Toward Sunday, September 20, 2015

Reading:  Mark 9:30-37
Theme:  Who is the greatest?  Or is it "how" is the greatest?

Interesting that the question of who is the greatest comes up just after Jesus has let the disciples know he's not going to be around much longer.  Naturally they start thinking of leadership succession, and each one has their own thoughts about who is best qualified to take over.

The obsessive-compulsives, of course, think they should lead because they really do believe chaos will come if they aren't in charge.  But all such personality disorders aside, I'm sure each of the disciples has their own definition of greatness, and their own choice of who really should lead the community once Jesus is gone. 

I wonder what criteria, what resume items, and what attributes and achievements they considered and argued about?  How do we think about and measure leadership in the community of faith?  In the community or country?  In our homes and families?  What do we think it takes to lead and be great or strong in God's way, and in the way the world needs?

And ... after very seriously compiling and checking and refining our list of needed attributes and achievements, and identifying our candidate, or even brushing up our own leadership skills to match what we think a good leader does ... what do we make of Jesus' little prophetic action of stepping outside the circle to bring in an as-yet-not-valued outsider, and telling us to go and do likewise -- that when do things like this, we truly open ourselves to the presence of God?

The sermon preached September 13, 2015

Reading:  Proverbs 1:20-33 and Isaiah 50:4-9
Sermon:  Enlightenment Guaranteed (revised)

“Enlightenment Guaranteed” is a film I saw a number of years ago.  It was in German with English subtitles, and another minister told me this week she saw it as well, but with Japanese subtitles.  It’s about two brothers – Gustav and Uwe, who journey together from Germany to study at a Zen monastery in Japan in a quest to sort out the mess of their lives and find themselves. 

The brothers are very different.  Gustav – a quite, introspective man, has always been burdened with a sense of not being enough and the journey to the monastery is something he has been planning for a long time.  Uwe – who is married when we meet him, begs to be taken along only at the last minute, when his wife and children suddenly leave him because of his emotional coldness and hardness.  For him, the journey is a desperate escape from his sudden loneliness.

Both men are looking for answers to their brokenness, and when they make it to the monastery the  physical and spiritual discipline of the place affects each of them in different and unexpected ways. 

But it’s the journey to the monastery that really is the subject of the movie, and the catalyst of enlightenment in both the brothers’ lives.  Their first night in Tokyo they go out drinking, get lost, can’t find a way back to their hotel, lose all their money and credit cards, and end up sleeping in boxes on a street in a city with a language and a culture that makes them totally alien and powerless.  And it’s this – the discipline of life as it is, the spiritual discipline of loss and helplessness as it overtakes them in the world, that really brings them to the spiritual transformation and opening that they need.

I thought of the film this week when I started wondering about the place, and maybe even the home of Wisdom in the reading from Proverbs this morning.

Wisdom is God’s Wisdom – portrayed almost as a second person within God, and in feminine terms.  She is Lady Wisdom – God’s Word and Way.  Gerhard von Rad in his study on wisdom in Proverbs says she is the Hebrew way of describing “primeval world order” – the basic way the world is meant to be if it’s to be any good at all, and reflect in any way the original and good intent of God in calling it to being.  In the New Testament and in Christian theology there is also a special connection between Wisdom and Jesus; in some ways Jesus is seen as one who is especially opened to God’s Wisdom, who actually bears God’s Wisdom in ther world.

And with all this in mind, I wonder why Wisdom is in the street, and in the public square.

Why is Wisdom not in the Temple, where First Isaiah came to meet her – high and lifted up, in glory and awesome light, a vision and call and a word from on high?

Or why is she not in the synagogue?  If as the scholars tell us, the Book of Proverbs was compiled around 400 BCE after the time of the Exile, synagogues would have been an important place of meeting for the Jews – their local community of faith would have been where they might have expected to worship God and encounter God’s Word and God’s Way.

Or why is Wisdom not in their homes?  The family home was always a central place of worship and remembrance, of story-telling and holy instruction and ritual.  Why is Wisdom not in the home?

I wonder, was Lady Wisdom somehow pushed out of the holy places?  Was she not listened to there?  Not welcomed?  It happens, I guess.

Or maybe is the street and the public square and the places “out there” – what we call “the secular world,” the place – or at least one of the places where Wisdom – the Way and the Word of God, the Christ, always and actually live and speak to us?  Or at least try to?

So when the servant of God in Isaiah 50 talks about “morning by morning” opening his ear to God, and “morning by morning” being awakened to God’s word and way, from which he does not turn back through the day, he is not talking just about his morning Bible reading and daily devotional and prayer time.  But he is also talking about reading the morning paper and listening to, or watching the morning news about the time and the world in which he lives.

A lot of the news is good – stories of compassion, sacrifice, justice being done, positive change.  And we love to hear and read these stories.

But how much is bad?  How much is challenging, upsetting, jarring, angering, depressing and infuriating?  Enough to make us say:

How long, O Lord?

How long will we and others hate knowledge?

How long will we not choose the way of God?

How long will we not listen to moral counsel?

How long will we despise correction, and all attempts to change the way we do things?

Which are exactly the words of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs – the words of God, of Earth itself in its primeval goodness, of Christ.

Opening ourselves in this way to this side of God’s voice, to this face of God’s Wisdom makes it harder for us – harder to live and know how to live, harder sometimes to believe and have faith.

But the message of Proverbs, the message of Isaiah, the message of Jesus and the whole of the Bible, the message of Israel and of the Christian church at their best and at their worst, is that this is the way to a faith that’s fuller and deeper, more engaged and engaging, more lively and life-giving, more true to God and God’s Way.

I say this with confidence – that it is true, because it’s only in the last two years as I’m learning really to face and embrace some of my own disorders and difficulties that I’m now learning things about myself and God and life and what and how I can be, that I wish I’d been able to learn 20 or 30 or even 40 years ago.  I try not to live in regret for having taken so long.  I try to live instead in gratitude for the chance to be facing and embracing my life as it is, both good and bad.

And Proverbs and Isaiah tell us that this is true of facing and embracing life as it is out there as well.

So what is the voice of Lady Wisdom in our day?  What is the voice of God out there?  What does it sound like?  What is it saying – at least, trying to say to us?

And is our life, is our church, is our faith itself fuller and deeper from listening to it?

The sermon written and not preached Sunday, Sept 13, 2015

Reading:  Proverbs 1:20-33 and Isaiah 50:4-9
Sermon:  Enlightenment Guaranteed

“Enlightenment Guaranteed” is a film I saw a number of years ago.  It was in German with English subtitles, and another minister told me this week she saw it as well, but with Japanese subtitles.  It’s about two brothers – Gustav and Uwe, who journey together from Germany to study at a Zen monastery in Japan in a quest to sort out the mess of their lives and find themselves. 

The brothers are very different.  Gustav – a loner, has always been burdened with a sense of not being enough and the journey to the monastery is something he has been planning for some time.  Uwe – who is married when we meet him, begs to be taken along only at the last minute, when his wife and children suddenly leave him because of his emotional coldness.  For him, the journey is a desperate escape from his sudden loneliness.

When the brothers make it to the monastery the  physical and spiritual discipline of the place affects each of them in different and unexpected ways. 

But it’s the journey to the monastery that really is the subject of the movie, and the catalyst of enlightenment in both the brothers’ lives.  Their first night in Tokyo they go out drinking, get lost, can’t find a way back to their hotel, also lose their wallets, credit cards and ID, and end up without their clothes, money or identity sleeping in boxes on a street in a city with a language and a culture that makes them totally alien and powerless.  And it’s this – the discipline of life as it is, the spiritual discipline of loss and helplessness as it overtakes them, that really brings them to the spiritual transformation and opening that they need.

The message seems to be, stay around life long enough and enlightenment is guaranteed.

In my own life, I know my difficulties and disasters of the past few years are what’s giving me the chance now to learn things about myself and God and what I am and can be, that I wish I had been able to learn 20, 30 or even 40 years ago.  And instead of living in that regret , to live instead in gratitude for where I am now, and what I am now finally able to learn. 

Stick around long enough, and enlightenment is guaranteed.  Or so we like to think, anyway.  It’s the best case scenario, and the ancients believed it firmly.

In the Semitic tradition – in the faith of the Hebrews and then also of Christians and Muslims, it’s expressed in some of the teaching of the Old Testament – that God is in charge of the world as a righteous judge and will not be mocked, that even if evil, greed and willful blindness seem to triumph for a while, in the end they will be undone and what is right and true – and those who are right and true, will be vindicated.  We see it in our reading this morning, when God’s Wisdom says of those who refuse to follow her ways:

          Because they hated knowledge

          and did not choose the fear of the Lord,

          would have none of my counsel,

          and despised all my reproof,

          therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way

          and be sated with their own devices.

          For waywardness kills the simple,

          and the complacency of fools destroys them;

          but those who listen to me will be secure

          and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.

In other words, what goes around comes around.  Your sins will find you out.  As Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”  Or as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. truly believed those things.  That’s why they were the leaders and re-shapers of society that they were.  It’s why what they did and said are worth being remembered.

But many people today, including many of our leaders and cultural icons, are not so sure about the moral arc of the universe – about the sureness of people being found out in their sins – about evil, greed and willful blindness having their day and then being punished – about the justice and morality of something beyond personal interest really mattering– about good always being rewarded and vindicated in the end. 

We see too many people getting away with too many things for too long a time.  We wonder if there is a moral universe at all – maybe the universe is simply and only what we decide to make of it, no matter the suffering it usually means for other people, other creatures, and even Earth itself.

Hindus have long believed in karma and reincarnation – that somewhere along the way, you get what you deserve – you reap what you sow, and what you don’t reap and learn from in this life you get chances to learn in new lives more in keeping with your character over and over again until you finally achieve enlightenment. 

I wonder if that’s what the traditional Catholic teaching of purgatory is also about – that whatever deadly sins of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony – in other words, whatever dominant  characteristics of our culture we don’t purge ourselves of in this life, we have time to get burned out of us after death.  Suddenly purgatory seems like a gracious thing. 

But the Bible overall seems more interested in inviting us to be cleansed and enlightened in this life, to be among those who walk and live with God’s Wisdom in this world for the good of others, for our own good, and for the good of planet Earth as a whole. 

Gerhard von Rad, one of the more notable Old Testament scholars of the last century, once described the Hebrew idea of Wisdom as “primeval world order” – or as the basic way the world is meant to work if it’s to be any good at all, and reflect in any way the original and good intent of God in making it.  And it’s that with which the Bible calls us to live in harmony – to learn to live in accord with the way the world and all its creatures are meant to be in Earth’s original glory.

In the end that’s what it’s about.  As Evelyn Underhill says, “the object of our salvation [-- the point of why we even bother to be disciples] is God’s glory, not our happiness.”

So we read in Isaiah 50 of the servant of God – whoever it is at different times, being willing to be taught by God, morning by morning listening for what God has to say and not rebelling against it, throughout his (or her) life following the way God reveals, and in that commitment finding the strength to stand up to whatever ridicule, opposition and even persecution may come – because in the end is there any other way of living, worth living?

We believe this is the way Jesus lived, and the way he calls us to live as well in his name and in his spirit.

Not everybody is ready to accept that invitation.  Probably there are more than we think, or than we count as being faithful to God’s way.

But it’s never a matter of numbers. 

The only real question is whether I am willing at this stage of my life with who I am and what I have, to learn what God and life and the world are trying to teach me about honest and faithful living. 

The longer I live, do I accept the discipline of life and the disasters of loss and helplessness that come my way, to come to whatever enlightenment still eludes and awaits me, but is guaranteed?