Sermons by the Rev. Bob Olmstead
Continuing Dr. King's Dream of Truth, Peace and Justice - The Rev. Bob Olmstead (text)
During most of the 10 years I was Senior Pastor of this church it was my privilege to work with the Community and Interfaith Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee and to host this event. Having welcomed and hosted such luminaries as Rev. Cecil Williams and the Honorable Willie Brown, it’s a bit daunting to stand in this role myself. I want to acknowledge Marjorie Moylan, Surlene Grant and Lillian Greer who founded this organization in 1986. And I want to acknowledge Patsy Moore, who worked with this organization almost from its inception, and who died unexpectedly late last year.
Patsy was white, like me. And so we stand symbolically for the principle point I hope to make this afternoon: that Martin Luther King, Jr. is not an African-American hero and pioneer - he is an American hero and pioneer, who was dedicated not just to freeing Blacks from the bonds of segregation and injustice, but who was also dedicated to freeing whites from the bonds of bigotry and hate. Indeed, Dr. King is more than an American hero and pioneer; he is an international and historical figure whose words and life have become part of the fabric by which all humanity tells its story.
I’m retired now and we live in the Sierra foothills. Our home is in Placerville, a town with about 8,000 souls; the hills around are dotted with smaller communities. Several public school teachers attend our church and around this time of year they ask me to come and tell the children - 4
I tell them how brave African Americans tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were driven back by Alabama State Troopers wielding tear gas, riding horses, swinging heavy clubs;
– how Martin Luther King sent out a plea to the nation to come to Selma to help;
– how Rev. James Reeb came and was himself clubbed to death. ;
I tell them how I got off a plane in Montgomery, Alabama the day after Reeb’s death, not knowing how I would get to Selma; ;
– how Roman Catholic priests gave me a ride in their van; ;–
– how a Black family offered to make space for my sleeping bag on their floor.
I tell them how desperately I wanted to call home to Oakland, California, to reassure my wife and my two small daughters that I had arrived safely and had a place to stay;
– and how the lady of the house - the apartment in the projects - put her hand on mine on the telephone receiver and said, “Please don’t. Don’t call out and say where you are. They listen in on all our calls. You can go home again. But we have to stay here after you leave and they will do things to us.”
I usually stop at that point and let the children ask questions. “What was she afraid of?” “Why were they trying to cross the bridge?” Almost always one of the children will ask (sometimes shyly), “Was this in America?”
I say, “This was in America and this was in my lifetime.”
The Freedom Rides began the year I graduated from high school. The Montgomery Bus Boycott took place while I was in college. When I was 19 I met Dr. King and heard him tell a group of Christian students (like me) that our generation was called to confront America’s most pressing issue: racial segregation in the South and racial discrimination everywhere.
Five years later the Civil Rights Movement had engulfed the Southern states. People were marching for their rights, especially for the right to vote, and the marching focused on Selma, Alabama. The entire nation was forced to take notice. “Come to Selma,” Dr. King implored.
After the second abortive attempt to cross the Edmund Pettus bridge, many of the streets leading out of Selma’s African American neighborhoods were barricaded by the police. Even short marches were thwarted. But on the day I arrived in Selma the barricades were mysteriously taken down and Martin Luther King led a march to the County Court House. By the time we reached the Court House, which housed the voter registration offices, all the offices had been emptied and the doors were locked. Life Magazine carried on its cover that week a photograph of Martin Luther King. Jr., Ralph Abernathy, C.T. Vivian, Archbishop Iakovos, and Walter Reuther of the AFL-CIO speaking from the Court House steps. The photo doesn’t show the crowd of marchers - maybe 200 of us - who stood below those steps listening to Dr. King’s speech.
If we were clergy we were asked to wear our clergy collars so everyone could see that we were ministers. That was supposed to count for something in the South. And they asked those of us with collars to stand on the fringes of the demonstration as a buffer between the demonstrators (mostly Black, mostly youth and children) and the white folks who were gathering in ominous numbers around us. The folks from outside our circle pressed so close I could smell their breath and feel their spit. They shouted vile sexual insinuations. They called out the names of the Black youths they recognized and said, “We’ll get you later.” Someone stuck his mouth close to my ear and said, “Rev. Reeb got what he deserved and we mean to do the same to you.”
And what did we do? We sang.
We sang freedom songs and we sang spirituals and we sang “We Shall Overcome.” Singing “We Shall Overcome” in a Selma street, in that press of bodies, was the proudest, scariest, more inspiring moment of my life. I felt the power of an idea, the power of a vision, the power of hope, the power of nonviolence, the power of the Dream.
Nobody registered to vote that day. But within a week President Lyndon Johnson came before the joint houses of Congress to propose a sweeping Voter Rights Bill. There were radios hung in the trees outside Selma’s Browns Memorial AME Church that night. The church had been packed for hours, the overflow was outside under the trees in the Alabama evening. And on that Alabama evening, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, with that Southern Texas drawl, concluded his words to the Congress with three words that electrified the crowd. He said, “We shall overcome!”
Lyndon Johnson was a white man. He was a Southerner. He was President of the United States and he said, “We...” “We shall overcome.”
I’m not going to take sides in the current debate over what proportion of credit goes to Dr. King or President Johnson. I want to focus on the importance of President Johnson speaking those three words: “We shall overcome.” They came at the conclusion of a passionate paragraph in which he decried the bigotry and the hate that led to white violence. He was proclaiming - perhaps inadvertently - that “we” shall overcome even that, that “we” will overcome the fear and insecurity that lie at the heart of white self-hatred. This was a goal far greater than any legislation; this was the greater goal Dr. King always sought.
When Martin was a boy he heard his father’s eloquent sermons. Martin heard the words of his beloved grandmother, who regaled him daily with stories from the Bible - stories rich with theology and meaning. At age five, young Martin announced to his family, “Just you watch. When I grow up, I’m going to get me some big words!” And he did. He marshaled more than enough big words to earn a Ph.D. from Boston School of Theology. But it was his mastery of certain small words - one in particular - that sets him apart from all the other great figures of American history. He spoke of love.
Four letters. Seldom found in political campaigns. Seldom found in historic crusades for justice, for mastery, for power. Four letters - love - this was one of the biggest words in Dr. King’s vocabulary.
This was not about romance, and there was nothing passive to it. Dr. King understood a fundamental religious insight. Love mirrors the power of the divine.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a heroic figure, an historical figure, a political figure, but most profoundly of all, he was a religious figure.
And in the religious tradition that nurtured and shaped him - Black American Christianity - the words of a Book stand central. And in the opening words of that Book the Divine Figure from whom all Creation issues speaks; and from the words God speaks all that is comes into being. “In the beginning . . . God said, ‘let there be light’ and there was light . . . God said, ‘let there be moon and stars’ and there were moon and stars . . . God said, ‘let there be earth and sky and sea’ and there were earth and sky and sea . . . God said, ‘let there be living things, let there be life, let there be men and women’ and so they came to be.” And God said, “they are good.” And when the men and women failed to live up to and into that goodness, so the story goes, God sent a Savior; and this Savior is known as the Word, of God, an embodiment, an incarnation of the very Word, of creation itself.
Words. The creative power of words! When I was in school I had to memorize Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Perhaps some of you did, too. “Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Those words have the echo of the Hebrew prophets; of George Washington’s farewell address; of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural, “Ask not what the country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” And in that pantheon of words, by which America defines its better self, echo the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have a dream. It is deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream - that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men (you know that Dr. King would include women if were speaking today) are created equal.
I have a dream that my little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. . . .
When I visited Canterbury Cathedral in England I walked through the vast nave and up into the chancel where priests celebrate the Mass and then through the chancel to the High Altar - the “Holy of Holies” in this greatest of English cathedrals - and there beside the high altar where you might expect an icon of Jesus Christ or at least a portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury, there was instead a large framed photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. More than 33 nations have issued postage stamps bearing Dr. King’s likeness. Is there any other American, living or dead, so honored in so many other nations? There is a Martin Luther King Middle School in Rome, Italy. There is a Martin Luther King Plaza in Sweden. (Tomorrow there will be one in Palo Alto.) On the hills of Galilee near Nazareth there is a grove of trees known as the Martin Luther King Memorial Forest. You will find memorials to Martin Luther King, Jr. in Samoa, Paraguay, the Netherlands, Spain and throughout Africa.
Dr. King was not just an American prophet. He was a universal prophet. He spoke not just for one era in American history; he spoke truth for the ages. He was not just a great African American leader. He was a leader for all of us, black and white and every other shade.
Shortly after the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King published his first book, Stride Toward Freedom. While signing autographs on a city street a young woman approached and stabbed a knife into his chest. The point came to rest against his aorta and doctors said if he had sneezed it would have ended his life.
While recuperating in the hospital he received letters from all over the world. He received a letter from President Eisenhower. He received a letter from Vice President Nixon. One letter he received read like this:
Dear Dr. King,
I am a ninth grade student at the White Plains High School. While it shouldn’t matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed you would have died. I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze. . . .
A white man wrote, “...you belong to us too, because we love you. Your voice is the only true voice of love today and we hear, we hear. . . .”
The only true voice of love . . .
. . . that word again.
I was tempted to take these moments this afternoon to tell the story of Vernon Johns. Does the name ‘Vernon Johns’ mean anything to you? He was the pastor who preceded Dr. King at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. Vernon Johns organized boycotts, preached Black pride, and told his congregation to plant gardens so they could boycott Montgomery’s white grocers. When black boys were sent to jail on trumped up charges, when black girls were abused and the justice system showed them no justice, Vernon Johns fought their battles for them, often alone. On more than one occasion he protested so vehemently he was thrown in jail. He embarrassed the good people of his church, and on one of those occasions while he was in jail, his Board of Deacons (tired of all that he asked them to do; fearful that he was “moving too fast”); they fired him. They fired Vernon Johns and they went looking for a highly-educated, refined Black preacher. They found a 26 year old with a newly minted Ph.D. from Boston School of Theology. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr.
What a story!
I tell that story because for every Martin Luther King there are dozens of Vernon Johns who prepare the way.
They labor without recognition, without fame, and seemingly without success; but their labors are not in vain for they are absolutely necessary to the success of the great ones of history, the ones like Dr. King. And after the great ones come a multitude more Vernon Johns. Keeping the dream alive. Continuing Dr. King’s Dream of Truth, Peace and Justice. Henry David Thoreau said, “...if one advances confidently in the direction of his or her dreams, and endeavors to live the life which is imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.... If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.”
Building the foundation beneath Dr. King’s dream of truth, peace and justice. Dr. King said, “...no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. ...This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is the time for vigorous and positive action.”
We could talk about health care now. You know Dr. King would have something to say about children going without adequate health insurance in the world’s richest nation. We could talk about war. Dr. King took much grief over a sermon he preached decrying the violence in Viet Nam. What would he say of Iraq? We could talk about immigration policies. Dr. King’s vision was all-inclusive. We could talk about economics. Dr. King died in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was championing the cause of striking garbage workers - not because the overwhelming majority were black, but because they were poorly paid. All around us the least and the last are being laid off once again.
Any of these is worth our tireless exertions and passionate concern. All these deserve our vigorous and positive action.
But I lift up something even more fundamental than these. I lift up the power of words. Is there not some child in your life to whom you could read for 15 minutes a day? Is there a school classroom where you can volunteer one day a week? Is there a local library with a reading program, a church in need of a Sunday School teacher?
Is there anybody in this room who could not sacrifice some time and some effort to read to children - so that they are weaned away from television and the decadent values of “popular” music? Where will children hear the words, that shape the souls, of the next generation.
– Truth
- Peace
- Justice
Don’t leave it up to anybody else.
I stand with a multitude - the world over - whose dreams were shaped by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I heard them in person; I read them on the page. No matter how poor or insignificant we may feel, we all speak words and the words we speak shape the universe for others. Don’t underestimate the power of your words.
A generation before Martin Luther King, Jr. the African American poet, Langston Hughes, wrote:
Holdfast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
We all speak words and the words we speak shape the universe, the very dreams, of others. Don’t underestimate the power of your words.
Shomrei Torah - The Rev. Bob Olmstead (Text and Audio)
Read and listen to the April 2, 2006 witness preached by the Rev. Bob Olmstead.
The readings were Jeremiah 31:31-34 and John 12:20-33.
Rev. Bob Olmstead
First United Methodist Church
Palo Alto, California
April 2, 2006
Someone - reacting to the sorry state of the world - complained to the poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, “It’s just one damn thing after another.” The poet replied: “No it’s not. It’s one damn thing over and over again.”
Maybe that’s the difference between a liberal and a conservative! The liberal looks at life/history/reality and concludes, it’s just one damn thing after another - a series of new challenges; while the conservative looking at life/history/reality and concludes that it’s just one damn thing over and over again - a fundamental flaw in our natures.
I’ve been trying to figure out for as long as I can remember whether I’m a liberal or a conservative. During the first year I was appointed here in Palo Alto I preached a two-sermon series; the first was titled “Why I Am a Conservative” and the second was “Why I Am a Liberal.”
It was reported to me after the first sermon that someone said on the patio, “Now I know why I’m not a Methodist!”
Gosh, don’t blame Methodism for my indiscretions . . .
I said I’m a conservative because of what I know of human nature (including my own). And I’m a liberal because I believe in God, a God who is able to work miracles, including the miracle of transforming human natures.
So where does that leave me? I’ll tell you this: it doesn’t leave me very comfortable being a Republican or a Democrat these days!
I’m more convinced then ever that it boils down to those old categories we’ve ceded to the fundamentalists: sin and salvation and crucifixion and resurrection and damnation and redemption. Those are good words that have been co-opted by a diseased branch of Christianity until we are embarrassed to use them.
So here goes with a couple of stories and a semi-conclusion. (By the way, I looked up what “emeritus” means. It means I get to preach for an extra ten minutes, so beware!)
I told you about this before but I share it again. When I was serving Christ Church United Methodist in Santa Rosa, I was approached by a group of Jews who wanted to start a congregation. They did not want, nor did they ever plan, to build their own synagogue. They knew that owning property quickly became the preoccupation of any congregation, Jewish or Christian. They proposed sharing a facility with a Christian congregation, holding Sabbath services on Friday evenings, Hebrew School on Saturday mornings, and needing for an office for their rabbi.
They would contribute to the upkeep of the facility, and we - like all Methodist churches - were struggling financially; so we struck a deal. That was 33 years ago. Those two congregations continue to share the church building, having rebuilt it together after a young man, high on drugs, set fire to the sanctuary in 1984.
Each year we two congregations would hold two joint services of worship. I would preach at one - the rabbi at the other. When one such service ended, after I had preached about Elie Wiesel, the concentration camp survivor and Nobel Prize winner, one of the Jewish men approached me. Without saying a word, he fixed his eyes on mine, turned an open palm toward me and slowly rolled up his sleeve. There on the tender skin of his inner forearm were a series of tattooed numbers. He said nothing - nor did he have to. What could be said? He was a concentration camp survivor, branded by human evil.
When the Santa Rosa Jewish group grew to sufficient size and strength they were formally “chartered” as a Temple. There was a special worship service on a Friday night to which Jewish congregations from miles around were invited. A revered older rabbi came as guest preacher, and the congregation’s new Torah was blessed and installed in the Ark of the Covenant. The Torah is an ornate scroll on which the first five books of the Bible are imprinted. The Ark of the Covenant is a cabinet that stands in the front of every Jewish synagogue and in which the Torah is stored between services of worship.
The old rabbi based his sermon on a passage from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah - the very same passage we read this morning. “ [Thus] says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts . . . ” The rabbi drew attention to the Torah they had received, the scroll that would be taken from the Ark every week at Sabbath services. Their “new” Torah, he pointed out, was over 700 years old. For seven centuries it had been the treasured center of a Czechoslovakian synagogue. Nazis had burned the synagogue, taken the scroll from its cabinet, fired bullets through it and left it behind. The Jews were taken away to concentration camps. When the war ended, surviving Jews gathered these ancient desecrated Torahs - as many as they could find - and restored them by hand-weaving fibers to mend the holes where the bullets had entered. The new Santa Rosa synagogue was receiving one of these restored Torahs, along with their new name: Congregation Shomrei Torah - Keepers of the Torah - the People Who Keep the Jewish Law, the Jewish Way.
And then the old rabbi preached - in a mixture of Hebrew and English - from the Jeremiah passage we read this morning. He said Torah has shaped Jewish life for 3,000 years. He said the Torah in their sanctuary had been horribly desecrated and lovingly restored. And said that their protection of the scroll ( Shomrei Torah) meant very little unless this “Law”, this “Way”, were written on their hearts, held deeply and safely within them, the path on which they walked their walk. That’s what it means to “keep Torah.”
He was speaking to a group of prosperous professionals in Santa Rosa, California, in 1975 - some of whom still carried tattooed numbers on their inner forearms. No matter how they prospered, no matter how much they fit into California suburban lifestyles, these people knew what exile felt like.
So we read the same Scripture text today - the fifth Sunday in Lent. Jeremiah was writing for a Jewish population about to be forced into exile. The Babylonians were at the gates. Jerusalem was about to be sacked. Solomon’s Temple would be pillaged and burned. The people were about to be driven from their homes and taken to a strange land, where there was no house of worship devoted to Yahweh and no place to put the sacred scrolls. The people despaired. But Jeremiah tells them that Yahweh will establish a “new covenant” with them. If they cannot carry the scrolls of the Torah into exile, He will write the Torah on their hearts.
Story number 2:
We’re active in Placerville’s Federated Church. Sometime in the 1920s the Methodists and the Presbyterians in Placerville decided to “federate”. Though we remain either Methodist or Presbyterian as individuals, we are one congregation with one building, one budget and one witness. (Don’t picture us as some “little” church, by the way. We have several hundred members, two full time pastors, plus other professional staff. Our worship attendance is about the same as this church, and our budget is 80% of yours. Oh, yes.) One Sunday, during Passing of the Peace, the mayor leaned over the back of the pew where I was standing and said, “I’d like you to come and speak at City Council Tuesday night.” I said, “Is there an assigned topic?” She said, “Yes; I’m planning to introduce a resolution making Placerville a ‘Hate Free Zone’ and there will be many people there in opposition. I’d like you to come and speak in favor.”
Why did we need to proclaim that Placerville is a “hate free zone”? It seems that one little group of Christians have a panel truck on which they have painted signs saying things like “God Hates Faggots” and “Sodomy Is an Abomination.” It has a picture of two men kissing with one of those (circle with a line slashed through it) signs superimposed. For months they parked their truck next to a different elementary school each morning and told the children arriving for school that God hates homosexuals. On weekends they parked their truck on a freeway overpass where everybody on their way to South Lake Tahoe can’t help but see it. It was pretty hateful.
So our mayor wanted to pass a resolution declaring Placerville a hate-free zone. City Council had to move the meeting to a larger hall to accommodate the crowd. Speaker after speaker - many of them pastors from small Baptist and evangelical churches - said some variation of this: The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. So if you tell us we are using “hate speech” when we denounce homosexuality, then you are saying that the Bible is “hate speech”. And we know that the government just wants to label the Bible “hate speech” so that police can come into our churches and arrest our pastors while they are preaching the Bible.”
I thought, “well, that’s a novel idea.” But I looked around at all the people who were there that night because they earnestly and sincerely believed it. And I thought, here we are in a reasonably progressive town in northern California (the City Council passed the “hate free zone” proclamation unanimously); we are not in Mississippi, for instance. But I ended up wondering how many churches there are in our town (and across America) where the people are hearing that other message Sunday after Sunday.
When our pastor in Placerville offered a Bible study on the “Rapture”, we had 40 people attend. Did they all believe the bizarre idea that true Christians will be “raptured” into heaven leaving cars driverless and children abandoned? No. They didn’t believe it. But they all had a family member, or good friend, or near neighbor who believed it and who was trying to convert them so they would not be “left behind” when the Rapture comes.
Did you know that financial support for the contested Jewish settlements in “Greater Israel” comes largely from evangelical Christians who believe that as soon as Jews take complete control of Israel and rebuild the Temple it will precipitate the promised end of the world and bring about the Rapture? Do you realize that there are people who hold this belief serving in the Bush Administration in Washington?
Do you think it will make a difference that five of our nine Supreme Court justices are staunch Roman Catholics - fervently supported by the same Baptists and Evangelicals who opposed John F. Kennedy’s presidency because he was a Catholic?
What are the consequences of being tolerant of those who are not tolerant?
This past week Carol heard a radio preacher talking about the evils Christian youth will face when they leave home and go to college. He named them. He said the three great evils a Christian youth will face are tolerance, diversity, and multi-culturism.
Our pastor in Placerville is advising a group of teachers who are trying to write a school curriculum on tolerance - they have been told, by other pastors, that Christians do not value tolerance - that tolerance is a plot to undermine Christianity.
We - people like us, liberal, tolerant Christians - are about to go into exile, and we are terribly unprepared. Our exile will not be like Jeremiah’s. We will still have our homes, we will be free to worship in First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto or Federated Church in Placerville. But increasingly it will feel like this isn’t “our” country any more.
Let me give you one small example. We still call United Methodists and Presbyterians and Lutherans and Episcopalians the “mainline” churches. We are not mainline any more. We are sideline churches at best. A delegation of United Methodist Bishops met recently with President Bush. How many waves did that make? Did you even know? If we cling to this feeling that we are the “mainline” our witness will be ineffective. The country and the culture are not about to come back to us. Get used to it. A very different witness is needed. A different strategy is needed as we are increasingly marginalized.
Write the “torah” on your hearts because the trappings of mainline Christianity don’t carry much weight in American culture today.
Liberal enclaves - like Berkeley and Palo Alto - will continue to exist, growing more and more powerless by the day.
We might actually have to learn how to speak Bible again. Not because we are forced to but because it is the language of our neighbors, or our government. How much serious Bible study is done at First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto? People in those “other” churches are studying Scripture daily as individuals, they are reading Scripture daily as family, and they are meeting one to three times a week to study Scripture in groups. We can’t hold up our end of the conversation because we can’t talk Bible to them. And they are not interested in talking psychology, tolerance, and enlightened science with us.
They are fervently motivated and politically powerful because the Republican party happily panders to them - selling its soul for fundamentalist pottage.
Are things really this bad? How bad is bad? Is this one damn thing after another or one damn thing over and over again.
Maybe you’ve seen the Academy Award winning film, “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Great film! It portrays those few months in the life of journalist Edward R. Murrow, when he took on Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early years of television. Remember the McCarthy years? (Some of us, at least, are old enough to remember the 1950s.) The fear and the polarization of America were worse then than now.
I am currently about a third of the way through Taylor Branch’s 2,600 page history of America during the Martin Luther King years. I’m stuck right now in a long dreary recitation of how President John F. Kennedy appointed Southern segregationist judges one after another after another. Kennedy’s record on Civil Rights makes George Bush look enlightened by comparison. He considered Martin Luther King, Jr. a nuisance.
This week I came across a photo of Blacks being kicked and clubbed by whites in broad daylight in the streets of a major American city. Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? Nope. Boston, Massachusetts, 1976. The courts had just decreed school bussing and Boston burst into riots.
So you tell me, is it one damned thing after another, or is it the same damned thing over and over again?
We are currently becoming a nation of tribes. There is very little consensus about anything. And that is uncomfortable - very uncomfortable - for those of us who somehow thought we were the center, the “mainline.”
It will be hard to accept that we are not a part of a mainline church. It will be hard to accept being part of a long-term political minority in our own land. Am I giving up on activism? Not at all. I commend all efforts to wrest power back from this administration who govern by fear and manipulation and secrecy. What is it that the Bush Administration has to hide, that they are so insistent on secrecy and darkness? Let them hear the words of Jesus, in the Gospel of John: “ For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” {John 3:20}
Which brings me (finally) back to Shomrei Torah. Jeremiah’s people couldn’t understand how they could continue if their culture was forbidden, their institutions and infrastructure destroyed. How will we worship if we can’t go to the Temple? What if they won’t let us take our Bibles (Torah) with us. And Jeremiah says, “God will write Torah on your hearts.” You will take nothing into exile with you except God’s law written on your hearts.
Finally, here is my semi-conclusion.
We may well feel for the rest of our lives that we are strangers in our own land. We may become increasingly marginalized by a Right Wing Supreme Court and a Republican hegemony rooted in Old South Bibliolotry that co-opts the Bible and turns Christianity into something we should be ashamed of and maybe even afraid of.
It would be well to consider what is really worth taking.
Tolerance - while an absolutely necessary civic virtue - is not the foundation of Christian faith.
Don’t be misled into believing liberal cliches like “the Bible is about love.” The Bible is not about love. . . . At least it’s not about human love. There is almost nothing in it about human love. It’s about Divine Love - a Divine Love so fierce and consuming that some have experienced it as wrath.
Having used up even my extra 10 minutes, and having begun with the story of one rabbi, I conclude with the words of another rabbi. He said, “Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your heart breaks, the holy words will fall inside.”
I suspect it is “one damned thing over and over again” - another way of saying that we live in a fallen world, where sin rules. But I have faith that there is a God, who writes the new Law on broken hearts, enabling us to survive exile, as a Covenant People.
Shomrei Torah!
Can 70 Donkeys Carry 10 Commandments? - The Rev. Bob Olmstead (text and audio)
Read and listen to the October 9th sermon preached by the Rev. Bob Olmstead. Bob Olmstead was the Senior Pastor of First Palo Alto from 1993-2003.
The readings were Exodus 32:1-14 and Judges 12:13-13:1.
Rev. Bob Olmstead
First United Methodist Church
Palo Alto, California
October 9, 2005
Exodus 32:1-14
Judges 12:13-13:1
Before surgery restored my hearing friends clipped advertisements touting “break-throughs” in hearing-aid technology and gave them to me. Now that I’m retired friends send me articles about slowing the onset of Alzheimers. The anti-Alzheimers articles all recommend doing cross-word puzzles. The articles don’t tell you, however, how to get the cross-word puzzles away from your wife. I get the sports section; Carol gets the cross-word puzzles.
No longer do I turn out a sermon a week - but I still read the news with the Bible in mind and I still read the Bible with the news in mind. And that’s sort of like a cross-word puzzle. How to make them “fit”! When Archer Summers invited me to preach on October 9 I was grateful for the chance to complete a puzzle and I immediately peeked at the lectionary - to see what Bible passages were prescribed for October 9.
The wrath of God! Congratulations!
Since that invitation we’ve had hurricanes Katrina and Rita and now an earthquake in Pakistan.. Insurance companies call hurricanes and earthquakes “acts of God” and the media has described them as “storms of Biblical proportions.” And the Bible readings for today are about the wrath of God.
Where to start?
Katrina or Moses?
Let’s start with Moses, OK? I’m going to assume you are familiar with the long story of which this morning’s lesson is a portion. Moses is born to a Hebrew slave woman, rescued and raised by a daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, fugitive after killing a supervisor, chosen by Yahweh/God to lead his people out of slavery and subjection in Egypt. He lifts his arm and the waters of the Red Sea part. The Hebrews cross safely to the other side and find themselves in a wasteland. Food is scarce. Water is scarcer. And about all Moses can tell the people is “God will provide.”
If you think this church has leadership issues, pity poor Moses. Mouthpiece for Yahweh/God. Moses spends 40 days and nights on a mountaintop taking dictation in the midst of swirling winds and dense fog. He was in the eye of the storm! That storm was of truly Biblical proportions!
But that storm was not about nature . . . except maybe about human nature.
That storm - on Mount Sinai - was about abolishing religion as it was known and practiced up till that moment in history. That storm was about abolishing the precepts of ethics and morality that had till them governed human interaction. Moses was in the eye of a storm infinitely more powerful than Katrina, because if those 10 commandments were given more than lip service they would precipitate a political/psychological tidal surge wiping out religion and morality as they were then known.
> One God . . . alone!
> Don’t kill!
> Don’t even envy!
> Be truthful in every transaction!
> Ask not what God can do for you; ask what you can do for God and your neighbor.
There was nothing in the ten commandments about bless the crops or the nation or the tribe. There was nothing about keeping our sons and daughters safe or keeping our village safe. There was nothing about offering sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. Nothing! There was nothing to bring comfort, except, maybe, a crumb of comfort in those first half-dozen words: “I am the Lord your God...”
So Moses stumbles down the mountain carrying two stone tablets, half blind and mighty hungry after 40 days and 40 nights in the eye of the hurricane, only to discover the people dancing around a golden calf - doing what they’ve always done, trying to get God on their side, trying to manipulate God’s feelings, trying to cajole God into doing their will, singing, “Here God, I’ll give you this lovely piece of Aunt Martha’s antique jewelry if You’ll just get us out of this desert and let us go back to our nice quiet lives.”
And while Moses is still rubbing his eyes and trying to take it all in, he hears the rumble of God’s voice behind him saying, “Enough! I’ve had enough! Stand aside ‘cause I’m gonna wipe them out! I’ve had it with these people!”
Now to the newspaper. Some look upon the devastation wrought by Katrina and Rita and see in it the wrath of God, destroying New Orleans for harboring homosexuals. A New Orleans city official was overhead saying they’d been trying to clean up public housing for years and now God had done it for them. I’m going to take for granted that nobody in this room believes such warped and ignorant theology.
But how about the mayor of a small Mississippi town which was spared much damage? She looked at the houses still standing and she said, “God saw fit to save our little town.” If we do not believe God’s wrath brought the destruction, do we dare say “thank you” when our lives or livelihoods are spared?
I’ve been helping train Stephen Ministers at the church we now attend. Most everyone knows someone who knows someone in Louisiana or Mississippi. One white-haired woman who has seen her share of sadness and struggle, said, “I don’t like to hear hurricanes called ‘acts of God’. What does God have to do with the weather? I look at those people who gave up their jobs to go and help, I look at the people who risked their lives to save others - those are acts of God.”
Is God in the earthquake and the storm?
Is God in helping hands and hearts?
There are two brothers in the Exodus story: Moses and Aaron. Aaron is the liberal: thinking of others, helping them get what they want, concerned about their welfare, sensitive to their struggles and feelings. Moses is the conservative: uncompromising in his devotion to the Word of God, laying down the law.
But neither of them is the principal character in the story. The principal character is Yahweh. God. Who is angry! “Wrathful” is the word that’s used. The key to this passage is not Aaron and the golden calf; it’s not Moses and the tablets of stone. The key to this passage is that God changes his mind. Verse 14: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”
Do we have a satisfactory answer to whether God sends hurricanes to teach us a lesson? I don’t know. I’m retired. Ask Archer! Or Katie! Here’s what I make of it, in no particular sequence and no order of significance.
God will go on working with us. Do we deserve it? That’s not the issues. God commits to us. God’s “laws” are not as important as the fact that God wants a relationship with us. God is like the spouse who forgives. That’s the story line of the entire Old Testament. That’s the story line of the entire Bible. God commits to us. God wants relationship with us. Just like the spouse who forgives.
I sure want to give thanks to somebody whenever I realize that day by day I have been spared. I have been spared hunger; I have been spared homelessness; I have been spared hurricanes, cancer, divorce . . . I have been spared.
I don’t think I have been singled out for blessings, any more than I think others are singled out for punishment. But I want to pray my “thank yous” and when I make my prayer in Jesus’s name, (you know, “...in Jesus’s name. Amen.”) then I have no choice but to add, “You are the Lord, my God; what do you want me to do?”
The novelist, Bernard Malamud, was asked what he thought about suffering, he said, “I’m against it. But, if it’s unavoidable let’s at least learn something from it.”
Mark Twain took it one step further, saying, “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again - and that is well; but also she will never
sit down on a cool one any more.”
So what have we learned?
America, despite its hubris, is not immune from the forces of nature.
Racism, in America, is still Ground Zero, the exact place any leader or any church ought to take its stand.
Former Defense Secretary, William Cohen, said, “Government is the enemy until you need a friend.” Well, Republicans have made it clear that they consider government the enemy. And Democrats have done little but say, “Tsk, tsk, what a naughty attitude.”
Republicans were not ready to help Americans in their need. Republicans are a disgrace.
Democrats will not state clearly how they propose to define the role of government. Democrats are a disgrace.
This is the opportunity for America to redefine and clarify the social contract. I hope one of the parties will step up to the plate. This is an historic moment.
Newscaster Eric Sevareid once said, “Civilization is only about seven meals from anarchy.” That’s an ugly truth.
Individuals will go to extraordinary lengths to lend a helping hand. That’s a lovely truth.
Government should be a responsible friend to those in need. That’s a forgotten truth.
Many of us have been boycotting WalMart for depressing wages and exploiting workers. Sixteen hours after Katrina abated, while the United States government was still trying to figure out how to make a phone call, WalMart loaded 1000 tractor-trailer trucks with merchandise (free) and delivered them to New Orleans. I’ve been reflecting on that.
Actor Anthony Perkins died of AIDS-related complications. He was heard to say that he believed AIDS was sent to teach people how to love and understand and have compassion for each other. Notice how he put that: “AIDS was sent...” “AIDS was sent to teach people how to love and understand...” Where do we find the verb “sent” in the Bible? God SENT his Son . . . God does not send the weather. God does not send AIDS. God sent his Son . . . and that trumps every other thing that could ever be said, including every other thing that is said in the Bible. That’s where a Christian always starts. Divine love trumps everything else.
Let’s jump from Moses to Abdon. How many of you know the story of Abdon? (I’ll tell you, this Archer Summers knows the Bible because this is one of the smallest stories in there and its only significance is its insignificance, which is the point, so to speak, as I get it, right now.)
Abdon appears in the book of Judges, which means the Hebrews have finally finished their 40 years in the wasteland and found their way to the promised land, but as yet they have no King David, no Jerusalem Temple, no major prophets. They are a loose confederation of tribes, eking out a living among hostile Philistines, and without much in the way of government. A succession of “judges” try to guide them in the paths of righteousness. One such “judge” is named Abdon, son of Hillel, of whom we are told, “He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys; he judged Israel eight years.” Then he died. That’s it!
That leaves a lot to the imagination! Forty sons. Phew! I thought it was hard raising four kids! Seventy donkeys. That’s a lot of barnyard exhaust!
But the Bible seems to think Abdon did OK, at least in comparison with the judges who followed him.
He didn’t build the Temple, defeat the Canaanites, or rule an empire. He was never called to the mountaintop. Abdon was only asked to remain faithful, to remind the people of their responsibilities and their calling, and to exercise such gifts as he had been given (which evidently included keeping 70 donkeys headed in the same direction)! I built my father’s memorial service sermon around a single sentence from Saint Bonaventure, who said, “A constant fidelity in little things is a great and heroic virtue.” Maybe that was Abdon’s virtue. A constant fidelity in little things.
What a woefully neglected word: virtue. “Virtue is the source of the feelings that prompt us to behave well.” That’s not my definition, but would you accept it? “Virtue is the source of the feelings that prompt us to behave well.” Virtue is different from commandments, which tell us what to do without making us feel like doing those things. A commandment works from the outside in, a virtue works from the inside out. (This discussion of virtues and commandments comes from an article by Barbara Brown Taylor in the July 26, 2005 Christian Century. She cites the writings of Paul Woodruff and Chuck Campbell).
Here’s the other half of that definition: virtue is a capacity cultivated by experience and training, largely in community, where habits that give rise to virtues are formed.
Virtue is the source of the feelings that prompt us to behave well. Virtue is a capacity cultivated by experience and training, largely in families and churches, where habits that give rise to virtues are formed.
I changed two words; did you notice that? I named the “communities” where the “habits that are give rise to virtues” are formed. Families and churches.
Where else but families and churches are the habits that give rise to virtues formed?
This the quiet everyday work of the church; this is the virtue of Abdon. A constant fidelity, transforming commandments into virtues, external laws into internal habits, habits of generosity and compassion and service and fidelity and sacrifice and hospitality and devotion and humor and reverence and hope. That’s what First United Methodist Church is about.
There are 90 Methodist ministers in Louisiana who cannot find their churches. They cannot find their buildings; their buildings are gone. They cannot find their people; their people are scattered, depending on the hospitality of strangers or distant family - who knows where?
Andre Dubos is an American writer. In 1986 he stopped to help a stranded motorist. He was hit by a car while helping; he lost one leg and the use of the other. He later lost his marriage. Looking back he writes, “We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after losses.” (Andre Dubos, Broken Vessels, 1991).
Two hundred seventy five thousand homes wiped off the face of the earth. A million people scattered. Most of them poor to start with, now having to learn that hard hard lesson: “We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after losses.”
Meanwhile, we are Abdon, with 70 donkeys - more than we need even if we have 40 sons and 30 grandsons. We are wealthy . . . very very wealthy. Surely I need not say more . . .
“APRON AND UMBRELLA” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“APRON AND UMBRELLA”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
June 1, 2003
“Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” (Luke 24:50-51)<
We call this Ascension Sunday. The two Scripture lessons tell how Jesus led his disciples out of Jerusalem to the town of Bethany, where he blessed them and then disappeared into the clouds. A pastor I know decided to illustrate this dramatic incident. He carried the Christ candle down from the altar close to the congregation. As the words of the lessons were read he snuffed out the candle and simultaneously members of the choir blew bubbles into the air. A little girl in the front row pointed her finger at the bubbles and watched with the gaping mouth and rapt attention of a little child seeing something new and beautiful and unexpected.
I suppose that’s how the disciples looked, and who could blame them? Jesus disappears into the clouds! That’s part A of the story. Part B is the appearance of two angels in freshly dry-cleaned white robes. “Why are looking up to heaven?” they ask. Blushing, the disciples close their mouths, look sheepishly at each other, and go back to Jerusalem as they were told.
It’s a sensational image; Jesus “lifted up, [until] a cloud took him out of sight.” In England there is a church known as the Chapel of the Ascension. Two feet stick down through the chapel ceiling. [1] Can you imagine, week after week, coming for worship and looking up at two feet forever seized in plaster? I wonder if the people of that congregation are similarly frozen in time, staring off into heaven when they should be looking at one another and listening for the spirit’s call to service in the world outside their doors? They got Part A in their architecture; but do they have Part B or for that matter, Part C, which comes next week. Pentecost, when the Spirit of Christ, the breath of God, the wisdom which is forever feminine in the Hebrew Bible, comes to fill them up and they discover that God “may have gone up with a shout” (today’s anthem), but now this same God has come back to transform these
followers into leaders, these listeners into preachers, these converts into missionaries, these healed men and women into healers. [2]
Part A – Jesus disappears into the clouds.
Part B – the disciples get over their shock, look around, and return to Jerusalem.
Part C – they discover that THEY are empowered to teach the things that Jesus taught, to live the life that Jesus lived, to do the things that Jesus did, to incarnate God’s healing presence in the world just as Jesus embodied it.
Every journey begins with a leave-taking. That’s why some never leave home. Every journey begins with good-bye. The disciples had to say good-bye to Jesus so they could begin their own journeys of faith and service and sacrifice and fulfillment and incarnation.
So this is my “last sermon” before retirement. People from all the congregations I have served are here this weekend. I am profoundly moved that you care enough to come and share this precious moment.
This being Ascension Sunday AND my final sermon before saying goodbye, Mark Shaull suggested that we rig up pulleys and wires and just waft me over your heads at the end of the service. Luckily I have enough authority left to veto that! For I, too, am one of the shambling disciples returning to "Jerusalem” to await the spirit. To see what new thing there is in store for me to do, what new thing there is for you to do.
Part B! Part B!
Part C! Part C!
The Choir sang, “God Is Gone up with a Shout!” But after all these parties Bob waddles off with a burp.
Janet asked me what my three favorite Bible verses were. I had no ready answer for that because I don’t think of the Bible that way – it is a vast sweeping saga with thousands of human characters bumping into the great mystery of God and then rubbing up against each other as they run to tell the story of their encounters. It got separated into “chapters” and “verses” only centuries later. But I thought about it. And I came up with three verses. When I was in Windsor I put Psalm 133, verse 1, on the church stationery. “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” That’s my favorite. “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” “Kindred” meant family ties and responsibilities that extended much farther in Bible times. “Kindred,” in that sense, is an image for the Church. It is my nature to look for ways to help people get along. Divisions and rivalries and disagreements within a congregation have always caused me distress. The Church has been a place of hospitality, caring, acceptance and encouragement to me, and I wish it could be that for everybody. Hospitality is God’s grace with skin on, and the Church must first of all be a place of hospitality.
My third favorite Bible verse is frivolous, so I needed to come up with something more profound for the second. I settled on the Gospel of John, Chapter 1, verse 5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” That sentence acknowledges the reality of darkness in this world, but it affirms the triumph of light. The verse is powerful instead of optimistic. The darkness is recognized. The light – of Christ, of love, of peace, of shalom, of faith, of the Church, of your grace-filled lives - shines in the darkness, and the darkness [will] not overcome it.
My third favorite Bible verse is from Nehemiah, chapter 8, verse 10, and I save it for all proof-texters: “Then [Nehemiah] said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’” This is my rebuttal to all those who have made skinny the new religion and losing weight the newest Puritanical fad. “Eat the fat and drink sweet wine . . . the joy of the Lord is your strength! . . . while you’re at it share the joy.” The Bible says so and that’s my reply to those who take themselves too seriously, and especially to those who are judgmental of others. John Wesley said “Sour godliness is the devil’s religion.” Laughter and generosity are symptoms of spiritual health, and the joy of the Lord of life is our strength.
Give . . . with joy!
In 1962 the Cabinet of District Superintendents met in a back room in June while Annual Conference was going on the auditorium at University of the Pacific. Methodists never knew when their pastor left for Conference each year if it would be he or another one who would come back to them. In 1962 I came back from Conference as the new and totally unexpected pastor of Shattuck Avenue United Methodist Church in Oakland. O.D. Jacoby introduced me to the congregation, then went back to sit down in his usual pew, and there I was, 22 years old and primed to preach my first sermon to a congregation who had never had a minister under 50.
Strangely enough, I was confident in my preaching. But serving Communion was a different matter. All those hands held out to me, brown hands, white hands, men’s hands, women’s hands, hands creased and callused with hard work, hands trembling and frail with age, hands that had experienced so much more of life than I had. I had no trouble writing sermons, but the hands unnerved me. All those people, kneeling at the Communion rail, reaching out for that simplest and humblest of all religious symbols, the symbol that defines our religion even more than the cross: a piece of bread, broken and shared.
It is Communion that looms before me today. Not this “final sermon,” but the indescribable privilege of serving God’s bread to God’s people. Holding the loaf for first a child, and then an elder, then a good friend, and then a complete stranger, watching those hands tear off a piece of the loaf, repeating the words that say so much: “The bread of life, given for you.”
A good friend of mine raised her daughter pretty much by herself. When the time came for the daughter to leave home for college my friend cooked a special dinner and invited her daughter’s friends. As she prepared the meal she wore a big baker’s apron on which she had stenciled special blessings and messages of love with a magic marker. When the meal was over she took out a big pair of scissors, cut the apron strings and tossed the apron aside. She said something like, “You’re on your own now. I’ve cut the apron strings.” But then she had a gift for her daughter. It was an umbrella; and on the underside of the umbrella where you could see it only when it was open and protecting you, she had written in bright nail polish: “I love you, Mom.”
I’m in awe of people who can think of things like that. During my last sermon at Christ Church in Santa Rosa I took off that terrible pink and blue plaid sport coat I wore for 10 years and I tossed it aside. But I don’t have a similar gesture now. There is still Communion to celebrate and robe and stole are symbols of the remarkable privilege the United Methodist Church has bestowed on me, the privilege of serving as a pastor among the people of five churches and three Pacific Islander fellowships across 42 years.
Every journey begins with good-bye. Retirement begins a new journey for me, garden and grandchildren and God await me. Part B and Part C of the Ascension story are still works in progress for me and for you.
Insofar as a pastor fulfills a mothering role the apron strings are now to be cut, but I’m there in that umbrella because love never ends: my love for the people of Shattuck Avenue United Methodist Church in Oakland, my love for the people of the Windsor Community United Methodist Church, my love for the people of Christ Church United Methodist in Santa Rosa, my love for the people of First United Methodist Church in Reno, Nevada, my love for the people of Tongan and Fijian Fellowships in both Reno and Palo Alto, and my love for the people of First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto..
Blessings on you, and on your families, and on everyone you love, this day and forevermore. Amen.
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[1] Thanks to Rev. John McLaughlin for this reference and for the candle/bubbles enactment.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, 1995.
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (II)” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (II)”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy . . .” (Psalm 98:8)
It feels odd to sing “Joy to the World” today, doesn’t it? We mistakenly limit it to the category of Christmas carol when it isn’t that at all. If you look at the small print at the bottom of the page you will note that it is based on Psalm 98:4-9. The Psalmist and the hymnist (Isaac Watts) both saw God’s triumph reflected in nature.
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let all their songs employ;
while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
reflect the sounding joy, reflect the sounding joy . . .
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found . . . [1]
That’s a theology struggling to include the natural world: earth, thorns, animals, fields, floods, rocks, hills and plains.
Let me share an extraordinary poem with you.
The cat has the chance to make the sunlight
Beautiful, to stop it and turn it immediately
Into black fur and motion, to take it
As shifting branch and brown feather
Into the back of the brain forever.
The cardinal has flown the sun in red
Through the oak forest to the lawn.
The finch has caught it in yellow
And taken it among the thorns. By the spider
It has been bound tightly and tied
In an eight-stringed knot.
The sun has been intercepted in its one
Basic state and changed to a million varieties
Of green stick and tassel. It has been broken
Into pieces by glass rings, by mist
Over the river. Its heat
Has been given the board fence for body.
The desert rock for fact. On winter hills
It has been laid down in white like a martyr.
This afternoon we could spread gold scarves
Clear across the field and say in truth,
“Sun you are silk.”
Imagine the sun totally isolated,
Its brightness shot in continuous streaks straight out
Into the black, never arrested,
Never once being made light.
Someone should take note
Of how the Earth has saved the sun from oblivion. [2]
Someone should take note of how the Earth has saved the sun from oblivion.
Some say God could not exist without us. We are the foils, the objects against which God splinters and is reflected; without us God would expand always into eternal nothingness.
Sermons are supposed to have a point and I don’t know what the point of that is, just that it feels very significant to me. It gives me the shivers down in that space where explanations don’t reach.
During this past Lent I preached a series of sermons about words that have resonated deeply with my experience of life. The series was interrupted when the war in Iraq began. Today’s sermon revisits the sermon that was originally planned for that week. I leave it up to you to see if these words about animals have any consequence in the light of war, hunger, drugs in our schools, and the general cussedness of human experience.
Annie Dillard tells of walking around the corner of a house just in time to see a mockingbird fly lightly from the roof to the ground. She writes,
"It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star. The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight . . . . beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there." [3]
Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
Will it be enough in my retirement to just “be there” when beauty and grace are performed? Or do I have to do something to justify my existence? (Or at least to be a good Methodist?)
Yet another poem provides one answer to that question:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. [4]
The first lines of that poem are not what one usually hears in a Sunday sermon: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.”
Losing track of our “place in the family of things,” leads to all kinds of mischief – like wars, racism, and a deep despair. Is that perhaps the real root of all evil?
Thirty years ago, or more, I preached a sermon using the hackneyed example of our human superiority to the animals by virtue of our ability to reason, or maybe because of the ingenuity which came with opposable thumbs, or because we are the only species who make promises and covenants. The illustration took human superiority for granted. I was merely using it to draw attention to one of our human qualities. A young woman named Barbara Hadley, who had barely spoken to me previously, was visibly disturbed when she came through the line to shake hands following worship. In her distress she was admirably succinct. “You’re wrong!” was all she said, and later she brought me a quote, a paragraph from a book I’d never heard of. I want to read it to you, to see what you think.
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” [5]
What happens if we see the animals, the earth’s other creatures, as “other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth”? That question is taking shape in human consciousness.
We’ve barely turned the page into a new century. What will be the experience of someone born this decade and living four score and seven years? War and the redistribution of wealth will continue to bedevil human experience as they have from the beginning of time. The miraculous things that happen in hospitals today will be viewed as barbaric by those looking back from the end of this century. And animal rights may prove to have been the most controversial, heated, and profound issue faced by humanity in the century to come.
I once had a poster on my office wall with a quote from the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. It said:
“Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself. We are created along with one another and directed to a life with one another. Creatures are placed in my way so that I, their fellow-creature, by means of them and with them find the way to God. A god reached by their exclusion would not be the God of all lives, in Whom all life is fulfilled… To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a [human] to reach God; but the human who sees the world in God, stands in God’s presence … If you hallow this life, you meet the living God.
Such reflections do not tempt me to become a vegetarian. I don’t think that’s the issue.
We will soon retire to our property on 7.5 acres of hillside and woods in the Sierra foothills. One of the first things I will do is build a fence – not a huge fence around the perimeter to define “my” domain, but a small fence around a bit of fertile earth where I can grow tomatoes. It’s the only way I know to live in peace with the deer and wild turkeys that will otherwise nibble my tomatoes down to the ground.
The animals do not live without killing and eating, nor do we.
We break the bread. We drink the wine. We do it with utmost reverence and respect, remembering that God sustains us by giving up a portion of Godself. We break the bread. We drink the wine. We do it with utmost reverence and respect and thereby learn our way in this world, our place on this earth that we share with other creatures, other nations.
[1] “Joy to the World,” Isaac Watts, The United Methodist Hymnal, The United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, TN, 1989.
[2] “The Significance of Location,” Patiann Rogers, Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Milkweed Editions, 1994;
thanks to Rev. Bob Moon for the gift of this poem – he knew I would like it!
[3] Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Harper’s Magazine Press, New York, 1974.
[4] “Wild Geese,” Mary Oliver? Denise Levertov?
[5] Henry Beston, The Outmost House – a Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, Rinehart & Co., New York, Toronto, 1928.
“WHEE! LIKE SHEEP" - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
WHEE! LIKE SHEEP”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1)
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)
I always found it hard to organize sermons during the first few months in a new parish. People are forming their first impressions of the new pastor, and I felt like I had to say everything at once so folks would know how “this” fit with “that.” Trying to say everything at once makes for bad sermons. Now that we are down to the final few weeks I feel a similar pressure. Addressing one issue leaves many things unsaid and there won’t be many more opportunities to say them.
So this morning we have Mother’s Day, the 23rd Psalm, tomorrow’s janitors’ strike, the Good Shepherd, UN resolutions about rebuilding Iraq, a pastoral transition that will make changes in your lives and mine, a morally infantile President who proposes enlarging our arsenal of nuclear weapons, and a couple of things I want to say about this church – the past decade and the years ahead. Mix all that together and it doesn’t make a coherent sermon. So I’m going to talk about sheep.
Did you know that when sheep stumble in the mud and their wooly coats get waterlogged, they will lie on their backs with their legs in the air and bleat piteously – never even trying to get up? They’ll lie there upside down in the mud till they die, unless their shepherd comes along and turns them back over. So I read.
I’ve never seen that, but I have seen a shepherd bring a flock of sheep into the pen at a livestock auction and set them to circling his legs – endlessly – each following the tail of the one in front of it, around and around and around and around . . . and around . . . while buyers bid on wooly lamb chops.
Alice Jensen grew up on a sheep ranch and she says that sheep are not stupid, but the dictionary says: sheep, (1) any of a wide variety of cud-chewing mammals related to the goats, with heavy wool, edible flesh called mutton, and skin used in making leather, parchment, etc. . . . (3) a person who is meek, stupid, timid, defenseless, submissive, etc.
Why does the Bible so often liken us to sheep? We need to get the self-esteem-police out there to clean that up and protect our good opinion of ourselves. Maybe the ancient peoples were meek, stupid, timid, defenseless and submissive, but we moderns are noble, kind, powerful, self-sufficient, creative and wise! Right?
Somebody hearing Handel’s Messiah for the first time wondered if it was written by a sheep farmer because the choir kept singing, “We like sheep . . . we like sheep . . . we like sheep . . . ,” before finally finishing the sentence, “. . . have gone astray-ay-ay-ay-ay.”
We, like sheep, have gone astray.
If you have email then somebody undoubtedly forwarded the following to you. (More than one of you forwarded it to me.)
A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items on the table in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, about 2" in diameter. He then asked his students if the jar was full. They all agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of tiny pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. As he did, the pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He asked the students again if the jar was full. Again, they agreed it was. Now the professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Quite a bit of sand slid into the spaces around the pebbles. The professor asked them yet again if the jar was full? The students responded with a unanimous "Yes." The professor proceeded to produce two [bottles of water] from under the table and poured the contents into the jar. The students laughed. "Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things, your family, your partner and your children. The things that if everything else were lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter, your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else. 'The small stuff'. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important. Play with your children. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, to clean the house, to give a dinner party and fix the disposal. Take care of the rocks first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities... The rest is just sand." [1]
Every day we fill up our lives with sand. Television and radio, newspapers and magazines call out to us, selling sand. “Buy this, drink that, smoke this, smooth away wrinkles…” They may not know my name, but they sure know where I live. Too often I live in a fearful, insecure place where I believe what the ads tell me. I believe that I will be happy, sexy, fulfilled and content if I buy their sand. McDonald’s may not spread a table for me in the presence of my enemies, but they will give me the fastest cheeseburger in the Western Hemisphere.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray, following all those little voices calling out to us.
Mother’s Day, known in the United Methodist Church as Festival of the Christian Home, is a good day to pay attention to the first rocks the philosophy professor placed in the jar. “Your family, your partner and your children,” he said. “The things that if everything else were lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.”
That’s good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.
A Sunday School teacher asked if anyone in the class could recite the 23rd Psalm. “I can teacher, let me!” said a little girl, frantically waving her hand. Her enthusiasm exceeded her memory, but the teacher gave her a chance. She stood up, took a deep breath, and said, “The Lord is my shepherd. That’s all I want.” [2]
Not a bad summary of the 23rd Psalm.
It’s the first “rock” – even before family - to put in our jar.
The Lord is my shepherd. That’s all I want.
A friend of mine, reflecting on the familiar words of the 23rd Psalm says, “’I shall not want’ can mean, ‘I’ll get everything I need.’ But it could mean, ‘I’ll stop wanting things I don’t need.’” [3]
The Lord is my shepherd. That’s all I want.
This same friend tells about helping out on his grandfather's farm. He says, “When I was ten or eleven I had a 15-foot bull whip that Uncle Everette had helped me make out of some strips of old horse harness. I practiced until I could snap the head off a dandelion at its full length. Besides this primitive weed-whacking, I had no real use for the whip…except for those two times a year [when we drove the sheep to their summer pasture] and I used it to strike fear into the heart of any sheep that even looked like it might step out of line. Boy, was I the good shepherd.”
Ah, yes. Our second sheep-Scripture lesson for the day, from the Gospel of John: “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus says, and “I’m gonna whip everybody into shape!”
Oops, that’s not what he says, is it? “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)
The Lord is my shepherd. That’s all I want.
We get to fill up our jar with rocks or pebbles or sand or water. The Good Shepherd carries no whip. We get to fill up our jar the way we choose.
A colleague of mine, a nearby UM pastor, was disturbed when I announced my retirement so far in advance. He said, “As soon as they know you are leaving you won’t be a part of their future any more.” On one level that is true. For the past several months I’ve been your interim pastor. On another level that’s not true. I will always be a part of the future of this church, by being a part of its past.
Doug Norris is part of the future of this church by virtue of his sixteen years of ministry here prior to my coming. Harry Peelor is part of the future of this church by virtue of his sexual misconduct; it happened 30 years ago but it cannot be swept under the rug as if it never occurred. Marvin Stuart is part of the future of this church by virtue of his 22 years as pastor here before he became Bishop.
So if I take a minute to look back over my 10 years here it is not an exercise in nostalgia, it’s an attempt to provide some perspective as you move ahead. (I will admit to a catch in my throat when I say “as you move ahead,” rather than “as we move ahead.”)
In the final book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, there are seven “letters” the author is commanded to write to the seven Christian congregations of Asia Minor. He is commanded to dictate a message not to each church but to the angel of each church. Once that was pointed out to me, it became a fascinating detail and it excited my imagination. I decided I needed to identify and address the angel of this church. Some of you who were here 10 years ago may remember that.
I prayed about it – I cleared my mind of other things and invited the angel of the church to appear before me. What I saw was a stern older woman dressed in flowing robes and standing on the steps of a stately mansion. When I came closer I saw that her gowns were patched. I realized that her children had left home and the upper stories of the mansion were closed off to save on the heating bills. She looked both stern and sad.
Do you remember what I said to her? I said: It’s OK to lighten up a little bit.
Frankly, I don’t know all that much about angels. Do they get old and die like we do? Can they grow younger? I feel like the angel of this church is the same angel, but younger, lighter, more playful, less judgmental and more inviting. People tell me they feel a friendly spirit here, a sense of warmth and acceptance. That’s good. That’s very good. I think the angel of this church listened. I’m not talking about programs or budgets or remodeling or numbers or accomplishments or mission. I’m talking about something more basic than that – the personality of our congregation, our spirit, the core relationships we share with each other and with those who come to join us. I’m talking about the living angel of this church. It’s something you and I and everyone here contribute to and it’s something more than the sum of those parts. Call that something more the Holy Spirit. Call it the Good Shepherd laying down his life for us. For us.
The Lord is my shepherd. That’s all I want.
Mother’s Day is a nice thing, especially for mothers. I can’t hear of a janitors’ strike without thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr., for it was a garbage workers’ strike that brought him to Memphis, Tennessee, where his life was snuffed out (the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep). Developing a new generation of nuclear weapons on top of our exorbitant military superiority is the dream of a moral madman. Rebuilding Iraq gives us an historic opportunity to do something right and something new. In this world of ours the Church remains unique in its hopefulness, its blithe faith, and its visionary community. And this sermon has gone astray-ay-ay-ay like a flock of sheep without a shepherd.
So I am going to sum up with three totally unrelated illustrations.
1) Do not have your concert first and tune your instruments afterward. Begin the day with God. Begin the week with worship. Get the center of your circle right and the circumference will take care of itself. (Put the big rocks in the jar first.)
2) A true story I’ve been carrying around for years and it doesn’t fit any of these “last” sermons so I’m going to throw it in now. Maybe you remember several years ago at the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C., during the fourth round of the contest, Rosalie Elliot, then an 11-year-old from South Carolina, drew the word “avowal.” In her soft, Southern accent she spelled it. But did the seventh grader say an ‘a’ or an ‘e’ as the next to the last letter? The judges couldn’t decide. They listened to tape recording playbacks, but the critical letter was accept-blurred. Chief Judge John Lloyd finally put the question to the only person who knew the answer. “Was the letter an ‘a’ or an ‘e’?” he asked Rosalie Elliot. Surrounded by whispering young spellers, she now knew the correct spelling of the word. Without hesitation, she replied that she had misspelled it. She walked from the stage and the audience rose and gave her a standing ovation, including 50 newspaper reporters, one of whom was heard to remark that Judge Lloyd had put quite a burden on an 11-year-old. Had he? [4] Is that what honesty has come to in our land? Then the Church has a clear mission – to be a community of people where every 11-year-old finds it easy to be truthful. Remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his Nobel address: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.” We of the Church must believe that!
3) Vaclav Havel – a good politician, like Nelson Mandela, with a benevolent vision for all humanity – said “… the only genuine backbone of all our actions – if they are to be moral – is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success.”
Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success . . . that’s
the first rock to put in the jar.
The Lord is my shepherd. That’s all I want.
[1] Thanks to Karen Black and others for forwarding this.
[2] Thanks to Rev. J. Barry Vaughn, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Germantown, PA.
[3] Dr. Ronald E. Parker, Trinity United Methodist Church, Berkeley, CA.
[4] Thanks to Rev. Don Shelby.
“’SHALOM’ TO YOU NOW” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“SHALOM’ TO YOU NOW”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” (Luke 24:36b)
The disciples huddle together in a locked room, somewhere, scratching their heads, commiserating over his death, glancing nervously at the door fearing whatever may happen next since they obviously backed the wrong horse in the Messiah race. Then Jesus appears in the room with them and his first word is “shalom,” . . . “peace”. “Shalom be with you.” “Peace be with you.”
Every Sunday, week after week, year after year, we join hands at the conclusion of our worship services and we sing,
Shalom to you now, shalom, my friends.
May God’s full mercies bless you, my friends.
In all your living and through your loving,
Christ be your shalom, Christ be your shalom. [1]
Week after week we separate from worship by repeating the first words with which the risen Christ greeted his nervous disciples.
Shalom to you now. Peace be with you.
“Shalom” is a rich Hebrew/Aramaic term meaning more than we mean, usually, when we use the word “peace.” It means more than peace of mind and it means more than the absence of war. Before his crucifixion Jesus promised to give shalom to his disciples, but he was quick to add, “not as the world giveth, do I give.” (John 14:27) Later in the first century Paul would call shalom the “peace that passes understanding.” (Philippians 4:7)
So what is this shalom we so blithely offer each other every Sunday morning? I need to give you a little linguistics lesson here – guaranteed to ruin my reputation for interesting and relevant sermons.
There are ten times as many words in English as there are in Hebrew. Hebrew words do double-duty. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. They are all consonants. No vowels. Shalom means several things depending on context, inflection and spelling.
Shalom – in Hebrew - would be written with three letters only – the Hebrew letter for our sound “sh”, the Hebrew letter for our sound “l”, and the Hebrew letter for our sound “m”. SH-L-M. Several dozen words could be built by adding spoken vowels. We don’t really know what vowels Jesus used when he said, “shalom be with you,” because vowels were not added to written Hebrew until six centuries after Christ.
Add an “a” sound and shalom means “complete”; add an “e” sound and shelem means “he paid” (fulfilled his obligation). [2]
Confused? It gets more complicated. There is no form of the verb “to be” in Hebrew – there is no word for “is,” no word for “be,” no word for “are.” Our English translation renders Jesus’ words as “Peace be with you,” but he probably said “Shalom [is] you” or “You [are] shalom.” Which is interesting because he was addressing a group of timid disciples, including Peter who denied him, and Thomas who doubted his existence.
You [are] shalom.
The word appears repeatedly throughout the Bible, in a variety of contexts – in the Prophets, in the Psalms, in the Histories, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse.
In some contexts it means friendship; shalom is the opposite of treachery.
In other contexts it means wellbeing: “do you have wellbeing, do you have shalom?” It’s like saying, “How are you?”
In some contexts it means safety. One dwells in shalom.
In other contexts it means salvation: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings of shalom.” The angels announce Jesus’ birth by singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth shalom to all on whom his favor rests.”
In Psalm 122:6 we find the familiar phrase, “Pray for the shalom of Jerusalem.” In English we translate it, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” But the Hebrews did not compartmentalize temporal peace and spiritual salvation. They were inseparable. You couldn’t have one without the other. So Psalm 122:6 could just as well be translated, “Pray for the salvation of Jerusalem.” It could also be translated, “Pray for the health of Jerusalem.” Or it could be translated, “Pray for the completion of Jerusalem.” “…the fulfillment of Jerusalem.” “…the perfection of Jerusalem.” “… the wholeness of Jerusalem.”
“Shalom be with you,” Jesus greeted his disciples. “Shalom to you now,” we sing at the end of every worship service.
Peace, salvation, health, wholeness, completion, the perfecting of God’s creation and the fulfillment of God’s intention in us, in history, in nature, in time and space, on earth as it is in heaven.
Peace be with you. Shalom to you now.
We sing that every week. Does that mean shalom is the unique characteristic of our congregation? I can only say “our” congregation for another two months and then another will assume my post. I will be your friend, but another will be your pastor. This week he will attend a “Transition Workshop” sponsored by our Conference, just as I did in May 10 years ago. The workshop leader (10 years ago) was Bud Phillips, author of a little book called Pastoral Transitions: from Endings to New Beginnings. [3] He said church life is a three-act play. People know their lines, the script is agreed upon, and the drama moves predictably. But midway through the second act a new actor, whom no one has ever seen before wanders on to the stage. He doesn’t know the lines, but he has a lead role to play. Everybody stumbles around for a while, trying to make things work, trying to draw him into the drama already underway, while he tries to establish his unique role and draw upon his experience from previous plays he has appeared in.
There’s a lot going on here in this church. But in a month and a half I’m going to wander off stage and Doug Monroe will wander on. He’ll have a lead role, but he won’t have seen the script! Should I tell him it’s all about shalom?
I sign off all my correspondence with “Sincerely, Bob.” Doug Monroe signs off with, “In the pursuit of shalom … always!”
Don’t assume that’s going to make for a perfect match. Because I happen to know that Doug’s current church sings a different song at the end of every worship service! I served that same church for the decade before coming here, two of our grown kids still live in that community and Carol worships there when she goes back to visit family. (In retirement I’ll get to visit family on weekends – an unknown concept for preachers!) The people of First united Methodist Church in Reno – where Doug Monroe currently serves as pastor – don’t sing “Shalom to you now,” they sing,
What does the Lord require of you?
What does the Lord require of you…,
But to do justice, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God.
So let me tell you what I imagine. I can just imagine, that this congregation who have sung “shalom to you now” for years and years, and a new pastor who is “in pursuit of shalom...always,” will have a knockdown drag-out battle, a major contest of wills, and a first falling-out over what to sing at the end of the worship service! Will it be “Shalom to you now,” or “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly…”?
I’ll be watching to see who wins!
Though I must tell you that “winning” and shalom are incompatible.
The poet Wordsworth caught a fleeting glimpse of shalom as something outside us:
“ . . . and I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is in the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.” [4]
Thomas Kelly found it not outside us, but deep within:
“On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.”
Shalom is a worthy “script” for individual lives and for a church. It is unlikely to be realized in any human lifetime, so it provides fuel for meaning in every age and stage of our lives. It cannot be achieved through human effort alone, but must call upon God’s presence in history and in daily life. Political peace will be impossible without individual salvation, health, wholeness and completion. Shalom is found both outside us, and deep within.
Shalom to you now, shalom, my friends.
May God’s full mercies bless you, my friends.
In all your living and through your loving,
Christ be your shalom, Christ be your shalom.
[1] Elsie S. Eslinger, 1980, No. 666, The United Methodist Hymnal, 1989.
[2] David Bivin, editor Jerusalem Perspective, via Rev. Anne Dilenschneider.
[3] …Center for Study of Church and Ministry, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 1987.
[4] “Lines on the Expected Dissolution of Mr. Fox,” 1807
“SALOME’S SPICES” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“SALOME’S SPICES”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb." (Mark 16:1-2)
A heart felt thanks to everybody wearing a hat today! If it’s a new hat then, “Thank you! Thank you!”
You see, in the Middle Ages all baptisms took place on Easter Sunday. That’s where the custom of wearing new clothes on Easter originated. They were baptismal clothes, new clothes symbolic of a new life! They were the outward and visible sign of a resurrection: the resurrection of the newly baptized convert. So thank you for this reminder that Easter isn’t about spring buds and garden flowers. It’s about new life in Christ.
In the dugouts of World War II two badly wounded men were waiting for their buddies to return. The one knew all too well that he wasn’t going to make it. He said to the other, “Listen Dominique, you’ve led a bad life. You have little to return to. There are no convictions against me. There’s nothing on the books against my name.” He took his dog tags and identification papers and thrust them at Dominique. “Take my name. Take my life. I give it to you. Straight off, you’ve no more convictions. Take it! … Go on, take it, and hand yours over to me – so I can carry all your crimes away with me.”
Baptism once meant that same to people. It was resurrection to a new life; it was the gift Christ offered, not simply the event Christ experienced. And that’s why baptisms were always on Easter. And it’s why they wore new clothes! Paul’s words to the Colossians are deceptively simple: “You have been buried with him when you were baptized; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him….” (Colossians 2:12) No matter who we were previously, we are free to live Christ’s life from now on; all we have to do is accept the gift that’s offered. “You have been buried with him when you were baptized; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him….”
One of Mark Twain’s lesser books contains the story of an elderly black slave who falls asleep beside the Mississippi River. The river is the boundary between Illinois and Kentucky. During the night the river rises, jumps its bank and changes its course. The man goes to sleep in Kentucky and awakes in Illinois. He goes to sleep a slave and wakes up a free man. Baptism means something much like that and it’s worth at least a new hat, not mention a new look!
The Bible mentions Salome only twice, both times in the Gospel of Mark. She was a disciple of Jesus, one of the forgotten females who followed Jesus but don’t get featured with the “twelve.” The story cannot be told without these women, however, because the men would never touch a dead body. (Besides, the men had mostly disappeared when the soldiers came for Jesus.) The women hung around. They stayed by the cross while Jesus died. They were there to take down Jesus’ corpse and carry it to the cave offered by Joseph of Arimathea. It was almost sundown and the Sabbath began at sundown and work was forbidden on the Sabbath – even women’s work. So they were unable to anoint his body with oils and spices to prevent it stinking. They saw to the rolling of the stone across the entrance to the cave and then trailed off to wherever they would spend the night, and the next day, the holy Sabbath, and the night following.
When the Sabbath, Saturday, was ended, they were up before dawn and ready for the day’s unpleasant task. There is a homely little detail in this story and it is the one I ask us to focus on this morning. Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices. That’s what it says. They bought spices so they could anoint Jesus’ body. The spices would be mixed in olive oil and spread over his corpse to disguise the odor of decomposition. There may have been a ritual significance to this, but it was eminently practical.
You’ve heard the other details many times, how they found the heavy rock rolled away from the entrance, how there was no stench of death in the cold damp air inside the cave, how the cloth in which they had wrapped the body was now neatly folded and put to one side. But it’s an untold detail that intrigues me. Where were Salome’s spices on Easter afternoon? What became of Salome’s spices? Did she tuck them away in a drawer in case Jesus died a second time – and stayed dead? Did she store them in a canister on her kitchen shelf, did she use them to keep her bridal garments fresh, did she burn them in the outhouse after someone used it? Where were Salome’s spices on Easter afternoon?! Did she find the living Christ and use them somehow to anoint his life?
Do you anoint renewed and risen life with every precious thing you own: time, thoughts, friendships, work, play, worship, talents, covenants. These are our bag of spices, meant to anoint a risen Christ wherever we find him . . . now.
Let me tell you a humble Easter story. Tell me if you identify the Easter in it. There is a United Methodist Church called Calvary in Lewiston, Maine. Lewiston is a predominantly Franco-American mill-town, and hardly a hotbed of progressivism. Ruth Morrison is the pastor of Calvary United Methodist Church in Lewiston, Maine. The church building sits in an unpromising neighborhood, recently populated by Somali immigrants. Recently arriving Africans were not welcomed with open arms in Lewiston, Maine. So the Methodists, being good Methodists, invited their new Somali neighbors to a church supper because that is the way Methodists go about doing good deeds whether in California or Maine . . . and quite probably in Somalia. Forty-five minutes past suppertime no Somalis had arrived. Finally some Somali men showed up. They all ate tentatively and engaged in hesitant conversation until . . . another hour after that . . . the Somali women and children arrived. The children quickly discovered a table of remnants from the church rummage sale – talk about typical Methodist! – old costume jewelry and the like, and pretty soon everybody, young and old, was playing dress-up. The ice was broken. A journey was begun.
Christmas time came. There was no new baby in the Methodist congregation for the annual holy family drama. So they invited a Somali family with an infant daughter, and they accepted. This built a bridge. In the spring the baby fell ill. Pastor Ruth paid a pastoral call. And then another, and as she was welcomed she became present to the family as they kept vigil with their very sick infant.
When the baby died, Methodist men built a little coffin and the congregation mourned with their neighbors. Their neighbors. These Methodists were mill workers, remember? It was the first of several coffins built and given to their friends, and then they helped kids with their homework assignments, and helped families make cultural adjustments to life in Lewiston, Maine. [1]
The United Methodists of Lewiston, Maine, could have lamented the loss of their neighborhood church and moved to whatever suburbs they could afford. Instead they opened their bag of spices – a church supper, a remnant table, their ability to craft coffins, and their precious presence in the lives of their neighbors. They anointed the risen life of Christ in their here and now.
In a previous century Phillips Brooks visited Bethlehem. He returned and wrote a Christmas carol that has become a favorite of the generations: “O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie . . .” Brooks wrote an Easter carol, too. It’s not as familiar, but perhaps it should be:
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right;
Faith and Hope triumphant say
Christ will rise on Easter Day.
We can change the tense of the last line. Christ rose on Easter Day and rises – lives risen – every day.
Adam and Eve left the Garden of Life holding only a partially eaten and dying apple core. Salome came to the garden of death holding her bag of spices only to find new life rising to meet her.
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right;
Faith and Hope triumphant say
Christ will rise on Easter Day.
What’s in your bag of spices? Take stock! Are you anointing death or life? Have you put on the new clothes of baptism and accepted the new life Christ offers?
It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts. Don’t put Easter in the past tense.
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right;
Faith and Hope triumphant say
Christ lives risen every day.
GOOD FRIDAY - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
GOOD FRIDAY
Rev. Bob Olmstead
Death on a cross is death by asphyxiation. It is agonizingly slow. The weight of one’s own body hanging from its arms causes paralysis of the diaphragm. Only by supporting his weight on his feet, pushing up with his legs to relieve the weight on his arms, can the crucified one take a breath. Though paintings often depict Jesus with nails driven through his hands, it was more typical to drive stakes through the wrists, or even to use rope and simply tie the outstretched arms to the crosspiece.
The stake driven through the feet made it excruciating to thrust up on them, using them to support the body’s weight while gasping a breath. So the criminal would push his body up until the pain in his feet paralyzed his legs, then would sink down until the weight of his body hanging from his arms paralyzed his lungs. Up, down, up, down . . . up . . . down . . . for hours. A block of wood was sometimes placed beneath the criminal’s feet making it somewhat easier to support his weight and insuring that his dying would be prolonged.
When the soldiers finished their job with the nails, when the cross was lifted up and dropped into the hole that held it upright, when the first stabbing agony of his long dying had been felt, Jesus spoke. These first words Jesus spoke from the cross have echoed across the centuries, shaping our understanding of what civilized behavior means. These are the words against which moral humans measure themselves, again and again.
“Abba,” he said, “Father, forgive them. They do not understand what they are doing.”
How characteristic of him, this one we call the Son of God. Thinking first of others, even in his agony, and knowing them better than they knew themselves.
This first word Jesus addressed to God; now he looked side to side. Two thieves hung beside him, one on either side. The first spewed words of accusation and self-pity. The second thief recognized Jesus’ innocence and he rebuked the first. Then he asked Jesus to pray for him.
Turning his head to look his neighbor in the eye, Jesus said, “Today, brother, you will be with me in paradise.” Strangers until that moment, they shared a promise and were linked for all eternity.
Having looked up to God and prayed for the soldiers who were guarding him, having looked side to side at those who were given as his neighbors in that moment, Jesus now looked down from the cross to those he loved: his mother, Mary, faithful to him throughout his unconventional ministry, loyal to him even as others questioned or criticized, strength for him through trials and tribulations, even to standing at the foot of the cross to watch his execution. Perhaps she leaned for strength on one of the other women who stood with her – perhaps she leaned on John, the beloved disciple, whose companionship meant so much to Jesus.
Jesus’ breathing was labored by now. Thrusting himself upward with his legs, taking the pressure off his arms, off his lungs, added enormously to the burden of speaking. Nevertheless he spoke to his mother. “Woman,” he said, looking first at her and then at John, “behold your son.” And to John, indicating Mary with his eyes, he said, “Behold your mother.”
He gave them to each other, first fruits of a beloved community – the Church – we who are given to each other for all the years while we wait for the consummation of this sacrifice begun that day on Golgotha.
Three words spoken from the cross – all fueled by compassion and concern for others – the soldiers, the thief, his mother and his friend.
Then – and only then – he gathered up in himself the universal question that puzzles all humankind, the cry of the soul caught in the tenuous and vulnerable enterprise of life. Jesus howled to the heavens: Why?
“My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me?”
And the sky grew dark as if in answer to the human predicament, our loneliness amidst the blind forces of fate and nature, the alienation of the creature from its Creator, our estrangement from God. As if in response to the darkening sky an earthquake rumbled across the land, graves split open, and the veil of the Temple was torn top to bottom, exposing the Holy of Holies. No longer was divinity hidden behind a Temple shroud. In and through Christ God no longer lived shrouded in the Temple’s mystery, but out amidst the graves and crosses and soldiers and families and disciples and crowds.
Only then did Jesus look to his own needs.
“I thirst,” he said.
If ever you doubt the humanity of Christ, think of those two words. “I thirst.”
This was no disembodied spirit, second person of the Trinity, pretending to live in our temporal world. This was the thirst of a human being, prone to the limits and the needs of flesh and blood.
Jesus’ eyes are glazed over now and he no longer sees his mother or his friend or the thieves. His lips move, and with the little breath left in his lungs he whispers, “It is finished.”
What did he see on the inner landscape of his mind at that moment? What is the “it” now finished? His earthly life? His work of salvation? And what precisely was that, is that? That question has preoccupied the minds and hearts of Christians for 2000 years. Whatever it is, it is finished. It is complete. Jesus, and the God to whom he whispers, are satisfied.
The fire of his life flickers brightly for one last brief moment and Jesus mouths his final words. No shout is necessary. He speaks to One so close as to be almost the same as he is.
“Abba, father, into your hands I give my spirit.”
And with that he died.
We call this Friday “Good” as in the old English expression for Holy. This is Holy Friday. We don’t explain it. We engage it.
The cross has been made central for you, brought down to the floor level where you can come close. All who wish are invited to kneel or stand by the cross to offer your own personal prayers.
While others are at the cross in prayer we will sing the Taize chant: “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom,” and then the ages old chant, “Kyrie eleison,” which means “Lord, have mercy.”
If you have no words for your prayer, simply come to the cross and breathe, and let each breath be a gift to the One who suffered there. And then go forth to remember what a great gift each breath we are given truly is.
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (V)” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (V)”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” (Isaiah 50:6)
“’Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.’ Immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; and with him there was a crowd with swords and clubs…” (Mark 14:41b-43)
More than three million people have died in the war so far. Three million people, most of them civilians! [1] That is more fatalities than in any conflict since World War II. I refer, of course, to the civil war in the Congo, in Africa, a war that has been going on for four and a half years and continues to this day. Where is the U.N.? Where are the Marines? Where are the protestors filling the streets of the world’s capitals? Why no peace marches and prayer corners for the past four and a half years while more than three million perished? . . . silence.
There will always be wars and rumors of wars . . . Jesus said that. We ignore most of them, most of the time, pacifists and militarists alike.
Many years ago I found a reference [2] that moved me deeply. I’ve shared it in every parish and on several other occasions; I know I’ve shared it here. I told it when I gave the Protestant prayer at my daughter’s high school baccalaureate service – back before prayers and baccalaureates were outlawed in public schools. It comes from a book called The Great Hunger by Johann Bojer.
The story goes like this: In a small and isolated Scandinavian village more than a century ago, almost everybody made their living by farming. Mostly they raised the food they needed for their families, with a bit extra to sell or trade for other necessities. The village farmlands were fenced and neatly cared for, and the villagers looked out for each other. All but one man, who lived alone, with only a large dog for company. The dog was known to be vicious and the man was assumed to be the same. Peer Holm was the man’s neighbor, a widower, a father whose little girl was the light of his life. You can see what’s coming: one day the dog escaped the fence and killed the little girl. The village went into mourning. The dog was destroyed, the dog’s owner was shunned, neighbors turned their backs to him, refusing to speak even if they met him in the village store. All agreed, they would sell him no seed corn for his next year’s crop. Spring came. The village fields sprouted with the bright green of new corn. All the village fields but one; the dog’s owner had no seed to plant. Then one day, neighbors noticed tender young corn sprouting in his field. Who had broken the ban and provided him the seed? It was his neighbor, Peer Holm, the father of the girl. He said, “I did not do this for Christ’s sake, or because I loved my enemy; but because...I felt a vast responsibility. Mankind must arrive, and be better than the blind powers that order its ways; in the midst of its sorrows it must take heed that the god-like does not die. The spark of eternity was once more aglow in me, and said; Let there be light... Therefore I went out and sowed the corn in my enemy’s field, that God might exist.” [3]
That paragraph contains the essence of the New Testament. It had a profound impact on me. I am convinced that this is how Christians are called to act.
While still in college I heard Martin Luther King, Jr. speak at a student conference. While still in seminary I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. I was much taken by his doctrine of non-violent resistance to evil and by his call to love our enemies. But Martin Luther King was killed. Shortly thereafter the idealistic Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I put in a short stint as campus minister at UC Berkeley and watched as peace marches turned into rock throwing, hate spewing, experiments in anarchy.
It was the night that Martin Luther King was killed that I came across these words of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final favor of love which is forgiveness.
I was walking home from a night of watching rioters pulled from paddy wagons at the Oakland jail. The air held whiffs of tear gas, the sidewalks were littered with broken glass, the city streets were finally strangely quiet, Martin Luther King, Jr. was still dead, and a shop owner had propped Niebuhr’s words against a bowl of flowers in his shop window. I was now out of seminary where Reinhold Niebuhr had been required reading. I hadn’t much liked him as a student. But his words clicked that night and over the years I have gone back to his writings and discovered a strange solace in his astringent realism.
Niebuhr became pastor of the Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit in 1915, ministering to a congregation of workers in the automobile industry. He was there throughout the 1920s, engaged in ministry on the urban frontier, exposing him to poverty, racial violence and savage labor-management conflicts. [4] In this crucible he saw human nature as something divided against itself, capable of goodness and unselfish love, capable of violence and evil. He came to the conclusion Christians are called to practice unselfish love (like Peer Holm) but that “love” is not sufficient for the restraint of evil. Unselfishness is properly the highest ideal for individuals, but the highest ideal for society seems to be justice, maintained by force when necessary.
Throughout the 1930s Niebuhr observed a world tormented by militaristic dictators like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. He concluded that Christian pacifism was irrelevant in such a world. War is a sign of our sinful natures, he wrote, but it is still necessary to defend the weak and restore justice even when that requires military force.
It is a paradox I feel very deeply. I’m a pacifist at heart, but I think it is immoral to stand by if others are being bullied.
Behavior like that of Peer Holm indeed draws God into the world. It is profoundly Christian to behave like that. But I have concluded (like Niebuhr) that nations cannot behave like that. That is for individual Christians, or perhaps Christian congregations to do. I’ll draw a parallel. Opposition to abortion is strongly rooted in the Roman Catholic faith. Roman Catholic are called to forbid themselves abortions. But I don’t think that deeply rooted unique moral stance should be imposed on society as a whole. Women who are not Roman Catholic should have a choice.
Pacifism is a similarly Christian moral stance. It may be the only way we can be loyal to our Lord, as individuals. But I don’t think we can try to force society as a whole to turn the other cheek.
The Christian faith is rooted in a story of crucifixion and resurrection, not in an ideal of perfection. Christian hope is not rooted in the perfectibility of humans. It is rooted in the redeemability of humans. Christian faith is grounded in a constant cycle of crucifixion and resurrection. God can take our very worst and redeem it, make something good out of it. That’s the Christian story.
That leads me to ask what good might come out of the historic convulsion we’re in right now.
For instance . . . a new UN might come out of this. More people in more parts of the world are thinking about the UN these days than at any time in recent history. Most are demanding its involvement merely as a means of impeding America’s spreading world hegemony. Maybe there are a few who are willing to propose reforms to the UN to make it an effective instrument of international law.
Quite a few of you were in our Great Decisions class when our Afghani guests said that the U.S. would do a better job than the U.N. at rebuilding Afghanistan. He gave two reasons: America has the resources and the UN gets so bogged down in bureaucracy that it gets little done. That was not what we idealistic humanitarian internationalists wanted to hear!
But if, indeed, this is a crisis, then this is a time when some people need to be willing to think the unthinkable. Halliburton and all those other industries that contributed so lavishly to the George W. Bush campaign are lining up for contracts to rebuild Iraq. That is an unconscionable conflict of interest! It is also true that they would undoubtedly do a better, faster, more efficient job of it than any “international” consortium cobbled together by the UN. Which is more important? To make the rebuilding multinational as a matter of principle . . . or to get the job done so folks have food and water and houses and electricity sooner rather than later?
I know many of you are ready to leap off your pews to counter that! It would be a dramatic – if unscripted – introduction to Holy Week to see me challenged in the pulpit. But I’m not proposing one way or the other. I’m saying now is an historic opportunity to envision something new, and that will come from people willing to think the unthinkable and envision something other than our current “two sides of the argument.”
Whatever comes out of this will not be perfect. History is largely a saga of unfinished business. [5] It is my hope that the UN will be seen as “unfinished business” – a product of the 1940s, still reflecting the 1940s, and inadequate for this first decade of the 21st century.
Resurrection can come of this.
Some of you know that I waste way too much time rising and falling with the San Francisco Giants. Did others of you notice that three brothers threw out the season’s opening pitch at Pacbell Park this year – the Alou brothers, Felipe, Manny and Jesus. Forty years ago those three Alou brothers played all three outfield positions for the Giants on opening day. They were joined later by two more Hispanic players: Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal. They were from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic; they spoke almost no English, but the team manager, Alvin Dark, forbid them to speak Spanish while they were in uniform!
This year, on opening day, 40% of the Giants roster speak Spanish . . . and Felipe Alou is the manager. Baseball isn’t the world. But 40 years is a very short time, a very short time, in the sweep of history. And we are growing closer together.
Twenty-four years ago last month Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was assassinated at the altar of his church for naming the military “death squads” who terrorized dissenters in his country. Shortly before his death Archbishop Romero said:
It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
That is what we are about. We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that this enables us to do something and do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way – an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results. But that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. [6]
Today is Palm Sunday. Many sermons will be preached today comparing Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the Marines’ triumphal entry into Baghdad. On the skin of the earth Baghdad and Jerusalem aren’t all that far apart, but there is a great difference between a donkey and a tank. Some sermons will emphasize the cheering crowds, others will emphasize Jesus’ humbleness. The story will be twisted this way and that way to suit the purposes of the preacher.
Jesus didn’t lift his arms in the gesture of a victorious politician. He didn’t flash “V” signs at the people beside the road. He knew people’s tendency to get carried away with the moment and he knew what lay ahead, for him and for them. Within days the crowds now shouting “Hosanna!” would be shouting “Crucify him!” Such is the way with crowds.
He would die.
And out of his death God would make a resurrection.
We are entering Holy Week with Jesus – remember that it is not a story of perfection. It is a story of violence and redemption, of crucifixion and resurrection. The Christian story is not the same as “The Little Engine That Could.” I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. The Christian story is the story of crucifixion and resurrection. The fulfillment of life we yearn for, the Kingdom of God we catch strive for, the impossible possibility of unconditional love is not something we will accomplish – solely – through education, rising standards of living, or any other human endeavor. Jesus lived the life we yearn for, Jesus lived God’s image and he was crucified and he would be crucified if he came again. The point is that God was able to make something good and god-like even out of that, even out of the crucifixion.
God can make something good out of the historical moment we are caught up in now. Out of the raw violence and misguided motives, out of the crass greed and outright lies, God (with our help) or we (with God’s help), can make something new, something better, something we probably haven’t seen before. It won’t be perfect.
Individuals can climb fences and plant seed in their enemies’ fields. Christians are called to live such lives. And societies can be better than they have been, though perhaps – indeed probably – never perfect.
I’ll quit, and leave us these words of Reinhold Niebuhr to ponder during Holy Week:
Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
[1] As per the International Rescue Committee, a private aid group based in New York City.
[2] Johann Bojer, The Great Hunger, referenced in a sermon by Rev. Bob Moon.
[3] Thanks to Rev. Bob Moon for this reference.
[4] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Life in the 20th Century, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 2000.
[5] Philip Gourevitch, “The Optimist” (profile of Kofi Annan), The New Yorker, March 3, 2003
[6] Thanks to Rev. Kim Smith, Trinity United Methodist Church, Berkeley, Ca; via Dr. Ronald Parker, Epworth UMC, Berkeley.
"WORDS TO LIVE WITH (IV)" - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (IV)”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.”
(Psalm 51:1-2)
Sue Miller and Ann Tyler are two of my favorite novelists. I’ve read all that each has written, some of it twice. I find more theology in their novels than in the heavy-lifting tomes from seminary days. They write about ordinary people living ordinary lives amidst the ordinary intricacies of families and friendships, where holiness is buried under the laundry and daily faithfulness constitutes heroism.
One mother in one of the novels, cleaning up one more time for yet another grandchild’s birthday party or maybe it was a wedding reception, asks herself, “…how often could a person celebrate? How many weddings, christenings, birthdays could she applaud, for heaven’s sake? What was the purpose of it all?”
Yes, well, that is the question, isn’t it?
Let me tell you how I prepared for today’s sermon: I got out all the Christmas cards and Christmas letters you sent me last December. It was quite a stack. I re-read them all. The first Christmas I was here, I said, “Put me on the list to get your Christmas letters. I want to hear about your distant grandchildren, your third cousins, vacations in Hawaii, lost jobs and found joys. Thank you for sending them. The people in those letters are the answer . . . they are the purpose of it all.
The woman in the novel thinks, “All that merriment! She would have to be so cheery! She wondered what would happen if she simply didn’t bother. If the girls started one of their quarrels and she just let it happen. If the moment for the toast came and went and she just slugged her drink down in silence.
“Still she made out her grocery list. Went to the store. Baked the cornbread ahead for the stuffing … gave both parlors a good going over.”
Tell me about heroes!
“Still she made out her grocery list. Went to the store. Baked the cornbread ahead for
the stuffing … gave both parlors a good going over.”
Sue Miller’s Family Pictures is a long novel about the Eberhardt family. They are a web of expectations, love, conflict, tension, competition, sacrifice, surveillance and sanctity. There are six children and the third child, Randall, is autistic. He never looks anyone in the eye, he makes strange noises, he rocks back and forth and screams if anyone interrupts his routine. He is the source of constant tension and tender concern. The other five kids grow up around him, sometimes helping with his care, often resenting him deeply. David Eberhardt, the father, is a psychiatrist: wise, kind and rational. Lainey Eberhardt, the mother, is emotional, erratic and fiercely protective of Randall, sometimes to the detriment of the others. Dr. David Eberhardt tacks a picture of Sigmund Freud to the kitchen wall. Though he does not insist, he counsels putting Randall in an institution where he will get consistent care and so the other five children can grow up in a more “normal” environment. Next to the photo of Freud Lainey tacks up two glossy postcards. They stay there above the toaster for years, growing tattered and grease stained.
By the end of the novel each member of the family has gone his or her own way. One of the sons is a minister, another is alcoholic, David and Lainey are divorced, Randall is dead. The family home has been sold and Nina, one of the daughters, is helping her mother pack up to move out. They come across a box of family photos. They pause to paw over this random record of birthdays, vacations, graduations, and family outings. When they return to packing, Nina pulls down her father’s old photo of Freud. She pulls down the two postcards her mother tacked up beside them so long ago. She looks at them and sees that both depict the Annunciation. The word is used just that once in the entire long novel, but I think it’s what the entire long novel is about. Annunciation. You know the story even if you don’t remember the word. We hear it every year just before Christmas. The Angel Gabriel salutes the maid Mary and announces that God is about to entrust a life to her and she should name him Jesus. The word only appears once in the novel, but the novel is about the consequences of accepting family members and special friends as gifts from God.
In “real life” our brothers and our sisters, our parents and our special friends, our colleagues at work and those who are given to us when we join a church are not introduced by angels with radiant wings. But if we believe in Annunciation then they are no less gifts from God.
Nina (in the book) tosses the greasy images of Freud and the angels on top of the box of family pictures (you may remember that is the name of the novel). And this insight suddenly comes to her!
“…out of the blue I understood that the family photograph held the answer. That it was really a portrait of a kind of reckless courage, a testament to the great loving carelessness at the heart of every family’s life, even ours. That each child represented such risk, such blind daring on its parents’ parts – such possibility for anguish and pain – that each one’s existence was a kind of miracle.” [1]
That paragraph brings me to my knees every time I read it.
Perhaps you identify with that as a parent, but remember that each of us was also once the product of blind daring on our parents’ parts; we embodied such possibility for anguish and pain. Our existence is a kind of miracle.
Dr. Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry at Harvard and author of several widely read books, says, “The more I live and the more I try to do my work as a psychiatrist, the less impressed I am by all of those psychological theories that try to tell us what causes what, what leads to this or what precludes that. Humans do indeed move along in response to various psychological urges, “drives,” and necessities; but at every moment in our lives we are open to new possibilities and are capable of turning in surprising directions. Accidents, unexpected incidents, creative encounters – all of those developments and much else that is mysterious or elusive or hard to pin down in words make up what in the end (and only then) any of us gets to call his or her “life.”
Accidents,
Unexpected incidents,
Creative encounters . . .
Alongside those I place two words from our Christian vocabulary: annunciation and providence.
Annunciation (the announcement of a sacred relationship that is entrusted to us), and
Providence (in which our future and God’s benevolence are mixed into one).
When I started a file for this sermon I tossed in another quote from a quite different source. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, unmarried (though engaged), who came to America in the 1930s to teach in one of our leading seminaries. With the rise of Hitler in his native Germany, he returned home to confront the evil that was gaining popularity in his homeland. He started his own little seminary of sorts, training pastors who were willing to stand firm in their opposition the Nazis. Pastor Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and ultimately executed by the Nazi authorities. His advice to pastors is collected in a little book called Life Together. He tells them: “It is never yours to complain about the souls in your care, to God or to each other. It is your job to commend them to God.” [2]
It should come as no surprise to you that pastors gripe to other pastors about parishioners (who don’t read the same books we do, who take their kids to soccer practice instead of Sunday School, who don’t give as much money as we think they should, who won’t volunteer to teach Sunday School, who hold contrary political opinions, are preoccupied with personal concerns, and wish that “church” came at a more convenient time than Sunday morning).
“It is never yours to complain about the souls in your care, to God or to each other. It is your job to commend them to God.”
Maybe when somebody joins the church we should send out birth announcements. We should all be notified that a new soul has joined our community and it’s not just chance or happenstance. They represent the powerful possibility of Annunciation. They may be part of God’s providential care for us, or we for them.
Our Christmas letters, shared with friends, are really sacred scripture, revealing God’s movement and mysterious presence.
“…how often could a person celebrate? How many weddings, christenings, birthdays could she applaud, for heaven’s sake?”
As many as she is given, would be my answer.
“What was the purpose of it all?”
To welcome each as an Annunciation, God’s angel hovering in the wings, naming someone who comes into our lives in a providential way.
[1] Sue Miller, Family Pictures, Harper & Row, New York, 1990.
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
"WORDS TO LIVE WITH (III)” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (III)”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea,
to go around the land of Edom;
but the people became impatient on the way” (Numbers 21:4)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish
but may have eternal life." (John 3:16)
Some few things I have read left a lasting impression. Not all of them made sense, like these opening paragraphs from a little dog-eared book on my shelf called The Third Peacock [1] . It begins with this modest sentence, “Let me tell you why God made the world.”
“Let me tell you why God made the world.
One afternoon, before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost sat around in the unity of their Godhead discussing one of the Father’s fixations. From all eternity, it seems he had had this thing about being. He would keep thinking up all kinds of unnecessary things – new ways of being and new kinds of beings to be. And as they talked, God the Son suddenly said, ‘Really, this is absolutely great stuff. Why don’t I go and mix us up a batch?’ And God the Holy Ghost said, ‘Terrific, I’ll help you.’ So they all pitched in, and after supper that night, the Son and the Holy Ghost put on this tremendous show of being for the Father. It was full of water and light and frogs; pinecones kept dropping all over the place and crazy fish swam around in the wineglasses. There were mushrooms and grapes, horseradishes and tigers – and men and women everywhere to taste them, to juggle them, to join them and to love them. And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and he said, ‘Wonderful! Just what I had in mind! Mazel tov! Tov! Tov! And all God the Son and God the Holy Ghost could think of to say was the same thing. ‘Tov! Tov! Tov!’ So they shouted together ‘Tov meod!’ and they laughed for ages and ages, saying things like how great it was for beings to be, and how clever of the Father to think of the idea, and how kind of the Son to go to all that trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing. And forever and ever they told old jokes, and the Father and the Son drank their wine in unitate Spiritus Sancti, and they all threw ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.”
A good friend told me about that book once while we were camping. Both of us had expensive cameras that we aimed at flowers and hillsides and cloud formations. We paused in one of our hikes and my friend confided that he did not always use film while photographing. He said that with a camera between his eye and an object he saw more clearly. He wasn’t interested in pictures; he was interested in seeing. (Only later did we discover this was Zen photography!) We went on to talk about the things there are to see, how did they get here, what do they mean, what lies behind it all, what are we seeing in those rare moments when we really see.
That’s when he recommended The Third Peacock. It was written by an Episcopal priest named Robert Farrar Capon, who goes on to say,
“Everybody knows that God is not three old men throwing olives at each other. Not everyone, I’m afraid, is equally clear that God is not a cosmic force or a principle of being or any other dish of celestial blancmange [pudding] we might choose to call him. Accordingly, I give you the central truth that creation is the result of a Trinitarian bash, and leave the details of the analogy to sort themselves out as best they can.”
Why do I like that so much? It drives people of a rational or scientific bent daffy. Which, of course, is one reason I like it! Religious language is designed to lead us into realms where reason cannot follow. Reason is a wonderful thing, it’s a useful thing. Using our reason we can map the human genome and build bigger bombs to destroy humans. Reason is one of the gifts with which we are endowed by our Creator, but it is only one of those gifts. We have other endowments. Faith, for example. Faith leads us into realms where reason cannot follow. And faith has its own special language which religion supplies.
The Nicene Creed, which we recited together this morning, is another good example. It’s as nice a piece of non-sense as you will ever hear or dance to. (Creeds should be understood as music, not as explanations.)
. . . maker of heaven and earth . . .
. . . eternally begotten of the father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made . . .
. . . for us and our salvation he came down from heaven . . .
and then the narrative: . . . became truly human . . . crucified . . . suffered death . . . rose again . . . ascended into heaven . . . seated at the right hand . . . .
. . . Holy Spirit . . .
. . . spoken through the prophets . . .
. . . apostolic church . . .
. . . baptism . . .
. . . forgiveness of sins . . .
. . . resurrection of the dead . . .
I love the feel of those words on my tongue. I especially love to be one voice in a congregation speaking those words with hope and anticipation - with faith - not reducing them to rational explanations that fit inside the limits of human reason.
Religious language – theology at its best, liturgy and worship – is more like music than science. Do we feel any need to reconcile Beethoven’s 5th Symphony with the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Then why should we feel the need to reconcile the Trinity with the Big Bang theory? The purpose of religious language – of religion itself - is to connect us to realms and realities that change our perspective and transform our lives.
Sometime in seminary or shortly thereafter I read a volume of sermons by David Roberts. He published only the one volume before his untimely death. The rest of the sermons have faded from memory, but in one he said something that stayed with me. He said,
“I spent twenty years trying to come to terms with my doubts. Then one day it dawned on me that I had better come to terms with my faith. Now I have passed from the agony of questions I cannot answer into the agony of answers I cannot escape. And it’s a great relief.” [2]
I don’t ever expect to find “proof” of God’s existence or of Christ’s divinity. I have as many doubts as anybody. But at that primordial fork in the road where we must decide whether to organize our lives around our doubts or our faith, I choose to follow my faith.
. . . that there is a God;
. . . that God cares, worries, weeps, laughs, welcomes, judges and loves;
. . . that Jesus is all those things they say about him in the creeds that I don’t understand but which I let play in my heart and soul and life like music;
. . . that there is significance to what I do, eternal significance perhaps;
. . . that whatever I do I do it in God’s sight;
. . . that I should offer up all that I do to God, or to Jesus;
. . . and that in God’s good time God will make something good out of all of this.
Remember how Robert Capon opens The Third Peacock? “Let me tell you why God made the world.” It’s an invitation to settle in and listen to a story that is able to render this world spiritually significant.
Creation – all this stuff of which we are a part, rocks and trees and goats and history and clouds and relationships and spiders and Beethoven and evolution and cancer and science and free will and oceans – existed first as an idea in the mind of God, was given body – form – being – through the work of Christ, and is choreographed – choreographed! – by a Holy Spirit.
Believing that is not a matter of science; it’s a matter of faith.
In his famous book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the late Joseph Campbell says, “Stories can render the modern world spiritually significant.” The meaning of life, Campbell claims, is not found in rationality and logic, not in rules, doctrines, beliefs or explanations, but in stories, images, metaphors, which are able to render the world spiritually significant. [3]
In the beginning . . .
Once upon a time . . .
Let me tell you why God made the world . . .
We get to choose which story we take part in. Faith puts us in God’s story and casts history in a different light. With faith we can hear and perhaps heed this counsel one pastor offered his people this week:
Do not be afraid to live among people who love the sword, who speak with iron hearts. You have been sent to make gentle this wounded world, to live in peace among those who are afraid, to bear healing to those who are captive to the spirit of pride and violence. Do not despair because of the oppressors, those who judge and despise, who will not listen, who do not know how to join with neighbors. Rejoice, for you have been given to them, to shine light into the darkness of their world. The Holy Spirit sustains you, so that you may dwell as healers among fearful men.
Bear your outrage lightly; do not cling to it. Let it lead you toward compassion, not anger. Pray that you may not be defeated by vengefulness, eaten by the appetite for power, destroyed by the spirit of destructiveness. Anger is not your weapon; it is your enemy.
The spirit of violence seeps into the world. But you radiate Good News, you breathe gentleness into the air that all others breathe, you establish trust on the earth. Be broken hearted. And through the cracks let light shine . . . the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. [4]
The final quote for this sermon surprises even me. I cut it out of a magazine article many years ago. Maybe at the time I meant to find fault with it.
“As to whether the faith is useful, I do not care. It is obligatory upon me and that is enough. My covenant with the Lord does not include the right to bargain for special favors and I am content.” [5]
[1] Robert Farrar Capon, The Third Peacock, Image Books / Doubleday, 1971
[3] Thanks to Rev. Richard Corson for this reference.
[4] Rev. Steve Holmes, forwarded via Internet from Grady Knowles, CA/NV UM Board of Pensions.
[5] George Reedy, “Christians, Why Do You Still Believe in God, in the Promise of the Cross?,” Harper’s (yellowing in my file, but without a date).
THE HEAVENS ARE TELLING… - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“THE HEAVENS ARE TELLING…”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge."
(Psalm 19:1-2)
“…God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom."
(I Corinthians 1:25)
During the American Civil War opposing armies battled in the open fields. When armies of the North and South were to meet, folks would make up picnic baskets and rush to the nearest hillside for a good vantage point. Newspaper accounts of the time report battles so fierce that spectators had to flee the smoke.
Now we sit on our sofas in the comfort home and watch bombs drop on Baghdad, a little tag on the screen reminding us that the action is “live,” while commentators repeat the obvious over and over again, and a banner runs across the bottom of the screen with news from the Pentagon, the oil wells, the aircraft carriers, from peace marches, from Washington, New York, Kuwait City, San Francisco, Basra, and back to Baghdad.
As the information flows across the screen my mind wanders to a conundrum I’ve never been able to figure out. Is human intelligence and creativity a blessing or a curse? Our bombs are “smart” now. Is that progress?
Ten years ago I preached two sermons back to back. The title of the first was “Why I Am a Conservative.” The title of the second was “Why I Am a Liberal.” I don’t have to go back and re-read them; I can summarize each in a single sentence. I am a conservative because of what I experience and see of human nature. I am a liberal because I believe in God.
I don’t want to believe that the building of bombs and the making of war and the taking of territory and the tribalization of attitudes are hard-wired into human nature. But even Jesus said, “There will always be wars and rumors of wars.” Perhaps aggression is a uniquely male characteristic. A case could be made for that. But jealousy, greed and selfishness are universal to genders and cultures. I would prefer not to believe that, but the evidence is there.
My hope is rooted in God, not human nature. We are creatures, not rulers – not even of ourselves. How regularly we forget that! Though jealousy, greed and selfishness are part of human nature, so is the possibility of opening to divine grace. Christian theology has named that dynamic the redemption of souls; if you prefer to call it the transformation of our natures I won’t quibble. Our natures can be redeemed when they are open to divine grace. That has been the heart of Christian transformation through the ages – it’s different from thinking that we humans will someday get it right if we just apply ourselves hard enough.
I don’t know what you think when a worship service contains a creed beginning with those two words: “I believe…” Is it merely an exercise in mental gymnastics? When I hear “I believe in the Holy Spirit” I think of the law of unintended consequences; is this the garb in which the Holy Spirit enters our realm of power and politics?
A speech by Dr. Robert Muller is making the rounds of the Internet. Muller is a former assistant secretary general of the United Nations. He witnessed the founding of the UN and recently surprised his listeners by pointing out that we are living in a miraculous and hopeful time in history. He says, “Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war.” Previous wars have been protested once they began. This time it was the legitimacy of war itself that was protested.
He goes on to assert that America’s will to war is in the process of creating a second superpower, “the merging, surging voice of the people of the world.”
I believe in the Holy Spirit….
Buried in the back of yesterday’s paper (which is where you will usually find reports of the Holy Spirit) was a small article about international humanitarian agencies already preparing to enter Iraq with food and medical supplies. Such humanitarian personnel usually enter battlefields under the protection of victorious armies. But the international humanitarian agencies have refused the protection of American forces because they do not want to be associated in people’s minds with America. That is real news about America’s future. Another world is taking shape behind the lines. God really does work in mysterious ways!
In one of our Great Decisions classes Bob Medearis pointed out that George W. Bush is the first of the last four U.S. presidents who did go to the UN before going to war. His father did not do that before the previous Gulf War and Bill Clinton did not do that before bombing Kosovo. The UN is back on the world’s radar for the world to see, and think about, and reform.
The UN hasn’t changed much since 1946. Why do France and Great Britain still wield veto power on the Security Council? They were the powers of a past era. What would it take to bring the Islamic world to an appropriate place at the table – with veto power on the Security Council if that is the way power is to be measured? America, Europe and the Soviet Union were given Security Council vetoes, reflecting their dominance of world affairs in 1946. President Truman insisted that China be given the same authority so the Asian world would be represented. How do we get Islam – the Muslim world – to the table? Perhaps the merging, surging voice of the world’s people can effect reforms giving the UN more authenticity and power.
God is not dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit.
We watch “live” coverage of a war which gets reported as if it were a sporting event, we listen to endless commentary filling empty spaces when nothing “exciting” is going on, words flow across the bottom of the TV screen with comments from this general, communications from that embassy, news from this front, information from that source.
What if the words streaming across the bottom of the TV screen were from the Bible?
Some of the words are from the Bible. “Tigris” and “Euphrates”. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are found in both the first and the final books of the Bible, in Genesis and in Revelation. The Tigris and Euphrates appear in the Garden of Eden and they reappear in that eternal city where there shall be no more tears. The fertile grasslands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are where the Garden of Eden was located. That’s where Mesopotamia, now called the “Cradle of Civilization,” was located. Baghdad was a city in Babylon long before Jesus came on the scene.
We’re bombing Eden. Again! Troops are trampling through the Garden.
The stories of Adam and Eve, the Garden and the snake of temptation, are stories of alienation and sin and estrangement and banishment and grieving and loss. Of all the stories in the Bible these make the most sense to me. Once we lived – or maybe might live - in harmony with nature . . . with each other . . . and with God. But our reality, generation after generation, is so different. Bombs will not break down the doors of Eden to readmit us. Something in our very natures will have to be redeemed.
An environmentalist who visited Kuwait after the last Gulf war, got close to the ground and observed that ants were carrying grains of sand – one by one, grain of sand by grain of sand – to cover the devastation of oil spills and flaming oil well fires.
Here, where it is spring, trees send up sap, azaleas bloom, bees visit, seeds stir beneath the warming earth. And in Iraq ants will carry sand grain by grain to cover up the oil spills and restore the environment. Halliburton will do it faster with bulldozers . . . God would get the work done with ants.
“The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge."
So proclaims the Psalm. Even if we pollute the atmosphere of earth with smoke and fire, bombs and burning oil wells . . . the stars still shine above the smoke and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
Such are the thoughts I think while sitting on the sofa watching war on CNN. God has no particular need of us. The ants will go about their work. And should this whole planet disappear the stars would continue to shine.
That is a depressing thought if we think we are at the center of the universe or at the apex of evolution. But if God is at the center . . . if we exist by the grace of God alone . . . then what?
I can’t say it any better than Norma LaComble said it Thursday night at our prayer vigil here in the sanctuary. She lighted one of the candles you see stuck in the sand on the altar today, she came to the microphone and she said simply: “God, I know you love me, and I know you love all the other people, and it must make you very sad to see what we are doing to each other tonight.”
Jesus sits on the hillside across the Kedron ravine from Jerusalem. He weeps, just as he wept from his friend Lazarus. And through his tears he says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, would that you knew the things that make for peace.”
I see the protesters in the streets of San Francisco; are they the ones who know the things that make for peace? I see quiet vigils on the steps of churches; are they the ones who know the things that make for peace? I see the familiar visages of Donald Rumsfeld, Condie Rice, Colin Powell; are they the ones who know the things that make for peace? Do any of us? Really?
Saint Paul looked at the life of Christ and said, “…the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.”
God’s wisdom is expressed in the Cross and living the wisdom of the cross is foolishness.
You can take that two ways. Living the wisdom of the cross
is foolishness so we might just as well quit. Or: living the wisdom of the cross is foolishness so get used to it . . . but keep it up.
Pastor Maggie’s community-wide witness through all of this has been an inspiration, and especially Thursday night when some of us gathered here in the sanctuary to light candles and to mark the opening of war with prayers, both ancient and spontaneous.
She told of working with Honduran refugees in Central America. People hounded off their ancestral lands, fleeing soldiers, living hand to mouth in jungles or refugee camps, unable to take even their meager possessions with them, they would do three things when settling into a new (and often temporary) location. They would elect a construction committee; they would elect an education committee; and they would elect a joy committee. They would not let circumstances drive them to despair. They would not allow joy be taken from them. The joy committee scheduled dances and celebrated birthdays and marked the holidays that shaped the people’s lives – even in exile.
She reminded us to keep the joy committee active.
She read the simple suggestions of Robert Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches:
“In the gloom of war, let us be guided by the light of faith and let it shine forth through our words and actions.
- open the doors of our sanctuaries so that all who wish may enter for prayer;
- keep a candle burning for peace on every altar, and some kind of light shining in the windows of our homes and offices;
- be the light of reason and conscience as Muslims and persons of Arab and Southeast Asian ethnicity are threatened by acts of hatred and racial profiling, reaching out to all our neighbors, defending our nation’s ideals of religious freedom and racial justice.
Thus we bring light into a world living under the shadow of war.”
And finally she paraphrased the prophet Micah: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (I)” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“WORDS TO LIVE WITH (I)”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“…in the presence of God in whom he [Abraham] believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. … Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’” (Romans 4:17,22)
“You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now…. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.” (Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations)
“All is grace . . .” (George Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest)
“Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”
(Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night)
When I left Reno to come to Palo Alto I gave away a lot of my books rather than pack them up and bring them. Many more have taken their place during my decade here and I’m planning to take no more than 10% of my books into retirement. After all, there are libraries!
Contemplating which books I might want to keep with me makes me realize how seldom I go back and re-read even portions of books once read. Most books are like meals, nourishment for the day, necessary but not memorable. There are a few, a very few, containing passages or paragraphs, perhaps a sentence or two, that gave shape and definition to who I am. I thought I would share those paragraphs with you this Lent in a series of five sermons called “Words to Live With.” But, as usual, life intrudes. Was it George Lennon who famously said, “Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans"?
I have never felt I needed to comment on whatever was in the news each week, but the imminent resumption of the Iraqi war, calls for some kind of comment from the pulpit, even if it’s little more than why I’ve said so little.
I find myself at odds with almost all my friends, my Bishop, my most trusted colleagues in the United Methodist ministry, my wife, my partner in ministry here, and the great majority of you. That leads me to question my opinion about the U.S. role in the world and whether we should resume the war with Iraq.
I will say first that I have a deep dislike of the Bush Administration. One reason for retiring is that I want to be far more partisan than I feel is fair for a pastor to be. I think that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Ashcroft policies are appalling. But (to quote Thomas Friedman), “Some things are true even if George W. Bush believes them.”
I am not convinced that we need to rush into full-scale military aggression right now; neither am I convinced that “peace” means anything more than neutrality and denial. Who will confront the thugs and the tyrants of this age if we do not? The UN, to my great disappointment, has shown little interest in confronting thuggery.
Recent war in Rwanda took two million lives. Two million lives. We could have stopped the slaughter. We did nothing. The UN did what little it could. Would you call that peace . . . because we avoided a “military solution”?
In my opinion – and this is just my opinion – we (you and I) are just as responsible for those lives lost in Rwanda when we did nothing, as we will be for the lives lost in Iraq when we wage war.
Of President Bush and those who support the war I would ask if we have the guts and the fortitude to enter into long-term “nation-rebuilding” after the war is “won”? Our record in Afghanistan is less than encouraging. Of my wife, my Bishop, my friends, my colleagues and those who oppose the war I would ask if you will feel personally responsible for the lives lost should it turn out that Saddam does have bio-terror weapons and uses them in some near or distant future? Will you take responsibility for that?
Left-wing intellectuals and right-wing isolationists joined forces to prevent the U.S. from going to war in support of Great Britain in 1939, 1940, 1941. Massive anti-war demonstrations by students threatened to close down America’s universities if America sent troops to Europe. Personal pacifism is a deeply Christian response to the violence of history. If practiced on the national level – by those nations with the means to enforce order - it consigns innocent others to tyranny and persecution.
Some years ago I heard Saul Alinsky ask the question: “If the ends do not justify the means, what does?” I’ve pondered that question ever since, and I don’t have an answer for it. For those who support and promote the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, I have dozens of questions. For those who support non-intervention or the just-war philosophy (which would limit the exercise of our power to pure self-interest and protection) I have just as many questions.
So I have thought it best to say little or nothing, to simply raise my questions and my doubts about the position held by whomever I’m with – which in my case is 99% opponents of re-invading Iraq.
I think we are in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between two evils. War is always evil. Sometimes it is the lesser evil.
And now I wonder if there any way to link these troubled thoughts with the words I originally intended to share with you today?
I think I will go ahead and share them, and let you judge whether they have relevance for the world of power and politics that impinges on us.
I was still in college when I read a short French novel titled The Diary of a Country Priest. The young priest in the novel has little to recommend him except sincerity. He is never going to be a bishop, nor does he aspire to be. He wants only to serve his little village, and to see every soul there turned trustingly toward God. The villagers, of course, want a priest who will be popular with the youth, who will perform their baptisms, their weddings and their funerals, and otherwise leave them alone to make money and whoopee.
When the young priest is driven to despair by the lethargy and unconscious cruelties of his parish, he bicycles to a larger town nearby where he can speak with an older and more experienced priest. In response to the young man’s frustrations the older priest says, “You’ve got to set things straight all the day long. You’ve got to restore order, knowing that disorder will get the upper hand the very next day, because such is the order of things, unluckily: night is bound to turn the day’s work upside down – night belongs to the Devil.”
I was 19 when I read that. I did not want to believe that disorder “is the order of things.” I was preparing to go to seminary after college. I was going to set the Church on its ear and make this world “a better place,” if not a perfect place. I did not want to hear that once I got a problem solved it would reappear again the very next day.
I wonder how many hundreds of times that paragraph has come back to me! “You’ve got to set things straight all the day long. You’ve got to restore order, knowing that disorder will get the upper hand the very next day, because such is the order of things, unluckily: night is bound to turn the day’s work upside down – night belongs to the Devil.”
Methodists, I find, don’t want to hear that. We’re the activists of the Christian world. “Well, what should we do about it?” is the Methodist mantra. As if, by our doing, we could accomplish what God has failed to accomplish from Eden on.
Which brings me to a second line of dialog. Again, in college I read the plays of Eugene O’Neill. They are unrelentingly bleak and the quotation I return to is from a play called, Long Day’s Journey into Night. It’s about alcoholism and family cruelties and existential despair. In the midst of which one character says, “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.” In one sentence O’Neill’s character captures the central message of the Christian Scriptures, the essence of St. Paul’s writings, and the heart of Jesus’ teachings. “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”
Which returns me to the final words of The Diary of a Country Priest. The older priest sends the younger one back to his little village, urging him to carry on day by day, setting things in order again and again, but not postponing his joy until everyone else - everyone under his care - finds the peace and faith that he has found. The country priest learns to take satisfaction from daily faithfulness, from small successes, from hopeful beginnings that may or may not come to fruition.
His work is cut short by increasing stomach pains, loss of appetite, and the reality of cancer. He faces his death stoically, a friend at his bedside. Together they wait for a neighboring priest to come and give last rites. It becomes clear that the other priest will not arrive in time, and the companion reports: “The priest was still on his way, and finally I was bound to voice my deep regret that such delay threatened to deprive my comrade of the final consolation of Our Church. He did not seem to hear me. But a few minutes later he put his hand over mine, and his eyes entreated me to draw closer to him. He then uttered these words almost in my ear. And I am quite sure that I have recorded them accurately, for his voice, though halting, was strangely distinct.
“’Does it matter? Grace is everywhere. . . .?’
“I think he died just then.”
I’ve lived with those three words ever since – trying quite unsuccessfully to plumb the depths of what they mean: “Grace is everywhere.” Those three words shaped my theology and they have shaped me. “Grace is everywhere.” My eyes are not always discerning enough to find it. But I shape my life by searching for it. Nancy Mairs took a few more words to say something similar: “We, like the rest of creation, are in God, of God, and God is unfailingly present as Whatever Happens Next.”
Which brings me, finally, to the words I meant to open this sermon with but which I shall use instead to close it. After my first year in seminary I was appointed pastor of Shattuck Avenue United Methodist Church in Oakland. For the next three years I was a full time pastor while continuing to take classes toward my seminary degree. (The only way to go – in my opinion!)
The congregation was largely working-class blue-collar African-American. I formed an adult Sunday School class to study and discuss the sermons of Paul Tillich – a theologian who was “required reading” in seminary. These were the ‘60s: the week Stokely Carmichal first used the phrase “Black Power” we discussed it in that class; it was the time of the Free Speech Movement, the Black Panthers’ office storefront was in the next block, opposition to the War in Vietnam was heating up, our church was one block from the Oakland/Berkeley boundary and we could sometimes smell the residues of Saturday night tear-gas as our Sunday School class met – to discuss Paul Tillich’s dense sermons. One of those sermons I have returned to again and again, and quoted more than once in every parish. You’ve already heard it here. The title of the sermon is also its punch line: “You Are Accepted.” This is much more than three words, so hear me out.
“We cannot transform our lives unless we allow them to be transformed by that stroke of grace. It happens; or it does not happen. And certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it shall not happen so long as we think, in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it. Grace strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the cold compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.”
______________________________
Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, Image Books, Doubleday & Co., New York, 1954; The Macmillan Company, Paris, 1937.
Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night, in The Plays of Eugene O’Neill, Random House, New York, 1933.
Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” The Shaking of the Foundations, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1948.
“FAITH WITH FOLDED ARMS (isn’t)” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“FAITH WITH FOLDED ARMS (isn’t)
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts?’” (Mark 2:8)
Did you hear about the parents who wanted their children to be free to choose whatever language they preferred when they were old enough, so they didn’t expose their children to language till they were 15?
Neither did I . . . but I do know of parents who want their children to be free to choose whatever religion they prefer when they are old enough, so they don’t expose their children to religion.
The human brain is primed to absorb vocabulary, syntax – the miracle of language – during three critical years from age 2 to 5. Keeping a child free from language during this critical time of life forever impairs his or her ability to conceptualize and communicate.
If we do not offer children a religious language, a vocabulary of faith, they will be forever impoverished. The vocabulary of Christian faith was once heard in schools, in media and in the marketplace. Even those of us with a liberal rational tolerant faith – who seldom speak of or to God in our homes - could take for granted that our children heard the rudiments of a Christian structure from cultural sources. That is no longer true.
I grew up in a very small New York town. The town library was Mrs. Purdy’s house. The ground floor held shelves of books; old Mrs. Purdy and her older blind mother lived on the second floor. I can’t remember how it began but for a time, as a boy, I climbed to the second floor once a week and read to the librarian’s blind mother. I was told to read her the Psalms out of the Bible. I would begin reading a Psalm – not just the 23rd, but seemingly any Psalm – and after a few words the old blind woman would join in and say the words along with me. She had the Psalms memorized.
Looking back I wonder what those Psalms meant to Mrs. Purdy’s mother. In seminary I learned to recognize editorial redactions, to analyze the literary couplets, and to date the probable historical references in the Psalms. Mrs. Purdy’s mother, her name now long forgotten by me, recited them with a smile on her blind face as if she were caressing a velvety fabric.
We don’t memorize Bible verses in Sunday School any more. We offer explanations. We encourage discussion. May you never be old and blind, but can you imagine that there might be circumstances where you will need something more profound than explanations?
Maggie and I both gave up including creeds in worship services years ago. Too many people complained that they didn’t believe this line and they didn’t believe that point and so they couldn’t say the creeds.
I wonder what you think of the creeds with which we opened worship this morning. First we said a creed developed by the Korean Methodist Church – a modern church – in the 20th century. Then we sang the “lesser doxology” – always called the Gloria Patri when I was growing up – words from the 3rd or 4th century. The Chancel Choir sang another ancient creed, to music composed by Mozart
If the Gloria Patri is sung in my room while I am comatose or on my deathbed, I know that I (whatever “I” means at that point) will recognize it, but I wonder if there is a child in this church who has ever heard it before.
Here is the starting point for this morning’s sermon. (I’m sure you are happy to know that I’ve finally gotten to the starting point!) This is actually the starting point of my life’s work! Here it is: Reason asks the questions, but reason cannot supply the answers. Let me add a qualifier. Reason can supply answers to some questions, but not to life’s ultimate questions. What is the deepest meaning of this life? Is history random or purposeful? If there life beyond this life? What should I do with my life? Why? Most of the “why?” questions don’t surrender to reason, rationality, though they often yield to religious imagery.
Reason asks the questions, but reason cannot supply the answers to life’s ultimate questions.
Anne Lamott is almost a local. She grew up in Marin County, started drinking when she was a teenager, grew alienated from her mother, got into drugs, lost her father to a brain tumor, became sexually promiscuous - mostly with married men – and then she found Jesus. I’ll make that sentence easier for you by putting quotation marks around the last two words. After alcohol, alienation, drug abuse and promiscuity she “found Jesus.” There – that makes it easier, doesn’t it?
Anne Lamott’s friends are poets, feminists, writers, peace marchers, highly educated . . . liberals. The Metropolitan Church in San Francisco recently invited Anne Lamott to speak at their evening service. She agreed. Then she had to figure out what to say. Among other things she said, “I know that God is not an old man or woman in the sky, but possibly a drag queen-golden retriever mix…. I know that when I was drunk and stoned and having tiny little boundary issues with men, sometimes several times a day, I staggered into a little church where I was no longer sure of one single thing, except that I was lost. The people were civil rights activists, and the music was beautiful, and that turned out to be enough. After a year in that church, I started to call God “Jesus.” I wish that this did not worry people so much. My friend Neshama calls God “Howard,” as in “Our father/mother, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name,” and this does not seem to worry people. When I was still afraid to call God Jesus, I called him my Higher Power, or for the sake of brevity, my old H.P. Then I started to think of Him as my old Hewlett-Packard, and that worked, and it worried people a lot less than this Jesus business...”
This “Jesus business” worries us a lot. We are embarrassed by people who called God “Jesus.” They aren’t our kind of people (whatever that means!). And besides - we are skeptical of all that stuff about Jesus in the creeds. Do we really have to believe all that?
Well, this “Jesus business” has been a thorny issue since the first century – all this stuff about “resurrection,” “Son of God,” “salvation,” “co-eternal with the Father,” “atonement,” “very God of very God,” “sacrament,” “second person of the Trinity,” “fully divine and fully human.” These words are problematic to fastidiously rational people like us, but let me tell you: they were problematic to people long before “science” became the norm for highly educated white people of European descent living in the northern hemisphere. (It’s really a local problem!)
Winifred Gallagher discarded Christianity back in her college days. Twelve years in Catholic schools gave her the idea that faith was about judgment, sin and guilt. While researching American Buddhism as a journalist, she began sitting in Zen meditation. Then she interviewed leading rabbis and Jewish mystics and she got a new perspective on the Jesus she had rejected. During her stop in San Francisco, she met the Rev. Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral. She confessed she still had trouble with most of the Christian creeds. “Good heavens, who doesn’t have trouble with creeds!” Rev. Jones responded. “I look at creeds as chapter headings for a love story. Our creed is the first word, not the last word. It helps us into the mystery.” [1]
Rationality, for all its benefits, can be a defense against entering into the mystery of life – its deeper realms. The 18-year-old college freshman, recently liberated from hometown Sunday School demands “proof”. If you can’t prove it to ME, then I hereby declare it to be untrue. Which translates, “I am the center of the universe and I am the measure of all truth, and if God refuses to make himself small enough to fit into my 18 year old brain, then by-golly I’ll show Him! I won’t believe in him!” Science, too, has created many small minds.
Creeds usually begin with those weighted words: “I believe.”
I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary…
Oops, wait a minute! . . . I don’t believe in the virgin birth, therefore I can’t say the Apostles Creed. /folded arms/
Western rationalism limits “belief” to a mental exercise, something that happens from the eyebrows up. “To believe” in a religious sense means to “give our heart to.” Faith means giving our hearts to possibilities we have no rational proof of. That’s what faith is. Doubts go right along with it. Always! Faith is always accompanied by doubts. But instead of a God small enough to fit inside your skull, faith makes you larger in response to the mystery of God.
Scientific inquiry and technological invention was sweeping England and Europe during the 18th century. Religion was fighting a rear guard action. Fundamentalism had not yet been invented, but it was soon to come. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was often asked to declare himself on the authority of the Bible. Over the course of years he developed what has come to be called the Methodist Quadrilateral. Scripture, tradition, reason, experience. To find answers to life’s ultimate questions we use those four resources: Scripture, tradition, reason, experience.
I can hear the sigh of relief in a congregation like ours: “Oh good, I can go on appealing to reason and to my personal preferences (I mean experience!) and still be a Christian (or at least a Methodist)!”
That’s true. But, you know, there are two other tools in your spiritual toolbox – perhaps rusty from lack of use. They are Scripture and tradition. They have the capacity to break you open and shed light on your personal experience; they can lead you into realms of the heart, instead of limiting you to what your mind has figured out.
An Orthodox priest was invited to lecture at Yale Divinity School one day. He gave a dry talk on the development of the creeds. How well I remember lectures like that. At the end of the lecture an earnest student (it could have been me), asked, “Father Theodore, what can one do when one finds it impossible to affirm certain tenets of the creed?”
The priest looked confused. “Well, you just say it. It’s not that hard to master. With a little effort, most can quickly learn it by heart.”
“No, you don’t understand,” continued the student, “what am I to do when I have difficulty affirming parts of the creed – like the Virgin Birth?”
The priest continued to look confused. “You just say it. Particularly when you have difficulty believing it, you just keep saying it. It will come to you eventually.”
Exasperatedly, the student, a wonderful representative of the ‘60s pleaded, “How can I with integrity affirm a creed in which I do not believe?”
“It’s not your creed, young man!” said the priest. “It’s our creed. Keep saying it, for heaven’s sake! Eventually, it may come to you. For some it takes longer than for others. How old are you? Twenty-three? Don’t be so hard on yourself. Eventually, it may come to you. Even if it doesn’t, don’t worry. It’s not your creed.”
Are you growing into a larger and fuller faith, or are you fending off life’s deeper mysteries with the folded arms of rigid rationality?
I believe in one God, the Father almighty; who made heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us humans and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made human. He was crucified also under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried. And on the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God: and he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son… I acknowledge baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Kathleen Norris calls creeds “another strange way of speaking in tongues.” Precisely. I like that.
We will never get everything all figured out. We can stand rigidly with folded arms – like the scribes who witnessed Jesus’s healing, or we can be like the paralyzed man’s friends: determined to find their way into Christ’s presence. Which do you choose to be?
We have to give our hearts to something before that something is fully clear to us. That’s faith. It comes with all kinds of doubts – always. Don’t fold your arms against all doubts and die in that position. Faith without doubt is dead; but doubt without faith is death.
It’s OK to let the vocabulary of our faith wash over us and enter into us. Give your heart to the images, even as your mind raises objections. Allow yourself to grow into the mysteries and truths that live within the ancient, yet familiar, words. Be patient. Be open.
Tennis great, Arthur Ashe, was given a tainted blood transfusion from which he contracted AIDS. When he discovered he was going to die he wrote his autobiography and in it included a letter to his young daughter, Camera. It is one of the finer documents of the last century.
Dear Camera, have faith in God. Do not be tempted either by pleasures and material possessions, or by the claims of science and smart thinkers, into believing that religion is obsolete, that the worship of God is somehow beneath you. Spiritual nourishment is as important as physical nourishment and intellectual nourishment… Do not beg God for favors. Instead, ask God for the wisdom to know what is right, what God wants done, and the will to do it. Know the Bible. Read the Psalms and the Sermon on the Mount, and everything else in this timeless book. You will find consolation for your darkest hours. You will find inscribed there the meaning of life and the way you should live. You will grow into a deeper understanding of life’s meanings.
QUOTIDIAN MIRACLES - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“…if the prophet commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said was, ‘Wash, and be clean.’?” (II Kings 5:13)
We heard of two healings today, one more familiar than the other. Jesus stretched out his hand to a man with leprosy and the man was healed, “made clean” if we are to translate precisely. (Mark 1:40-45) The Old Testament story of Naaman (II Kings 5:1-14) is less familiar. I don’t understand why it’s not told more often because it’s a classic.
Naaman was the Donald Rumsfeld of his time. Secretary of Defense for a powerful king. Something of a bully; big military establishment at his command. But he has leprosy, which was the AIDS of his day.
After Naaman’s army overran Israel he brought home a Jewish slave-girl as a gift for his wife. The slave-girl can’t help but notice Naaman’s disease and she tells Naaman’s wife about Elisha, a Jewish prophet who heals people of their sicknesses. Naaman’s wife tells Naaman, Naaman tells the King of Aram, the King of Aram faxes the King of Israel and says, “I’m sending my Defense Minister across the border to visit your prophet, Elisha. He’ll be coming with four billion dollars and six armored tank battalions.”
The King of Israel hears “six armored tank battalions” and tears his hair with anxiety. But Elisha gets wind of it and sends a telegram saying, “Not to worry, King; just send him along to my house.” So Naaman pulls up with four billion dollars and six armored tank battalions in front of Elisha’s little suburban bungalow. Elisha is busy making brunch so he sends a messenger to the door and the messenger says, “Go wash in the River Jordan seven times and you will be healed.”
Naaman blows a gasket! He wants the prophet, not some messenger! Naaman wants fireworks, not a nice dip in the muddy little Jordan! There are bigger rivers where he came from! Naaman wants . . . a MIRACLE! With discreet understatement the Bible says, “He turned and went away in a rage.” A servant (who must have been one brave servant) approaches Naaman and says, “Father, if the prophet commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you as ‘Wash, and be clean’?”
Give Naaman credit. He swallowed his pride. We went humbly to that little Israeli stream called Jordan, washed seven times, and found healing.
What constitutes a miracle?
I ask you to consider the female Oncideres beetle. With a brain the size of a speck of dust, she holds three thoughts and she must keep them in proper order. First she has to find a mimosa tree. No other tree will do. When she finds a mimosa tree she must climb it for her second thought is to lay her eggs, which she does by climbing out on a limb, cutting a longitudinal slit with her mandible and depositing her eggs beneath the slit. Her third and final thought concerns the welfare of her offspring. Beetle larvae cannot survive in live wood, so she backs up a foot or so and cuts a neat girdle all around the limb, through the bark and through the cambium layer. It takes her about eight hours to finish this cabinetwork. When the cambium layer is severed the tree limb dies. Wind knocks the dead limb from the tree, the larvae feed and a new generation of Oncideres beetles emerge.
And consider this: mimosa trees live only 25 to 30 years in their natural state unless they are pruned. Mimosa trees pruned by the Oncideres beetle flourish for up to 100 years.
Lewis Thomas calls that an elegant example of a symbiotic partnership. [1] I call it a quotidian miracle.
Do you know the word, “quotidian”? The dictionary says it’s an adjective meaning “daily, recurring every day, anything that recurs daily.”
I could have titled this sermon “Everyday Miracles.” Seminary professors tell us to preach sermons using the simplest words possible and never to use words of more than three syllables. I’ve offered the same advice at preaching workshops. But I like “quotidian.” I like words in general. Words are quotidian miracles. I force air from my lungs, past delicate little strings in my throat; vibrations travel through the air and bounce up against a membrane in your ear. At the speed of sound you think the same thoughts I’m thinking – maybe about beetles, maybe about God’s grace.
Is that any less miraculous because we can explain it?
In the Bible, miracle is something different from our conception of miracle as a disruption of natural law. The Biblical writers had no conception of “nature” as a realm of ordained laws somehow separate from God’s intention. Rather, God sustained creation, and God’s will was expressed in natural events, whether it was the coming of spring rains or the birth of a child.
Our dictionaries, however, say “miracle” is a noun meaning “an event or action…thought to be due to supernatural causes, especially to an act of God….”
Why does an act of God have to be supernatural? Cannot an act of God be natural, everyday . . . quotidian?
A little boy was walking down the street with his grandmother. He said to her, “Has anybody ever seen God?” She replied, “Son, sometimes it seems I don’t see anything else.”
The Oncideres beetle and the mimosa tree are an elegant example of symbiotic partnership and an illustration of evolutionary adaptation. The tiny brain of a beetle contains three microscopic thoughts. She has three bits of awareness – bits of awareness – three. And they have to pop into her awareness in the proper sequence. How many bits of awareness do we have and how many combinations and permutations can we make of them? Yet, as we are to the beetle so God is to us. However many bits of awareness we have, they are closer to the beetle’s three than to God’s infinity.
If a thousand years pass in the blink of God’s eye, might not evolution be precisely how God gets God’s things done? It is we who want “miracles” on demand, suspension of the natural order, zizz boom bah, right now, overturn the laws of nature, and only THEN will we call it a miracle!
Twelve years ago Saddam Hussein set the oil fields of Kuwait on fire. Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist, was sent to the Persian Gulf early in 1991 with a governmental scientific team to view the war-induced decimation of land animals, sea creatures and bird life. She watched ants move clean sand grain by grain in order to cover the black crust caused by the oil spill. She concluded that all creatures have their own kind of awareness. I conclude that God has less need for humans than we prefer to think. If we could get that through our thick skulls, it would be a miracle!
A friend here in our church shared a letter from someone many of you know (so I am going to change the names). The correspondent went out to lunch with a friend who was bubbling over with a story to tell. It seemed that her second daughter (we’ll call her Julie) had just moved. Friends and relations turned out to help. At the end of the day, Julie came to her mother with a long, stricken face and held out her hand. The diamond from her ring was gone. That diamond was from her grandmother’s engagement ring, from the mother of the woman telling the story. She cried and she started praying which intensified over the hours. At one point she cried out, “Lord, I want a miracle. I want Julie to find Mother’s diamond.” And of course Julie found the diamond and Marie is convinced that her prayers did it. She’s giving daily prayers of thanks for that miracle. Well, our correspondent writes, I guess I can’t say that isn’t true, but I have such a doubtful reaction to the whole thing, and more than anything I think that the world is falling apart and Marie’s whole attention is on a diamond. If miracles are to be handed out and asked for, it seems as if there are more important things.
What do you think?
I tell people, “If a diamond is what you’re worried about, go ahead and pray for it. God is more likely to transform your prayers than return a diamond, but who am I to say!”
Is finding a lost diamond any more a miracle than a beetle with three thoughts, pruning the mimosa trees generation unto generation? I’m more impressed with the beetles.
Some years ago a sentence from an airline magazine jumped off the page at me. It was about a mother welcoming her son home from the war in Vietnam. A friend tells her, “That’s what miracles are, baby – all the tears you never shed.”
A woman offers prayers of gratitude and praise when a lost diamond is found. I wonder, did she offer prayers of gratitude and praise on all the days when it was never lost? That’s what MIRACLES are, baby – all the tears you never shed.
I read most everything that comes before me – airline magazines, bumper stickers - there’s anger on the nation’s bumpers these days – much of it in the name of peace. But this week I saw a bumper sticker message that was new to me. It said, My Other Vehicle Is My Imagination. I got stopped at several traffic signals behind that car, and as I sat there waiting for the lights to change I wondered where that driver’s imagination took him. I wondered if any creatures other than humans possess the miracle of imagination. Every human child has this gift. If it isn’t lost it gets translated into music, art, literature, scientific exploration, and inventions.
My other vehicle is imagination. Imagination is a miracle.
Former President Jimmy Carter visited our church a couple of years ago to autograph copies of his childhood memoir. The Georgia of his childhood was about as poor as Americans ever experienced. But his hard working father and his idealistic mother gave him a unique childhood in which his imagination thrived; as an adult he was able to imagine himself President of the United States. In his recent speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace, Jimmy Carter said, “War may sometimes be a necessary evil . . . but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”
War kills so many children and destroys so much imagination. If there is one single criticism to make of our current U.S. administration, it is their utter lack of imagination. George Bush is Naaman with his four billion dollars and his six armored tank battalions, but without Naaman’s healing dose of humility.
Jesus taught the first disciples to taste God’s essence in a broken piece of bread, a shared sip of wine. From this we should learn that the quotidian and the spiritual do not exist on separate planes.
I close with this poem of Wendell Berry.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
HOW TO BE HUMAN - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
HOW TO BE HUMAN
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
“That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered at the door. … In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:32-33,35)
Notice the rhythm in Jesus’ life. Proclaiming God’s message is his vocation, but people make other demands on him. “Heal me! Heal me!” He responds to the people, exhausting himself. There are more at his door, but he takes care of himself, rising before dawn to enjoy the solitude he needs, refreshing himself in God’s company.
What do we need to be fully and satisfyingly human?
Remember, some years ago, when the Japanese Finance Minister said that Americans can't build a decent car because American workers are lazy. That precipitated a great hoo-ha. How dare a foreigner insult Americans! (It turns out that he also thought Americans couldn't understand Japanese and he was amazed when his comments got translated.)
While politicians postured, one brave columnist pointed out that we have labored long and hard to create and protect leisure time and we should not try to work like the Japanese. Japanese work habits are unhealthy and are devastating to family life. (The columnist also pointed out that German workers get six weeks annual vacation, twice as many paid holidays still make better cars.)
What is work? at does it mean?
The popular bumper sticker reads, "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go." That is the attitude of many. Work is not satisfying. It's just necessary. It makes purchasing possible -- food, toys, shelter, entertainment, even companionship.
Remember Peter Piper and his peck of pickled peppers? It’s out of date. The rhyme now goes like this:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
But perspicacious Polly Perkins purchased Peter's product
and peddled pickles to produce a pretty profit. [1]
Market capitalism in the nursery school! Most of us are more like perspicacious Polly Perkins than we are like Peter Piper -- we peddle pickles somebody else produced. We don't get the satisfaction of producing something ourselves.
Marxism has been largely discredited, but before we bury Karl Marx we need to acknowledge that he was correct about at least one thing: when workers are alienated from their work, when they are mere cogs in a machine or a system, when work holds no personal meaning because workers have no investment in what they produce -- then trouble is brewing, for the individual and for the system. We are denied an essential ingredient in what it takes to be satisfyingly human. Meaningful work.
Marx made the mistake of reducing everything in life to this one insight. He saw everything through an economic peephole. Meaningful work is necessary, but not sufficient for satisfying human living.
W.H. Auden says, "...those who try to live by Work alone, without Laughter or Prayer, turn into insane lovers of power, tyrants who would enslave Nature to their immediate desires ..." [2] The desolation of Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism is mute testimony to this truth. Maybe Marx was right in his assessment of work's importance; he was dead wrong to deny the importance of the religious element of satisfying human life.
Here is Auden on prayer:
... the serious part of prayer begins when we have got our begging over with and listen for the Voice of what I would call the Holy Spirit, though if others prefer to say the Voice of Oz or the Dreamer or Conscience, I shan't quarrel, so long as they don't call it the Voice of the Super-Ego, for that "entity" can only tell us what we know already, whereas the Voice I am talking about always says something new and unpredictable -- an unexpected demand, obedience to which involves a change of self, however painful. [3]
That is a rich understanding of prayer -- "... when we have got our begging over with and listen for the Voice ... [that] always says something new and unpredictable, obedience to which involves a change of self ....."
To be truly human requires a relationship with a Will other than our own, a Will which expresses purposes larger than our own selfish desires and needs!
While speaking of prayer, Auden goes on to say,
I do not believe there is such a thing as a 'random' event. “'Unpredictable' is a factual description; 'random' contains, without having the honesty to admit it, a philosophical bias typical of persons who have forgotten how to pray .... I must now openly state my own bias and say that I do not believe in Chance; I believe in Providence and Miracles....’”
How life changes when we listen for the whispers of a Will that reveals occasions as the working of Providence and Miracle instead of mere chance! To pray is to be open to insights like that, even though they change us by revealing a Will which is not our own and Purposes which are greater than ours.
Prayer [religion], too, can be corrupted if it is declared the sole source of meaning and satisfaction, if it becomes the peephole through which all of life is viewed. That is the corruption of Fundamentalism. If Communism was the corruption of work without prayer, then fundamentalism (Protestant, Islamic, whatever) is the corruption of prayer without play.
Auden says that prayer without Laughter and Work "turns Gnostic, cranky, [and] Pharisaic." (If you don't know what Gnostic and Pharisaic mean, just focus on the cranky. That about sums it up.)
Auden uses the term “carnival” for the kind of laughter and play he means. Carnival is the release of roles and responsibilities. In the Middle Ages, Carnival was the great equalizer. Popes and Kings were mocked, parents acted as silly as their children, and no one had to stick with the gender he or she was born with. At Mardi Gras (in the Middle Ages) everyone participated in Carnival; the shops were closed, the churches locked, while young and old, men and women, children and adults, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, powerful and weak, wise and foolish took to the streets in costume. Everything that was important and powerful and sacred got laughed at! By laughing at everything, everyone ended up laughing with each other.
Carnival celebrates the unity of our human race as mortal creatures, who come into this world and depart from it without our consent, who must eat, drink,...belch, and procreate if our species is to survive.... We oscillate between wishing we were unreflective animals and wishing we were disembodied spirits, for in either case we should not be [so] problematic to ourselves. The Carnival solution of this ambiguity is to laugh, for laughter is simultaneously a protest and an acceptance. [4]
"Laughter is simultaneously a protest and an acceptance" . . . of the ambiguities of our human existence.
People who cannot laugh, especially at themselves, are either dangerous or depressive.
But Carnival needs to be joined with Work and Prayer if human life is to be fully satisfying. The Hippies of the 60s and early 70s tried to live Carnival when time and society seemed to have forgotten how. But they neglected work and prayer. The Hippie carnival soured, became ugly, grubby and, ultimately, pornographic.
* * * * * * * * * * *
In John Updike's novel, Roger's Version, Pastor Lambert asks, "Why does life feel, to us as we experience it, so desperately urgent and so utterly pointless at the same time?" [5]
That is the question of the "modern" human.
In Updike's novel Pastor Lambert himself has lost touch with a clear sense of a Will other than his own (with prayer). Therefore his "work" becomes meaningless and his play is joyless.
Auden's answer to Pastor Lambert, and to us, is that satisfying human life – (I call it “how to be human”) - requires three elements: meaningful work, prayer (relationship to a Will that is not our own), and a healthy sense of carnival to help us laugh at the ridiculous ambiguities of the human condition.
“WHITHER THE LIBERAL CHURCH: (OR WILL IT JUST WITHER?) - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“WHITHER THE LIBERAL CHURCH:
(OR WILL IT JUST WITHER?)”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. … They were amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching – with authority!’…” (Mark 1:21,27)
Seven people. Five men and two women. Six Americans and one Israeli. Five whites and two persons of color. Did the one who came to America from India practice Hinduism? One Jew for sure. One African American. Much more than seven people really. How many people did it take to put the Columbia into space? How many engineers, secretaries, politicians, dreamers, computer programmers, mechanics? Space travel is one of the supreme accomplishments of the modern age. And those seven people, men and women of various faiths and ethnicities are heroes of the modern age: the age of science, cooperation, experiment, and new geophysical frontiers.
Seven families struggling with the mystery of death today. No different really from two families here in Palo Alto. A youngster on a bike. A teenager in a car. Two families changed forever. The struggle of every age, modern or primitive, in space or suburb. What is the meaning of life in the face of death?
Thousands on the march in the streets of our city yesterday. A president pursuing his own grim course. A paralyzed international agency. Nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, guided missiles, anthrax germs, UN inspectors, defiant dictator, incessant TV coverage . . . .
Is there a God?
How would we know? How would we know if there is a God? And whether this God cares for human life?
If there is a God how are we expected to respond? Is anything expected of us? Do we have a relationship with this God? Might we? Do we want to? Do we have a choice? Where would we find the answers?
An Episcopal Church in New York City has a signboard out front that says: “Open Door, Open Minds, Open Hearts”. Everybody in this room would cheer if we put that sign out front of our church. Right? Open Door, Open Minds, Open Hearts. That’s us. That’s who we aspire to be.
That would be a welcome invitation to someone raised in a closed-minded hard-hearted church. Such a person, if he or she still cared about “church” at all, would bring a great knowledge of the Bible through the open door and would find open minds and open hearts here.
But what would that sign mean to someone who never went to church as a child, who was raised in a family with no religious curiosity or practice? Open Door, Open Minds, Open Hearts. So? That could describe a bowling league or the Sierra Club. Well, actually not. A bowling league would soon tire of somebody who never practiced and the Sierra Club isn’t open-minded at all. They have a clear purpose and they would like to convince everybody of it!
So what does it mean for a church to be “open-minded”. It means former fundamentalists will feel comfortable. It means people preferring Christianity-lite won’t find anything challenging here. It will satisfy those wanting a less-filling faith, but those wanting more flavor will have to look elsewhere. [i]
For the last 30 years the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Congregational Church, and the Episcopal Church have experienced steadily declining membership. We were once known as the “mainline” denominations. Meanwhile churches with rigid ethics and a literal understanding of the Bible have grown in size and influence. [ii]
Some 12 or 14 years ago I worked out in the YMCA in another community. A young guy sat behind the counter; he took my towel and pushed a flier across the counter toward me. It advertised a popular right-wing speaker who was coming to a local church. With a smile I said, “No thanks, my politics run in the other direction.” With no hint of a smile he snarled, “What are you? A liberal?” I’d never heard the word pronounced quite that way before, filled with hostility and contempt.
Introvert that I am, I said nothing, went home and looked up “liberal” in the dictionary. It originally meant “suitable for a freeman”. For example a “liberal education” was suitable for a freeman (an aristocrat usually), but not for a slave or a serf or a convict. “Liberal” – “suitable for a freeman.”
The dictionary gave eight more definitions of “liberal”: they include – in order – “giving freely, generous; large or plentiful, abundant; not restricted to the literal meaning; tolerant of views differing from one’s own, broad-minded; of democratic or republican forms of government, as distinguished from monarchies, aristocracies, etc.; favoring reform or progress…especially reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual . . .”
MY GOODNESS! I HOPE I’M A LIBERAL!
When did the word become a slur?
And what is the future of the liberal church – denominations and congregations that favor giving freely, that are broadminded and tolerant of views differing from one’s own, not restricted to literal meaning, favoring reform or progress … especially reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual . . . ?
Why are fewer people coming through our open doors to find our open minds and open hearts?
Could it be because open mindedness is not enough?
Dr. William McKinney, president of Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, recently said of the Church – our kind of church, “It is time to stop focusing on decline and recognize that we are not only at the end of a period in our history – we are at the beginning of a new time.”
We are at the beginning of a new time.
The liberal church is no longer in the mainstream of American culture. Being a Methodist no longer puts us in the mainstream.
My generation didn’t want to impose religious dogma on our children, so we didn’t. Maybe we brought them to church, maybe we didn’t. The grown children of my generation, by and large, have nothing against the church, they just find it irrelevant. It doesn’t play a meaningful role in their lives.
That doesn’t make them bad people. It doesn’t mean they are going to hell. It doesn’t mean they don’t have issues, questions, problems. But the liberal church is not perceived to have unique or worthwhile answers. Open minds and open hearts they find in many other places.
Why the Church?
I remember interviewing a candidate for the United Methodist ministry. I liked him a lot. He told me he didn’t believe in the Virgin Birth. He didn’t believe in the literal resurrection of Christ’s body. He didn’t believe in the miracles, at least not the way they are described in the Bible. He would have fit right into the Methodist ministry, but I decided to play the contrarian and I asked him to spend 45 minutes telling me what he did believe and what he intended to preach on Sunday mornings. Well, he believed in love, and people getting along with each other, and peace, and respecting other cultures, and finding the truth in all religions, and universal health care. I suggested he try for a job with the Democratic Party or maybe writing verses for Hallmark cards. I asked him why he wanted to be a United Methodist minister. He said he wanted to help people. Help them what? I asked.
The Church once knew the answer to that. It was to save their souls and help them get into heaven. What’s our purpose now?
To make disciples for Jesus Christ.
This will not prepare them for the American mainstream. Discipleship is hard, it requires discipline, and it makes one different. We should be upfront about that with the children, with our teenagers, and with anybody who says they want to become a “member”. Discipleship makes you “different”!
We are in the business of making disciples.
We are in the business of making theologians. A theologian is a specialist who has the necessary tools to think about God. A liberal theologian is a specialist who knows how to think about God without closing her mind or turning his back on science, technology, democratic institutions and other fruits of the Enlightenment.
We are in the business of teaching the Bible – not as science, but as the mythic, ethical, symbolic, moral, narrative wellspring revealing human fulfillment. [iii]
We embody a sacramental lifestyle, modeled in baptism and Communion and then carried into home and workplace.
We remind each other that we are followers of Jesus and we help each other find his footsteps because he is out there in this modern world of ours. That’s where he lives.
Open mindedness is not enough.
We are in the business of making disciples for Jesus Christ.
We are making theologians.
We teach the Bible.
We embody a sacramental lifestyle, modeled in baptism and Communion.
We help each other follow Jesus.
That’s what we do.
[i] The flaw is to assume that “everybody” knows what Christianity is all about. Americans used to be Christians (unless they were Jewish). Used to be. Now the world has come to our doorstep. Our neighbors, our co-workers, our children’s classmates, often know nothing about Christianity.
[ii] I think it is because liberalism is too optimistic and optimism is disproved by experience.
[iii] By and large the Church resisted the Enlightenment – lumping the new ideas together in the concept of “modernism” – since they sapped the Church’s authority. The Roman Catholic doctrine of the Pope’s infallibility came only after the Enlightenment and in reaction to it. The rise of Protestant fundamentalism and its insistence on an infallible Bible came only after the Enlightenment and in reaction to it.
The liberal Church sought to integrate Christian faith with the evolution of science and the science of evolution, with the idea and the ideal of democratic self-government, as well as with the insights of psychology.
A RECONCILING CHURCH: WHAT OTHER KIND IS THERE? - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“A RECONCILING CHURCH:
WHAT OTHER KIND IS THERE?”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to Godself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."
(II Corinthians 5:16-21)
Paul writes to the church at Corinth: “All this is from God….” Everybody from Osama bin Laden to George Bush seems to know what God wants these days, so there is a somewhat hollow ring to Paul’s words. However, Paul’s words are found in Holy Scripture while Osama and George can manage nothing better than TV, so I opt for Saint Paul. What is it, precisely, that Paul proclaims? Hear it again: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to Godself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."
Reconciliation is the work of God. It’s what God does. Because reconciliation is the defining work of God, reconciliation is the primary work of the Church. And we are the Church – we are the Church – so reconciliation is our primary work. God entrusted it to us. God’s work: now our work.
Sin, in the Bible, means separation – separation from God, separation from each other. That is the condition known as sin. Separation is the opposite of reconciliation. So we are against it.
For reconciliation. Against sin (separation). That’s about it. That’s as good a definition of the work of the Church as I know. That’s what it means to be a Christian. Being a Christian does not mean being a not-Muslim or a not-Jew or a not-Buddhist or a not-Hindu. Nor does it mean being an American. Being a Christian means taking on the work God entrusts to us, doing the work that God began in Jesus Christ: the work of reconciliation. Overcoming separation (sin). Bringing people together, with each other and with God.
For reconciliation. Against separation.
Somewhere early on people got mixed up about sin. Instead of seeing sin as separation from God (which could be cured by reconciliation with God), people started seeing sin as something someone did which made God so mad that God rejected them and therefore we should reject them too. In other words, we should separate ourselves from them. In other words, we should engage in the sin of separation in order to remain pure.
This shift from sin as separation to sin as impurity led to the making of all sorts of rules about what was pure and what was impure, who was clean and who was unclean. Reconciliation got pushed aside and largely forgotten.
Notice: Paul – our first theologian - did not write, “God was in Christ judging the world, counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of judgment to us.” That is NOT what Paul wrote.
Why is it that those who claim to take the Bible literally get this exactly backwards?
God was in Christ, it says, in this Bible of ours - God was in Christ, who went by the very common name of Jesus while living an earthly life. Along comes Jesus, touching lepers, healing on the Sabbath, hanging out with tax collectors, encouraging foreign women. The evidence would suggest that he was more interested in reconciliation than purity.
Three years ago we, here at First United Methodist Church, passed a Covenant of Inclusiveness. At the bottom of our bulletins we proclaim ourselves a Reconciling Congregation. That’s a really odd name. Is there any other kind of church? We have been given the ministry of reconciliation . . . like it or not! Accept it or not! Believe it or not! Do it or not! We are a Reconciling Church. What other kind is there?!
When everybody knows that “church” MEANS reconciling, we won’t need that redundant adjective any more. But we aren’t there yet.
For the time being, we call ourselves a Reconciling Church to remind ourselves and others that we are intentionally embracing persons who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. If our current society excluded lepers and Samaritan women we would include them in our ministry of reconciliation. But for right now, in our society, sexual orientation is a primary focus of discrimination, exclusion, judgement, and condemnation.
Here is an important distinction. “Reconciling” is not the same as “welcoming”. Welcoming is good. We want to be welcoming. We post greeters at the front doors of the sanctuary every Sunday to shake hands with visitors and welcome them. Some of our members are so EXTRAORDINARILY welcoming that they even SPEAK to visitors, sometimes inviting them to remain for coffee and showing them around a little bit, maybe introducing them to friends on the patio or pouring them a cup of Methodist coffee.
Welcoming is good, I heartily encourage it, but it is not reconciling. Reconciling is much more. Reconciling is re-reading that Covenant of Inclusiveness that we affirmed by a vote margin of 10 to 1, and then seeking out those who are still separated from us.
Seeking out those who are separate from us. [1]
“…in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."
We, here at FUMC in Palo Alto, do a pretty good job of welcoming. We don’t shun people who are gay or lesbian. Some of our gay and lesbian members have significant roles and significant friendships within the congregation. This is good. We have rainbow banners out front; some of you wear your rainbow ribbon attached to your nametag every Sunday, and every Sunday our bulletin includes the words: We, as a Reconciling Congregation, welcome and seek to include all persons regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, cultural background, physical or mental health or ability, family status or financial circumstances.
Whew! This is good! What more could we be doing? (I’m a preacher; it’s my job to push you to do more. More! More!)
What more could we be doing? The ministry of reconciliation has been entrusted to us! What more could we be doing?
Our youth groups are thriving. Great kids! Great counselors! Great fellowship! Support their spaghetti dinner and talent show in three weeks; all proceeds benefit the Mid-Peninsula Opportunity Center. Show up! What if one of those 14 year olds discovers that his or her emerging hormonal attractions are consistently directed to not to persons of the “opposite sex” but to persons of the same sex? Is our M.Y.F., is our church, a place where he or she could talk about that?
Somebody said, listening is love. That’s why I’m such a fan of Stephen Ministry. That’s why I spend hours teaching Stephen Ministers. Tonight’s lesson – two and a half hours – is titled “The Art of Listening.” Listening is love. Are we ready to listen if one of our youth is not attracted to the “opposite sex?”
Imagine what it is like to be 14 years old (even in a community as liberal as ours) and to be attracted to somebody of the same sex. Imagine that. I’m not going to mince words: teen-agers are sometimes the cruelest people on earth. They instinctively make it painful to be “different”.
“…in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, … and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us." That means Christian teen-agers too.
It’s a dream of mine that in a church like ours a teen-ager could talk about confusing and difficult sexual impulses and find compassion, understanding, acceptance, reconciliation. One of the most profound forms of reconciliation is reconciliation with oneself when we find that we are “different” from most other people . . . and that it’s OK.
Some years ago a young man stopped me in the aisle of the church at the conclusion of the worship service. He had a wild look in his eyes and he didn’t bother to introduce himself. He said, “I want you to baptize me, I want you to baptize me right now!” I tried to get him to slow down and catch his breath and allow me to catch mine, but he was very agitated and kept repeating, “Baptize me now, baptize me in the name of Jesus Christ, my name is not important.” I said, “I’m not going to do that. You have to come into my office and talk to me first.” With reluctance he agreed. We went into my office and to make a longer story short, he said that the Devil was torturing him with the terrible sinful homosexual desires, and if I would just baptize him in the name of Jesus Christ he wouldn’t be gay anymore.
I remember trying to calm him down. I remember trying to put into words the good news that his sexuality was a gift from God, that God made him the way he was and God loved him the way he was. He literally screamed when I said that. He screamed, “Nooo!” I tried again to say that God loved him as he was, but he leaped up and ran out of the room and out of the church. I never saw him again.
What made him hate himself like that? I worry that it was the Church. Choosing purity over reconciliation. It’s a dream of mine that the Church – this church – could be a place where anyone can leave self-hate at the door, can leave self-doubt, misunderstandings, genuine brokenness at the door. A place where we experience and practice reconciliation: reconciliation with God, reconciliation with each other, and reconciliation with the hidden or rejected parts of ourselves.
“…in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, … and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."
We are a reconciling church; what other kind is there?
Gordon Johnston is organist at an Episcopal Church in another community. The church is named St. John’s. Gordon Johnston tells about growing up in a deeply religious family, about his tortured adolescent years, about his effort to pretend attraction to a woman, about his years of therapy, about being excommunicated from his family’s church, and about the “gentle, persistent love” of God. When the position of organist came open at St. John’s, he says, “I knew it was a place I could be happy. I had played here as substitute organist frequently and knew of the open-minded, progressive attitude of this congregation. I was delighted when the then-rector Allen Box offered me the job; but in a private interview before accepting the position I warned him that I was openly gay, and that if that was going to be a problem he should say so before I signed on the dotted line. He said, ‘In this church, people are people.’ That was all I needed to hear, and I signed on.
“For my first five years [at St. John’s] I kept a careful distance from the religious life of the community, and viewed my work as my job, my employment. I did not receive communion until more than five years after I first came here. Over time, I came to realize that independent of my ‘employment’, the ministry of St. John’s was important to me. This church is such a special place, and the loving attitude of open minds and open hearts is so important and yet rare.
“In 1995, when Gaston and I had been together for ten years, we asked [Pastor] Garth if he would bless our relationship. He said yes, and we had a beautiful commitment ceremony here with about 150 people, music, scripture readings and prayers, and afterwards went into the Burke Room and had little triangle sandwiches with the crust cut off. It was wonderful. The following week our friend Bishop Baycroft sent Garth a letter informing him that if he ever blessed another gay couple he would be fired, and Bishop Baycroft sent a general letter to all clergy reminding them not to use unauthorized liturgies….” [2]
What more can I say? “…in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, … and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."
[1] Thanks to Rev. Dr. Ronald E. Parker, Epworth United Methodist Church, Berkeley, California, for the important insight on which this sermon is built.
[2] Gordon Johnston, “Telling the Truth about Gay Pride,” St. John’s Church is in Ottawa.
DID YOU HEAR YOUR NAME - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” (Mark 1:9-11)
This is a Sunday to remember the baptism of Jesus. It is a Sunday for remembering the waters of our own baptism. Most of us recall the breathtaking words Jesus heard: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
I wonder how many baptisms I’ve performed in 41 years of ministry. No matter how many times I ask that simple question – “What name is given this child?” – it profoundly moves me. The very particularity of every infant, every baby, every child. What lies ahead for this child now given a name? What joys? What suffering?
Jesus and John stood in the River Jordan when the heavens opened. The people who shared that day with them had deep associations with the River Jordan. Their ancient ancestors had crossed that very river to enter the Promised Land. The could probably quote from the prophet Isaiah, where God says, "O Israel, do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you..." {Isaiah 43:1b-2a}.
I’ve been mulling that over. Is it enough? Is that all we can expect from God when it is our turn to "pass through the waters" of suffering or tragedy or trial? "...Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you..."
I'm sure Marvin Stuart knew Mel Wheatley. Wheatley was one of our great preachers and one of our great bishops. When Bishop Wheatley was a young preacher fresh out of seminary, he preached a sermon in which he tried to explain the enigma of human suffering. After the service a parishioner greeted him at the door. Perhaps she thought she was offering him a compliment. "Oh, Rev. Wheatley," she gushed, "I don't think I ever knew what it meant to suffer until I heard you preach."
We have all passed through the waters of some kind of suffering -- loss, illness, a child's despair, loneliness, unemployment, grief. Many of us have prayed earnestly for help. Is this all the help we can expect? O Israel, do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you..." Wouldn't it be better if God did something -- part the waters maybe -- something to alleviate suffering or clear up our troubles. If God has the power, and if God is as loving as we claim, then why does God let us suffer, saying only, "you are mine," "I know your name," and "I am with you"?
Many of you knew Robert McAfee Brown while he taught in the religion department at Stanford. He left Stanford, taught at seminaries, and retired here in Palo Alto. His writings continued to appear regularly until his recent death. Some years ago Bob Brown's granddaughter, Mackenzie, was born. Things were not well with Mackenzie and she hovered precariously on the brink between life and death, sustained by tubes and technology in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a local hospital. While his granddaughter's life still hung in the balance, Dr. Brown honored an invitation to preach, and his sermon was in the form of a message to his granddaughter, Mackenzie. It was later published in a periodical to which I subscribe. He tells Mackenzie how her parents slept on the hospital floor when no one knew if she would live through the night; how it seemed a sacramental laying on of hands whenever the male nurse lifted her up, tubes and all, to place her in her mother's or father's arms; how prayers were said over her, strangers donated blood, and a Black high school student known to her mother (a teacher) offered to donate a kidney if she needed one. Then Brown wrote:
Finally, Mackenzie, you have affirmed the reality of love. Would I be able to write these words if things were going badly? I hope I could, but it would be a severe test. "Why," I would be asking myself, "does all this happen to a tiny, newborn baby?" . . . If you live, Mackenzie, we'll all give thanks to God in whatever ways we think of God. And if you don't live, we will refuse to be acquiescent and blindly accepting. We'll have to believe somehow that God is present in the defeats as well as in the victories -- a God who has chosen to be as vulnerable as we are, who feels pain as we do, who would mourn your loss as we would. [1]
A month later a letter to the editor appeared taking issue with Brown's theology. It said:
Brown gives a picture of an all-loving but impotent God. God is not seen as impotent if suffering ends, for Brown will give him thanks if all works out in life as he prays. But if suffering is followed by death, all he can say in thanksgiving seems to be that God is present with us and mourns our losses with us. A few Christians in their suffering might be consoled by this thought; but most...may be driven to despair because love without power is no relief. [2]
Robert McAfee Brown seems to echo Isaiah -- affirming a God who knows us and who cares, who calls us by name, and promises to be with us. The writer of the letter wants a God who will do more than that, a God who is omnipotent and who will use some of that power on our behalf.
I once listened to a young pastor struggle with the same question. He was a probationer in our Conference and I was one of several "Elders" interviewing him to see if he was ready to be ordained an Elder. He asked to open his interview with a discussion of "theodicy." "Theodicy" is a fancy term for the same old question, "Why does God allow suffering to continue? Why doesn't God do something to end suffering and evil?"
The young pastor gave a explanation revealing that he had read many books and that he had an understanding of what others had to say about "theodicy." But out of the corner of my eye I was watching an older colleague, John Moore. Two of John's three daughters died in the Jonestown mass suicide with Jim Jones. The young pastor's answer was a defense of God. God is all powerful; or, as he put it, "God can do anything He jolly well pleases." But God has chosen to limit Himself so as not to compromise our freedom as humans. God could intervene at any time, defeat evil and end suffering, and someday God will. But that would also end our independence and free will as humans. When the young pastor finished, John Moore said, "In my experience, God is not all-powerful. The power of evil is very strong."
After the long and windy argument of a seminarian, defending God, the simple statement of a man who has lost two daughters: "In my experience, God is not all-powerful."
+ + + + + + + + +
Bernard Malamud, the novelist, was asked "What about suffering?"
He said, "I'm against it. But whenever we cannot avoid it, let's be sure to learn something from it."
People who have lived through great loss or pain say they have learned to value the present moment, to claim the joys and challenges of each day as it comes.
People who have "passed through the waters" of tragedy say that their priorities got straightened out and they have come to understand just why love is touted as the most important thing.
Does that mean God sends suffering to teach us these lessons? I don't believe that. I'm not a puppet being jerked about on God's strings!
There are important lessons to be learned, and suffering is sometimes the teacher. But God does not send the suffering, nor is the "lesson" sufficient to explain God's seeming impotence in the face of our tragedies.
Robert McAfee Brown did not let the letter written in response to his article go unanswered. In his response he tells of an adaptation of Psalm 23 which he said over Mackenzie and to Mackenzie many times during her six-week hospitalization.
"Mackenzie, the Lord is your shepherd, your guardian.
You shall not want for anything...
Even when you walk through a valley of deep darkness,
in the shadow of death (which is where you have been,
Mackenzie),
You need fear no evil, for God is with you always...
The cup of life overflows for you.
Goodness and unfailing mercy will follow you all the days of your life, however short or long,
And you will continue to dwell in God's house through all the years to come." [3]
That echoes the conclusion reached by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his little book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He wrote the book after the prolonged dying of his little boy. He reviews all the places he looked for answers, including the traditional theological arguments that make excuses for God's inaction. Kushner then concludes that God is not all-powerful; that in this life there are imponderable questions, there is inescapable evil and unspeakable suffering . . . and God suffers along with us. We are not alone.
Something is working itself out. Creation moves toward some great fulfillment. But it is not yet, and until it is we ride the tides of time and space in the company of the Creator, who knows and cares and calls to us with a message that is love.
Kushner writes:
Innocent people do suffer misfortunes in this life. Things happen to them far worse than they deserve -- they lose their jobs, they get sick, their children suffer or make them suffer. But when it happens it does not represent God punishing them for something they did wrong. The misfortunes do not come from God at all . . .
From that perspective, there ought to be a sense of relief in coming to the conclusion that God is not doing this to us. ...God can still be on our side when bad things happen to us. God can know that we are good and honest people who deserve better. ...Our question will not be Job's question, "God, why are you doing this to me?" but rather, "God, see what is happening to me. Can You help me?" We will turn to God, not to be judged or forgiven, not to be rewarded or punished, but to be strengthened and comforted. [4]
Life is not fair. Life is life, a precious gift even in its darkest moments. It does not last forever, which makes its moments more precious still. Faith does not protect us from evil, and God gives no insurance against suffering. We're in it together, you and I . . . and God . . . and our children and our aging parents and previous generations and generations yet to come. We're in it together.
God does not reach down and punish this man with an illness while saving that one from an auto accident. God is found weeping at every tomb. God is with us, and God suffers, too. God is to be found rejoicing when lives are full and rich and courageous. Our God is a God who nurtures and encourages us as we step boldly and faithfully into the stream of life -- to pass through the waters.
Which brings us, finally, back to baptism.
"What name shall be given this child?," we ask before the water is poured three times over her head. "What name?" And after that name is spoken -- a name for that one unique precious vulnerable human life -- he or she is baptized in the name of the Triune God: Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit.
Baptism is the promise that we are known by name and that we will not go through life's trials alone.
We will go through life's trials!
We will pass through the waters.
And as we call upon God's name, we will hear God calling our name -- the name given at our baptism -- asking us to join with the Divine Love in resisting the forces of evil and death, to be a part of the redemption of this world.
We will not always prevail, you and I.
In the final end God will triumph, but God's only power is love.
God's only power is love. And when our name is called, we can be a part of that power.
“MUSCULAR METHODISM” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“MUSCULAR METHODISM”
“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
(Isaiah 60:1-3)
Methodists played a major role in shaping America’s future. Methodism was muscular.
[1] From Hal Luccock’s Endless Line of Splendor, via Rev. Don Shelby.
[2] Thanks to Rev. Bob Moon.
[3] Leonard Sweet, Soul Tsunami
[4] Ben Campbell Johnson, quoted in The Christian Century, Nov 20-Dec 3, 2002.
“IT WAS TO OLDER FOLK” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“IT WAS TO OLDER FOLK”
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, ‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation’ … There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of great age…." (Luke 2:28-30,36)
In the summer of his 90th year, Charles Eliot, the venerable president-emeritus of Harvard, made his way down the road from his Maine home at Northeast Harbor to a neighboring cottage where the young Shattuck family lived. Mrs. Shattuck greeted him warmly and took him into the living room. After a brief conversation, Dr. Eliot asked permission to hold the Shattuck’s new baby. Surprised by the request, Mrs. Shattuck nonetheless lifted her infant son out of the crib and laid him carefully in the frail arms of the eminent educator. Dr. Eliot held the baby quietly, gazing intently into the child’s face. Then with a little gesture he returned the baby to his mother and said, “I have been looking at the end of life for so long that I wanted to look for a few moments at its beginning.”
Two old folks in this morning’s Gospel lesson - Simeon and Anna – do something similar. They hold the baby Jesus in their arms and they see the beginning of new life – not just for Jesus but for many. Simeon and Anna are minor characters in the cast, but an anthem has been written about them and I am going to ask our choir to sing it now. The fifth verse is printed in the bulletin and everybody is expected to join in at that point, so watch Mark for your cue!
It was to older folk that Jesus came [1]
that they might know their place and learn his name,
And upset notions of whom God may choose
to change the world or celebrate good news.
And this they understand who have been told
of Sarah who conceived when she was old,
and Hannah who found joy despite her tears,
and Naomi who blessed her later years.
With Zechariah, zealous for routine,
ensuring what’s to come has always been,
they may disclaim an angel’s message too
declaring God intends to make all new.
Like Simeon, resigned to failing pow’r,
old age might yet become the finest hour
for those who risk false claims that they’re deranged
by claiming God wants all things to be changed.
It is not in the manger Christ must stay,
forever lying helpless in the hay;
it is by older folk Jesus is blessed,
who see God’s restlessness in him expressed.
“It is by older folk Jesus is blessed, / [and] who see God’s restlessness in him expressed.” How strange. By and large we do not accord to age the dignity and respect that other cultures render. We are youth-oriented and have turned youthfulness into a fetish.
Many “older folks” are singled out in the Bible. Simeon and Anna, also Sarah and Abraham and Hannah and Naomi and Zechariah and Elizabeth.
Today we read the names of 45 of our church members who took their vows of membership 50 years – or more! – ago. Some are among our most active and supportive members – have been for more than 50 years!
In an Anne Tyler novel, Pearl, the heroine, puts on her hat and stares into the flecked mirror above the bureau in her bedroom. She leans closer and slowly traces the lines on her face: around her eyes, on her forehead, around her mouth, on her neck. Then she holds up her hands to the mirror and looks at the wrinkles and spots reflected there. The author says of her: “Pearl’s age does not surprise her. She’s grown used to it by now. You’re old for so much longer than you’re young, she thinks.” [2]
Advertising tries to deny that reality, holding out vain promises of prolonged youthfulness. What’s wrong with being old? We’re old for much longer than we’re young.
Now that I have announced my retirement I am frequently asked: “What do you plan to do in your retirement?” Do I have to DO something to justify being alive? I would like to practice being instead of doing. Having spent my years as a human-becoming, I want to be a human-being. That’s heresy, of course. Books on aging stress the importance of taking on new tasks, of maintaining a youthful “attitude,” and keeping abreast of current events.
Oh?
There is a difference between things that are eternal and things that are merely futuristic. Old people have often mastered the difference, but ours is a culture that values people for appearances and accomplishments. We are supposed to produce, achieve, have and keep. It’s tough to gain respect for being what you are, for inner quietude, for what you have learned, for a solid center of accumulated wisdom.
I was appointed pastor of Shattuck Avenue United Methodist Church in Oakland when I was 22 years old. The majority of the congregation was over 60; they seemed like a different species from me. But I dutifully set out to call on each of them. They taught me something. We have two ears and one mouth. That’s so we can listen twice as much as we talk. Many of those elderly Oakland parishioners had survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. I took to asking, “Where were you during the Earthquake?” I got the gift of a fascinating composite first-person oral history of an earth-shaking event! Others of those elders in North Oakland were African Americans. They were not in San Francisco in 1906. They had lived another reality and they were eager to tell me about it. What a blessing I received from those older folks. Talk of the San Francisco earthquake or the Jim Crow South led to talk of the families they started and work they did, children and grandchildren, gains and losses, joys and tragedies, successes and failures. I learned the history of our nation and our neighborhood. I wove these personal stories into funerals and memorial services. People still tell me they appreciate that. And I always want to say, well it really isn’t very hard – all you have to do is take the time to listen to older folks.
Somebody called old people “God’s glorious sunsets.” A sunset is something to be savored; we have to slow down and pause for awhile to appreciate it.
In many Native American cultures it is the old women who weave the baskets without which the tribe can gather neither water nor harvest. In China parents work and it is the grandparents, living as part of the family unit, who raise the children. In “primitive” cultures the elders are the story tellers, giving people knowledge of themselves, their history, their common values. The older folks often pass along spiritual traditions. But in America we segregate “the elderly” and treat aging as almost shameful. Something to be denied or covered up.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a monumental personage of the 20th century. When he was a Soviet dissident and acclaimed novelist the media portrayed him as heroic. When he came to America and turned out to be politically conservative the press marginalized him. Now he is old and lives again in Russia. In a recent interview he said, “I do feel that for humanity – not society but for humanity – moral authority is a necessity. The course of world history and world culture shows us that there are, and should be, moral authorities. They constitute a kind of spiritual hierarchy which is absolutely necessary… In the 20th century, the universal tendency … was to destroy any hierarchies so that everyone could act just as he or she wants without regarding any moral authority…”
I suspect that sheds light on our attempt to isolate older people, keeping them comfortable but marginalized. Age is associated with moral authority. And the great effort of the 20th century was to destroy – or at least to isolate and minimize – moral authority in the name of individualism, in the name of personal freedom, in the name of self-help, in the name of personal autonomy – all those shibboleths of 20th century western culture.
After returning to Moscow Solzhenitsyn wrote a prose poem titled “Growing Old”:
“How much easier it is then, how much more receptive we are to death, when advancing years guide us softly to our end. Aging thus is in no sense a punishment from on high, but brings its own blessings and a warmth of colors all its own… There is even warmth to be drawn from the waning of your own strength compared with the past – just to think how sturdy I once used to be! You can no longer get through a whole day’s work at a stretch, but how good it is to slip into the brief oblivion of sleep, and what a gift to wake once more to the clarity of your second or third morning of the day. Your spirit can find delight in limiting your intake of food, in abandoning the pursuit of novel flavors. You are still of this life, yet you are rising above the material plane… Growing old serenely is not a downhill path but an ascent.” [3]
Is it OK to “abandon the pursuit of novel flavors”? Sounds un-American. Of course Solzhenitsyn was Russian . . .
Mary Oliver wrote a beautiful poem about autumn. The last lines especially seem relevant here.
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies
Into pillars of light,
Are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon
And fulfillment,
The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away
Over the blue shoulders of the ponds,
And every pond, no matter what its name is,
Is nameless now.
Every year everything I have ever learned
In my lifetime leads back to this:
The fires and the black river of loss whose other side
Is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know.
To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. [4]
Mary Ella Stuart used to say, “Old age isn’t for sissies.” She was right. There are tough challenges. It helps if some of life’s lessons are learned in advance. Or better yet, practiced in advance so they don’t have to be learned under the duress of declining health and energy. Five simple rules for happiness in old age are these:
~ free your heart from hatred
~ free your mind from worries
~ live simply
~ give more
~ expect less
It helps to learn those lessons before old age makes them necessary. And who do we learn them from? Usually we learn them from older folks! What goes round comes round.
The Internet offers regular doses of humor about growing old: how our wild oats have turned into prunes and All Bran and if God wanted me to touch my toes, He would have put them on my knees. We have probably seen supposed prayers by older people asking forgiveness for talking too much or offering advice too freely. But I want to conclude with a prayer written by an older person that goes deeper than that.
“Eternal God, I thank you that I am growing old. It is a privilege many have been denied. Awareness of this mercy gives fresh wonder to every day you give me breath.
I thank you for the joys I now can grasp because age has pried my fingers loose from trivial things – for simpler life; for swallows skimming over sunlit meadows; for unhurried moments to nourish faith on thoughts of your past mercies; for sacred instants when all things that once seemed disjointed fall into place and the sad things of earth are swallowed up in holy joy.
Thanks to you for the faith of others which strengthened my own. Thanks for those who have gone before me, marching with dignity through advanced age.
O God in heaven, hear my prayer for all who are growing old. Grant us awareness of the beauties of life’s autumn, a time of fulfillment and harvest. May age be seen as part of your design for the world and for us, so that the years may rest less like a burden and more like a benediction. Let reluctance to leave this world be not a dread of death but a tribute to life.
Spare us from self-pity that shrivels the soul. Though our wrinkles multiply and bodies tire, may there be no withering of our spirits. May every day witness some rebirth of beauty, some eager exploration of a new, unspoiled hour with glad expectations of finding treasure there. Grant us grace to stand the pain of encountering a new idea without flinching.
If our appetite for food should fade, may our eyes still savor tenderness in others, consume the dawn, feast on starlight, and nourish our souls with the wonders of your world. Like Job, may we see that the order of the planets is more significant than our sores.
Though our money may be limited, let us be spendthrifts with love and squanderers of kindness in the healthy exercise of bending down to help someone up.
And grant us daily some moments of living on tiptoes, lured by the eternal city just beyond the hills of time. Amen.” [5]
[1] John Bell, “It Was to Older Folk” from the collection “God Comes Tomorrow,” GIA Publications, Inc., 7404 S. Mason Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60638.
[2] Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
[3] The New Yorker, August 6, 2001
[4] Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods”
[5] borrowed some years ago from the newsletter of Shoreview United Methodist Church
“PREPARING THE WAY” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“ PREPARING THE WAY” DARE TO TRUST
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.” (Luke 1:38)
I wonder if Mary had any idea what she was getting into? “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Wow! Wouldn’t you think she might have been skeptical?
This Advent I’ve suggested it takes a bit of daring to prepare the way of the Lord. Dare to hope. Dare to rejoice. Dare to trust! Trust may be hardest of all.
An Arizona businessman tells this story:
In our house it has been the custom for years to open the presents on Christmas morning. We have four children and they make this day a joyous occasion. The younger ones believe in Santa Claus with all their hearts. They know that sometime on Christmas Eve Santa will leave a pack of gifts…. We have a rule that requires that the first child awake on Christmas morning must arouse the rest of the family and it is forbidden to go into the living room where the tree stands until the whole family can enter together. The Christmas my son, David, was 7, he came down the hall to our bedroom about 4:30 on Christmas morning…. His face was radiant,…his speech was going about 90 miles an hour. “Daddy! Mother! Daddy! Mother! Get up! Come quick! Come quick!” We wiped the sleep from our eyes. His mother looked at me and I looked at her and we knew what had happened. The rule had been broken and our 7-year-old had discovered the new bicycle that he had been wanting for two years. Somehow we felt cheated and disappointed, but it was Christmas and we didn’t scold him. We got out of bed and put on our robe and slippers. He took us by the hand and led us down the hall – we stopped at the girls’ room and then awakened his younger brother, John. And then, with all the family in tow, David led us through the darkened living room to the eastern window and he pointed through the window – oblivious to the bicycle which he had not even noticed under the tree with all the other presents. He pointed his little finger to the eastern sky and he exclaimed in hushed awe: “The Star! See the Star! The Star of Bethlehem! I’ve seen the Star!”
Oh, for the eyes of a 7 year old . . . and the faith of a 7 year old. David missed the bicycle and “saw” instead the mystery and promise of Christmas.
“I’ve seen the star!”
Two weeks ago I read a Howard Thurman poem about the gifts of Christmas. I’d like to repeat the opening of it.
I place these gifts on my altar this Christmas;
Gifts that are mine, as the years are mine:
The quiet hopes that flood the earnest cargo of my dreams:
The best of all good things for those I love,
A fresh new trust for all whose faith is dim….
Wouldn’t that be nice if we could give the gift of a “fresh new trust” to those whose faith is dim; wouldn’t it be nice if somebody were to wrap up a “fresh new trust” and stuff it in our stocking or put it under our tree or in our hearts, or wherever we carry that precious fragile thing . . . trust.
Cynicism and distrust are the poisons of adult life.
Children seem to start out with a trusting nature. When does trust begin to erode, to tarnish, to slip away? When do caution, distrust, cynicism take its place?
…we share a secret with a friend, then hear that secret rumored back from one we never told it to. A friend betrays a friendship and we learn to distrust friendship.
…we join the church, we serve, we give, we sing, we work together, and then discover that church people can be as narrow-minded, unkind, peevish and hateful as any others. The church turns out to be only human and we learn to distrust the church.
…we give ourselves in love, we share life with another as fully as we know how, and then discover that the one we love is loving another. And, deeply hurt, we learn to distrust love, we withhold love, lest we be hurt again.
…we put our faith in God, we pour out ardent prayers, and only silence meets us in return; nothing is changed. We feel let down, abandoned, and we lose our trust in God.
…a son holds out his arms; he gets a slap instead of a hug from a mother whose brain is clouded with alcohol.
…a girl wants her Daddy’s love and get abuse that leaves her confused, wounded, distrustful.
“Man’s inhumanity to man,” is a phrase familiar to all and an experience familiar to many. Borders, boundaries, passports, armies, navies … all bear testimony to our failures of trust and trustworthiness.
Do we dare trust the taxi driver wearing a turban, the neighbor with an accent, the pastor’s hug, the angel’s promise?
Let me tell you of another star, found not in the heavens but in the ocean. The starfish. It is neither a fish nor shaped precisely like a star, but most of us have seen them at the ocean’s edge. Loren Eiseley tells of living in a seacoast town for a time. Unable to sleep he walked the beach daily as dawn was breaking. There were others on the beach in those early hours; they came to harvest the starfish that washed ashore during the night; they threw them in buckets and brought them to the markets to sell to tourists. Eiseley was a paleontologist, his field of expertise was evolution and this gathering of the helpless starfish seemed to him no more or less than an example of the natural process at work – the strong overcoming the weak. But one morning Eiseley was up and out on the beach earlier than usual. In this hour of the pre-dawn he discovered a lone figure walking along the beach, gathering starfish and hurling them back out to the sea, beyond the breaking surf, beyond the reach of those who would come later. Morning after morning, if he came early enough, Eiseley found the same person on the same errand of mercy, no matter what the weather or the day of the week. One day Eiseley approached the man and asked him, “What is the point?” The man replied, “At least some will live.”
Eiseley named this person “the star thrower” and he titled a book for him: The Star Thrower. In his introduction to the text Eiseley tells how this man’s behavior contradicted all that he had learned and taught about evolution and the survival of the fittest. Here on the beach at Cozumel Eiseley found one who was strong reaching down to save the weak. He goes on to wonder, “Is there, in the vastness of this universe, a star thrower at work? A God who reaches down to lift up the weak, a God who overcomes death, a God whose nature, in the words of Thomas Merton, is ‘mercy within mercy within mercy’?”
“That is what we hope and pray is coming in the future. This is what we look forward to in Advent – the God who threw the stars at creation, and faithfully in covenant throws them still; a God who comes into the world through Jesus, born in a manger, and by means of this weakness lifts the world; a God who is raised under the suffering of the Cross and by that means, raises the world through resurrection, into life abundant and eternal. This is the good news of Advent, not a good news without its tragic underside, but because of it, we can truly say, not only is it the worst of times, it is also the best of times, for we do not know what is coming, but we know who is coming, even Jesus Christ our Lord.” [1]
It is interesting to note that this Jesus whom we call the Christ chose for his disciples Judas, who betrayed him, and Peter, who denied him. He trusted his mission to them and to the others. Judas ended up hanging himself. He was unwilling to trust Jesus and Jesus’ way of love, Judas took things into his own hands and ended up hanging himself. Peter, who vehemently denied ever knowing Jesus, became the rock on which succeeding generations built their church.
“I place these gifts on my altar this Christmas . . .
A fresh new trust for all whose faith is dim.”
Can we at least admit that war is not inevitable? To hold out for alternatives that recognize the world’s evil, yet attempt to break the circle of violence in response to it? If we find a way to build on trust it will not make peace inevitable but it will make peace possible. Much work, much effort, much faith, much trust will be required.
To those of you who look out the window and see only the darkness of hurts you have suffered at the hands of others . . .
To those of you who look out the window and see only the promises that have been broken, the slanders told . . .
To those of you who look out the window and see only the human failings of the Church . . .
To those of you who look out the window where once you stood and prayed and who hear only the silence of an empty universe . . .
. . . to you I announce the Star of Bethlehem and I remind you of the angel who came to Mary with a commission straight from the Divine. And she said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Not all saw the star then and not all see the star now. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Not all hear the angel when one speaks to us. But that doesn’t mean we lack a divinely appointed task. To see the star, or to hear the angel, you have to trust that the One who first threw the stars against the Universe, and who throws them still, has come, is coming and will come in Jesus Christ, to lift up the weak, to give them, and us, another chance at a world as loving as God envisions it.
Hurts can be healed and love is worth the risk. Prayers are not always answered to our satisfaction, but praying can change us when we are the ones in need of changing. Peace can be practiced until we get it right, though it won’t come easily.
The Church can sometimes reveal a moment of God’s glory and in that moment nudge, pull, push, call us poor sinners toward that glory.
Be a star thrower. Give someone a chance at life. What counts at Christmas (and every day) is not the bicycle; what counts is the Star, seen by the child and found again by those who dare to hope, who dare to rejoice, and who dare to trust. “The Star! See the Star! The Star of Bethlehem!”
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
[1] Dr. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Woodside Community Church; formerly Dean of Memorial Church, Stanford University.
“PREPARE THE WAY” DARE TO REJOICE - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“PREPARE THE WAY” DARE TO REJOICE
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners…” (Isaiah 61:1)
“Do not quench the Spirit.” (I Thessalonians 5:19)
We speak of a “school” of fish, a “herd” of cows, a “flock” of sheep, and a “gaggle” of geese. Whereas a gathering of people is known as a committee.
I think I prefer the company of larks, for a gathering of larks is as “exaltation.” An exaltation of larks.
M.J. Cartledge-Hayes writes:
I’ve never seen a lark. I’ve seen lots of red-winged blackbirds and my fair share of robins and sparrows. A cardinal once chose to spend one winter in my backyard, as did a blue jay once: but I’ve never seen a lark.
I’d like to. Actually, I don’t think one would be enough. I’d have to see ten, or thirty, or however many it takes for them to warrant their proper group name: an exaltation.
I think I can imagine what they would be like. They’d swoop through the air, flutter from tree to tree, trill out of pure joy, sing their excitement over this day, this hour, this moment.
People, I’ve noticed, are never referred to as an exaltation. When we group together, we’re called a committee, or a circle, or a congregation….
A few times though…I’ve been part of an exaltation.
Just before Christmas last year, a very friendly baby was baptized in our church. Halfway through the ritual, she noticed the minister’s left ear. She touched it with an inquiring finger. She tweaked it. She yanked it. She wiggled it. And all the while, she smiled at it. We in the congregation smiled too – at her, and at each other. For a moment we were an exaltation. [1]
Such a simple thing. Why would it cause us joy to see a baby tweak the minister’s ear? It would have been a pretty sour congregation not to have smiled at that. Just for a moment in time people let down defenses and smiled, even chuckled – together – at an unembarrassed child exploring and discovering the marvels and mysteries of being alive in this world.
An acquaintance who wrote a column in the Reno paper, told about his friend “Dwight.” Dwight got cancer, underwent terrible treatments and realized, while lying in bed one day, that there were many things he had intended to do for which there might not now be time . . . like learning to play the violin . . . and taking up photography.
When Dwight was well down the road to recovery he set out with great zest to make the most of his days. He decided it was not too late to take up photography. Taking the simplest camera possible, Dwight shot two rolls of film in one night while cruising downtown Reno. When developed, his 48 photographs looked like “outer space.” On the advice of his friend, Dwight tried to get at least a partial refund from the store that had sold him the film and developed the photos. “Sorry,” they said, “Not our fault.”
“Look at this.” He spread the pictures across the counter. Most were totally black; a few had flashes of orange, usually in a corner.
“What is it?” asked the manager….
“It’s downtown. I shot it last night.” … Finally the manager asked Dwight if he had the camera with him, and Dwight brought it in from the car.
The shutter opened and closed. There didn’t seem to be any light leaks. The film advance worked. You can’t be Ansel Adams with a 110 camera, but it should take pictures.
Dwight was aiming the camera around the room idly when the manager laughed and pointed at him …. He was holding the thing backward, looking through the viewfinder in reverse and taking pictures of his nose from ½ inch away.
[His friend says] I would have been humiliated. But Dwight, to whom every day is a gift, is past that. He pondered the information awhile, nodded, then asked to borrow a pen. He scribbled something on the orange part of a picture and handed it to the manager as we left.
“To John,” it said. “You taught me everything I know about photography. Thanks.” [2]
A Roman Catholic contemplative, says, “Joy is the echo of God’s life in us.” [3]
Karl Barth – whose systematic theology fills 27 volumes and to my knowledge contains no chuckles – said, “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”
Did you know that for a time our Puritan ancestors in Europe and New England outlawed Christmas carols? It was against the law in certain American colonies to sing Christmas carols! Only Psalms could be sung in church. For a brief time Christmas was outlawed, since Christmas is not mentioned in the Bible.
People have recently tried to turn Advent into a season of penance, fasting and sacrifice. Christians are urged to spend the four weeks preceding Christmas in quiet meditation, lighting one more purple candle each Sunday leading up to December 25. But some subversives with happy hearts snuck in a pink candle for the third Sunday of Advent. It is known as the Gaudate candle and this is Gaudate Sunday and gaudate – for those of you who have forgotten your Latin – means “dare to rejoice.”
Dare to rejoice! Gaudate!
Several summers ago I stopped for a bite to eat in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina. Close to the community college campus was a vegetarian diner staffed by students and decorated with a profusion of plants and vines. The walls were plastered with paintings of Hindu saints dancing and twirling and embracing in brightly flowered pantaloons and vibrant saffron saris.
I can’t remember ever seeing a Christian saint in flowered pantaloons. Most Christian saints are pictured in deep distress. I wonder how many of those wholesome college kids grew up in North Carolina Christian churches where they heard lots about “sin” and “sacrifice” but little about joy. Gaudate! Dare to rejoice.
Liberal Christians have abandoned the emphasis on sin and sacrifice, but still focus on suffering. We make war, injustice, hunger, abuse and deprivation the focus of our gospel. How could a responsible Christian rejoice in a world so filled with pain and suffering? Well, if we don’t rejoice – in the face of pain and suffering – then we have turned our religion into something just as sour and forbidding as those who focus on sin and sacrifice.
Remember the Enya folksong?:
My life goes on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?
What though the tempest loudly roar
I hear the truth it liveth,
And though the darkness round me close
Song and light it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to the Rock I’m clinging,
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?
I don’t understand why that isn’t in the Hymnal. It is blunt orthodox Christian theology. It would fit perfectly in the Advent section of hymns. I hear the real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation. (That was the title Paul Tillich chose for his concluding volume of sermons – “The New Creation.”) We sing the new creation despite earth’s lamentation.
Through all the tumult and the strife I hear its music ringing, it sounds an echo in my soul. Joy is the echo of God’s life in us, remember? How can I keep from singing?
Last week I proposed that we prepare the way of the Lord by daring to hope. I quoted a character in a Barbara Kingsolver novel who tells her sister, “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.”
Those who baptize their hopes – think about that please – those who baptize their hopes, who offer them to Christ so that Christ will live through their very hopes, discover the song of a new creation echoing in their lives. Joy is the echo of God’s life in us.
Jesus announced his calling by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners…” (Isaiah 61:1) Those words had already been around for 600 years; they had not been fulfilled. But Jesus didn’t let that break his spirit. The good news of God’s justice is coming . . . still. Do not quench the Spirit, Paul admonishes the Thessalonians in today’s epistle. Dare to rejoice!
Jesus never said, “You made your bed. Now lie in it.” Jesus said, “Pick up your bed and walk.”
And John Wesley told the original Methodists, “Sour godliness is the devil’s religion.”
Christians dare to rejoice in the midst of a world damaged by sin, war, greed and tragedy. This, too, prepares the way for the revealing of God’s kingdom of reconciliation, joy and peace. We have to live it, not just promote it.
Dare to rejoice! Live the gracious life! Receive God’s gifts with gratitude. Light a pink candle. Transform your homes and neighborhoods with your joy. Don’t let the sourpusses rule this world.
[1] M.J. Cartledge-Hayes, Alive Now, Nov.-Dec., 1984.
[2] Cory Farley, “Takes Time to Become Another Ansel Adams,” Reno Gazette Journal, November, 1987.
[3] Abbott Marmion
“PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD” - The Rev. Bob Olmstead
“PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD”
DARE TO HOPE
Rev. Bob Olmstead
“A voice cries out, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’ … See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”
(Isaiah 40:3,10-11)
I knew Howard Thurman only during his final years; he was a tall distinguished black man with an air of poise and wisdom. I had read his books in college and appreciated his biography. On one or two occasions I was part of a large congregation that heard him speak. Once, he led a retreat I took part in. That afternoon he read the entire Gospel of Mark aloud, beginning to end. The opening verses of Mark we heard this morning. Thurman read with the simple drama of a man whose grandmother was a slave, who never owned a pair of shoes until he left for college, who founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, who went on to long years of service as Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, who knew both Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Howard Thurman wrote a poem every Advent, had it printed on his Christmas cards, and sent it out to his many friends around the world. One such Advent poem reads like this:
I place these gifts on my altar this Christmas;
Gifts that are mine, as the years are mine:
The quiet hopes that flood the earnest cargo of my dreams:
The best of all good things for those I love,
A fresh new trust for all whose faith is dim,
The love of life, God’s precious gift in reach of all:
Seeing in each day the seeds of the morrow,
Finding in each struggle the strength of renewal,
Seeking in each person the face of my Brother.
I place these gifts on my altar this Christmas;
Gifts that are mine, as the years are mine.
I had always read line three with emphasis on the two words “quiet hopes.” But this year I saw a different emphasis: the verb “to flood.”
I love children’s books. During those years when our children were grown and we as yet had no grandchildren I had no one to buy children’s books for. So one year I bought children’s books for our adult friends: one book in particular. It was called “Noah’s Ark.” It had no words. Just page after page of sumptuous watercolors depicting the familiar story of a floating ark filled with teeming life. One of the pictures gave me new insight into Howard Thurman’s poem, especially line three: “The quiet hope that flood the earnest cargo of my dreams…” In the picture in the child’s book Noah’s ark is completed – it’s huge – clumsy – filled with teeming life – and it’s still on dry land propped up with timbers. It is stranded. How will Noah ever get it to the sea? Impossible!
He has to wait for the rains. The rains will flood the land and float his clumsy ark.
“The quiet hopes that flood the earnest cargo of my dreams…”
We all have dreams. At least I hope we all have dreams! But what shall save them, move them, enliven them, float them? What shall flood the earnest cargo of our dreams and set them to moving? Hope “floods” our dreams and sets them free to sail.
I looked up “hope” in Frederick Buechner’s Theological ABC and I didn’t like what I found. See “Wishful Thinking” it said. I mean something more than “wishful thinking” when I speak of hope, but I looked up the reference anyway.
“Christianity is mainly wishful thinking. Even the part about Judgement and Hell reflects the wish that somewhere the score is being kept.
Dreams are wishful thinking. Children playing at being grown-up is wishful thinking. Interplanetary travel is wishful thinking.
Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes true on.
One of the most remarkable books I ever read is Under a Cruel Star by Heda Margolius Kovaly. She is a Hungarian Jew. During World War II she and her husband were piled into the cattle cars of a long train and taken to concentration camps in Poland. She never saw her husband again. Before the war was over in 1945 she made a daring escape and traveled across much of war-torn Europe, on foot, living hand to mouth, in constant danger, finally making it back to her native Hungary which was then a Soviet Communist satellite. Eventually she remarried. Her second husband was executed in one of Joseph Stalin’s purges. Let me share the first two paragraphs of her book.
Three forces carved the landscape of my life. Two of them crushed half the world. The third was very small and weak and, actually, invisible. It was a shy little bird hidden in my rib cage an inch or two above my stomach. Sometimes in the most unexpected moments the bird would wake up, lift its head, and flutter its wings in rapture. Then I too would lift my head because, for that short moment, I would know for certain that love and hope are infinitely more powerful than hate and fury, and that somewhere beyond the line of my horizon there was life indestructible, always triumphant.
The first force was Adolf Hitler; the second, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin. They made my life a microcosm in which the history of a small country in the heart of Europe was condensed. The little bird, the third force, kept me alive to tell the story….
Paul Tillich was one of those old German theologians with the long sentences. This is a bit dense but worth contemplating:
“… nobody can live without hope, even if it is for the smallest things which give some satisfaction even under the worst of conditions. Without hope, the tension of our life toward the future would vanish, and with it, life itself… Where there is genuine hope … that for which we hope has already some presence, in some way the hoped for is at the same time here and not here. It is not yet fulfilled and it may remain unfulfilled. But it is here, in the situation and in ourselves as a power which drives those who hope into the future.”
Codi is a figure in a Barbara Kingsolver novel. Codi struggles with uncertainties about her purpose in life, especially as she watches her younger sister, Hallie, live out her heart’s deepest desire. Hallie is a self-taught expert on dealing with garden pests; she leaves the U.S. to go and plant cotton in Central America among poor farmers who are trying desperately to make a living. The sisters carry on a sporadic correspondence, Codi giving vent to her dissatisfactions, Hallie celebrating her sense of fulfillment. In her last letter home, Hallie writes:
“Codi, here’s what I’ve decided: the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I’m living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides. I can’t tell you how good it feels. I wish you knew. I wish you knew how to squander yourself.” [1]
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.
Genuine hope begins when I choose to live out that part of God’s hope that is possible in the present – right here, right now. If I want the poor and dispossessed to be a real part of the future story, then I can begin to make the concerns of the poor a part of my life and take action now. If I want a loving world, then I need to live in this world as lovingly as I can. If I dream a world of green parks and clean water, then there are things I can do and choices I must make today.
Most of the people I talk to these days are puzzled by the paradox of the Christmas season. We prepare to welcome the Prince of Peace by singing hymns about peace on earth, while a Christian president prepares us to go to war. Two people have told me in the past two days they simply don’t watch or read the news any more. It causes them despair.
Flo Wegner sent me a “Christmas Quiz” called “How well do you know what the Bible tells us about the Christmas story?” Twenty-seven questions, true/false and multiple choice. Question 17: What is the “heavenly host” (that appeared to the shepherds)?
A. The angel at the gate of heaven
B. The angel who invites people to heaven
C. The angel who serves drinks in heaven
D. An angel choir
E. An angel army
The correct answer is E.- an angel army. And the point we overlook – if we don’t know that the heavenly host was an angel army – is that the angel army came announcing peace. The army of heaven came announcing peace on earth. That’s the point of the story about the angels and the shepherds.
But when? I don’t know.
But that is the hope that Christians live in. That is not what Christians hope for. That is the hope that Christians live in - running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides.
One of our colleague Methodist congregations is making the news these days – Epworth United Methodist Church in Berkeley. I happen to know the pastor pretty well. Sometime in the fall he sat down with the Worship Committee and said, “How shall we celebrate Advent this year? What could we do that’s special to anticipate the coming Christ Child?” They thought. They tossed out ideas. One woman said, “I keep coming back to that line in a Christmas carol: ‘The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.’ Maybe we could do something with hopes and fears.” So they did. They invited everybody in the congregation to bring some symbol, some representation of a hope . . . or of a fear. An architect in the congregation built scaffolding along the sanctuary walls and hooks with wires from the ceiling to hang their hopes and fears on. The pastor kept announcing that people should bring their hopes and fears to church during Advent. He suggested that greeters at the door – instead of saying ‘welcome, we’re glad you’re here’ – would ask people for their hopes and fears. He acknowledged that some visitors would turn around and run while others would burst into tears.
The project grew. People told their friends. The local press picked up the story. Our national Methodist news service posted pictures on the Internet. Last Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent, people brought paintings, sculptures, letters, and imaginative symbols of their hopes and fears, enough to cover one entire wall of the sanctuary, hang from the ceiling and overflow into the narthex. In an interview with the press my friend, the pastor, says, “This is just the first week, we expect many more. But so far there are more fears than hopes.”
Does this, perhaps, explain why the world is the way the world is? We are more in touch with our fears than with our hopes. Too many people inhabiting their fear, living in their fear, running down the hallways of their fear touching the walls on both sides. Does this explain the sorry state of the world?
And does it suggest the role of the Christian in this world? We are the ones who still respond to the army of heaven, who came announcing peace. We are the ones who live in our hope. The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.
As you come forward to receive God’s simple gifts of bread and wine this morning, I ask you to reflect on what you most deeply hope for - that one thing you hope for above all others. And then, having received God’s sustenance – the bread and the cup - reflect on what it will mean to you to live inside that hope.
And before you leave this morning ask God to give you the courage to squander your life . . . living inside your hope instead of your fear.
Hanging of the Greens Service
HANGING OF THE GREENS
Rev. Bob Olmstead, Rev. Maggie McNaught, Rev. Stephen Black
Church Carman, guitar; David Parsons, organ
Jerry Johnson, children’s song leader
Sunday School staff
Worship Team
A child's way of being in the world is one of movement, exploration. This runs contrary to most "traditional" worship services. Accordingly, we like to occasionally offer worship services that a child can experience as active and fun. We hope this is such a worship service. But we hope this service is meaningful to people of all ages. So we invite you to open yourself, trying to see and experience God in this service of worship through the experience of a child. For, as Jesus said, "to such belong the kingdom of heaven."
SHOFAR SOUNDS IN THE BACK OF THE SANCTUARY
YOUTH ENTER SINGING “PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD” (from Godspell)
CHILDREN JOIN PASTOR BOB IN THE CHANCEL
Which is set with sofa, rocking chair, coffee table – a “living room”
BOB GETS THE BIG BIBLE AND READS THEM THE STORY: MARK 1:1-8
“In the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
BOB EXPLAINS IT IS TIME FOR US TO GET READY - TO “PREPARE THE WAY”
If somebody comes to visit at your house, your mom and dad do something special. If your grandma and grandpa, or your cousins are going to stay for a few days, you put clean sheets on the bed and fresh towels in the bathroom. If you are going to have friends come for a sleepover, you buy some special snacks that they will like.
Jesus is coming to stay with us. That’s what Christmas means. It’s time to get our houses ready for him. It’s time to get our hearts ready for him.
CONGREGATION SINGS “PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD” – No.207 (4 part round)
Worship Team decks the sanctuary with green garlands
HANGING OF THE GREENS (Bob)
We call our church the “House of God.” We have to get the House ready for Jesus.
In the cold cold countries when snow covered the ground, some trees were still green. People cut some greens and brought them into their house and put them by the fireplace.
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