Idle and Blessed

A couple of weeks ago the New York Times had two articles about one of the odd and troubling aspects of modern life. One, in the Review section, was about how busy we are, how being busy has become a mark of meaning, a sign of importance and worth. We are too busy to see friends, too busy to take a day "off," too busy to step out of the ratrace even for a moment. The other article was in the Travel section and was about how hard it is to unplug on vacation. The ubiquitious email, the "bing" of messages, the vibrating phone -- all those divide our attention. We keep one ear listening for the sounds of work in case we miss something important. And what happens is that we risk missing that which is truly important, and we are never fully present where we are in the moment. Children are laughing, old people are telling stories, young mothers are singing babies to bed, the ocean is washing the cares of the world away -- and we are busy listening for the latest office email.

I have been more intentional this year about giving my wholehearted attention to the place and the people where I am. I have been spectacularly un-busy. I have had fascinating conversations with a three-year-old, and have listened to the prayers of tiny toddler. I have sat on the beach and dozed. I have napped. I have cooked with my mother and brother, read the paper every morning with my father, and shared a bed with sister just as we did when we were little.

I have been idle and blessed, and it has been like an unceasing prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving for all the bounty of this life, this family, this time. Amen.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?  

from New and Selected Poems, 1992 Beacon Press, Boston, MA    

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

What’s Your Story?

Mark 6:1-12

For the past several weeks, we have been reading stories about the early days of Jesus’ ministry.  The stories tell of Jesus healing and raising people out of death, stilling the storm, casting out demons.  There are miracles at every turn, it seems. 

Great crowds gather to watch, some out of curiosity, no doubt, wanting to see this spectacle; others out of need, seeking healing and wholeness for themselves or someone they love.  Some see and believe that this is godly power; others dismiss Jesus as just another trouble-maker or a heretic. 

But whatever the crowds think, the stories spread.  They inspire the faithful and challenge the skeptics.  The stories are told and retold. And eventually, they are written down and spread even further. 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of Jesus returning to his hometown and going to the synagogue.   We’ve heard Mark’s account this morning, and it is a little different from the other versions.  That is understandable, isn’t it?  Two or three people can be involved in the same event and each one will have a different perspective. 

As Mark tells the story, we know how Jesus’ visit to Nazareth affected him.  The negative reaction of the people is powerful and makes it all but impossible for him to minister among them. 

But there are other stories here, too.  What about the people who heard him teach that day, those who were offended by his teaching?  How were they affected?  What story would they tell about this encounter?  I invite you to imagine one of those stories with me.

Well, I’d known him all his life, and he was always a nice boy.  His mother was glad to have him take up the family business and support her, and he was a good carpenter, steady and strong.  But he always seemed to be thinking about something else, and that cousin of his, John, was not a good influence.  One day, he just up and left, went to see John in the wilderness somewhere down near Jerusalem, where he got baptized or something. 

He came back home after that but he was not the same.  That was when he started his work as an itinerant preacher.  It just about broke his mother’s heart when he left home.  And the stuff he was saying and doing – oh my goodness – we all knew he would get into trouble with the authorities.

I remember that Sabbath when he came back to Nazareth to visit.  In our synagogue, men and women worshipped together and I was there that day when Jesus stood up and started to teach.  We were all so impressed by his confidence, his knowledge, his wisdom.  But the more he talked, the more it seemed he was challenging us.  His interpretation of the scriptures was not what we were used to.  And somehow I felt …accused…or guilty….or something. We were good people, weren’t we?  But I felt like I needed to defend my beliefs against what he was saying.

And then I just got angry.  I think a lot of us did.  I mean, who did he think we was to presume to teach us about God, to tell us what it meant to be faithful.  He was only a carpenter, after all, not a rabbi, and not even from a respectable background.  Of course, Joseph had raised him, but we had never been quite sure about who his father really was. And where was his respect for his elders?  I was old enough to be his mother; I’d changed his diapers, for goodness sake. And now here he was, acting like he was God or something. 

We never got to see any of those miracles we’d heard about.  And when he left us that time, we knew he would not be back.  It was almost as though he had shaken the dust of Nazareth off his feet and moved on.  And I’m sorry that it turned out the way it did, but we were right about him getting into trouble. I just never thought he would get himself killed, and certainly not like that.

You know, I’ve thought a lot about that day in the synagogue since he died.  I can’t remember exactly what he said but I know now that he was trying to show us some deep truth about God, and all we could see was an ordinary person we’d known all our lives. 

I’d give almost anything to be able to sit in that synagogue and hear him teach again.  And maybe I can.  The ones who were with him while he was alive say that he is still present, that he is alive in a new way.  I don’t know what to make of that, exactly.  But I do know that he keeps on teaching.  I hear his stories all the time.  It is as though he left parts of himself behind in those who were willing to take what he offered. 

I didn’t do that when he was here, but I’m doing it now.  I’m looking for him in the most ordinary places; I’m listening for him in the voices of those around me; I’m trying to live so God can use me to do that for others.  And maybe there has been a miracle in our midst because I feel like I’m meeting Jesus in a whole new way.  I feel like I’ve been given another chance to know him.  

And that’s my story. 

What’s your story? 

Are you one of those ordinary people who bears God into the world?  Are you one who teaches Christ?  What story are you telling the world with the way you live your life?  You may be the only gospel some people ever hear. 

And where do you yourself meet Christ?  Do you expect to encounter him in the words of a brother or sister, a familiar friend, an ordinary person?  When your faith is weak, do you draw strength from the Christ in another’s heart? 

Jesus is in our midst, still teaching, still healing, still challenging.  All we have to do is receive what he offers.  The great story of God’s love, God’s power made perfect in weakness, God’s all-sufficient grace, was lived out in Jesus; and now that story lives in us. 

           

Go and tell!

Trinity Sunday

"Understanding God"

Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17

John 3:1-17

Today is Trinity Sunday, but we acknowledge the Holy Trinity almost every Sunday.  “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is an ancient –- and very familiar -- way of understanding God.  Some churches sing it in a Gloria Patri or a doxology. Others say it along with the sign of the cross. And almost all churches use the phrase as part of baptism.  But what does it mean, really, to speak of God as trinity, as three in one, one in three?

The preacher Frederick Buechner explains it this way:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery.  Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God.

The Trinity is also a way of saying something about God and the way God is within Godself, namely God does not need Creation in order to have something to love, because within Godself love happens.  In other words, the love God is is love not as a noun but as a verb. ….

                                                                             (Wishful Thinking, p 114)

So God is love in action, in the threefold way that is a mystery.  I’m talking about capital M mystery, the kind of mystery that might better be called mystical, and not the kind that is a problem to be solved.  We are good at the latter, at solving problems and figuring things out, but not so good at dwelling with mystery.  That’s a problem in itself, because the life of faith, a life lived in, with, of and by God, is just that, a life of dwelling in mystery. 

If this isn’t easy for us we can perhaps take comfort that it hasn’t been easy for our predecessors in faith either.  

Look at poor old Nicodemus.  He just didn’t get it, did he?

He came under cover of darkness to see Jesus, both the darkness of nighttime and maybe also the darkness of his own doubt and confusion.  Perhaps he thought that his interest in Jesus would be hidden in the dark, but instead he found himself in the presence of pure light, the kind of light that exposed all his deepest needs and desires and lack and longing.  He found himself in the presence of the Light of world.

He was drawn to Jesus by the physical signs he had seen, but Jesus seemed to say that it was what could not be seen that was more powerful.  Nicodemus was firmly rooted in the kingdom of the world and Jesus instead pointed him to the Kingdom of heaven – whatever that meant.

And Nicodemus confused Jesus’ instruction to be born from above as meaning that he had to somehow crawl back into his mother’s womb.

He also thought Jesus was talking about the wind when what Jesus really meant was the powerful breath of the Spirit blowing wherever it chose.

We get a sense of how frustrated Nicodemus must have been when he finally threw up his hands and said:  How can these things be?

How indeed!  If Nicodemus, a learned man, a scholar of the Torah, a teacher of Israel, couldn’t understand, what hope could there be for the rest of the people, especially those like us who never had the chance to approach Jesus in person?  How is it possible for us to understand God, to comprehend this mystery?  What is God like?  How can we know God?

Reflect with me for a moment on some of the ways God is revealed in the Hebrew Bible.  God is experienced as a mighty wind, a voice, a rock, a pillar of fire, a sheer silence and the sound of thunder.  God is understood as a nursing mother caring for her child, a shepherd, a king; a judge, a potter, a lover, a father.  And yet, none of those understandings fully grasp all of who God is.  As the prophet Isaiah reminded us:  God’s thoughts are not our thoughts nor are our ways God’s ways.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways and God’s thoughts than our thoughts (paraphrase of Isaiah 55:8-9).

As much as we might try, ultimately it seems God is unknowable.  Except, except, God apparently wants to be known so God comes to us in ways we can understand.  As John Calvin said:

“For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is [accustomed] … to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of God to our slight capacity. To do this God must descend far beneath God’s loftiness.” (Calvin, Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 13, Section 1)

In other words, God speaks to us in baby talk.  God kneels down so we can see eye to eye.  God comes to us in ways we can comprehend.  We have an understanding God who knows our limitations and responds to them, by approaching us in a whole variety of ways, and even going so far as to become one of us.  Jesus was both the Son of God and somehow also God.  John tells us that “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  But John also reminds us that “No one has ever seen God.  It is the God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.” (John 1:14, 18)  And Jesus has made God known to us as “Abba,” a word that means something like “Daddy” or “Papa.”  It is a term of endearment, expressing intimacy and love.  And Jesus’ Abba is our own Abba, because we, too, are the children of God. 

And that is two-thirds of the mystery.  From the record of scripture we can understand God as the author of creation, our father and mother, and as Jesus our brother.  But God is not limited to the pages of a book, not even if it is the Good Book.  The God who acted in the past is still at work.  God still breathes new life into our world.  And God’s life-giving breath can be as powerful and unpredictable as a sudden storm, or as gentle and refreshing as a cool breeze on a summer morning. 

Our Triune God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being – we live because God has created us, has birthed us into life; we move in the world as Jesus moved, acting with compassion and justice and mercy and acceptance and love; and we have our being by the power of the Holy Spirit, who continues to breathe in and through us, inspiring us and those around us. 

And in the end, there is only one reason we can ever even come close to understanding the mystery that is God and that is because our understanding God loves us and calls us to respond in love. 

Can we explain or ever fully understand love – where it comes from, how it works, its power and tenderness? When we are able to understand the mystery of love, then we will understand God.  Because God is love – God who is the creator, transcendent and over all, high and lofty; God who is our brother Jesus, walking with us in the sorrows and celebrations of this life; and God who is as close to us as our own breath, the Spirit which gives us life. 

And maybe it doesn't matter at all that we cannot understand God because God fully understands us, understands us and still loves us.  God so loves us; God so loves the world.

And for that, thanks be to God: Abba, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Spirit Like the Sea

I worshiped this morning in a church that has an early service with guitar and music that is not familiar to me.  One of the songs had these words:  “Bring your spirit like a living stream to the center of my heart … and let it overwhelm me like the sea.”  As the people were singing, I had this memory of being at the beach in the water and getting knocked down by a strong wave.  

There is that sense of losing all control, of being turned over and over so you no longer know what is up, of not being able to breathe or find your footing.  And then finally you are deposited on the sand, scraped and bruised and out of breath.  

I don’t know why we would ask for that, but I do know that it is often the way the Spirit comes.  It knocks me down, strips away my fragile sense of control, and turns my world upside down.  I must depend on the power of the wave – the power of the Spirit --  to bring me to safety because I cannot do it myself. 

John Donne wrote a poem that is a prayer seeking this experience: 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
 

It is an odd prayer to pray, perhaps, but maybe it holds more truth than our usual tame and timid inquiries of the Spirit……

Holding Bread

How many times have you said the Lord’s Prayer?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  Countless times.  The Prayer is embedded in our hearts and minds; we can say it without even having to remember the words.  It is a prayer that prays itself.  That is both a comfort and a challenge – comforting because it is always there when we need it and challenging because its familiarity can cloud the radical approach to life we ask for when we pray this prayer.

Give us this day our daily bread, for example.  It seems a simple request.  In the Greek, though, the words take on an additional meaning that is easy to miss in routine and rote.  The word translated “daily” has its origins in two Greek words that mean necessary for existence.  The bread is given either for the current day or the very next day, depending on which scholar you read.  Either way, the portion is for a single day, not something to be stored up and hoarded, but rather that which is necessary for life in the present. 

So praying for daily bread is asking for what we need for our very existence, but it is also an implicit promise of trust. When we ask God to give us our daily bread, we are promising to trust that what we need will be given each day, that we do not need to hoard or try to store up God’s gifts.  For anxious people, this is a hard promise to make.  Remember the Israelites in the wilderness, trying to gather more manna than they needed in the moment?  How hard it must have been for them to trust that God would provide for the future, and not try to manage it themselves.

And it is hard for us, too.  All too often, we rush ahead to meet the future, hands full of worry, hearts so preoccupied by what does not yet exist that we miss the gift of the holy now.  And in spite of ourselves, God continues to answer the prayer we pray even when we do not fully trust what we are asking.  God continues to give us the bread we need for the present.

A story is told about the thousands of children who were orphaned and left to starve during the bombing raids of World War II. 

The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee campus where they received food and good care.  But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night.  They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food.  Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime.  Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace.  All through the night the bread reminded them, “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.” (Sleeping with Bread:  Holding What Gives You Life, by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn, p 1)

At this Table, we are given a piece of bread to hold.  It reminds us that God has provided all we have needed for life in the past, and God will continue to provide for our future.  We can let go of worry and anxiety and fear.  Holding our bread, receiving and being part of the Body of Christ, we, too, can rest in the sure and certain promise of God’s eternal love.  And that is all we need for today. 

Amen.

A sermon preached for 

The Presbytery of Southern New England

May 5, 2012

(c) Martha C. Highsmith

An Easter Story

It is Easter, but I have been thinking about Founders’ Day. We observe it every October in our church, in honor of those who founded the church, and is always a wonderful occasion. There is special music, usually a bagpiper, fancy sandwiches and the silver tea service for coffee hour, lots of old friends returning to share worship and fellowship.

This past Founders’ Day marked the 160^th anniversary of the founding of our church. It was truly a memorable day, but not for the reason you might think – unless you were one of the 12 people in worship that day…. It was the day after the October snowstorm.

There were trees and limbs and power lines down everywhere. It was a mess. My little street was blocked for almost a week, and when the debris was removed, the whole landscape had changed. Even months after the storm, there are still dangling branches and open scars from broken limbs. It has been hard to see how the maple in my front yard could survive with so much damage.

But something curious has been happening in the past few weeks. Where it seemed there was only brokenness, new sprouts are emerging. The forests are red with new growth budding even on the broken branches. Where is seemed that the chance of survival was slim to none, there was life all along, gathering its strength, waiting.

---------

On Good Friday, the landscape of faith was changed forever. We said no to God’s great gift of love. We broke faith with God. And for a while it seemed that death might have the last word. But our “no” cannot stand in the way of God’s eternal “yes.” Out of death and brokenness, God in Christ brings life. Easter is our great celebration of that. In a way, this is our true Founders’ Day! Here we are: special music, old and new friends sharing worship and fellowship, a feast prepared for us!

And at the Table, we are reminded of the source of life. It is not of our own doing. It is not from our own strength. In the midst of our worry and weakness and brokenness, it is God who is giving us new life.

And the gift comes to us from the risen Christ who says to us: This is my body broken for you – broken. Take and eat … and live. And out of brokenness, we are given hope and love and resurrection.

A favorite poem of mine (Manifest: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry) includes these instructions: "Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts." That is how we are to live, with laughter and joy.

Christ is alive, and so are we. Against all odds, in spite of the facts – we are alive! And the final line of the poem is like an invitation to us from the risen Christ. The poet says: "Practice resurrection."

And Christ says it, too, with his own life and the example set for us: Practice resurrection!

In the face of all that would say “no,” let God’s great “yes” be spoken. Consider the facts, as grim as they are sometimes – budgets, numbers, personal prognoses, broken hopes and dreams, fragile faith, loss and death and sickness.

Consider the facts and then …. rejoice. Because Christ is alive, and so are we. We are resurrection people. And may we continue live Christ-like lives, practicing resurrection.

Alleluia! Amen!