Living Into the Dream Preached on December 2nd 2019 At Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25 We enter our story this week, as history is on he brink of cataclysmic change. The calendar, to be used by most of the world, is about to shift. From BC (Before Christ) or BCE (Before Common Era) to AD (Anno Domini, the Year of Our Lord) or CE (Common Era). The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and the destruction of all Jerusalem, will happen within the century. The Jewish faith will shift from temple based worship to Rabbinical Judaism. Followers of Jesus will begin to found the Church, which will become the major world religion for at least 2,000 years. Joseph knows none of this. Joseph is a carpenter in a small town in Nazareth, according to Luke. He works for the Roman elite in the nearby city, Sepphoris. And according to Matthew he is a devout Jew. He knows his law, and colors inside the lines. He is ready for marriage and is betrothed to a young woman, Mary. She is in her late teens, the typical age for marriage for Jewish women of the 1st century. Joseph is about ten years older. Life is as he expected it to be. He is doing all the right things, the unexciting things. He is content, quietly looking forward to his upcoming marriage and hoping for children soon. But Joseph is about to experience a cataclysmic change in his own life. It comes like a punch to the gut. He learns that his betrothed, Mary, is already pregnant. And he knows he is not responsible. Joseph has only one recourse under the law. He must divorce her. She has clearly committed adultery. And yet, he cares. The shame, and possibly the punishment, would destroy Mary. He couldn’t do that to her. After all, how much say does a young girl have in these matters? He hasn’t grown up with his eyes closed. Some men are not so righteous as he is. He paces his small home anxiously, late into the night. Eventually he resolves to end the betrothal quietly. Mary’s family can deal with the consequences. Once he has decided, he can finally rest. He lies down and drifts into an uneasy sleep. While he sleeps he is visited by an angel in a dream. This is the first in a series of dreams for Joseph, each directing him to a new course of action. Each one calling him to do something he would never have thought of before. Each revealing one more step on the dangerous journey ahead of him, as he becomes the earthly father of the child Jesus. The angel says “Joseph, Son of David, do not be afraid …” He comes with instructions on how Joseph is to take Mary as his wife, and raise the child as his own. The child is going to be the longed for one, the anointed one. He is going to be Emmanuel, God is with us. And so, Joseph awakes with a change of heart, the words “do not be afraid” and “God is with us” echoing in his head. He has a renewed sense of purpose. He has had a complete flip. He goes out to tell Mary’s family, “no problem”, he will still take Mary as his wife. When we sleep our reasoning brains disengage. Our subconscious engages and sometimes even creates solutions to problems. No wonder we often say we will “sleep on it” when we have to make a difficult decision. Joseph is presented with a difficult decision and then some. His message from the angel may be a matter of sorting things out. And yet, it is also more than that. There is a transition to a different way of thinking. You might say, Joseph grows up during that night’s sleep, or at least grows more. To use psychologist Carl Jung’s terminology he grows from the “first half of life” to the second. Joseph has been raised in the Jewish tradition, he has learned the laws and right behaviors. He has learned to color inside the lines. That is the work of the first half of life. What the angel tells him will lead him to the freedom to color outside the lines. It will lead quiet Joseph to become an agent of cataclysmic change: the coming of Jesus to the world, the fulfillment of God’s dream for the world. Joseph might have been scared by this news. He’s not accustomed to coloring outside the lines. But this is what God is calling him to do. Note the parentheses of the angel’s speech. As if to give him the confidence to make this leap in faith, he begins with “do not be afraid” and ends with “God is with us.” Jung said that “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” [1] Developing a healthy ego involves learning the rules of life. Children do best when they are given firm boundaries. They need to know what is allowed and what is not. This is what keeps them safe into adulthood. As we grow older we realize that there are times when the rules do not work. Situations change, nuance is called for. We move beyond the “black and white” and learn to work in the grey areas. We learn that we cannot always color inside the lines. In church, our Sunday School years gave us a grounding. But that will not fit us as adults. Now we are called to bring our adult eyes, ears and minds to the stories and scriptures. As children and young adults, we were encouraged to color in the lines as Christians. And the lines were in the shape of a church building. I always colored inside the lines. I was the so-called “good” older child of the family. I learned to behave and did so in order to avoid disapproval. I did my homework on time. I helped in the house, and was only a little bit moody as a teenager. I always went to church and Sunday School and never asked not to. When I experienced the call to ministry, my thinking was much the same. I expected it would be hard to become a pastor. I thought about all the studying required and how I had not been in formal education for many years. I thought about the fact that the last time I wrote an essay for credit was in my teens. Now I was in my late forties. What I had not thought about was how my expectations would be challenged. I expected I would be needed to provide pastoral care to church members, old, young and in-between. I’d do hospital visits and home visits. I’d officiate the baptisms, marriages and funerals of my congregants. Maybe I’d lead youth mission trips, Bible studies, or put on a nativity pageant. It would be hard work, and it would be clearly defined. I, too, was used to coloring in the shape of a church building. What I have discovered is that my work is not so clearly defined. In recent months the work has been more about forging relationships between other church and religious leaders in the community. It has been about building relationships with organizations who work with the our addicted neighbors and our unhoused neighbors. That is the wonder of this calling, for us here in this place. My friends, we – Wollaston Congregational Church – have been called to notice that cataclysmic moment for our generation. We have to somehow figure out how to work together, with our fellow Christians and people of other faiths or convictions. We have hidden out in our own bastions for too long. That is the message us who support small congregations in large, expensive, aging buildings. Those congregations and all around this city and in the communities beyond. We are being called to color outside the lines of the church building shape. Pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in Germany at the time of Hitler. Bonhoeffer “… founded the Confessing Church which became the center of German Protestant resistance to the Nazi regime [and their persecution of the Jewish people.]” The members of the Confessing Church were in the minority in Germany. Few other churches of Europe had the courage or the conviction to stand against Hitler. Bonhoeffer was seriously disappointed in religion and religious people. If they were unable to stand up against this unspeakable evil, what was the point? While he was imprisoned by the Nazis, because of his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, he wrote “We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious’…” [2] Bonhoeffer had a big picture view of what was happening. He believed that religion had failed. And he wondered “What is a religionless Christianity?” Although Bonhoeffer died many years ago, Church and our world is still grappling with this cataclysmic shift. The European church, in its pre-World War II form simply wore out. The former way of doing things did not work any longer. We, the church of today, are being called to a shift in thinking, to a second half of life mindset. Jesus will no longer fit into the church shape building we used to like to color. This may sound like scary stuff. We might be as scared as Joseph was when he heard about Mary’s pregnancy and wondered what was coming next. We remember the challenging call to Joseph, to take Mary as his wife and become the earthly father of the child Jesus. We know what came next for him. It was a dream instructing Joseph to take his family to flee to Egypt to avoid the wrath of King Herod. And still we can remember that the words of the angel were surrounded by these parentheses: “do not be afraid” and “God is with us.” We – you and I – are probably not visited by angels in our dreams. Instead, we are reminded of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls “God’s Dream.” We have read about it in his children’s book of the same name. “God’s dream” is a vision of a world in which little children of every color, creed and nation, join hands in recognition, friendship and forgiveness. Tutu’s book expresses the African principle of Unbuntu, “I am because we are.” And so, we move toward Christmas and anticipate welcoming Jesus into our lives once more. May we not be afraid to live into the dream: I am because we are … all because God is with us. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/332083-the-first-half-of-life-is-devoted-to-forming-a [2] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/588bcd399f74561e5f64a486/t/58b765251b631b4e73e0ef32/1488413990197/Dietrich+Bonhoeffer%2C+all+excerpts.pdf
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Traveling to Bethlehem December 24th, 2019 Scripture: Luke 2:1-20 Human beings move, sometimes through choice and sometimes because they are forced. From he beginning of human history people have migrated and they have traveled. At the beginning of the story of Israel God calls Abraham and Sarah, to leave the place where they are settled and move where God is leading them. This begins a story of migration and movement. Much of it is spent in the wilderness wondering where will be the final destination, “the promised land.” This continent, America, was populated by movement and migration, which began long before the first European settlers. It is thought that the first human beings arrived tens of thousands of years ago. Perhaps those people, who became the First Nations, crossed the Bering Strait, or the polar ice cap. The migration from Europe, and Asia came later. Then of course, there was the forced migration of enslaved people from Africa. And in 1838 the Cherokee people were forcibly removed from their homeland and relocated in so called “Indian Territory.” This route of their relocation was known as the Trail of Tears, 4,000 people died along the way. In the midst of all these migrations, voluntary or forced, we can be sure there were families. And we can imagine there were expectant mothers, many of whom would have no choice but to give birth far from home. In the story we read from the gospel of Luke this evening, Mary and Joseph are undergoing a kind of forced migration. They are required to travel some 100 miles, from Nazareth in Galilee, to Bethlehem in Judea. It is a decree from the Emperor Augustus, ruler of the world. It is a command and there is no choice. And there’s no option to choose a more convenient time. Mary is the advanced stages of pregnancy. They can only hope she will make it to Bethlehem before she goes into labor. And so she packs her bundles with bands of cloth to wrap around the baby, if and when he arrives. They layer their clothes, for the winter desert weather. And they hug Mary’s family good bye, before they join the caravan that will makes its way through the wilderness country. We don’t know whether Mary and Joseph had a donkey for the journey. It is quite likely Mary had to walk. Or perhaps a fellow traveler offered her a ride on their animal. They would have carried skins for water to be refilled at wells. They bundled dried bread and little oil for sustenance. They’d make up to 20 miles per day, in good company with all the others heading for David’s city and beyond. They traveled together for safety as well as companionship. There would be wild animals out at night along the route as well as the possibility of bandits. Mary makes it to Bethlehem without birthing along the way. That’s a huge relief. But now they need to find a place for her to lie because the pains have begun. With the city crowded with so many descendants of David, an innkeeper shows them to the part of the house where the animals are kept. They will have some privacy. They bed down in the homey smells and warmth of the barn. And when Baby Jesus comes into the world, his first cries are accompanied by the snorts and snuffles of resting donkeys. Mary and Joseph’s experience is common enough, and yet exceptional. Families around the world still migrate, or are forcibly moved. Mothers go into labor anywhere they happen to be. This can be perilous for mother and child. We can imagine this night, there will be mothers giving birth in the refugee camp on Lesbos Island, Greece. This is a holding place for families fleeing violence in the middle east. They hope for safe haven in Europe. There will be mothers traveling to family and friends during the holidays, who will seek a safe place to give birth along the way. And there will be those who have to move because their home has been threatened by storms, fires or floods. Last year in the United States “16.1 million people had to leave their homes because of weather related disasters.” [1] Surely some of those are mothers who had to give birth in a place far from home. And, on our southern border, just this past February, in a detention center in Texas, a Honduran woman went into premature labor. Tragically her baby did not survive. Warzones, famines, hurricanes and wildfires have little respect for expectant mothers and unborn children. Immigration practices and forced migration add to the toll. Birthing on the road, or in a camp or a prison is a dangerous proposition for both mother and child. And we might be outraged, asking why can’t we do better in this day and age? And what has happened to our compassion? But we might also wonder why God would choose this kind of way to enter the world. Why God would choose to come near in the form of a fragile infant, into such a precarious situation. In order to ponder this mystery, it is necessary for each of us to make our own kind of journey tonight. I’m inviting you to come to Bethlehem, and see this miracle. It’s as simple as a young mother, dad and newborn cuddled together in relief and exhaustion. And it’s as complex as the Creator of the universe - from the cells of our bodies to the planets billions of light years away - come to meet us in this tiny little body. To get to the Bethlehem of Jesus’ time, we would need to journey 2,000 years through time and partway around the globe. And yet, we only need to make a step or two to encounter the divine. It can be done by looking into the eyes of another human or sentient being, it can be done by tenderly touch their hand . It will be especially easy to do that tonight. From the breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup, to the passing of the candle light around the circle while we sing Silent Night. We will facilitate that experience for one another gently and tenderly. Our charge today is to share that mystery of God-come-near when we leave this place, not just tonight but through the coming year. And over that year, we may very well make new journeys to places we cannot quite imagine just now. These journeys will probably not entail migration to distant lands, or even vacation travels overseas. More likely we will travel to a neighbor’s house, when a family member is sick, or a loved one has died. Or we will journey to a hospital, nursing home or rehab to be with a friend or family member. We may make the trip across town to worship to a different congregation or to experience the practices of another faith. We may be invited to break bread with people who speak a different language and listen to different stories. And in each place we travel, we are called to notice the precarious life that God has chosen to share with us, in the infant Jesus. We will find it in the meeting of eyes and the touch of skin, the birth of the vulnerable, tender one we found here. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] https://www.americansecurityproject.org/16-1-million-people-displaced-by-weather-disasters-more-than-by-conflict/ The Pillars of Joy: Humor, Acceptance and Compassion Preached on December 15th, 2019 At Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: Luke 1:46-55 Today we are reflecting on the song of Mary, the Magnificat, a song of joy we just heard as one of our lectionary readings. This is a beautiful passage in itself, but if we are to understand it, we need to go back in Luke’s story a little. As we ponder the story and the song, we will discover three elements of joy: acceptance, compassion, and perhaps surprisingly humor. And so, I invite you to listen for God’s word for us, in this time and place, as we explore the joy of Mary. The narrative of Luke’s gospel begins with the birth of John the Baptist, to an elderly childless couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth. The angel Gabriel visits Zechariah while he is serving priestly duties in the Jerusalem temple. Gabriel gives Zechariah the news that Elizabeth will become pregnant with a baby who is to be called John. John will prepare the way for the people of Israel for the coming of the Lord. Zechariah cannot believe the angel, and so he is struck dumb until the child is born. Meanwhile, Elizabeth does indeed become pregnant and she is overjoyed. Perhaps she is also anxious, because of the likelihood of miscarriage and so she hides in her house for several months. In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy the angel comes to visit a younger woman, Mary, who is engaged but not yet married. Gabriel tells Mary that she is highly favored and blessed. She will conceive and give birth to a son. She is to name him Jesus. She asks how this can be, as she is still unmarried. The angel replies that the Spirit will come upon her, she is not to worry about the details. The holy one born will be called the son of God. Gabriel tells Mary that her barren relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age. This is a sign for Mary. And so, Mary consents to Gabriel “let it be with me according to your word.” Now Mary sets off on a journey to the hill country, to Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house. When Elizabeth, now six month’s pregnant, greets Mary at the door, the child in her womb leaps for joy. The unborn child, John, has recognized that Mary is carrying Jesus. And so Elizabeth blesses Mary, asking “why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” And in response, Mary bursts into the song we heard a few minutes ago. It is a song of joy, full of what the presence of God means to the world. Mary has just navigated the dangerous hill country around Galilee to get to Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house. She knows the world is not always a hospitable place for one bringing peace and joy. And still she sings of what it means to see God in the world. She sings with joy about signs of what God does in the here and now, and what God will do in the coming of Jesus. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of South Africa, also know that this world is not a hospitable place for those bringing peace and joy. The Dalai Lama has spent the past 60 years in exile from his home in Tibet. He longs to go home, and grieves for his people who have experienced terrible persecution. And at the same time he lives with joy. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has also experienced suffering, for himself and for his people. Their land was taken and occupied by the Dutch and the British during colonization. Tutu’s people were forced into servitude. And during his childhood, Tutu’s family was forced to move many times. The Archbishop was a spiritual leader for the black people of South Africa as they fought apartheid and worked for majority rule. Even as that goal has been accomplished, many black South Africans still live in poverty and suffering. And, yet, the Archbishop also lives with joy. “The Book of Joy” by Douglas Abrams documents a conversation between the His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the meaning of joy. At the time, the two older men were meeting to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday. Pictures throughout the book illustrate their mutual joy in one another’s company. They touch, they tease, they eat, drink and dance together. They are filled with joy. [1] These two wise men talk of 8 pillars of joy: perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion and generosity. These are the pillars that enable all people to experience joy, even in places of suffering. The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu exude the pillar of humor. It seems that they are always laughing. It may seem that humor is inappropriate when people are suffering, but the Archbishop says it is actually helpful. During the most violent times in South Africa’s struggle, Tutu would conduct funerals for the people who had been killed by police. There were hundreds of people in attendance – this was the only kind of gathering that was permitted. And so funerals also became political rallies. In order to contain the anger and grief, Tutu would use humor. With the police waiting just feet away, he would tell a joke at his own expense to defuse the tension. [2] Doug Abrams recalls a Mexican shaman who said “that laughing and crying and the same thing – laughing just feels better.” [3] Laughing in times of grief is entirely appropriate. In every funeral I have presided, family members have included some kind of humor in their eulogies. In my own family we cry for the loved one we have lost, of course. And yet we also remember the funny things: their quirks and idiosyncrasies that made them human. When my father in law passed away several years ago we had recently spent a family Christmas in Florida. He was struggling at the time. He suffered from the pain of cancer and the pain of the loss of my mother in law just two years before. The family planned to go to Universal Studios and he wanted to come along too, so we agreed to get a motorized scooter for him. We were an unwieldy extended family - German, English and American. After a couple of rides together we decided to split up. We agreed to meet for lunch at a particular spot. But when we all assembled, there was no dad. My husband and his brother in law circled the park, in opposite directions, looking for the scooter. Surely he would be easy to find. They arrived back at the lunch spot with no dad, both looking anxious. Had something happened to him? While we were brainstorming what to do next, when he rolled up on the scooter. Where had he been? Oh, he replied, I was waiting over there when a man came and said to me “Come this way, sir, and so I went … he put me on the King Kong ride. It was great, I avoided the whole long queue!” We all laughed out loud with relief, this was a joy we could remember when he was gone. Joyful humor is never mean, of course. And yet those who are oppressed will find humor in lampooning the high and mighty. And so, Mary declares, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones.” The high and mighty are the people who take themselves too seriously. They are brought down by a joke: God coming into the world in such a way that the mighty king Herod does not even notice. Imagine Mary and Elizabeth’s laughter as the two pregnant women greet one another … an elderly first time mom and a young unmarried woman. They secretly contain revelations of God’s great joy for the world within their bodies. This is God’s joke for humanity. Another pillar of joy is acceptance. The Dalai Lama quotes the 8th century Buddhist monk, Shantideva, who said “Why be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use of being unhappy if it cannot be remedied?” [4] Abrams points out that acceptance is not resignation and defeat, it is the opposite. The two older men’s “activism [for peace comes] from a deep acceptance of what is.” Archbishop Tutu “did not accept the inevitability of apartheid, but he did accept its reality.” Abrams says “We cannot succeed by denying what exists. The acceptance of reality is the only place from which change can begin.” [5] Acceptance of “what is” is one of the gifts of Advent. Acceptance allows us to move on to fullness of joy. Mary gave her consent to the Angel Gabriel. She accepted the calling to birth the savior. The joy of her acceptance shines through her song: “God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God’s servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” Some say Mary did not know what was ahead. They say she did not know what Jesus’ ministry would look like. She did not know that his preaching, healing and speaking the truth in love would lead to his crucifixion. They believe she was joyful because of her ignorance. I beg to differ. I believe that she knew all of this and more. I believe that Mary suffered with Jesus all his life, even going to the cross to watch him die. “Suffer with” is the meaning of compassion, another pillar of joy. That is what mothers do. They suffer with their children. As the Dalai Lama says, we learn compassion from the people who nurture us, most often our mothers. Jesus was a most excellent example of compassion, he surely learned that from Mary. It’s not surprising that Mary expresses this pillar of joy, particularly for the poor and lowly who are lifted up in God’s presence. And so today, on the Advent Sunday of joy, we are invited to become filled with joy. As we contemplate what God is calling us to in this time and place, may we embrace humor, acceptance, and compassion. You are encouraged to fill yourself up with humor. Look for the absurdities in this world, the jokes God is playing on us. Anticipate the toppling of the pompous and haughty. It will get you through the holiday dinners with that bombastic person who knows best. Even in our church, ponder the quirks and idiosyncrasies of our congregation and our building. May we laugh with one another and with God. And, as a church and in our lives, we are invited to practice acceptance. In our church, perhaps we will stroll around the building, examine the leaks, the plasterwork, the cold rooms and the warm ones. And accept. In our lives, we will look with kindness on that family member or that friend, that co-worker or classmate, who rubs us up the wrong way. And accept. Above all, though, we are invited to practice compassion. To suffer with does not sound joyful, until we remember that it is our separation from one another that brings us pain. May we have compassion for bombastic leaders who live joyless lives. May we have compassion for the poor of the world, who are to be lifted up. May we have compassion, too, for ourselves. May we treat ourselves and one another kindly this season, understanding the tenderness many of us feel this time of year. Then, Church, we will then marvel and sing at what God has done within these walls, and what God will continue to do beyond these walls. God takes joy in us. And so we sing, dance, and laugh out loud for joy this holy season. Amen [1] His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, (New York: Penguin Random House, 2016) [2] Ibid., 17 [3] Ibid., 216 [4] Ibid., 223 [5] Ibid., 224-225 What do you do with the mad that you feel? Preached on December 8th, 2019 At Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: Matthew 3:1-12 On Wednesday night, a good number of us gathered for our weekly Advent soup and meditation. The form of meditation we are using this year is the ancient practice of Lectio Divina. This is a mediation on scripture. The idea of Lectio is that we read the scripture as though it is a letter written lovingly from someone who cares about us deeply. It is the kind of letter you keep in your pocket for days, even weeks, and pull it out when you have a quiet moment. You re-read, slowly and carefully paying attention to the words of your loved one. Over several careful and slow re-readings of the scripture, you pick out a word or a phrase that speaks to you. And you ask God “What are you saying to me, for my life at this time, in this letter.” And so, for those who did not attend on Wednesday, I am going to read the gospel passage again, this time more slowly than last time. You may like to follow along in your pew Bible Matthew 3:1-12 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." This reading from the gospel of Matthew comes right after the story of the birth of Jesus. You may remember that story ends with Joseph taking his wife, Mary, and the infant Jesus to Egypt. They do this to avoid the wrath of King Herod, who orders all boys under two years old be killed. Herod is so fearful of the threat of the newborn who has come to be king of the Jews. After Herod dies, Mary, Joseph and Jesus return to Israel and live in Galilee. And years pass by as the story moves on. Then John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, preaching “repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” He is preparing the way for Jesus to begin his ministry. When we read this passage on Wednesday, a number of the women in the group were struck by John’s anger. This is not a “gentle Jesus meek and mild” type passage. As a prophet of God, very much like the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, John comes with stern words from the God of Israel. We imagined the Messianic figure who is ready to cut down trees that do not bear good fruit, who carries a winnowing fork to separate the grain from the straw. And inwardly we cringed a little. Is this really a love letter from our God? We were not comfortable, because we are rarely comfortable with anger. And still, anger is part and parcel of being human and being in relationship with God. In order to grapple with the possibility of God’s anger, here is an image from the prophet Hosea. It speaks of God, whose anger is like that of a bear robbed of her cubs. Have you ever been warned, if you see a bear cub, to be sure not to get between him and his mother? Even the small black bears of New England will become ferocious if they are afraid for their babies. Hosea expresses the righteous anger of God as being like the fierce love of a mother bear. (Hosea 13:8) We witness the fierce love of God each year at Advent, when we remember that God so loves the world fiercely enough to send God’s own child to be with us. We are reminded that if God’s love is bound up in the abundance and beauty of creation, God is angry about its destruction. God, our fierce loving parent, cares for every infant, every child, every creature on the planet. And so pain inflicted on children, through abuse, inequitable distribution of resources, through warfare and disease, all must anger God. There’s no escaping it, fierce love and righteous anger go hand in hand. Besides being uncomfortable with the anger of our fiercely loving God, we also tend to be uncomfortable with our own anger. And yet, if we are to love fiercely, like our parent God, we will experience anger too. I think of: The anger of the parent of the child who is being bullied at school and on social media. Or the anger of the parent whose adult child has been refused marriage in the church because their partner is the same sex. Or the anger of the parent whose child has experienced abuse, sexual or otherwise, in their religious institution. Or the fierce love of a foster parent I know, who takes in babies born to addicted mothers and rocks them as they go through withdrawal. It is not only parents who experience anger, of course. We have recently witnessed the anger and fierce love of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg for her own generation and for the planet. Whether or not we find it palatable, Thunberg expresses righteous anger for our generation’s lack of urgency in the face of the climate crisis. Many of us here today have not been raised to deal with our own anger. This is problematic, because anger is the tip of an iceberg of feelings. Emotions such as grief, depression, sadness, shame, regret and hurt remain hidden under the surface, when we do not speak to our anger. [1] As girls we were discouraged from feeling anger at all. We were expected to be nice and show only our patient, nurturing, caring selves. On the other hand, boys were discouraged from feeling the things that come underneath the anger iceberg. They were taught to keep feelings like grief, sadness, and hurt to themselves. Instead, anger was the only emotion they were allowed, expressed through aggressive behaviors and outbursts, rather than dialogue. Some years ago, I helped organize a women’s retreat for my church. The theme was “women’s anger.” 40 women signed up almost immediately, it was the maximum number for the space we had reserved. It was one of the best-attended church events I’ve ever been involved with. This was a wakeup call for me: there is a deep need, in our culture, to speak about anger, and to understand God’s righteous anger. When my children were small I reached a point where I was trying to deal with their anger and with mine. Sure, I felt frustrated when the children would not do what I wanted them to do. They would not eat what I wanted them to eat and they would not cooperate with me. But I the anger I was feeling had nothing to do with them and everything to do with those things hidden beneath the surface. The kids also felt frustrated and angry that they sometimes had to do things they didn’t want to do. Sometimes they were frustrated simply because they could not express themselves. I wanted to allow my children to be angry in healthy ways. I wanted to manage my own anger so that it would not impact my children. My help came from the children’s TV program, “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” Although the show was intended to speak to children, it became my go-to for parenting advice. This is because Fred Rogers modeled a beautiful way of speaking to children in which he would honor them as individuals and allow them to express their feelings. And in the words of journalist, Tom Junod, Rogers also spoke to adults in a way “that we could remember what it was like to be a child … he could talk to anyone, believing that if you remembered what it was like to be a child, you would remember that you were a child of God.” [2] Fred Rogers helped adults to honor their inner child. This past week I took a trip down memory lane, and went to see the new movie about Mr. Rogers: “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” The movie tells the story of an angry young journalist, Lloyd Vogel, who interviews Fred Rogers for a feature article for Esquire magazine. Rogers is drawn to Vogel, even as other people are put off, because of his anger. Vogel is angry because his own father was absent for much of his life. Rogers helps Vogel access his inner child, who is carrying the burden of anger. He helps the journalist understand the hurt and pain that is beneath his anger and eventually to transition to forgiveness. In his TV show Fred Rogers gave children permission to feel and express anger in healthy ways. In the song “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” He asks: “Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag? Or see how fast you go? It's great to be able to stop When you've planned a thing that's wrong, And be able to do something else instead And think this song: I can stop when I want to Can stop when I wish I can stop, stop, stop any time.” [3] In a recent article, Tom Junod, reminds readers that Fred Rogers “was an ordained Presbyterian minister who was … appalled by what he saw on 1950s television,” such as “adults trying to entertain children by throwing pies in each other’s faces.” And so Rogers “joined the medium as a reformer. He considered the space between the television set and the eyes of his audience sacred [making] nearly 1,000 episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, [in an attempt] to make that space less profane.” [4] Rogers was passionate about his ministry to children through television. It’s quite likely that he felt angry when his show was threated by proposed cuts to government funding of the Public Broadcasting Service. In 1969, Fred Rogers appeared before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications. He was given only a few minutes to speak and still he spoke slowly and softly. He described his show, saying that it spoke to the inner needs of children. He told senators that he addressed anger in family situations, speaking to it constructively. He reminded the senate of the importance of mental health for the nation’s children. He told them that his program provided a neighborhood expression of care, such as two men working out their feelings of anger by talking. And then he ended his short speech by reciting the song “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” In light of the interview, the senate decided not to cut the proposed $20 million for Public Broadcasting. [5] ------------- Sometimes our anger is righteous anger, like God’s. Other times it is anger for ourselves and our own pain. Neither is wrong. Both need to be expressed. In the case of anger for ourselves, and our own inner child, we will need to do the work of unpacking what is beneath the surface. As we work through Matthew’s gospel this year we will hear the call to express righteous anger in the face of injustices to most vulnerable in our world. We began today with the slow reading of the gospel text as though it was a letter from our beloved. We were thrown off guard by the imagery of anger. And so here is the message for us this Advent. We are to prepare to welcome our fiercely loving God come to us in Jesus. Love like God’s cannot be wholly expressed by gentle words and niceness. The gospel message is of a God who loves us fiercely enough to be angry. And that is reason to rejoice. May all God’s people say Amen. [1] https://www.destressmonday.org/monday-uncover-iceberg-look-beneath-surface-anger/ [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/what-would-mister-rogers-do/600772/ [3] http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/music/songs/what_do_you_do.html [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/what-would-mister-rogers-do/600772/ [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q Advent, One Foot in Front of the Other Preached on December 1st, 2019 At Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5 This morning, as we step into the season of Advent, we are called by Isaiah to go up to the mountain of the Lord, to come walk in the light of the Lord. And so as we begin the season we begin a journey. And this is no ordinary journey, rather it is a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning. That is to say, a person who completes a pilgrimage ends in a different place from the place they began. This is sometimes a different physical place and always a different spiritual place. At the beginning we may not think we are ready to go to a new and different place. We may not feel willing to be changed by the experience of Advent. And yet today, we are simply invited to begin. To put one foot in front of the other. This morning we heard Psalm 122 which is a psalm of ascents, a pilgrimage psalm. The psalmist proclaims: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’” It is another invitation to begin a journey. Going to the Jerusalem temple always meant “going up” for ancient pilgrims. The psalms of ascent are thought to have been sung as travelers climbed the road to Jerusalem for one of the three Jewish pilgrim festivals. The reading we heard this morning, from Isaiah, is a prophecy made during a difficult times for Judah. The northern kingdom of Israel and the Aramaean kingdom of Damascus have tried to force Judah into an unwise alliance in opposition to the Assyrian Empire. When the foes lay siege to Jerusalem, King Ahaz turns to the prophet for advice and assurance. Isaiah’s reassurance is that, no matter the current circumstances, the day will come when God will reign on Mount Zion for all to see. This will occur when all nations, all tribes, all peoples are drawn to journey to that place. Isaiah reassures us that God’s ultimate purpose is to bring salvation and peace to all nations. This is what Christians anticipate at Advent in the coming of the Christ child. We remember the proclamation of the angels “peace on earth, good will to all people.” El Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain is pilgrimage route that was popular in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. The route has become popular again in recent times. El Camino de Santiago, “The Way of Saint James”, leads to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. According to legend, the remains of the apostle, James, reside inside the Cathedral. Walking the route will take about four weeks. Pilgrims will find times of solitude as well as times spent walking and talking with many other pilgrims from around the world. They may stay in pilgrimage hostels and religious communities as they step back into a time-honored tradition. They take their time, there is no way to do the pilgrimage quickly. They experience changes in weather – wet, hot and cold – and learn to accept what comes. And over the course of the walk they can reflect on their lives, gaining perspective on themselves and their relationships with others and with God. When pilgrims arrival at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela they are invited to attend a Pilgrim Mass, which occurs twice per day. Pilgrims from many nations, traditions and languages experience this multi-sensory mass. The huge censer is swung by six robed men, wafting incense throughout the towering cathedral. Light streams through stained glass windows and is reflected from golden statues; chants and anthems are sung and organ music resounds. It’s a fitting end to simplicity of the lengthy, life-changing hike.[1] I have never made a pilgrimage like El Camino, but I have learned to make small pilgrimages of my own. Like the one I made during Advent some years ago. The month of December had become much too busy for me. I barely took the time to breathe, never mind reflect on the season and enjoy the anticipation of the coming of Jesus. I had recently joined my church’s Mission Committee and we were planning a “Missions Fair.” We would sell products from and for the benefit of various mission-related organizations. The committee decided to take about a dozen teddy bears to be sold to benefit a men’s homeless shelter in Salem. And so I volunteered to go to Salem to pick up the bears. At that time I rarely went anywhere without our three little children in tow. A friend offered to take our youngest, Chloe, for a play date after half-day preschool so that I could make the pilgrimage around route 128. It was a sunny December day and, at mid-day, the men’s shelter was quiet. Some residents were napping, and volunteers staffed the desk. I was only there for a few minutes, but in that time I took in the unassuming hospitality of the place. It was an Advent kind of place, far from the glitz of the mall and the impatience of the highways. It smelled of bodies, instead of the intense perfumes of seasonal candles. I picked up the teddy bears and brought them to my car. Then I had about 45 minutes to spare and I walked around the Salem neighborhoods. I could see how forgotten people might get lost there. And yet it was also a place to be found. I took my time in the thin sunlight. I needed the moments of solitude. I needed to be reminded of who God is and what God does in this season of waiting. In Isaiah’s vision, the people who have journeyed to the mountain learn new things about who God is and what God does. When the peoples are gathered from all nations on that sacred mountain, God judges. The judgment of God may sound terrifying, but in this case it is more of a sorting out of problems, an arbitration. The result of this judgment is peace. The peace of the Hebrew Bible, Shalom, is not merely the absence of fighting and war. It is a deep peace between peoples and between humanity and God. The invitation to Shalom is irresistible. The nations beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. The tools of war are no longer needed, they become the tools for cultivation. Shalom means a great community in which all the people are fed. This is the peace for which the city is name, Jeru-Shalom. It means all inclusive wellbeing. Shane Claiborne is a Christian leader, speaker, and author. He has worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and is the founder of a neighborhood-based community called “The Simple Way” in Philadelphia. Claiborne has recently written a book with co-author Michael Martin called “Beating Guns: Hope for People who are Weary of Violence.” Martin is a former Mennonite youth pastor who has retrained as a blacksmith. Their book tour was a 37-city pilgrimage in a decommissioned school bus. [2] While on their journey, Claiborne and Martin ran a unique kind of gun buy-back program. They held vigils in places that have experienced mass shootings or drug-related violence. Local people were invited to bring their guns to be melted down in a mobile forge. These weapons were refashioned into gardening tools and objects of art. The LA Times published a column entitled “Evangelical activist Shane Claiborne wants to beat our guns into plowshares — really.” Claiborne says “There’s folks that say we don’t have a gun problem, we have a heart problem. We realize we’ve got both a gun problem and a heart problem. God heals hearts and people change laws and we need to think of it as both of those.” Talking about the meltdown vigils he says, "In one hour, we go from a piece of metal that was designed to kill to a piece of metal that was designed to cultivate life.” [3] Perhaps you noticed that Shane Claiborne is described by the LA Times as an evangelical activist. He is the leader of a movement called the “Red Letter Christians.” Members of the movement say they are committed to living "as if Jesus meant the things he said." [4] If I’m to be honest, I have to say “I’m not there yet.” The gun meltdown sounds amazing. But will it really change enough hearts and minds to bring peace to our cities and neighborhoods? Will laying down our weapons, whatever they are, leave us too vulnerable? Not all of us own guns, of course. But we have other means of defense and protection. We stick with our own neighborhoods, and with our own kind of people that we think of as being “safe.” We shop in familiar places, talk with familiar people. We carefully avoid anything that looks out of the ordinary and feels uncomfortable. Are we ready to step out of those zones of comfort and safety? Are we ready to make journeys with people who look different from us, who are from different places, different faiths, who speak different languages? I’d say, for most of us, probably not. We’re simply “not there yet.” Advent means “coming.” And so this month we anticipate the coming of Jesus. And we can look forward with hope, to the coming of peace, Shalom. Indeed, Christ is coming. And yet, we are also going. We are going on the journey, the pilgrimage. If we are “not there yet” it is OK. Perhaps that is the whole point of the pilgrimage journey: that we are not there yet. Today all we need to do is to put one foot in front of the other. And so here is the invitation, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” Amen [1] https://caminoways.com/pilgrims-mass-santiago-de-compostela [2] https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/god-guns-and-country-the-evangelical-fight-over-firearms [3] https://wjactv.com/news/local/beating-guns-tour-stops-in-state-college-they-turned-guns-into-garden-tools [4] http://www.shaneclaiborne.com/new-page/ |
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