the king of kings...Christ the King.   While I admire the effort, I am not sure it was the most effective strategy.  When we try to compare Jesus to our earthly understanding of kings, he will never really compare. Even in the time that Jesus lived, many of his followers wanted him to be a king, the kind of king that would help them overthrow the Roman government, the kind of king who would display his glory and power in battle.   He was never that king.

                Had that been his desire, Jesus could have been that king.  He could have done anything that he wanted.  He had the power to defeat the Romans, but he chose not to wield his power in that way.  Obviously, that had been done before.  The Israel people had some wonderful kings, like King David, who made them victors in war. But that kind of power was ephemeral. It did not last.  Jesus was the kind of king who would live amongst those who were suffering, who would insist that we love our enemies, even when they hate us and mean us harm.  He was the kind of king who would demand that his followers put down their swords when he was taken away by armed guards.  He was the kind of king who refused to wield his power over those who were weaker, even when those people were people like Pilate, who thought they had the power to kill him. 

                That is why we have this Gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday.  This is one of the scenes in the trial of Jesus.  He was being accused of blasphemy because he claimed to be God.  This was not a punishable offence according to the Romans, but claiming to be king was.  Claiming to be a king was an offense and threat to the Roman Emperor. Part of what Pilate was trying to determine was whether this man was really a threat.  It would appear that Pilate did not think he was much of a threat.  And how could he be? He had no army.  His own followers had betrayed him.  Even his people had turned against him.  There was no way that he was a threat to the Roman Emperor.  Despite all of this, Pilate decided that he needed to be crucified. 

What is interesting to me is that Pilate insisted on putting a sign on Jesus’ cross that proclaimed him as king of the Jews.  In many ways, it was one of the most profound acknowledgments of the power of Jesus.  A Roman leader officially acknowledged him as a king.   Jesus was a different kind of king.  He was a king who suffered for the sins of the world and that was never more evident than when he died on the cross under a sign that proclaimed him “King of the Jews.” 

                Many people felt that this was a defeat for Jesus and his followers. A real king, a powerful God would never allow himself to be crucified.  However, because we know the end of the story, we know that Jesus did in fact display ultimate power when he died on the cross.  He displayed power over death.  Once you have conquered death, no one can claim power over you. 

                I don’t know why this video of a father and his son has been viewed over 15 million times.  At first, it just seems like a display of innocence and hope in the midst of evil and suffering.  I think it is more than that.  Obviously, we know that any gun can destroy all the flowers and candles of this world.  What a gun cannot destroy is what the flowers and the candles represent.  It’s the hope that comes with people wanting to remember and honor those who have died.  It’s people who respond to hatred with love.  It is faith that evil cannot have the last word; that candles will always burn when we mourn those who we have lost; that flowers will bloom even in the most dismal of places.  It’s a king who conquers not with violent displays of power, but with sacrificial love and vulnerability.  When we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, we are not celebrating a king who sat on a throne with a crown of gold, but a king who was nailed to a cross with a crown of thorns.  This is the king we honor.   

During Holy Week, we have a bare cross that stands in our cemetery.  It has a sign that reads, “King of the Jews.”  On Easter Sunday we have another cross that we cover with flowers. A symbol of fear, hatred, and pain becomes a beautiful vision of joy and triumph.  We don’t just do that because it’s pretty.  We could just take the cross down and stick with the flowers if all we wanted was something pretty.  Instead we cover that hate with love.   We transform death into life because that was what Jesus did.   We stand here as a church…so that candles will always burn for the loved ones we have lost, flowers will always bloom even on the darkest and coldest of days, and the cross will always stand as a reminder that we have a king who refused to sit on a throne and instead lives among us.  

Letting go: Mark 12:38-44

Year B, Pentecost 24                                                         November 8, 2015

            Our Gospel reading is a deceivingly difficult text.  At first glance, it seems like a gift from heaven. Here we are in the middle of our fall stewardship campaign and the Gospel reading is the widow’s mite.  Everyone knows that story…the woman who has little gives all she has to her faith community. It’s almost like we purposefully picked this reading for this time of the year.  But then you have that darn context again.  Right before this lovely story about the widow is Jesus telling the crowd to beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes….who devour widow’s houses for the sake of appearances say long prayers.  These scribes that Jesus is warning about are the same scribes who might benefit from the gift that this poor widow is making.  Furthermore Jesus is accusing them of taking advantage of the plight of widows like her and here she is giving everything she has to them. It seems odd that Jesus would support such a action.

            We hear a lot about widows in the New Testament as well as the Old Testament.   The Bible tells us again and again how important it is to care for widows.  There were several reasons this group of people received special attention in the Bible.  Now when we think of widows, we consider the emotional ramifications, the loss one experiences when he or she loses their spouse.  While that was certainly a factor at this time, the primary social concern was related to caring for the physical needs of the widows. 

At this time, women could not inherit money or property.  If her husband died, she would be left with nothing.  If she had a son, the property would all go to the son and the expectation would be that the son would care for his mother.  However, if there was no son, then there was no safety net.  If the woman was still young and able to have children, she might be able to marry again.  If this was not possible, then her options were limited to: depending on the kindness of male relatives, begging on the streets, or becoming a prostitute.  Working was not an option for women and there was no social security or Medicare.  Widows epitomized what it was to be completely vulnerable and dependent on others for their own well-being.  This is why the people of God were commanded again and again to care for widows. 

In the Gospel for today, we are told that not only was this woman a widow, but she was a poor widow, which tells us that she had no one caring for her.  She had nothing except for two coins.  She gave both of those coins to the treasury of the temple.  The traditional understanding of this text (and the one that is most convenient for stewardship sermons) is that she was a model of sacrificial giving.  She gave everything she had to God.  Jesus was holding her up as an example for all of us to follow. The more critical interpretation is that Jesus was using her to illustrate how unjust the system was, another example of how the poor and vulnerable were abused.  Right after he pointed her out, he predicted the destruction of the temple.  Why would he encourage her or anyone else to give to a temple that was about to be destroyed? 

The more I wrestled with these two interpretations, the more frustrated I became. I realized that I could not with integrity preach the traditional interpretation of the text with the emphasis on sacrificial giving but I also felt that she had more to teach us than what was wrong with the world at that time. 

We had a funeral recently and I was reading the liturgy and I came to a part that I have never given much consideration.  “For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord.  So, then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s possession.”  We are the Lord’s possession.  It seems strange to me that we find comfort in this statement after someone has died because I am pretty sure there is no other time when we refer to ourselves or others as the Lord’s possession.  People would probably balk at that idea. Nobody wants to be someone else’s possession, even if that someone else is God.   It is only when we lose someone to death that we can allow for the possibility that they are now God’s possession.

That reminded me of the widow in this story.  All the commentators and scholars, when they talked about her being a widow, it was only to explain her plight, her financial circumstance.  It was never about the fact that this woman had lost not only her financial stability, but her partner in life. I know that there are many people here who have suffered that loss, or the loss of a child, a parent, a sibling, a close friend.  Most of us have lost someone who is precious to us.  I can only imagine the pain that must come with losing a partner in life.  In my limited experience with loss, what I have learned is that even in our grief when we acknowledge the person as the Lord’s possession, we still have to find the strength to let go, to truly accept that they are the Lord’s possession.  We have to let go of something that was once ours to hold and give it to God.  When you have experienced that kind of loss, then letting go of a few coins, even if they are the only coins you possess, isn’t that big a deal…not much of a sacrifice at all. 

I wonder if this widow, in her intimacy with loss and grief, knew something that the great scholars of her day and ours cannot quite grasp.  Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s possession.  If we can understand that while we are still living, then we become free from everything.  When we declare that we are the possession of the Lord, then we no longer feel as possessive about what we have or think we have.  This woman is held up as a model of sacrificial giving.  Perhaps that is true, but not because she sacrificed a few coins, but because she learned to let go.  She learned the hard way, but she learned.  I imagine that is one of the hardest lessons in life, letting go of people, letting go of control, letting go of things, letting go of independence, letting go of prestige…. The way we find strength to let go is to trust that we are not letting go into some abyss.  We are letting go so that God can take hold.  In letting go, we are giving…we are giving to God.   

Where's the joy? October 18, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 21                                                                         
Job 38: 1-7, 34-41 & Mark 10:35-45                                                             

            When our stewardship chair (Eleanor) and I decided on a date for the ministry fair and the kick off to our Fall stewardship season, I immediately looked at the readings for the day.  Since our theme is joy, I was hoping I could find something related to joy in the readings.  When I saw the Old Testament reading was Job, I knew I was in trouble.   The only thing worse would have been the Book of Lamentations.  But I thought, well this is the end of Job….this is where God finally answers Job’s prayer.  Surely this is the good news we have been waiting for.  As I mentioned last week, the primary question that Job had was not why all these bad things were happening, but where God was in the midst of the pain and suffering. One would hope that when that answer came, there would be relief, possibly even joy.

            Then I read the text and it did not make me joyful.   The text begins with, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…” First of all, it is almost never good news when God enters the conversation with a storm.  It’s not like the storm was a coincidence. This was God’s storm.  From the storm, God said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.”  That is not the tone that I was expecting.  I have read this text many times and every time it comes up, it shocks me.  To begin, God told Job that he knew nothing.  Then there is the “gird up your loins” line which seems a little peculiar.  In biblical times this phrase was used when people were preparing for battle, when great courage was expected.  God was basically saying, get ready because this is going to get uncomfortable.  This is not going to be an easy conversation.

            God proceeded to ask Job over 70 questions…none of which Job could answer…none of which he was expected to answer.  The first question is a good example of what comes, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  If I was to sum up the questions, it would probably come down to, “Do you have any idea who you are talking to?”  One would think that would be an obvious question.  Job has been questioning God. But what God is saying is that any knowledge that Job may think he has is a tiny tiny fraction of what God knows.  It is a mere drop in the ocean of God’s vast knowledge. And I understand that (as much as my tiny tiny human brain can) but I still find myself disturbed by God’s response.  After all that Job has been through, I would think that it would not be too much to ask for a little compassion on the part of God.  We know that God is a loving God, but that side of God is not evident in this reading.

            I could say, well this is the Old Testament vengeful and wrathful God.  Jesus brought us the softer and gentler side of God.  Yet I do not really believe that.  I believe that the God we meet in the Old Testament is the very same God that we meet in the New Testament.  It’s just different sides to a very complex and incomprehensible God.  At the same time, as Christians we have received some special intel from God.  God came in the form of a man so that we could get to know God.  God wanted to be known.  God also knew that as humans, we needed to know him.  We need a relationship with God. So God with his infinite power and infinite knowledge was born to a peasant in the form of a baby and then lived among real people, people like Job, who wanted to be in the presence of God. 

            This is not to say that once Jesus came in the form of man, we all got with the program.  We can see from the Gospel reading that even the disciples were still having trouble understanding.  Jesus had just told them about his death so they would understand the kind of sacrifice he was making.  They responded by asking him whether they could be in the seat of power when he received glory.  While Job could not understand the God of absolute power, the disciples could not understand a God who acted as a servant.  Not only that, but Jesus expects us all to be servants.

            Where is joy…where is the joy in a God who comes from the storm and makes us uncomfortable?  Where is the joy in a God who asks us to sacrifice and serve?  It’s not a happy or carefree joy, but it is joy.  There is joy because we have a God who is present in our lives.  When God asked Job all of those questions, the questions referenced many of Job’s questions.  God had been listening to all that ranting and raving.  While Jesus has asked us to make sacrifices and serve others, he is only asking what he has already done.  We have a God who listens to us, knows us, wants us to know him, and who wants us to experience joy, not only here but in the life to come.  

            One of the questions that God asked Job was, “Who laid [the earth’s] cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted with joy?”  The joy that God brings is bigger than us.  We have a God to whom the stars sing and the heavenly beings shout with joy.  And that same God who has the power to create the stars-- came down from heaven so that he could heal the sick, feed the hungry, give hope to the hopeless, forgive the sins of many and then be insulted, betrayed, abandoned, beaten and killed.  There is nothing we can do, nothing we can say to a thank a God who did all of that. 

There is another hymn that is sung around Christmas that I love.  The last verse is:

 What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.[1]

Our God, the creator of all things, the salvation of all people continues to ask something of us.  God thinks that we have something to give.  There is joy in that.  God thinks that we have something to give.  Who are we to question God?

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[1] In the Bleak Midwinter, Christian Rossetti