“The Monkey Mind” Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church On January 28th, 2018 Scripture: Mark 1:21-28 Our story today from Mark’s gospel tells of the first public appearance of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has been baptized by John, when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and took residence with him as he was proclaimed the Son of God. He has been tested in the wilderness by Satan. He has called his first disciples: Simon, Andrew, James and John. And now, on the Sabbath, he has come to the synagogue in Capernaum. All of this has happened in the first chapter of the gospel, and there are still more events to take place before chapter 2 begins. Mark’s gospel is pretty dense! In our story today, Jesus teaches in the synagogue, and we are told that the people are amazed at his “new” teaching, but we are not told what that teaching is. Since the content is not shared with us, we can assume that our attention is to be elsewhere. In this case our gaze is directed toward what Jesus is doing and we see him heal a possessed man. Before Jesus came onto the scene, this poor man had been trapped by what is described as an unclean spirit. The Jewish readers of this story would recognize right away that the spirit keeps the man from community in the synagogue. The synagogue is sacred space, while the spirit is profane. The two simply cannot exist together. In our story the man never speaks. Instead the talkative spirit dominates the conversation with Jesus. Here we see a common theme for the gospel of Mark. The unclean spirit clearly knows exactly who Jesus is: the holy One of God. Jesus rebukes this spirit, and commands it to be silent. When left without a voice, the spirit leaves the man, who may now be restored to the community of the synagogue. Our modern minds may tend to wonder about possession by an unclean spirit. What does this mean in today’s language? Some might imagine the story is referring to the demon of addiction. We know that there are many people in our culture today who are trapped in addictions to drugs and other substances. Johann Hari, author of the book “Chasing the Scream”, suggests that thinking of addiction as either the fault of the addict, or the fault of the substance is incorrect. He proposes a different way of thinking, arguing that addiction is an adaptation to environment. Hari says “it’s not you, it’s your cage.” [1] The cage refers to an experiment conducted on rats, who were kept alone in bare cages and given access to two water bottles. One bottle contained plain water and the other contained water laced with heroin. The rats soon became addicted to the drugged water, drinking it obsessively until they died. But Professor Bruce Alexander, of Vancouver, decided to vary this classic drug experiment by creating an environment called “Rat Park.” This was a happy place for rats, with tasty food, colorful balls and other rats to play with. The same two water bottles were offered, but in this case the most of the rats ignored the drugged water and did not become addicted. The researcher concluded that while the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did. Hari sees the Vietnam War as a human version of this experiment. Heroin was said to have been as common as chewing gum for American troops during that war and 20% of soldiers became addicted. When they returned home to their families, friends and work, though, 95% of the addicted soldier simply stopped taking the drug. They had been freed from the horrendous cage of the war to the pleasant environment of their communities. They didn’t need drugs anymore. According to Hari, addiction ought to be renamed “bonding.” When humans are in situations where they cannot bond with one another they bond with other substances. Three years ago, during that horrendous Boston winter, I spent some time talking with some of the homeless folks in the city. You may remember that was the year that bridge to the shelter and rehab center on Long Island was abruptly closed. In the city, shelters were full to overflowing, when suddenly there were 700 more unhoused men and women on the streets. Miserable conditions were made worse by overcrowding and awful weather. I met many people who lived on the street day and night, and I began to understand why many homeless people become drug addicted just to survive. Imagine the man that Jesus healed of the unclean spirit, being freed from his cage … like the isolated rat, or the US soldier in Vietnam, or the person living on the streets in the dead of winter. We can guess that the man was restored to his true, God-centered self. Then perhaps he was welcomed into the community of the synagogue and found connection there. We don’t know, the story doesn’t tell us. A second way we could think of the unclean spirit is more common, even, than drug addiction. It is the “internal narrator,” the ego, or what the Buddha called “the monkey mind.” Dan Harris, correspondent for ABC News, writes about becoming hijacked by the voice inside his head, until he discovered the practice of meditation. Harris doesn’t have schizophrenia. He’s talking about the “internal narrator” inside all of us. This is the voice that tells us that our relationships are not enough, that what we have is not enough, and that who we are is not enough. Harris says he was an ambitious and idealistic young reporter covering war zones for ABC News in the early 2000’s. He went to Pakistan in 2001 and soon became ABC’s “man in Afghanistan.” For three years, he shuttled between New York and war torn Middle-East locations, like the West Bank, Gaza and Iraq. He witnessed scenes of violence and despair, suicide bombings and other horrors of war. When he returned to life in the United States, he developed an undiagnosed depression that he self-medicated with drugs. The drugs raised his level of adrenaline, which in turn raised his anxiety levels and led to him having a panic attack, while on the air for ABC. Harris describes this as a melt-down and the “direct result of an extended period of mindlessness, during which [he] was focused on advancement and adventure, to the detriment of pretty much everything else in [his] life.” [2] Harris’s books describe his quest to silence his internal narrator. Although he would never have entertained the idea before, he began meditation. The practice of meditation helped to return him to the present moment, to delight in his work, his wife and his child. Now he is a proponent of meditation, his books “10% Happier…” are written to convince other skeptics to try it too. Harris tells readers that the monkey mind fixates on the past and future, it will not let us live peacefully in the “now.” The monkey mind is insatiable, pushing us to eat a whole batch of cookies, or make the humorous but hurtful remark about our partner. At night, it is the monkey mind that repeats, on continuous loop, the sequence of anxieties that refuse to let you sleep. The monkey mind is always up for a fight, and, as Harris says, it is unrelievedly self-involved. [3] Perhaps the monkey mind sounds familiar to you. I know it does to me. I recognize it as the thing that takes over when I am reacting to a situation rather than responding. I think of this as “seeing red”, or being triggered. Back in the summer, I went to the grocery store a friend from England who was visiting. My friend and her daughter, who has learning disabilities, lingered by the row of carts, asking whether they should take one. Suddenly an angry looking woman barged between them, pushing them out of the way, to pull out a cart for herself. I reacted. “Excuse me!” I exclaimed with sarcasm, “please be respectful to my guests!” “I said excuse me,” she replied … and then “don’t do this to me today!” Apparently she had reason to be angry, although it had nothing to do with me or my guests. I felt despondent. I had just met the woman’s reaction with my own. I’d escalated the situation. Neither of us walked away from that interaction with any peace. On another more centered day, I hope I will respond differently. I have a feeling that almost all the problems of our world today are caused by humans interacting one monkey mind to another. This kind of communication escalates conflict. Social media, like Twitter, provide the perfect forum for monkey mind communication, as one searing tweet reacts to another. The monkey mind is the mind of reaction and anger, self-aggrandizement and never good enough. The monkey mind would rather dwell on the hurts of the past, and the fears of the future, than rest peacefully in the “now.” We can only guess that the man Jesus healed was in some kind of cage of separation and isolation from the community of the synagogue. We don’t know whether that separation was addiction, or perhaps his internal narrator gone rogue. But we do know that Jesus healed the unclean spirit, and freed the man from his cage by commanding the spirit to “be silent.” With the spirit silenced, the man was free to participate in the community as his whole, God-centered self. For us today, the way to quiet the internal narrator may be meditation, or it may be some other spiritual practice. In a few weeks we will begin the season of Lent. This Lent we will begin to learn about various spiritual practices that will enable us to listen, listen to what Jesus has to say to our God centered selves. For now, I invite you to be on the look out for the things that pull you away from community, away from family, away from neighborliness, toward unhealthy bonding. And I invite you to pay attention to the places from which you speak or act. Is your monkey mind getting too much air time? And know, that God’s desire for us, expressed by Jesus, especially today in our Annual meeting. God’s desire for us is to communicate from a place of community and our God-centered selves. May our monkey minds be silenced. Let all God’s people say, Amen [1]https://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html [2] Dan Harris, “10% Happier, How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Loosing My Edge and Found Self-Help that Actually Works”, (New York, HarperCollins, 20014) [3] Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book, (New York, Penguin Random House, 2017)
0 Comments
Blessed and Beloved, Are We Able to Keep the Promise? Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church On January 14th, 2018 Scripture: Mark 1:4-11 As we heard today, Mark’s gospel introduces Jesus by way of a simple sentence: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” Mark doesn’t mention Jesus as an infant. He doesn’t get involved in Jesus’ earthly parentage. Instead, Jesus is presented as making the journey from Nazareth to meet the John Baptizer at the River Jordan. In this meeting, Jesus submits to baptism, immersed beneath the waters, like the many others who have come to John. When Jesus emerges from the waters the story takes an extraordinary turn. As his head breaks the surface and his body straightens and he gulps his first breath of air, he sees the heavens torn apart … the spirit as a dove, diving from the sky to descend on him, and a voice come from heaven saying “You are my Son the beloved, with you I am well pleased.” This is the recurrent theme of the gospel of Mark, that Jesus is uniquely identified as God’s beloved Son. This moment of baptism is of cosmic consequence, anointing Jesus as blessed and beloved. The pronouncement of Jesus as Son of God is repeated several times through the gospel. As the story continues, Jesus casts out demons in a number of situations. While these events may seem strange and somewhat medieval to us, it is important to remember that they to be taken symbolically. They represent Jesus’ engagement with the forces of evil in our world. Ironically, in Mark’s gospel, it is only the demons who consistently remember that Jesus is the Son of God. I’m humbled to think that, story as a backdrop, we are invited to “remember” and give thanks for our own baptisms today. I cannot actually remember my baptism as I was only a couple of months old at the time. Even so, I have plenty of evidence that it took place. There is an antique-looking certificate, embellished with chubby cherubim stored among my papers. And there are gifts: a silver spoon, and a white leather bound, golden edged Bible, the King James version, and an embellished silver bracelet. I had three God parents: two God mothers and a God father. And I know my parents made waves at the time. They insisted that the priest changed his custom of holding private afternoon baptisms and baptize me in the presence of the gathered congregation during Sunday morning worship. While I do not remember the event itself, I know the church where it took place very well. The large stone font is at the back of the sanctuary, the first thing guests encounter as they enter from the narthex. It’s position is traditional: baptism by means of the font is every Christian’s “entrance” into the Church. I was not immersed in the water of the font, but simply sprinkled and marked with the sign of the cross. And yet I feel a powerful connection with my baptism and the baptism of others. I’m stirred by Paul’s affirmation in Ephesians 4:5, that there is only One body, One Spirit, On Lord, One faith, and One baptism, that all baptized people of history and bound together into the baptism of Jesus. We are not uniquely identified as Sons of God, but we know we are blessed and beloved as children of God because of Christ. We can rest assured that the Holy Spirit attended our baptisms and has never left our sides. And sometimes we will feel Her presence like a powerful ocean wave, practically knocking us off our feet. And other times we will not know She is there at all. While I do not remember my own baptism, I do remember many others. The baptisms of my own three children stand out, of course. They were all baptized in the springtime, when they were 6 months, 9 months and almost one year old respectively. I remember being proud that each child was quite comfortable in the church, and being held by the minister. They were not fazed by the splashes of water on their foreheads and the little promenade to be introduced to the congregation. As I pondered my call to ministry, the desire to baptize tugged me in the direction of ordination. In my sacraments class in seminary my classmates and I practiced, taking baby dolls and administering the watery threefold sign of the cross. What an indescribable honor, to hold, touch, and administer the Holy Spirit in such an intimate way. What an incredible opportunity to extend God’s blessing to the beloved. The first time I was asked to do a baptism was while I was covering for another minister’s sabbatical. The family of a baby girl needed the ceremony to be conducted privately for pastoral reasons. We settled on a baking hot Saturday afternoon in July, and I feared that the baby and I would both be baptized in perspiration. And yet it felt perfect, as she settled solemnly in my arms and I administered that threefold cross. But there is another baptism that stands out for me. It is the one that took place here in this church, last Easter. On that occasion Rhea came to the baptismal waters. This was my first adult baptism. As we prayed over Rhea that day, and invited the Holy Spirit to be upon her, I do believe She came mightily down, upon Rhea and on all of us. And I believe that I did hear here echoes of Jesus’ baptism in the voice of God proclaiming “this is my beloved child.” Baptism is birth, it is a person’s inauguration into membership of the universal church. When someone wants to participate in Christ’s baptism, here at Wollaston Congregational Church, it does not matter whether we sprinkle them with water from the font, or go down to Wollaston Beach, and submerge them under the waves. What matters is that we empower each and every new Christian we baptize to live the life Jesus modeled and ordained for them. Later in the Mark’s gospel, two young disciples, James and John, get a little ahead of themselves and ask Jesus to give them priority seating in heaven. They ask to sit at each side of Jesus in glory. Jesus tells them they do not know what they are asking. And so he asks them “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Perhaps James and John look back, with rose colored glasses, to the time of Jesus’ dramatic baptism as they say “we are able.” They do not know what we know, that Jesus’ baptism leads to self-denial and the cross. Perhaps, in my passion for baptism and baptizing, I also look on the practice with rose-colored glasses. I’d do well to remind myself that besides the dunking and the sprinkling, baptism involves promises. And those promises can seem quite weighty, especially when small babies are involved. The weightiest promise, for me, in the United Church of Christ liturgy of baptism asks the question: “Do you renounce the powers of evil and desire freedom of new life in Christ?” Renounce. We do not promise to protect our children from evil at their baptisms, or to avoid evil ourselves. On the contrary we promise to renounce evil, to actively engage in resisting evil in the world. Civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began studying civil disobedience as a practice to resist evil while he was a freshman at Morehouse College. King read the works of Henry Thoreau and said he was “fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system … [and] became convinced the noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” [1] King’s conviction that evil must be resisted inspired many aspects of the civil rights movement, including lunch counter sit-ins, the freedom ride into Mississippi, the bus boycott in Montgomery. As we remember Dr King this weekend, we may look back on the evils of segregation and Jim Crow laws, and give thanks that he was determined to resist these evils. But, we also remember that the evil of racism is alive and well in our culture today. Yes, some people are more outwardly racist than others. Some ignorantly use the “N” word, and cruelly practice hate crimes. But, our African American siblings, under our parent God, suffer most of all from disadvantages cause by institutional racism. This begins from birth, when 20% of African-American babies have lower than normal birth weights. [2] And then students of color are more likely to attend under-resourced school, and they’re more likely to be suspended unfairly from school than other students. This begins the "school-to-prison pipeline” which pushes students out of their classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. [3] Black Americans are eight times more likely to be murdered than white Americans. And black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers last year. [4] Fifty years ago, Dr King spoke to the nation from the National Cathedral saying “We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.” [5] My friends, there is a great deal of racist evil still to be renounced in our nation. When Rhea came to talk with me about baptism, I learned that she was already engaged in anti-racism work. And yesterday Tina, Rhea, John and I attended the MLK day of learning with City Missions. These things give me hope that members and friends here at Wollaston Congregational, bring gifts that will enable us to live into the baptismal promise of renouncing evil. I imagine that are times when we all look back on all the very special baptisms in our lives with rose colored glasses. But may we never forget that as people baptized into Jesus’ baptism, we are also called to Christ’s work in the world. Amen [1] Clayborne Carson, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2001) [2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/01/casey-foundation-achievement-gap_n_5065959.html [3] http://www.bostonstudentrights.org/the-school-to-prison-pipeline/ [4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/08/the-counted-police-killings-2016-young-black-men [5] https://citymissionboston.org/news-events/ The Birth Preached at the Wollaston Congregational Church On December 24th, 2017 Scripture: Luke 2 In my family, each generation of children heard the Christmas story from the time they were old enough to listen. The Grandparents made sure that there were children’s bibles and other stories of Jesus’ birth for every different age and stage. And so there was always an age-appropriate version ready to go for the holy season. Our niece, Christina, grew up in the countryside of Germany, familiar with the local farms. Once she began pony riding lessons she became a frequent visitor to the barn. It was around that time, when she was about 7, that her aunt offered to read her the Christmas story. “No thank you,” Christina replied, “I don’t like that story, it’s too dirty.” Christina knew the smell of the ban, she knew mucking out and feeding. She knew the humid air of animal breath, the crunch of the straw beneath her boots. Her answer to the story of a baby born in such a place was “no thank you.” I wonder how many of us today, if we were honest, would answer the same way. The inns in Bethlehem, the little known suburb of Jerusalem, were full at the time of Mary and Joseph’s visit. The Roman empire’s call for each man to return with his family to his ancestral home had packed the area with visitors. Imagine how many Jewish men were descended from the great King David, whose own humble beginning was also in Bethlehem. Mary’s labor pains began at this inconvenient time. And so, she and Joseph had been afforded a little privacy in the indoor/outdoor room of a local family, used to house their animals at night. Perhaps there was a donkey and a cow, if the family was fortunate, maybe few chickens. Mary and Joseph would have felt the humid animal warmth coming to greet them. There would be soft grunts and snuffles from their animal companions, hopefully bedded down for the night. We can hope that the host had refreshed the straw bedding, and that there were some blankets and a pallet for them to lie on. But, no, this is not the scrubbed-clean labor and delivery room of a modern hospital. But, the “uncleanliness” of the story isn’t only about the barn. There is another factor in this story that hardly ever receives a mention: the actual birthing of the child into this world. Photographer Natalie Lennard travels the world. She creates art that depicts birth from ancient to modern times, from the squalid conditions of the poor to the elaborate circumstances of famous. And so, she was curious about depictions of the birth of Jesus Christ. She had looked through centuries of art of the nativity, but could not find the moment of Mary actually giving birth to Jesus anywhere. The closest she came was a painting from 1891 by Julius Garibaldi, showing Mary and Joseph slumped in exhaustion following the birth. And so she decided to take on a project to show Mary actually bringing Jesus into the world. [1] Lennard wanted to get close to the true moment of birth and so she brought a cow, a donkey and a rooster, into a rustic stable in Tuscany, Italy. She chose Marta Razza, an Italian fashion model, to play Mary. In the photograph that Lennard captured, Marta’s mouth is open widein a shout of triumph as the man playing Joseph “catches” baby Jesus emerging into the world. Lennard wanted to do enough to make the scene believable without unnecessarily offending her religious friends. In my opinion the result is raw and yet beautiful, it is both real and holy. The stable is not sterile. Luke’s telling of Jesus’ being birthed in it is not sanitized. The moans and groans of labor, the pushing and the panting are a given. Perhaps there was anxiety, on Joseph’s face … a first time dad, unfamiliar with the birthing process. Mary had not done this for herself before, but perhaps was calmer. She had her instinct to guide her and surely she had been present as other women in her family gave birth. This past year, perhaps you have seen the video footage of tiny baby twins born to a Rohingya Muslim mother in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. They were born while their family was fleeing persecution Myanmar. Even in 2017, birth can happen in scary places, for women on the move. And in a few months, Kate Middleton, Prince William’s wife, will give birth to their third child in a private maternity wing of a London hospital that boasts the highest quality of care for patients experiencing both ‘straightforward’ and complex pregnancies.[2] All human beings, past and present, came into the world the same way the only variation being a surgical birth. Whether our mothers had access to the finest medical care, or they birthed on the road, desperately seeking a place to stay, delivery is much the same. To date, there is no other way for a human being to begin life than within a human womb. And so, my question for us, tonight, is: how close to the manger will we approach this year? How near are we willing to come to witness our savior going through the universal process of birth? Perhaps some of us are ready to come near, to connect intimately with Holy One crying out, wet and slippery, rapidly wrapped in the swaddles. Perhaps you can bear his vulnerability. But I think that some who may prefer to stay back today. I understand. The pain, the blood, the cries of struggle and of joy… the infant searching and latching on to nurse for the first time. This isn’t for everyone. For some, this story is too earthy, too real. Perhaps you’ve spent too many hours, these past months, weeks or days, in the hospital or the nursing home. Perhaps you’ve spent too many nights in a crowded, noisy homeless shelter. Perhaps the pains you’ve experienced this past year have not led to life, but to loss. I understand, and of course God understands. But … here is the thing. How close we are willing to come to the manger is not what really counts. It is how close God is willing to come to us. That is what this story, this earthy, dirty story, is about. It’s about the creator of the universe unable to resist coming into the world by means of a humble mother’s womb. It is about our God in Christ, so longing for closeness to the beloved creation, that Christ comes to us as a vulnerable newborn. It’s about our God taking the same route as a refugee mother, to give birth in a stable. And, whether or not we dare approach, God in Christ has come to meet tonight in our real, and raw reality. May all of God’s people say, Amen. [1] http://www.birthundisturbed.com/the-creation-of-man [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2360171/Kate-Middleton-birth-Royal-baby-private-maternity-wing-Prince-William-born.html#ixzz51efb9O97 |
If you enjoy a sermon or have a question, please leave a comment. If you would like to quote any of my material in your own sermons or writings, please use appropriate attribution. I look forward to hearing from you!Archives
April 2022
Categories |