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.

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.