Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Psalm 126

A minister in Santa Fe tells the story of a drought she lived through in New Mexico. For ten long years, there was almost no rain, in a land of little rain to begin with. Centuries-old pinyon trees that covered the hills throughout northern New Mexico became susceptible to bark beetles and died by the thousands. A once green landscape turned grey with dead trees. For the people who lived there, she said, it felt like a death in the family.

Then one summer, it rained. Within days – days! – fields of wildflowers sprang up. Yellow cow-pen daises, purple asters. People couldn’t believe their eyes. Every patch of ground was covered with wildflowers that had not been seen in a century. It turns out that rain alone was not the reason for this riot of color. The needles of the dead pinyon trees provided mulch and nutrients needed by the seeds that had lain dormant for decades. The trees would never be restored, but their death gave birth to new beauty as far as the eye could see. [1]

We have been journeying with the ancient people of Israel during Advent, and today we are entering the devastated, grey desert of their former homeland with them. After decades of exile in Babylon, they have started to return home – but to a home that had been destroyed, sometimes down to the last block, by the Babylonian army. There is joy here, deep joy. But there is also an awful lot of devastation to repair, a lot of homes and cities to restore. Think of an Iraqi refugee coming home to a house reduced to rubble. How quickly could the joy turn to weariness over the sheer amount of work to be done, over how much had been lost?

And so we hear in the psalm, which was written after their return home from exile, both of these notes. That high note of joy: mouths filled with laughter, tongues loosed in shouts of joy. Returning refugees so deliriously happy they wonder if they are dreaming.

And yet, only one verse later, we hear the lower note of pain, of need: “Restore our fortunes, O God, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.” It’s interesting to note the magnitude of the people’s request in this psalm. The Negeb is a desert in that region whose very name means “dry,” “parched.” It is one of the hottest, most desolate deserts around. The people’s plea is for not just springs, but watercourses – rivers of water – to flow again in this dessicated land. And they plea not just for gladness or mirth but for the Hebrew word rinnah – which means a loud cry, a proclamation of joy, a shout of victory. Three times in this short psalm, the writer refers to this rinnah – translated here as shouts of joy.[2] Not smiles, not quiet contentment. The people are asking for coursing rivers of joy -- for fields of long-dormant wildflowers -- in the midst of their desert.

In the passage from Isaiah, then, we hear God’s promise to these joyful, devastated people via the prophet: (read Isaiah)

Yes, the prophet promises, the seeds of their tears will bear a harvest of joy. In fact, the prophet piles on the metaphors in his attempt to communicate just how lavish this restoration will be: the community will no longer wear sackcloth and ashes but the festive dress reserved for a bride and bridegroom – rich robes, garlands of flowers, necklaces of jewels. The community will be like “oaks of righteousness” – long-lived, large trees with spreading branches. Their homeland will no longer be a grey desolate desert but a garden spot.

But there’s one more metaphor, one more promise. The restored people who were once themselves the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captive will become priests, will become ministers to the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captive. The renewed, restored people will serve as intermediaries between God and all who need God’s restoration. God will use them, use their pain, use their exile, use their oppression to comfort and free others. More than simply being restored, they will become the restorers.

When one of you tells me of a pain so deep it could devastate your life, I take note. I start watching, and waiting. What is going to grow from this devastated place? If the pain can be endured, experienced and finally embraced, something always starts growing. The tears of grief or bitterness or shame or loneliness water the seeds, and eventually flowers, long dormant, begin to bloom. The writers of the Psalms believed that weeping or keening while you planted the crops made them more productive. And I believe the same thing is true in our spiritual life. The tears of devastation can bring forth a vigorous, productive flowering… the fruit of compassion, the fruit of wisdom. They can bring forth the fruit of a ministry, sometimes even a calling.

Think of the person who has endured the death of a loved one who can then comfort those who similarly mourn. The abused child who becomes a counselor binding up the wounds of the next generation of abused children. The person scarred by the church who goes on to minister with a special sensitivity to those whose hearts the church continues to break. The gay man who spends the first part of his life in a fearful closet and spends the second part as a fearless liberator, freeing those captive to ignorance and shame, changing a city called San Francisco and the world. More than simply being restored, they become the restorers. Their former brokenness becomes the mulch that brings forth the new growth, the new creation.

The pinyon pines are dead. The houses are rubble. The promise is not that things will be restored to their original state. The promise given to Israel, and to us, is that from death, from devastation – even the devastations of many generations – a new creation can come. And the promise given to Israel, and to us, is that God has called us to be the community of priests, the community of ministers, that raises up the former devastations. Using our tears as long-needed rain, God causes a desert to bloom.

Amen.

[1] From Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary.
[2] Ibid.

“Complex Comfort”

Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-18

I thank God every day that I am still able to fix everything in Patrick’s life through simple comforts – a kiss where it aches, a particularly goofy facial expression, a cookie that magically makes all the hurt go away. These are the simple comforts of childhood and, thankfully, as we age, these simple things – a kiss, a joke, a sweet treat – can still provide comfort. During a rough patch, one of you said to me recently, “I just can’t wait to come to church on Sunday. I know I’ll feel better there.” The simple comfort of community – what a gift. A hand on the shoulder, a hug, a hymn. A listening ear. Thank God for simple comforts.

In our Hebrew scripture text for today, the people of Israel are finally getting some comfort. As I mentioned last week, this part of Isaiah – called Second Isaiah – was written after Israel’s homeland had been destroyed and the people deported into exile in Babylon. It is the lowest period in their life as a people thus far, made doubly harsh since they believe their exile it is due to their own sin. If only they had been faithful to God, this would not have happened. But finally, after decades in exile, they hear, these words: “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says the prophet.. “Speak tenderly to her. Tell her that she has paid her penalty, that she has served her term.” The prophet Isaiah is telling them that their time of exile is almost over, that God will save them, that they will be able to go home.

The author of Mark uses some of Isaiah’s words to speak his own words of comfort almost 600 years later. The person speaking these words is John the Baptist who, for Mark, is like the voice that announces comfort to the exiles in Babylon. “Although first-century Jews were not in exile, they were under foreign occupation. It was if the Babylonian exile had followed them home.”[1] And so John tells these people that a powerful one is coming, the promised Messiah, the one – so people thought – who would rescue them from occupation.

The people of Israel in both Isaiah and Mark’s time are a people defined by a tragic past, enduring a painful present. Isaiah and John both give them a future tense – they give them hope. You will be going home. Your savior is coming. But the comfort being offered is not a simple kind of comfort – like a kiss that makes it all go away. The comfort offered to the people is a more complex comfort.

True, God is coming to save them, says Isaiah. But this God is a complicated God – both a tender God, who feeds her flock like a shepherd, gathering the lambs into her bosom – and a God who “comes with might,” who demands that the “valleys and mountains of human inequality be leveled out.” This is a God “for whom bringing comfort can also involve upsetting those who have grown comfortable with status quo living”[2] – or, as the saying goes, a God who will afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. God’s future is coming – but, depending on who you are, you may not find it, at least initially, very comfortable. This is a complex kind of comfort.

True, your Messiah is coming, John says. But some paths need to be made straight in the meantime. John is not talking about political or military preparations here – straightening highways so that the liberator’s army can march through – cleaning up corrupt political establishments – in other words, preparations the people might be expecting to hear about, given the imminent arrival of a liberator. No, the paths needing to be straightened are much more personal. You need to take stock of your lives, John says – where are you living in wrong relationship? What needs to be healed? What needs to be confessed? What needs to be forgiven? This is a complex kind of comfort.

The people have been given a future tense. A hopeless people have been given hope. But they have a lot of preparation to do in the present, during this threshold time between what has been and what will be. And it is not easy, simple work. It demands the rearranging of priorities and relationships as they prepare for the inbreaking of God into their lives and their world.

And so this is the complex comfort of Advent, this threshold time between what has been and what will be. We are expecting the birth of Immanuel, God with us. We have a lot of work to do to prepare.

When I was pregnant with Patrick, after 2 ½ years of trying to conceive, my overwhelming emotion was ambivalence. I’ve talked to enough of us who have been pregnant to know that I am not alone in this. In fact, during my pregnancy I read a book by a midwife who said that the number one emotion pregnant women report experiencing is not joy but ambivalence. It was a great relief to me. I’d have fleeting moments of joy, but for the most part I was anxious and just sort of… confused. This thing that was happening in me and to me was bigger than anything I’d ever experienced before. It’s like my mind couldn’t quite make sense of it: Who am I? Who am I becoming? How am I changing? And in the midst of all these ponderings, I was busy preparing – doing the actual physical work of making space for a new person in our life.

Pregnancy is one of the classic “liminal” or threshold states, so no wonder it is the overriding metaphor for Advent. A liminal state – that place where we are in transition, where we are in between – is characterized by ambiguity, openness, indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding and behavior are relaxed. It is a sometimes scary, sometimes hopeful, often unpredictable. It offers a mix of possibility and peril.[3] We needn’t have been expecting a child to have had liminal moments – being a teenager, being in between jobs, being on pilgrimage, moving to a new place, moving into a new phase of our lives – these are all liminal or threshold states. As a country, we are in a liminal state right now – not just between presidents but between two different visions for who we are as a people.

And as a people on a journey of spirit, we are in that place right now. Our Advent work invites us to open ourselves to the complex comfort of preparing for the promised one: What has to be made low and lifted up in you? What needs comfort, what needs challenge? What needs to be reprioritized, healed, forgiven? What future tense might God be drawing you toward? What way is God making within and through you? What way are you making for God?

[1] From Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary.
[2] From the Advent worship resources found in Leader magazine, Fall 2008.
[3] Some of the description on liminality was found on wikipedia.org.

"Alienation: Exile from the Garden"

Back to the Basics: Caring for Creation
Genesis 3

When I was back in Ohio in July, I wanted to take Patrick to a little creek near our house that I remember wading in when I was a child. The creek is a small wonder — overhung with a canopy of young trees that form a green tunnel; dragonflies that dart millimeters above the water; groups of tiny minnows that flit so quickly through the creek you're not sure you just saw them. It was a place of beauty and wonder for me as a kid, and I wanted Patrick to have the same experience.

And we did. Although a housing development has replaced most of the woods I used to walk in to get to the creek, we found it quite unchanged. In fact, Patrick was enjoying himself so much that he decided to "swim" in this creek. We took off his clothes, and he laid down in the approximately six inches of water in the creek. He wasn't going to be able to swim, but he didn't want to anyway. He just wanted the feel of the cool waters on his body.

Later, back at home, I began to wonder if perhaps Patrick should have taken a bath after his little swim. Just what sort of pesticides or herbicides might be in that creek, I wondered? There's a lot of farming around here, and certainly the waterways carry agricultural runoff. And what else might have been in there? My anxiety level went up a bit: Did he get water into his mouth? Did he drink it?

Patrick survived his creek swim with no rashes or vomiting. But I was left with a lingering sadness that even in my childhood home — where horse-drawn buggies and plows are the norm, far from the exhaust-filled, industrialized area I now call home — even here, the waters may not be safe for a child to swim in. Is there no place on Earth we haven't harmed, I thought? The air pollution in the "pristine" Kings Canyon south of Yosemite is worse than in New York City thanks to the smog from the Central Valley. Is there anyplace untouched by us and our mess? Is there nothing left of that Garden we first called home?

If today is a typical day in our Garden, we will lose more than 180 square miles of rainforest, what one biologist calls the "lungs of our planet." Today, the human population will increase by a quarter of million people. Today, 73 tons of topsoil will be eroded. Today, 1800 tons of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons will be added to the atmosphere.[1] "Today, the Earth will be a little hotter, its waters more acidic, and the fabric of life more threadbare."[2]

This outer devastation is mirrored by an inner diminishment that Thomas Berry mentions in the reading we heard: We no longer live in a universe. When's the last time you looked up and saw a night sky strewn with stars? Most of us live in a world of computers and cars and Ipods. These are wonderful devices, but they can't match the feel of cool creek water on your skin. When's the last time we felt that? Sixty years ago, there was a big swimming hole near where I used to live in Oakland. The swimming hole was formed by the waters of Sausal Creek, waters that have now been forced underground into a concrete culvert. If kids go swimming now, it is in a chlorinated pool surrounded by cement. No dragonflies or minnows or tree canopy here.

Whether we realize it or not, we have lost a sense of being connected to a greater cosmos. Whether we realize it or not, we've lost a sense of communion and kinship with the earth that sustained our ancestors. We feel alone in the universe in a way that would have been unimaginable to those who came before us, and still is to indigenous people.

How did we get here? How did we so badly mess up our Garden Home? How did we become so alienated from the earth? Thomas Berry talks of three defining moments in our cultural history that have led us to this place of alienation, that have led to our exile from the Garden.

The first of these moments occurred when Christianity met Greek philosophy, most notably the work of Plato and Aristotle. In doing so, Christianity — unlike Judaism — adopted the idea of the dualism of soul and body. Now bear with me as we get a bit academic. This idea of dualism is really important because it undergirds a lot of our thinking in the Christian West. But to explain it you have to sound a bit like a college professor — God forbid!.

Dualistic thinking considers the human soul to be a different essence than the body. The soul is an entirely spiritual or intellectual substance and the body is the inert matter that holds this spirit. Plato believed that the human soul first lived in the world of Ideas, an absolutely spiritual world. On entering the human body, the soul becomes the "master of the body," the thing that guides the ship. Christianity adopted this dualistic belief and expanded it by talking about a soul that departs the body and enters a heavenly realm after death. For both Plato and this form of Christianity, then, only the soul or spirit is really real. The body is just a temporary vessel.

Interestingly, in Judaism, this dualistic thinking never took root. That's why there's almost no mention of an afterlife within Jewish theology. Soul and body come into the world together, and they leave the world together.

It didn't take long for a hierarchy of value to get built around this dualism. Since the soul is eternal, it is good. Since the body is just temporary, it is bad. Women, animals and "dumb nature" became identified with the "bad" part of this dualism — the body. Men were identified with the "good" part of this dualism — the soul, or spirit. The perfectly disembodied, pure realm of intellect. Not that messy body realm, where things happen that we can't control. The body — and the women, animals and nature associated with it — became something to control, to subdue, to be "used" for the higher purposes of the spirit. So, that's dualism.

The second defining moment was the Black Death in Europe in the mid 1300s. In two years, one-third to one-half of the population of Europe died from the bubonic plague. We can not comprehend what it would be like to live through this. The closest we have is the first period of the AIDS crisis during the 1980s. Needless to say, such a cataclysm had a major impact on Western consciousness.

European civilization responded in two broad ways. One, Christianity began to embrace a strong redemption-based theology. To be redeemed and saved out of this world of suffering became the entire aim of the Christian message. Gone was the idea that we, and creation, are fundamentally good. Gone was the idea that the whole creation is the place for God's saving activity within history. Nope. We get right with God so that when we die, our soul can be with "Him" in heaven. What happens in and to this world doesn't matter. What happens to the natural world doesn't matter. What happens to our bodies doesn't matter. It is only our eternal soul that matters, and where it is going. This, as we know, is still the fundmanetal view of salvation for much of Christianity, and it has its roots in this period.

The second response to the agony of the Black Death came from the secular community, which sought to remedy the terror of natural events by studying the processes of the earth. If only humans could begin to understand natural processes, we might be able to exert more control over them. Eventually, this response helped bring about the Enlightenment — which celebrated human reason — and the scientific revolution.

Of course, this has been a wonderful development. We can't even fathom a world without the benefits of this revolution, and we wouldn't want to. But this scientific worldview also helped create a consciousness that saw us as the subjects and nature as the object — an object to be studied prodded, made to yield its secrets. An object that we can then control and dominate for our own use. And we did this. We live in a world unimaginable to a person of the 13th century because we gained knowledge about how the natural world really works.

But, as we've been finding out for the last few decades, there are severe limits to this knowledge. We have enough knoweldge to make a pesticide called DDT but not enough to know what releasing vast amounts of this chemical into the environment might to do ecological systems or human health. As it turns out, they cause cancer and kill birds. We have enough knoweldge to produce chloroflourcarbons but not enough to know what happens when we release them into the atmosphere. As it turns out, they thin the ozone layer that protects us from the sun.

The Earth is such a complex, interconnected life system that we make a change here, and a change over here happens that we can't anticipate. We can't dominate the Earth because we can barely understand how the whole thing works. And we've gotten into a lot of trouble for assuming we can. We thought we'd eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and be lords of the universe. But we find ourselves, instead, in exile from a Garden we are helping to destroy.

The last defining moment was in the late 19th century. In some sense, according to Berry, the destiny of the human community and of planet Earth were determined during this critical time. These were the years when we transitioned from an organic economy to an extractive economy. So just what does that mean?

In the 1850s, we were still largely a rural, agrarian country. Because we had to, we lived within what Berry calls "the bounty of seasonal renewing productions of the planet's biosystems." "But as soon as we established a way of life dependent on extracting nonrenewing substances from the Earth — oil, natural gas, metal — then we could survive only so long as these endured." Peak oil, anyone? Our petroleum powers our cars and airplanes and plows, makes up the fertilizers and pesticides used to grow the vast majority of our food supply, and produces the plastics that make almost everything. And most experts predict it's going to be virtually gone in 40-50 years.

What's more, transforming these substances into something we can use release terrible contaminants into the environment. The process of refining petroleum, for instance, releases toxic residues we still don't know what to do with. When I lived in Montana, we used to visit Butte, proud home of the largest Superfund site in the country. It's a sad, wrecked place. After extracting massive amounts of copper from the soil, the mining corporation left, leaving huge, gaping pits of toxic stew that have been meessing with the health of the residents and the ecosystem there for decades.

Another problem with this extractive economy is that it uses technology to turn renewing resources into nonrenewing resources. So, instead of allowing the soil to replenish itself through natural cycles, we exploit it by using chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides to such a degree that we exhaust the soil or make it toxic. Using advanced fishing technology, we've so depleted marine resources that they are no longer able to renew themselves. Jerome's brother had to quit fishing 10 years ago because the cod he had been fishing for were, for all purposes, gone. They had been fished out, extracted.

So here we are — with a dualistic consciousness, a head full of just enough knowledge that we can really mess things up, living on a planet that's being mined and fished and fertilized and extracted almost to death. We have become, in geneticist David Suzuki's words, a "superspecies" — a species capable of disrupting the functioning of the Earth in such a way that its basic life support systems are imperilled.

In the story from Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve after they had eaten from the tree of knowledge: "Now they have become like one of us." We have become like God. We have this power to fundamentally change the planet, and we have. We have eaten the fruit of the one tree forbidden to us. And now, like Adam and Eve, we stand east of Eden, outside that Garden, wondering what happened to paradise.

We have some choices standing outside this garden: We can deny we are even here. There's a lot of that going on. We can look west and long for the lost garden, in a paralyzed grief. I don't know about you, but I feel that in myself at times. Or we can try to understand what happened, how we got here. And we can turn east, toward an uncertain future, but toward a morning sun that still comes bearing dawn.

Amen.

_____________

[1] From "Healing Our World Commentary: The Great Deception" by Jackie Alan Guiliano, on the Environment News Service website, Feb. 8, 2002

[2] David Orr, in "What is Education For?" in Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture, Winter 1991

"Original Blessing: Our Garden, Our Home"

Back to the Basics: Caring for Creation
Genesis 1 (excerpts)

[Four demi-altars have been set up, one each for Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The earth altar consists of, in part, a large pot of soil. The air altar has a hanging dream-catcher. The fire altar has a burning lantern. The water altar has a small fountain.]

(Go over to earth) Do you know stuff grows from this? Did you know that you could plant a seed as small as this and it could turn into a plant that has bears buckets of these? (Pluck a tomato and eat. Pass around?) Or that a seed put into this stuff could grow into this. (Dahlia) Or that a seed could turn into a tree that can grow as high as a 30-story building? What is in this stuff that is so powerful? We really don't know. We can fly people to the moon and back, but our understanding of the first inch of soil underneath our feet is pretty limited. One teaspoon of forest soil can contain 40,000 species of bacteria and 20,000 species of fungi. The majority of these organisms have not been identified by scientists — maybe 5%. Much less do we understand how these organisms interact with each other. And yet, our life depends on this. Basically everything we eat comes from this amazing substance — whether it is the plants themselves or the animals who eat the plants.

God created the earth and it was good; indeed, it was very good.

(Go over to water) Do you know that this substance flows in deep rivers underneath us, and occasionally comes to the surface of the earth where we can swim in it or use it to wash dirt off our bodies? Do you know that it sometimes pours down from the sky? Do you know that if you are thirsty, you can drink this and feel a lot better? Once, Jerome went on a hike, alone, in the Gila Wilderness of southern New Mexico. He was carrying enough water to get him through the day. He planned to camp where there was a spring, so he could refill his jugs. But there was no spring there. During the night, he kept dreaming of water. He hiked out the next day, delirious, in the 95-degree heat, and finally got to the ranger station where he walked up to a faucet, turned a knob and out came water. We are about 60% water. The Earth's surface is 74% water. As far as we know, no life has ever evolved to exist without it, and wherever there is water, there is the possibility of life.

God created water and it was good; indeed, it was very good

(Go over to air.) We don't think much about air because it's invisible. We can't see it. But astronauts who have traveled above our atmosphere can see it in a new way. One astronaut said, "You see a thin, thin layer just above the surface of the Earth, maybe 10 or 12 kilometres thick. (That's 6-7 miles.) That is the atmosphere of the Earth. That is it. Below that is life. Above it is nothing." The first thing we do when we are born into life is gulp for this air, and during the course of our life we will take about 350 million lungfuls of it. Breathing air is so important that our bodies have taken over this function from our conscious control. We breathe whether we want to or not. You know what happens when you hold your breath. Your body starts demanding it pretty quickly — your heart pounds, blood vessels in your head begin to bulge. And then you breathe the air, again.

God created air and it was good; indeed, it was very good

(Go over to fire). The first words the Creator utters in our Scriptures are: "Let there be light." Fire is the energy of creation. It starts everything up. It gets the whole ball rolling. Every morning, the fiery engine that drives the Earth and all life rises over our heads. Our sun is just one small star in a cosmos that contains billions, and we get just a tiny sliver of its radiation. But it is enough to run a planet. When that sun rises, all life rises, too, so that we can receive its energy. Flowers turn toward the light of its fire, reptiles and cats warm themselves in it, trees and plants start to eat this sunlight through photosynthesis. When we eat those plants (or the animals that ate them), we eat sunlight, too. We take this energy of fire into our bodies.

God created fire, and it was good; indeed it was very good.

Welcome to our world! For fire, earth, air, and water all come together in varying proportions to make up me, and you, and this beautiful garden we call home. They are the building blocks Creator God uses to create life. And they form a garden that is unmatched in its diversity and complexity, in the "gorgeousness of its self-expression" (as one cosmologist put it). So far as we know, there is no other place in the universe like our planet Earth. We are the garden spot of the cosmos.

Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and priest puts it: "Earth seems to be a reality that is developing with the simple aim of celebrating the joy of existence. This can be seen in the coloration of the various plants and animals, in the circling flights of the swallows as well as the blossoming of the spring flowers; each of these events required immense creativity over billions of years in order to come forth as Earth."

This, then, is our Home, this garden that exists simply to celebrate the joy of existence. This is our Original Blessing. Our foundational story, our creation story that we heard today from Genesis reminds us over and over again that the essential nature of this home is good. Sun? Good. Moon? Good. Stars? Good. Oceans? Good. Plants? Good. Creepy-crawly things? Good. Animals? Good. Us? Good.

I wonder if we heard that growing up? I wonder if our families, our schools, our churches, spoke to us of the fundamental goodness of creation, of the fundamental goodness of ourselves. I wonder if they told us that long before there was sin and the fall and Adam and Eve and the snake and the expulsion from the garden, there was Original Blessing.

If we didn't hear that in our churches, well, that's odd, because this blessing is where God begins. In fact, in God's time (which is to say, in cosmological time), sin is a relatively new invention. There were 19 billion years or more of history and God's creative activity before human beings appeared on the scene and invented sin. So, it's hardly original. I'm not saying that sin isn't real. It is. But it's not the place God starts, and it shouldn't be the place we start.

Instead, we begin here, with the unimaginable blessing of creation. And this is where we start as we begin this series together. Many of us realize that big changes are coming. Our First World way of life, made possible by vast quantities of cheap oil and other natural resources, is coming to an end. The Earth just can't handle us anymore. I know that many of us have felt for some time the increasing urgency of the need to make changes, and of the possibility of this unimaginable blessing of creation somehow disappearing, or at least being irrevocably changed.

There's this amazing document called the Earth Charter, which was created by a large global consultation process, headed up by Mikhail Gorbachev, and finally ratified in 2000. It was originally started by the United Nations and it has since been endorsed by thousands of organizations representing millions of individuals. This is what is says in its preamble, "We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. We must form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life."

It's a pretty amazing time to be on the planet, folks. We've been born in a rather exceptional time in history. A time of great choice. A time that holds great peril and great promise. While this time presents technical and intellectual challenges for us, it is foundationally, I believe, a spiritual challenge. The consciousness that made possible the destruction of the Earth must give way to a consciousness that sees the Earth as a "communion of subjects, not a collection of objects" to use Thomas Berry's language. (repeat) This movement into a new consciousness and a new relationship with our Garden Home is the Great Work of humanity at this time in history. Yeah, it's really that big.

As we begin this journey together, may we carry in the core of our being the goodness of earth, the goodness of fire, the goodness of water, the goodness of air, the goodness of us, of each other. May we feel their support, their inspiration, their blessing as we do this Great Work together. Amen.

"Defiant Daughters"

Psalm 124, Exodus 1:8-2:10

The goings-on in Egypt that form the context of our story for today are grim and, sadly, all too familiar. A cruel and callous tyrant sits on the throne. He is also a bit paranoid – a lethal combination, that one, paranoia and cruelty. Whereas once the Israelites lived as honored guests in the best land of Egypt (as gratitude for Joseph’s service at the Egyptian court), the new Pharaoh recognizes no obligation to them. Indeed, the Israelites’ numbers and strength alarm him, and sees a threat to national security. They are becoming too numerous, they are producing too many offspring – they are multiplying, as God had promised to Abraham. He begins to devise ways to control them. His first idea is to makes slaves of them, slaves who construct buildings for Pharaoh’s supply cities.

But, still, to the ruler’s chagrin, this hard labor fails to check their vigor. The Hebrew people keep on producing babies. In fact, the verb “spread” used in verse 12 is the Hebrew word, parotz, which means to literally “burst forth.” It is a verb connected with fertility and wealth when it is used in Genesis. So, the Hebrew people are fertile, vigorous and, in this way, powerful. So the Pharaoh hits upon a solution tried far too often in the history of so-called civilization – genocide.

Enter, now, into our story our first set of defiant daughters. They are Shiphrah and Puah, midwives to the Hebrew people. Pharaoh calls aside these two women and tells them to kill all the baby boys in the name of Egyptian homeland security. We can tell Pharaoh is not thinking straight here. Like any ruler caught up in paranoia and cruelty, he is doing things that are ultimately not in his own interest. He is killing all the boys, the boys who will turn into men, the men who will provide the slave labor to build his cities.

We often assume that Pharaoh’s command is to kill the infant boys as they are born, but some scholars believe Pharaoh is telling the midwives to abort a fetus as soon as they know that it is male. Egyptians were known throughout the ancient world for their advanced gynecological practices, and so it is possible that the midwives did know how to at least somewhat accurately predict the gender of unborn fetuses. No matter what the exact order, we know that the midwives are not dutiful daughters of their ruler, Pharaoh. They will not participate in the killing of either fetuses or newborns. They blatantly disobey Pharaoh and then tell a bald-faced lie to his face: that the Hebrew women are so vigorous that they give birth before the midwives even get there. This defiance of the midwives has been called the “oldest record of civil disobedience in world literature.”

Now let’s just pause for a moment and consider what it meant for these midwives to participate in this act of civil disobedience. In the ancient world, the pharaoh had absolute authority. In fact, he was divine in that world, and so disobedience to the pharaoh meant transgressing the very order of the cosmos. But these midwives, these defiant daughters, tell an outrageous lie to the demigod, Pharaoh. One can only imagine the fate that awaits them if Pharaoh sees through their deception -- death, certainly, and likely a death that would not be swift and painless. Amazingly, though, Pharaoh buys their lie. The midwives survive their civil disobedience and, in fact, are blessed by God with their own families.

Whew. There’s one catastrophe averted through the work of some defiant daughters. But the story does not end there. Let’s read on. (Read Exodus 1:22-2:10)

Pharaoh isn’t done. Of course not. He turns around and issues an even more cruel decree: The average Egyptian is now to become the agent of Pharaoh’s repression, not just the specialists: that is, the soldiers who supervise the slave labor or the midwives who supervise births. Now, the average citizen is asked to participate in genocide and throw every Hebrew boy baby they encounter into the Nile.

Enter some more defiant daughters into this story. A Hebrew mother of a newborn and the baby’s sister craftily obey Pharaoh’s command to the letter of the law. They do “throw” their son and brother into the Nile. He just happens to be thrown into a papyrus basket. The Hebrew word used here for basket could actually be translated something like “little ark.” It is an allusion to Noah’s Ark, of course, the implication being that just as God saved Noah and thus humanity from destruction by water, so God will now save the Israelites through the little baby in the basket.

The sister stays behind and watches over the little basket in the reeds containing her brother. Of course, this defiant daughter could not just put her brother in a basket and then walk away. She watches, and waits. And what will she see? Will she see her brother drown? Will she see him captured and killed? Will the authorities then seek out the boy’s family and kill them too, for their disobedience? Imagine what it was like to wait, and not know. She eventually sees some women approach. Egyptian women. Can you imagine the girl’s distress? Why would she not assume that these Egyptian women are dutiful daughters of the Pharaoh?

And yet… enter some more defiant daughters. No less than Pharaoh’s daughter finds the Hebrew boy, pulls him out of the water and… has compassion on him. She recognizes the boy as one of the children her father intended to kill, and her defiant, compassionate heart will not allow her to follow her father’s genocidal orders. The baby’s sister witnesses this and, cool as a cucumber, walks up and addresses this royal woman: “Uh, would it be helpful if I went and called a wet nurse to nurse the child for you?” Yes, the Pharaoh’s daughter says. And so the girl does what she says she was going to do, and just a little bit more: The wet nurse happens to be the baby’s mother. Even more amazingly, Pharaoh’s daughter is now paying the baby’s mother to nurse her own son.

Now, let’s step back again and view this amazing scene. Pharaoh’s daughter is royalty, daughter of a god, and the girl is the daughter of a slave. In a crisis situation, a woman of rank, privilege and power listens to perhaps the least powerful person she is likely to encounter: the young female child of a slave. And she allows the child to offer the plan, to tell her what to do. Truly amazing. Truly amazing what boundaries of class, race and age defiant daughters will cross in the name of compassion.

Of course, the baby’s sister is Miriam and the baby boy is none other the Moses, the liberator of the Hebrew people. The rest of the story of the struggle and liberation of the Israelites from cruel slavery in Egypt will belong to men – to Moses, mainly, but also to Aaron. But the whole thing was kicked off by some determined, courageous women and their acts of no cooperation with authority. Puah and Shiphrah, Miriam and Moses’ mother, Pharaoh’s daughter – these defiant daughters practiced ordinary, everyday acts of resistance to evil. And these ordinary, everyday acts birthed a movement that liberated a people and have inspired similar liberation movements for centuries.

Now, what I take away from these stories is not the superiority of women, or that women have a special purchase on holy defiance. However, it’s worth noting that it is very often women in the Bible who exercise their moral authority through noncooperation with evil (other examples?). Interestingly, a woman is also the main figure in the Greek prototype of civil disobedience, Antigone. From the earliest narratives that we have in history, there is a sense that the politics of noncooperation is the special weapon of the very oppressed– and women, back then (as well as to do this day) are the oppressed people in any society. They are often the oppressed of the oppressed.

That aside, what I take away from this is how everyday and ordinary and spontaneous the women’s acts were. They didn’t wait for some leader to tell them what to do. They didn’t hold special meetings in a church basement to devise strategy. They didn’t figure out how to get out the word. Those things are all important, and those things would come later when Moses takes over this liberation movement. But the movement began because these women in the course of doing their jobs, going about their ordinary lives, decided that they could not go along with evil. And they made courageous decisions in the moment to resist it.

That isn’t to say they didn’t collaborate or go it alone—you can bet the midwives Puah and Shiphrah strategized and worked together. You can bet Miriam and Moses’ mother thought through the best plan to save their son and brother. And one can even imagine that Pharaoh’s daughter and her attendants might have put their heads together, scheming how to save this little Hebrew baby from the Pharaoh’s cruelty. The collaborate and conspire with each other, but do so without ay other directive from a leader or think tank or political party or even a Barack Obama telling them what to do. In fact, the text doesn’t even tell us they were doing what God told them to do in a dream, or through a prophecy. Perhaps, they figured, God had done enough and it was time for them to act. They drew their own line in the sand and say, over this I cannot cross.

The ordinary courage of these life-loving women forces me to ask myself (and us) some questions like… what may we be waiting for? Are we waiting for a movement to start before we take action? Are we waiting for some leader to issue “marching orders”? What opportunities may we have in each day to practice noncooperation with evil and cruelty? How are we called in the course of our day to be a defiant daughter or son -- to resist death and protect life?

Thank God we have people like Moses and Martin Luther King. Thank God for movement leaders. But let’s always remember that behind every movement leader are hundreds if not thousands of nameless, courageous people who helped birth the movement, if not the leader himself. Behind every movement for liberation and justice are thousands of nameless, courageous people of faith who worship a God of life and defy the gods of death ever day. Today, in the name of Puah and Shiphrah and Miriam, let’s celebrate them. And let’s also allow their memory to place a call on our own lives. May we have the courage to be an anonymous defiant daughter, an anonymous defiant son.

Matthew

Shannon Koehler

Matthew 10:24-39

Before I start I'd like to say that I'll be using the words Jesus and God interchangeably. Just a heads up.

It's about 80 AD and a guy sits down with some old scrolls and compiles the information. He's got the gospel of Mark, which is pretty new at the time, and he's got a few other out takes. He figures he'll attribute his writing to the apostle Matthew, then some people might read it, after all the writer is just a scribe.

The writer of Matthew lives in a world of division. The Pharisees are stronger than ever before and it's led to a lack of communication between Jews and Jews who are following Jesus. Even the church has false prophets, already! You'd think the crazies might lay low till we hit the century mark. But the writer of Matthew lives in a mixed up world where living out faith is hard, oppression is common, and the truth is the only thing a person can hold onto.

Here's a scribe looking at the gospel of Mark and some other scriptures while right outside his window, the families of religion seem to be tearing themselves apart. But he's got a rock, he's got his truth, and Jesus is his truth.

Folks, Jesus tells it straight in Matthew. No knock knock jokes. He doesn't play hambone and he doesn't do yoga. I know what you're saying, why yoga? Well, it most certainly doesn't sound like he's trying to chill anybody out. In verses 24 and 25 Jesus tries to make the disciples understand that he is their only teacher and this road they are about to walk down isn't going to be easy. A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master. In the Jewish scholastic system of that day once a student had learned all there was to learn a student could either continue to study under their teacher or set themselves up as a teacher. This is parallel to the fears that the writer of Matthew had, people continue to set themselves up as teachers "false prophets" and go astray. Jesus makes it clear we are to continue studying under his supervision. But he parallels this with a slave being like a master. Slaves, recipients or cruelty, and students of Jesus. Jesus is preparing them. Being a students and followers of Jesus doesn't mean we'll be sleeping in beds of rose pedals. This is not a vacation. Jesus says If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! If the nay sayers can call Jesus Beelzebul, meaning demon or Satan, then what will they do to those who follow him? He continues to warn the disciples in verses 34-37 when he says: Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. He's come to divide families, set kids against parents, and just get people down right angry.

Remember, this is all on the disciples first day! Imagine you're at your first day of work at a new place and the boss calls you in and says: Look, we don't pay all that much, and we can't really offer you any perks because hey, what do you want from a paperclip factory? Oh, and don't feel bad that you don't get any health benefits because I don't either. I'm sorry but I don't want to work for a place like that!

Right after the warning in verse 25 Jesus says have no fear, and in verse 28 he says have no fear again. And in verse 31 he says have no fear again! We are not to fear in verse 26 because nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered. Jesus parallels what is covered and uncovered with his teachings. We are to proclaim his teachings, shout them, act them, yell them, get them out there! But that sounds a little weird because behavior like that can bring on persecution, and persecution is definitely something to fear! But Jesus follows with Verse 28 do not fear those who kill the body but kill the soul... The soul is the true self. Our true selves, our souls, are our lives. And Jesus goes on to say our souls are worth more than any other creature many times over. Within are souls are the teachings. If we let those teaching, those truths, become our identity, and make us who we are, then there is no persecution that can harm us. If we allow ourselves to freely act as we have been taught to live our lives, then there is no earthly consequence that can defeat us. By uncovering the teachings we uncover ourselves.

But Jesus draws the line, and the tension of the early church arises once again. We must acknowledge Jesus before others to have Jesus acknowledge us. This is about more than judgment. Jesus continues to ask us to give ourselves over to him as his followers. It's about releasing, it's about uncovering what was covered and shouting the teachings that were once secrets. If we make those teachings and the truth of those teachings the core of our souls and our way of life, then we need to let that truth flow through us. For the scribe putting together this text, proclaiming Jesus to others would be an offering of one's self. He would be open to ridicule, physical abuse. Jesus calls us to be free with our souls, and in return we still hold his teachings and the great truths of those teachings.

Jesus does it again when speaking about divided families. He warns the disciples. And he denies that he is the peaceful Messiah the Jewish people thought was coming from Isaiah 9: 4 For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. Jesus doesn't come with force to break the oppressor, but once again, he's got a whole boat load of teachings. It is the teachings that tear these families apart. I had to get a new cardiologist because Kaiser said I was officially an adult. I was on me to make the phone calls, find the right doctor, get the appointments lined up, all stuff that I had never had to deal with before. So I ignored it. I don't like going to the doctors so I figured I just would worry about getting there all too quickly. But my dad got on the phone with me and he told me how it was. I need to make it a priority. Forget the band, school, dad even took a day off of work drove up from Fresno to San Francisco just to come and meet my new cardiologist. My dad knew what was important, and I started to really take responsibility over that part of my life. I had to figure out what was necessary, I figured my heart was pretty necessary. But it's about priorities. And it's about being committed to those priorities. Once we commit to priorities they become a part of our lives and our identities. I have to see my doctors. I have to be with my wife, I have to be with my husband, I have to be with my kids. We have to give back to the community. We have to make peace. We have to find a way to love each-other. Those are commitments that we make that we won't break for anything or anybody.

In verse 38 and 39 Jesus says "whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." It's clear now that God asks us to take the cross upon ourselves and then give ourselves to God. Once again, the writer of Matthew acknowledges the difficult split in his time. Jesus asks us again to offer ourselves to God, and release what ever it is that is hindering us from strengthening our understanding and immersing ourselves in the teachings. We need to lose our lives to it, and for the writer of Matthew he was talking quite literally. We need to lose our lives for God's sake. We lose our lives, which is also understood as giving up our souls for Jesus' teachings. The commitments we make to God's teachings are the foundation for the commitments we make in our lives. And the only reason why we have our lives back is by the grace of God. God is being gracious here. It's because we gave it up that we get it back. There is this circular motion that continues to appear in Matthew, if you give you get something back. God keeps asking us to give and give. And God's not just asking for us to give him a sandwich, God's not asking for a couple of bucks for muni, God's not asking for a big donation to pay the entire mortgage of the MVS house, God is asking us for our lives, our souls. Sometimes it's easy to say that we've found our life in something other than God, a lot easier than giving up our souls. My pastor at my Fresno church would say "what was life giving for you today and what was life draining?" Well, some of us feel that getting a new car is pretty life giving. A new apartment, flipping off your boss on your last day of work, or making out with a random person at a club, those can all seem pretty life giving. But while those things might give us temporary happiness, our commitments to God don't always entail the fleeting moments of happiness. We can feel drained, tired, depressed, and would love to break those truths, teachings, and commitments. But our rock of truth, and our EVERLASTING joy that comes from that truth pulls us in and brings us back to our uncovered relationship with God.

Just when you though God couldn't ask for anything more from 12 pretty rough dudes, fisherman, tax collectors; God asks for manors. In verse 40 Jesus says "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me." The word welcomes can also be interpreted as showing hospitality. Jesus seems to be giving the disciples a tip on how to spot good people. Not only will people say good morning, or what's up? They'll say come in, have a glass of what? Have you ever tried one of my home made cookies? A good helping of kindness is fitting for all people. Verses 41-42 say, "Who ever welcomes a prophet a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever given ever a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple –truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." The term prophet can also be used as the term missionary. The word righteous can be understood as elderly, a teacher in the congregation. And the word little one's can be understood as the least of Jesus' followers. Jesus said welcome the prophet in the name of the prophet, help the prophet for the prophet's sake. This isn't just about us anymore. We need to not just welcome, but show hospitality to missionaries, elderly folks, children, everyone and everybody. Don't just say welcome to San Francisco, we're called to help eachother, and show a great sort of kindness.

Jesus stopped to talking to the disciples. That was enough, and that is enough. The writer of Matthew lived in a time where Pharisees didn't pull punches, so the Jesus we see in Matthew prepares his disciples for the difficulty to come. This is not easy, and it's not supposed to be. The people for which the book of Matthew was written needed to preach the gospel when they knew they would face persecution, they had to acknowledge God before others when those others could bring about bodily harm or death, they needed to understand that because of their commitments to God, because of the way the had shaped the minds, bodies, souls around Jesus' teachings, and because of their commitments, they could lose their homes, friends, families; and on top of that they had to be gracious about it with hospitality and wearing a big smile on their face.

Such is the tax for following a healer, a revolutionary, for following God. We have to be willing to open ourselves to God, and to do that we need to put our selves on the line for the whole world to see. We release our pride, we release our fear, and we release our lives trusting that God will give it back. We have to trust God. That means we have to trust in the teachings, in the truths that come from them, and the commitments in our lives that come from them. This is not easy, but it is enough. If we go back to the starting point of Jesus' discussion in verse 25 Jesus' says it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher. It is enough that we are like Jesus, not that we are Jesus. Being like Jesus is enough to be acknowledged by Jesus. And when we give our lives in doing like the teachings, and doing like the truths of Jesus, God will help us find our lives anew. And once again, in verse 42, Jesus says "truly I tell you none of these will lose their reward." The rewards of following God are ours to lose, God has given us our reward and in return we need to trust in it. Our trust is enough. And just as the writer of Matthew gave his trust and stood firm in the truth when faced opposition, so do we. God values us and has given us the teachings, truths, and a foundation to build our lives on. We need to trust and stand by our foundation. That's not easy, but do not fear because it is enough. It is enough.

"Lizkor: Remember" Reflection

Barton Shulman

Job 23:1-12

Friday was Yom HaShoah, the Jewish “Day of the Catastrophe and the Heroism,” when Jews remember the terrible events and the many victims of the Holocaust. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what this means to me, and why I wanted to share with you my feelings about this day, this painful but holy day.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking and writing about the differences between Mennonites and Jews when it comes to remembering our histories of persecution. Russ and I discussed the difference between personal memory and memorializing, and I anguished over somehow coming across as “holier than thou,” as if somehow my experience is more potent, more persecuted, than yours.

I don’t believe this. I think we all carry our own experiences of pain, of persecution, of injustice. And I think it’s a blessing and an honor to share that experience together, even if we don’t experience it in the same way. So my purpose today is to share my experience, a piece of my culture, with you all, and I hope that when you reflect on this day, you bring your own meaning to it.

Jews are taught, from the very youngest age, to remember not just the lessons of our history, but our history itself, as if it personally happened to us. Not just learn it, not just memorize it, but personally remember the experience of it.

During the Seder, the Passover dinner, there are very few actual requirements – like much of Jewish tradition, there are lots of variations and individual practices. But one of the few absolute requirements is found in the specific language of every Passover service. When explaining what the Passover Seder is all about, we are taught to say “This is because of what God did for me when I was a slave in Egypt.”

It’s not what God did for the Israelites, or the Jews, or the Hebrews. It’s what God did for ME. We are taught to own this history personally, and to experience the memory each year. And this is referring to events that happened literally thousands of years ago – we remember that they happened to US personally.

If we start with these memories of the Exodus as an example, the Holocaust happened just yesterday, and its lessons, its wounds, its memories are fresh in our minds (or should be). It seems natural that we carry around a good deal of fear of loss; at any time, our property could be taken from us, our families could be separated; we could be imprisoned or enslaved; our very lives could be taken. After all, it’s not just that it’s happened for hundreds OR thousands of years, it happened just yesterday.

I’ve been thinking recently about why this is – why we are taught to REMEMBER rather than MEMORIALIZE. I think we probably all agree that a personal memory is stronger than a learned history. And I’ve been thinking about another aspect of this. As I look out at everyone here, it’s really difficult for me to guess how many people are in front of me. Are there thirty people here today, or a hundred? I’m really bad at that kind of perception, and could never get a job estimating the numbers in a crowd. Trying to visualize a thousand people all in one place at one time is strange for me. The thought of a hundred thousand? I can’t really get my imagination to hold that. And when I try to think of six million, it just goes away – it becomes so theoretical that it’s not real.

I can’t picture six million. I cannot conceive of six million. I certainly can’t feel for six million. But I can feel for one. I can have a personal experience, and own it, knowing I am sharing the experience of six million.

Recently, Jessica, my 16-year-old niece, participated in a student exchange program. Her exchange sister came from Austria to stay in Seattle for several weeks, and then Jessica returned to Austria with her and spent several weeks there. Jessica wrote a lot about her experiences there, and with her permission I will quote part of it here.

Her host mother, Birgit, took her to Mauthausen, one of the largest concentration camps in all of the Third Reich, and the second largest in Austria. This camp was the location of the deaths of about 119,000 people, the largest number of any concentration camp (as opposed to the extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 2 million or more were killed).

Quoting from Jessica:

“Birgit purchased two pamphlets, one in English and one in German, to lead us through our self-guided tour. We left the center and followed a path through a narrow doorway until I found myself standing among various memorials. Here the names of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, conspirators, and other victims of the Nazis filled variously shaped stones and monuments. I walked through the monuments, analyzing and comparing the average ages, ethnicities, and genders of the victims, resorting to my love of numbers and patterns to avoid the reality of what they represented. My cold calculations ended when Birgit led us into the main entrance.

“I stood in the doorway and forced myself to step onto the cobblestone path inside the camp. I entered and walked to the right. I referred to my pamphlet in hopes of avoiding my own thoughts. I looked at the wall about five inches from me, and saw a reference number. After locating this number in the pamphlet, I read in casual terms that at times when the camp’s population exceeded its limit, the weak, sick and old were lined up against this wall and shot one by one. My head darted up from the words I had read and stared out at the wall and then to the ground; the ground where people had stood, the same dirt, the same wall, where their blood had been spilled. Not just people, but my people, my culture, my religion, me.

“I backed away from the wall and entered the nearest building to escape. I went into a chapel that the brochure explained was where the Nazi soldiers would conduct prayer services. On the wall I read Pax, the Latin word for peace, and my thoughts wandered to the Nazi soldier who had just shot someone in the head and watched as their life slipped away, then entered church to pray for peace.

“Passing the Chapel, I made silent eye contact with Birgit whose eyes read to me ‘Are you OK? Can you handle this?’ I felt singled out, as if this was supposed to be harder for me to deal with than everyone else. After all, I was the Jew. I didn’t want to have to act OK for her or anyone, so I scurried off through the nearest door to the next room and on until I reached a set of stairs leading down.

“I found myself descending into the lower part of the building, to a set of smaller rooms. I approached a chamber with the word Gaskammer, and I could only imagine what was coming next. I entered a small, musty, dank room. The floor was covered in aged red paint that was chipping away, and I could see several drains. Along the walls there were pipes mounted low, running along all four walls. I felt myself choking to death on poisonous gas spewing from the pipes, and saw people being packed into this room around me and falling to the floor gasping for their last breath.

“I ran up a set of stairs, hoping to find some peace of my own in this insanity; only to find myself standing in front of two ovens that had been used for cremation and burning people alive that were weak or sick. I stood motionless, staring at the ovens. I saw dust and dirt on the ground surrounding the ovens that screamed to me as if it were human ash from people that once lived and loved as I do. I ran through several rooms until I was finally outside.

“I walked along the original cobblestone and felt the steps of those walking to their deaths. I searched for a spot where I could avoid touching any surface they had touched. Finally I found a corner of modern pavement and retreated there, mentally and physically, until Birgit found me and led me over to see the wall where they would throw people over onto the steep rocks if they didn’t feel like wasting a bullet.

“Finally, I asked Birgit if we could leave, and she looked at me with concern and agreed. On our way out we passed the stairs that victims had been forced to walk along day after day, cutting and gathering stones from the bottom of the hill to build the camp.”

Here I need to interject something that Jessica didn’t write about. These stairs, the 186 steps of the Wiener Graben from the quarry to the camp, are infamous.

Often Prisoners were made to run up and down the stairs until most were dead. Sometimes those remaining would be forced to jump off the top of the quarry, so SS officers cruelly nicknamed it “the parachute jump.” In 1941, a large group of Jews from the Netherlands were persecuted mercilessly. They were made to slide down the loose stones on the side of the staircase. Many of them died in the effort. The survivors were made to run up and down the steps with 50 pound stones on their backs. Any dropped stones fell on the people behind, and anyone who dropped their rock was beaten. For two days, the SS drove the Jews up and down the steps. On the third day, in an act of despair, the remaining Jews joined hands and leaped over the edge to their death.

I’ll return to Jessica’s story:

“We left again through the narrow doorway and got into Birgit’s car. My exchange sister Marlene, seeing that I had been affected, turned to me and said, ‘I wish I could feel sad from this. I know it is a sad place, but I don’t feel sad.’

“I didn’t understand how anyone could experience what I had just experienced and not feel anything. Then I realized that this site had been preserved for exactly that, so that these emotions could be evoked, in me and generations to follow.”

Jessica asks some great questions: Why didn’t Marlene experience Mauthausen the same way Jessica did? Why did Jessica go through all that? Why expose herself to that much suffering?

And is suffering a key to all of this? Is the fact that I grew up as the only white kid in my neighborhood, the only Jew at my school, the only gay person I knew of; does that experience of isolation, fear and pain inform my experience of suffering in others? Is that the reason I often feel I can literally remember events for which I was not physically present?

I often wonder whether this experience of my Jewish culture makes me deeply empathic, really co-dependent, or just neurotic. Being raised with the constant message of “live your history” affects me daily. I find myself experiencing the pain and angst of people who share no history with me. I feel like I can “remember” experiences not of my own people, but of those I care for. But can I truly “remember” being a slave in the hold of a trade ship? Can I remember being shot for standing against the military junta in Burma? If so, how do I carry this around without becoming so empathetic that I lose myself?

I wonder if the specifics of the memories are not the point. Learning to truly remember MY culture’s experiences, to experience REMEMBERING, seems to be the important lesson. The ability to do that seems to be the key to true empathy with any oppressed people.

Jessica didn’t say it, maybe at 16 she didn’t have the words to say it, but she personally experienced the Holocaust that day. She was shot, gassed, burned alive, and she was brutalized by the experience. She became a Holocaust survivor. And as much as I want to show people, explain, teach what the “Jewish experience” is, I can no more do that than I can know the experience of the Mennonite martyrs who died after agonizing torture at the hands of their captors.

But I wonder; what would it mean to personally experience Dirk Willem’s martyrdom? To feel the fear, the cold, the terror of running away from the thief catcher across the ice. To hear the creaking, the cracks and splash and screams of my pursuer as he falls in the freezing water. What would it mean to REMEMBER making the conscious choice to turn and save him, knowing it would mean my death?

How would it affect our spiritual and psychological journeys, if we didn’t just LEARN ABOUT our history, but if we REMEMBERED it?

So today, I remember the Holocaust.

I remember the disappointment of learning that new laws had been passed that affected my rights as an individual. I remember the anger at being forced to wear a yellow star of David at all times, give up the home my family lived in and move to a hovel in a Jewish ghetto. I remember the nagging fear at the disappearance of friends and families from other towns. I remember the rumors of horrific, unspeakable, unthinkable things.

Today I remember my store being looted and burned, the fear of un-knowing and complete lack of control. I remember screaming mobs roaming the streets, the sounds of gunshots in the dark. I remember being forced from my home with barely any possessions.

Today I remember walking past people I thought were friends; neighbors, acquaintances – people I knew from the street where I grew up. I remember seeing fear, anger, and hatred in their eyes. I remember them shouting filth at me as if they didn’t know me. I remember watching, as faces I recognized twisted in hate and spat on me. I remember realizing that they didn’t think I was human. I remember others standing in their doorways, staring, silent, doing nothing.

I remember being packed onto a freight car and traveling far too long with far too many others. I remember being led to a work camp with thousands of others, told we were going there to be “kept safe.” I remember seeing thin, ghostly people, hope gone from their hollow eyes. I remember everything being gray, and dirty, and dusty, and dying.

Today I remember my grandmother being led immediately to a horrifying building with a large smokestack. I remember her looking back at me to try to reassure me, when we all knew that as unreal, as impossible as this was, it was really happening. I remember my children being taken from me, screaming, terror in their eyes, never to be seen or held again.

Today I remember being stripped of my belongings, my clothing, my hair, my dignity, my humanity. I remember being scoured with noxious chemicals and forced to stand naked while strange angry men decided my fitness to work. I remember being handed rags to wear, still reeking of the sweat and misery of their former wearer.

Today I remember days, weeks, endless months of unbelievably harsh work. I remember an existence based on rocks; breaking rocks, hauling rocks, feeling the hard sharp edges of rocks, breathing the dust of rocks. I remember the fear that if I paused, tripped, or fell, I would be beaten or simply shot.

Today I remember losing the will to have friends, for friendships were fleeting and friends were killed without notice. I remember watching as that happened to others, and being completely helpless to even pray over the dead for fear of being killed myself.

Today I remember the lack of food, the foul soup that was inedible but was eaten anyway. I remember the stench of human misery in unlivable conditions.

Today I remember death. I remember the terrible, slow passage of time, standing above a ditch, waiting for the gunshot that would end my life. I remember being packed into a room with hundreds, and hearing the harsh metal clanging of the gas canisters drop. I remember the unique smell of crematory smoke, and the surreal terror of walking toward the building housing the ovens.

But today I also remember determination. I remember pushing when it seemed impossible to push. I remember being slipped the tiniest piece of bread when it seemed I was too weak to go on. I remember seeing small, almost invisible acts of kindness which helped someone live another moment, another day.

Today I remember the bravery of my neighbors. I remember them building hidden doors, hidden rooms, hidden sanctuaries. I remember them hiding me when hiding a Jew meant certain death.

Today I remember secretly, almost silently, sneaking and gathering to pray to a God who didn’t seem to be listening, but praying just the same, for there was no other choice but to pray.

So today, I remember.

"Many Mansions or One Way?"

John 14:1-14

It is an old joke, one you’ve probably heard before, but nevertheless, it’s perfect for this Sunday, and I must tell it:

A man died and was ushered into heaven, which appeared to be an enormous house. An angel began to escort him down a long hallway past “many rooms.”

"What's in that room?" the man asked, pointing to a very somber-looking group of people chanting a Gregorian mass. "That's the Roman Catholic room," said the angel. "Very high church."

"What's in that room?" the man asked, pointing to a group of people with painted bodies and elaborate headdresses, drumming and dancing and singing loudly. "That's the Native American group," said the angel. "Very spirited."

"What's in that room?" asked the man, pointing to a group of people meditating to the sound of an enormous gong. "That's the Zen Buddhist group," said the angel. "They’re so quiet. You hardly know they’re here."

Then the angel stopped the man, as they were about to round a corner. "Now, when we get to the next room," said the angel, "I would appreciate it if you would tiptoe past. We mustn't make any sound." "Why'?" asked the man. "Because in that room there's a bunch of fundamentalist Christians; and they think they're the only ones here."

I’m not a big joke teller, but I knew I had to tell this one because it sets up perfectly a central dilemma found in this passage from John 14.

On the one hand, we have the infamous verse, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” For those Christians sitting in their own room in heaven, sure that they are the only ones there, this verse offers all the proof they need of the exclusivity of Christianity. Jesus seems to be saying very clearly here, “I am the way. Me. I’m it. I’m your only way to be saved.”

Interestingly, just a few verses before this one is the verse: “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” or some translations say “dwelling places.” Those who would argue that there are many paths to the truth, cite this verse. The many mansions may refer, they say, to the heavenly places in which Hindus and Buddhists and Jews will dwell – alongside Christians. Obviously, this is the setup of the joke I just told. There’s room – and a room – for everybody in the hereafter.

So, in about four short verses in John 14, you have the outlines of the great debate about religious pluralism that has raised for centuries: between those who argue for what’s called a universalist view (there are many paths to the Truth) verses those who argue for the particularist way (nope, there’s only one path – and it just happens to be mine). Many mansions or one way? Which is it?

Harvey Cox was one of my professors in seminary. He’s an ordained Baptist minister married to a Jewish woman for many years now. Not surprisingly, he locates himself on the “universalist” pole of the religious pluralism debate. He’s been very active in interfaith dialogues sponsored by groups like the World Council of Churches and he’s written a lot on the subject. OK, so he’s a “many mansions” guy through and through, right? Yes but… he’s also a “Jesus is the way” guy. In fact, he writes, “I do not believe these two (verses) are contradictory. From Jesus, I have learned that he is the way and that in God’s house there are many mansions.”[1] Huh? What he’s saying is that we’re using the wrong conjunction. It’s not “many mansions or one way.” It’s “many mansions and one way.” Huh?

It’s probably no surprise to you that I locate myself as a universalist. In fact, I would agree with the theologian Marcus Borg, that if to be a Christian meant that I had to declare other religions false, I don’t think I could be a Christian.[2] But for the true-believing universalist, no less than for the true-believing particularist, changing that conjunction to “and” poses a problem. What could that mean? What does it mean to say that Jesus is the way and also believe that he is not everybody’s way?

Marcus Borg tells the story of a Hindu professor whom he heard preach a sermon at a Christian seminary. As luck would have it, the text for the day was this “one way” passage. About it, the Hindu scholar said: “This verse is absolutely true – Jesus is the only way.” But he went on to say, “And that way – of dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being – is known in all the religions of the world.”[3]

In other words, being “born again” is something that happens not just to evangelical Christians, but to people of every faith. At the core of the world’s great religions is this idea that we need to be remade, need to be transformed into a new person more fully grounded in the Divine Reality, more fully abiding in the Truth. So, in some Native American traditions, you have the vision quest – a person goes out into the wilderness for days and through a series of trials and challenges and dreams emerges with a new vision for their life. Buddhists, through a series of spiritual practices, hope to achieve enlightenment – a whole new way of perceiving the world and themselves. Islam is essentially a path of surrender to Allah that reorients the whole person.

So, “salvation” is not primarily about believing a certain set up things – what Borg calls “salvation by syllables.” No, redemption is actually a much more arduous than an intellectual assent to something. It is committing yourself to a path, a way, a process of transformation.

For Christians, Jesus is that way. “In Jesus, we see what this way of death and rebirth embodied in a person looks like. In Jesus, we see what the truth embodied in a person looks like. And in Jesus, we see what real life embodied in a person looks like. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life for those of us who are following his path.” (From Marcus Borg)

But why not follow another path then? Why not follow the way of Buddha or the way of Islam, if they are also true paths of transformation? Certainly, if you are called to one of these paths, then do it. To use a popular metaphor, they all lead one up the mountain, to the summit. But, to really be on the path of transformation, we can’t jump to another path as soon as ours gets steep or constantly be looking around for another way that seems more interesting, more scenic. If you do, you’ll never reach the summit. Huston Smith, the great scholar of world religions who is also a committed Methodist, says that if you are looking for water, better to dig one well 60 feet deep than to dig six wells 10 feet deep. We need to go deeply into a path if we truly want to be transformed by it.

(But, to nuance that just a bit. Smith calls Christianity his main meal. But, he says, he’s a strong believer in “vitamin supplements,” that is, learning from other faiths. His own immersion into other religious traditions has greatly enriched his faith as a Christian, he says.)

As we commit ourselves to a way of transformation, I believe we are increasingly able to access the “spiritual energy” of that particular path, or what Harvey Cox calls the “primal energy” of a religious tradition. One of the best stories I’ve heard about this primal energy was told by Eric Schiller, a volunteer with Christian Peacemaker Teams.[4] As many of us know, this is a group that puts their lives on the line to try to stop violence in places such as the West Bank and Colombia.

Eric was attending a Quaker conference, during which one of the key speakers said that for him God was revealed through Jesus Christ his Lord and Savior --- very particularist language, right? He then proceeded to deliver a very prophetic message about the effects of materialism and affluence. We are living in Babylon, he said, and the events of 9-11 were the first wounds given to the “beast” (a symbol for the unholy Roman Empire from the book of Revelation). We should all be girding ourselves to oppose the war in Iraq, he said. It was clear, Eric said, that passion and urgency of his message sprang from his deeply rooted biblical faith.

This was all even more interesting because this same speaker began his speech by saying that for him to be an effective instrument of the divine as he spoke, God must be present among them. But he did not pray to Jesus Christ and ask him to be present. Instead, he invited all of those there to invoke the presence of the divine Spirit in terms that were most familiar to each person. What followed, Eric said, “was a holy, blessed babble as persons called upon Abba Elohim, dear Lord Jesus, Hari Krishna, living Spirit within, the blessed Spirit of earth and water that sustains us” and on and on. This man was able to balance a deep, passionate faith in Jesus with an embrace of others’ religious paths.

“It is no small spiritual challenge to balance depth and breadth,” Eric concluded, but “I believe that it is a spiritual imperative. If we so concentrate on our own spiritual way, we can slip into an exclusive view of God that is in danger of leading to religious intolerance. If we lose our faith and roots, we may well lose our … spiritual energy and creative drive.”

In other words: Many mansions and one way. Yes, there are many mansions, and yes, Jesus is the way for us. Maybe this is the reason those two verses are so close together! Perhaps we need both. We need the open-minded tolerance of the one and the primal energy of the other. We need to acknowledge the beauty and truth of other religious traditions. And we need a deeply-rooted commitment to Jesus as the Way, the Truth, the Life if our faith is to be truly transformative. Amen.

---

[1] From the article “Many Mansions or One Way? The Crisis in Interfaith Dialogue” first published in The Christian Century August 17-24, 1998. Obviously, the title of my sermon comes from his article. Thanks, Harvey!

[2] From his book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith.

[3] From Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but not Literally.

[4] From a posting found in a CPT chat room.

“Minimum Protection, Maximum Support”

Eastertide

Psalm 23

There are probably no other chapters of the Bible that any of us know by heart other than the 23rd psalm. You may remember snippets of some other psalm, or a cluster of verses, but I’m betting that there is no other chapter that so many of us can still – to this day – recite from memory.

Shall we try it? If you need help, it’s in your order of worship. The psalm there is in the King James Version, since that’s the version I’m guessing many of memorized it in.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I
will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

What is it about this psalm? Why is it the only Biblical passage most of us can recite from memory? Several summers ago, I worked as a chaplain intern at Mt. Diablo Medical Center in Concord. As part of that job, I had to make – as we interns referred to them – “cold calls.” I would walk into a patient’s hospital room and strike up a conversation with them, hoping that I could be, in some small way, spiritually useful.

It was a very hard thing to do. I had no idea what I was going to encounter as I walked into a patient’s room – a person sitting up, perkily eating her tray of food? Or a man halfway to death, barely conscious, coiled up on the bed? Someone who wanted me to be there or someone who barely tolerated my presence?

One day, I started up a conversation with a woman who was going in for surgery in a few minutes. I can’t remember the nature of the surgery – it wasn’t life-threatening, but it wasn’t a tonsillectomy either. But it was clear that she was scared, as are most people who are awaiting surgery. We talked a bit, and I held her hand. She was still obviously frightened, and I felt pretty useless. Finally, it was time to go. I really wanted to leave her with some comforting image, some word of solace. And that’s when it came to me… “Do you want me to say the 23rd psalm?” I asked. Tears appeared in her eyes, and she nodded yes. I began, and almost immediately, she started saying it with me. By the end, it was clear that the psalm had worked its spiritual magic in her soul. She was at peace. After that, I recited the 23rd psalm with many people: families standing around the bed of a dying mother and grandmother, a person who had just received a diagnosis of cancer. It never failed to offer solace.

What is it about this psalm that can calm our fears? That can offer us comfort when nothing else can? It’s not just Christians who love it, by the way. Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote a book on the 23rd Psalm a few years ago, says that no matter how grievous a funeral was, no matter how tragic a memorial service, if he just started to recite he familiar words of this Psalm, it “tranquilized the congregation.” He referred to it often in the months after September 11. In fact, he says that “in just a mere 57 words of Hebrew, the author of the 23rd Psalm gives us a more practical theology than we can find in many books.”[1]

I have turned to this psalm myself as much as anybody. Even when I was going through a time of deep doubt and cynicism about the Christian faith, I would – almost reluctantly – find comfort in these words in times of distress or anxiety. What is it about this psalm? As I read and reread it this week, trying to figure out its magic, I wasn’t able to get past the first verse. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” The Lord is my shepherd – OK, I have no difficulty with that. But “I shall not want.” Excuse me?

Rabbi Kushner tells the story of a minister who sat by the bed of a dying woman. Having no words of his own – much like me – he took her hand and began reciting the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” At which point, the woman opened her eyes for a moment and weakly said: “But I do want!” I’m really glad no one said that to me when I was a hospital chaplain, because at the time I’m not sure what I would have done with it.

Of course, we want. That woman wanted not to die. She wanted to see her grandchildren grow up. Of course, we want. We want to be healthy. We want to be healed. We want the pain – whether physical, emotional or spiritual – to go away. Of course, we want. We want our children to find their heart’s desires, we want our parents to not have to suffer as their bodies age and die. We want a lot of things, and having God or Jesus as our shepherd does not mean that all those wants are going to be supplied. Children die young. Our parents suffer. We will see many of our deepest dreams go unfulfilled. It seems that, rather than providing solace, the first sentence of this psalm should make us depressed – or angry. No, none of us is given all we want, so please don’t throw that “magic God” stuff in my face.

But is supplying our wants really what is promised here? Kushner says the original Hebrew of this verse is more accurately captured by some more recent translations, such as: “The Lord is my shepherd. What more do I need?” It’s a subtle shift, but it makes me ask a subtly different question. Of course, we want. We want many things, and none of those things are guaranteed to us. But what do we really need?

We must not need safety, protection, the assurance that everything is going to be alright for us and our loved ones. Because we don’t get that. And, indeed, I don’t think the psalm is promising that. The Good Shepherd does not keep the psalmist out of the valley of the shadow of death. No, the person who wrote this psalm had to walk through it. He or she had to walk through the death of a loved one, or the betrayal of friends, or loneliness or fear. There was no protection from that. The Good Shepherd does not keep the psalmist’s enemies away—no, they are there, watching as the psalmist is fed from God’s table. But they are there. The Good Shepherd does not even keep the psalmist away from the presence of evil – evil is present, it’s just that the psalmist doesn’t fear it. There’s no protection here. So what is there? What do we really need that this psalm offers?

Some of you are familiar with the name of William Sloane Coffin, who died two years ago. He is often talked about in the same breath as Martin Luther King, Jr., as one of the great moral leaders of our country. He was a relentless activist for peace and justice, opposed U.S. military intervention from Vietnam to the Iraq War and was an ardent supporter of LGBT rights long before other clergy were. He’s also one of the most eloquent preachers I’ve read. His most requested sermon is a eulogy he gave at Riverside Church in New York City for his beloved son, Alex, only 10 days after Alex was killed in a car accident.

“As almost all of you know,” that eulogy begins, “a week ago last Monday night, driving in a terrible storm, my son – Alexander—who to his friends was a real day-brightener, and to his family was ‘fair as a star when only one is shining in the sky’ – my 24-year-old Alexander, who enjoyed beating his old man at every game and in every race, beat his father to the grave.”[2]

“Immediately after such a tragedy, people must come to your rescue,” he said. “People who only want to hold your hand, not to quote anybody or even say anything, people who simply bring food and flowers – the basics of beauty and life – people who sign letters simply, ‘Your brokenhearted sister.’” In the eulogy, he contrasted those people with others – often his own pastoral colleagues -- who quoted some verse from Scripture as a way of offering comfort that was, he says, only thinly disguised self-protection – as a way to pretty up a situation whose bleakness they simply couldn’t face. “Like God herself,” Coffin said, “Scripture is not around for anyone’s protection, just for everyone’s unending support. That’s what hundreds of you understood so beautifully. You gave me what God gives all of us – minimum protection, maximum support. I swear to you, I wouldn’t be standing here were I not upheld.”

Minimum protection, maximum support. This is what we are promised, says this great man of the faith, and I believe he is right. And this is what we are promised in this great psalm. What we need is not for anything bad to ever happen. What we need is the assurance that we will not be utterly destroyed by the things that do happen. What we need is not protection from pain and loss – not even God can give that – but assurance that pain and loss do not need to define our lives forever, that on the other side of the valley of the shadow of death there is land of light and warmth. What we need is to know that, even as we walk through that valley, we are being accompanied by someone who is walking with us, grieving with us. “My own consolation,” William Coffin said in his eulogy, “was in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.” Minimum protection. Maximum support.

God will not – God can not, I think – protect us from pain and loss, but this psalm assures us that we will survive the worst life, and death, can bring us. We will hurt, but we will heal. We will grieve, but we will grow whole again. For God – and God’s people – are surely with us. Amen.

_______________

[1] From The Lord is my Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the 23rd Psalm.
[2] See http://www.pbs.org/now/society/eulogy.html.