Preaching with a broken heart: August 25

 Year B, Pentecost 14                                     Psalm 34:15-22 & John 6:56-69                                             

I can’t remember where I read it, some important preaching professor no doubt--- said that preachers must preach from our scars and not our wounds.  The idea is that we don’t unload our issues onto our congregation.  We can talk about that which troubles us, but only after we have reached some resolution.  It’s wise advice, and advice I have followed for many years.  But like all sage advice, there are exceptions.  One of my very dear friends died of lung cancer last Saturday.  She was my first priest friend and then became my go to for all things.  We started a writing group together and many years later, we wrote a book together about our experiences with illness and our irreverent prayers that came out of those illnesses. 

Unfortunately her lung cancer returned while we were writing.  Even after she was moved to stage 4 lung cancer, she continued to preach and write.  She wrote about the axiom of preaching from our scars rather than our wounds. She said she no longer had the luxury of preaching from scars---because her wounds would not heal.  That made sense given her situation, but I thought I would stick with that advice until I couldn’t anymore.

Then I read the psalm for today.  “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and will save those whose spirits are crushed.”  When people have asked me how I am over the last week, my answer has typically been, “My heart is broken.”  Obviously this is not the first grief I have experienced in my life.  But it’s been particularly acute.  She was someone I communicated with multiple times a day.  She knew the worst things about me and celebrated the best things.   I like to think I did the same for her.  A friend of mine who is a grief counselor said that when you lose someone that close it’s like someone cuts a hole out of a piece of a quilt and that quilt is the story of your life….it’s like part of your story is gone and you don’t really know how to start writing again.

I am not afraid to admit to myself or you that I am angry at God. I know that good people die tragically long before their time, every minute of every day.  There are some clergy out there who preach the prosperity Gospel.  That is the idea that if you are good, if you love and serve God and of course give money to that preacher, good things will come to you. You will be compensated not only with a good life, but also with material goods.  It’s a complete heresy and contrary to so much of scripture, but it’s a convenient message and a popular one if that is what you need to believe. 

Yet this Psalm shows us that’s not how it always works.  “The Lord is near the brokenhearted…” That means followers of God still have their hearts broken, sometimes over and over again… It then says that “Many are the troubles of the righteous…”  It doesn’t get more direct than that.   Good people, righteous have troubles, many troubles. Most people are not comfortable calling themselves righteous. We associate it with being self righteous. Or we just don’t think we are worthy of being called righteous. In the Bible righteousness is more about the relationship between the person and God, or the person and others.  It’s right relationship.  It’s ok to associate yourself with the righteous—even if you have not yet achieved perfection.

  Unfortunately suffering is a reality for most us.  No one goes through life without suffering.  Sometimes I even wonder if being Christian brings us more suffering.  It’s not a great advertisement for Christianity.  I would never be an effective mega pastor.  It’s not that being Christian brings more bad things upon us---it just that our hearts become more malleable. We are more vulnerable to heartbreak.  If you never love, if you never open your heart to another, your heart will never be broken. 

So what does it mean that God is close to those who are broken hearted? That probably brings comfort to many, but I worry that shames some people. They think, if I don’t feel God’s presence when I suffer or when I am broken hearted, there must be something wrong with me.  I must not be righteous enough. 

The reason that Elizabeth and I decided to write our book together is because we both realized that when we were in the hospital---when we were the most vulnerable, we felt the furthest from God.  We could not pray.  We decided to write prayers that we would have wanted to pray, or we would have wanted others to pray for us. Please, hear me when I say, it’s ok if you when you suffer, you don’t feel close to God.  It’s not your fault. You are not a bad Christian.  You don’t lack righteousness.  Sometimes, you just need the prayers of others to lift you---which is why a Christian community is so vital.  The prayers of others can carry you when your own prayers feel as though they are falling on deaf ears, or when you can’t pray---when your broken heart doesn’t bring you any closer to God.

Over the last week, I realized that I was talking to God all the time. I was raised Roman Catholic.  We were taught that the saints interceded for us on behalf of God.  As Episcopalians, we believe that all Christians are saints…not just the perfect Christians who rarely sin, but all Christians.  My friend Elizabeth always advocated for those she loved, and she didn’t care who she upset doing it.  I realized that she’s with God, interceding in all my prayers. It made me want to pray more, talk to God more. That was one of the last gifts she gave to me.

We are on our 5^th week of the 6^th chapter of John’s Gospel.  We have been hearing about Jesus being the bread of life for 6 weeks.  It’s a long time to talk about the bread of life.  In our reading for today, the disciples said, “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it.” Jesus then said a few more difficult things, because he was never one to make things easy on people.  Then, realizing that many people in the crowd had left because it was too much for them, he asked his 12 disciples if they also wanted to leave. Peter replied, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

There are many times I have struggled with my faith over the years.  In the end, I believe that while Jesus never makes my life easier, Jesus has the words of eternal life.  And while so many people in this world come and go, Jesus has the words of eternal life. Jesus will save those whose spirits are crushed.

Benefits of Complaining: August 4, 2024

 Year B, Pentecost 11                 Exodus 16: 2-4, 9-15                                                               

I am always fascinated by people who say thing like, “well there’s no point in complaining.”  I always want to ask, are you sure?  I understand that sometimes it goes too far.  When all we do is complain and refuse to act, then we are just sabotaging ourselves and making others miserable in the process. I think that a little complaining can be healthy, especially if the person who is listening is sympathetic and might help you deal with the problem at hand. The other time when complaining can be helpful is when we are talking to God.  I will admit that there were times in the Bible when complaining kind of ticked off God. There were also times, like our story in Exodus, when it worked out well for everyone involved. 

          Some like to make a big deal of the complaining of the Hebrew people in the exodus story.  I remember in one church I served, there was a lay reader who generally read in a monotone, except when it came to the Exodus story.  Then she moved into this rather nasally whine that woke everybody up and elicited a raised eyebrow from the rector.  People love to imitate the whine of the Hebrew people.   They get a bad rap and I wonder if they really deserve it. They were after all in the desert with very little food or water.  It’s not like they were just on a long stretch of highway between Starbucks.  So why are we so quick to judge them?  

To some, they seem ungrateful. God just saved them from slavery and parted a body of water so that they could escape and now they are complaining again!  I admit their comment that it would have been better that they had died in Egypt where they had plenty to eat was a little obnoxious.  But they were hungry and scared.  People say desperate things when they are in desperate situations.  Plus, the God that they had experienced, the all-powerful God who rained down plagues and killed thousands of people was not necessarily the same tender hearted God that we picture.  In their minds, they had a God who was a warrior and a deliverer, but maybe not a provider of food and love.

          While Moses was a little annoyed with the people and their complaints, God showed no such judgment.  As soon as they complained to Moses, God said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you…”  Problem solved.  Yet God provided an interesting caveat.  “…each day people shall go out and gather enough for that day.  In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instructions or not.”  The instructions were clear.  The people were to gather only enough…only enough as they needed for that one day.  But these were hungry people who had just been through a period of slavery and uncertainty.  Sure, God had freed them from slavery but that was after a long period of suffering.  Some Biblical scholars surmise that they were enslaved for 400 years.  The people who were freed had seen many of their loved ones die in slavery.  They had seen infants killed.  That was a high price to pay and not one that would be easily forgotten.  The people needed more than one miraculous act to believe in God.  They needed a relationship with God.

          God addressed that need in a couple of ways.  He started with communication.  He communicated directly with the leaders (Moses and Moses’ brother Aaron).   Then he did something rather surprising. Aaron told the people to “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.”   With those words, the glory of the Lord appeared to them.  All the people saw it.  Imagine if after every time I recommended that you grow closer to God, God appeared.  That would be effective, would it not?  What I find particularly interesting is that God never told Moses or Aaron that he would appear to the people.  He said that he would provide food, but he never mentioned that cloud of glory. It was an affirmation for not only the people, but the leadership as well.  They needed it too.

          The next way that God encouraged a closer relationship with him was by providing a test.  Most of us probably do not have warm and fuzzy feelings about tests.  I have not taken a test in about twenty years and I still have nightmares about them.  Recently I read about a new method they are attempting in education.  The teacher starts the year with a test. It would be similar to the test that the student would take at the end of the year, but there would be no grade.  The idea is that the student would see what was expected of them for the year.  The teacher would also know what areas needed more time than others. 

This is similar to the kind of test that God was providing.  There was no grade, but there were results.  It was not a test as much as it was another teaching opportunity.  The people were only supposed to gather as much as they needed.  But they were hungry. They were used to having to grab everything they could get because they did not know where the next meal was coming from.  Need is a relative term.  They probably felt they needed as much as they could gather.  Of course they could not eat all that they gathered, so they stored it for the next day….just in case God did not deliver the bread from heaven.   When they woke up, the food that they had stored was infested with worms AND the manna from heaven rained down again.  They didn’t pass the test, but they still got the bread and they learned something.  This God was not a warrior, and not merely a deliverer.  This God was God who cared about their day to day needs but also a God who expected obedience.  

          Perhaps we are quick to judge the Hebrew people for their complaints because we are also quick to judge ourselves for our own lack of faith, our lack of confidence in God.   That is what complaints about or to God seem to indicate to so many…a lack of faith.   Yet the complaints of the Hebrew people resulted in a closer relationship with God.  Now I am not encouraging you all to start complaining…especially not to me (unless it is non-church related in which case, fire away)!  However there is something to say about complaining to God.  Sometimes when we are questioning our faith or when we are frustrated with our own life, it is tempting to shut God out, but that is the time when we really need to talk to God, even if it sounds like whining. 

In the Episcopal Church we have loads of beautiful prayers, but there have been times in my life when those prayers didn’t cut it.  Instead I needed to weep, or rage or just whine.  And you know what--those prayers were just as appreciated as those lovely ones we have in our prayer book, maybe even more so. God wants all of us, not just the polished or polite part of us. When it comes to communicating with God, it’s not about the presentation, it’s simply a matter of follow through.  God wants to hear us.  We probably won’t get the immediate response that the Hebrew people received in Exodus, but what if that communication creates an openness in our hearts, an openness to the glory of God, the love of God, the presence of God. If there is even a chance of that, then that’s a conversation worth having.

That's Where You Are: July 28, 2024

Year B, Pentecost 10                                John 6:1-21                                                                                                                        

On occasion I like to do a first person narrative as a sermon.  That means I wrote this from the perspective of someone in the Gospel story. Most of what I am saying is based on the text, but some is what I imagine the feelings of one of the disciples would be, so take that for what it’s worth.

I told the others we should have waited for him.  We should never have gotten in the boat without him.  But Peter said we should.  Peter said that he probably wanted to be alone after feeding 5000 people…I mean, who wouldn’t want a breather after that? And you know Peter, he’s never wrong. Man is he stubborn. 

I was worried.  That crowd was intense.  They were grateful for the food.  Of course they were. But they wanted more from Jesus.  They wanted him to be king.  Jesus doesn’t want to be a king, at least not the kind of king they were looking for.  He has been clear about that all along.  I thought he might need a little protection.  What if those people followed him and took him away.  People want so many different things from Jesus. It seems to me that he’s always being pulled in different directions.  Everyone wants something from him.

Andrew said that Jesus could handle himself. He did just feel 5000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish.  He would be fine.  It still felt wrong just to leave him.  I guess if I am honest, and I try to be most of the time, I really didn’t want to be without him.  Especially in the dark.  I have always hated being in a boat in the dark.  Bad things happen in the dark.  Everyone knows that storms came out of nowhere on the Sea of Galilee.  I think the others wanted to prove that they didn’t need him. I mean, we are adults.  We should be able to get in a boat without him. It’s just once you have been around Jesus, you don’t want to not be around him.  It’s like the dark is darker when he’s not there.  I know that sounds crazy.  But you know Peter, he’s never wrong, until he is.

            So I got in the boat with the others.   They had enough people rowing so I curled up in the corner hoping to get some sleep, hoping that when I woke up it would be morning and Jesus would be back with us.  As soon as that first drop of rain fell, I knew that we were in for a bad one.  I sat up and looked around me—I could not see land anywhere. We must have been miles from shore, which is a bad place to be in a storm.  Soon the rain was coming down so hard we could barely see.  That would have been ok except for the wind. The wind was the worst part.  It kept rocking the boat back and forth. The others were scared but I was the only one who was panicking. I yelled, “I told you that we should not have left without him.” They could barely hear me.  “We’ll be fine,” Peter shouted. “We’ve seen this before.  It will pass.”

            It didn’t.  It might have only been minutes, but it felt like hours to me.  We should never have left without him.  I started praying.  I should have been praying the whole time and maybe I was, but now I was praying out loud.  I was straining to see the shore in any direction.  If I could just see the shore, I would be ok.  It looked like something was moving.  Could it be another boat?  Could there be others as foolish as we were to be out in the middle of the night? It wasn’t a boat.  It looked like a person.  I thought I might be going crazy. Then I saw the others looking. They had all dropped their oars and were staring.  It was a person.  It was like he was walking on water, but that’s impossible.  I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I looked around to see if I was the only one who was afraid.  I wasn’t.  Peter was pointing and he kept opening and closing his mouth, like he was trying to speak but could not form the words. That was when I was really afraid because Peter is never speechless.  Never.

            I heard Thomas whisper, “It’s him.  It’s Jesus.”  He was right.  He was there, walking on the water with the storm raging around him. His clothes were soaked just like ours, but he was still above the water.  I thought, no it can’t be. Then he spoke. Despite the wind and the rain, I heard it clearly.  “It is I, do not be afraid.” I would like to say that I stopped being afraid, but I didn’t.  It just didn’t make sense. And what was he saying? Those are the words that only God can speak, “I am.”

As a good Jew, I knew that was God’s name. That was almost as scary as the image of him walking across water.  I begged him to get in the boat.  Everyone tried to get him in the boat.  It’s not that I was worried about him. He was fine.  I just needed him in the boat with us. I needed his presence.  I wanted to know that he wouldn’t leave.  If he got in our boat, then everything would be ok.  He refused. I guess if you can walk on water you don’t need a boat.

            Suddenly we were on shore.  It’s not that the boat sped up, it was more like the land just moved closer. The rain turned into a drizzle.  I turned to him and told him I was sorry that we had left him.  He just patted me on the shoulder and walked on.  I called after him and asked, “Why do you ever go in a boat if you can walk on water.” He turned and smiled, “Because that is where you are.”