Oh, what a family (we are called and empowered to be) -- sermon from Sunday, February 25, 2018

Reading

 (The illustration is from the illuminated Sauvigny Bible, 12th-century France, titled "Abraham Holding in His Lap His Descendants: Jews, Christians and Muslims")

Jews, Christians and Muslims are all descended from Abraham and Sarah, the old and childless couple whom God chooses in the Book of Genesis to be father and mother to a great people who, in communion with God, will bless all people and all life on Earth.  What kind of people are they?  And are their children at all like them?

Selected and abbreviated verses from Genesis

Now Terah was the father of Abram and two other sons, and they lived in the great city of Ur, in what is now Iraq, between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.  Abram was married to Sarai, who was barren.  They had no children.

Terah took Abram and Sarai, as well as Lot, the son of a brother of Abram who had died, and left the city of Ur and the kingdom of the Chaldeans, to travel to the land of Canaan.  But when the family – such as it was, came to Haran – only half-way to where they planned to be, they settled down.  Some years later, Terah died there.

Then the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your father’s house to the land I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the Earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went as the Lord told him, and journeyed by stages as the Lord showed him.  (Gen. 11:27 – 12:1-3)

And along the way, at a number of points in Abram’s and Sarai’s long and continuing journey, God repeated this promise to them and to the family that eventually was born to them:

"Look toward the heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.  So shall your descendants be.”  (Gen. 15:5)

"You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.”  (Gen. 17:4-5)

“I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.  And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the Earth be blessed and gain blessing for themselves, because you obey my voice.”  (Gen. 22:17-18)

Sermon

According to the commercials, ancestry.ca is a powerful tool for bringing people together and creating vibrant, inclusive community by helping people recognize and celebrate their common ancestry.  In one commercial, a man watches a new family move in next door – clearly different in lifestyle, culture, family patterns, behaviour and language.  The new family is deeply Irish, and it’s hard for the man who’s been there for years to imagine ever really connecting with these strangers next door.

But when he learns through ancestry.ca that his background includes Irish ancestry and blood, he calls his new neighbour over to the fence between their back yards, pulls up the evidence of common blood on his Smartphone, and the two of them suddenly have a connection that over the last ten seconds of the commercial turns into a growing life-long friendship between their two families with the fence between them torn down to make two backyards into one!

Can you imagine if there were a spiritualancestry.ca available to us?  If all people on Earth somehow were able to see in black and white pie-chart evidence on their Smartphone app, our common connection with one another as descendants of Adam, and children of God? 

Or if all Jews, Christians and Muslims at least, were able to remember over our backyard fences of our shared ancestry in Abraham and Sarah, long-ago chosen servants of God?  That in spite of our differences and our sibling rivalries and conflicts, we really are brothers and sisters?  That the fences can come down, or at least have a few more gates put in, so we can work at a single backyard for the good of all the world around us?

Together, we are the stars of the heaven – God’s lights beyond number twinkling with hope in the darkness of our time.  We are like the sand of the seashore – grains of holy grit beyond number that individually, in small handsful and in large accumulations are able to be good for the world in so many ways.

If only we could get our act together.  Work out the details of a family re-union.  Really address and heal our family’s dysfunctions – the dysfunctions that separate our different streams, as well as the dysfunctions we suffer within our own traditions, and even in our own little faith communities.

Because think what kind of family this is in the world.  The family of God under Abraham and Sarah is not a blue-blood, royal house like the Tudors or Windsors, somehow high and lifted-up, separate from the rest of us ordinary people.  It’s not a family like the Kennedys or Bushes, or the Molsons, Irvings, Trudeaus or now the Mulroneys – an establishment-power family somehow feeling entitled to rule or at least have the power to sway others who do.  Nor are we the Cosa Nostra or some Mafia family with closed doors, secret handshakes and a need always to win out over rivals and come out on top.

We are the family of Abraham and Sarah, and it’s worth remembering what this means for how we see ourselves, and how we go about our business in the world. 

Does it mean anything, for instance, that at different times instead of settling down and comfortably in to wherever they were, they are willing whenever God calls, to pack and go, and accept whatever journey God has for them now to take?  Even when it means leaving a home they have grown to love, leaving a place of influence they’ve come to have, leaving behind and never seeing again the final resting place of Abraham’s father.

And does it mean anything that even though God promises them a land, they seem to be in no rush to get there?  That even when they get there – unlike some of their later children, later generations of their children, instead of treating what God gives them, as their possession that they need to protect with force of arms, they hold it quite lightly and even let it go from time to time to become poor wanderers again when God and life seem to demand it?

In their time, whether by choice or circumstance, they are marginal people.  Not marginal on Earth; they are quite at home on Earth because they know all of Earth is in God’s hands.  Bugt marginal to any culture of their time that sees any part of Earth as their exclusive domain.  They are outsiders to the dominant culture of the day.  They are powerless and vulnerable. 

And they’re okay with this, because they trust in God.  They let God and not something less, be the answer to their fear and anxiety.  In their acceptance of vulnerability they learn to be open to others along the way.  They learn the meaning and necessity of compassion, generosity, tolerance, love and justice – not just for themselves, but for all the world.  They show the world a new way of being – different in spirit and in purpose than what any other family and culture more naturally encourages.

I wonder if Abraham and Sarah were the only people God called.  Or if maybe God also called others – tried enlisting others in God’s way of being, but they were just the ones who heard and answered God’s call.  And let it shape their whole life.

Whatever the reason behind their becoming people of God, thank God for them.  And thank God for the chance we have to be part of their family – one little constellation of stars among so many others in the vastness of our time’s night sky – one little bit of beach made up of our little grains of sand gathered together like others are elsewhere for the good of the world, on the seashore of the ocean of God’s great good will for all the Earth.

Promises to Keep (sermon from Lent 1 Sunday, Feb 18, 2018)

Reading:  Genesis 9:8-17
  
(The Book of Genesis tells the story of a Great Flood at the beginning of time.  God, pictured as a mighty warrior with a great bow, is angry at how bad the world has become.  Humanity is doing so much evil that God sends a flood to clean everything up – to wash away the evil, and save the good.  But when the flood is over and the survivors and God get together, God does not say what we might expect.  God does not say, “Now let that be a lesson to you, people – never to be that evil again!” Instead, God says, “Oh my!  I almost washed everything away.  I will never do that again!  I promise, from now on I will use my power to save and maintain– not to destroy, all life on Earth.”)

Rainbows are wonderful things.  What do you feel when you see one?  How does it make you feel?

That’s important, because there are other times in life as well – times when it seems the world has come to an end.

It probably feels that way right now for the parents, the families and the friends of the 14 young people and 3 adults shot at a high school in Florida this week. 

I wonder if it felt that way somewhere along the line for the young man who has confessed to the killings – like his world had come to end, and that’s part of the reason he did what he did.

There are times in life when everything we want, hope for, count on in the world no longer is there, or is true.  It happens in all kinds of ways and on all kinds of levels. 

Like when your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up with you.  Or when a marriage and a family falls apart.  When you lose a job.  Or get the diagnosis you were fearing from the doctor.

The end of the world can be as big as 9/11 or as close to home and personal as the collapse of your hopes or the falling apart of your family.

And what do we do when it happens?

Do we blame, find out whose fault it is, and punish them?

Do we give up – on ourselves or on others?

Do we get angry, and make the world and other people around us, suffer as much as we do?

Do we try to make the world somehow more secure, more pure and perfect?  Try to get rid of everything and everyone that doesn’t measure up to what we want the world to be?

The Bible tells a story about God seeing the world God loved, ending.  It takes up three chapters (chapters 7-9) in the early part of the Book of Genesis that tells stories about how the world is made, and what the world is really all about.  It’s the story of the Great Flood, and today we read the very end of the story.

In the story, God has made the world to be good and wonderful – put day and night, land and water and air in good order, and has filled the Earth with all kinds of life and beauty and goodness.  Plants and animals are everywhere, and human beings are put in charge of it all – to take good care of everything, to take care of things the way God intends.

But by chapter 7 things have started going terribly wrong.  People – the very creatures God put in charge, have turned out to be capable of evil and because of it all creation is suffering.

It breaks God’s heart to see it, and at first God gets angry.  God decides to strike back, and to clean the world up by eliminating whatever and whoever doesn’t measure up.

That’s what the Flood is about, the story says.  It’s God’s way of washing away all that’s bad, leaving only the good behind.

Through the Flood, though, God learns two things. 

Lesson one – that by reacting that way, God almost loses everything.  When God sees all the world under water, God sees how close he has come to losing it all for good.  If God were human, we’d say that God scares himself at the power of what he can do when he doesn’t stop to think through what might happen.

And lesson two – that even the ones God saves and helps survive the Flood, who are supposed to be good, are really also a mixture of good and bad just like everyone else.  For all their apparent goodness they are not really that different from others.  Nothing and no one is “perfect.”

So ... what does God do? 

Basically, God promises to stick with it as it is.  To accept the Earth, all life in it, and even all humanity such as we are.  And to do whatever is necessary to keep it all going, to keep it whole and alive in its ongoing, evolving life.

There’s a teaching in Buddhism called “the wisdom of no escape.”  It’s about being open to wherever you are and whatever is, committing yourself to it, letting yourself be touched by it, and letting yourself grow into loving relationship with all that life is.

That’s what God does.  God sees the wholeness of Earth, and God promises to sustain all of Earth’s ongoing and unfolding life. 

This is it, says God.  God commits – promises, to work with it and within it, in all its mixed-up goodness and badness, in all its living and normal imperfection, to make it as good as it can be day by day, year by year, life by life, age by age.

And that, the story says, is what the rainbow is about, and why it’s a sign of hope.  It’s a sign of God keeping the promise to put away the divine bow and arrow, and never use it again. 

God’s bow is still hanging up on the wall, and instead of taking it down and using his power to destroy things, God is still working with us to make all life on Earth good.

And that helps us keep going when things turn bad.  We trust God to keep promises like that. 

And we do the same thing. 

Because we share in the life and responsibility of God, and live in the image of God, we also make promises -- very specific and particular promises all through our life, that help make Earth and all life on it as good as we can day by day, year by year, life by life. 

And we do our best to keep them.

Looking and listening for God in the ER

Reading:  Isaiah 40:21-31



The Book of Isaiah is made up of three different books from different stages in Israel’s history, put together as one because of the consistent theme through all the parts.

The First Book – chapters 1-39, foresees the coming destruction and loss of the kingdom to Israel’s fearsome enemies, because of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God’s love for the poor and oppressed, and God’s desire for the well-being of all.  The Second Book – chapters 40-55, comes from a time much later, after the people have suffered the loss of their kingdom and years in exile, and now are returning to their land by God’s good will – the good will of God who still and always is especially present to the poor and oppressed, and desires the well-being of all.

In this passage the prophet encourages the people to trust the good will of God in all things and all times.

John Claypool in the late ‘60’s was pastor to the congregation of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky when his ten-year-old daughter, Laura Lue was diagnosed as having acute leukemia.  Only eighteen months and ten days after the diagnosis, she died.

During that time John continued in his ministry, with intermittent short leaves of absence, and he shared as much as he could with his congregation of his and his wife’s and their family’s struggle.  Roughly half-way through the progress of the disease – after nearly nine months of remission and almost total normalcy, Laura Lue suffered a relapse and a full-blown return of the symptoms of the disease on an Easter Sunday morning, and was re-admitted to hospital on Easter Monday. 

Two weeks later John reflected on that experience in a sermon based on the same reading we have heard today from Isaiah 40.  John titled the sermon “Strength Not to Faint.”  And one thing I have not forgotten from reading that sermon maybe 30 or 35 years ago is the strength and deep encouragement he finds in the closing promise of the passage:

          those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

          they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

          they shall run and not be weary,

          they shall walk and not faint.

“Here I am this morning,” John Claypool says at the end of his sermon, “ – sad, broken-hearted, still bearing in my spirit the wounds of this darkness.  I confess to you honestly that I have no wings with which to fly or even any legs on which to run – but listen, by the grace of God, I am still on my feet!  I have not fainted yet.  I have not exploded in the anger of presumption, nor have I keeled over into the paralysis of despair.  All I am doing is walking and not fainting, hanging in there, enduring with patience what I cannot change but have to bear.

“This may not sound like much to you, but to me it is the most appropriate and most needful gift of all [from God.]  My religion has been the difference in the last two weeks; it has given me the gift of patience, the gift of endurance, the strength to walk and not faint.  And I am here to give God thanks for that!

“And who knows, if I am willing to accept this gift, and just hang in there and not cop out, maybe the day will come that Laura Lue and I will run again and not be weary, that we may even soar some day, and rise up with wings as eagles!  But until then – to walk and not faint, that is enough.  O God, that is enough!”

I thought about that sermon and what John Claypool shared of his experience, strength and hope while I was sitting with Japhia in the Emergency Room of St. Joe’s last Wednesday night and into Thursday morning – the third visit we made there in the space of six days. 

She’s better again now.  She’s once again achieved a kind of good and manageable balance in her disease.  But it was a rough week for her.  Not a week of soaring or running very far.  More a week of just getting through each day, one day at a time, without falling over or giving up.

And all of you, in your own ways and in your own journeys, know what that’s like – in your own life, in the life of your family, in the lives of friends and neighbours and co-workers that you care about.

There are times of soaring, for which we are immensely grateful.  There are times of running and not growing weary, for which we give thanks.  And there are times for us all and for others around us when it is enough – truly enough, to be able to walk and not faint, to get through the day and the night that follows without falling or giving up entirely.

And how often does the strength to do that come from others?  From the help and support of family and friends that is there when we need it?  And from what someone else has shared of their experience, strength and hope, and that we remember in our own time of struggle and crisis?

Have you not known?  [the prophet says.]  Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundations of the Earth?

[That God is big enough to encompass and take in –

to embrace and take on,

all our sorrow and pain.

That God’s love is greater

than anything that might scare us or threaten us;

greater also than anything we think must do or must have

to fight whatever enemy we face.

And that God is more loving and creative in his handling of all that is –

whether good or bad, easy or hard,

and in his desire

to draw all things together toward a good end,

than we can ever imagine history and life being capable of.

And so …

those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

                   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

                   they shall run and not be weary,

                   they shall walk and not faint.

Just a thought, though, about “those who wait for the Lord” – or “wait upon the Lord” as we sometimes translate it.

My guess is that a lot of people talk to God, and that they mean it quite honestly.  Giving thanks for what seems good, and asking God’s help – making requests of God for what they need and hope for in the spot they are in.  And then going on … in a way, waiting to see if God will answer their prayer, but still getting on with things themselves in the meantime.

I wonder, though, if as many as talk to God are also committed t0 listening to God.  And listening for God.  Not just for God’s happy “You’re welcome!” when they offer thanks.  And not just for God’s “Yes” or “No” to whatever they ask for – which can be hard enough.

But also for God’s quiet and often-merely-whispered “Here I am” in the midst of whatever situation they are in – no matter how dark or painful, how tragic or God-forsaken it may appear to be.

Israel found, for instance, that really they did their best theology, that they found their way into their deepest communion with God, and that they themselves most became the people of God in the hardest times of their history – when they were most tempted to doubt and despair, when without the trappings of worldly success and strength they learned to wait and listen for the Lord in the midst of their darkness, and from the underside of history and of life they were able to see and know where and how God really is in this world to make it go ‘round.

In the ER last Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I wonder where God really was. 

Obviously in the kindness of the paramedics who came to the house, and of the triage nurse who got things started? 

Maybe also in the sometimes unguarded conversation of the young couple sitting ahead of us in the waiting room, whose simplicity and openness of life somehow helped us all to be real? 

Of course in the kindness of the doctor who attended Japhia and who we remembered – and who remembered us from a visit some months ago? 

Was God also present to the pain of the young woman who Japhia was asked to give her bed to, and to her quietly distraught husband – love and solicitude and powerlessness all over his face as he asked the nursing staff for help? 

I am convinced I saw a face of the true God in the young man – about high school age, maybe Eritrean or Somalian, who was there at 4 in the morning to translate for his father who had come in for some reason, and who got out of the chair he was resting in, so he could invite me to sit in it, so I could maybe nap.

Somehow, in all of that activity and anxiety and tedium and terror and humility and honesty, God was present and whispering to those with ears to hear, “Here I am.” 

John Claypool, because of the way he shared his experience, strength and hope, helped me to listen, and to wait upon God not just beyond but also in that present moment. 

Are there others who help you to wait and to listen for God in your present moments?

And are there others yet in the world that you live in, who will be able to wait and listen for that presence of God in their present moments, because of what you share with them of your experience, strength and hope?